Vanderbilt University History of Art Blog

“Book as Art: Medieval Necessity and Modern Invention” Exhibit Curated by HART Students

Illuminated manuscript (literally “hand written”) books are arguably the most characteristic objects of the European middle ages. They preserved a culture’s visions, adventures, religious rituals, and hard-won knowledge in books that were entirely handmade simply because there was no alternative. Contemporary artists, working in a culture dominated by mass-produced books and digitized content, are revisiting the challenges and joys of making a book by hand.

Elizabeth Moodey, assistant professor of history of art, and her HART 2288 seminar students this spring chose and researched the works in this exhibition—Book as Art:  Medieval Necessity and Modern Invention.  They investigated medieval and contemporary artists’ books to deduce common threads and broader stories. They also acquired new skills to share oral histories and digital resources.

The exhibition, on view in the lobby of the Heard Library through March 2017,  was curated by students Anna Childress, Mary Helen Johns, BA’16, Ariana Parrish, Danielle Pettiti, Francesca Salvatore, BA’16, Sharon Si, Rebekah Smith, and Daniel Weitz, BA’16, as a collaboration between the library and the department of history of art.

Each of the themes examined—Music (Si), Travel (Childress), Memory (Smith),  Word and Image:  The Role and Impact of Script (Johns), “For the Glory of God” (Parrish),  Medicine and The Evolving Understanding of the Body (Weitz), Materials—Making a Medieval Manuscript (Pettiti), and Women’s Experience (Salvatore)—brings together a medieval example and a selection of contemporary artists’ books, suggesting that medieval and modern artists share common concerns and draw on similar powers of invention.

“We began the course by asking, ‘What would be on our bookshelves if we had to write out all of our books? What do we gain with printing and digitization, and what do we lose?’” Moodey said.  “My idea was to consider books from the Middle Ages, when all books were made by hand because there was no alternative, alongside the work of contemporary artists who have chosen what many people think of as an archaic medium. I wanted to understand the enduring appeal of the form and the inventiveness of the artists who are transforming it—to explore what it is about handmade books, especially in the face of widespread digitization, that still makes them worth the trouble.”

The student-curated immersion project is part of “The Campus Curates: Illumination, Enlightenment and Discovery,” an exhibition opening in phases this summer, according to Celia Walker, director of special projects at Vanderbilt Libraries.

“Discovery requires one to step off the path and take a few risks,” Walker said. “These  projects celebrate the immersive work of students who stretched themselves by ‘wandering off the path’ to learn new things while curating exhibits.”

See Jane R. Snyder’s article about the exhibit in the most recent Nashville Arts Magazine (June 2016).

Sharon Si, sophomore (above) and Daniel Weitz, BA’16, (below) describe the themes they examined at the April 25 exhibition opening in the lobby of the Heard Library.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on May 13, 2016 in Events, HART, HART in Nashville, Student/Alumni, VRC

---

Department to Honor HART Graduates at May 12 Reception and Awards Ceremony

History of Art majors and minors and their families and friends are invited to attend the department’s reception and awards ceremony for our graduating seniors on Thursday, May 12, from 2 to 4 pm. The event will be held in the atrium of Cohen Memorial Hall on the Peabody campus, and awards will be presented at 3 pm.

Graduates and their families are also invited to view the current exhibits in the Fine Arts Gallery near the atrium from noon to 4:00 pm.  Out of the Vault:  Stories of People and Things, a student-curated exhibition exploring the dynamic relationships between people and things, will open that same day.  The twelve objects selected from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Collection seem to have little in common, ranging in origin from the ancient Mediterranean to twentieth-century Nashville.  The life stories of these objects, from their creation, life, death, and rebirth, are as complex and diverse as our own.

