1

issue n o 22

LETTER FROM THE

CO-PRESIDENTS
GRACE SHI ‘23 & ELLIE LYONS ‘24
Dear Reader,

2022-2023 was an important year for NAR. With the sup- Adams, Elizabeth Upenieks, Professor Jesus Escobar, Pro-
port of the Department and a talented Executive Board, fessor Antawan Byrd and the Department of Art His-
we were able to bring back a myriad of in-person program- tory as a whole for supporting our endeavors.
ming. From the Abandoned Art Charity Auction to our Lastly, we want to thank our talented
EXPO trip, this year has proved exceptional. Notably, with Journal Design Team led by Kelsey
the support of the Northwestern Rotaract Club, we raised Carroll for enthusiastically tack-
over $2,400 for disadvantaged students in Ethiopia. More- ling one of our biggest projects
over, this year marked an important milestone for stream- of the year and bringing an ex-
lining our operations. Our Online Journal worked exten- traordinary level of expertise.
sively with the Design Team to achieve a regular bi-weekly We are thrilled to pres-
posting schedule that captivated a wide audience from ent this year’s journal Fine,
weekly artist interviews by Aimee Resnick to generous sub- Art. From trashscapes to nu-
missions by the undergraduate Art History community. mismatics, this journal cov-
We would like to express utmost gratitude for Grace ers topics historically left unex-
Wu and Reyna Patel, both of whom have continued to im- plored in the field of art history.
press us with the quality of their work. This year, we were able This has been a year-long project
to resume a long-standing NAR tradition of hosting a Jour- that has culminated into an exception-
nal theme selection party, in which members shared laughs al publication we sincerely hope you enjoy.
and desserts, and caught a first glimpse of our curated arti-
cles for the Journal. We also wanted to extend a special thank Happy reading and go NAR!
you to Lisa Vicini, who led the Event Planning team for two
years and continues to inspire us with her relentless work Grace Shi & Ellie Lyons
ethic and resilience. In addition, we want to thank Steven Co-Presidents, Northwestern Art Review

2 1
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

LETTER FROM THE LETTER FROM

CO-EDITORS IN CHIEF THE ADVISOR
GRACE WU ‘23 & REYNA PATEL ‘24 ANTAWAN I. BYRD
Dear Reader, Dear Reader,

We are thrilled to share with you our 2023 Print Journal, “Fine, ian film series on Rome, and how psychology impacts the Art I write to express my great thanks and admiration to the members of the Northwestern Art Review
Art.” This special collection of pieces from all over the market. You will bear witness to the reinterpretation of even for promoting the study of art history at the undergraduate level. I especially applaud the mem-
country (and beyond) has been our team’s pas- the most orthodox subjects, such as the sublime in Amer- bers of NAR’s leadership for their imaginative and collaborative efforts in executing an ambitious
sion project throughout the school year. ican landscape representations, by undergraduate schol- number of initiatives this year. In realizing projects including a career panel, coffee chats with
This year’s Journal not only encompass- ars as they push beyond traditional methods of analysis. faculty, the annual student art exhibition, and this edition of the journal, NAR’s reputa-
es an incredible breadth of topics and “Fine, Art” would not have been possible without the tion as one of the most dynamic undergraduate student organizations at Northwest-
perspectives, but also shows our hard work of NAR’s Executive Board. We are grateful for the in- ern remains indisputable. The 2022-2023 academic year also marked the successful
strong partnerships with peer insti- credible efforts of our Design Team, particularly Kelsey Carroll return of NAR’s Abandoned Art Auction. In partnership with Northwestern’s Ro-
tutions. Bringing this vision to life and Ana Cuartas, for visually bringing these essays to life. We also taract Club and Evanston Township High School, the Abandoned Art Auction
has been a labor of love, and work- send our warmest thanks NAR Presidents Ellie Lyons and Grace sold artworks—a mix of donated and unclaimed objects—to raise funds to sup-
ing with our fabulous authors Shi for their tireless support and encouragement. We also give spe- port the Haile-Manas Academy, an elementary school in the Amhara region of
has been our greatest pleasure. cial thanks to the Department of Art History for providing men- Ethiopia. As a witness to the complex preparations for this event, I was amazed by
torship and financial support for our fervent pursuit of academic the high level of engagement across campus and Evanston more broadly as well as
This year, we received a re- inquiry. Finally, we express our deepest gratitude to all of our au- the creative problem solving that NAR members demonstrated. This along with the
cord-number of 37 submissions thors for their partnership and patience throughout this process. generosity of the Evanston community made the auction an incredible and successful
from 10 schools in the United States We hope that as you spend time with these arti- event. The care and enthusiasm that each member of NAR brings to the organization’s
and the United Kingdom. The collec- cles, “Fine Art” becomes “Fine, Art.” The quality of writ- mission is truly impressive! I am therefore delighted to have had the privilege of support-
tanea “Fine, Art” critically considers the ing and level of critical inquiry we’ve encountered speaks ing NAR’s activities and mission this past year, and I look forward to continued engagement.
parameters that define the artistic canon and en- to the bright future of undergraduate scholarship, and we
courages new forms of inquiry, including utilizing non-art his- are confident in the ever-expanding scope of this field of Antawan I. Byrd
torical methods. We frame the objects of our study as facets of study as it reaches deeper levels of inclusivity and creativity. NAR Faculty Advisor and College Fellow
“visual culture”—rather than “Art” or “Fine Art”—to reflect the Department of Art History
changing ways of how the discipline of art history views itself. Happy reading!
Our Journal reflects a diverse range of media and material cul-
ture, including: the iconography on Euro banknotes, modernist Grace Wu & Reyna Patel
interpretations of the window as architecture, a three-part Ital Co-Editors in Chief, Northwestern Art Review

2 3
 6 The Psychology of Scarcity and Control in Art
Natalie Regan, Georgetown University ‘23

11
Who can shout the loudest? The voices framing Pop Art’s
meanings in exhibitions
Nicole Kitsberg, University of Oxford ‘23

27 Alice Neel’s Portraits of Her Selves

Hailee Heinrich, Stanford University ‘23

NORTHWESTERN ART REVIEW

34
From Sea to Shining Sea: Strategies and Subversions of the
Sublime in American Landscape Representation, 1830–1999
Catie Burnell, Georgetown University ‘23

48 Yao Lu’s Trashscapes: An Examination of the Modern Beijing

Zheng, Xin, Georgetown University ‘23

62 False Ideals: The Inaccessibility of Modern Architecture in

the 1920s
Ellie Lyons, Northwestern University ‘24

68 Indoor-outdoor living: modernist interpretations of the window

and its role in residential architecture
Cecilia Ascione, University of California, Berkeley ‘24

ISSUE NO 22 // SPRING 2023

81 The Camera, Self-Portraiture, and Gender in Nazlı Hanım’s
Portrait Photographs
Madeleine Giaconia, Northwestern University ‘24

86 Fellini’s Exposure of the Hidden Rome: The Fragmentation of

Modern Life in an Ancient City
Viv Kammerer, University of California, Berkeley ‘24

96 Life in Death: Villanovan hut urns to Hellenistic tomb paintings

Kelsey Carroll, Northwestern University ‘24

106
Currency, Architecture, and Territory: The Iconography of the
Euro in Numismatics
Baolong (Dustin) Chen, New York University ‘24
4 5
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

The Psychology of
monogram.”2 The idea of claiming one’s work gained popular- mades to art. The ready-made, then, was a response to a con-
ity in Durer’s wake, so much that other artists started to copy dition of everyday life.”3 His art was less about technique than
Dürer’s style and monogram to profit through the virtue of his it was a manifestation of the increasing industrialization of the

Scarcity and Control in Art

fame and wide success. Through forgery, artists were able to by- world and a critique on the modern construction of art itself.
pass barriers to success, appealing to the name of a famous artist Maurizo Catelan’s Comedian directly parallels this sentiment.
in order to make a profit. This example adds color to Maurizio Catelan’s $120,000 Comedian (Figure 1) encapsulates the
Natalie Regan, Georgetown University ‘23 Catelan’s (b. 1960) Comedian case study at hand because it pro- crux of group and intergroup psychology in contemporary art

T
he contemporary art world is full of many contradictions. both within the art world and in society at large, vides not only an early vignette of an artist mark- by mocking the manufactured ideology of an elite group that
In its best form, art should be a genuine expression of an in- provides a vignette into this phenomenon. ing their work and achieving monetary success, dictates the value of art. Viewed through the lens of resource
dividual’s beliefs and passions or promote a potent political It is impossible to condense thou- but also the potential for others to fake a name mobilization theory and relative deprivation theory, Comedian
message. Oftentimes, the best art accomplishes all of these, yet not all sands of years of art history into a co- in order to share some of Dürer’s success. manifests as a critique of how the institutions and people who
artists become famous or reach elevated levels of success, even if their herent, comprehensive background. In- One could argue that Dürer’s prosperity have control in the art world determine the value of art through
work could be considered exemplary by these standards. The core stead, the focus of this paper will be on was derived from his passion and skill, arbitrary standards. Because these people and institutions hold
tension of the issue is that in order to express potent political ideas, more recent events that paved the way for and while the other forgers may have been the power to assign worth to individual artists and their pieces,
one’s creativity, and skill, an artist needs to be valued by the art world the current culture of contemporary art. skilled in their own right, they were primarily they can shape the success or failures of artists and direct people
at large, which is often composed of the very elitist institutions that Before art was associated with a distinct style motivated by the financial benefits. The artist’s goals, with financial resources towards purchasing and funding spe-
the artist is critiquing. There is also the question of access to spaces of an artist, an artist’s name, or an expression whether they are made public or not, matter to the view- cific kinds of artists and their
in which the artist can share their unrestrained ideas. While an indi- of their own ideas, beliefs, and motivations, ers of the piece and determine the authenticity of the messages careers.
vidual should not be forced to create skillful, poignant work without it was a commission. Wealthy elites of the works, especially considering Catelan’s oeuvre. Another
proper compensation, it can make the message of their work ring in a community—including reli- significant artist that pertains to the current state of
insincere if they associate or exchange information and money with gious members such as clergy, the contemporary art world is Marcel
more elitist institutions and figures. It is important to analyze this monks or popes; mem- Duchamp (1887-1968). Du-
phenomenon by fully delving into the mechanisms that control an bers of the monarchy; champ illustrates a pre-con-
artist’s access to resources that promote their work, thus forcing the or merchants—ex- plicitly temporary model of reac-
artist to sacrifice either potential income or their own moral values. told artists what the content of tionary art, playing with the
Research mobilization theory underscores the driving role of mate- their work should con- tain, and the ideas of what it means to be success-
rial factors and second hand nature of psychological processes, while artist was expected to render that subject as skill- ful in the art world, as well as what constitutes
relative deprivation theory explores the role of social comparison in fully as possible. The freedom of the artist did not lie in art itself. As an ascribed member of the avant
understanding the “mismatch between psychological experiences the subject matter, but rather their technique and style. Artists garde, Duchamp’s works challenged the idea
and material conditions.”1 Through the lens of research mobiliza- did not often sign their works or received notable status until the of technique. His readymade pieces required
tion theory and relative deprivation theory, one might understand early Renaissance. Albrecht Dürer, however, “had become one of virtually no assembly at all, such as turning a
what makes reactionary artists so provocative. Maurizio Catelan (b. the most famous artists in Europe by virtue, primarily, of his widely urinal on its side in his Fountain. Duchamp
1960), a reactionary artist whose artworks defy the bounds of art distributed and popular woodcut and engraved prints of religious “was careful…to point out that originally it
that ascribes to traditional conventions and questions social issues and other scenes: each consistently marked with his distinctive AD was never a question of condemning the ready-

2 Karol, “Albrecht Durer’s Enforcement Actions,” 1.

1 Moghaddam, Multiculturalism, 116. (Figure 1, above) Maurizo Catelan, Comedian, 2019. Banana, duct tape. Art Basel, Miami Beach. 3 Nesbit, “Ready-Made Originals,” 62.
6 7
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
For example, people outside of the art world sanctuary, center for human rights” and is par- true significance of art. Shouldn’t art be im- and its price keeps the institutions and elites validation. Social media and other modes
who visit a modern art museum can be shocked ticularly sobering in light of his suicide three portant irrespective of its monetary value? with money in control of determining who of advertising ensure individual access to a
at an artwork that has been deemed important years after its completion.4 Yet even without Catelan’s work explores this very question. is successful and what works come to the greater audience without the compromise
enough to be displayed in a place of promi- this context, this work would not have held Relative deprivation theory and resource forefront within auctions, museums, gallery of external validation from elite institutions
nence, stating an exclamation along the lines of such significance without judgment and valua- mobilization theory are the most relevant spaces, and more. These institutions and elite and people. For example, Maurizo Catelan
“I could do that!” The inventiveness of the art- tion by institutions and an elite few with money to my discussion of the psychology of scar- people need materialism—it necessitates earned his position to question the struc-
ist is key to their success and cannot be replicat- to support Rothko. These passersby witnessing city and control in the art world due to the their position of power. Psychologist Fathali ture of the art world—but not too radically.
ed by an aver- a work such as Rothko’s are getting at the root structure of the art world’s success. In order Moghaddam additionally covers instances of Maurizio Catelan’s unique position in the
age museum of the inner machinations of the art world that for art markets and museums to thrive, there resource mobilization at play, best illustrat- art world allows him access to critique the
“IN ORDER FOR ART goer, yet a can be baffling to those that exist outside those must be people in financial or institutional ed through the increasing social prominence art world from within it. The elites and in-
key compo- bounds, and as resource mobilization theory power who dictate what is worthy of recog- of women: “The timing and nature of the stitutions of the art world deemed Catelan
MARKETS AND nent of artis- posits, the art world wants to keep it that way. nition and support. In a 2017 psychology women’s liberation movement can be bet- talented, and perhaps more cynically, tame
tic success is In John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, he illustrates study conducted by Hyunji Kim et al. titled ter explained by referencing the interests of enough to make statements in the art world
MUSEUMS TO THRIVE, the monetary that many members of the public equate art Social comparison, personal relative depriva- the capitalist elites who controlled resourc- without compromising their position at the

THERE MUST BE
appraisal of museums with religious institutions.5 Muse- tion, and materialism, the researchers sup- es in the 20th century. Powerful political top of the hierarchy. The artist needed to
a patron or ums perpetuate exclusivity. As highlighted by port that across five studies, personal rela- groups channeled these feelings of anger… have a decent supply of resources and credi-

PEOPLE IN FINANCIAL
institution, Berger in his discussion of Leonardo DaVinci’s tive deprivation is related to materialism.7 into political and social action.”9 Women bility in order to warrant Comedian’s success
warranting cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne While this meta-analysis focuses specifically were not simply galvanized to take action and ironically high price tag, but it was up

OR INSTITUTIONAL the inclusion

of the piece
and St. John the Baptist, the National Gal-
lery is implicit in this process: “Now it hangs
on the association between personal relative
deprivation and materialism, its results color
to change their circumstances in a vacuum;
they were motivated by the elites’ decision
to the people in charge of Art Basel to to
invite him. As underscored in sociologist

POWER WHO DICTATE in a muse-

um. Works
in a room by itself. The room is like a chapel.
The drawing is behind bullet-proof perspex.
the increasing role of materialism in the art
world and the negative implications of this
to mobilize them. Without the presence of
the people and institutions in power driv-
Harold R. Kerbo’s Movements of “Crisis” and
Movements of “Affluence,” an individual or

WHAT IS WORTHY OF such as Mark

Rothko’s Rot-
It has acquired a new kind of impressiveness.
Not because of the meaning of its image. It
relationship. The results of the studies under-
line that “simply lacking financial resourc-
ing this political and social change, women
likely would have remained in their lower
group must have access to greater resources
then they had before in order to take action;
RECOGNITION AND hko
el,
Chap-
which
has become impressive, mysterious, because of
its market value.”6 Because the art world and
es was…not associated with the adoption
of materialistic values and goals across our
position societally. This applies to the art
world because the art world controls who
“People have more ‘discretionary resources’
and have contact with an existing voluntary
SUPPORT.” features 14
paintings of
its institutions assign worth to an artwork, it
gains notoriety and therefore is seen as more
studies—instead, materialism was predicted
by participants’ concerns about their relative
has access and who is supported in order
to critique it. In order to gain prominence
association network that they can be mobi-
lized for such moral concerns.”10 The sociol-
blocks of col- remarkable and extraordinary than other piec- deprivation.”8 This relates to the framework and success, those with resources have to be ogist also writes that despite some move-
or, shed light on this experience. Each compo- es, even though it was virtually unknown be- of the art world because the concern with selective in choosing who to support and ments—such as the French Revolution of
sition from a distance looks completely black, fore it was given value. The reduction of an preserving the association between a more publicize. The predominant mode of access 1789 and the Russian Revolution—having
but upon closer reflection, there is a great deal art piece’s value to simply its price tag is essen- engaging and technically proficient art piece to the art world at large is through external limited material resources, they were able
of texture where one can observe his vertical tially what is occurring, exposing a backwards
brushstrokes. The chapel exists as an “interfaith and capitalist conception of the meaning and 7 Kim et al., “Social comparison.”
4 Dowell, “Meditation and Modern Art Meet in Rothko Chapel.” 8 Kim et al., 388.
5 Berger, “Chapter 1.” 9 Moghaddam, Multiculturalism and Intergroup Relations, 73.
6 Berger, “Chapter 1.” 10 Kerbo, “Movements of ‘Crisis’ and Movements of ‘Affluence,’” 655.
8 9
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

U
sing military ists’ voices were increasing-
imagery to de- ly overridden; subsumed

Who can shout

scribe the speed within broader regiments,
with which Pop Art was with the General’s voice
to mobilize, if more in an disorganized success is complex, and this analysis has

the loudest? The

accepted within museo- amplified above individu-
nature, through intense feelings of an- questions whether preservation is possible Bibliography
logical structures, Ameri- al soldiers. The changing
ger and hardship.11 Resources are more within the current framework. However, Berger, John. “Chapter 1.” In Ways of Seeing. https://www.ways-
can poet Stanley Kunitz’s framing of Pop Art’s mean-

voices framing
nebulous under the realm of resources all hope is not lost. Through support of of-seeing.com/ch1.
description of “The over- ings was therefore a result
mobilization theory; a resource could be artists with laudable talent and messag- Dowell, Pat. “Meditation And Modern Art Meet in Rothko
night apotheosis not of a of the varying amplification
a greater network of voluntary associa- es, the elites and institutions are able to Chapel.” NPR. Accessed March 14, 2023. https://
single lonely artist but of of different voices. Empha-

Pop Art’s
tions, financial backing, or robust feelings support those that demonstrate impres- www.npr.org/2011/03/01/134160717/medita-
a whole regiment wearing sizing the voices of individ-
of deprivation. This theory ties into the sive skill. Moreover, those whose work is tion-and-modern-art-meet-in-rothko-chapel.
the colors of pop art” notes uals will debunk the imper-

meanings in
Catelan case study because he has the re- perceived by established institutions as Karol, Peter. “Albrecht Durer’s Enforcement Actions: A Trade-
the forceful acceleration of sonal broadness of the term
sources of credibility and perceived talent too radical could be supported through mark Origin Story.” SSRN, 1-54. https://papers.ssrn.
this acceptance compared “exhibitions,” instead fore-
in the art world to duct tape a banana to a alternative avenues such as social media com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4060349#.
to other art movements.1 grounding the centrality of

exhibitions
wall, unlike a less-established person who or smaller boutique galleries. While dis- Kerbo, Harold R. “Movements of ‘Crisis’ and Movements of
This metaphor of Pop Art individuals in framing Pop
would kindly be escorted out if they at- mantling the entire art world is not neces- ‘Affluence’: A Critique of Deprivation and Resource
as an army can be extend- Art’s meaning, often align-
tempted something of this nature. Having sary nor an achievable objective, it is vital Mobilization Theories.” The Journal of Conflict Resolu-
ed further. The unrelent- ing with their own agendas.
the ability to display Comedian required for artists like Catelan who have earned tion 26, no. 4 (1982): 645–63. http://www.jstor.org/

