bruce robertson | University of California, Santa Barbara (original) (raw)
Papers by bruce robertson
"Complementary Modernisms in China and the United States: Art as Life/Art as Idea is the res... more "Complementary Modernisms in China and the United States: Art as Life/Art as Idea is the result of a conference where Chinese and Americanist art historians addressed the development of modernism in their respective cultural traditions. The chapters juxtapose historical developments without attempting to map connections or influences. Instead, both national modernisms are presented as part of the larger terrain of global modernism, but generated within specific, localized circumstances. This juxtaposition reveals significant differences as much as any particular moments of connection or similarities, disrupting any standard narrative of the primacy of French (or European) avant-garde art and its influence on more belated and peripheral communities. The differences that are revealed are not merely the result of the very different historical trajectories of each country's moves into modernity. Rather, differences in attention and methodology are just as important, in particular the focus on the post-1980 development of Chinese art as part of the modernization of Chinese culture and economy, rather than the American perspective on post-1980s postmodern qualities. At the same time, significant convergent concerns emerge, such as the importance of urban centers and urbanization, the profound effect of political and technological disruption, and the question of identity.The volume represent a cross-section of Chinese and Americanist art historians, both early career and senior scholars, working on a wide variety of subjects, such as the Ashcan School, Impressionism, Cai Liang, Liang Sicheng, Huang Binhong, Cézanne, Bauhaus, Joseph Cornell, Andrew Wyeth, Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and contemporary art more broadly, with (as is usual in any survey of the 20th century these days) a concentration on the 1960s. 《交互视野下的中国和美国的现代艺术: 艺术/生活或观念》这一会议论文集收录了中美艺术史家对现代主义在各自传统下的发展进行研究所得的成果。这些文章并置历史发展,而非试图详述其中的关联或影响。相反,两个国家的现代主义都被展现为全球现代主义大背景中的一部分,并被认为是在特定环境中产生的。这种并置显示了重要的差异性以及任何特殊情况下的联系或相似之处,打破了一般强调法国(或欧洲)先锋派首要地位及其对 [...]
This paper summarizes the questions raised by the research of Microcosms, an interdisciplinary, m... more This paper summarizes the questions raised by the research of Microcosms, an interdisciplinary, multicampus research project at the University of California. This project considers the role of material collections in the modern university, within an historical perspective, and comes to several broad conclusions. The research that underpins the organization of the 9 annual UMAC conference, “Putting University Collections to Work in Research and Teaching”, was done within the context of Microcosms, a multicampus research project of the University of California, co-directed by Rosemary Joyce, Mark Meadow and myself. What follows is based upon our collective work in this project. The project, beginning informally ten years ago, has the goal of analyzing the uses of material collections in the modern university, seen within an historical perspective, and projected into the future. That is to say, using the UC system’s material collections as our case study, we wish to understand the hist...
Choice Reviews Online
This extravagantly illustrated catalogue - published in association with a major exhibition - evo... more This extravagantly illustrated catalogue - published in association with a major exhibition - evokes the romantic fascination with Italy that glimmers in the work of John Singer Sargent. Sargent, heralded on both sides of the Atlantic, was one of the most creative American artists of the late nineteenth century. Born in Florence to American parents living abroad, he retained a deep and lifelong connection to the country famed for its ability to get 'ineradicably in one's blood'. Sargent vacationed frequently in Italy, and most of the works he created there were painted not for commission but out of his artistic passion for Italy's people, land, and culture. Often hauntingly powerful, they range from dramatically painted genre scenes of Italian peasants and saturated landscapes that celebrate the beauty of the Italian countryside to portraits of other Anglo-American expatriates and tourists, including Henry James and Edith Wharton.The majority of works are of Italian sites, including well-known tourist spots but also the quieter, more isolated locales that Sargent sought out. His subjects include magnificent Italian gardens with their ancient and Baroque statuary, Rome's Neoclassical and Renaissance buildings, urban street scenes, the Italian Alps, and, of course, Venetian canals. Sargent found Venice particularly alluring, and the city well suited the watercolor medium in which he worked most often in Italy. His use of vivid colors, brushwork that varied from soft and fluid to bold and dashing, and an overwhelming sense of light and air characterize his Italian scenes - and rank Sargent as one of the finest watercolorists of all time. His later Italian works, some in watercolor and others in oil, reveal an artist who relished his materials and made art purely for art's sake.Both beautiful and informative, this lavish volume includes eighty-five color and fifty black-and-white images. It adds a new dimension to our appreciation of Sargent's art and will delight anyone who loves Italy, as Sargent so passionately did.