Out of the Vault investigates the journeys of objects across space and time and the meanings attached to them by the people with whom they came into contact.  Although we tend to think of inanimate objects as somehow inert, this exhibition shows that objects have agency.  Not only do people give meanings to objects, but also objects themselves can have an influence upon individuals with whom they interact.  The viewer is invited to engage with these remarkable objects and add one’s own perspective to their evolving stories.

This exhibition is the third in a partnership between the History of Art Department and the Fine Arts Gallery resulting in a student-curated exhibition.  This year Mireille Lee, assistant professor of history of art, taught the course entitled “Exhibiting Historical Art:  What is this thing?”  The class benefited from a guest lecture by Erica Kelly, senior exhibit developer at the San Diego Natural History Museum.

On view through September 9, this exhibit was conceived and designed by Haley Bowse ’19, Lilia Briskin ’19, Joe Eibert ’19, Sophia Jorasch ’16, Gabrielle Levitt ’18, Lauren Linquest ’19, Edward McElwreath ’18, Sarah Robinson ’18, Vivian Saxon ’18, Rebekah Smith ’16, Clancy Taylor ’16, and Daniel Weitz ’16.

A second exhibit in the gallery, on view through May 26, is Close Readings:  American Abstract Art from the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, featuring a wide range of abstract art by some of America’s most prominent artists, including Josef Albers, William Anastasi, Ross Bleckner, Stuart Davis, Sam Durant, Sam Gilliam, Cheryl Goldsleger, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, Harvey Quaytman, Martin Puryear, and Mark di Suvero.

The gallery will be open on Commencement Day (Friday, May 13) from noon to 4 pm, and Saturday, May 14, from 1 to 5 pm.  Gallery hours for the summer are Tuesday-Friday, noon to 4 pm; and Saturday, 1-5 pm. The gallery will be closed on Sundays and Mondays.

*Juan Alonso Villabrille y Ron (1663-1728), Spanish.  Head of John the Baptist, wood with traces of polychromy, 17th-18th century,

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on May 3, 2016 in Events, Fine Arts Gallery, HART, Student/Alumni

---

Vivien Fryd Invited to Present Lectures at Two Universities in Germany

Vivien Fryd, professor of history of art, will deliver a lecture addressing “Kara Walker’s About the Title:  Re-enacting the Trauma of Colonialism and Slavery” on Thursday, May 12, at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, Germany.  Her lecture is sponsored by the Program in North American Studies.

Fryd will present a paper titled “Stefanie Ries:  Waiting to Escape Nazi Germany” at a conference held May 20-22 at the University of Paderborn.  The title of the panel session is “Waiting as Cultural Practice.”

She is currently writing book manuscripts entitled Against Our Will:  Representing Sexual Trauma in American Art, 1970-2014 and Writing Trauma:  Henry Ries’ Photographs of Berlin, 1937-2004.  Fryd is the niece of New York Times photographer Henry Ries (1917-2004), a Berlin-born Jew who fled Hitler with his sister (Fryd’s mother) in 1938, returning to Germany after the war to photograph the darkness of war’s aftermath.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on May 2, 2016 in HART, Lectures, VRC

---

HART Major Hannah Ladendorf Experiences a Surrealist Play in New York City Through a Downing Grant

This past February, I was fortunate to receive a Downing grant to travel to New York City to conduct research in an atypical environment for an art historian.  In determining my final project for Professor Leonard Folgarait’s seminar on Surrealism, I decided to explore a play I had seen the year before in New York that I had described as “unusual” or “peculiar,” whereas a more appropriate word to describe it is “surreal.”   No words, no plot, no stage.  Sleep No More stands apart from a totalizing, prescribed narrative, materializing a rather surreal vision of theater.

Staged in the McKittrick Hotel, Sleep No More occupies more than 10,000 square feet of playing area that is  divided into nearly a hundred richly imagined, decorated rooms spread over six floors. Thematic elements of the play primarily refer to William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, while recalling sound and architectural elements from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Vertigo.   Felix Barret, director of Sleep No More, describes the production as a “non-linear approach to storytelling.” The experience of Sleep No More is often described as witnessing someone else’s dream. The play repeats itself after each hour, allowing guests to witness three different cycles, depending on their choices at each point.