many mechanisms to be in place for its the ability to make critiques within the stable/173789.
Nicole Kitsberg, University of Oxford ‘23 ing march towards institu- This march towards insti-
tionalization moved Pop tutionalization was con-
success and eventual financial prosperity. art world to continue executing art pieces Kim, Hyunji, Mitchell J. Callan, Ana I. Gheorghiu, and
Art’s camp, in the form of sistently discernible across
Resource mobilization theory and relative that provoke the artworld and public at William J. Matthews. “Social comparison, personal
exhibitions, from the radi- the United States (U.S.)
deprivation theory provide a comprehen- large to question the established systems relative deprivation, and materialism.” British Journal
cal periphery to embedded and the United Kingdom
sive lens through which to view the inner both within the art world and beyond. of Social Psychology 56, no. 2 ( June 2017).
within the institutional (U.K.), with isolated in-
workings of the contemporary art world Moghaddam, Fathali M. Multiculturalism and Intergroup
center. Within this process stances of resistance in the
and market. Maurizo Catelan acts as a co- Relations: Psychological Implications for Democracy in
of framing Pop Art, the form of Happenings. Ulti-
gent case study, as his credibility in the art Global Context. American Psychological Association.,
emergence of a singular in- mately, institutionalization
world as an established artist of value al- 2008.
stitutional meaning under- led to the neutralization of
lows him to achieve success through seem- Nesbit, Molly. “Ready-Made Originals: The Duchamp
mined the plurality which radical meaning. Resulting
ingly banal works such as Comedian. This Model.” October 37 (1986): 53–64. https://doi.
had flourished in peripher- in the continuous refram-
tension between preserving one’s own ar- org/10.2307/778518.
al exhibitions, introducing ing of Pop Art’s meaning,
tistic integrity and achieving professional tension between institu- this constant drive to-
11 Kerbo, 652. tional exhibitions’ framing wards institutionalization
of Pop Art’s meaning and heralded the shift of Pop
artists’ self-definition. Art- Art’s exhibitions from the
(Figure 1) Sam Lambert, Installation view of Zone 2, Hamilton-McHale-Voelcker, at “This is Tomorrow.”
Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1956. 1 Kunitz, “A Symposium on Pop Art,” 73.
10 11
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review
periphery to the center, with geographical with scale, the space undermined perspectiv- his introduction, encapsulated in claiming term, Hamilton’s deliber-
migration accompanied by a changing fram- al assumptions, disorientating viewers. Zone that “Behind the painting stands the man ate capitalization of “Pop
ing of meaning. Pop Art’s meaning there- 2 dominates scholarly attention, likely due to himself who painted it.”3 With the cata- Art” revealed his intentions
fore functioned as a palimpsest, with each the contributors’ esteemed careers. Yet, the log as much part of the exhibition frame as to formalize it, despite be-
exhibition vocalizing its own framing of meaning of Pop Art within the exhibition the physical display itself, it contributed to ing slightly undercut by his
meaning, layering on top of previous frames. derives from the juxtapositions created be- framing Pop Art’s meanings as constantly ambivalence about whether
tween the zones, forming a plurality of defi- in flux, given the continuous renegotiation the artworks were worthy
Deafening silence: The imposition of in- nitions. To fully understand how the exhibi- of self-definition. The absence of interpre- of serious consideration.5
stitutional exhibition frames in the Unit- tion framed Pop Art’s meaning, it therefore tation panels in the exhibition space denied Questioning whether it was
ed Kingdom proves crucial to consider it in its entirety. For any mediation of the artists’ voices, facili- “possible that the partici-
“This is Tomorrow” (Whitechapel Gallery, example, in Zone 6, Alice and Peter Smith- tating direct communication. The physical pants could relinquish their
1956) is often referenced in analysis purely son, Nigel Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi’s experience of visiting the exhibition em- existing personal solutions
because it is considered to be the first Pop pavilion filled with sculptures pertaining to bodied this, with each room proclaiming a and try to bring about some
Art exhibition. In actuality, it is significant daily activities and vital needs offered a cele- different definition, resulting in meaning new formal conception
beyond chronologically convenient reasons, bratory tone contrasting to Zone 2’s damna- morphing as one moved through the space. complying with a strict, mu-
given that the exhibiting artists coordinat- tion of modern life. With all zones adopting Directly contrasting to the emphasis tually agreed programme,”
ed the exhibition themselves. Stemming modernity as their subject matter, the vary- “This is Tomorrow” placed on individual Hamilton suggested artists
from architect Theo Crosby’s (1925-94) ing tones vocalized the fluidity of meaning. artists, artist Richard Hamilton’s letter to forgo pursuit of individu-
idea for an exhibition modeling collabora- Carving out space for each of the Peter and Alison Smithson, written a year af- al interests and adhere to
tive art practice, the exhibition amplified contributors, the catalog granted visual form ter “This is Tomorrow” on January 16, 1957, a universal agenda.6 This
artists’ voices within the process of self-defi- to this plural self-definition, with different articulates the beginnings of moving to insti- emergence of a conviction
nition. Composed of twelve groups of art- layouts and aesthetic tones in each section, tutional framing of meaning. Inviting collab- to pinpoint definitions
ists and architects each creating discrete rather than a universal schema. Art critic orative discussion with the Smithsons, who and assert a unified stance
zones expressing their vision of the future, Lawrence Alloway’s use of designer-centered were the renowned architects who had also within the movement is
the exhibition was multivocal, with each language emphasized individuality, resisting participated in “This is Tomorrow,” Ham- indicative of the shift to-
group’s distinct ideas operating concurrently. subsuming designers within a homogenous ilton’s authoritative, manifesto-like tone wards institutionalization. (Figure 2, top right) (Figure 3, top left) 
Pauline Boty, It’s a Man’s World I, Pauline Boty, It’s a Man’s World
A meandering warren of confined narrative, declaring that “Although there are conveyed his aim to codify Pop Art. Argu- The taxidermist tendencies 1964. Oil on canvas with collage, II, 1964-65. Oil on canvas, 125 x
153 x 122 cm. 125 cm.
spaces filled with visual stimuli, Zone 2, cre- exhibits in the present show which testify to ing that another Independent Group show of institutional exhibitions
of “This is Tomorrow” was short-lived. (Figure 4, bottom left) (Figure 5, bottom right)
ated by Richard Hamilton, John McHale, their designers’ belief in the existence of uni- could improve through consolidation to be- and art historical scholarship depend
This process of institutionaliza- Installation view of Claes Old- Installation view of Claes Olden-
and John Voelcker, confronted visitors with fying forms and rhythms common to objects come “highly disciplined and unified in con- on these concrete definitions. Given enburg, The Store (107 East 2nd burg, The Store (Green Gallery),
tion was very gradual in the U.K. despite Street), 1961-62. 1962.
distorted television commercials, magazine of different use and structure, the universal ception” rather than the disparate content the realization that the individuality of
its large scale. The annual “Spring Exhi-
food advertisements and larger-than-lifesize has to compete on equal terms with other of “This is Tomorrow,” Hamilton endeav- “This is Tomorrow” was incompatible
bition” at the Cartwright Memorial Hall
cardboard cut-outs of Marilyn Monroe and principles.”2 Organizer David Lewis similar- ored to unify Pop Art coherently.4 Forming with facilitating future success within
in Bradford celebrated contemporary
Robbie the Robot (Figure 1). Experimenting ly emphasized individual agency throughout a seminal moment given the coining of the such structures, the radical multivocality
2 This is Tomorrow, 4. 5 Hamilton, 5.
3 This is Tomorrow, 10. 6 Hamilton, 5.
4 Hamilton, “Letter to Peter and Alison Smithson (1957),” 5.
12 13
art, inviting both local and established artists. a Man’s World I, Boty depicted famous men (Figure 6) James Rosenquist, F-111, women by their appearance.”8 Using anec- of mass media images and engage critically.
1964-65. Oil on canvas with alumini-
Despite exhibiting renowned artists, it still from a range of periods and professions, from um in 23 sections, 304.8 x 2621.3 cm. dotal experience structured in an accessible With the artworks seamlessly sub-
Museum of Modern Art.
occupied a peripheral position, with a con- Marcel Proust to Muhammad Ali. In direct format referred to as “The Ten Points,” Mor- sumed into the general survey exhibition
temporary review claiming that it “developed opposition, the women depicted in It’s a gan strived to galvanize support from a wide celebrating contemporary art, little atten-
quietly and is little recognised even, perhaps, Man’s World II are defined by their sensuality audience through exposing gender inequities, tion was paid to the artists’ individual iden-
in its home county”.7 Nonetheless, the mech- and their bodies, presented as timeless. This aligning with the aims of Boty’s works, albe- tities, overlooking Boty’s nature as “one of
anisms of locating meaning shifted given the is most evident in depictions of the female it with Morgan more overtly stoking active the few women artists to engage with Pop
inclusion of more dominant voices than art- body where the head is not represented, ren- resistance.9 United in cultivating a sense of Art.”10 Analysis often omits this muting of
ists’ self-definition. This is evident in the 1966 dering the objectified body decontextualized collective experience which transcended the both Boty’s voice and the radical feminism
display of Pauline Boty’s It’s a Man’s World I and anonymous. The juxtaposition between individual, both Morgan and Boty opposed of her work, instead celebrating “Spring Ex-
(1964) (Figure 2) and It’s a Man’s World II the two works therefore articulates that, in the singular, homogenous identity of women hibition” as being amongst the few to exhibit
(1964-65) (Figure 3), with the politically con- contrast to the multifaceted understanding enforced by patriarchal society, epitomized in Boty, in the context of her persistent exclu-
tentious and confrontational meaning of the of masculinity, there is only one acceptable the misogynistic oppressive values enshrined sion from representation. This marginaliza-
works overlooked in the curatorial approach. kind of femininity: coyness under the male both in “Miss America” and mass media more tion is echoed in art historian Hal Foster’s
Boty’s works depend on each other gaze. This disparity formed the central thread broadly. Simultaneously showcasing the af- relegation of Boty in his survey-style work
for their meaning, arguably operating as a in Robin Morgan’s 1968 manifesto-like press firmative quality of the shared experience of to a single footnote, omitted entirely from
diptych. The dialogue between the two ex- release “No More Miss America!,” which ac- popular culture and scrutinizing the disparity consideration in the main text or even a ref-
posed the inequity of gendered experience companied the protest coinciding with the in gendered experience, Boty encouraged the erence in the index.11 Once incorporated
and drew critical attention to the binary op- final of the annual “Miss America” pageant, viewer to look beyond the grid-like structure within this wider exhibition narrative which
positions which pervade mass culture. In It’s noting how “men are judged by their actions, 8 Morgan, “No More Miss America!,” 524.
9 Morgan, 524.
10 Tate, “Re-occupying the Erotic Body,” 177.
7 Tucker, “Review: Bradford Spring Exhibition,” 4. 11 Foster and Francis (eds.), Pop, 48.
14 15
promoted a celebratory tone, the radical contest partly be explained by the tight intersection (Figure 6, cont.) James Rosenquist, vitriolic indictment of image-saturated con- subject to the same semiological systems of
of Boty’s works was neutralized, denying her the of the commercial and institutional spheres. F-111, 1964-65. Oil on canvas with
aluminium in 23 sections, 304.8 x
sumer society, Guy Debord’s “The Society of burgeoning consumer capitalism that Debord
agency to articulate the meaning of her work. Peripheral radical spaces were replicat- 2621.3 cm. Museum of Modern Art. the Spectacle” is predicated on his understand- critiqued.15 Despite using the periphery to ar-
This omittance illustrates a broader notion of ed in the U.S., for example in Claes Olden- ing of the viewer as entirely passive within “the ticulate subversion, the meaning of The Store
exhibitions imposing an exclusionary frame, burg’s The Store (1961-62), displayed initially spectacle”: capitalism’s instrument of manip- morphed after receiving gallery representation.
stipulating meaning at the expense of artists in a rented storefront on 107 East 2nd Street ulation.14 Understood within Debord’s theo- Immediately becoming framed by consumer-
defining Pop Art. Ultimately, the move from in New York City (Figure 4). Masquerading ry, Oldenburg challenged pervasive consumer ist structures, a modified version was included
the radical periphery to increasingly institu- as a functioning commercial store, the work passivity, through deliberately collapsing the in Oldenburg’s first Uptown exhibition at the
tionalized exhibitions amplified the curatorial displayed enamel-painted plaster sculptures of distinction between the commercial experience Green Gallery in the fall of 1962 (Figure 5).
voice, muting Boty’s overt feminist manifesto. convenience store products, with the inventory of viewing artworks and of viewing commodi- Despite the artist levying critique at such ex-
of 107 sculptures including pastries, anchovies, ties. Heralded by the display mode undermin- hibitions, which he believed led to creativity
“Money talks”: The interaction of commer- and shirts.12 Given his strong belief that “The ing assumptions of viewing conditions, this becoming “clouded by bourgeois values and by
cial and institutional exhibition frames in enemy is bourgeois culture,” Oldenburg argued installation stirred the viewer out of consumer- removal from an actual functional situation,”
the United States that art should not be displayed in galleries, ism-induced anesthesia, conveying Oldenburg’s the force of this critique evaporated during
A comparable process of institutionaliza- which he claimed enshrined bourgeois values.13 critique of the effects of consumerism and spe- this exhibition, with the sculptures mounted
tion can be discerned in the U.S., with a cacoph- Situated against the backdrop of the rise of cifically art’s absorption within such structures. on plinths and displayed within a white-cube
ony of voices vying to define Pop Art. The accel- the supermarket, Oldenburg’s presentation of Oldenburg’s initial plight to disrupt the exhibition space.16 The larger-than-life scale
erated migration from the radical periphery to the entirely non-functional works, which were “autocratic reign of the market economy” was of the works, enlarged to fill the gallery, artic-
institutional exhibitions and the corresponding available for purchase, circumvented selling art short-lived, given that The Store soon became ulated the works shifting from posing as com-
shift in the framing of Pop Art’s meaning can in a conventional gallery. Similarly offering a
14 Debord, The Society of the Spectacle.
12 Oldenburg, Store Days, 31. 15 Debord, 2.
13 Oldenburg, 8. 16 Oldenburg, Store Days, 31.
16 17
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
modities to critique consumerism, to instead tances of social geography.”17 The geograph- Rosenquist’s F-111 (1964-65) (Figure 6), Rosenquist critiqued the public’s complicity ership of the work’s meaning. “Re the F-111:
becoming conceptualized as artworks, giv- ical shift closer to institutional museums led with the collector Robert Scull’s acquisition in the military complex, with the intended A Collector’s Notes,” published in The Met’s
en the loss of any visual suggestion of func- to a shift in the meaning ascribed to works. acting as impetus. First displayed in 1965 at purchase of individual panels by different 1968 bulletin, a special edition devoted to
tionality. The geographical migration of the Leading to the work’s meaning being increas- the Leo Castelli Gallery, Rosenquist’s F-111 buyers designed to echo how their taxes had discussion of F-111 coinciding with its dis-
work away from the artworld’s periphery and ingly framed by institutional structures, this engulfed the viewer, dwarfing them in the facilitated part of the plane. Describing that play, cemented the authority afforded to
physically closer to Fifth Avenue museums of shift ultimately muted its radical critique. face of the work’s monumental depiction of “It felt to me like a plane flying through the Scull. Despite the obvious presence of his
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) This trajectory of the movement from the F-111 fighter plane which runs the length flak of an economy,” Rosenquist articulated ego throughout obfuscating an entirely lucid
and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) the Lower East Side to Midtown to the Upper of the work, forming its backbone (Figure his concern of the tight connections between reading, it evidences his constructed sense of
represented a significant move of “great dis- East Side is epitomized most directly in James (Figure 7) Installation view of James Rosenquist, 7). Given its site-specific nature, the work militarism, taxation and consumerism, in the residing at the heart of these collector-artist
F-111. Leo Castelli Gallery, 1965.
rampaged across all four walls of the gallery, shadow of the atomic bomb.18 In accordance relationships, through the anaphora of “I,”
17 Whiting, A Taste for Pop, 8.
entirely enveloping it. This ini- with Rosenquist’s aims, the exhibition land- along with the generally anecdotal tone.19
tial exhibition augmented the ed the political commentary just as much as Laying claim to Rosenquist’s career develop-
work’s political critique of im- the colliding elements of the iconography. ment, Scull developed a narrative of his own
ages of destruction becoming Given Rosenquist’s articulated mean- integrality to this, positioning Rosenquist as
commonplace within society, ing, there is a harsh irony in the collector Scull a marginalized artist at the start, reluctant to
circulated as freely as con- purchasing the complete work, with the cri- talk about his art or even to show Scull his
sumerist advertising. The im- tique of the middle-classes funding the mili- work, evolving under Scull’s patronage to a
mersive display mimicked the tary complex seemingly lost on him. His pur- renowned artist.20 This clear exaggeration
unrelenting bombardment of chase of all the panels maintained the piece’s contrasts to the detailed interviews Rosen-
such imagery, with F-111 em- original integrity, inadvertently reflecting his quist gave, some of which are published in
ploying the same style as con- larger tax contribution as a wealthy collector. the same bulletin issue.21 The deliberate sug-
sumer advertising with bold His acquisition fundamentally reconfigured gestion of closeness with Rosenquist but-
tonality and precise outlines, the framing of Pop Art’s meaning, given the tresses this—through repeated reference to
along with instantly recognis- shift in the relative volume of voices claim- “Jim” and claiming to have attended all of
able iconography. Invading ing a meaning. Scull emerged as dominant: Rosenquist’s openings until that of F-111—
the viewer’s peripheral vision, his status afforded him an authoritative conveying Scull’s apparent anxious urgency
it proved impossible to turn platform, as well as control over future ex- in trying to prove his credentials.22 Arguing
away from the painting, given hibitions of F-111. Ultimately, he disarmed for the compatibility of Pop Art and Abstract
the encircling display format. Rosenquist’s pertinent political critique, in- Expression, through emphasizing values
With the $75-million devel- stead framing the work in accordance with which transcend political commentary, this
opment of the F-111 fighter jet his own agenda as a collector. Thus, owner- narrative granted weight to Scull’s own col-
funded by American taxpayers, ship of the work seemingly equated to own- lecting interests.23 Scull’s authoritative tone
18 “Collection 1940s-1970s.”
19 Scull, “Re the F-111.”
20 Scull, 255.
21 Swenson, “An Interview with James Rosenquist,” 284-88.
22 Scull, “Re the F-111,” 256.
23 Scull, 256.
18 19
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review
positioned himself as a central taste-maker, art historical categories, Geldzahler crafted ing Pop Art’s meaning, with
claiming that through judging “art, not by an understanding of Pop Art as the culmi- impetus provided by wealthy
history, but by the measure of my response nation of a long art historical trajectory of collectors, this process of in-
and personal involvement in the art expe- “Dada, surrealism, collage, the art of Paul stitutionalization, inexorably
rience”, his own judgment was superior to Klee, the art of Jean Dubuffet, abstract ex- linked to canonization, ulti-
historical precedents.24 This attitude clearly pressionism, and now pop art”.26 Geldzahler mately disarmed the political
demonstrates how money drives the art- thus laid the foundations for a turbu- charge of Rosenquist’s work.
world, with a megaphone afforded to Scull lence-free landing of F-111—and Pop Art The process of insti-
in the process of framing meaning purely as a more broadly—into the art historical canon. tutionalization also codified
result of his being a wealthy collector. Acqui- This exhibition epitomized Pop Art’s the institution as a dominant
sition therefore granted him the authority to meaning being increasingly framed by insti- voice within framing Pop Art’s
frame his own meaning of the work, shift- tutions at the expense of artists’ own voices. meaning. On December 13,
ing it from Rosenquist’s initial exhibition. The physicality of this shift emphasizes this, 1962, the Museum of Modern
The constant drive towards insti- in the reconfiguration of the work’s panels, Art hosted “A Symposium on
tutionalization led to Scull organizing a displayed on three walls in The Met’s gal- Pop Art,” which affirmed the
national and international tour of F-111, leries, rather than Rosenquist’s intended weight of institutional voic-
including at The Met in 1968 (Figure 8). encircling four. Geldzahler’s claim that the es in framing and articulat-
Within this exhibition, Scull’s voice re- exhibition nonetheless engulfed the viewer ing Pop Art’s meaning. With
mained dominant in framing Pop Art’s transpires as a convenient attempt to justify a panel of five distinguished
meaning, but harmonized with that of Hen- imposing his curatorial approach, overriding critics, selected on account
ry Geldzahler, curator of American Art at Rosenquist’s intentions.27 Despite aspects of of their past contributions to
The Met. Displaying F-111 alongside canon- art critic Sidney Tillim’s caustic critique of American art criticism, the
ical works from the collection, Geldzahler’s the exhibition being overly forceful, his crit- symposium’s declared remit
curatorial approach forged immediate links icism of the exhibition design holds some was whether Pop Art was wor-
with Surrealist and Renaissance paintings. weight.28 His description that “The mu- thy of museum display.30 In
Writing for The Met’s Bulletin, Geldzahler’s ral looks like a blanket that is too short for actuality, the critics attested to the potency (Figure 8) Installation view avant-garde,” testifying to the neutralization within Pop Art’s ascendancy, maintaining that
of James Rosenquist’s F-111.
unerring motivation to connect all aspects its bed” aptly captures this jarring physical of institutionalization in framing Pop Art’s The Metropolitan Museum of radical meaning which accompanies insti- it was the fact that “the galleries and museums
of Art, 1968.
of F-111 to historical precedents is evident translation of the work to a space that it was meaning. Geldzahler, for example, argued tutionalization.31 Similarly, critic Dore Ash- immediately opened their doors, and the col-
from the opening description of Pop Art as a never intended to be displayed in, imposing that the direct institutional support for Pop ton defined Pop Art in dialogue with previous lectors their pocketbooks” that allowed Pop
contemporary reconfiguration of tradition- a different physical frame.29 Testifying to Art had meant that “There is no longer, or at art movements, specifically Romanticism, en- Art to swiftly accrue popularity.33 Arguing
al landscape painting.25 Absorbing it into the institutional voice’s dominance in fram- least not at the moment, such a thing as an trenching it within broader art historical nar- for the centrality of institutional exhibitions
24 Scull, 256. ratives.32 Art critic Stanley Kunitz, although in framing Pop Art’s meaning, the sympo-
25 Geldzahler, “James Rosenquist’s F-111,” 277. adopting a cynical tone, ascribed a similar im- sium articulated power dynamics which priv-
26 Geldzahler, 280. portance to the role that institutions played ileged the voice of the institution far above
27 Geldzahler, 281.
28 Tillim, “Rosenquist at the Met,” 46-49. 31 Kunitz, “A Symposium on Pop Art,” 67.
29 Tillim, 47. 32 “A Symposium on Pop Art,” 70.
30 The Museum of Modern Art, Press release no. 138. 33 “A Symposium on Pop Art,” 73.
20 21
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
that of individual artists, instantiating the intentionally neutralized their radicalism.35 months she had been working in Paris, the tioned as a visual metaphor of the process the art world safeguarded the exclusivity of damental motivation of “I want to live and
inequities present within the varying ampli- Through steeping her analysis in deeply ac- Happening built up layers of paint through of exhibitions framing meaning, which she her own voice in defining her works’ mean- make others live” appears to be at odds with
fications of voices when framing meaning. ademicized references to other scholars and collaborative destruction, all ultimately de- was evading. The layers of paint represented ing. This oppositional stance was motivated the destructive tone of her writing and the
In stark contrast to artists self-defining Pop movements, Sontag embedded discussion voured by the insatiable hunger of the flames. an imposition of meaning that obliterated by Minujín’s belief that art should not be Happening itself.45 This apparent disparity
Art in “This is Tomorrow,” the panel—with within the art historical conventions which Describing herself as “the enemy of muse- the artist’s intentions, obscuring Minujín’s confined to institutions she deemed to be can be reconciled by her belief that subsum-
no artists represented—relegated artists to Happenings were resisting.36 Semantically, ums, of galleries, of the commercialisation of original brushstrokes from view. Resisting the mainstay of the bourgeoisie, arguing that mation within the “cultural cemeteries” of
mute audience members who watched crit- this is pinpointed in describing Happen- creation,” Minujín delivered a body blow to this process, Minujín invited the people “art was something more important for hu- the artworld was ultimately a form of death.46
ics, writers, and curators define Pop Art, ings as a “genre”: a term rooted in hierarchi- Sontag’s ambivalence through deliberately lo- one might expect at a commercial gallery, man beings than the eternity that only a few Through opting for incineration rather than
overriding artists’ self-definition. The press cal art historical discourse.37 More broadly, cating meaning outside of and in opposition describing how “People of all incarceration as the fate of her
release issued by MoMA keenly emphasized Sontag’s ambivalence about the degree of to exhibitions, defying the process of insti- kinds came - critics, collectors, artworks, Minujín located her
the attendance of artists such as Rosenquist Happenings’ subversion is evident through tutionalization in every aspect of the work.41 artists, marchands.”42 This en- definition of Pop Art in oppo-
and Marcel Duchamp in the audience, thus her situating them within a wider art histor- Despite her animosity towards commercial gagement with expected audi- sition to the frame construct-
using artists as silent reference points.34 Af- ical trajectory as the “logical development galleries often thawing when she was offered ences created an initial façade of ed by exhibitions, evading the
firming the hegemony of the institutional of the New York school of painting of the representation, suggesting that her stance normalcy, thus augmenting the exclusionary processes of in-
voice, the panel defined Pop Art for the art- fifties,” and within a web of influences, in- was at least partially informed by her plight degree of subversion through stitutionalization and canon-
ists, rather than in dialogue with the artists. cluding Surrealism and Dadaism.38 Despite to secure representation, La destrucción artic- highlighting how far from ex- ization which they embodied.
emphasizing the liberation of Happenings ulated her opposition, which had far greater pectations the Happening lay.
Performing Pop: Articulating resistance from “the museum conception of art” and longevity than Oldenburg’s similar aims, as Minujín’s declaration that “No Speaking from the pulpit:
to institutionalization consumer capitalism, Sontag undercut this articulated through The Store. Physically po- one could buy anything of Institutionalization as
This constant underlying pulse to- oppositional power through her uncertain- sitioned outside of mainstream exhibition mine, they could only observe, neutralization
wards institutionalization can be discerned ty as to its degree, situating her analysis of spaces, the location of meaning followed suit. given that my works were des- The Royal Academy of
across Pop Art’s breadth, albeit to varying Happenings within academic art history.39 In contrast to some scholars arguing tined for the butcher” refused Arts’ (RA) 1991 “The Pop Art
extents and at varying paces. Through ar- Declaring her intention to “Create in that Minujín surrendered her authorship, the entry of these works into Show” asserted the institution-
ticulating counter-narratives, the staging order to destroy; burn out my identity,” Ar- the Happening—through breaking out of consumerist market structures al voice as dominant, neutral-
of Happenings defined Pop Art in deliber- gentinian Pop artist Marta Minujín created the shackles of the art world’s valuation sys- and wider art historical narra- izing radical meaning through
ate opposition to institutional exhibitions. a spectacle of destruction in La destrucción tem—achieved the opposite effect: the re- tives.43 This resistance was dou- consolidating the works into a
Susan Sontag’s 1962 essay “Hap- (Impasse Ronsin, June 6, 1963), assuming birth of the artist, rising as a phoenix from ble-pronged, denying both the unified survey which claimed
penings: an art of radical juxtaposition” the role of conductor at the eye of the storm the ashes to assert her voice in defining her immediate commercialisation totality. Evident in the certain-
(Figure 11) Installation view of “The Pop Art Show.” Royal Academy of Arts, 1991.
(1962) articulated Happenings’ resistance (Figure 9).40 Inviting other artists to paint work. Under her authority, the artists’ paint- of La destrucción and also later ty of the title, the exhibition
to museum structures, yet her writing un- on top of her canvases produced in the three ing on top of her canvases arguably func- exhibitions through obliterating Minujín’s cultured ones could attain in museums”.44 established a single tenable narrative, pro-
legacy. Constructing her own frame, Minu- Playing with the binary opposition of life mulgating an understanding of Pop Art as
34 The Museum of Modern Art, Press release no. 138.
35 Sontag, “Happenings,” 263-74. jín’s resistance to the commercial forces of and death throughout her writing, her fun- white and virile, positioning “the West” as
36 Sontag, 263-74.
37 Sontag, 263. 42 Minujín, “Destruction of My Works in the Impasse Ronsin,” 61.
38 Sontag, 268-70. 43 Minujín, 61.
39 Sontag, 268. 44 Minujín, 59.
40 Minujín, “Destruction of My Works in the Impasse Ronsin,” 61. 45 Minujín, 59.
41 de Lacaze Mohrmann, “Marta Minujín’s Destructive Intervention,” 72. 46 Minujín, 59.
22 23
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

rendered static. The interpretative scaffold rative, with two roles defined for women: the periphery of the composition, assuming
of the exhibition labeling and catalog fore- domesticated housewife or sexualized pin- a role akin to the decorative objects which
grounded the link to the Biblical narrative up. Within the collage made from magazine adorn the room. Promoting an exclusion-
of St. Sebastian, rather than engaging with clippings, the women form part of the clut- ary frame of Pop Art’s meanings, the exhi-
the radical process.48 Framed within these ter of consumerist objects of the post-war bition consistently positioned women in
exhibition structures, the radical meaning of victory consumer boom. In the background, this way: ornaments for male consumption.
de Saint Phalle’s work was denied a lifeline. the text “Ordinary cleaners reach only this Consideration of the framing of
The institutional framing of meaning far” is evidently extracted from an adver- Hamilton’s work in this exhibition brings
further augmented the homogenized narra- tisement for a vacuum cleaner, but it could discussion full circle, emphasizing the degree
tive of Pop Art as male-dominated, given the just as equally be describing the vacuuming to which exhibitions frame meanings, epit-
overwhelming display of works by male Pop woman; her worth therefore measured solely omized in the trajectory of the meaning of
artists presenting objectified female bodies. by her domestic utility. Hamilton’s first wife, Hamilton’s collage, from functioning as dis-
The jovial tone of the few contemporary re- Terry, collaborated with him on this collage, tributed ephemera in the form of the poster
views which even noted this gender disparity sourcing and sorting elements of the materi- for Zone 2 in “This is Tomorrow” to venerat-
belies the severity of this inscription of Pop al. Yet, her contribution is excluded from the ed as part of the canon in “The Pop Art Show.”
Art’s gender inequities within the canon, exhibition labels and catalog; she is a victim Bookending the process of institutionaliza-
with John McEwen sardonically noting “The of the dominant narrative of Pop Art as a tion, these exhibitions reveal the tight con-
spirit of boys being boys is pervasive.”49 The male movement reinforced by the exhibition nection between the dominant voice of the
serious ramifications of this disparity in rep- frame. The visual density of references in the institutional exhibition and the formation
resentation meant that the almost complete collage supports art historian John Russell’s of the canon, aligning with art historian Bar-
muting of female voices within the exhibi- description of “the endless pockets of mean- bara Rose’s understanding that “Museums
tion’s framing of meaning defined the only ing” located across the work’s surface, but are a center of authority in our culture.”51
tenable position for women within the exhi- contrary to his suggestion of the meaning Displaying works solely to be seen, rather
(Figure 9, upper left) Harry Shunk and János bition, and therefore within Pop Art more requiring deciphering, the binary opposi- than engaging with commercial structures,
a center and everywhere else as a periph- visitors were invited to throw at the work,
Kender, Photograph of Marta Minujín’s La
broadly, as passive subject, with de Saint tion between the roles ascribed to the male the survey exhibition represents the epito-
destrucción (Paris, 1963). ery. The RA’s prestige—combined with the St Sebastian’s first exhibition displayed its
Phalle the sole exception. The now canoni- and female figures dominates the work.50 me of institutionalization. Although scholar
(Figure 10, lower left) Niki de Saint Phalle, fact that this was the largest exhibition of active, radical process. In contrast, the exhi-
St Sebastian or Portrait of My Lover, 1960. Oil cal Just What is it That Makes Today’s Homes When considered contextualized within Michael Pye was commenting on the physi-
paint, paper, fabric, and darts on wood, 72 x
Pop Art to date—amplified the institution- bition design at the RA draped the doors,
So Different, So Appealing? (1956) (Figure the wider exhibition, this meaning is fur- cal exhibition design, his description of the
55 x 7 cm. al voice. This presentation of Pop Art as a floors, and walls in white fabric (Figure
12) created by Richard Hamilton, an artist ther amplified, corroborated by other works. works being afforded a new resting place in
(Figure 12, right) Richard Hamilton, Just male-dominated movement was buttressed 11), which some contemporary reviews
What is it That Makes Today’s Homes So Differ- involved in the creation of Zone 2 of “This With the male figure domineering within “a ceremonial canopy at the Royal Academy”
ent, So Appealing?, 1956. Collage on paper, 26
by the near-total exclusion of female artists claimed was referencing typical 1960s
is Tomorrow,” grants visual form to this nar- the domestic space, the women recede into could equally describe the process of fram-
x 25 cm. other than Niki de Saint Phalle’s St Sebas- display modes.47 Yet, within this entirely
tian or Portrait of My Lover (1960) (Fig- white, visually neutral exhibition space, de
48 Livingstone (ed.), Pop Art, 290.
ure 10). Displayed alongside darts which Saint Phalle’s subversively active work was 49 McEwen, “Pop Goes the Easel.”
50 Russell, “Introduction” in Richard Hamilton, 10-11.
47 Lambirth, “30 Years On.” 51 Rose, “Pop Art at The Guggenheim,” 84.
24 25
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

Alice Neel’s A
lice Neel (1900-84) ‘self,’ Neel’s visual vocabulary
ing meaning, and the lofty position afforded therefore shifted from augmenting subver- tember 15, 1991).
is one of the most punctuates the difference be-
to the works in the canon.52 The imposition sive meanings of radical peripheral exhibi- Minujín, M. “Destruction of My Works in the Impasse
prolific and profes- tween the physical portraits

Portraits of
of the canonical frame therefore neutralized tions to imposing neutralized institutional Ronsin, Paris (1963).” M. Feitlowitz (trans.) in Inés
sionally acclaimed portrait- themselves and their imag-
the radical meanings of the works in the meanings. Promoting a singular narrative, Katzenstein (ed.) Listen Here Now! Argentine Art of
ists of the twentieth centu- ined meaning. It is the over-
exhibition, dislocating them from the spe- inexorably connected to the canon, the in-

Her Selves
the 1960s: Writings of the Avant-Garde. New York,
ry, yet in her vast career, she whelming similarity present
cific circumstances dictating their creation. stitutional exhibition frame, in its exclu- 2004, 59-61.
painted only one oil-based in each of these three works,
Embedding the works within the structures sionary nature, granted minimal space for Morgan, R. “No More Miss America! (1968).” In Sisterhood is
self-portrait. This work, titled made visible by her choice of
which they originally reacted against, the female voices, or voices of artists originating Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Wom-
Self-Portrait, took between
institutional frame was sufficiently opaque from outside “the West” to frame Pop Art’s en’s Liberation Movement. New York, 1970, 520-24. Hailee Heinrich, Stanford University ‘23 subject matter, brushstroke
the years 1975 and 1980 to style, and tone, wherein Neel’s
to override previous framings of meaning. meaning. The dissonant babel of voices vy- The Museum of Modern Art, Press release no. 138 (Decem-
construct and was one of implementation of ontologi-
With Pop Art’s meaning functioning as a pa- ing to frame Pop Art’s meaning can be heard ber 3, 1962).
her more sizable and daring cal metaphor makes vivid the
limpsest, the exhibition acted as a blueprint in the present day, with future exhibitions Oldenburg, C. Store Days: Documents from The Store (1961)
works. Rendered with eighty- thread underpinning all three
for the later trajectory of meaning, with this contributing to the trajectory of Pop Art’s and Ray Gun Theatre (1962). New York, 1967.
year-old Neel entirely nude, pieces. In each of these, the
codification of a singular narrative of Pop changing meaning. The question of how Rose, B., “Pop Art at The Guggenheim.” In S. Madoff (ed.),
this self-portrait, made at the individual in the portrait acts
Art granted significant longevity as a result Pop Art’s meanings are framed by exhibi- Pop Art: A Critical History. Berkeley, 1997, 82-84.
end of the most recognized as a manifestation of Neel’s at-
of originating from an institutional pulpit. tions therefore continues into the present. Russell, J. “Introduction” in exh. cat. Richard Hamilton. New
decade of her oeuvre, was tempts to immortalize the dis-
York, 1973.
to be one of the last works tant identity that is called the
Echoing voices Bibliography Sontag, S. “Happenings: an art of radical juxtaposition
Neel completed before she self. By doing so, these por-
Despite the dynamics and character- “Collection 1940s-1970s: James Rosenquist, ‘F-111’ (1964- (1962).”In Against Interpretation and Other Essays.
passed away. Within the peak traits become memorials of
istics of Pop Art varying across geographical 65).” Accessed December 2, 2022. https://www. New York, 1966, 263-74.
of this success in the 1970s, the buried iterations of Neel’s
regions, the same process of tending towards moma.org/audio/playlist/297/82. Tate, S. “Re-occupying the Erotic Body: The Painting and
Neel also painted two other being that capture the fleet-
institutionalization was consistently discern- Debord, G. The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit, 1970. ‘Performance’ of Pauline Boty, British Pop Artist
portraits, Portrait of a Girl in ingness of self-actualization
ible, aside from infrequent moments of resis- de Lacaze Mohrmann, M. “Marta Minujín’s Destructive (1938-66).” In A. M. Kokoli (ed.) Feminism Re-
Blue Chair and Nancy and the in the enduring passage of life.
tance. The question of how Pop Art’s mean- Intervention.” ARTMargins 9, no. 2 (2020), 61-84. framed. Cambridge, 2008, 177-201.
Rubber Plant. Each of these The journey of Neel’s
ings were framed by exhibitions is ultimately Foster, H. and M. Francis, M. (eds.). Pop. London, 2010. This is Tomorrow: a Facsimile of Wright, E., This is Tomorrow
three works coincide with dis- memorialization of the self
the question of which voice was raised most Geldzahler, H. “James Rosenquist’s F-111.” The (1956). Ed. Whitechapel Gallery. London, 2010.
tinct moments in her career starts with her infamous
in the harmonizing and clashing of different Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 26, no. 7 Tucker, A. “Review: Bradford Spring Exhibition.” The Guard-
and constitute a profound Self-Portrait (Figure 1). Since
voices within this process of framing mean- (March 1968), 277-81. ian. 1963.
acknowledgement of the life her commercially unsuccess-
ing. With the institutional voice emerging as Hamilton, R. “Letter to Peter and Alison Smithson (1957).” Tillim, S. “Rosenquist at the Met: Avant-Garde or Red
stages Neel finds herself in as ful works of the 1920s and
dominant and more opaque than other ex- In Collected Words, 1953-1982. London, 1983 Guard?” Artforum. April 1968, 46-49.
both a simultaneously reborn subsequent decades of rela-
hibition frames, institutional meaning was Lambirth, A. “30 Years On.” The Sunday Times (September Whiting, C. A Taste for Pop: Pop Art, Gender and Consumer
and aging artist. Contextual- tive obscurity, Neel began this
superimposed on Pop Art, amplified to the 8, 1991).Livingstone, M. (ed.). Pop Art. London, Culture. Cambridge, 1997.
izing these three works along- portrait at the halfway point
loudest volume as a result of the prestige of 1991.
side philosopher René Des- of the most acclaimed decade
these institutions. Exhibitions of Pop Art McEwen, J. “Pop Goes the Easel.” The Sunday Telegraph (Sep-
cartes’ belief in consciousness of her career, amidst seismic
52 Pye, “Review of ‘The Pop Art Show.’” as the relevant indicator of the shifts in her legacy in the art
(Figure 1) Alice Neel, Self-Portrait, 1980. Oil on canvas, 57 x 43 x 2 in. National Portrait Gallery,
Washington, D.C., United States.
26 27
 issue n o 22
world. By crafting this image of herself in such mediacy of the present, in floating above the system of this new social and professional
a time of flux, Self-Portrait’s subject becomes floor, Neel’s subject is timely in her eternity; success is brought into the painting in Neel’s
a vehicle through which Neel pins down a she, just like her oil-painted self, is unbound depiction of herself at eighty and becomes
multifaceted and timeless idea of the self. and unaffected by place, setting, and era. By the landscape through which she situates
For this, Neel paints herself leaning forward; painting herself nude and acknowledging the different refractions of her identity. Visual-
her posture is that of someone who is still en- simultaneous vulnerability and bravery of ly representative of her history as an artist,
gaged with the world around them and pro- continuing to crystallize her identity while the shadow her body projects behind her
ductive in their endeavors. The active hunch boldly hurtling towards her own mortality, acknowledges this past as a part of her cur-
of her shoulders, though situated on top of Neel emphasizes how the building of the rent conception of self. With this silhouette,
naked and drooping skin, invokes a maturing self is an anachronistic and iterative process her legacy is painted into the piece. And as
utility that is fully articulated in the paint- that occurs without heeding the call of time. a result, her self-portrait becomes a painting
brush in her right hand. At eighty-years-old, Not only does Neel’s representation of two: Alice Neel as the prolific painter of
Neel paints herself first and foremost as an of herself in Self-Portrait emphasize the cre- the late 1970s and Alice Neel as the conse-
artist—with the muscles of her hand visibly ation of her own identity, but her use of light quential memory she leaves behind with her
taut and gripping the end of her brush, she is and shadow does as well. The light illumi- long-lasting oeuvre. This piece thus becomes
fearlessly creating her own perennial self-im- nating the front of Neel’s body adds contour an emphasis on the self as a construction of
age in spite of her own mortality. Though to the curvature of her legs and arms, and how one exists within a current time, poised
her lower body is evidence of the effects of casts a wide shadow on the wall behind her. in the continual process of creating one’s be-
the passage of time, with her sagging breasts Due to this shadow’s unrealistic grandness, ing, while simultaneously being an amalga-
and protruding stomach, Neel depicts her- it imagines Neel as this larger-than-life sub- mation of the shadows of one’s past selves.
self as a human being still in the process of ject and works to intensify her immediate For the sake of Neel’s journey to me-
existing in the world. Life is not happen- position. This use of light and shadow is not morialize her identity, if Neel’s Self-Portrait
ing to Neel’s representation in this portrait; common for Neel, and as art historian Patri- comes as a capstone to the crescendo of ac-
rather, with her paintbrush in hand and cia Hills finds, most of Neel’s portraits depict colades she received in the 1970s, then her
questioning brow, Neel is poised to create. her subjects “in the immediate shadowless Portrait of a Girl in Blue Chair is the ideo-
The green- and gold-colored floor foreground of [her] studio” with this “lack logical seed from which her immortalization
reiterates this point as well—in choosing to of milieu [suggesting] an isolation from” of being stems (Figure 2). After decades of
paint herself as straddling the line between the external scene.1 Significantly for Neel, relatively little large-scale success, Neel’s cre-
these two colors, Neel’s representation in her repudiation of her traditional methods ation of Portrait of a Girl in Blue Chair in
this portrait epitomizes how the process of with this incorporation of shadow reflects an 1970 coincides with her rise as a commer-
immortalizing and curating an idea of the acute recognition of the environment of her cially successful artist, and consequently, the
self can be a divided experience that bridges subject. For the sake of this piece, however, young girl’s position as subject in Portrait of
(Figure 2) Alice Neel, Portrait the gap between the past and the present. If the environment is not the physicality of her a Girl in Blue Chair acts as a metaphor for
of a Girl in Blue Chair, 1970.
Screenprint in colors on paper these two colors symbolize the contrast be- surroundings, but instead, her current life as the rebirth of another iteration of Neel’s
laid down to foam board, 26.88 x
20.88 in. Privately owned. tween the ever-expanding past and the im- a thriving artist; the nebulously defined eco- self. Harkening to Alice Neel’s humanist
1 Hills, Alice Neel, 191.

