by | April 30, 2012

“The Art Department’s wanderjahre” — The origins of the Sloane Art Library

Over the last few months, I’ve had the pleasure of working on a project researching the history and origins of the Sloane Art Library. While rummaging through the Art Department’s old letters and administrative files might not sound like a fascinating way to spend time to everyone, my time in the University Archives at Wilson Library has revealed a surprisingly gripping narrative. Though many side stories attracted my attention, the main tale of the Art Library’s founding seems to be one of constant, dogged perseverance in the face of a troubled economy and an intransigent government.

The Sloane Art Library’s early history is inextricable from the history of the Ackland Art Museum. The first evidence in the archives of discussion of either the Art Library or the Ackland is in a 1951 report to Chancellor R.B. House from the “Committee on the Ackland Memorial,” in which the members discuss their plans to build an arts center in the “Fine Arts Area” of campus.

The intended location of the arts center. (1951)

Envisioned as a combination gallery and art department in which teaching would be facilitated by the presence of art, the plan was to include “the development of the Art Reference Library, housing books, prints, photographs and slides, for research and the teaching of art.” Later documents from 1953 detail more specific plans for this library, including:

  • A main reading room, office space for a librarian, and a “typing room”
  • Smaller reading rooms for classes
  • Shelving for 5000 books
  • An accessible “back stack”
  • A slide room and a file room for photos and prints
  • A vault for small valuable objects
  • Offices for the library’s art historian staff
  • Adequate table space for 30 readers
  • Spaces for 12-15 graduate students
  • 4 individual study rooms for faculty and researchers
  • An open-air reading room

Initial plans for the Ackland building, including the Art Library. (1951)

At first, the path seemed smooth for the Art Library. Grounds work was in progress on the Ackland complex by 1958, and the Ackland had an opening ceremony the same year. However, it seems that some problems were already beginning to surface just a year later, in 1959:

“The enclosed sketch shows why the [roof] canopy leaks. The rain water fills the channels faster than the water runs off so that drops hitting it splash up around the edge of the trough and drop below in quantity. I do not know if the design is defective or the installation, but in either case, the thing leaks like a sieve.”

At least they didn't have this problem! Close-up from an ad for fire safety products in the archive file. The ad title reads: "Stop Fire BEFORE It Spreads."

In 1966, plans were beginning for what would eventually become the Hanes Art Center. A “Defense of an Appropriation for an Art Building at UNC Chapel Hill” complained that the current library space was completely full (in terms of both books and people), had inadequate work space for librarians, and not enough study space. Unfortunately, in 1967 the art building was excised from the governor’s budget, prompting Joseph Sloane (then Director of the Ackland Art Museum, including the Art Library) to write to Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson: “Sadly enough, we all know that sweet reason is not what the Legislature is most likely to listen to.” 

One of many facilities photographs used as an argument for a new space. (1970)

These hard times, described in another letter from Sloane as “the Art Department’s wanderjahre,” lasted for another twelve years, with a total blackout on new construction in 1969 and another ignored request for funding in 1970. At long last, in 1978, discussion of the new building resumed, and in 1979 building plans were once more being reviewed, this time with a new architectural firm.

I have many more files to go through, and more questions to answer: when was the library finally completed? What was the turning point for getting construction done? When did the Art Library go from being part of the Ackland to become part of the University Library system?

I’ll return to you with some of these answers in a later installment!

– Eva Sclippa

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by | April 4, 2012

Wrought from the ghosts of card catalogs past: David Bunn’s Subliminal Messages

Card catalog drawer, Uploaded to Creative Commons by Kevin Harber, 2011

Card catalog drawer, Uploaded to Creative Commons by Kevin Harber, 2011

Once upon a time, before computers were everywhere, looking for a library book required real preparation. To have any hope of success, you needed to be ready with a title, author, or official Library of Congress “subject” in mind.

The catalog you consulted was a hefty piece of furniture filled with endless index cards. There was nowhere to type your stream-of-consciousness haiku, that eminently Google-able mush we all hastily deposit into online library catalog search fields now.  No autocorrect options ever popped up to suggest what you might be looking for. That was the librarian’s job.