Choice Reviews Online
... the Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press (Cleveland, Ohio and... more ... the Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press (Cleveland, Ohio and Bloomington). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1990. PUB TYPE: Book (ISBN 0940717026 ). VOLUME/EDITION: PAGES (INTRO/BODY): xvi, 196 p. SUBJECT(S): Homer, Winslow; Exhibitions ...
The Yale Journal of Criticism, 1998
Woman's Art Journal, 2003
Page 1. Din «u Mill IFa iIilkWJiiiintlikiiii f.jiuB ROBERT DANCE ,«/ BRUCE ROBERTSON Page 2. Pag... more Page 1. Din «u Mill IFa iIilkWJiiiintlikiiii f.jiuB ROBERT DANCE ,«/ BRUCE ROBERTSON Page 2. Page 3. ... MGM beauhes even mo1e beauhful" -Louelia Pas:ons. 1929 ROBERT DANCE is . a p1ivata a1t paala1 in Naw Yo1k, spaciali2ing in Olp Mas.ta1 paintings . anp p1awings. ...
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2009
Page 1. Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting and Touching in History. By Mark M. ... more Page 1. Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting and Touching in History. By Mark M. Smith (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007) 180 pp. 55.00cloth55.00 cloth 55.00cloth19.95 paper How do the senses shape human experience ...
museum and society, 2004
The South Kensington Museumnow the Victoria and Albert Museumhas a complex history. 1 Founded i... more The South Kensington Museumnow the Victoria and Albert Museumhas a complex history. 1 Founded in 1857 as an omnibus museum of art and industrya condensation of the Great Exhibition of 1851 in all its abundanceit had a bewildering variety of possible ...
American Quarterly, 1989
... Catalog of the same title by John K. Howat et al., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York,... more ... Catalog of the same title by John K. Howat et al., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York, 1987), distributed by Harry N ... academics but also exhibition curators, proposed a symbolic interpretation of the style and iconography of American landscape painting that drew on the ...
American Art, 2003
Canonization—that moment at which the art historical community accepts a work as essential to our... more Canonization—that moment at which the art historical community accepts a work as essential to our understanding of art—occurs when a work of art enters a public museum collection. It is then that the work of art becomes an established entity, always accessible for reproduction and viewing. By and large, it is this quality of stability and availability that is the necessary pre-condition, the tipping point. I use as my example the collecting of American art, in particular what has been called “luminism,” in part because the history of the art of the United States is coincident with the development of public museums.
AI & Society, 2000
MICROCOSMS is an on-going project, that will find its outcome in a set of physical exhibitions ex... more MICROCOSMS is an on-going project, that will find its outcome in a set of physical exhibitions extending into the Internet. Our goal is to enlarge the discursive space of museums, universities, disciplines and collections by pushing at their conceptual boundaries. At the centre of the project lie the multifarious things of the world that we collect and analyse in the contemporary university. The knowledge produced from objects is integral to the primary mission of the university, and is quite distinct from textual knowledge. But while we would like to believe that sharp boundaries define the functions of knowledgeobjects, they in fact exist in a series of continua of motives and uses: temporal, spatial, institutional. For example, universities and museums are not distinct entities, and neither are museums, laboratories or libraries. Objects reside in teaching or research collections; in departmental or personal assemblages of memorabilia; in the limbo of closets and cabinets, temporarily obsolete and disposable, but never disposed. They are the sources of knowledge production, the storehouses of that knowledge, and the means of its dissemination. There is one space where all these aspects of objects may once have existed under the same roof and that is the 16th-century Curiosity Cabinet; there is one realm where they may be virtually reunited, and that is the Internet. These two spaces are the beginning and end of the project.