28 29
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
belief in the importance of the individual, and existence as free from objective reality.4 ing else in the piece except the young girl and the color blue to both outline the 1975 Nancy and the Rubber Plant is
the white backdrop centers the girl’s posi- Utilizing the definition of ontology put forth the chair, the girl is spotlighted as another it- girl and the chair, an instantaneous another version of one of the mul-
tion as the focus of the work.2 The young in the International Handbooks on Informa- eration of Neel’s self formed in her episodic and effervescent tone is built. And tiple iterations of Neel’s self (Figure
girl, with her chubby, childlike cheeks, in tion Systems as the “nature and structure of journey towards recording her own being. through these blue lines delineating 3). Yet unlike the girl in Portrait of
contrast to her wise and uncompromising things per se, independently of any further Adding to Neel’s focus on the girl as between subject and background, a a Girl in Blue Chair, the Nancy of
eyes, embodies a mismatch of innocence considerations, and even independent of the subject, the rapid brushstroke style and dialogue emerges: with Portrait of a Nancy and the Rubber Plant was
and wisdom, youth and age. With similar fa- their actual existence” to push this idea fur- the blue outlines present bring a speed and Girl in Blue Chair and Self-Portrait, an identifiable person—more than
cial structure, features, and coloring as Neel ther, I argue that Neel uses this young girl as spontaneity into the work that emphasizes a true synergy of motion is created that, a member of Neel’s family.
in her 1980 Self-Portrait, both works act as a proxy; independent of the actuality of the the instantaneous nature of capturing one’s in which the young girl as a subject Nancy was Neel’s daughter-in-law
mirror images of each other—rhyming with girl herself, the young girl behaves as a chan- self. In using the bare minimum of brush is subsumed by this refraction of and was responsible for most of
the curved and questioning brow of Neel’s nel for Neel’s own projections of self.5 Here, strokes needed to produce an idea of a chair, Neel’s self. Neel ignores the con- the administrative tasks of Neel’s
1980 self, this little girl warps into a young- Neel pulls from Descartes’ framing of reality there is no wasted motion or effort. In this tinuity of background or lines; in skyrocketing career in the 1970s.9
er version of Neel’s self-portrait. Neel had a and self as well, for she, as Descartes explains portrayal, Neel mirrors the position she is doing so, the girl’s position outside Neel painted many portraits of
tendency to fully subsume the identities of in “Meditations on First Philosophy”, knows in within her career as well. In continuously of linear time solidifies itself. Just as Nancy—by herself, pregnant, and
her subjects and mentions in conversation “and [understands] more distinctly the painting new pieces and traveling to confer- Neel’s identity exists as this transi- as a mother—but in this render-
with her biographer Patricia Hill that she things whose existence to [her] seems dubi- ences across the U.S. throughout the early tory, amorphous being in which she ing of Nancy, she exists in her role
gets “so identified when [she paints] them” ous… than others of the truth.”6 In painting 1970s, Neel’s work finds itself situated in a is both herself and this young girl, as Neel’s studio assistant.10 With
that she “[has] no self—[she has] gone into a portrait of this girl in her studio, Neel is flurry of activity—something that is reflect- so too does the formal arrangement Neel’s choice of Nancy as the sub-
this other person” as a way to find her “tick- able to externalize a reflection of her own ed in the velocity of Portrait of a Girl in Blue and tone of the work exist in a fleet- ject, I argue that Neel uses Nancy
et to reality.”3 In her tendency to diminish self; her identity is born through the conduit Chair. The lines, almost childlike in their flu- ing moment outside of the confines as a surface to make visible the rip-
this separation from her subjects and her of the young girl as her subject and is there- idity, bring forward an emphasis on the pres- of ‘reality.’ It is because of the sub- ples of Neel’s own self. Nancy’s role
own identity, Neel is able to create works fore more honest than the ‘truth’ of the girl ent moment and the novelty of the now— ject matter, use of motion, and over- in Alice Neel’s life in the 1970s was
that achieve their own realism because the as a separate person. The distance between even Neel herself meditates that when she whelming similarities between the monumental; in charge of a sig-
subjects take on elements of her own being. the body and consciousness, or the ‘self ’, in paints, “she just [reacts]” in an intuitive man- two works, in conjunction with the nificant portion of Neel’s affairs,
Here, her use of ontological meta- Descartes’ framework makes this metaphor ner which captures the ephemerality of exis- timing of Portrait of a Girl in Blue Nancy’s position as an extension of
phor comes through. In expanding further of the young girl as a version of Neel’s own tence.7 Part of ‘reacting’ in this way meant Chair in the greater arc of Neel’s Neel’s own self was solidified by her
on ontology, Martin Hieddeger’s explication person viable. Because of the separation that that Neel often had no preliminary draw- oeuvre, that the piece becomes a occupational duties and responsi-
of it as “being which is free from objects” be- Descartes’ model creates, this young girl can ings; she simply divided up the canvas by metaphor that immortalizes and bilities. By painting Nancy in such
comes a useful starting point for understand- symbolize Neel’s soul without being con- drawing the outlines and features of her sub- captures this version of Neel’s self. professional clothes, seated with
ing Neel’s attempts to identify her own being nected to Neel’s physical body. With noth- jects in light blue paint.8 In selectively using Though significant, Portrait her legs primly crossed and eyes
of a Girl in Blue Chair is not the piercing and direct, she embodies
2 Baum and Griffey, Alice Neel, 13.
3 Hills, Alice Neel, 183. only work of Neel’s that acts as a the collective cultural archetype of
4 Hiedegger, Ontology, 2. (Figure 3) Alice Neel, Nancy and larger ontological metaphor; Neel’s a working woman. In this articula-
5 Guarino et al., “What is an Ontology?,” 1-2. the Rubber Plant, 1975. Oil on
6 Descartes, “Meditations on First Philosophy,” 11. canvas, 79 7/8 x 36 in. Toledo
Museum of Art, Ohio, United 9 Allara, Pictures of People, 199.
7 Hills, Alice Neel, 141. States. 10 Object label for Nancy and the Rubber Plant.
8 Hills, 190.
30 31
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
tion, Nancy becomes a proxy for the busi- trait of a Girl in Blue Chair, Nancy acts as a ly fixed, with the window and its flickering of a plastic impersonation of a living plant in- Chair and Nancy and the Rubber Plant all Bibliography

ness elements of Neel’s burgeoning success fragment of Neel’s soul that is, in the words light serving to epitomize just how reliably sists on the ironic coexistence of the immor- affirm the ways that Neel has formed her-
and acts out the role of Neel as a professional of Descartes, “entirely and absolutely distinct time exists in the present, while also fading tal and fleeting self. Rhyming with the plant, self from the amalgamation of her present Allara, Pamela. Pictures of People: Alice Neel’s Ameri-

in the art ecosystem. Nancy’s body language from the body.”13 Who Nancy was as an in- by with each passing moment. Time, just like Nancy as the subject in this piece embodies and her past. Neel’s works dissected in this can Portrait Gallery. Hanover and London:

also rhymes with the portrait behind her: a dividual is therefore not as important as her the self Neel creates within each of these three this juxtaposition of life and death, thereby paper encompass Descartes’ notion that “the Brandeis University Press, 1998.

miniature version of the 1940 painting Neel role as a ‘living’ metaphor, and with Nancy portraits, will continue on in immortality, becoming a snapshot of Neel both alive in human body may indeed easily enough per- Baum, Kelly and Randall Griffey. Alice Neel: People

did of Audrey McMahon, former head of personifying the ideal working woman, she dependably ticking forward towards oblivi- the present moment and fixed forever in her ish, but the mind… is owning to its nature Come First. New York: The Metropolitan Mu-

the New York Works Progress Administra- becomes a snapshot of Neel’s self in the midst on. An extension of the regularity of the ex- portraits. As part of her visual vocabulary, immortal,” and come together to suspend re- seum of Art, 2021.

tion.11 The inclusion of a previous Neel work of immense professional success in 1975. ternal world, the window calls to this idea of this plant echoes the green- and gold-colored ality and allow for another truth: that each Descartes, René. “Meditations on First Philosophy.”

of McMahon, a woman whose role as Neel’s Aligned with this ideological fram- the continuous and rhythmic process of cre- floor pattern in Neel’s Self-Portrait. Though of these three works captures a distinct ver- In The Philosophical Works of Descartes. Cam-

former boss at the WPA epitomizes this ing and usage of metaphor, Neel’s rhythmic ating one’s being. Adding nuance to this idea represented in different ways, both the floor sion of Neel’s self.16 In this continual pur- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911,

emphasis on professionalism, underscores incorporation of a window and her use of of time and the building of the self, Neel’s and the plant symbolize how the idea of the suit to mold and shape her reality and the 11-27.

the prevalence of Neel’s past in her current shadow in Nancy and the Rubber Plant are use of shadow ties Nancy’s position to the self can be formed within the gap between boundaries of her being, Neel eternalizes Garb, Tamar, et al. (eds.). Alice Neel: Painted Truths.

meditation of self as visualized in Nancy. also evidence of a larger attempt to define present as well; with Nancy’s shadow lurch- the past and the present, the mortal and the her own self and preserves it anachronis- Houston: Museum of Fine Art, Houston,

If using the definition of ontology as and situate her identity in the simultaneous ing forward towards the viewer, Neel sus- forever. The formal elements of Nancy and tically amidst the ceaseless passage of time. 2010. https://tfaoi.org/aa/9aa/9aa327.htm. 

‘being’ which is free from objectivity, Neel’s instantaneous moment and the continuous pends time by catching Nancy’s figure in the the Rubber Plant—as illustrated through Guarino, Nicola, et al. “What is an Ontology?” Hand-

creation of a fantastical reality is brought to passage of time. Painted the year before her boundless space between the instantaneous the window, plant, and shadows—harken to book on Ontologies, International Handbooks

the surface and manifests itself through Nan- first solo show at the Whitney Museum of and the forever. Unlike the window, with Neel’s continual journey to fashion her iden- on Information Systems (2009): 1-2. Accessed

cy; this is to say that though Nancy was an American Art, Nancy and the Rubber Plant is its predictable view and fixed relation to the tity as a historic artist while still simultane- November 12, 2022. https://iaoa.org/isc2012/

identifiable person, in Nancy and the Rubber coming at a moment where Neel’s identity in outside world, Nancy’s shadow exists only as ously recognizing the iteration of herself that docs/Guarino2009_What_is_an_Ontology.

Plant she becomes a channel through which the greater art ecosystem is being curated.14 a result of the light hitting her at that specif- is continually adapting and redefining itself. pdf. 

Neel creates a concept of her own self that is The window, serving as a portal outside of ic moment in time. Ultimately then, Neel’s One of Neel’s own truisms that “no matter Hiedegger, Martin. Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Fac-

reliant on, but unrelated to, Nancy’s real life this personal sphere, is a reminder of Nancy’s use of both the window and Nancy’s shadow what the rules are, when one is painting one ticity. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1999.

as a person in the work. As Jack Kroll wrote presence in the world around her; peeking speaks to a larger attempt to understand the creates one’s own world” holds immense va- Hills, Patricia. Alice Neel. New York: Harry N. Abrams,

in a 1966 Newsweek review of Neel’s career, out through the foliage of this rubber plant, memorialization of self as something that lidity in these pieces.15 While it is true that 1983.

her portraits “are alive with people—not the skyline is clarified from behind the with- is simultaneously enduring and ephemeral. Neel only completed one oil paint self-por- Hoban, Phoebe. Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty.

‘real people,’ but art-people, humans caught drawn blinds and emphasizes Nancy’s tie to Similarly, Neel’s inclusion of a rubber trait in her public career, this paper argues a New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010.

in the torrid, temperate and frigid zones of the greater whole of life outside of her own plant transfixes time in such a way as to con- contrary view; understood through a Des- Object label for Nancy and the Rubber Plant. Toledo

their passage through the human span.”12 interior. By illustrating her connection to this trast the nature of mortality and immortality. cartian and ontological view of the self, the Museum of Art, Ohio, United States, 2017.

Nancy, though a real individual in Neel’s life, exterior world, Nancy is not only connected Growing out from directly behind the trunk brushstroke style, subject choice, and tone http://emuseum.toledomuseum.org/ob-

becomes an ‘art-person’ in this piece, and in to other people, but to time as well. As an of Nancy and her chair, the plant juts out as in Self-Portrait, Portrait of a Girl in Blue jects/76155/nancy-and-the-rubber-plant. 

doing so, exists more as a metaphor than her entity, time in this portrait is something that an extension of her body. Aptly titled Nancy 15 Hills, Alice Neel, 134.
own being. Much like the young girl in Por- is both always morphing and staying rigid- and the Rubber Plant, the image’s inclusion 16 Descartes, “Meditations on First Philosophy,” 5.
11 Allara, Pictures of People, 199.
12 Hills, Alice Neel, 108.
13 Descartes, “Meditations on First Philosophy,” 27.
14 Garb, et al., eds., Alice Neel, 2010.
32 33
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

From Sea to Shining

Sea: Strategies and
Subversions of the
Sublime in American
Landscape
Representation,
1830–1999
Catie Burnell, Georgetown University ‘23
A different version of this essay is published in the 2023 edition of Utraque
Unum: A Journal of Georgetown University’s Tocqueville Form for Political
Understanding.

F
rom its earliest iterations, American land- tionary era, particularly in landscape painting of
scape representation has long had a unique the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as Ameri-
and potent connection with the American cans were left to their own devices for the first time
national identity itself, often acting as a vehicle for with their newfound liberty and hungered for fur-
nationalistic ideas. This is especially true in the ther expansion into the American continent. The
United States’ early years as an independent nation simultaneous existential fear and expansionary ar-
as American artists hypothesized a distinct aesthet- rogance spurred by the ambiguity of autonomous
ic tradition, one that was cognizant of the glory of rule is manifest in the sweeping panoramic depic-
the European academies and attentive to the nov- tions of landscapes of the era. This existential anx-
el ruggedness and individuality of independent iety at the precariousness of the American experi-
American life. The sublime emerged as a common ence reverberated beyond the nineteenth century,
theme in such American art of the post-Revolu- as the Modernist and even Postmodern modes
(Figure 1) Thomas Cole, Catskill Scenery, c. 1833. Oil on canvas, 24 1/2 x 32 3/8 in. St. Louis Museum of Art, St. Louis.
34 35
nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
allowed for new interpretations of ever, the sublime is also prevalent as roundness, smoothness, and har-
the sublime in the postwar period. in the Greek tradition, emerging mony—and the sublime, which he
Artists of this oeuvre and beyond first in Longinus’s first-century lit- characterizes as “productive of the
were frequently in dialogue with the erary work Peri hupsous, a text that strongest emotion of which the mind
sublime, though their approaches was well known in its own day but is capable of feeling” and spurring
differed: while many artists engaged was lost for centuries thereafter. In emotional responses so overwhelm-
directly with the sublime, some sub- the seventeenth century though, the ing they approached repulsiveness.3
verted the sublime instead, with sev- text reemerged in a series of mod- Burke approached his distinction
eral going so far as to reject it entire- ern translations, notably to French between the beautiful and the sub-
ly. These differing methods construct by Nicolas Boileau. Boileau would lime with a psychological underpin-
different representations of reality later theorize the sublime as a lin- ning: the beautiful was appealing be-
based on the different lived experi- guistic concept in his highly influ- cause it spoke to the human (mainly
ences of the artists creating them. ential 1674 work Traité du sublime male) desire for “generation” of the
The sublime emerged first as a ou du merveilleux dans le discours, human species, and thus its formal
philosophical concept before an aes- traduit de grec de Longin, in which characteristics represented the soft,
thetic one. Etymologically, the Lat- he codifies the sublime as righteous harmonious characteristics men de-
in sublīmus, from the prefix sub and ideas expressed simply so as to awak- sired in women. The sublime, on the
the word līmin, denotes that which en awe within the reader or listen- other hand, represented a primal in-
is “up to the lintel” of a building or er without verbose obstruction.2 stinct for survival; these two theories
threshold, though its exact post-clas- With the basis of Boileau’s are then distinguished as the beauti-
sical meaning is debated. By the philosophical definition of the sub- ful one of humanity and growth, the
fourteenth century, “sublime” was lime, the sublime was theorized in- sublime as one of a force greater than
(Figure 2, top) Thomas Cole, present in both French and Middle creasingly as an aesthetic concept in humanity, and one that inspired a
v, 1836. Oil on canvas, 51.5 x
76 in. Metropolitan Museum
English, though it assumed a pri- the seventeenth century. Irish polit- fear of a loss of generation.4 This dis-
of Art, New York. marily alchemical significance as it ical theorist Edmund Burke applied tinction between the sublime and
(Figure 3, bottom left) became a verb meaning “to purify” existing concepts of the sublime the beautiful as individual but equal-
Thomas Cole, The Savage
State, c. 1834, from The
and was often linked with fire and directly to aesthetic experience in ly important psychological respons-
Course of Empire (1834-36). violence. By the end of the century, 1751. He made the crucial distinc- es to aesthetic qualities was further
Oil on canvas, 39 1/4 × 63
1/4 in. Metropolitan Muse- the sublime as a term came to en- tion between the beautiful—char- developed near the turn of the cen-
um of Art, New York.
compass that of high rank or stature, acterized by attractiveness which in- tury. British author Uvedale Price’s
(Figure 4, bottom right) then came to signify noble thinking spires a fleeting emotional response 1794 Essay on the Picturesque nota-
Thomas Cole, The Arcadian
or Pastoral State, 1834, from itself.1 Strictly philosophically how- of pleasure and such formal qualities bly argues for the active application
The Course of Empire (1834-
36). Oil on canvas, 39 1/4
× 63 1/4 in. Metropolitan
1 Costelloe, “The Sublime,” 3.
Museum of Art, New York. 2 Costelloe, 5.
3 Burke, “A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,” 36.; Lindey, Keywords of Nine-
teenth-Century Art, 196-97.
4 Wilton and Barringer, eds., “The Sublime in the Old World and the New,” 13.
36 37
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
(Figure 5, top right) Thomas Cole, The Consum-
of theories of the sublime, beautiful, and pic- tury, the sublime was well-established as its revolutionary fervor yielded to the unknown mation of Empire, c. 1835-36, from The Course of landscape as “devoid of history Thomas Cole, though
turesque not only to the aesthetics of nature own distinct aesthetic theory and pictorial challenges of autonomous rule, Americans Empire (1834-36). Oil on canvas, 51 1/4 x 76 in. and the nuances that sentiment British by birth, remains a
New-York Historical Society, New York.
but to pictorial representation as well. Price canon, as artists attempted to capture the struggled to comprehend the vastness of of scholarship found everywhere founding member of the canon
(Figure 6, left) Thomas Cole, Destruction, 1836,
distinguishes the picturesque as a departure awe-inspiring fear that nature could elicit. the land that now lay solely within their from The Course of Empire (1834-36). Oil on in Europe” and notes that such of American landscape painting.
from the beautiful due to its characteristic Though steeped initially in a Europe- domain. In his notes on the seminal 2002 canvas, 39 1/4 x 63 1/2 in. New-York Historical development was marked by an The nineteenth–century artist
Society, New York.
contrast and roughness but clarifies that the an painterly tradition, nowhere was an at- Tate Britain exhibition American Sublime: “instinct to find spiritual signif- was acutely aware of the compli-
(Figure 7, bottom right) Thomas Cole, Desola-
picturesque does not approach the capacity tempt to define and encapsulate the sublime Landscape Painting 1820-1880, curator tion, 1836, from The Course of Empire (1834-36). icance in nature… inherent in cated relationship between the
for overwhelming emotional response elicit- more prevalent or potent than in the fledg- Andrew Wilson characterizes this early de- Oil on canvas, 39 1/4 × 63 in. Metropolitan the broadly devout American sublime and spirituality. In his
Museum of Art, New York.
ed by the sublime.5 By the nineteenth cen- ling United States. As the bombastic years of velopment of American nineteenth-century consciousness,” suggesting that 1836 “Essay on American Scen-
the desire to explore the sublime ery,” Cole described landscape as
5 Price, An Essay on the Picturesque.
in American art was a unique and noble subject for
spurred by an existen- painting, praising “those scenes
tial dread of the precar- of solitude from which the hand
iousness of the new na- of nature has never been lifted”
tion’s strength as well as which “affect the mind with a
a desire to comprehend more deep toned emotion than
this ambiguity by turn- aught which the hand of man
ing to a higher spiritu- has touched. … they are [God’s]
al understanding.6 The undefiled works, and the mind
American sublime was is cast into the contemplation
inextricably linked not of eternal things.”7 Cole’s early
only with Burke’s hy- works fall more in line with the-
pothesis of the sublime ories of the picturesque, as he
in dialogue with pri- attempted to depict the unique
mal, survival instincts, splendor and opportunity of
but also with the no- the American continent. His
tion of the sublime 1833 work Catskill Scenery (Fig-
as an expression of ure 1), for instance, presents a
a superhuman, spir- grand yet unimposing represen-
itual power, namely tation of the Hudson River Val-
the all-encompassing ley, a land rife with opportunity
power of God over all both for pastoral enjoyment and
nature and humanity. economic growth, as indicated
6 Wilton and Barringer, eds., “The Sublime in the Old World
and the New,” 14.
7 Cole, “Essay on American Scenery,” 4.

38 39
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
by the scene’s rolling hills and distant farmhouse. Cole’s time Cole began The Oxbow, the Massachusetts landscape
depiction of America’s singular capacity for rugged, wild depicted therein had already been marred by construction
adventure in harmony with human development does not of the Canajoharie and Catskill Railroad, an event that Cole
yet approach the sublime—instead, Cole subverts the sub- lamented as destructive to the natural elements it affected.9
lime, depicting the natural landscape not as indicative of an Also in his “Essay on American Scenery,” Cole expressed
overwhelming superhuman force, but as indicative of a par- his fear of the effects of human development on unbridled
adise where man and nature could coexist harmoniously. American wilderness, writing that “there are those who re-
Later in his career, however, Cole took a decided- gret that with the improvements of cultivation the sublim-
ly less optimistic approach to his depictions of American ity of the wilderness should pass away.”10 The Oxbow, then,
landscapes, indicating a strategy of engaging with the sub- mediated by Cole’s own feelings towards preserving the
lime rather than avoiding it. This shift suggested Cole’s sublime as is indicated explicitly by his self-insertion into
own displeasure with and fear of the increasingly industri- the painting, is a fearful warning of the potentially devastat-
al mode of American economic development, which had a ing wrath of nature over the hubris of human development.
direct impact on the American landscape as urbanization Cole’s allegory of nature versus man is developed
followed the development of factories, railroads, and in- in earnest through his seminal series The Course of Empire,
dustry.8 Cole’s 1836 painting View from Mount Holyoke, painted between 1834 to 1836. The monumental series,
Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The composed of five canvases each over five feet in width,
Oxbow indicates a tentative introduction of sublimity to constitute an extended allegory of Cole’s view of nature as
Cole’s pastoral landscapes (Figure 2). At nearly six and a ultimately all-powerful. The Savage State, the series’s first
half feet in width, The Oxbow is overwhelming not only in painting, depicts an untouched mountainous landscape,
its sheer physical presence, but also in the formidable land- replete with abundant vegetation and sweeping ocean
scape scene it depicts. The viewer’s eye is immediately drawn views (Figure 3). A sole figure emerges from the trees on
to the sweeping farmlands encompassing the right side of the right of the picture plane, marching eastward towards
the picture plane, once again alluding to Cole’s enthusias- what appear to be the earliest signs of civilization in the
tic vision of an America guided by economic and agricul- distance. The second installation of the series, The Arca-
tural progress. The left side of the picture plane, however, dian or Pastoral State, depicts the same site, though it has
(Figure 8) Albert Bier- is shrouded in ominous clouds that seem to encroach on undergone substantial development and is much more
stadt, Rocky Mountains, populated (Figure 4). By the third installation, The Con-
‘Lander’s Peak’, 1863. Oil
the peaceful environment. Broken tree trunks and limbs
on linen, ​​43 5/8 x 35 1/2 punctuating the overgrown vegetation directly beneath summation of Empire, the splendid decadence of a Classical
in. Harvard Art Muse- these clouds seem to indicate that the land has already civilization at its height has completely overwhelmed any
ums, Cambridge.
been ravaged by the storm. Near the edge of this vegetation sense of nature (Figure 5). The series’s gruesome fourth in-
is a barely-visible self-portrait of the artist, appearing to stallment, Destruction, depicts the sack and pillaging of the
paint the landscape itself and dressed in gentlemanly garb. once-prosperous city, in the shroud of a tempest, linking
This scene itself, though, is an anachronism: by the 9 Bjelajac, “Thomas Cole’s Oxbow and the American Zion
8 Chianese, “Avoidance of the Sublime in Nineteenth-Cen- Divided,” 60-83.
tury American Landscape Art,” 437-61. 10 Cole, “An Essay on American Scenery,” 4.