Library patrons search the catalogs of yesteryear. (uploaded to Creative Commons by Providence Public Library, 2004)

People spent time with these card catalogs. They spilled coffee on them.  Pawed through with grubby fingers. Leaked ink or made stray marks with their pens. Sometimes, they even editorialized on cards by adding a comment or crossing out words.  Paper card catalogs were imminently hack-able, no programming knowledge needed.  Brevity, however, appears to have been an important skill  – you might only have time to quickly scrawl a word or two without being noticed.

I often wish I could have been a librarian back in the heyday of card catalogs and so David Bunn’s Subliminal Messages, one of the many gems in our collection of artists’ books, holds a special appeal for me.

In a series of high-resolution scans, he presents noteworthy specimens from the discarded catalog of the Los Angeles Central Library.   A progression of elegant pairs, one page will feature a card in its entirety while the next presents a full-page close-up of whatever mischief may have befallen it.

Ink smears between pages look like Rorschach tests. Two stray marks on the “Vampire” title cards look menacingly like teeth.  On the card for a 1966 volume titled Mexican American youth: Forgotten youth at the crossroads, a simple editorial note appears: “Racist.”

The oscillation between close-up and long-view scans creates an intriguing tension between the anthropological nature of the project and the abstract beauty of marks on paper fibers. There are bleeds and blots, quick dashes of ink or mystery sauce.

Today’s online catalogs facilitate improved searching, but there are fewer twists and turns along the way — less commentary, fewer signs of encounter.  Luckily, art can always help to rescue the physical and tactile from the force of forgetting.

– Madeline Veitch

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by | February 15, 2012

A Suite of Valentines — Postscript

Although she’s away at a conference this week, Heather wanted to share her own art-historical crush — a quick Valentine tribute to the master draftsman with the rock-star locks, Albrecht Dürer.

Albrecht Dürer, Self-portrait at 26. 1498; Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.


Who could resist that hair? (Or his hare, for that matter?)

And if you missed them the first time around, be sure to check out our three earlier Valentine’s Day posts about the artists we adore from afar:

Valentine #1 — for Tamara de Lempicka, from Eva
Valentine #2 — for Claude Cahun, from Madeline
Valentine #3 — for Sophie Calle, from Josh

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by | February 14, 2012

A Suite of Valentines — in which Sloane Art Library staff reveal their secret art historical crushes… (Part 3 of 3)

And finally, here’s the third of three Valentine’s Day posts celebrating some of the artists who make us weak in the knees.

Valentine #1 — for Tamara de Lempicka, from Eva
Valentine #2 — for Claude Cahun, from Madeline
Valentine #3 — for Sophie Calle, from Josh
Bonus Valentine! — for Albrecht Dürer, from Heather

 

Oh Sophie – I’ve Calle-d and called but you never answer…

Rrose Selavy, a.k.a. Marcel Duchamp, 1921

You encounter so many inspiring artists here in the Art Library that you can never have a crush on just one. In the way of crushes, the flame will burn bright for one artist for a couple of days only to shift to another when the next sexy new book comes along.

My choice for Valentine’s Day came down to two artists: Sophie Calle and Marcel Duchamp – or more accurately his female alter ego, Rrose Selavy. Ever the painful punster, Duchamp’s cross-dressing name is pronounced “Eros, c’est la vie…”

Yes, love is life, and since we’ve already featured another gender-bending representative in Claude Cahun, I’ll gush about Sophie Calle this time.

What can I say, I love the literary types. Her biography in Oxford Art Online describes her as a French photographer, but photography is such a small part of her work. Her photographs aren’t objects for aesthetic appreciation – they’re not “retinal art,” as Duchamp would call it. Instead, they are documentary, telling the elaborate, intimate, obsessive stories which are her true works of art.

Calle captures her Venetian subject at lunch in Suite Venitienne

In one project that eventually becomes the artist’s book Suite Venitienne, she meets a man at an exhibition opening in Paris and learns that he is soon taking a trip to Venice. She decides to follow him and photograph him there, completely unknown to him.

She bases another book project (Take care of yourself) on an email she receives from a lover breaking up with her. She shares the email with 107 colleagues in different professions – actresses and opera singers, professional archers and chess players – and asks them all to interpret it. Their responses are gathered together into an exhibition and a book that is by turns heartbreaking and hilarious.

The musician Feist reads Calle's break-up letter in Take Care of Yourself.