"Complementary Modernisms in China and the United States: Art as Life/Art as Idea is the res... more "Complementary Modernisms in China and the United States: Art as Life/Art as Idea is the result of a conference where Chinese and Americanist art historians addressed the development of modernism in their respective cultural traditions. The chapters juxtapose historical developments without attempting to map connections or influences. Instead, both national modernisms are presented as part of the larger terrain of global modernism, but generated within specific, localized circumstances. This juxtaposition reveals significant differences as much as any particular moments of connection or similarities, disrupting any standard narrative of the primacy of French (or European) avant-garde art and its influence on more belated and peripheral communities. The differences that are revealed are not merely the result of the very different historical trajectories of each country's moves into modernity. Rather, differences in attention and methodology are just as important, in particular the focus on the post-1980 development of Chinese art as part of the modernization of Chinese culture and economy, rather than the American perspective on post-1980s postmodern qualities. At the same time, significant convergent concerns emerge, such as the importance of urban centers and urbanization, the profound effect of political and technological disruption, and the question of identity.The volume represent a cross-section of Chinese and Americanist art historians, both early career and senior scholars, working on a wide variety of subjects, such as the Ashcan School, Impressionism, Cai Liang, Liang Sicheng, Huang Binhong, Cézanne, Bauhaus, Joseph Cornell, Andrew Wyeth, Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and contemporary art more broadly, with (as is usual in any survey of the 20th century these days) a concentration on the 1960s. 《交互视野下的中国和美国的现代艺术: 艺术/生活或观念》这一会议论文集收录了中美艺术史家对现代主义在各自传统下的发展进行研究所得的成果。这些文章并置历史发展,而非试图详述其中的关联或影响。相反,两个国家的现代主义都被展现为全球现代主义大背景中的一部分,并被认为是在特定环境中产生的。这种并置显示了重要的差异性以及任何特殊情况下的联系或相似之处,打破了一般强调法国(或欧洲)先锋派首要地位及其对 [...]
This paper summarizes the questions raised by the research of Microcosms, an interdisciplinary, m... more This paper summarizes the questions raised by the research of Microcosms, an interdisciplinary, multicampus research project at the University of California. This project considers the role of material collections in the modern university, within an historical perspective, and comes to several broad conclusions. The research that underpins the organization of the 9 annual UMAC conference, “Putting University Collections to Work in Research and Teaching”, was done within the context of Microcosms, a multicampus research project of the University of California, co-directed by Rosemary Joyce, Mark Meadow and myself. What follows is based upon our collective work in this project. The project, beginning informally ten years ago, has the goal of analyzing the uses of material collections in the modern university, seen within an historical perspective, and projected into the future. That is to say, using the UC system’s material collections as our case study, we wish to understand the hist...
Choice Reviews Online
This extravagantly illustrated catalogue - published in association with a major exhibition - evo... more This extravagantly illustrated catalogue - published in association with a major exhibition - evokes the romantic fascination with Italy that glimmers in the work of John Singer Sargent. Sargent, heralded on both sides of the Atlantic, was one of the most creative American artists of the late nineteenth century. Born in Florence to American parents living abroad, he retained a deep and lifelong connection to the country famed for its ability to get 'ineradicably in one's blood'. Sargent vacationed frequently in Italy, and most of the works he created there were painted not for commission but out of his artistic passion for Italy's people, land, and culture. Often hauntingly powerful, they range from dramatically painted genre scenes of Italian peasants and saturated landscapes that celebrate the beauty of the Italian countryside to portraits of other Anglo-American expatriates and tourists, including Henry James and Edith Wharton.The majority of works are of Italian sites, including well-known tourist spots but also the quieter, more isolated locales that Sargent sought out. His subjects include magnificent Italian gardens with their ancient and Baroque statuary, Rome's Neoclassical and Renaissance buildings, urban street scenes, the Italian Alps, and, of course, Venetian canals. Sargent found Venice particularly alluring, and the city well suited the watercolor medium in which he worked most often in Italy. His use of vivid colors, brushwork that varied from soft and fluid to bold and dashing, and an overwhelming sense of light and air characterize his Italian scenes - and rank Sargent as one of the finest watercolorists of all time. His later Italian works, some in watercolor and others in oil, reveal an artist who relished his materials and made art purely for art's sake.Both beautiful and informative, this lavish volume includes eighty-five color and fifty black-and-white images. It adds a new dimension to our appreciation of Sargent's art and will delight anyone who loves Italy, as Sargent so passionately did.