40 41
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
the wrath of the destructors with the wrath of exploration of the sublime in painting was
natural forces (Figure 6). The series’s fifth and certainly not exclusive to this region. Land-
final piece, Desolation, shows only the ruins scapes of the American West provided an es-
of the city, now overrun with nature (Figure pecially rich source material for exploration
7)—nature has, in Cole’s depiction, forceful- of the desolate sublime with their multitude
ly reclaimed that which humans tried to take. of topographies spanning from vast deserts to
The Course of Empire represents Cole’s enormous mountains. Albert Bierstadt was
own wariness towards the expansionary ef- an early pioneer of landscape depictions of
forts of President Andrew Jackson at the the Great West, having enlisted with an 1859
time, especially as the artist saw the conse- federally commissioned expedition to the
quences of the British Empire’s downfall un- Rocky Mountains alongside explorer Freder-
fold. Desolation represents the ultimate fear ick West Lander and another in 1863 to the
harbored by Cole and his contemporaries, Pacific coast. The incomparable landscapes of
who saw time and time again the toppling the Sierra Nevada and the Yosemite Valley in
of empires and foresaw a similar fate for the particular provided Bierstadt a wealth of ma-
young United States under an overzealous terial from which to paint. The German-born
policy of expansion.11 Desolation presents Bierstadt’s early Western landscapes, like
the paramount anxiety for Cole: that the Cole’s early works, lavishly celebrate an opti-
great American experiment would come un- mistic view of the land. His 1863 work Rock
done as quickly and gloriously as it had come Mountains, ‘Lander’s Peak’ doesn’t depict a
to fruition, and that human might would particular point in the Rocky Mountains that
be no match against the wills of nature. Bierstadt encountered in his travels; instead,
Desolation would become just as pow- it imagines the ideal Rockies peak, consoli-
erful a vein of the sublime as had the immense dating the overwhelming landscape into an
abundance of nature, a powerful reminder of amalgam (Figure 8). Two rays of sunlight
the unknown, and the dangerous expanse beam through the clouded sky, illuminating ral world in this heretofore untouched land. stadt expressed his distaste for the emerging this iteration’s dramatic contrast of the fiery
(Figure 9, top right) Albert Bierstadt, Sunset in
that lay ahead for Americans as the country’s the massive mountains in the background and the Yosemite Valley, 1868. Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x The notion of the West as a virginal brand of American hubris that seemed to be sunset against the near-black clouds, along
52 1/4 in. Haggin Museum, Stockton, California.
borders expanded ever westward. Although the peaceful valley in the foreground, turning and untouched realm was, of course, igno- shaping the developing national identity in with the sparse vegetation contrasted with
(Figure 10, left) Horace Pippin, Holy Mountain rant to the centuries of development by Na- his later works, which take on a far more om- the terrifying mountain peaks resembling
much scholarship on the American sublime Lander’s Peak into an overtly religious scene: IV, 1946, from Holy Mountain series. Oil on
and on American landscape paintings in gen- the sublime, in this instance, is communicated canvas, 26 x 36 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, tive American peoples in the West and be- inous tone than his earlier landscapes. His shards, is far more imposing than his previ-
New York.
eral focuses heavily on those painters of the through the allusions to God’s high, heaven- yond that were wiped out by the arrival of 1868 work Sunset in the Yosemite Valley re- ous attempts (Figure 9). Sunset in the Yosem-
(Figure 11, bottom right) Robert Smithson, American settlers. Bierstadt was a witness to sembles an apocalyptic scene more so than it ite Valley represents Bierstadt in direct dia-
Hudson River School—of which Cole was ly realm, as well as the biblical site of Mount Spiral Jetty, 1970. Basalt rock, salt crystals, water,
a founding and foremost member —and Sinai.12 Bierstadt engages with the sublime to 1500 x 15 ft. Dia Art Foundation, Great Salt the transformation of the American west and does a landscape painting: though it depicts logue with the sublime, eliciting terror in the
Lake, Utah.
their depictions of the American Northeast, express the awe-inspiring power of the natu- empathized with the plight of Indigenous the same view of the Yosemite that Bier- viewer and directly refuting the notion that
populations that he saw firsthand.13 Bier- stadt had already painted numerous times, American human and industrial develop-
11 Barringer, “The Englishness of Thomas Cole,” 1-52.
12 Wilton, “The Great West” in American Sublime, 230. 13 McWhorter, “Introduction” in Albert Bierstadt, 3-9.
42 43
 issue n o 22
ment could overcome the natural power of that transcends rationality and reaches the to human presence as the enveloping land-
the landscape. This point is made clearer by most primal of human desires and needs.15 scapes of his predecessors in the medium.
the complete absence of any living creature Nineteenth-century ideals of the sublime The biblical undercurrents of Holy Mountain
in the entire picture, emphasizing the fearful of those natural forces which were greater IV further this existential dread: at this holy
desolation of the West due to the destruc- than human capability were still prevalent mountain, the power of man is made entirely
tion caused by expansionary greed. Bier- in the twentieth century, especially as Amer- insufficient, as this land has seemingly been
stadt strategically employed the sublime as ica’s changing role on the world stage be- abandoned by even the holiest of figures
a didactic measure to warn viewers—mostly came more urgent for artists to understand. who once occupied it. Pippin’s Holy Moun-
those beyond the American West—that the Horace Pippin occupied a unique role in this tain IV represents his own vision of Ameri-
land of the West had a history and a power anxious national moment: as a Black paint- ca ravaged psychologically by war as well as
of its own and to warn them of the poten- er and a veteran of World War I, Pippin was the challenges that the destruction of World
tial dangers of overindulgent expansion. confronted with both the grotesque racism War I presented to his devout spirituality.
Though the age of great American that still pervaded American culture as well Later in the twentieth century, artists
landscape painting is generally understood as the confused hopelessness spurred by the used new media to further engage with and
to be contained within the nineteenth centu- terror of the war. Much of Pippin’s oeuvre challenge the sublime. The sublime, particu-
ry, as a pre-Modernist tradition, the sublime was directly in dialogue with the sublime, larly in the latter half of the twentieth centu-
did not simply disappear as European de- with many of his works steeped in religious ry, came to represent the fear of the unknown
velopments in Modernist painting reached symbolism and featuring vast expanses of na- that such rapid human development—devel-
American shores. In fact, the Modernist ture. Pippin’s Holy Mountain series is overtly opment that couldn’t seem to keep up with
mode allowed for rich new interpretations of engaged with biblical imagery, but the ee- itself—brought: the fear of the consequences
the sublime landscape. In his 1872 work of riness of the landscapes he depicts directly of unbridled industry as it clashed with na-
theory The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit reflects the isolation he felt having served in ture. The environmental movement certain-
of Music, German philosopher Friedrich Ni- combat. Holy Mountain IV, a 1946 installa- ly occupies no small role in more recent at-
etzsche recalls antiquity as he hypothesizes tion to this series, is particularly jarring: an tempts at approaching the sublime as artists
an Apollonian and a Dionysian art, arguing imposing yet lonesome mountain occupies have grappled with the rapid deterioration
that the sublime is found in the latter as a re- the background against a snowy scene, with of the natural world at the hands of human
pudiation of human rationality.14 Sigmund a barren, sickly tree to its left (Figure 10). development. Such was a chief concern for
Freud mentions the sublime or sublimation The arid landscape, populated only by the Robert Smithson in the 1970 creation of his
throughout his psychoanalytic writings, sketched-out figures of ostensibly two lions seminal Spiral Jetty, considered an archetypal
though often in a context more reminiscent and a fox, is terrifying in its ambiguity. Rath- earthwork. The massive work, spanning ap-
of the alchemical denotation in its French er than present the sublime as awe-inspiring, proximately 1,500 feet in width, is made en-
(Figure 12) James and Middle English presence, meaning “to Pippin subverts the sublime, instead invert-
Doolin, Twilight,
tirely of basalt rock and salt crystals, jetting
1999. Oil on canvas, purify.” Nonetheless, Freud’s understanding ing its canonical meaning to present the bar- out from the banks of Utah’s Great Salt Lake
82 x 72 in. Private
collection. of the sublime represents human thinking renness of the land as a commensurate threat (Figure 11).16 Smithson’s monumental work
14 Guyer, “The German Sublime After Kant” in The Sublime, 114-17.
15 Cohn and Miles, “The Sublime.”
16 Beardsley, “Traditional Aspects of New Land Art,” 226-32.
44 45
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
is in dialogue with numerous aspects of ple with an increasingly materialistic ignored as the hustle of daily life trudges Nature is, to these artists, the beginning and Burke, Edmund. “A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin Guyer, Paul. “The German Sublime After Kant,” In American

the evolving American aesthetic identity America that had seemingly reached the on. Doolin’s depictions of the saturated, the end: from nature did civilization emerge, of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,” in On Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States

of the mid- to late-twentieth century, es- limits of its expansion. James Doolin’s if lifeless, urban scenes so common in and nature still possessed the power to re- Taste; On the Sublime and Beautiful; Reflections on 1820-1880, edited by Andrew Wilton and Tim

pecially the increasing commodification paintings of California freeways subvert postwar America represent the simul- claim what humans took. In engaging with the French Revolution; A Letter to a Noble Lord, Barringer. Princeton: Princeton University Press,

of American art to satiate the swelling the sweeping panoramas of Bierstadt taneously overwhelming and isolating the sublime, artists accept this fate as inevita- edited by Charles W. Eliot. New York: P.F. Collier 2013, 114-17.

art market. Beyond the art world, Spiral and other prominent painters of the experience of modernity and urban life. ble. In challenging it, artists depict the stub- and Son, 1909. McWhorter, Karen B. “Introduction.” In Albert Bierstadt:

Jetty remarks on the rapid postwar ur- nineteenth century great west. Instead of The sublime has, since its earliest born human desire to continue to overpower Chianese, Robert. “Avoidance of the Sublime in Nine- Witness to a Changing West, edited by Peter H.

banization and suburban development painting the magnificent expanses of the explorations in American art, remained the barriers of the natural world. Both strat- teenth-Century American Landscape Art: An En- Hassrick, 3–9. Boston: University of Oklahoma

of the United States: in creating new Sierra Nevada, Doolin depicts the ba- as powerful in its applications as it has in egies, however, accept the all-encompassing vironmental Reading of Depicted Land.” Amerikas- Press, 2018.

living spaces for the swelling American nality of American life despite the splen- its repudiations. Whether the sublime is power of nature as one that is constantly at tudien / American Studies 43, no. 3 (1998): 437–61. Price, Uvedale. An Essay on the Picturesque, as Compared

population, destruction was inevitable. dor of technological progress. His 1999 celebrated or challenged in pictorial rep- odds with humanity, and are in dialogue http://www.jstor.org/stable/41157398. with the Sublime and the Beautiful: And, on the Use

Smithson’s work therefore engages the work Twilight (Figure 12) recalls Bier- resentation, the existential fear posed by with the inherent human struggle to ac- Cohn, Jay, and Thomas H. Miles. “The Sublime: In Alchemy, of Studying Pictures, for the Purpose of Improving

sublime in protest of this environmental stadt’s masterful use of light—the dusky the insurmountability and inevitably of cept their own weakness relative to nature. Aesthetics and Psychoanalysis.” Modern Philology Real Landscape. Cambridge Library Collection

defacement by sacrificing itself entirely sky rendered in brilliant yellow dotted the natural world against human desire 74, no. 3 (February 1977): 289-304. http://www. - Art and Architecture. Cambridge: Cambridge

to the wills of nature: the work’s visi- with clouds in purple and red—and has long been of chief concern for Amer- Bibliography jstor.org/stable/437116. University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1017/

bility is entirely dependent upon envi- land—with a mountain range visible in ican artists in particular, as the power of Barringer, Tim. “The Englishness of Thomas Cole.” In The Cole, Thomas. “Essay on American Scenery.” American CBO9781107360532.

ronmental conditions, giving full power the distant background. The painting’s nature against man represented the very Cultured Canvas, edited by Nancy Siegel, 1–52. Monthly Magazine 1 ( January 1836). Thomas Cole Wilton, Andrew, and Tim Barringer, eds. American Sublime:

over the work to nature itself.17 Smith- foreground, however, is obstructed in its precariousness and fragility that has Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, National Historic Site. Landscape Painting in the United States 1820-1880.

son rejects the notion of human suprem- entirety by layers of crowded freeways, characterized the United States since its 2011. Costelloe, Timothy M, ed. The Sublime: From Antiquity to Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.

acy and returns all force back to nature. extending back seemingly without end. emergence as a nation. The consequenc- Beardsley, John. “Traditional Aspects of New Land Art.” Art the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press,

Still, the grand tradition of land- Doolin seems to lament the death of the es of expansion, both in terms of land Journal 42, no. 3 (autumn 1982): 226–232. https:// 2012.

scape painting was not lost on artists sublime in Twilight: the reverence for na- and of societal development, were a cau- doi.org/10.2307/776583.

of the twentieth century, though their ture has been lost entirely to the vapidity tionary tale, both in the destruction of Bjelajac, David. “Thomas Cole’s Oxbow and the American

depictions are markedly different. Like of modern life, the last vestiges of nature nature necessitated by growth and in the Zion Divided.” American Art 20, no.1 (spring

Smithson, other artists sought to grap- (in this case, the sky at sunset) entirely human isolation that generated from it. 2006): 60–83. https://doi.org/10.1086/504062.

17 Beardsley, 226.

46 47
 issue n o 22
(Figure 1.1) Detail of Wang annual GDP growth in the decade a camera and took pictures of what cerns about Beijing in-the-making.
Ximeng, A Thousand Li of Rivers
and Mountains, Northern Song leading up to 2001, China was un- he perceived as beautiful scenes.5 The similarities between Song
era. Ink and color on silk, 51.5
cm x 1191.5 cm. Palace Muse-
der another revolution.4 Skyscrapers “Mystical” would be the paintings and Beijing’s construction
um, Beijing, China. were built, airports were enlarged, perfect adjective to describe Yao’s sites inspired Yao to take pictures,
and subways were constructed. It works. At first glance upon Moun- and the similarities also became one
was the dawn of modernity in Chi- tain Ridges Shrouded in Hazy Sun- of his most powerful tools. He be-
na and people could feel it. Behind set (Figure 2), one is stunned by the lieves that photography as a medium
the excitement of the 90s, however, sheer confusion that Yao creates. has a dichotomy between tradition-
people started to worry about what At the bottom third of the photo, a al and contemporary. According to
to make of this rapidly changing tree sits on top of a hill of construc- Yao, “photography can be very tra-
China, and such was the time when tion waste, which towers over a tree ditional, which brings people back
Yao, Lu (b. 1967) began his career as with the Chinese character shou 寿 in time, or it can be modern which
an artist in his hometown Beijing. [longevity] emblazoned on it. These gives misconceptions of time and
Yao experienced the revo- elements recall traditional Chinese space through the rearrangement
lution in Beijing firsthand. After culture which praised trees for their of objects, so the audience can see

Yao Lu’s Trashscapes: An he started teaching at the govern-

ment-endorsed Central Academy
ability to live in hostile conditions
like on top of a mountain. As the
the real and the unreal at the same
time.”6 Yao is keen on creating con-

Examination of the Modern

of Fine Arts in the early 2000s, he audience moves from the tree to the trasts between the world that Song
noticed something similar between bottom of the picture, tradition- paintings depict and the reality of
Song (960-1279) landscape paint- al references are gone. Instead, the Beijing. Perhaps the most obvious

Beijing ings and Beijing’s construction sites

(Figures 1.1 and 1.2). To prepare for
the Olympics as well as the result of
tranquil atmosphere created by the
tree and the mist is replaced by a
field of to-go boxes, broken bricks,
change to Beijing in the early 2000s
was that Beijing was becoming more
crowded. The reality of Beijing’s
Zheng, Xin, Georgetown University ‘23 the economic boom, construction used tissues, and small branches. busy streets in the middle register of

“C
sites were quite common in major At this point, the audience realiz- Yao’s Mountain Ridges is juxtaposed
omrades! I hope the whole bid for the 2008 Summer Olympics.2 Peo- the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution and the
cities like Beijing. Strangely enough, es that the picture actually depicts with the quiet and empty world in
nation works hard with Bei- ple who could not make it to Tiananmen 1989 Tiananmen Protest. Jiang stepped up
Yao saw piles of construction wastes quite a different world compared the foreground. Chinese literati rec-
jing to stage a successful cheered and applauded in bars, cafés, offic- as the president after the 1989 protest with
as mountains, green dust-proof cov- to that of a Song painting, and it is ognized the principle “less is more”
Olympics…I also welcome friends around es, supermarkets, and countless apartments a clear and forceful vision to continue Deng
ers as grasses and aerosolized dust as certainly different from what Yao as early as the sixth century, and the
the world to visit us in 2008!”1 President all over China. The successful Olympics Xiaoping’s (1978-89) economic reforms
misty clouds. Thus, unsightly con- had previously envisioned. This principle stayed with Chinese artists
Jiang Zemin (1989-2002) shouted in Tian- bid was a national phenomenon because and four modernizations.3 During Jiang’s
struction sites appeared beautiful in essay will examine how Yao Lu even centuries after.7 The real charm
anmen Square on July 13, 2001, as 13 mil- it was seen as a long-awaited international presidency, China experienced its own eco-
the eyes of Yao, who was raised in used references to the past in his of Chinese literati painting lies in
lion patriots marched to celebrate Beijing’s recognition of China’s achievements after nomic miracle. Averaging at 11.28-percent
a family of artists, so he picked up new landscapes to express his con- the artist’s use of empty spaces and
1 Jia, Tiananmen de gongheguo jiyi, 524. 4 “GDP growth (annual %) – China.”
2 Jia, 524. 5 Yao, interviewed by Zhang Litao, “Sheying zhongde chuantong yu xiandai.”
3 The economic reforms in China refer to Deng Xiaoping’s vision to open-up China’s economy after the Cultural Revolution. The four modernizations 6 Yao, interviewed by Qu Qian, “Zhong gou de jingguan zhebi de xianshi.”
are Deng’s plan to modernize agriculture, defense, science, and industry. For more information, see Evans, Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China. 7 Painter and critic Xie He (sixth century) wrote a collection of essays that has been crowned by many as the most important
48 49
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
a more reserved color palette In addition to Yao Lu’s make sure that foreigners would other juxtaposition in that Bei-
as seen in Zhu Da’s Heron and references to traditional com- not see any unpleasant images jingers did not have the luxury of
Lotus (Figure 3). Yet empty position, the de-emphasis of of Beijing during the Olympics, spending time in nature not only
and reserved can hardly be ac- human presence also recalls the when workers were sacrificed because of the busy city life, but
curate adjectives to describe past. It seems incomprehen- and neglected, much like what also because nature had been re-
Beijing around 2008. Instead, sible to depict a construction Yao’s picture shows. Construc- placed by trash. To a certain de-
Beijing was a bustling city with site without any construction tion workers almost never make gree, this is a dark humor as Yao
an endless sea of buildings and workers, but we have to con- an appearance in his works, and suggests that instead of becoming
people. The stark contrast be- sider that workers were under- even in the rare case that they do, one with nature, Beijingers could
tween Yao’s photo and the real appreciated in Beijing despite they appear minuscule compared only become one with trash.
Beijing makes people critical of their valuable contribution. to the rest of the picture. More- The crowded city and the
their actual living conditions. Most of the time, workers in over, it is important to acknowl- underappreciation of workers
With regard to this contrast, Beijing came from less afflu- edge that Beijing natives, like the were only the obvious problems
Yao stresses that “the more ent and densely populated government, had a similar ambiv- that Beijing faced, but as we ex-
beautiful the scene, the stark- neighboring provinces like alence toward workers. An esti- amine Yao’s works more closely,
er the contrast, so using tradi- Hebei and Henan, and they mated 25 percent of people living some of his more hidden mes-
tional painting is my strategy.”8 lived in unsanitary and illegal in Beijing were non-natives, but sages start to surface. Yao is con-
Essentially what had original- apartments with very little many Beijing natives advocated cerned with representing tradi-
ly started as Yao’s impulse to income.9 The Beijing govern- for stricter control of “low-quali- tions in a contemporary fashion
capture Beijing’s beauty had ment’s attitude toward these ty” people’s mobility.11 Yao brings because he is a deep lover of Chi-
turned into a critique of the workers became apparent after the real contributors to people’s nese cultures. He urges his fellow
Beijing that was modernizing officials announced a plan to attention by depicting almost Chinese to “not forget about our
and preparing for the Olym- remove these so-called low- a ghost town like construction ancestors’ heritage, [and] don’t
pics. Yao’s deliberate attempt end populations to prepare site where the audience would let Western thoughts corrupt
to sugarcoat his messages is for the Olympics. Non-native question who these sites were for. our traditions…Cultures should
actually a way for him to en- workers were barred from en- The lack of humans is also learn from each other, but not
hance their impact because tering Beijing. Their living a reference to the traditional lit- in a colonial way.”12 Based on his
the discrepancy would make complexes were closed, and eratus who enjoyed spending thoughts on the Western culture’s
(Figure 1.2, top) A typical (Figure 2, far right) Yao Lu, it easier for people to realize their children’s schools were time in solitude as seen in various colonization of Chinese culture,
construction site in China. Mountain Ridges Shrouded
in Hazy Sunset, 2009. Inkjet their unfortunate situations. shut down.10 The intent was to portraits of Emperor Yongzheng his pictures take on a new mean-
(Figure 3, left) Zhu Da, print. The Qianlong emper- (r. 1722-35) that depict him ing in that they are also depicting
Heron and Lotus, Qing, or’s seal is circled in red. treatise on Chinese painting. In the essays, he stressed the importance of
Color on paper, 106 x 34.3 simple and effective composition and use of color. For more information, in the wilderness (Figure 4). A the downfall of traditional cul-
cm. Private collection. (Figure 4, above) Anony-
see Xie, “The Six Laws of Xie He.” closer consideration of Beijing’s ture during Beijing’s moderniza-
mous, Paintings of Amuse-
ment of the Yongzheng 8 Yao Lu, interviewed by Qu Qian, “Zhong gou de jingguan zhebi
de xianshi.”
real conditions would reveal an- tion. In Illustrated Treatise on the
Emperor, Qing era. Ink and
color on silk, 34.9 x 31 cm. 9 Zhang, “Beijing wailai mingong zhuangkuang jidai gaishan.” 11 Jiang Jinqi, “Beijing shimin jianyi kongzhi luidong renkou.”.
Palace Museum, Beijing, 10 Li Guosheng, “Beijing jin bai dagong zidi chongjin bei qudi 12 Yao Lu, interviewed by Zhang Litao, “Sheying zhongde chuantong yu
China.
xuexiao qiangxing shangke.” xiandai.”
50 51
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
Maritime Kingdoms, no. 1, for example, we Empress Dowager Chengtian (953-1009).
see that a traditional Chinese building has The last line of the poem reads: “Clouds
been occupied by Western food chains like and fogs gather and dissipate near all an-
McDonald’s, KFC, and Starbucks (Figure cient buildings, only the Yixun River con-
5). This is exactly the colonization that tinues to flow.”14 It suggests that over time,
Yao warns people of. Simply retaining the buildings will dissipate like fog will, hence
building is not enough to preserve culture the patches of fog in Yao’s photo. More-
because the real purpose of the building and over, it would be logical to connect the pa-
its heritage are all washed away. The mes- goda in the foreground and the factories in
sage becomes especially clear if we consider the background, so it makes people ques-
Yao’s inspiration. Yao titles this work after a tion if the pagoda is being demolished to
nineteenth-century treatise on Western na- build factories. It is clear that Yao resents
tions written by imperial official Wei Yuan. a total takeover by the Western way of life,
The book introduced Western sciences, his- and his pictures call that to people’s atten-
tory, geography, and politics to Chinese of- tion. The falling pagoda is a powerful im-
ficials after China’s defeat in the First Opi- age that reminds people of their collective
um War (1839-42), and the book’s central past and their slowly dissipating heritage.
theme is to “learn from the West to defeat Much has been said about Yao’s de-
the West.”13 Essentially, Yao’s picture is an- sire to reject a Western takeover, but there
other critique of China since it clearly did is one thing in particular that he is trying
not learn from the book, which brought to protect—Beijing’s hutong (Figure 7).
the downfall of the Qing Empire and the Hutongs are straight and often narrow
continuation of Western colonization. streets with courtyard residences on the
We should appreciate that despite side, and they made up the majority of Bei-
losing some heritage, at least the buildings jing until the Republican Era (1912-49).
remain, but it was not always the case. In Hutongs have existed in Beijing for such a
The Beauty of Kunming, we see a Buddhist long time that even Marco Polo comment-
pagoda that appears slanted with clouds ed on them when he visited. With regard to
of dust near its base almost like it is col- hutongs, Polo wrote: “I assure you that the
lapsing in front of the audience (Figure streets of the city are so straight and broad
6). The inscription on the left is a poem by that one can see from one end to the other…
the Jiaqing emperor (r. 1796-1820) who and they are so arranged that from each gate
was commenting on a mysterious ruins site one can see the opposite one.”15 Of course,
which was believed to be the chambers of hutong would have fascinated the Vene-
13 Shang, “Weiyuan ‘whiyi zhang ji yi zhi yi’ de sixiang yanjiu zongshu.”
14 Yixun River is near the site of the said ruins.
(Figure 5) Yao Lu, Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms, no. 1. Inkjet print. 15 Benedetto, The Travels of Marco Polo, 122.
52 53
nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
tian whose streets were arranged according to the flow as he claims in an interview conducted after his solo
of water. As a result of hutong’s deep connection with exhibition at the Central Academy of Fine Arts: “After
the history of Beijing, natives have crowned hutong as a generation, everything will be blank. Culture com-
Beijing’s “cultural DNA.”16 Despite looking outdated, pletely disappears.”21 In other words, Yao sees hutongs
Beijingers actually “praise the life-quality of hutong… as physical evidence of Beijingers’ shared memory,
and typically hutong residents consider themselves but it is endangered by Beijing’s rapid modernization.
true Beijingers and many speak their own dialect.”17 As Aside from the close-knit community, Beijingers
a Beijing native, Yao also grew up in a hutong, but by also valued hutongs because hutongs provided “peace
the time Yao started working as an artist, an estimated and solitude from the hustle and bustle of the city.”22
almost 90 percent of Beijing’s hutongs had been demol- Ironically, as the city accelerated, fewer of these hutongs
ished. This is why Yao describes the new Beijing as “a remained. Hutongs at the very least acted as shelters for
balloon that keeps getting bigger but without objects to people, protecting them from the new and fast-paced
remind people of the past.”18 Yao resented when he saw Beijing, and the destruction of these shelters meant that
his childhood mem- people were now exposed to the outside. In Angling on
ories disappear into Low Island and Fishing Boats Berthed by the Mount
a sea of “modern, su- Yu, there is a repeated motif of people interacting with
perficial and oversim- wastewater (Figure 8). As a result of the destruction
plified buildings.”19 of Hutongs, Beijingers were deprived of their recre-
Furthermore, Yao not ational spaces, and the motif suggests that due to in-
only mourns for the creasing pollution, children can only swim in polluted
buildings but also a ponds and adults can only fish in puddles of wastewa-
more refined way of ter. It creates yet another stark contrast between what
life. His anger at new Song paintings wanted to depict and Beijing’s reality.
buildings in Beijing is The misfortunes of disappearing hutongs must
understandable because Beijingers enjoyed the benign have been Yao’s main concern, but there is another se-
“social relations with their neighbors, developed over rious problem that troubles Yao. He claims that “when
(Figure 6, top left) Yao decades of having to live together in small spaces.”20 making this set of work, [he] cannot overlook the fact
Lu, The Beauty of Kun-
ming, 2010. Inkjet print. And generations of connections were destroyed along that the dust means there are large sums of garbage in
(Figure 7, bottom left) with hutongs. The loss of close-knit communities of- [his] living quarters.”23 Essentially, Yao also turned his
Anthony Tao, Hutong, fers another reading of the emptiness in Yao’s pictures works into a critique of pollution, and Beijing suffered
2021.

(Figure 8, bottom right) 16 Jiang Jilin, “Struggle Between Tradition and Modernity: The Images of Beijing Hutongs in Anglo-American Media,” 65.
Yao Lu, detail of Angling 17 Heath, “Beijing’s Hutong and Siheyuan: Conservation of an Urban Identity.”
on Low Island, 2009. 18 Yao, interviewed by Zhang Litao, “Sheying zhongde chuantong yu xiandai.”
Inkjet print. 19 Yao, interviewed by Zhang Litao, “Sheying zhongde chuantong yu xiandai.”
20 Heath, “Beijing’s Hutong and Siheyuan.”
(Figure 9, above) Oded
Balilty, Tiananmen 21 Yao, interviewed by Zhang Litao, “Sheying zhongde chuantong yu xiandai.”
Square, 2008. 22 Heath, “Beijing’s Hutong and Siheyuan.”
23 Yao, interviewed by Zhang Litao, “Sheying zhongde chuantong yu xiandai.”
54 55
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
from different sources of pollution in the consequences of modernization or centuries. As a deep lover of Chinese or did more than admire. As someone
the early 2000s with air pollution being that Beijing was somehow more beauti- culture, the Qianlong emperor devel- who loves art and trained in art, Yao
the most immediate issue. The intense ful than before because as Yao’s pictures oped a frenzied love for leaving person- must have hated the Qianlong emper-
urbanization had caused Beijing to suf- suggest, the new Beijing was not pret- al marks on his imperial collection of or’s seals as they were always intrusive,
fer from smog (Figure 9). According to ty but full of junk. There were other precious paintings and calligraphies. and Qianlong also set a bad precedent
images taken by the European Space forms of pollution that harmed Beijing It is important to acknowledge that that would stay with later Qing emper-
Agency in 2005, the capital and cities aside from air pollution, and one of it was customary for art collectors to ors (Figure 10). Additionally, a parallel
surrounding it had the highest con- them was deforestation caused by ille- leave personal seals or writings on their can be drawn between what the Qian-
centration of nitrogen dioxide in the gal logging. One will notice that trees, collections, but none came close to the long emperor did to those artworks and
world.24 In fact, the air quality was so although common in traditional depic- degree the Qianlong emperor did. Em- what modernity has done to Beijing
bad in Beijing that schools and offices tions of landscapes, are seldom includ- peror Huizong of Song (r. 1100-26) de- in that both traditional artworks and
were forced to close during colder days ed by Yao. Even if there are trees, they vised a method that has been called the Beijing’s heritages were valued by so
when the fine particulate matter index are almost always leafless and indeed Xuanhe Seven Seals. As seen in Liang many people yet were destroyed in the
was exceptionally high. It also became lifeless. The lack of trees is enhanced Shimin’s Islet and Reeds in Snow, which name of beautification and admiration.
customary during the time to purchase by the wording on the wall of Green was in Huizong’s imperial collection, In most of Yao’s works, seals are
household air purifiers. The haze in Cliffhanger which reads: “you over-log, instead of applying his seals directly only a subtle element that contributes
Yao’s pictures references the mist in tra- I over-fine,” but of course, people ig- on the painting, Huizong extended to the overall message, but there is one
ditional paintings where it was used to nored these regulations as piles of wood the original scroll and applied his seals work in particular where Yao treats
suggest the sereness and tranquility of are placed right next to the wall (Fig- on the edge of the painting and on the these poorly placed seals as the major
distant mountains, but this reference is ure 11). Yao’s critique of air pollution seams of the extensions (Figure 12.1). subject. In Travelers among Mountains
merely a sugarcoat for the real atroci- and deforestation all implies a desire The Qianlong emperor, of course, took and Streams (Figure 13.1), he puts a
ties in Beijing (Figure 10). It confirms to live harmoniously with nature, and Huizong’s advice to heart. With regard seal that says, “Likang Moving Com-
that Beijing indeed looked modern and perhaps this is the reason for the strong to a work of calligraphy which consists pany / AC installation, and buying
new on the surface, but underneath visual references to Song paintings of only 28 words, the Qianlong emper- used goods / Call 81985859.” To un-
the beauty also lay serious problems. because it recalled a time when peo- or turned it into a booklet that expands derstand the reference, we need to look
The logic can be applied to ev- ple could actually enjoy the outdoors. to well over three meters long, and he at another form of pollution that was
erything that Yao tries to accomplish When used correctly, words and filled the booklet with close to one prevalent across China—vandalism in
(Figure 10, top left) Emperor (Figure 11, bottom left) Detail
with his work. From heritage loss to seals can enhance the composition and Huizong, Autumn Rivers and of Yao Lu, Green Cliffhanger, hundred seals (Figure 12.2). Inspired the form of advertisements. Chinese
pollution, the contrast between Bei- the meaning of a work, but they were Mountains, Song era. Color 2009. Inkjet print. by the Qianlong emperor, Yao Lu also cities suffered greatly from these in-
and ink on silk, 94 x 53 cm.
jing’s reality and the world created by not always used correctly. The most National Palace Museum, (Figure 12.1, above) Two puts seals in his pictures that are poorly considerate advertisements that usu-
Taipei, Taiwan. The Qianlong details of Liang Shimin, Islet
Song paintings is Yao’s way of calling infamous connoisseur in Chinese art emperor’s seals have been and Reeds in Snow, North- placed. One of the most repeated seals ally advertised unlicensed businesses
the issues of modernization to people’s history is the Qianlong emperor (r. marked by red; the Jiaqing ern Song. Color and ink on in Yao’s works is a copy of the ruler’s seal of lock-picking, recycling, or usurious
emperor’s in blue, and the silk, 26.5 x 145.6 cm, Palace
attention. These issues cannot hide be- 1735-96) whose misuse of inscrip- Xuantong emperor’s in green. Museum, Beijing. Emperor that reads: “Treasure admired by his loans in apartment hallways (Figure
Huizong’s seals are circled in
hind the rhetoric that they were simply tion and seals has been ridiculed for red. Majesty the Qianlong Emperor” (Fig- 14). They were hard to remove and
ure 2). Obviously, the Qianlong emper- ruined the aesthetics of people’s apart-
24 Vause, “China Announces Emergency Olympics Smog Plan.”