Sophie’s work is the logical result of Duchamp’s desire to replace “retinal” art that’s appealing to the eye with an art of ideas and concepts. She has turned herself into a readymade. Just as Duchamp made a simple snow shovel into a work of art by calling it one, she has made portions of her life into a work of art by declaring them so. So maybe I’m not choosing between Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Selavy and Sophie Calle at all – one is the other is the other.

When asked what he did after he gave up making works of art, Duchamp called himself “un respirateur” — a ‘breather.’ I would call Sophie Calle “une obsessioniste.” And what better obsession is there than a good crush?

– Josh

[With apologies to my wife, Margarite, the greatest possible artist-crush. Happy Valentine's Day!]

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by | February 14, 2012

A Suite of Valentines — in which Sloane Art Library staff reveal their secret art historical crushes… (Part 2 of 3)

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, here’s the second of three posts celebrating some of the artists who make us weak in the knees.

Claude Cahun, Untitled, 1927, 117mm x 89mm (whole), Jersey Heritage Trust

Valentine #1 — for Tamara de Lempicka, from Eva
Valentine #2 — for Claude Cahun, from Madeline
Valentine #3 — for Sophie Calle, from Josh
Bonus Valentine! — for Albrecht Dürer, from Heather

 

“Don’t kiss me, I’m in training”

Gender benders make me swoon – from Judith Butler to Lady Gaga, I just can’t help myself. Most alluring of all are the visual artists whose works are characterized by slippages, sauciness, and shifting identities – the masculine, the feminine, and beyond. Claude Cahun, who began making photographs over 90 years ago, created images of unimaginable complexity.

Claude Cahun, Untitled, 1928, 118mm x 95 mm (whole), Jersey Heritage Trust

Portraying a multitude of personas, her photographs pre-figure Cindy Sherman‘s work but with a surreal twist. She often stares into the camera with a fierce gaze – in braids and theater makeup, or a saucy driving jacket. In one carefully composed image, her perfectly round bald head sprouts twice from the same neck – two Claudes in one. Constantly shifting ground, her photographs and writings de-center gender in ways both playful and extremely serious, and deal with sexuality in a manner that defies labels.

Her biography is a remarkable one. In the 1920s she began living with her stepsister, who went by the name Marcel Moore. Lovers and collaborators for life, they moved to the Island of Jersey in 1937. During the war, they created a secret counter-propaganda office to produce literature in opposition to the Nazi occupation. Imprisoned and barely spared execution, they made it out of the war alive, although Cahun passed away soon after, in 1954.

Claude Cahun, Untitled, c. 1920, 210 mm x 124 mm, Jersey Heritage Trust

In Disavowals – or Cancelled Confessions, a recent English translation of a series of “poem-essays” originally published in 1930, Cahun’s narrative voice shape-shifts over the course of nine sections, many of which are equally literary and lusty. Seriously, you might find yourself blushing… Of art she writes:

“art is the very great morose delight,
A sad and tender attempt to immortalize our
    pleasures,
To remember passing love.”

 

– Madeline

Information and images from: Don’t Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore

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by | February 14, 2012

A Suite of Valentines — in which Sloane Art Library staff reveal their secret art historical crushes… (Part 1 of 3)

So, you’ve long wondered what nerdy passions lurk beneath the surface of your friendly art library staff. Well, today’s your lucky day. In the following series of posts you’ll find accounts of the art historical crushes that we carry in our hearts as we stamp your checkouts or tidy up the stacks. They cause us to pause by a familiar monograph, to take it down from the shelf as our hearts skip a beat. Today we share these three posts, which serve as our collective valentine to some of the artists we so adore.

Valentine #1 — for Tamara de Lempicka, from Eva
Valentine #2 — for Claude Cahun, from Madeline
Valentine #3 — for Sophie Calle, from Josh
Bonus Valentine! — for Albrecht Dürer, from Heather

 

Tamara de Lempicka in an evening gown by Marcel Rochas. Photo by Madame d'Ora ca. 1931, Alain and Michèle Blondel collection.

Look out – dandy coming through

Tamara de Lempicka: The queen of modern.

Tamara de Lempicka: Goddess of the automobile age.