A major element of the play is that it is “experiential,” permitting each audience member to determine the course that they follow.   Twenty different actors roam throughout the rooms of the hotel, and the permutations are infinite for each guest who has complete freedom during the three hours they are in the hotel to determine their course during each “cycle” of the play.  This relates to Surrealist theory because the outcome of the performance each guest sees is determined by chance rather than a formulaic approach to experiencing the play.   Sleep No More defies the rational approach to a theatrical experience by allowing guests to determine their course and to follow the golden rule of “fortune favors the bold.” Much like a dream, each member of the audience leaves the hotel with his or her own version of the story, often disjointed and non-linear.

While I was in the McKittrick Hotel, I had a completely different experience than I had the previous year.  I followed different characters, experienced new scenes, explored new rooms, allowing for some gaps of information to be filled, but leaving with even more holes in my story and a stronger desire to return.  The entire story line had changed just by chance.  I also explored the aspect of the subconscious, as Sleep No More is a dreamlike experience and related to Surrealist theory.  What is exposed when we explore our subconscious, what hidden desires are found, and what are our natural feelings?  I discovered that I was exploring not only the subconscious of the tragic hero, Macbeth, but also my own subconscious desires through the experience of wearing a mask and as a “morphic” cast member as well.

The play was an immersive, incredibly surreal experience to say the least, and I came away with a greater understanding of myself and my truest self when I am behind a mask.  My seminar paper focused on the Surrealist elements that I identified in the play, such as the exploration of the subconscious, focusing on scenes involving Lady Macbeth cleansing the blood of King Duncan from Macbeth’s body, as well as discussing the disturbances in the natural order promoted through the story line, as well as the set and visual design.  Because the play is truly a subjective experience, my paper was centered around my own personal experience as an audience member, as well as interviews with the director and actors to uncover overarching themes and characteristics of the play itself.

The weekend in New York City was incredible:  From exploring the MoMA and explaining the Surrealist concept of our irrational fear of drinking from Oppenheim’s fur-lined teacup to my friend (I still don’t think hair in tea would be a good mixture!) to traveling down the High Line and stopping in Chelsea Market before our show, we filled our weekend to the brim with a myriad of activities.  I am so grateful for this opportunity afforded me by the Downing grant to explore more of the city of New York, resulting in a weekend filled with laughs, great food, and surreal moments that will be cherished for a lifetime.—Hannah Ladendorf, BA’16

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on May 2, 2016 in HART, Student/Alumni, VRC

---

HART Alumnus and Sculptor John Powers Named 2016 Guggenheim Fellow

The allure of the unattainable and its connection to the passage of time have become central to the research of John Powers, BA’01, assistant professor of sculpture at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville, who was recently named a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Drawing from areas as diverse as natural history, architecture and the history of technology, Powers investigates the intersection of cinema, engineering, computation, music and physical space.  By employing motion and sound in his work, he incorporates the passage of time as a compositional element in an attempt to examine abstract and often intangible topics such as memory, thought, emotion, language and the essence of self.

“My work primarily takes the form of large kinetic sculpture, and it’s not uncommon that it can take a year to finish a single piece around all my other duties,” Powers said.  “My proposal was simply for time to dedicate to my work.  The main premise of my proposal was that I make large, complicated objects and was at a place in my career where I could benefit greatly from the time to focus on ambitious new works.”

Guggenheim Fellowships are grants awarded to scholars, artists, and scientists who have produced exceptional scholarship or creative work.  The title of his proposal was “Time and Space,” and the fellowship will allow Powers to take a year off from teaching to work in the studio.   “The Guggenheim is among the highest honors in the field, so being named as a fellow is simultaneously humbling and exhilarating,” he said.  “I could not be more excited.”