56 57
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
it to a modern concept, and through this little boat to the distant Isles of Immor-
reference, Yao again metaphorically com- tals!”26 One can sense that he feels a strong
ments on what has happened to his city. force behind China’s modernization and
Much talk has been centered compares that force with the holy bird
around Yao’s real intent, and we will never that can fly extraordinary distances. And
get to the bottom of it. For one thing, he there is also a hidden desire to just forget
has a wider Western audience compared about the issues in Beijing and retreat to
to domestic ones, and three out of his four a peaceful place. The inscription is from
solo exhibitions were outside of China. a Song poem by Li Qingzhao that talks
Perhaps as a result of the fact that he still about her fantastical dreams during her
works in a government-endorsed academy, travels. Although Yao only includes the
he has no real intentions to create rebel last line of the poem, the effect is stron-
art like Ai Weiwei. Yao Lu’s criticisms are ger if the whole poem is considered. The
rather mild and subtle. On one hand, he previous line reads: “The road is long, I
loves the land and its people, but on the say, and the day already late. I write poet-
other hand, the land has been colonized ry, but my startling lines are produced in
by Western culture and corrupted by mod- vain.”27Beautiful poems to a poet are like
ernization. Certainly, Yao expresses mixed beautiful art to an artist, and this sense of
feelings about the modern Beijing because helplessness pierces through the poem and
(Figure 12.2, above) Wang (Figure 13.1, right) Yao Lu,
Xizhi, Timely Clearing Travelers among Mountains there is a sense of helplessness in his works. Yao’s art because in the end, people cannot
After Snowfall, Jin Dynasty and Streams, c. 2010. Inkjet
(265-420), Copied in Tang print, 100 x 36 cm. We do not know if the helplessness comes combat the bigger trends of their time.
Dynasty (618-907). Ink from the fact that he realizes the need for While the poem in the image’s up-
on paper, 23 x 14.8 cm, (Figure 13.2, far right)
National Palace Museum, Fan Kuan, Travelers among China to modernize or that he realizes the per left implies Yao’s acknowledgment of
Taipei, Taiwan. Mountains and Streams,
Wang’s original calligraphy Song era. Ink and color government will not listen to the voice of his limits, the content of the poem in the
is circled in red, and the rest on silk, 206.3 x 103.3 cm. an artist. Regardless, he admits his limita- upper right corner is just as important. It
of the scroll are the Qian- National Palace Museum,
long emperor’s additions. Taipei, Taiwan. tions: “I think as a contemporary artist, it was composed by Song official Xin Qiji
is impossible for me to change anything, (1140-1207) when he was recalled from a
but what I can do is raise awareness.”25 post in the northern frontiers. He did not
ments. Yao consciously placed an advertise- versally agreed that only the most learned Qianlong emperor’s bad habit in that a close This helplessness is often subtly shown in know what the future held and wrote the
ment seal in the place where the Qianlong literati would even dare to write on antique inspection would reveal that the mountains his works. On the left side of Mountain poem to express his patriotism and uncer-
emperor stamped his on the original Travelers artworks, but the Qianlong emperor, in- in Yao’s Travelers are made up of words and Ridges (Figure 2), Yao puts the inscription tain future. He compares mountains to
among Mountains and Streams by Northern deed, considered himself a great patron and phone numbers. The writings mostly consist “A wind blows thousands of miles, the gi- himself by saying that “mountains stand
Song painter Fan Kuan (950-1032) (Figure a learned connoisseur. There is one extreme of rental ads with a small number of usuri- ant phoenix will soon take flight. Blow my up tall without the help of others, [and]
13.2). The Qianlong emperor’s admiration example where the emperor wrote all over ous loans, plumbing, and illegal taxis. Yao 25 Yao, interviewed by Zhang Litao, “Sheying zhongde chuantong yu xiandai.”
26 Li, “To the tune ‘The Fisherman Is Proud,” 99.
did not end with the seals, as he also wrote the sky of a painting, which ruined the com- references the Qianlong emperor’s history of 27 Li, 99.
countless poems on paintings. It was uni- position (Figure 15). So Yao plays with the destroying something beautiful, and applies
58 59
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

it holds the land and the sky to show people its ment on social or political issues. There are countless (Figure 14, left) Wang Shun, Hall-
way of an apartment complex full of
abilities.”28 Despite his ambitions and abilities, he precedents in both Eastern and Western art, but it is stamped advertisements, 2018. Li Qingzhao. “To the tune ‘The Fisherman Is Proud.” In The Works of Li Qingzhao, edited by
was never sent to an important position again. In impressive that Yao is able to control, or conceal, his (Figure 15, middle) Zhao Mengfu, Bibliography Anna M. Shields. Translated by Ronald Egan, 98-99. Boston: De Gruyter, 2019.
a sense, Yao is comparing himself with Xin as both messages to work with the Chinese government. As Autumn Colors on the Qiao and Hua
Benedetto, L. F. The Travels of Marco Polo. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis Group, 2004. Shang Fangchao. “Weiyuan ‘whiyi zhang ji yi zhi yi’ de sixiang yanjiu zongshu 魏源 《师夷
Mountains, 1295, Color and ink on
of them have ambitions to accomplish something, he continues to teach at the Central Academy of Fine silk, 28.4 x 90.2 cm. National Palace Evans, Richard. Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China. New York: Viking Books, 长技以制夷》 的思想研究综述 [‘Wei Yuan’s ‘learn from the west to defeat the
Museum, Taipei, Taiwan.
yet experiences too many obstacles along the way. Arts, he will be able to influence a new generation of 1993. west’].” Historical Records of Heilongjiang, no. 23 (2013): 163-69.
After Yao had finished with his series of these artists who will be able to learn Chinese culture from (Figure 16, right) Yao Lu, Sheep on
“GDP growth (annual %) – China.” World Bank. Accessed December 8, 2022. https://data. Vause, John. “China Announces Emergency Olympics Smog Plan.” CNN, July 30, 2008.
the Snowy Cliff, 2010. Inkjet print.
new landscapes, his works took on a different direc- him, but more importantly, they will learn about the worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=CN. Xie He. “The Six Laws of Xie He.” In Asian Art. Edited by Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S.
tion. In the early 2010s, he started making pictures role of contemporary artists who are responsible Heath, Tim. “Beijing’s Hutong and Siheyuan: Conservation of an Urban Identity.” Proceedings Hutton. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 242-46.
that are more explicitly about the environment. A for responding to current events in Chinese society. of the Institution of Civil Engineers 163, no. 3 (2010). Xin Qiji. “Jiang lang shan he yun 江郎山和韵 [Rhyme of Mount Jianglang].” Ancient Poem
typical work like Sheep on the Snowy Cliff depicts Jia Yingting. Tiananmen de gongheguo jiyi 天安门的共和国记忆 [The Republic Memory of Network 古诗文网. https://so.gushiwen.cn/shiwenv_99c56e309d34.aspx.
animals interacting with piles of trash as if they were Tiananmen]. Beijing: China Democracy Legislative Publishing, 2019. Yao Lu. Interviewed by Qu Qian. “Zhong gou de jingguan zhebi de xianshi 重构的景观遮蔽
grasses (Figure 16). Moreover, Yao writes “Return Jiang Jilin. “Struggle Between Tradition and Modernity: The Images of Beijing Hutongs in 的现实 [Reconstructed View; Concealed Reality].” SoHu. 2020.
the clear sky to me” on top of the work to make his Anglo-American Media.” Critical Arts 1, no. 35 (2021): 65-84. http://3g.k.sohu.com/t/n471903698.
message clearer. These environmental issues did not Jiang Jinqi “Beijing shimin jianyi kongzhi luidong renkou, jianshao di suzhi renyuan jin jing Yao Lu. Interviewed by Zhang Litao. “Sheying zhongde chuantong yu xiandai 摄影中的传统
affect animals alone as they were experienced by all 北京市民建议控制流动人口，减少低素质人员进京 [Beijing Residents sug- 与现代 [Traditional and Contemporary Photography].” Central Academy of Fine
Chinese in those years when the smog was especially gest to reduce low-quality people from entering].” Sina News, 2005. Arts. 2010.
problematic. The picture creates yet another power- http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2005-08-09/00336641907s.shtml. https://www.cafamuseum.org/exhibit/newsdetail/1449
ful imagery of sheep that are grazing on trash rather Li Guosheng. “Beijing jin bai dagong zidi chongjin bei qudi xuexiao qiangxing shangke 北京 Zhang Nan. “Beijing wailai mingong zhuangkuang jidai gaishan 北京外来民工状况亟待改
than grass, and through that Yao calls dire environ- 近百打工子弟冲进被取缔学校强行上课 [Nearly a hundred workers’ children 善 [Beijing’s Non-local Workers’ Conditions need urgent Improvement].” Voice of
mental issues to people’s attention. Indeed, Yao Lu stormed into the banned school to forcibly attend classes].” Sina News, 2006. America, 2011.
was not the first person in art history to use art to com- http://news.sina.com.cn/c/edu/2006-09-21/100910073973s.shtml.

28 Xin, “Jiang lang shan he yun.”

60 61
False Ideals: The
Inaccessibility of
Modern
Architecture in
the 1920s
Ellie Lyons, Northwestern University ‘24

A
s with all art, the built environment Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
has an intended audience. Wheth- Though I will be discussing
er this audience is strictly defined specific examples, their qual-
or simply implied, it affects the experiences ities illustrate the idea of the
of all who exist within the environment. Eu- healthy body in moderni-
ropean modern architects of the 1920s de- ty and can be applied to the particularly important aspect of this move- Walter Gropius in 1919.4 Founders of the self-realization.6 Such harmony between the ural light from its large glass-covered walls.
fined their implied audience and cultivated work of other modern European architects. ment was the transformation of the body Bauhaus saw physical health as relevant to body and soul was regarded as the source of It consists of teaching and workshop areas, a
the ideal healthy body through their archi- Sport and physical health became from simply a physical being to a physical creative work and therefore incorporated creativity—physicality was of the utmost theater, a cafeteria, a gymnasium, and twen-
tecture. Though the spoken ideals of mod- increasingly important in the modern era. embodiment of the spirit; physical health exercises into the school’s curriculum, while importance for the artists of the Bauhaus. ty-eight studio flats for students, each with
ernism said something different, the implied In Germany, the lebensreform—or life-re- came to be of the utmost importance. With organized sport and individual exercise be- Such values are present in the Bauhaus a private balcony.8 Its various asymmetrical
ideal healthy body—the ideal occupant of form—movement rose to prominence in the popularization of this movement, sport came popular free-time activities for both building at Dessau (Figure 1). Walter Gro- interlocking wings create a building with no
modern architecture—was an able-bodied, the mid-nineteenth century and had a large transformed from an activity accessible only students and staff.5 For the Bauhaus, phys- pius designed this building during the move central view; it must be walked through and
wealthy man. In this paper, I will argue that impact on modernist thinking.1 This move- to the upper class to an activity not only ical discipline served not only to promote of the physical home of the Bauhaus from around to be truly appreciated.9 Between the
modern European architecture of the 1920s ment attempted to grapple with the nega- important for physical health but also as the health of the body but as a tool to train Weimar to Dessau in 1925.7 The building it- size, gymnasium, and balconies, sport and
was not accessible to those who did not fit tive consequences of industrialization and a means for breaking down class barriers.3 the body as an instrument of creativity and self is large and airy, featuring plenty of nat- movement are built into the building itself.
this standard using specific case studies social upheaval by promoting various uto- The ideals of the life-reform move- (Figure 1) Lucia Maholy,
4 Whitford and White, 163.
from Walter Gropius, Moisei Ginzberg, and pian ideals, such as communal living.2 One ment seeped into the Bauhaus, a German “Bauhaus Dessau,” 1926.
5 Otto and Rössler, eds., Bauhaus Bodies, 26.
school of art and thought founded by 6 Otto and Rössler, eds., 28.
1 Otto and Rössler, eds., Bauhaus Bodies, 25. 7 Griffith, “The Bauhaus.”
2 Otto and Rössler, eds., 25. 8 Whitford and White, Bauhaus, 158.
3 Whitford and White, Bauhaus, 163. 9 Rowland, Bauhaus Source book, 100.
62 63
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
ple, undecorated geometric forms construct- quent housing in the Russian republic, Ginz- ing projects, the communal living aspect was
ed of economically produced materials such berg’s Narkomfin house was designed with never truly realized. Almost as soon as con-
as steel, glass, and concrete.12 In particular, the ideal of total communal living in mind. struction finished, the building became “an
modernist residential complexes subscribed The complex featured many different types embarrassing reminder…of a bygone era.”18
to the ideal of functionalism, designing of units that could support various family By the mid-1930s, the majority of the Nar-
buildings that could be crafted through quick structures as they transitioned from preex- komfin complex was converted into fully pri-
and efficient mass production and therefore isting bourgeois living patterns (in the K vate apartments with pre-revolutionary floor
be accessible to all members of society.13 and 2-F units) to fully communist living (in plans and eventually offices.19 The ideal of
Moisei Ginzberg’s Narkomfin Com- the F units)16. The architecture and design communal living did not appeal to the mass-
munal House in Moscow is one such exam- of the complex eased this transition with an es it wished to contain; modernism hid lav-
ple of an economic communal living housing emphasis on flexibility – the individual units ish interiors behind a façade of economically
complex (Figure 2). In 1920s Russia—the could be combined or segregated as fami- viable industrial production.20 Today, the
time during which Ginzberg designed the ly structures changed, allowing a capitalist Narkomfin building ironically houses luxury
complex—architecture was understood as bourgeois family in a completely individual flats, the cheapest of which sells for 30 million
a manifestation of the social and economic unit to gradually disperse and become fully rubles.21 Though modernism marketed itself
structures of the society in which it was pro- integrated at the level of the commune.17 The toward society as a whole, it truly was only
duced. Whereas the skyscraper was a mani- exterior of the building reflects those of oth- appealing and accessible to the upper class—
festation of American capitalism, the com- er modernist housing complexes. It is sim- modernism’s ideal occupants were wealthy.
(Figure 2) Artem munal complex was a manifestation of Soviet ple and understated with plain white walls Finally, modern architecture is gen-
Svetlov, “Image of the communism.14 Due to this ideology, Soviet and a geometric rectangular shape, reflect- dered. With the rise of modernity came the
Narkomfin Building in
Moscow,” 2020. architects received the mandate to craft a ing the modernist ideals of efficiency and rise in the concept of domesticity as the city
new material world based on the principles economy in building materials. In both its – the masculine place of work – came to be
The Bauhaus building, therefore, has exercises. Furthermore, the sheer size are decidedly not for the disabled. of state ownership and communist labor re- structure and facade Ginzberg’s Narkomfin understood against the home – the femi-
an implied ideal occupant. The archi- of the campus creates the need for stu- Modern architecture was also lations.15 One such design was the commu- Communal House expresses ideas of equal nine place of reproduction.22 Domesticity
tecture of the building clearly reflects dents, faculty, and visitors to walk ex- intended to be efficient and economic. nal house, of which Ginzberg’s Narkomfin living unrestricted by economic barriers. came to be associated with femininity as it
the ideals of physical health and exer- cessive distances throughout the day. Often, modern architecture attempted Communal House is a prominent example. The reality of Ginzberg’s building differs depended upon the historically feminine
cise vital to the Bauhaus curriculum. All of this comes together to promote to comprehend the social upheaval and Designed to be a prototype for all subse- from this ideal. As with other modern hous- act of homemaking, the act of appropriat-
The inclusion of a gymnasium intend- a certain ideal, one that is able-bodied disorganization of its era. Intended for
ed for use by students living at Dessau and athletic. In his writings, Gropius society as a whole rather than the bour- 12 Gartman, “Why Modern Architecture Emerged in Europe, Not America,” 87.
implies the expectation for such stu- himself clearly lays out this expecta- geois—as had been the case in earlier 13 Gartman, 87.
14 Buchli, “Moisei Ginzburg’s Narkomfin Communal House in Moscow,” 160.
dents to incorporate exercise into their tion: “first a person must be able-bod- times—the audience was supposed to
15 Buchli, 160.
daily routine, as do the private balco- ied, only then can the artist design the be the masses, or at least the middle 16 Buchli, 162.
nies attached to the studio apartments beautiful garment for him.”10 The Bau- classes.11 With this in mind, architects 17 Buchli, 164.
18 Buchli, 177.
perfectly crafted for private calisthenic haus and other modern movements turned to a new style that featured sim- 19 Buchli, 177.
20 Schuldenfrei, Luxury and Modernism, 1.
10 Gropius, “Bankunst im freien Volksstaat,” 135. 21 Davies, “Luxury Flats in Moscow’s Iconic Narkomfin Building Finally Go on Sale.”
11 Schuldenfrei, Luxury and Modernism, 2. 22 Flanagan, Constructing the Patriarchal City, 3.
64 65
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
ing a house by decorating and imbuing it with mementos a long, varied career across multiple continents designing The distance between pieces of furniture of modernism. The ideal healthy body— Gropius, Walter. “Bankunst im freien Volksstaat,” in Deutscher

of personal and family history.23 Many aspects of home- buildings with a variety of functions – for the purpose of this and their placement in relation to the struc- the ideal occupant of modern architec- Revolutionsalmanach. Hamburg: Hoffman und

making, such as caring for sentimental objects and the con- discussion, this paper will focus on his domestic architec- ture of the house is carefully planned; the ture—is an able-bodied, wealthy white Campe, 1919.

tinuous rearranging of the necessities for daily life, became ture in the late 1920s. Coming from a background in stone home is almost museological in its design. man. The selected examples of Walter Gro- Heynen, Hilde and Gülsüm Baydar, eds. Negotiating Domes-

antithetical to the values of modernity, which prioritized masonry and carpentry, Mies was particularly interested in Villa Tugendhat —as with Mies’s oth- pius, Moisei Ginzberg, and Ludwig Mies ticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Ar-

a rejection of such sentimentality.24 Being undomestic be- the effect of material on the sense.26 Mies’s designs in the late er designs and those of other modern archi- van der Rohe illustrate the expectation chitecture. Florence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2005.

came a vital aspect of modernity; in its everlasting quest for 1920s reflect this interest, as well as his personal belief that tects—is a home for men. Mies held strong for the audience of modern architecture Johnson, Philip and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Mies Van Der

efficiency, modern art had no time for the mundane details less is more—his designs are simple and sparse, focusing on control over the interior design of the home, to fit this ideal and the inaccessible nature Rohe. 3d, rev. ed. New York; Boston: Museum of

material rather than ornament.27 This reducing the materiality of the home and of such architecture to those who do not. Modern Art, 1978.

simplicity and sparseness focus atten- stripping it of inessential objects to express a Maholy, Lucia. “Bauhaus Dessau.” Lempertz. 1926.

tion on each individual object, render- sense of distinctly masculine minimalist tidi- Bibliography https://www.lempertz.com/en/catalogues/

ing the arrangement of objects all-im- ness.31 This control did not allow for the ap- Buchli, Victor. “Moisei Ginzburg’s Narkomfin Communal lot/1142-2/56-lucia-moholyerich-consemueller.

portant; Mies himself decided upon the propriation and personalization of the home, House in Moscow: Contesting the Social and Mate- html

arrangement of the home and did not establishing it as a purely functional space rial World.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Otto, Elizabeth and Patrick Rössler, eds. Bauhaus Bodies:

allow for the occupant’s personal touch. rather than a sentimental one. Furthermore, Historians 57, no. 2 (1998). Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism’s

One specific design that reflects in the Villa Tugendhat, Mies removes the Davies, Katie. “Luxury Flats in Moscow’s Iconic Narkomfin Legendary Art School. New York: Bloomsbury Pub-

these principles is Mies’s Villa Tugend- nooks, shelves, and walls where occupants Building Finally Go on Sale.” The Calvert Jour- lishing USA, 2019.

hat, built between 1928 and 1930 for collect and display their personal possessions; nal. https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/ Reed, Christopher. Not at Home: The Suppression of Domes-

the Tugendhat family in Brno, now lo- the home is resistant to the feminine act of show/10117/luxury-flats-in-moscows-iconic-nar- ticity in Modern Art and Architecture. London:

cated in the Czech Republic.28 The de- homemaking.32 Though some argue that the komfin-building-finally-go-on-sale. Thames and Hudson.

sign of this famous home emphasizes visual and tactile qualities of the materials of Flanagan, Maureen. Constructing the Patriarchal City: Gender Rowland, Anna. Bauhaus Source book: Bauhaus Style and its

the importance of space and the use of the house—the shiny metal and transparent and the Built Environments of London, Dublin, Worldwide Influence. Oxford, Phaidon, 1990.

materials, particularly in the living-din- glass contrasted against natural wood and Toronto, and Chicago, 1870s into the 1940s. Tokyo; Schuldenfrei, Robin. Luxury and Modernism: Architecture

ing area.29 This main room is articulat- soft velvet—act as a kind of decoration, such Philadelphia; Rome;: Temple University Press, and the Object in Germany 1900-1933. Princeton

ed by a wall of onyx and a curved wall materials do not allow for the extremely per- 2018. UP, 2018.

of ebony which define the four main sonal act of homemaking often reserved for Gartman, David. “Why Modern Architecture Emerged in Singley, Paulette. “Living in a Glass Prism: The Female Figure

functions of the room as a living room, women. In his minimalist aesthetic and con- Europe, Not America: The New Class and the Aes- in Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe’s Domestic Architec-

of home life and housekeeping.25 Because of this, modern- a dining room, a library, and an entrance hall.30 Other ma- trol over the interior of the home, Mies es- thetics of Technocracy.” Theory, Culture & Society ture.” Critical Matrix 6, no. 2 (1992).

ism and modern architecture are inherently masculine. terials, such as wood and velvet, act as accents throughout tablishes Villa Tugendhat’s ideal occupant as 17, no. 5 (2000). Wagner, Monika. “Mies Van Der Rohe’s Tugendhat House

German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe subscribed the home. Beyond the materiality of the space, Mies incor- a man who will not feel the need to rearrange Griffith, Alexandra. “The Bauhaus, 1919–1933.” In Hei- – Weightless Living.” Docomomo Journal no. 46

to the ideal of minimalism in many of his designs. Mies had porates the arrangement of furniture into the overall design. and personalize the space; the ideal healthy lbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The (2012).

23 Heynen and Baydar, eds., Negotiating Domesticity, 24. (Figure 3) Mary Gaudin, “A House of
body in modern architecture is masculine. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www. Whitford, Frank and Michael White. Bauhaus. New ed.
24 Heynen and Baydar, eds., 20. Light and History,” interior of Villa Tu- Thus, the modern European built metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm London: Thames & Hudson, 2020.
25 Reed, Not at Home, 7. gendhat, May 25, 2018.
26 Johnson and van der Rohe, Mies Van Der Rohe, 9. environment reflected the implied ideals (August 2007; last revised October 2016).
27 Johnson and van der Rohe, 49. 31 Singley, “Living in a Glass Prism,” 1.
28 Wagner, “Mies Van Der Rohe’s Tugendhat House,” 21. 32 Singley, 7.
29 Johnson and van der Rohe, Mies Van Der Rohe, 49.
30 Johnson and van der Rohe, 49.
66 67
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

Indoor-outdoor living:
modernist interpretations
of the window and its
role in residential
architecture
Cecilia Ascione, University of California, Berkeley ‘24

“Eventually everything connects”

- Charles Eames

F
rom its earliest etymological geneal- this relationship between the two, the win- and the various design approaches it invites
ogy, the window has been associated dow becomes the primary tool to regulate can be used to trace shifts in man’s relation-
with both viewing and access.1 Tradi- the outdoor presence indoors. The focus of ship to nature and his surroundings.
tionally a glazed opening, the window has the following paper is to investigate the role Case Study #8, later to be known as
historically performed as a site of negotia- of the window in modernist architecture in the Eames House, was part of a larger pro-
(Figure 1) The Eames House. manufacturers and suppliers, considerably decreas- nologies to domestic architecture, had to respond to
tion with an outdoor reality made available conjuring sites and sights. Focusing primar- gram of prototypical models of modernist Photograph by Matthew Tait.
ing the expected cost of each project and allowing the post-war large-scale need for housing. Between
indoors. Particularly within modernist ar- ily on the Eames House and on examples residential architecture initiated by Entenza
for construction to remain within the magazine’s set 1945 and 1966, when Entenza sold the magazine, a
chitecture and design, fenestration assumed from Le Corbusier’s (1887-1965) oeuvre, I in the magazine Arts & Architecture (Figure
budget. In hopes of fostering greater acceptance of total of 34 designs were published; 23 of those were
a fundamental role in the mediation between aim to demonstrate how transparent glass 1). The Case Study Houses were designed
modernist architecture aesthetics, the program was actually built by the 8 architects involved in the
the interior built environment and its exteri- paneled openings have been used as a means with actual families in mind (young profes-
meant to “encourage experimentation in modern project and whose ranks included, among others,
or setting. As a pathway connecting the two, to grant seamless access to the outside world sionals with no domestic help) and opened
housing during a time when financing was difficult Eero Saarinen and Richard Neutra.
the window is part of the indoor space while while simultaneously preserving privacy and for public viewing upon their completion.
to obtain for projects that veered from conventional Part of the program’s first wave of construc-
simultaneously communicating with the seclusion. As the site where architecture, In return for advertisement and publicity
approaches.”2 The new houses, betraying the ambi- tion, Case Study #8 and its complementary coun-
outside world: instantiating and allowing photography, and film coalesce, the window on the magazine, materials were provided by
tious project of applying wartime industrial tech- terpart #9—co-designed with Eero Saarinen—were
1 The term dates back to 1200 and literally translates from the Old Norse vindauga, or “wind eye” which replaced the Old English vocabulary eagbyrl, or
“eye-hole”, and eagduru, or “eye-door.” “Window | Search Online Etymology Dictionary.” 2 Neuhart, Eames House, 19.
68 69
nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
announced in the 1945 issue of the maga- umns and a studio situated at ground level
zine and finished only four and five years connected to it by a walkaway. As Colomi-
later respectively, after many of the Case na notes, it is hard to deny the influence
Study Houses had already been brought of Mies, as “the house is elevated off the
to completion. Both houses were built ground as a kind of viewing platform. The
on a 5-acre lot purchased by Entenza sheer glass walls are aimed at the landscape,
from Will Rogers, above Santa Moni- lined up with the horizon. In the original
ca canyon. The Eames house, occupying drawings, we see the occupant of the house
together with Case Study #9 2/3 of that, standing behind the glass, an isolated figure
stands atop a 150-foot cliff overlooking looking out at the world that is now framed
the Pacific Ocean, a secluded site in Pa- by the horizontal structure.”3 As in the
cific Palisades that was left in its natural Miesian Farnsworth example, the interior
state and regarded by the architects as is stark, borderline unfurnished, with a few
instrumental to the design’s effective- pieces located near the glass overlooking
ness. Charles and Ray Eames are in fact the natural surroundings; the indoor space
remembered driving around the county spills outwards with the reflection of trees
looking for potential locations before being the only constant—albeit, a dynam-
settling for this specific stretch of land. ic and continuously shifting one—occupy-
Produced out of the same steel ing the house (Figure 2). The two houses
structural components as the neigh- bear many similarities: both are long can-
boring Entenza House (Case Study #9) tilevered rectangular structures support-
while all the first houses of the program ed by columns and enclosed in glass, with
had employed wood, the Eames House is an interior floor plan and exterior terrac-
a reworking of an earlier version, the orig- es articulated on the same relationship of
inal “Bridge House” inspired by Miesian horizontal to vertical members.4 It is per-
principles of architecture. The first plans haps this striking affinity with the Miesian
for Case Study #8, in fact, showed two precedent that led Charles to abandon the
structures set at right angles to each oth- original plan and redesign the house after
er, positioned to take full advantage of the steel had already been delivered to the
the ocean view without intruding on the site. As remembered in Ray Eames’ own
integrity and privacy of the nearby Case account, his visit in November 1947 to a
Study #9, whose lot they shared: a house Mies exhibition at the Museum of Modern
cantilevered and supported by steel col- Art in New York City influenced this deci-
(Figure 2) Reflection of outdoor trees on
3 Colomina, “Chapter 3,” 101. glass of Eames House. Photograph courtesy
4 Neuhart, “Eames House,” 24. of Eames House Foundation.