And my particular favorite, from a blurb for the latter book:

Tamara de Lempicka: “…a female dandy brimming with cool elegance”

Tamara de Lempicka could not even begin her artistic career in a boring way. Debuting in Paris in the Salon d’Automne in 1922, Tamara was widely admired as Monsieur Lempitzky, her male Russian alter ego.

Images and egos, alter or not, were a big part of Tamara’s life. She cultivated her image as a glamorous, fast-moving, aristocratic artist/starlet (an artlet?), and she seems to have been more than happy living the life. Tamara had a reputation even at the time for her love of elegant automobiles, the modern metropolis, and beautiful women.

Tamara de Lempicka, My Portrait, 1929; private collection.

Her art bears this reputation out. In her most famous self-portrait, she depicts herself with flowing scarf and immaculate gloves, slouching languorously behind the wheel of a convertible, an untouchable poise in her eyes.

Tamara de Lempicka, Rafaëla sur fond vert (Le rêve), July 1927, private collection, courtesy Duhamel Fine Art.

She also produced myriad images of those aforementioned beautiful women, including a particularly sensual series featuring one model, Rafaela. The unabashedly gorgeous lines and shapes in her paintings just lure me in further, as does Tamara’s clearly evident appreciation of them. The recent publication of a novel exploring her relationship with Rafaela, The Last Nude, doesn’t hurt my interest, either. (We don’t have a copy at Sloane yet, although there is one at Davis Library. Did I mention that my birthday is coming up?)

Of course, this high-flying lifestyle probably wouldn’t make her the best choice for a life partner — but aren’t crushes supposed to be a little unreasonable?

– Eva

Information and images from: Tamara de Lempicka: The Queen of Modern

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by | January 31, 2012

From the Studio to the Stacks – A conversation with George Jenne

An altered film poster from George Jenne's 2010 exhibition Don't Look Now

This post is the third in a series focused on MFA students and their research

For first-year MFA student George Jenne, films are not just for watching – they are landscapes in which to explore new ideas: “In terms of working out ideas and getting synapses firing, I do drawings from film stills.  I have this digital library of images taken from the Internet – a lot of them are campy or B movies, but drawing them is a way to pull back and work through an idea – to meander for a while and find a focus point.”

Prior to starting at UNC-Chapel Hill this fall, Jenne spent ten years doing commercial prop and set work alongside his own art, basing his operations out of a studio in Brooklyn, New York. During that time he learned how to work with a variety of materials and tools, including wood, metals, plastics, and textiles. Since starting the MFA program, he has been challenged to simplify his approach to art-making. “I’ve been shedding some technical stuff, paring down. For instance, I just did a piece for which I shot a bunch of video of existing objects but decided that I couldn’t make any sculptural elements. It became more of a collected assemblage.”

Don't Look Now, installation view

Jenne’s work deals with memory, mortality, fetish, and – he reports with a glint in his eye – “notions of fakery.”  In Don’t Look Now, a 2010 exhibition in Washington DC, he revisited films that had affected him as a child, deliberately misinterpreting works like Treasure Island and Dawn of the Dead to create an eerily beautiful collection of sculptures and two-dimensional works.  Of the films themselves, he noted “they’re films that feel like they were made in a vacuum; the ambient quality is super quiet.”

The installation dealt with the monstrous in a way that suggested an “abject nostalgia” for pre-adolescent ways of seeing.  In a room adjacent to the main gallery he screened clips from the films themselves, revealing to viewers the reference points from which he had spun his imagery. The screening served as an archival accompaniment to the work, bringing the artist’s research process to life.

Clean Cut, 2003

Detail, Mechanism for Innocent Obscenities

Detail, Mechanism for Innocent Obscenities

With regard to his research process, Jenne has a longer history with UNC libraries than most graduate students.  His dad was an Urban Planning professor at Chapel Hill, so when George was growing up he spent afternoons and vacations with full run of Davis Library. When he moved back to the area from New York he resumed a weekly study routine, this time at the Sloane Art Library.  

There are still corners of the larger collection he’d like to get to, including the Stetson Kennedy files, which are held at Wilson Library.  Kennedy was an author, folklorist, and activist known for his undercover infiltration work to expose Klu Klux Klan groups in the 1940s and 50s.