Choice Reviews Online
... the Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press (Cleveland, Ohio and... more ... the Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press (Cleveland, Ohio and Bloomington). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1990. PUB TYPE: Book (ISBN 0940717026 ). VOLUME/EDITION: PAGES (INTRO/BODY): xvi, 196 p. SUBJECT(S): Homer, Winslow; Exhibitions ...
The Yale Journal of Criticism, 1998
Woman's Art Journal, 2003
Page 1. Din «u Mill IFa iIilkWJiiiintlikiiii f.jiuB ROBERT DANCE ,«/ BRUCE ROBERTSON Page 2. Pag... more Page 1. Din «u Mill IFa iIilkWJiiiintlikiiii f.jiuB ROBERT DANCE ,«/ BRUCE ROBERTSON Page 2. Page 3. ... MGM beauhes even mo1e beauhful" -Louelia Pas:ons. 1929 ROBERT DANCE is . a p1ivata a1t paala1 in Naw Yo1k, spaciali2ing in Olp Mas.ta1 paintings . anp p1awings. ...
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2009
Page 1. Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting and Touching in History. By Mark M. ... more Page 1. Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting and Touching in History. By Mark M. Smith (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007) 180 pp. 55.00cloth55.00 cloth 55.00cloth19.95 paper How do the senses shape human experience ...
museum and society, 2004
The South Kensington Museumnow the Victoria and Albert Museumhas a complex history. 1 Founded i... more The South Kensington Museumnow the Victoria and Albert Museumhas a complex history. 1 Founded in 1857 as an omnibus museum of art and industrya condensation of the Great Exhibition of 1851 in all its abundanceit had a bewildering variety of possible ...
American Quarterly, 1989
... Catalog of the same title by John K. Howat et al., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York,... more ... Catalog of the same title by John K. Howat et al., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York, 1987), distributed by Harry N ... academics but also exhibition curators, proposed a symbolic interpretation of the style and iconography of American landscape painting that drew on the ...
American Art, 2003
Canonization—that moment at which the art historical community accepts a work as essential to our... more Canonization—that moment at which the art historical community accepts a work as essential to our understanding of art—occurs when a work of art enters a public museum collection. It is then that the work of art becomes an established entity, always accessible for reproduction and viewing. By and large, it is this quality of stability and availability that is the necessary pre-condition, the tipping point. I use as my example the collecting of American art, in particular what has been called “luminism,” in part because the history of the art of the United States is coincident with the development of public museums.
AI & Society, 2000
MICROCOSMS is an on-going project, that will find its outcome in a set of physical exhibitions ex... more MICROCOSMS is an on-going project, that will find its outcome in a set of physical exhibitions extending into the Internet. Our goal is to enlarge the discursive space of museums, universities, disciplines and collections by pushing at their conceptual boundaries. At the centre of the project lie the multifarious things of the world that we collect and analyse in the contemporary university. The knowledge produced from objects is integral to the primary mission of the university, and is quite distinct from textual knowledge. But while we would like to believe that sharp boundaries define the functions of knowledgeobjects, they in fact exist in a series of continua of motives and uses: temporal, spatial, institutional. For example, universities and museums are not distinct entities, and neither are museums, laboratories or libraries. Objects reside in teaching or research collections; in departmental or personal assemblages of memorabilia; in the limbo of closets and cabinets, temporarily obsolete and disposable, but never disposed. They are the sources of knowledge production, the storehouses of that knowledge, and the means of its dissemination. There is one space where all these aspects of objects may once have existed under the same roof and that is the 16th-century Curiosity Cabinet; there is one realm where they may be virtually reunited, and that is the Internet. These two spaces are the beginning and end of the project.