That strong emotions have irresistible power over us is undeniable. What can be denied, or ignored, is the all-pervasive influence of even low-grade emotion on society and its members. The Australian Research Council (ARC) is funding a project to investigate the effects of emotion on European life in the second millennium. Schwartz brings back a progress report on emotion in art. Continue reading “351 The emotional turn”
Comparative study
336 The Camus complex at The New Yorker
In the 1950s death lost its sting in The New Yorker. As in the opening line of Albert Camus’s novel L’Etranger, mothers – and others – keep dying without anyone shedding a tear over them.
Terms of reception: Europeans and Persians and each other’s art
From Mediating Netherlandish art and material culture in Asia, edited by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and Michael North, published by Amsterdam University Press, distributed in US by University of Chicago Press, 2014
From University of Chicago Press website (with more information on the book): “Scholars have extensively documented the historical and socioeconomic impact of the Dutch East India Company. They have paid much less attention to the company’s significant influence on Asian art and visual culture.
“Mediating Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in Asia addresses this imbalance with a wide range of contributions covering such topics as Dutch and Chinese art in colonial and indigenous households; the rise of Hollandmania in Japan; and the Dutch painters who worked at the court of the Persian shahs. Together, the contributors shed new light on seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture—and the company that spread it across Asia.”
Open pdf (10Mb)
Rembrandt’s Dürer
Rembrandt’s Dürer is the text of a talk delivered by Gary Schwartz on 9 March 2013 at the opening of a sales exhibition of work on paper by both artists at Christopher-Clark Fine Art, 377 Geary Street, San Francisco. These pages are from a printed brochure produced by the gallery.
Rembrandt’s David and Mephiboseth: a forgotten subject from Vondel
Gary Schwartz, “Rembrandt’s David and Mephiboseth: a forgotten subject from Vondel,” in Tribute to Lotte Brand Philip, art historian and detective, New York (Abaris Books) 1985, pp. 166-74
212 The international identity of the Netherlands
The Rijksmuseum is consulting an array of outsiders in formulating its program for the New Rijksmuseum, which is to open in 2008. As a participant in the round-table discussion on “The Rijksmuseum and Dutch national identity,” Schwartz advised the museum to focus instead on Dutch international identity. He attached to it a very concrete proposal for the presentation of Dutch and foreign art in the rebuilt museum art and an interpretation of the philosophy behind the Old Rijksmuseum. Continue reading “212 The international identity of the Netherlands”