70 71
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
sion; fearful about being derivative, “Charles became diagonal with all its major sight lines offering pleasing but fragmented views. At musical soundtrack and no narration, and is conjured through the window as a cinemat- supreme: “Only the basic frame stayed still,
changed his mind about the siting of build- redirected at the Entenza House—now sep- the same time, however, the complex inter- meant to present the house as a “means of ic framing device (Figure 3). Conceived and this frame was meant to be almost invis-
ings, and worked on a new plan that used arated from it by an open meadow, a long play of reflections and refractions on the refracting the natural world around it, or as a collage of separate stills framed by the ible. A necessary prop—no more than that.”
the same amount of steel but enclosed more earthen mound formed with the fill from glass surfaces renders the house (though still as a lens through which it is to be viewed.”7 windows, the house is de-materialized and 11
In other words, the house, whose con-
space.”5 Allegedly, eleven and one-half tons the hillside excavation that was conceived as transparent in its material construction) al- Great care is given to the minuscule de- dynamized through the reflections, which struction had already been transparent with
of steel framing were raised in one and a half a screen between the two Case Study Hous- most impenetrable from the outside. In oth- tails—including flowers, skies, kitchenware, endlessly multiply and relocate, turning iso- the exposed steel armature out in the open
days, consolidating the narrative surround- es, offering privacy and seclusion through er words, the reflection of trees and light and pantry items—that inform daily life lated frozen views into moving pictures: all for everyone to see, had to become self-ef-
ing the project as the offspring of industri- the eucalyptus trees that were subsequently on the glass windows obscures the interior and suggest the relationship of the house to but the steel armature vanishes. As McCoy facing, to cease to exist, overpowered by the
alized mass-manufacture, standardization, planted. The patio was re-conceived as an ex- which cannot, therefore, be fully appre- nature. Like the film’s thousand still frames, notes, “the interior […] is alive with collid- possibilities of reconfiguration.
and prefabricated construction. But, as not- tension of the house, as an interior projected hended from the outside. Conscious of the the windows too are understood as frames ing reflected images on the glass and walls, Refusing to provide the inhabitant
ed by Neuhart, no economical reworking of outwards, as noted by Colomina in Domes- relationship that the trees would instantiate carefully positioned to structure the in- changing with sun and season.”9 The house with packaged, ready-made living solutions,
the pre-cut steel frames would have allowed ticity at War, thus marking the beginning with the built structure, the Eameses went habitant’s gaze, conceived as a collection of and its apparatus of staged panoramic views the architects stressed the occupant’s active
to erect a two-story house with one-story of the indoor-outdoor dialectic that would to great lengths to capitalize on such recip- sights shot from different angles. It would be is therefore put in motion by the continu- role in the design process. Creative choic-
components. In addition, for all the men- structure the house’s living environment. rocal exchange, as shown by the repurposing hard to overstate the influence of film on the ously shifting reflections. As a result, the es were left to individual discretion, with
tions of industrial mass production in the Over the years, vegetation has tak- of photographs depicting the tree reflec- house’s design; the eye looking out of those steel frame seems to disappear, obscured dwellers being summoned to participate
steel armature, the amount of hand-craft- en over and engulfed the building, now al- tions as wall art inside the house and the use openings is the eye of the camera, a multiple by the fleeting impressions. To quote Colo- in the definition of the space through the
ing actually required by the project and the most completely hidden among the trees. of one of said photographs as panel for the eye offering a series of simultaneous views. mina, “the house dissolved in a play of re- constant reconfiguration of the collectibles
fitting of windows was far from modern.6 This effect, however, would have been visi- south façade. This latter choice, in particular, As Colomina writes, “the occupants can see flections”; after 13 years of living in a glass within it.12 Blurring the distinction between
Some designed elements were not found in ble since the very early years of the domestic confirmed that every panel should be under- only fragments of the outside, fragments box with exposed steel beams, Ray herself designer and occupant, the Eameses encour-
industrial catalogs and had to be produced residence. Charles, in fact, had been moved stood as a photographic frame, as both Co- that have the same status as the objects that admitted to no longer being aware of the aged individual agency and decision-mak-
on a piece-by-piece basis, specifically crafted by the desire to maintain the architectural lomina and Steele argue. Given such colorful now take over the interior. […] Everything structure, which “long ago ceased to exist.”10 ing, letting the inhabitant leave their mark
for the house, with over 200 separate weld- relationship of the house to nature: the site, and vibrant interaction of sights and their overlaps, moves, and changes. The singular Movement is therefore the thread on the house, and reframing Modernism as
ing operations having to be performed on left in its natural state, was not denied by the reflections, it is worth spending some time unmediated [Miesian] view is replaced by a unifying the built and natural environment. an aesthetic that could be fully personalized
the factory sash. It is precisely for this reason imposing presence of the built space. The investigating the role of fenestration, with its kaleidoscopic excess of objects. The eye that Inside the house, space could be freely recon- with the ephemera of daily life. Ephemera
that the steel-frame model—abandoned for relationship between the two is, to this day, ever-changing refractions and light effects, organized the architecture of the historical figured through the ever-changing arrange- that, like the unfixed layout, could be ar-
the wood-framed tract house in other Case wholly complimentary, with the geometric as a mediating tool between the interior en- avant-garde has been displaced by a multi- ment of panels and wall dividers, reworked bitrarily shuffled to fabricate a space filled
Study homes—did not become a common steel frame and the natural landscape in con- vironment and the surrounding landscape plicity of zooming eyes,” those of film.8 like Japanese screens; furniture could be re- with things, the things that made the space
type for the average post-war family. stant dialogue with one another. outside it. Experts in communication, the positioned; relationships between the build- what it was. The Eames house, then, heavily
Notwithstanding these practical lim- Instrumental in this relationship are It is my belief that to fully compre- Eameses made large use of what they re- ing and its constituent parts were constantly influenced by Charles’s work as MGM set
itations to large-scale industrial production, the glass panes, objects of much consider- hend the logic of fenestration in the Eames ferred to as the “multiple-image technique,” negotiated: stillness and permanently fixed stager, seems to take the shape of a collector’s
in the second configuration of the Eames ation in Colomina’s scholarship. Here, the House the film House After Five Years of Liv- which undoubtedly informed their design layouts had no place in the postwar modern den, one big trophy room where the inhab-
House a retaining wall against the hill was rectangular openings enable the indoor en- ing must be addressed. The film, a 10-minute of the House as an assemblage of sights-sites home. For the Eameses, movement reigned itants Charles and Ray could display their
built; fusing the house to the land, a change vironment to diffuse outwards and simulta- and 4-second collage of various still frames 7 Steele, Eames House, 10.
8 Colomina, “Chapter 3,” 102.
of orientation was made which caused the neously allow nature—the surrounding eu- shot by the architects between 1949 and 9 McCoy, Piecing together Los Angeles, 172.
house to no longer face the ocean. The view calyptus trees_to penetrate into the house, 1955, is made up of a sequence of slides, with 10 Colomina, “Chapter 3,” 92.
5 Steele, Eames House, 9. 11 Colomina, 92.
6 Neuhart, Eames House, 38. 12 Colomina, 91.
72 73
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
possessions: the careful blending of archi- outdoor space is anything but transparent, on inorganic materials but also infinitely
tecture and showmanship that best describes enmeshed as it is with the endlessly replicat- dissolving into it. In the Eames house, the
a showroom. It is perhaps in the definition ing refractions that structure the indoor liv- window seems to define the experience of
of the house as an exhibition space that the ing experience. But to what extent is the in- the natural world by regulating and polic-
most striking features of the building—the terior dominated by the reflective fragments ing how much of it is allowed to seep into
intersection of design, cinematic views, and of the outside and the shadows they cast? In a space whose very definition depends on
arbitrary arrangement of objects13—are ac- other words, how much of the exterior effec- the effects that the outdoor environment
tualized, finding their highest expression. tively finds its way in if the offered views are produces. Not a house divorced from na-
The house is a (Spartan) framework for the constantly distorted, multiplied, and refract- ture, but an inhabitable space contiguous
display of rich objects, what Robert Ventu- ed? Can we speak of an outdoor presence with it, the Eames Case Study is a riddle.
ri brilliantly termed “Victorian Clutter”; a indoors if the only way the external world Despite the complexities of its visuality, in
“glass-and-steel cage that lends itself admira- is conjured and substantiated is through a the Eames house the separation of outside
bly as an exhibition space for a changing col- mere reflection or photograph of the local and inside is not a stark, definite one: con-
lection of art, toys, and crafts.”14 The Eameses flora (repurposed as wall art)? It becomes tours are blurred and the two worlds fuse
even designed the furniture inside it, success- difficult to establish once and for all the with one another thanks to the ephemeral
fully embodying the modernist ethos of inte- exact relationship between the indoor and transparency of the glass. A different effect
grating all disciplines. outdoor spaces, to pinpoint how much the is achieved by Courbusian architecture, as (Figure 3)
Interior of Eames
Returning to the prevalence of glass latter—let in through discontinuous views interpreted by Colomina. Quoting Rosa- House. Photo-
graph courtesy
reflecting surfaces within the building’s de- of the vegetation in the form of shadows and lind Krauss, the author notes that “view- of Eames House
sign program, the topic of privacy and ac- reflections—is actually cast indoors. Con- ing a landscape through a window implies Foundation.

cessibility should be addressed. Traditional- versely, it is right to wonder how much of the a separation. […] ‘A window, any window,
ly conceived as a glass framed opening, the indoors is transported outdoors, evaporating breaks the connection between being in a In Le Corbusier, this distinction between in- and outside substantiated by the Courbusian by it—she’s nothing but an extension of the
window’s potential for transparency is un- towards an idyllic earthly paradise capable of landscape and seeing it’. Le Corbusier’s hori- side and outside is problematized as separa- window also assumes gendered undertones inanimate. To better convey the distance and
disputed. In the Eames house, however, the healing modern man in the Age of Anxiety. zontal window works to put this condition, tion. This is underlined by the necessary use that reinforce the interior-exterior dialec- dichotomy of spaces implied by Le Corbusi-
intricate play of reflections creates a unique Regardless of such questions, the truth is this ‘caesura’, into evidence.”15 As opening of the periscope in the Beistegui penthouse tic: in both the film L’Architecture d’Aujourd er’s window, one must not go further than to
effect. As previously mentioned, enveloped that the experience of the house is a shifting on the outside world now made available, as as a means to access and secure the exterior d’hui and images of the Immeuble Clarté as consider the architect’s assertion that “from
as they are in the trees and their multiplica- one, constantly renewing with atmospheric framing mediating device, the window (by view, which is here splintered in a collec- photographed in the Oeuvre complete, the our windows we will get the feeling of be-
tions, the house and its interior arrangement changes and the various light effects pro- its very nature), suggests a separation; it pos- tion of fragmentary glimpses of the city that house is conceived as an enclosure bound- ing lookouts dominating a world in order,” a
become inaccessible from the outside. En- duced throughout the day. This contrib- tulates an interposed distance between the the window (a device activated by electrical ing the woman to the domestic space. Like statement that perfectly complements the ar-
shrined among trees and reflective surfaces, utes to the seeming de-materialization of here-and-now (the inside space from which power) enables. As noted by Manfredo Ta- a prisoner, “The woman is placed inside, the chitect’s “hand of God” as portrayed in L’Ar-
the Eames residence is protected from the the building, an entity unreadable from the the view is apprehended) and a foreign oth- furi “an innocent reunification between the man outside; the woman looks at the man, chitecture d’Aujourd d’hui.18 A relationship of
scrutinizing eye of the outside observer—in outside, clearly separate from the natural er, a there-and-then (the outside space made fragment and the whole is no longer possible. the man looks at the world.”17 And again in this sort with the natural realm is one that
one word, opaque. From the inside, too, the world in its human fabrication and reliance transparent and accessible by the opening). The intervention of artifice [the periscope] the Chaise Longue photos, the woman is does not identify the viewer with the viewed,
13 In regards to this, note the following quote in McCoy: “furniture design, filmmaking, and preparation of exhibitions coexist. If the three appear to have is a necessity.”16 The caesura between inside facing the wall, becoming almost absorbed but rather substantiates their irreconcilable
been cut from the same bolt it is because one developed so naturally out of the other.” McCoy, Piecing together Los Angeles, 187. 16 Colomina, 303-04.
14 McCoy, 305, 171. 17 Colomina, 296.
15 Colomina, Privacy and Publicity, 133. 18 Colomina, 306.
74 75
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
separation—we couldn’t be farther from the Eameses’ view.”21 Noting how the horizontal orientation of the
must stand to the one side. […] the subject is technology of the window would be then house is literally and figuratively wedded to
palliative dispersal of the interior towards nature. window implies a choice, a selection of only a portion
displaced by the equipment.”23 This, accord- energized and activated by the visitor walk- the land, and fully responsive to [it].”27 This
Unifying the Eameses’ interpretation of the of the landscape that is worthy of being isolated, Co-
ing to Colomina would be another nod to ing along the horizontal fenêtre,26 introduc- stands in stark contrast with the Corbusian
window and Le Corbusier’s is the common influence lomina underscores the fenêtre en longueur as cutting
the art of photographic framing, particular- ing thus a kind of dynamism and dispersal of ideal of dominating the world outside the
of photography, particularly the eye of the camera something out of the view and therefore positioning
ly of the movie camera, which implies a lack the eye that is akin, in my personal reading window, conquering panel by panel the out-
and, as a result, that of cinema (Figure 4). Defined the architect as akin to the photographer framing
of center and a moving eye – elements that of it, to the Eames House’s endless refrac- door realm.
as a ‘multiscreen performance’ by Colomina,19 the his composition. The same can be said of the Eames
can also be found in the Eames House logic tion and reflection of views. But while in Le We must not, however, succumb to the al-
Eames House shares Le Corbusier’s use of the win- House and its glass panels, which as we’ve seen care-
of fenestration. In the sketches for the Cor- Corbusier’s designs the still frames are put lure of reducing the difference between these
dow as a framing device for capturing views. Central fully resemble the slides of a presentation. Compared
seaux Villa we have the division of the win- in motion by the visitor strolling along the two approaches to design to a mere dichot-
to our understanding of this is Colomina’s reading of to the vertical window (which corresponds to the tra-
dow frame into four panels: “the panorama promenade (“walking creates diversity in omy of active versus passive enjoyment of
the Corbusian fenêtre en longueur. The author’s argu- ditional space of western perspectival representation),
sticking to the window glass is superimposed the spectacle before our eyes,” Le Corbusi- views, for the Eameses too revealed a great
ment centers on the idea of fenestration as a substi- Le Corbusier’s fenêtre en longueur negates the illusion
on a rhythmic grid that suggests a series of er writes in La Maison des Hommes), in the degree of control over the amount of natural
tute for the photographic camera, with the window of depth, eliminating the anthropocentric Renais-
photographs placed next to each other in a Eames house views are mobilized as dynamic space—substantiated as light, shadow, air,
being therefore likened to a still-frame
row, or perhaps a series of stills from a mov- sights due to the actual changes and mobil- and view—permitted to penetrate indoors.28
offering uninterrupted panoramic views:
ie.”24 Such separation, with “each shot indi- ity of organic life; the cycle of the day, the Overall, however, Case Study #8 seems to
“in framing the landscape the house plac-
vidually framed” and “relatively independent movement inherent in the passing of time point to a symbiotic relationship with na-
es the landscape into a system of catego-
of the adjacent view” does not, however, re- and the impermanence of nature inevitably ture, whereas designs like the Corseaux Villa
ries, the house is a mechanism for classi-
sult in a fragmentary perception of the land- affect the appearance of the outdoors and its or Villa Savoy suggest greater division.
fication. It collects views and, in doing
scape; Colomina’s thesis, in fact, presents projection indoors. As presented in the film My argument, centered on the as-
so, classifies them. The house is a system
movement as a unifying force animating the House After Five Years of Living, the interior sumption of the window as a mediating tool
for taking pictures. What determines the
sensory experience of the Corbusian house. space is marked by the diurnal cycle as the between the interior and exterior spaces, is
nature of the picture is the window. […]
Not without hesitation, Colomina sun moves across the sky and casts its shad- that while the Eameses’ architecture pro-
the window itself is a camera lens.”20 We
(Figure 4) Le Corbusier, “Une Petit attempts to reconcile the stillness inherent ows over the house. For the Eameses, nature motes a union with nature, Le Corbusier’s
can find similarities here with the lived experience of sance-born single point perspective that identifies re- Maison, Corseaux.” Sketch of Eames’ in photography with the actual impression is the source of movement, choreographing designs eschew such integration. Another el-
the Eames House interior as a synthesis of fragmen- ality with the singular point of view of the observer.22 House imagined interior and the
windows’ function as eyes. of transience and movement perceived by the inhabitant-spectator’s experience of the ement, in addition to the different attitudes
tary views derived from the exterior. Beginning her In other words, the horizontal window displaces the
the viewer looking out a fenêtre en longueur, house. Views, then, seem to impose them- towards looking that the window enables,
argument with a strong case for Le Corbusier’s win- viewer from its traditional anthropocentric role; Le
a borrowing of cinematic techniques that selves on the viewer who is passively receiv- supports such stance: the construction of
dow as a framing technology, Colomina notes that in Corbusier’s window de-centralizes the human figure
put sequences of stills into motion.25If Co- ing them and whose daily life is punctuated the Eames House as a site-specific building.
photographs of Corbusian houses, “everything seems and relegates it to the periphery (not the heart) of the
lomina’s argument is correct, the framing by their variations. As noted by Steele “the As reported in numerous accounts, Charles
to be disposed in a way that continuously throws the frame. In the Roneo drawing, the visitor occupies a
subject towards the periphery of the house. The look peripheral position as the window is opened by slid- 23 Colomina, 136.
24 Colomina, 139.
is directed to the exterior in such a deliberate way to ing it; because of this, “the individual no longer occu- 25 See Colomina, 283: “Frames are given temporality through the promenade. […] perception here occurs in motion. It is hard to think of oneself in static
suggest the reading of these houses as frames for a pies the center of the window when opening it, but positions.”
26 For this, see Colomina’s statement about the “deliberate dispersal of the eye in Le Corbusier’s villas of the twenties, effected through the architectural
19 Colomina, “The Eames House,” 106 promenade, together with the collapsing of space outside the horizontal window – the architectural correlative of the space of the movie camera.” Colomina,
20 Colomina, Privacy and Publicity, 311. Privacy and Publicity, 134.
21 Colomina, 283. 27 Steele, Eames House, 18.
22 Colomina, 128, 130, 133. 28 Steele, 11.
76 77
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
and Ray not only selected the plot after landscape itself is imagined not as a place a set of images framed by the windows busier the window is a screen because the not, as one would assume, the expression of timedia exhibitions, films, and slideshows.
a careful survey of sites around LA; they but as a series of views which the house as media screens broadcasting a specta- promenadier assembles and mobilizes the an unruly Nature haphazardly taking siege In their film Glimpses produced for the 1959
visited the plot several times before con- makes possible,30 which leads Colomina cle—similar to the multiscreen perfor- views, we find the same reference to motion of the house; instead, the Eameses carefully Moscow Exhibition as much as in their
struction began, for picnics and archery to affirm that for Le Corbusier “the site mance enacted by the Eames House. pictures in the Eames House: the house is controlled the flow of information transmit- Sample Lesson, the designers were moved by
competitions with friends and family. is first and foremost a sight” that can be For the Swiss architect, the house stores an accretion of multiple simultaneous views ted into the house, so much so that their ar- the idea of sensory overload: the goal was
This sensitive land planning that marries achieved through several locations.31 It views that are pieced together by the that bombard the inhabitant from every an- chitecture has been defined as a “multichan- to overwhelm the viewer with an intense
construction and location is one of the is here that the aforementioned idea of viewer like the operator of a flip book; gle, reproducing the modern mode of view- nel information machine.”35 In the case of stream of perceptual experiences. The Eames
key elements contributing to the success dominating nature is fully comprehend- each window is a still, perceived by the ing made possible by television. As previous- House #8, the information being relayed is a were looking for an emotional response to ar-
of the house. Le Corbusier’s approach ed: the house is planned with a picture moving occupant (the inhabitant walk- ly stated, the eye at play within the Eames collection of sights, penetrating in the form chitectural space and film alike: in both the
to building and project design, howev- already in mind and imagined as a frame ing the space) as a movie strip. Quoting architecture is that of the cinematic exhibition and the house “the audience
camera with overlapping POVs. Both drifts through a multimedia space that
er, suggests a fundamental detachment to domesticate the landscape (the pho- Colomina, “The house is no more than
Charles and Ray are said to have been
“FOR LE CORBUSIER, IN FACT, exceeds their capacity to absorb it.”36
from the site as informing and directing tographic subject). a series of views choreographed by the
the house plan. As previously anticipat- Despite Colomina’s insistence that visitor, the way a film-maker effects the avid film fanatics, regularly making their THE HOUSE IS NOT A FIXED Windows are screens, multi-screens,
ed, the Corbusian house is conceived as this autonomy of site and architecture montage of a film.”32 The similarity, appearance at drive-in movies which MATERIAL REALITY BUT putting on a choreographed show for
they watched with no sound on; their the occupant. Gathering information
a camera, with the window performing does not lead to the full independence here, to the Eames House is remark-
familiarity with cutting and editing film
RATHER A COLLAGE OF from the outside world, the house and
as a lens. For the Swiss architect, “the of Corbusian designs from their place— able. Like in Le Corbusian architecture,
view of the house is a categorical view, but rather to the redefinition of “place” Case Study #8 de-materializes under the probably originated in this pastime.33 VIEWS, A SET OF IMAGES its openings channel that information
without connection to the ground”;29 as a collage of sights—I would certain- multiple-screen effect and the underly- In Le Corbusier, too, the FRAMED BY THE WINDOWS indoors. There is no room for improvi-
suspended above the earth through pi- ly argue that what it does is engender a ing physical structure becomes ephem- eye—“entry door of our architectural
AS MEDIA SCREENS BROAD- sation—the interaction is staged like a
lotis, then, the house can be virtually perceptions”—is a moving eye, one that circus performance.
kind of approach to construction that is eral, obliterated as it is by the plethora
structures the experience of the archi- CASTING A SPECTACLE— It is precisely this constant, ev-
moved anywhere; it is mobile. less site-specific. of reflections that dominate both the
It follows that the general notion Although in contrast with the interior and exterior visual experience tectural space.34 SIMILAR TO THE er-changing rearrangement of images
of view in Le Corbusier takes precedence Eameses’ painstaking attentiveness to of the space. Both Le Corbusier’s and The role of the window as a medi- MULTISCREEN PERFORMANCE (but also, as we’ve seen, collectibles,
ating tool is therefore evident: not only souvenirs, furnishings, and walls) en-
over the particular view offered by a spe- the house’s location, the Corbusian the Eameses’ approaches posit archi-
a mediator between inside and outside,
ENACTED BY THE EAMES shrouding the building that makes the
cific site. In other words, it is the view houses do share Case Study #8’s imma- tecture as ephemeral, unfixed, not de-
that matters, not that view. Le Corbus- teriality; Le Corbusier’s statement that termined once and for all but evolving the glass pane becomes a mediator of ex- HOUSE.” house and undoes its materiality; like
ier’s own account of the construction of “architecture is made in the head” seems slowly, and emerging out of the occu- periences. The window shapes the life of in Le Corbusier, the house amounts to
Villa Le Lac (the Corseaux petite mai- to echo the Eameses’ own interpretation pant-turned-designer’s constant reimag- the inhabitant indoors, regulating what and of light, shadows, fragments of views, and a mirage of idyllic panoramas continuous-
son) betrays this modus operando: first, of architecture as the rearrangement of ination of spaces. how much of the natural landscape is let in. their reflections. ly repositioned—art is brought (in)to life.
the plan is drawn. Then, the search for a items and movable parts—including the Immateriality, still-frames, mo- Despite the sensory overload resulting from The idea of an overpowering multi- This movement, as previously demonstrated,
suitable site begins. Because the Corbu- views—found within it. For Le Corbus- tion, and cinema—these are are the fea- the simultaneity of multiple images available tude of images meant to confuse the senses is also movement in time: with its endlessly
sian house, devoid of any tie to the land, ier, in fact, the house is not a fixed mate- tures starring in the Eames House and to the viewer at once, the projections are with stimuli is also present in the Eames mul- shifting reflections being a testament to the
can be taken and moved anywhere, the rial reality but rather a collage of views, Corbusian designs alike. If in Le Cor-
29 Colomina, Privacy and Publicity, 311. 33 McCoy, Piecing together Los Angeles, 304.
30 For further analysis of the relationship between architecture and site in Le Corbusier, see Colomina’s Privacy and Publicity, 311-30. 34 Colomina, Privacy and Publicity, 330.
31 Colomina, 318. 35 Colomina, “Enclosed by images,” 22.
32 Colomina, 312. 36 Colomina, 19.
78 79
nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

The Camera,
changes occurring in the outside world, the window screen is where outside natural sites with conventions of gender expression.3
Eames House design is based on and meant are broadcasted indoors as sights to be con- In the left-hand photo (Figure 1),
to emphasize temporality.37 sumed by the multimedia-versed modern

Self-Portraiture,
Nazlı is perched primly on a boulder, po-
viewer—a hoarder of perceptual experienc- sitioned against a conventional “exotic”
What can be evinced from the ex- es—because “eventually everything con- Orientalist background of sand and palm

and Gender in
amples of Modernist architecture herein nects.” trees. She wears a long-sleeved dress, ruf-
analyzed is that the window, the interposed fled collar, and heeled boots. With the
filter between interior and exterior, lends Bibliography
exception of her hat (which does not con-

Nazlı Hanım’s
itself to all sorts of conceptual consider- Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and Publicity. MIT Press, 1996, form to any fashion standard, European or
ations about the relationship between man 124-39, 282-335.
Egyptian),4 Nazlı’s garb and delicate, for-

Portrait Photographs
and nature. Democratizing the inhabitant’s “Enclosed by Images: The Eameses’ Multimedia Architec- mal pose mirror that of a European lady.
visual and cognitive access to the outdoors, ture”, Grey Room, no. 2, 2001, pp. 7–29. JSTOR,
On the right, however, is a starkly differ-
opening up a space for the unobstructed www.jstor.org/stable/1262540.
ent picture of the princess. Nazlı flashes
appraisal of the world “out there,” the trans- “Chapter 3: The Eames House”, Domesticity at War, MIT the same matter-of-fact expression as her
parency of the glass-paneled window allows Press, 2007, pp. 83-109. Madeleine Giaconia, Northwestern University ‘24 other portrait, yet she stands tall. She is
the natural realm to penetrate indoors and House After Five Years of Living. Directed by Charles and

T
dressed in a long black kaftan and white
the interior space to extend outwards. Op- Ray Eames, Office of Charles & Ray Eames, 1955. he art of portraiture is a fraught to studios became an equalizing space in
cloak, and wears a tarboosh on her head.
erating within this dialectic between inside L’Architecture d’Aujourd d’hui. Directed by Pierre Chenal, one. Human desperation to create Cairo: the same backgrounds, props, poses,
These two sartorial items were reserved for
and outside, the window becomes a tool to written by Pierre Chenal and Le Corbusier, L’Ar- self-representation and leave be- and photo development processes were avail-
men (her clothing for members of the cler-
manage and regulate the dialogue, inevita- chitecture d’Aujourd d’hui (magazine), 1930. hind a lasting visual memory is matched by able to all who entered, regardless of class.1
gy; the tarboosh for educated elite men).5
bly shaping the human occupant’s experi- McCoy, Esther. Piecing together Los Angeles: An Esther eternal dissatisfaction that a single still image Around 1880, one notable upper-class fig-
The long, bulky cloak completely obscures
ence of the landscape. Inside the built envi- McCoy Reader, edited by Susan Morgan, East of can never truly capture the essence of a living ure sat for a series of portraits: Nazlı Hanım
the form of her body, erasing any notion of
ronment, all our perceptions hinge on the Borneo, 2012. being. Painting had been the primary mode (1853-1913), Ottoman-Egyptian Princess
sexualization. She stands dominantly over
window and the different interpretations Neuhart, Marylin and John. Eames House, Ernst & Sohn, of portraiture for centuries, but in 1839 its and founder of a distinguished intellectual
an unidentified woman, who is dressed in
of its role as frame for a view. Negotiating 1994. dominance was challenged by the public salon in Cairo. Nazlı was a member of the
the garb of a fellaha and seated casually, legs
a balance between indoors and outdoors, it Steele, James. Eames House, Phaidon Press Limited, 1994. introduction of the camera. Photography, Egyptian Khedival family, only recently ac-
spread. The visual juxtaposition of Nazlı
is the window that structures the relation “Window | Search Online Etymology Dictionary.” the process of using light filtered through a cepted within Ottoman culture as the ruling
and her femininely-clothed companion (as
that the house and its inhabitants estab- lens to imprint shapes on a chemically-treat- family of Egypt.2 Discovered in a private fo-
well as the leftmost photo of Nazlı in Eu-
lish with the surroundings. Transparent or ed plate, appeared to capture a person’s lio in Stafford, England, the photographs of
ropean women’s garb) seems to make Na-
opaque, vertical or en longueur, unmediated “true” image. It took off across the world, Nazlı do not align with traditional portraits
zlı’s cross-dressing even more prominent.
or refracted, the modernist window betrays including the Egyptian capital city, Cairo. of a woman, let alone one of her elite status.
Notably, she also left her hair spilling out
the human need to interact with nature. Over the decades, multinational pho- Rather, they reveal a woman freely toying
Whether through symbiotic fusion (Eames) 1 Hannoosh, “Practices of Photography,” 10.
2 Roberts, “Nazlı’s Photographic Games,” 468.
or unilateral dominance (Le Corbusier), the 3 Roberts, 474.
37 See the following quote from Colomina, “Perhaps we can no longer talk about “space,” but rath- 4 Seggerman, “Future Publics,” 34.
er about “structure,” or more precisely, about time. Structure for the Eameses is organization in time.” 5 Seggerman, 34.
Colomina, “Enclosed by Images,” 23.
80 81
issue n o 22 nor t hwes t er n ar t review
from under the tarboosh, underscoring her femi- However, the same critics that had railed against
ninity amidst her male garb and visually tying her hyper-realistic painting now turned their ire on
to the left portrait where her hair is similarly loose. photography. With its machine-made translation
As a single widow insecurely situated of light onto paper, it seemed to lack the ability
in the khedival lineage, who opened herself to to convey a living spirit.8 Yet it also carried a dis-
worldly visitors in her salon, Nazlı Hanım was turbing paradox: for all the critiques in the world,
an object of judgment for many.6 Yet her gen- photography undeniably appeared closer to the
der-bending self-portraits were an unadulterated human perception of “reality” than preceding art
self-expression, in spite of critical opinions. They forms. It shares its creator with human vision: light.
could perhaps have only been realized through Viewing a photographic portrait, then, pro-
photography—a modern, mechanized medium duced a mixed bag of emotions for early sitters. On
that both returns agency to its subjects and serves the one hand, it looked closer to the human per-
as an undeniable testimony of their existence. ception of life than painting did. Yet, disturbingly,
In the early 1800’s, before photography it also had the capacity to look very unlike its sit-
had even arrived on the scene, the art of portrai- ter, and could often feel contrived in its attempts to
ture was under examination. Philosophers hot- crystallize its subject’s characteristics through pos-
ly debated which paintings defined true “resem- es. In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes notes that
blance”: those that more clearly bore the mark of photography “transformed subject into object,”
the human hand, or those that attempted to erase particularly in its incipit days when sitters had to
it. Portraits delineating tiny details could be con- stay motionless for long periods, lest they be lost
sidered too close to reality; consumed in reproduc- to the chemical ether during exposure time.9 Bar-
ing the sitter’s superficial appearance (or “outer” thes characterizes being photographed as a loss of
resemblance) and thus obscuring their personality agency, a “micro-version of death”: frozen in front
or other internal qualities (“inner” resemblance).7 of the lens, embalmed with film reel chemicals.10
Should the artist pour effort into defining ev- For all its merits, however, Barthes’s char-
ery crack in their subject’s lips, or focus on how acterization does seem to lack acknowledgment of
their mouth quirks subtly in a mischievous smile? the very characteristics of the photographic medi-
Such was the dilemma into which photog- um that made it, to many, an appealing form of por-
raphy elbowed itself in the mid-nineteenth cen- traiture; the aspects that inherently imbued it with
tury. As a novel and efficient process, it took off life in a way painting could never achieve. A painter
as a mode of portraiture, particularly among the had the capacity to paint his sitter from memory—
bourgeois class to which Nazlı Hanım belonged. if they left the room, he could still produce their