Jenne’s use of the library includes fiction as well as exhibition catalogs and artists’ writings. Currently he’s reading  Mark Rothko’s Writings on Art and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Breakfast of Champions He has also been looking at Sterling Ruby and Jack Goldstein.  

What would he check out from a fantastical library in which anything was possible? Probably a submarine. Or maybe some kind of space pod.

– Madeline Veitch

old school submarine

"First Ever Submarine." Photo by Matt Debnam, Creative Commons, 2009.

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by | December 9, 2011

Provenance, memory, and mystery: Reflections on cataloging auction catalogs

Got provenance?  Custodial history?  Though they’re born out of art markets rather than academia, the 9,000 auction catalogs we have stowed away in storage could include valuable information for students of art history – a color reproduction of a work, dates of auctions, or the name of an elusive buyer or seller.

One of the nearly 9,000 auction catalogs being made more accessible through this project.

I should know – I’ve spent the last few months up to my knees in these lovely volumes, creating records so that you’ll be able to search for them in the library catalog.

Until now, this large collection has not been represented in the library catalog. The only way to access it was to consult an out-of-the-way spreadsheet and request the materials from storage. Once we received a request, finding a single volume could be a Herculean task.  An intrepid library staff member would bravely wade into a sea of over two hundred boxes only loosely organized by auction house and year.  Unable to find specific volumes easily, our adventurer had to locate several boxes which might contain the right materials and haul them across campus to the Art Library.  With each box weighing in at over forty pounds, exploratory ventures required some serious brawn. As we give each auction catalog its own record, though, the process is becoming much more user- (and staff-) friendly!

Another, from 1956.

So what exactly does cataloging entail?  This is a common question, although it usually results in immediate regret on the part of the inquirer.  I’ve tried to discuss this project at potlucks and family dinners alike, and at the mere mention of “adding fields and updating formats” most people make a mad dash for the nachos.

I’ll spare you the technicalities – in short, there are a lot of rules and coding standards – because cataloging has a beautifully tactile and historical dimension. Over the course of the project, I will touch every volume of the collection that I create a record for, most of which were produced by Sotheby’s and Christie’s between the 1940s and 2010.  You can see revolutions in printing unfold, as exquisite black-and-white plates are replaced by color plates, and finally full image reproductions embedded with the text on the pages themselves.

Wouldn't you love to bid on something from this house? I mean, this 'palatial mansion'?

The language and tone of “the sell” has also shifted over time.  In the 1940s, catalogs often featured pictures of the estates from which the works came, a habit that was phased out by the 1970s, along with elegant fonts and wordy titles.  Adjectives have been worn out and replaced over the years. Works that were once “notable” or “fine” are now “important,” “very important” or presented sans modifier.  In the 1990s, Christie’s apparently thought that a hot pink typeface might help to sell neoclassical decorative arts — a bold move into uncharted territory.

I hope they remembered what it was they wanted...

The catalogs donated to UNC were no doubt used by prospective buyers, many of whom absentmindedly stuck papers between the pages. Letters, postcards, notices, and notes-to-self slip from between the volumes as I flip through, trying to decide whether I’d characterize the illustrations as “col. ill.” or “ill (some col.).” One of my favorite finds, from between the pages of a 40-year-old catalog, is this yellowed note that reads simply “DON’T FORGET.”

–Madeline Veitch

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by | November 23, 2011

Patron Interview: Krysta Black on doing research with manuscript facsimiles

The 10th century in Spain was a hectic time to create an illuminated manuscript.  In the south, the Umayyad Caliphate ruled from Cordoba, while in the north, a series of kings attempted to define themselves and their struggling kingdoms.

Art History PhD candidate Krysta Black, who recently sat down with me to talk about her research, feels that this climate of social upheaval helps to explain some of the odd quirks about her manuscript of choice: the Leon Bible of 960.

The Leon Bible of 960

The Rare Book Collection's facsimile of the Leon Bible of 960, on display at an event in the Art Library on Nov. 9th.

Krysta described one of her first experiences studying the facsimile of the Leon Bible, which is held in the Rare Book Collection in the Wilson Special Collections Library:

“… one of the things that I noticed that I hadn’t really gotten from any of the literature on the manuscript, was the way in which certain books of the Bible were far more heavily illustrated than others.   Because it’s something that is really striking when you’re actually leafing through the book.  You’re like ‘Okay, I’m going through Genesis, there are a couple of little illustrations, that’s cool, that’s cool…’ I get to Exodus and the book just explodes!” 