Powers, who began teaching sculpture at the University of Tennessee in 2013, was a fine arts major at Vanderbilt and recipient of the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award in 2001.  He earned his MFA in sculpture, with distinction, in 2008 from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia.

His sculptures, installations,  animation and video works have been exhibited nationally and internationally.  He has exhibited nationally at such venues as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the MIT Museum, the Mariana Kistler Beach Museum of Art, the Huntsville Museum of Art, the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art, the Wiregrass Museum of Art, the Alexander Brest Museum, the Masur Museum, the Gadsden Museum of Art, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Brenda Taylor Gallery, the Georgia Museum of Art, the Vero Beach Museum of Art, and Cue Art Foundation.

His work has been featured in the New York Times, World Sculpture News, Sculpture Magazine, Art Forum, the Huffington Post, Art in America, the Boston Globe, and on CBS News Sunday Morning.

Previous honors include the 2013 Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award, a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant, a Southeastern College Art Conference Individual Artist Fellowship, an Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship, and the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award.

Powers will have a solo exhibition that will include his most recent work, Locus, at the Knoxville Museum of Art, from May 6 to August 7.

“My colleagues and I are thrilled that John has been selected for this prestigious award,” said Dottie Habel, director of UT’s School of Art. “His work is remarkable for its scale, its ambition, its manufacture, and its haunting content.”

*John Douglas Powers, Locus, oak, poplar, steel, brass, plastic and electric motor, 2015

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on April 27, 2016 in HART, Student/Alumni, VRC

---

HART Major Sujin Shin Visits Houston’s Rothko Chapel Through a Downing Grant

In April, through the Downing Grant, I had the incredible experience of visiting the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas.  Viewing Mark Rothko’s monumental paintings within the chapel and observing the entire layout in person contributed immensely to the creation of my Honors project.  I plan to explore how the concept of the sublime applies to both the conception of the design and the paintings within the Rothko Chapel.

Founded in 1971 by philanthropists John and Dominique de Menil, the Rothko Chapel is a sacred space open to people of all beliefs. Designed by Mark Rothko, one of the most prominent American artists of the twentieth century, the chapel is a meditative, spiritual sanctuary that contains fourteen of his characteristic Abstract Expressionist paintings.  Rothko felt that the chapel would be his most important artistic statement.  Created during the end of his career (he committed suicide in 1970), the chapel could also be viewed as embodying not only the sublime but also this darker time in his life.

Even if one isn’t interested in Rothko or Abstract Expressionism, the space is unlike anything created before and a completely unique experience.  Christopher Rothko, son of the artist, has described it as “a place that will really not just invite, but also demand a kind of journey.”

The area around the Rothko Chapel is also home to a number of other unique architectural structures, such as Phillip Johnson’s Chapel of Saint Basil on the campus of the University of Saint Thomas.—Sujin Shin, BA’17

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on April 22, 2016 in HART, Student/Alumni, VRC

---

HART Alumna Stephanie Storey to Talk About Her Debut Novel on April 19

HART alumna Stephanie Storey graduated cum laude from Vanderbilt in 1997 with a fine arts major (now history of art) and a passionate interest in Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Italian Renaissance.  Such an obsession, she claims, ultimately culminated in her debut art historical novel, Oil and Marble, recently published by Arcade/Skyhorse.

Storey will talk to HART and creative writing students about her career trajectory since graduation in an informal discussion on Tuesday, April 19, at noon in the atrium annex (second-floor lobby) of Cohen Memorial Hall.  A light lunch will be provided.

“Over the past 20 years I’ve read every book I could find, crawled into the back of dark library stacks to track down obscure documents, studied art and Italian at the University of Pisa [semester abroad through Vanderbilt], driven up and down the Italian peninsula, and been on a pilgrimage to see every work on public display by Michelangelo, ” said Storey.

Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both lived and worked in Florence from 1501-1505.   Storey’s richly imagined tale of the real-life rivalry that drove these artists to create their iconic masterpieces is set against a backdrop of the violent, deceitful yet inspired world of the Italian Renaissance.

A native of Arkansas, Storey attended a PhD program in Art History before leaving to get her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College.  Now a Los Angeles-based writer, Storey has spent the past 15 years producing television for such shows as Tavis Smiley on PBS, The Writers’ Room with Jim Rash on Sundance, Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil for Comedy Central, and The Arsenio Hall Show for CBS.

 

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on April 18, 2016 in Events, HART, Student/Alumni, VRC

---

Rebecca VanDiver Convenes Panel on Diasporic Aesthetics at the University of Edinburgh

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on April 11, 2016 in Events, HART, Lectures, VRC

---

Tyler Jo Smith to Address Greek Vases in Popular Culture in AIA Lecture on April 14

A specialist in ancient Greek vase painting, Tyler Jo Smith, associate professor of classical art and archaeology, University of Virginia, will deliver the final AIA lecture of the semester on Thursday, April 14, at 6:00 pm at the Nashville Parthenon.  In her lecture, “From Hamilton to Hercules:  Greek Vases in Popular Culture,” Smith will explore the ways in which the visual imagery of Greek myths entered the popular imagination with Hamilton’s acquisition of Greek vases, tracing that influence up to the Disney film “Hercules” and the New Yorker cover (August 9 and 16, 2004) that appears on the poster for her talk.

Director of UVa’s Interdisciplinary Archaeology Program, Smith is particularly interested in the iconography of performance and the relationship between art and religion.  Author of Komast Dancers in Archaic Greek Art (Oxford 2010) and  co-editor of A Companion to Greek Art  (with Dimitris  Plantzos, 2012), she is currently writing The Art of Greek Religion (under contract with University of Pennsylvania Press).  An active field archaeologist, Smith has participated on excavations and surveys in Greece, Sicily, Turkey, and England.

Free and open to the public, her lecture is sponsored by the Nashville Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, the Conservancy for the Parthenon and Centennial Park, and Vanderbilt’s Department of Classical Studies.  Those who plan to attend the AIA lecture on April 14 are encouraged to call the Nashville Parthenon at 615.862.8431 to reserve a seat.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on April 11, 2016 in Events, HART, Lectures, VRC

---

“Feedback: A Campus Conversation About Race” Pop-Up Exhibit Opens April 13 in Cohen Hall

“Feedback:  A Campus Conversation About Race”—an exhibition to encourage open dialogue about perceptions of race at Vanderbilt—opens on Wednesday, April 13, from 5 to 7 pm in the west atrium of Cohen Memorial Hall.  The exhibit is comprised of nine photographs from a 2013 Hidden Dores campaign based on the “I am Harvard Campaign” paired with troubling posts from Yik Yak, an anonymous social media platform, collected over the course of the fall semester 2015.

Rebecca VanDiver, assistant professor of history of art, curated the exhibit along with the Creative Team of the Hidden Dores Student Organization.  “Dialogue is accomplished in part,” said VanDiver, “by coupling photographs of Vanderbilt students, who have an opportunity to speak out and speak back to those who question their presence on campus, with anonymously written comments posted on Yik Yak, candidly revealing popular on-campus interior narratives that are problematic and antithetical to the ideals of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

On view through May 26, the exhibition was made possible through the generosity of Vice Chancellor George Hill and the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, the Department of History of Art, and the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery.

Assembled on a table in the midst of the exhibit is a student-curated selection of books that explore race relations, campus activism, and the black experience, as a supplement to the photographs and quotations exhibited on the surrounding walls.  A mix of non-fiction and fiction, some of these books offer statistics, where others offer stories.  While not a comprehensive list, these books are just a few to help foster understanding and to start a conversation with the viewer and with members of the Vanderbilt community within this space and beyond.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on April 11, 2016 in Events, Fine Arts Gallery, HART, VRC

---