6 Mary Roberts, “Nazlı’s Photographic Games,” 464-74.

7 von Brevern, “Resemblance After Photography,” 8. (Figure 1) Photographer unknown, Princess Nazlı
8 von Brevern, 9. Hanım, 1870s-80s. Courtesy of the Staffordshire Re-
9 Barthes, Camera lucida, 13. cord Office, Stafford, England.
10 Barthes, 14.
82 83
 issue n o 22 nor t hwes t er n ar t review
image, regardless of how “accurately” it re- itself is important to women as a method of sexualized pose for female portraits. Ana-
14
Nazlı’s gender play. Seggerman goes a step
17
that defied gender norms and opened her to was an undeniable testimony to her agen-
sembled them. Conversely, if the subject was controlling one’s own representation—and lyzing the photographs, Mesch asserts that further, noting that the album belonged to critique. While we can never know Nazlı’s cy. Like all those who rebelled against so-
not in front of the camera, their portrait sim- the camera’s “inescapable dependence” on Dieulafoy’s photos demonstrate a comfort the Third Duke of Sutherland, and that he precise intentions in commissioning these cietal gender constraints, both before and
ply could not exist. Thus, despite arguments light enhances this notion. A photograph, in their own skin. Rather than create a death perhaps received the photos, indicating that portraits, the photographic process reveals after her time, Nazlı was refusing erasure.
regarding its mechanized removal of the hu- Loewenberg notes, “must resemble the sub- of their subject, the images “catapult” Dieu- they were circulated among foreign digni- an intentionality in her gender-play and af-
Bibliography
man spirit, the portrait photograph is never- ject in front of the lens.”12 A self-portrait on lafoy into a future where their complex gen- taries.18 Whoever the precise audience was, fords her an agency that other mediums may
Allen, Roger. “Writings of Members of ‘the Nāzlī Cir-
theless a testimony to presence: the person film was an opportunity to present a ver- der identity might be better understood.15 though, it was clear that Nazlı sent the pho- have stripped away. If the same image had
cle.’” Journal of the American Research Cen-
in front of the lens was undeniably there. sion of oneself without a subjective artist’s Far beyond Nazlı’s era, in the 1970s, pho- tos abroad, projecting her image outward. been a painting, one could question whether
ter in Egypt 8 (1969): 79–84. https://doi.
Barthes, however, shies away from hand as intermediary between sitter and tographer Cindy Sherman photographed an The princess was also certainly aware the artist had chosen to depict Nazlı’s male
org/10.2307/40000042.
analyzing photography from the perspec- maker. Such an opportunity at represen- oeuvre of self-portraits, dressed in countless that, as leader of a salon that attracted global costume, and how much control the prin-
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography.
tive of the photographer (what he calls the tation is crucial to women, for whom era- different costumes: prostitutes, criminals, dignitaries, many gazes were upon her—and cess had over the matter. On film, however,
Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and
“operator”).11 If Barthes had delved into this sure and objectification are commonplace. film starlets, and often men. As Sherman not all of them favorable. Defying societal it was undeniable that Nazlı had put on the
Wang, 1981.
role, he would have lighted upon the no- The photographic medium also of- herself said, “I want to play with what’s re- expectations for a woman of her status, Na- clothing and stepped in front of the cam-
Hannoosh, Michèle. “Practices of Photography: Circulation
tion of self-portraiture photography, which fered a greater opportunity for play, wheth- al.”16 Sherman’s remark is a perfect crystal- zlı was highly educated, and remained a free era—openly defying societal standards of
and Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century Medi-
poses a tricky counter to his description of er through costume or pose. Hanoosh notes lization of photography’s unique ability to agent for two decades after the death of her who was allowed to wear certain garments,
terranean,” History of Photography 40 no. 1 (2016):
subject “death.” In producing an image of this theme in broader Orientalist photog- capture play– with its translation of light first husband Khalil Bey.19 In his memoirs, and boldly declaring her own agency in en-
3-27. https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2015.11
oneself, self-portraiture inherently returns raphy traditions—studios in Cairo always into marks, it seems to be the closest process diplomat Muhammad Farid commented gineering the photos’ most seemingly inde-
23830.
agency to the sitter. Photographic art pos- had a selection of costumes on hand, cre- to capturing what humans perceive as “real.” disparagingly on the princess’s every move, corous qualities. To commentators like Farid
Knafo, Danielle. “Dressing Up and Other Games of Make-Be-
es an additional layer of self-determination ating a space where sitters could “step out- On camera, then, people can transform, to from her drinking habits to her relations who sought to degrade her femininity, she is-
lieve: The Function of Play in the Art of Cindy
to portraiture, as much of photography is side the markers of identity with which immortalize an alternate reality outside with men after her husband’s death. He even sues a statement of comfort in her own body,
Sherman.” American Imago 53, no. 2 (1996):
determined before the lens is uncovered— they were usually associated.”13 Both the of any limitations within their daily lives. remarks that she stayed with her second hus- experimenting with styles of dress and leav-
139–64.
for instance, selecting angle, costume, pose, novelty and relative speed of photography Perhaps it is these colliding aspects of band as-Sayyid Khalil Abu Hajib, “until he ing her long hair down even while wearing a
Loewenberg, Ina. “Reflections on Self-Portraiture in Photog-
and background. Even a completely inex- made it ideal for such experimentation. photography and self-portraiture that made died without having any children,” noting kaftan and tarboosh. She parries attacks on
raphy.” Feminist Studies 25, no. 2 (1999): 399–408.
perienced photographer, then, could have The notion of “play” on camera was photography appealing to Nazlı Hanım. The Nazlı’s lack of progeny and seemingly tak- her womanhood by challenging masculin-
Mesch, Rachel. “The Legs of the Orientalist: Jane Dieulafoy’s
relative control over their self-portraiture, particularly used to toy with notions of gen- scale and circulation of her portraits is un- ing a jab at her womanhood.20 Although ity; claiming poses and garments typically
Self-Portraits in Persia,” Yale French Studies 139
so long as they controlled these aspects. der. In 1885 (around the same time Nazlı certain—the private album page on which Nazlı had many admirers and allies, both reserved for men. To all those who viewed
(2021): 171-90.
In this way, self-portraiture photog- had her photographs taken), explorer Jane they were discovered bears an address to an friends and within her successful salon, her the photos, whether private or public, friend
Roberts, Mary, “Nazlı’s Photographic Games: Said and Art
raphy is a particularly tempting avenue for Dieulafoy shot several self-portrait photo- English friend, “Miss Laing,” but Mary Rob- unusual agency and outward assertion of or foe, Nazlı was sending a clear message of
History in a Contrapuntal Mode,” Patterns of Preju-
female sitters like Nazlı Hanım. Photogra- graphs, reclined in an odalisque-esque po- erts asserts it was likely they were spread be- intelligence did also leave her vulnerable to her own cheekiness, boldness, and power.
dice 48 (2014): 460-78.
pher Ina Loewenberg, who shot many im- sition yet fully covered in men’s clothing— yond a single private exchange (potentially scathing (and sexist) criticism like Farid’s. For Nazlı, whose actions through-
von Brevern, Jan. “Resemblance After Photography.” Rep-
ages of herself, writes that self-portraiture seemingly mocking the traditionally nude, to other elite women), to share in the joke of Thus, the Nazlı Hanım that entered out her life reflect a woman determined
resentations 123, no. 1 (2013): 1–22. https://doi.
the photo studio for her portraits was a to write her own unique narrative, posing
11 Barthes, 9. org/10.1525/rep.2013.123.1.1.
woman who projected a public image; one for such playful photographic portraits
12 Loewenberg, “Reflections on Self-Portraiture in Photography,” 400.
13 Hannoosh, “Practices of Photography,” 16. 17 Roberts, “Nazlı’s Photographic Games,” 474.
14 Mesch, “The Legs of the Orientalist,” 182. 18 Seggerman, “Future Publics,” 35.
15 Mesch, 189. 19 Seggerman, 32.
16 Danielle Knafo, “Dressing Up and Other Games of Make-Believe,” 144. 20 Allen, “Writings of Members of ‘the Nāzlī Circle,’” 79.
84 85
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
ratives and communication in the backdrop of Rome contrasts His unique ability to craft fantastical worlds and use striking
the ancient and modern city and exposes the hidden underbelly visual imagery earned Fellini an Academy Award for La Stra-
of ancient Roman society. Ultimately, Fellini reimagines Rome da in 1957, and the film is today considered one of the most
as a dream-like fantastical world for his characters to discover, influential films ever made. Upon the release of La Dolce Vita,
thus forever altering the cinematic projection of ancient Rome. audiences in Italy and America flocked to the cinemas to view
Prior to Fellini’s films, Italian cinema had never wit- Fellini’s wild and invigorating representation of Roman soci-
nessed such daring representations of Rome. After the Italian ety; subsequently, La Dolce Vita was awarded the Palme d’Or at
the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. With
Satyricon and Roma, Fellini continued
to push past conventional depictions
of Rome and revealed an unfamil-
iar and alternative version of the city.

La Dolce Vita
The fragmented narrative struc-
ture and communication in La Dolce
Vita projects Rome as a city of happen-

Fellini’s Exposure of the (Figure 2) Still from Roma (2018). Yalitza Aparicio runs into
the sea in Cuarón’s Roma.

Hidden Rome: The

silent film era (c. 1910-25), which was
largely characterized by ancient Roman
historical tales or strongman “Maciste”

Fragmentation of Modern Life

films, the sound era coincided with It-
aly’s fascist regime and led to funding

in an Ancient City
for production stages such as the Mus-
solini-funded Cinnecita (which Fellini
later used). The postwar era ushered
in the birth of Italian Neorealist cine-
Viv Kammerer, University of California, Berkeley ‘24
(Figure 3) Still from the opening scene La Dolce Vita (1960). A helicopter carries a statue of Christ over the city of Rome.
ma, generating classics such as Vittorio

F
ederico Fellini’s (1920-93) Rome tril- from the time of the emperor Nero’s reign in matic structure and imagery by crafting films de Sica’s Umberto D. (1952), which uses poetic storytelling to stance, revealing the social detachments of a new social class.
ogy (La Dolce Vita (1960), Satyricon ancient Rome to the postwar economically with narrative polyphony, revealing a side emphasize the cruelty of an Italy broken by war. Following the The film is composed of a series of vignettes that weave through
(1969), and Roma (1972)) contains booming contemporary Rome of the 1960s of Rome previously unseen by Hollywood Neorealist era, sword-and-sandal epics telling Biblical or histor- the tumultuous and indifferent social engagements of the pro-
some of the most heterogeneous and frag- and 1970s. In all three films, Fellini displays sword-and-sandal epics or Italian “Maciste” ical tales of ancient Rome rose to prominence in the 1950s and tagonist Marcello. The film opens with Marcello’s chance meet-
mented representations of the city of Rome. his artistic vision and ability as an auteur to films. This paper will analyze Fellini’s Rome 1960s. By the time Fellini began his Rome trilogy, he was an ing with Maddalena in the nightclub, their socially detached
The subject matter of the films range wildly set aside the conventional methods of cine- trilogy and how his usage of fragmented nar- already established director in Italy and abroad having directed facades emphasized by their wearing of sunglasses indoors.
films such as La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1957). The film jumps rapidly from day to day and “avoids traditional
(Figure 1, above) Still from La Dolce Vita (1960). Marcello Mastroianni in the bittersweet final scene of La Dolce Vita.

86 87
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
dramatic plotting and instead relies, instead, upon versation with Paola speaks to Marcello’s refusal to well.” Marcello’s description of Rome is reflected in the Baths organized religious gathering during the Madonna-spotting
the power of visual images and narrative rhythm engage in genuine relationships and dialogue. The of Caracalla scene where Marcello further creates separation scene in La Dolce Vita becomes a profit-motivated and news
to move the spectator’s attention along a vast jour- influence of Fellini’s visual culture and use of imag- between himself and Sylvia when he seductively speaks to her coverage publicity stunt that eventually descends into chaot-
ney.”1 This is apparent in scenes such as when Mar- es to stand in for complex conversations is reflect- in Italian despite her not knowing the language, their conver- ic madness resulting in the death of a child. Additionally, the
cello encounters his distant father who goes home ed in how this scene is echoed in Alfonso Cuarón’s sation only to be interrupted by the untamed energy of the sa- only scene that takes place in a church is with Steiner—who
with a woman from the Cha-Cha-Cha Club, has a Roma (2018) (Figure 2) and Y Tu Mamá También tyr-looking character, Frankie. The modern social atmosphere offers advice and seems morally sound. This depiction is so
minor heart attack, then leaves Rome abruptly— (2001), both of which feature fragmented narra- in the backdrop of the third-century CE, ancient site of the only for the audience to later realize that Steiner committed
never to appear in the film again. This disregard for tive structures. Fellini’s narrative disjointed- Baths of Caracalla contrasts modern life with the ancient city a double murder-suicide against his family. Thus, Fellini’s neg-
the narrative was forwardly an aim of Fellini’s. He ness and conversational fragmentation all around them. Antiquity and references to antiquity are all ative commentary on the Catholic Church is quite deliberate
said of La Dolce Vita: “Let’s try not to worry about are rampant in the films of the Rome around the characters in La Dolce Vita, both figuratively and and as such, “church groups demanded the film be banned as
the logic of the narrative. We have to make a statue, trilogy. In addition to foreground- literally, such as when busts of ancient Roman emperors line morally outrageous or even obscene.”5 Christian traditions
break it, and recompose the pieces.”2 Steiner is an- ing the difficulties of commu- the living room at Jane’s party. Further, “Contemporary life are also sexualized in the film, such as during the Trevi Foun-
other character that emphasizes La Dolce Vita’s dis- nication, his films are also [is] defined as all facade and masquerade set against the back- tain baptism scene during which Sylvia purrs animalistically
jointed narrative structure and social facades. Stein- marked by the inclusion of
er is projected as a shallow member of the bourgeois Roman visuals that polarize
who puts on pseudo-intellectual parties—only to the ancient and modern city.
be hiding tenets of his personality that later result Fellini uses archeolog-
in the somewhat jarring revelation that he commit- ical sites and spectacles in La
ted murder and suicide. Even when Marcello has Dolce Vita to contrast ancient
to assist police in communicating this tragedy to and modern Rome. With the
his wife, he is interrupted by reporters looking to famous opening scene (Figure
photograph her, further emphasizing the film’s con- 3) which suspends the statue of (Figure 5) Still from La Dolce Vita (1960). Close-up of the satyr-like character, Frankie. (Figure 6) Still from Satyricon (1969). Fragments of a fresco on a building with painted images of
tinual representation of strained communication. Christ over an ancient Roman drop of the ancient and Christian past” in scenes such as when characters from the film.
Another instance of this tenuous communication, aqueduct and buildings being con- the poet Iris dresses in a toga-like dress while being proclaimed as she sensually puts water on Marcello’s head. The display of
which Fellini artfully conveys, is when Maddalena structed as part of the postwar econom- as the “alcoholic oracle” during Steiner’s bourgeois party.4 the opulence and morally corrupt, yet free modern social life
proposes to Marcello at Jane’s party from another ic boom, “Fellini immediately alerts the The untamed and immoral atmosphere of La Dolce Vita of the postwar era was also tied to sexuality and femininity.
room using a voice amplification device between viewer to the distinctions of the old Rome— opposes past cinematic projections of a Rome guided by Chris- Similar to Roma, Fellini displays the sexuality of Rome
rooms. When Marcello hears her ghostly voice the Rome of ancient structures, monuments, and tian morals. During the Baths of Caracalla scene, the satyr-like and emphasizes the feminine energy of the city in La Dolce
through the walls he initially responds, only to be churches—and the new, modern Rome.”3 This par- Frankie’s (Figures 4 and 5) interruption inspires a raucous akin Vita. Early in the film Marcello and Maddalena drive a pros-
interrupted by a man seducing her—this instance of allel continues throughout the film and is elevated to something like the effect of Blackboard Jungle (1955) or the titute to her home. This modern act demonstrates a disregard
strained communication underscores Fellini’s cre- by the fragmentation of the film, allowing each of iconic Johnny B. Goode scene in Back to the Future (1985). The for social and moral convention as the “female prostitute was
ation of modern Roman society as fragmented and these visual comparisons to be considered indi- loose morals and decadence of La Dolce Vita resulted in the antithetical to the male Roman citizen.”6 Many of the female
a happenstance playground. Lastly, in the abrupt vidually. For example, Marcello describes Rome film being condemned by the Catholic Church and banned in characters are portrayed as flirtatious and lustful, which would
closing scene of the film (Figure 1), Marcello’s con- as a “moderate tranquil jungle where one can hide Spain until 1975. Additionally, it speaks volumes that the only have surely aligned with 1960s Italy and America, which were
1 Bondanella, The Films of Federico Fellini, 69. (Figure 4) Roman Silver Head of a 4 Bondanella, The Films of Federico Fellini, 74-75.
2 Bondanella, The Cinema of Federico Fellini, 133. Satyr. 13 century CE, Rome, Italy. 5 Bondanella, The Cinema of Federico Fellini, 132.
3 Zimmerman, “Fellini’s La Dolce Vita as a Historical Artifact,” 1. 6 Hallett, Roman Sexualities, 81.
88 89
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
living the reality of the publication of the Kinsey reports, the nated by…the missing parts. What intrigued Fellini most about ty of antiquity.”13 Fellini also describes the atmosphere of Satyricon Roman society, such as when Ascilto mocks the busts of ances-
newly developed contraceptive pill, and the election of JFK Petronius’s text was precisely the text’s fragmentary nature…and as “not historical, but that of a dream world,” which is felt in the tors in the suicide villa. The film is full of strange-looking people,
and his supposed romance with Marylin Monroe: “The film’s the mysterious remaining parts forever lost to us.”9 The sudden extravagantly grotesque projection of the ancient Roman world.14 gestures, landscapes, and customs, which offers “a de-idealized im-
portrayal of loose sexuality resonated with American audi- cuts to different scenes disrupt any clear narrative structure and Perhaps of all the films of Fellini’s Rome trilogy, Fellini in- age of antiquity, one in which brutal power reigns over a depraved
ences in the 1960s.”7 Sylvia’s sexuality is explored both in the causes “an already fragmented novel in which a clear plot be- vents a new, fantastical image of ancient Rome in Satyricon that re- host of grotesque subjects.”19 Fellini is said to have chosen his ac-
Trevi Fountain scene and during her celebrity interview in comes unrecognizable even more in Fellini’s film adaptation.”10 jects past projections of the ancient society. Fellini was one of the tors for their faces, judging them by the shock value and exotic
which she mentions sleeping in two drops of French perfume, Petronius’ text becomes little more than a loose inspiration first auteurs and directors to view filmmaking as an art. He believed flair that they offered to cast his Rome as a “stylized freak show.”20
a quote attributed to Marylin Monroe.8 Lastly, towards the for Fellini, who provides only “tenuous, causal links between that the “artist is the medi- In Satyricon, Fellini also
end of the film at Nadia’s annulment party, two dancers are events” which serves to promote “the accidentally fragmentary um between his fantasies crafts a Rome in which
shown in drag, and Marcello unsuccessfully tries to incite an
orgy, met instead with apprehension and disdain by the par-
condition of the ancient text.”11 Just as Fellini viewed La Dolce
Vita as pioneering a style of filmmaking akin to poetry, as an au-
and the real world.”15 He
was able to erase the border
“ULTIMATELY characters range on the
spectrum of sexuality and
tygoers. In consolation, Marcello rides on a woman like a teur he viewed his role in Satyricon as “that of an archeologist… between dream and reality, BY EMPLOYING A include diverse and multi-
horse and then covers her in feathers like a chicken. This un- to put the surviving pieces of antiquity together in a form that antiquity and imagination cultural peoples. Women
“to invent everything and FRAGMENTED are displayed in all shapes,

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
then to objectify fanta- sizes, and colors (Figure 8)
sy.”16 Above all, he offered in stark contrast to Hol-

SATYRICON REJECTS
an image of ancient Rome lywood and Italian films
that was “a fresco in fan- about Rome which cast

MORALITY, CHRISTIANITY,
tasy key.”17 Satyricon was a Rome as almost entirely
challenge to Hollywood’s white—the only excep-
cinematic vision of Rome,
showing a disconnected AND SEXUAL AND tion being slaves. Saty-
ricon also projects Rome

NARRATIVE NORMS.”
(Figure 7) Still from Satyricon (1969). Graffiti-ridden streets of Rome. (Figure 8) Still from Satyricon (1969). Fellini’s re-casting of ancient Rome included women of all
shapes, sizes, and colors.
and dirty Rome from the as openly homosexual, as
tamed sexuality is also present in Fellini’s Satyricon, where it can never be completed” so that the fragmentary images of the start of the film with En- seen with the plot largely
is jarringly conveyed alongside the fragmentation of the film. film constitute “the potsherds, crumbs and dust of a vanished colpio standing in front revolving around the love
world.”12 This dust of a vanished world is recognized in the sud- of a graffiti-covered wall (Figure 7). Some landscapes, with their triangle of Encolpio, Gitone, and Ascilto, even featuring a scene of
Satyricon den closing scene of the film, where the characters fade into an- brightly colored skies expanding into supposed oblivion, appear same-sex union between Lichas and Encolpio. Sexuality was also
Fellini uses Petronius’ ancient text Satyricon as a basis for cient pieces of crumbling fresco (Figure 6). Fellini also adds sev- somewhat Kubrick-esque. Fellini immediately transports the view- bound to religion and ritual: “All aspects of love, sex, and sexuali-
his film adaptation and embraces the text’s fragmented nature eral scenes to Satyricon that are unfound in Petronius’ text, such er into an alternate world “far from the Rome familiar to us from ty were ampty represented by the deities, male and female.”21 This
to create a film devoid of a clear narrative plot, instead creat- as the suicide villa and the cannibalism of the emperor. In doing the Hollywood epic.”18 Some scenes even seem to mock ancient Roman understanding of love can be seen in the Satyricon scene
ing the film as a series of episodic vignettes, similar to La Dolce so, Fellini creates a distant, completely alien Rome: “Satyricon’s 13 Paul, “Rome Ruined and Fragmented,” 113.
14 Hall, “Whose Satyricon,” 347.
Vita. Bondanella writes, “Fellini reread Petronius and was fasci- fragmented city thus represents the distance and inaccessibili- 15 Fellini, Fellini on Fellini, 76.
7 Zimmerman, “Fellini’s La Dolce Vita as a Historical Artifact,” 3. 16 Bondanella, The Cinema of Federico Fellini, 241.
8 Bondanella, The Films of Federico Fellini, 85. 17 Paul, “Rome Ruined and Fragmented,” 109.
9 Bondanella, The Cinema of Federico Fellini, 139. 18 Paul, 110.
10 Larson, Greek and Roman Sexualities, 181. 19 Aldouby, Federico Fellini, 87.
11 Wyke, Projecting the Past, 189. 20 Dick, “Adaptation As Archeology,” 131.
12 Wyke, 189. 21 Chrystal, In Bed with the Romans, 144.
90 91
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
came from America, they eat everything out of cans
there.” Like the opening scene of La Dolce Vita, this
statement promptly ingrains the idea of modernity in
the audience’s mind and indicates that the film will be
about a transformative Rome. Similar to the opening
line of The Godfather (1972), “I believe in America,”
it indicates to the viewer that there is a clash between
two versions of a nation. This idea is further explored
in the scene of Metro system workers encountering an-
cient frescoes that disappear when daylight hits them.
(Figure 10) Fresco from the House of the Centenary room 43, 79 CE, Pompeii, Italy.
The closing scene of the film displaying the procession
of motorcyclists speeding through the streets of Rome
ritual festival of Mirth, the god of laughter, spares Encolpio’s life. past the Flavian Amphitheater also creates a visual spec-
Ultimately by employing a fragmented narrative structure Saty- tacle between ancient and modern versions of the city
ricon rejects morality, Christianity, and sexual and narrative norms. (Figure 12). The dissonance between the ancient and
modern is also exhibited in the scenes of the younger,
Roma 1970s hippie generation of Romans. This generational
(Figure 9) Still from Satyricon (1969) Frescoes of sexuality and sexual acts.
Like all of the films in Fellini’s Rome trilogy, Roma uses gap is also explored in the fragmented understanding
where a ritual serves as a cure for impotence and in the sexual fres- fragmented storytelling; in this case, it serves as a device to docu- between generations, further complicating how Fellini’s
coes that line the walls of villas in the film (Figure 9), drawing inspi- ment Fellini’s personal ownership over and relationship to Rome. memory of Rome is conveyed. Fellini states that “Rome
ration from the many real frescoes depicting sexual acts in ancient The voiceover at the very beginning of the film makes clear that was gradually changing outside…waiting for a third
Rome such as room 43 in the House of the Centenary (Figure 10). the film will lack a conventional story, instead attempting to paint world war, or for a miracle, or for the Martians.”26 The
Satyricon, with its posters proclaiming “Before Christ…After a portrait of the city. Fellini uses an “imaginative re-creation of metamorphism of Rome is communicated through the
Fellini” (Figure 11), like La Dolce Vita and Roma rejects images of his past memories or fantasies of Rome” to create this portrait.24 ecclesiastical fashion show (Figure 13), which paints
a Christian Rome and instead opts for a ritualistic and pagan Ro- This imaginary Rome also has qualities akin to the dream-world Rome as no longer Christian—Christianity is mocked
man society. The sexually charged ritual at the beach, bacchanal, and of Satyricon with rapid cuts between sequences of uncanny vi- as a distant memory of antiquity. The church, a symbol
Trimalchio’s banquet, which “aimed to display the host’s wealth and sual images. The film displays “the fabric of the city and its peo- of the forever unchanging, becomes temporal. Fellini’s
exotic luxuries” all show a clear disregard for morals.22 Further, the ple is in a state of disrepair, and the motif of the fragment ap- sacrilegious MET Gala of sorts gives us roller-skating
inclusion of suicide, cannibalism, and dishonoring the dead (take, pears regularly throughout the film.”25 Ancient Rome is shown priests, disco ball-looking cloaks, and nuns whose hab-
for example this line from Satyricon “Better to hang a dead husband both in its splendor and as a barrier to the comings of modernity. its are made of blinking neon lights. It crescendos to
than to lose a living lover”) exemplifies how “like Petronius, Fellini Roma also creates striking visual imagery by drawing on an- a close with a goth, skeleton-riddled float of sorts—a
has more of an artist’s eye than a moralist’s.”23 Perhaps the only in- cient sites to contrast the advent of postwar modernity with the an- modern take on the sanctity of Christian reliquary re-
stance of morality in the film is when the masked gladiator at the cient and eternal city of Rome. Early in the film is the line “A letter mains, and a dapper Pope as the sun with chic sunglass-
22 Dalby, Empires of Pleasures, 253. es. Thus in modern Rome, Christianity is a fashionable
23 Bondanella, The Cinema of Federico Fellini, 239.
24 Bondanella, 198. 26 Fellini, Fellini on Fellini, 74. (Figure 11) Promotional poster for Fellini’s Satyricon, c. 1969.
25 Paul, “Rome Ruined and Fragmented”, 115.
92 93
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

trend rather than a time-hon-

ored religious tradition.
Bibliography
Lastly, as Fellini casts
Aldouby, Hava. Federico Fellini: Painting in Film, Painting in Film.
Rome as a happenstance play-
Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2013.
ground in La Dolce Vita and
Bondanella, Peter and Cristina Degli-Esposti. Perspectives on Federico
invents a pagan fantasy in Sa-
Fellini. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1993.
tyricon, in Roma Fellini cre-
Bondanella, Peter. The Cinema of Federico Fellini. Princeton: Prince-
ates an idealized and personal
ton University Press, 1992.
vision of Rome. The opening
Bondanella, Peter. The Films of Federico Fellini. Cambridge, UK: Cam-
voice over tells of the mythol-
bridge University Press, 2002.
ogy surrounding Rome and
Chrystal, Paul. In Bed with the Romans. Gloucestershire, UK: Amber-
how Fellini viewed the city
propitious future. He both enacts a fantastical and (Figure 12) Still from ley Publishing, 2015.
through its monolithic historical presence— the idea Roma (1972). Cars stuck (Figure 13) Still from and are coming nearer to poetry. I am trying to free
idealized image of his memory of Rome and builds in traffic surround the Roma (1972). An uncanny Dalby, Andrew. Empire of Pleasures: Luxury and indulgence in the Roman
that ‘all roads lead to Rome.’ This mystique surround- Flavian Amphitheater in Catholic fashion show my work from certain constructions–a story with a
a protective cinematic chrysalis around it, forev- takes place in Fellini’s world. New York: Routledge Press, 2000.
ing Rome is apparent throughout the film, such as Rome. beginning, a development, and ending. It should be
er cementing it in the popular memory of the city. Dick, Bernard. “Adaptation as Archeology: Fellini Satyricon (1969) from
when schoolboys marvel at slides with images of the more like a poem with meter and cadence.”27 In the
the ‘Novel’ by Petronius.” In Perspectives on Fellini. New York:
city’s famous monuments. Rome is displayed as a artistic style of poetry, Fellini establishes his unique
Fellini, with his Rome trilogy, did to cinemat- Macmillan Publishing Co, 1993.
“city of illusions” in intellectual Gore Vidal’s cameo directorial style as an auteur by embracing the power
ic projections of Rome what Picasso did to visual Fellini, Federico. Fellini on Fellini. New York: Delacorte Press, 1976.
appearance; in the film, he mentions how the church, of imagined, fantastical, and idealized visual images
art or what Jack Kerouac did to poetry. His ability Hall, Robert. “Whose Satyricon – Petronius’ or Fellini’s?” In The Classical
government, and movies are all “makers of illusion.” of ancient and modern Rome. The fragmentary and
as an auteur to reimagine ancient and modern Rome Papers of Gilbert Highet. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
Thus, Rome is presented as a gargantuan, all-con- disconnected manner in which he does this makes it
inspired new possibilities in cinema and television 1983.
suming force capable of taking on an idealized and possible for the viewer to be consumed fully by these
to cast Rome as something beyond the structured, Hallett, Judith and Marilyn Skinner. Roman Sexualities. Princeton: Prince-
imagined image in one’s memory. There is a self-ref- images rather than being confined by the structure of
Christian, and heroic representations it had so of- ton University Press, 1997.
erential scene in Roma where students approach Fel- a developing plot. In Fellini’s Rome trilogy—La Dolce
ten been subject to before Fellini. For his boundless Larson, Jennifer. Greek and Roman Sexualities: A Sourcebook. New York:
lini in the Villa Borghese park and challenge him Vita, Satyricon, and Roma—he elevates fragmenta-
creativity and narrative individualism, he continues Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2012.
about the film he is making—the film we are seeing. tion, fantasy, and invention over narrative structure
to be an influential figure and an inspiration to such Paul, Joanna. “Rome Ruined and Fragmented: The Cinematic City in Felli-
One asks whether it will have “an objective point of and uses the backdrop of ancient and modern Rome
directors as Pedro Almodovar, Elia Sulieman, Paolo ni’s Satyricon and Roma Cinematic Rome,” ed. Richard Wrigley.
view” and deal with contemporary issues. Anoth- to demonstrate that for him, myth-making, memo-
Sorrentino, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, and Al- Leicester, UK: Troubador Publishing, 2008.
er says, “We hope we’re not going to get the usual ry-altering, and image-making in the act of creativity
fonso Cuarón. The films of the Rome trilogy are un- Wyke, Maria. Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History. New
shabby, easygoing, messy, maternal Rome.” Fellini is the ultimate human freedom. Fellini consistently
afraid to counter conventional images of Rome and York: Routledge Press, 1997.
replies, “I think one should only do what one finds demonstrates the possibilities of disregarding struc-
are some of the first to truly undertake filmmaking Zimmerman, Zach. “Fellini’s La Dolce Vita as a Historical Artifact,”
congenial.” Thus a falsified, manufactured image of ture and proves that fragmentary narratives arising
in Rome as an artistic and avant-garde endeavor. Elements 6, no. 2 (November 2010).
Rome is conveyed. Fellini uses his position as direc- from an auteur’s personal artistic expression can ex-
In the words of Fellini himself: “Movies
tor and auteur to pay homage to his infatuation and pand upon and reimagine a city as eternal as Rome.
now have gone past the phase of prose narrative
curious enamor with Rome’s monumental past and 27 Bondanella, The Films of Federico Fellini, 71.
94 95
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