Since then she has been exploring, among other issues, the connection between the heavy illustration of the Book of Exodus–a book entirely focused on the escape from slavery–and the political climate at the time.

Krysta emphasized not only that she could not have made this discovery without the facsimile, but also just how much the facsimile helped to dictate her future course of study.  In choosing a manuscript to work with, she gravitated toward those works the UNC libraries had available in facsimile form.

Krysta Black speaking on her chosen manuscript.

Krysta Black in action, presenting the facsimile of the Leon Bible of 960.

“So, Rare Books had recently acquired a facsimile of the Leon Bible of 960, the most densely illustrated bible before the year 1000.  After looking at what books the UNC collection had, I saw that and said ‘Okay, that’s what I’m going to work on.’  I would say that the collection here directed me to what I studied rather than the other way around.”

Much like Professor Chatterjee noted in my previous interview, Krysta has discovered that manuscript facsimiles provide a way to connect with the experience of the book as it was originally intended, and to learn from that experience:

“I think working with facsimiles really facilitates being able to study those experiential aspects of manuscript illustration.  Whereas, if you’re just dealing with excised images, you’ve completely lost the entire context of what the book is about. ”

The audience enjoying firsthand experience with manuscripts at the Art Library facsimile event.

Finally, there is the issue of access.  To Krysta, facsimiles are important not only for the ways in which they open up new avenues of thought about the manuscripts, but also the ways in which they bring the user one step closer to actually accessing the original–which can be very difficult.

“I studied in Spain to do just that, and even when you gain access to these  things you have maybe a couple of hours with them.  So, [working with the facsimile in the library] helps you to prepare for actually getting to see the real thing. But also if you can’t make it to see the real thing the facsimile is, of course, the next best thing. ”

Krysta, along with Professor Dorothy Verkerk, gave us a great introduction to “the next best thing” when they gave a facsimile talk in the Art Library on November 9th.  With the generous assistance of the Rare Books Collection they were able to present the Leon Bible facsimile in the Art Library in all its glory.  Keep following us here to learn of more such events in the future as well as for further interviews!

– Eva Sclippa

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by | November 11, 2011

Coming up on Tuesday, Nov. 15th: Hanes Visiting Artist lecture by James Elkins

Insert text of caption here

Event details:
“Farewell to Visual Studies”
James Elkins
Tuesday, November 15
Hanes Auditorium, Hanes Art Center
6:00 pm

James Elkins is the E.C. Chadbourne Professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As a student he studied at the University of Chicago where he first earned a graduate degree in painting, and then switched to earn a PhD in art history.

Dr. Elkins’ writing focuses on the intersection between the study and practice of art as he explores the history and theory of images.  Some of his books are exclusively on fine art (What Painting Is and Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?, for example). Others include scientific and non-art images, writing systems, and archaeology (e.g. The Domain of Images and On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them), and some are about natural history (How to Use Your Eyes).

Elkins’ talk at UNC will be titled “Farewell to Visual Studies.” In it, he will explore the rapid growth of visual studies as an intellectual field at colleges and universities throughout the world.  Visual studies have at least four different forms in North America and the UK, in Scandinavia and German-speaking countries, in Latin America, and in China and Taiwan. However, despite its range, one has to wonder: are visual studies really asking the most interesting questions?  The discipline has not fulfilled its initial promise as a means to study visuality and visual practices of all sorts, and it has not consolidated a common set of purposes or methods. Why look only at the same handful of theorists? Why exclude non-Western art or scientific images? Elkins will survey the original purposes of the field and its current condition, and will suggest several reasons why it may be time to say farewell to visual studies.

To find out more about James Elkins’ thoughts on visual studies as well as his broader body of work, take a look at his many books in the library’s online catalog. His many publications can make it difficult to tell where to start, so here are a few recommendations:

Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2003.

What Happened to Art Criticism? Chicago, Ill.: Prickly Paradigm, 2003.

On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Pictures & Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings. London: Routledge, 2001.

Pictures of the Body: Pain and Metamorphosis. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999.

The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

– Laura Fravel

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