Life in Death:
further divided by the seats of the gods.
These segments were then mirrored in the
earthly realm, such that “to the templum

Villanovan hut urns

of the heavens corresponded a templum
on earth.”2 From this religious ideal, we

to Hellenistic tomb
can infer an extension of the sentiment
of a mirrored heaven-earth to a mir-
rored earth-afterlife, represented in the

paintings
creative schemes of each urn, tomb, and
even grave goods included in each grave.
It is increasingly apparent the con-
nection between the earth and afterlife
Kelsey Carroll, Northwestern University ‘24 through artistic conventions given the

C
entral to the beliefs of the Etruscans and the Orientalizing Period (720-580 BCE), it is knowledge that “missing from the archae-
their predecessors was the veneration clear that despite repeatedly changing funerary ological record in Etruria are the full-
of the dead and the adequate prepara- practices among the Etruscans, crafting visual scale paintings above ground,” according
tion for a world that lay beyond their own. Amid ties to one’s previous life ceases to escape the to Bell.3 No examples of domestic fres-
continual economic and political developments imaginative landscapes crafted by the Etruscans coes, wooden panel paintings, or terra
across the eighth through first centuries BCE in for their dead. Whether through the construc- cotta tile paintings have survived, but
which is found the Etruscans making contact tion of dwelling-shaped cinerary urns, to later we do find evidence of painting in com-
with the Levant and most notably the Greeks, a depictions of ceilings and furniture arrangement monly frequented spaces such as tem-
variety of burial and funerary practices arise that within a tumulus tomb, a series of case studies ples and civic structures. The existence
increasingly disrupt and alter previously held will display that each of the Etruscans’ burial of “domestic-like” painting in burial
traditions. Through changes in trade resulting iterations shares one common trait: its ability spaces is granted credibility through the
in the Etruscans’ exposure to materials includ- and desire to representing the “life” in “death.” existence of similar scenes depicted, or
ing bronze and ivory, and subsequently a new The construction of the Etruscans’ daily similar spaces themselves, above ground.
(Figure 1, top) Hut urn. Bronze, max. H. 29.4 cm.; The origin of the Etruscan peoples
landscape of societal stratification and a devel- life was centered around religion, both in a met- diam. of base 36.2 cm. (long axis), 31.6 cm. (short
oped elite class, we find increasingly extravagant aphorical and a literal sense. The “axial system” axis). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher stems from the Villanovan culture formed
Fund.
burials that, in a way, only loosely bear resem- of a city’s layout “incorporated the relation be- in Etruria, closely linked to the Urnfield
(Figure 2, middle) Hut urn, from the necropolis of culture of Central Europe (1300-750
blance to the Etruscans’ traditions found during tween terrestrial delimitation and the celestial the Osteria, Vulci. Bronze. Rome, Museo Nazionale
(Figure 4) Montescudaio
the period associated with their origin from the templum undefined,” according to Castagnoli.1 di Villa Giulia. BCE), although the Urnfield peoples had urn, 650-25 BCE. Near
Villanovan, and coinciding Urnfield, cultures. The Etruscans believed that heaven was divid- (Figure 3, bottom) Tarquinia, Impiccato cemetery, ties with the Levant and multiple origin Volterra, Italy.
grave with stylized face, front and back. points through migration. The Hallstatt
Spanning the eighth to sixth centuries ed into four parts by two axes, the cardine and
BCE in the Etruscan timeline, encompassing the decumanus, and these four segments were 2 Castagnoli, “Orthogonal Town Plan-
ning in Antiquity.”
1 Castagnoli, “Orthogonal Town Planning in Antiquity.”
3 Bell and Pieraccini, “Etruscan Wall
Painting,” 249.
96 97
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
cans, at this point in the society’s development, or. Tuck claims that if we accept that the covering of
clearly mimicked their living spaces in their burial a biconical vessel, “whether a helmet or bowl, sym-
spaces would be an understatement given the lev- bolizes the head of the deceased,” it is then “plausi-
el of detail and preparation it appears was attend- ble that the urn is intended to represent the body.”7
ed to when fitting a proper urn for the deceased. Apart from representations of one’s home or
Even in the biconical urns from the first Vil- personal appearance, depictions of “life” in death
lanovan Period, no longer resembling a domestic through burial practices additionally depicts scenes
space, the lids themselves seem to reflect the indi- of daily life, or scenes as part of the funerary rituals,
vidual who has passed and can sometimes have spe- such as the funerary banquet or ordinary dinner ta-
cific characteristics that identify who is contained ble. Together, the seventh-century BCE Montescu-
within the urn in a way that implies the urn’s role in daio urn (Figure 4), Chiusi seated ossuaries (Figure
one’s life proceeding after death. Male biconical urns 5), and the Tomb of the Five Chairs (Figure 6) are
usually featured a clear examples of the inclusion of daily “habits” in
helmet-shape d funerary commemoration. Whether these depic-
lid, personalized tions of banqueting or dinner scenes were meant to
(Figure 5, left) Chiusi seated ossuaries culture, being the most recent phase of the Urnfield were being offered a similar context they would have to signify the allow the dead in the afterlife a place to eat them-
from Poggio alla Sala, Chiusi, Italy.
culture (eighth to sixth centuries BCE) directly in- had while alive. Bell suggests, “That these vessels identify of a spe- selves in a mirrored earth-afterlife landscape, or
(Figure 6, middle) Tomb of the Five cific soldier in life whether it was simply part of the funerary banquet
Chairs, final third of seventh century
fluences the development of the Etruscans through- represented the “home” is hardly disputed. Some of
BCE. Cerveteri, Italy. out the eighth to first centuries BCE. The “Villa- their façades show incised decor with their original accompanied by itself to create a commemorative version of the
(Figure 7, right) Plan and profile of the novan culture” is deemed the earliest phase of the paint,” going on to describe how the “doors” incised razors, serpentine events is unclear. In either case, such inclusions of
tumulus II in Cerveteri (Caere) with fibulae, and weap- “eating scenes” themselves humanize and give life
the tomb of the Hut, seventh century
Etruscan civilization, and it is here that we find the were often decorated with a “dog tooth” triangle
BCE. first depictions of “life” within death in Etruscan, or pattern that was also found in the earliest painted ons. Additional- to the post-life realm. In the Montescudaio urn, a
proto-Etruscan burial practices. During the first Vil- tombs at Caere.4 The hut-shaped urn from the Met ly, alongside the group of figures are shown around a table, eating
lanovan Period, cinerary urns are found in the shape features a pitched roof and a clearly demarcated helmet, biconical seated upright and thus being one of the only de-
of biconical vases or hut-shaped urns in the context door, alongside strips of bronze rivets, signs of its vessels could be pictions of Etruscan dining scenes before the Greek
of largely agricultural settlements. Hut urns, such as specific stylization. In addition to the specificity of (Figure 8) Tomb of the Hut, beginning complete with a stylized face, linking the object to influence of dining while reclining. Tuck likens this
of seventh century BCE. Caere, Italy.
that located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s hut-shaped urn designs, noted by Buranelli in their the “Chiusine practice of anthropomorphization,” seated banquet scene to that found in the Tomb of
collection in New York City (Figure 1), were found discussion of another hut-shaped urn from the ne- according to Tuck (Figure 3).6 Just as the hut-shaped the Five Chairs, in which five rock-carved thrones
put in graves in lithic boxes, usually accompanied by cropolis of the Osteria, Vulci (Figure 2) that differs urns reminisce on one’s earthly dwelling, the detail are inset into the tomb wall. Tuck claims that two
fibulae, razors, rings, or other small items belonging greatly from that in the Met’s collection, Turfa notes in the biconical vessels complete with helmets and stone tables “carved from the rock, were located in
to the deceased or gifted to them upon their death. that hut-shaped urns were often furnished with min- stylized faces reminisce on the life of an individual, front of the chairs,” and a large basket and libation
Decorations were carved into the hut-shaped urns iature sets of dishes, as an “additional reference to who is now being physically placed in the afterlife table with a rectangular base were most likely also
with a comb-like tool, with the idea that the dead the home life of a family or clan.”5 To say the Etrus- both through the placement of their ashes within situated with two additional cylindrical thrones.8
the urn, but also through their visage on the exteri- Three male figures and two female figures were
4 Bell and Pieraccini, 248. 6 Tuck, “The Etruscan Seated Banquet,” 624.
5 Buranelli, “The Bronze Hut Urn in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” 6.; Turfa, “Early Etruscans,” 8. 7 Tuck, 624.
8 Tuck, 618.
98 99
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
found seated in the configuration, and all at seated banquets from funerary contexts demonstrates the Etruscans’ introduction there is no “archaeological record in Etru-
have their right arm extended in a “ritual suggests that more is represented than of the “life” of the recently deceased into ria [of ] full-scale paintings above ground,”
pose,” extended with the palm upturned.9 simple scenes of people eating. The fu- their personal burial space, in a potential it is widely acknowledged that the earliest
This pose was also found on the Montes- nerary seated banquet scenes may indeed attempt to supply the deceased with a monumental tombs “architecturally imi-
cudaio urn, wherein a fragment might be employ an iconography specifically relat- banquet upon their arrival in the afterlife. tate the home,” thus serving as an exten-
reconstructed to show a figure gesturing ed to the death ritual.”10 When looking at Moving through and past the Ori- sion of one’s life on Earth into the after-
in a similar way. The universality of this the Montescudaio urn and Tomb of the entalizing period revolutionized Etruscan life through their new “domestic space”
Five Chairs in con- burial practices and brought
junction with Chi- about a new influx of wealth
usi seated ossuaries, that ultimately had some of
where “the actual its greatest impacts on the
physical remains of size of tombs, and the devel-
the dead person are opment of an increasingly
enthroned and pre- stratified society. New trade
sented at a meal” by routes led to an increase of
placing the ossuary amphora use and more trade
in a banquet setting of all goods across cultures,
within the tomb, leading to new motifs in fig-
it is clear that “not urative decoration. Import-
only does the urn ed goods led to the creation
represent the de- of objects attaining “luxury”
ceased, but the rest status, such as ivory objects,
of the funerary ar- and subsequently the cre-
rangement charac- ations of monumental tombs
terizes the deceased for the new social elite. Tu-
at a banquet.”11 muli (singular tumulus, Fig-
Given the banquet’s ure 7) became fairly common
importance in the in burial practice for those
Etruscans’ daily life, with enough wealth to space
(Figure 9) Tomb of the Reliefs, end of
fourth century BCE. Caere, Italy. pose in banquet scenes found in funer- and especially the funerary ritual where it such large quantities of land under which within the tomb.12 Steingraber claims (Figure 10) Tomb of the Lionesses, 520
BCE. Tarquinia, Italy.
ary contexts suggests, according to Tuck, was enacted alongside the funerary sports to bury their family, with the main Orien- the “concept of the tomb as a ‘house of
that “while it is apparent that seated din- games and procession, the constant ded- talizing centers in Etruria being Cerveteri, the dead’” was fundamental in Etruria:
ing also took place in non-funerary con- ication to a representation of this criti- Tarquinia, and Vulci, with the most Ori-
texts, the common gesture of the figures cal moment in time in the burial space entalizing and post-Orientalizing tomb The shape of the chamber tomb,
9 Tuck, 618. frescoes found in these cities. Although its architectural elements and fur-
10 Tuck, 619.
11 Tuck, 622. 12 Bell and Pieraccini, “Etruscan Wall Painting,” 248.
100 101
 issue n o 22
fashion, outdoor environments, the funerary or or- Tomb of the Lionesses (Figure 10) show us the ex-
dinary banquet, esoterism, and the underworld. To- tent to which the tomb space was meant to recreate
gether with the grave goods found, tombs following the domestic space. The Tomb of the Reliefs in the
the development of monumentalization in the Ori- Banditaccia necropolis at Caere is decorated with
entalizing period display the same reverence for life stucco friezes and pilasters around which military,
that is seen in a different way in hut-shaped urns and domestic, and underworld subjects can be found.15
biconical vessels. However, even without surviving The tomb is home to several dozen burials, and the
frescoes, the tombs mimic the living world through objects depicted within the stucco reliefs on its piers
their organization. In the case of the seventh-century and pilasters, “pieces of furniture, tools, kitchen
BCE Tomb of the Hut at Caere (Figure 8), the ear- utensils, vessels, implements, even animals—provide
liest monumental tomb discovered in the city thus interesting insights into everyday Etruscan life,” as
far, the tomb itself appears to mimic an Etruscan the viewer is almost fooled into believing the space
home, with its pitched roof and rounded door. Even is a lived-in one, if not for the falsity of the stucco
without a physical domestic space remaining, we see objects.16 Objects used in daily life cover the walls as
the same architectural structure present in both the if they could be removed and used at will, seeming-
hut-shaped urns and the Tomb of the Hut, granting ly granting the dead a place to reside in the afterlife.
us the ability to draw connections between the two Krauskopf states that these reliefs, if real items, make
and their replication of supposed Etruscan domestic the tomb “so lavishly furnished that the deceased
spaces. Given that the later painted clay plaques pro- would have everything he (or she) needed as if to
duced in Archaic Caere, produced after the Tomb of continue life on earth. In the case of the Tomb of the
the Hut but potentially decorating the tomb all the Reliefs, this meant a fully equipped household.”17 As
same although it sits bare today, can be viewed as “a if the deceased would continue to utilize the space
direct descent of early wall painting on clay walls or they were placed in after death, the family has filled
tiles in Villanovan and Orientalizing period homes. the area with commonplace objects that would ease
It is possible that Etruscan tomb painting grew out the dead’s transition to a new world in the same
of early home décor, namely, from the desire to rep- space. The Tomb of the Reliefs is said to “project a
(Figure 11) Bartoccini Tomb, sixth
nishings, and the majority of its grave tual level is shown by their own cult larly emphasized in colored paint.13 century BCE. Tarquinia, Italy.
licate the home within a tomb.”14 The addition of strong, assertive energy that evokes the vitality of
goods—notably jewelry and textiles, of the dead and tomb art, for example Paintings in tombs have been found art of either the tile or fresco variety, together with Etruscan daily life,” in its unique decorative scheme.18
banqueting vessels, sometimes even Attic grave steles depicting scenes of from between the seventh and second cen- the shape of the tomb itself, produced an effect that Similarly, the Tomb of the Lionesses is espe-
the remains of food—clearly indi- parting. In Tarquinian tombs from turies BCE, with the most numerous, 140 recreated the living space in the space of the dead. cially “home-like” in its frescoes. The frescoed check-
cate as much. In this the Etruscan the sixth and fifth centuries, archi- painted tombs, found at Tarquinia, and the Frescoes in the fourth-century BCE Tomb ered pattern adorning the ceiling emphasizes the “pa-
mentality, steeped in magic and reli- tectural elements like architraves, first painted tombs found at Veio and Caere, of the Reliefs (Figure 9) and the sixth-century BCE vilion or tent-like nature of the tomb,” according to
gion, clearly contrasts with that of the gable supports, columena, and bases present-day Cerveteri. Common themes and 14 Bell and Pieraccini, “Etruscan Wall Painting,” 248.
Greeks, whose more elevated intellec- are frequently suggested or particu- images uncovered in Etruscan tombs include 15 Steingraber and Stockman, Abundance of Life, 262.
16 Steingraber and Stockman, 263.
13 Steingraber and Stockman, Abundance of Life, 20. 17 Krauskopf, “The Grave and Beyond in Etruscan Religion,” 72.
18 Steingraber and Stockman, Abundance of Life, 20.
102 103
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
(Figure 12, left) Tomb of the Underworld, in Latin, vestibulum Orci.21 those in which the message is slightly more subtle.
Anina, 250 BCE. Tarquinia,
Italy.

(Figure 13, middle) Tomb of

The dead are intended to become enliv- Bibliography
the Augurs, 520 BCE. Tarqui- ened to proceed to the afterlife to begin a sec-
nia, Italy.
ondary, new life. By presenting the passage to Bell, Sinclair, and Lisa C. Pieraccini. “Etruscan Wall Painting: In-
(Figure 14, right) Tomb of
the Blue Demons, end of fifth
the afterlife to the viewers of the tomb, whether sights, Innovations, and Legacy.” Essay. In A Companion to
century BCE. Tarquinia, Italy. it be ancestors or today’s researchers, the Etrus- the Etruscans, 249. Chichester, West Sussex: J. Wiley, 2016.

cans have given life to their deceased and allowed Buranelli, Francesco. “The Bronze Hut Urn in the Metropolitan

for their awakening to travel to the next world. Museum of Art.” Metropolitan Museum Journal 21 (1986):

Steingraber, usually accompanied by painted through trade following economic growth in In the Tomb of the Augur, the door is only Imagery surrounding the afterlife, and especial- 6. https://doi.org/10.2307/1512821.

columns or poles in addition to further exag- the Orientalizing period, and this accurate painted on and not made of wood or materi- ly one’s passage to the afterlife through the door, Castagnoli, Ferdinando. “Orthogonal Town Planning in Antiquity.”

gerate the “residential” nature of the tomb.19 representation of life above the tomb has been als other than paint, but the same idea stands increased in the second to first centuries BCE MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies. PubPub,

The same feature is found in the sixth-centu- translated to the walls of the space below. that the dead would be able to pass through when it was clear the Romans were encroach- April 22, 2021. https://mitp-arch.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/

ry BCE Bartoccini Tomb (Figure 11), where Although not necessarily a depiction the space. A door is not always present, for ing on Etruscan cities and threatening assimila- gelx1232/release/1.

the ceiling and walls are complete with a of one’s previous life mirrored in their burial instance in the fifth-century BCE Tomb of tion. As the Etruscans rapidly lost the habits that Krauskopf, Ingrid. “The Grave and Beyond in Etruscan Religion.” In

checkered roof and checkered patterning space, the third-century BCE Tomb of the the Blue Demons (Figure 14), where instead made them “Etruscans’’ and quickly adopted the The Religion of the Etruscans, edited by Nancy Thomson de

underneath an empty frieze. These frescoes Anina (Figure 12) emphasizes the new “life” a ship “ha[s] the same function” as the door Romans’ language and dress, we see at the same Grummond and Erika Simon. University of Texas Press,

literally transform the “house of the dead” given to the dead, who in Etruscan beliefs, in terms of being a mode of transportation time an increase in the amount of imagery depict- 2006. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7560/706873.11.

into a “house” itself. Additionally, the Tomb must make it to the afterlife with the assis- to another life, according to Krauskopf: ing an “escape” to the afterlife, as if the Etruscans Steingraber, Stephan, and Russell Stockman. Abundance of Life:

of the Lionesses is an excellent depiction of tance of two demons. In Etruscan religious are acutely aware of their impending doom and Etruscan Wall Painting. English translation J. Paul Getty

Etruscan garb, bringing the life of the Etrus- beliefs, the dead were meant to make their They [doors] mark the transition have painted as many escape-routes as possible. Trusted. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006:

cans below ground. The frescoes along the way to the afterlife through the “red door,” from an “antechamber” (in this case, Whether fashioned in bronze, terra cotta, 262.

walls show women each in a draping teben- depicted in tombs including the sixth-cen- the tomb) into the Afterlife. We have or fresco, the Etruscans have retained their be- Turfa, Jean MacIntosh. “Early Etruscans: A Glimpse of Iron Age

na (cloak) along with calce repandi (pointed tury BCE Tomb of the Augurs (Figure 13), seen that such doors and thresholds lief in the deceased’s “life after death,” and they and Orientalizing Italy through Artifacts.” In Catalogue

shoes) and a tutulus (headdress). The men ac- while in the Tomb of the Anina the demons can apparently open for a short time have made this belief apparent in their artistic of the Etruscan Gallery of the University of Pennsylvania

companying the women in the reclining ban- guard the entrance to the tomb itself.20 The in the opposite direction as well, production in burial settings. Through chang- Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 8. University of

quet scene are also wearing either a kolobus dead would be accompanied through the when the dead come to greet new- es in economic and societal structures as a result Pennsylvania Press, 2005. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.

(long tunic) or chitoniskos (short tunic). The door by two friendly demons, Vanth and comers. This is also true of the doors of the Orientalizing period, the Etruscans’ be- ctt3fhbfv.9.

fact that the figures are dining reclining, a Culsu. On the walls of the Tomb of the Ani- in Tarquinian tombs: the deceased lief in, and depictions of, another life after death Tuck, Anthony S. “The Etruscan Seated Banquet: Villanovan Ritual

habit gathered from Greek influence, as well na, we clearly see two figures prepared to as- has to pass through them but un- only became more didactic with the introduction and Etruscan Iconography.” American Journal of Archaeolo-

as surrounded by lionesses, animals found in sist with the door set into the wall, one with a der certain circumstances can return of tumuli, painted with scenes that to a modern gy 98, no. 4 (1994): 624. https://doi.org/10.2307/506549.

the Levant, clearly shows the Etruscans’ de- mallet already lifted to smash the door open, for a while not to the earth but to eye, are recognizable in such a way that we are
veloping relations with surrounding cultures and the other with a torch to guide the way. the tomb or to the anteroom of the able to draw connections between the Etruscans’
newer, more extravagant funerary displays, and
19 Steingraber and Stockman, 20. 21 Krauskopf, “The Grave and Beyond in Etruscan Religion,” 75.
20 Steingraber and Stockman, 20.
104 105
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

Currency, Architecture, and of the banknotes are occupied by con- spect to their expected performance
trived windows, gateways and bridges and the operational reality. To fur-
Following this thread of in-
quiry, it is important to understand

Territory: The Iconography of

which, symbolized the “growing links ther inquire into these seemingly es- the tradition of numismatic studies
oteric messages and the potential qualification of the
contained in the euro as a contemporary component.

the Euro in Numismatics

icons of ages and The use of numismatic tokens was
styles, I will com- prevalent in ancient societies with
bine art histori- a wide range of decorative motifs,
Baolong (Dustin) Chen, New York University ‘24 cal evidence and mythological references, and regal ef-
politics in order figies. Considering the majestic use
The illustration of the banknote is solely used for academic purposes
in the paper; printing or reproduction is strictly prohibited to draw a poste- of money in both military prepara-
riori understand- tion and civil consolidation since the
Introduction to the Euro and the of the issuing of physical banknotes inations with various European ar- ing of the euro time of the Roman Emperor Augus-
Tradition of Numismatic Studies with an uncommonly remarkable de- chitectural styles.2 Signifying typical

J
from its rather tus, scholar Eszter Salgó suggests the
anuary 1, 2002, marked one of sign, the euro greatly bore flattered architectural elements of Classical, recent birth. As visual iconographies cast on the coins
the boldest moves in the history trust, unforeseen risk, and shared Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, the euro is wide- possess inseparable functionality in
of the European Union (EU). hope to construct a union across mon- Baroque and Rococo, and the Age between European people.” On the ly analyzed for its monetary functions
3
political adhesion and affirmation
Twelve member sovereign countries etary and geopolitical boundaries.   of  Iron
    and Glass in European archi- one hand, currency as the most es- or affiliated international policies, the of centralized authority.4 Capturing
renounced their currency to switch to With the complications nar- tectural history, the euro mesmerized (Figure 1, left) 5-euro
banknote with Gre- sential component of both daily life artistic value of the numismatic de- political contexts and geographi-
a shared banknote, the euro. The new rated above in mind, the newly their users with the shared icono- co-Roman architecture
and capital activity was reimagined sign as a denomination itself is greatly cal connectivity, numismatic studies
(The illustration of the
currency is designed to flow freely founded Europe- banknote is solely used as the legacy from a collective mem- understudied. My research will con- have long provided an interwoven
across the boundaries of EU members an Central Bank for academic purposes
in the paper; printing ory of the glorious past. On the oth- tribute to a new dimension of artis- picture of the dynamism between the
through both tourists and bank trans- (ECB) in charge or reproduction is
er hand, the connotation of critical tic and numismatic understanding of visual communication and the wide
strictly prohibited)
actions. In 1999, the euro first start- of the circula- architectural elements, like windows the euro rooted in and going beyond circulation of tokens and symbols.
ed to be used alongside all other EU tion of physical (Figure 2, above) 10-
euro banknote with and doorways, formidably provoke its monetary functions: the explicit However, it is undeniable that
members’ national currencies, namely euro banknotes Romanesque Archi-
a transcendental desire of mobility: messages and art historical connota- the euro, as a contemporary curren-
tecture (Photo Credit:
the French franc or the Italian lira, as released the un- ECB “Denominations,” by suggesting a liminal experience of tions of architectural representations cy, should also be understood as an
an experimental alternative medium precedented and the illustration of the
banknote is sole used going beyond and enthralling expo- on the euro facilitate the unification immediate succession to currencies
in multiple European banks. Under widely criticized for academic purposes
sure to the unexplored, the design of of the EU and the political and mon- issued and circulated in Europe start-
in the paper; printing
such circumstances, the full shift to the design: the Ages or reproduction is the banknote series complicates the etary mission of the ECB. On the ing from the late-nineteenth century
euro banknote in 2002 was peculiarly and Styles series. strictly prohibited)
nature of openness and cooperation.  other hand, the nature of the geopo- as a tool for nation-state building. The
precarious in its potential irreversibil- Robert Kalina, In fact, more critical questions litical and geoeconomic conditions epoch of nationalism widely incorpo-
ity, but there was resolved faith in Op- the winner of the design competition graphic tradition of architectural con- could be raised about the innovative of the euro complicates the meaning rates heroic figures, leadership, or even
timal Currency Area Theory.1 In view held in 1996, illustrated the denom- struction and imagination: the centers iconographic representations with re- of the iconography on banknotes. futurist representation as common

1 Alesina and Barro, “Currency Unions,” 409. 3 European Central Bank, “Denominations.”
2 European Central Bank, “Denominations.” 4 Salgó, “Europa’s Sacred Gaze,” 90.
106 107
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
motifs to construct national con- strength of affiliation to certain cul- no such collective consciousness
(Figure 3, left) 20-euro no significant difference in design corporates the corresponding archi- when Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand
sciousness. When these images were tural and artistic movements alien- during ancient or medieval times. banknote with Gothic ar-
chitecture (The illustration between the two series, although tectural facades in lighter colors in succeeded the Archdukes as the Gov-
perceived, they instigated patriotism ate peripheral EU members. Certain Therefore, the contrived architectur- of the banknote is solely
used for academic purposes the Europa series renounced the an attempt to sustain and contextu- ernor of the Spanish Netherland, as
through the universally shared and memb ers
in the paper; printing or banknote with 500 in face value to alize the provenance of windows and the construction and use of trium-
practically communicable visual lan- not par- reproduction is strictly
prohibited) curb multinational monetary crimes doorways. On the 5-euro banknote, a phal arches for such occasions was
guage.5 In this way, the design of euro ticipating
and inflation. Also, the Europa series’ classical triumphant facade is proudly elaborately recorded in Pompa In-
banknotes additional to transaction- in any of
(Figure 4, bottom) 50-euro architectural representation is more rendered in classical Greek tradition troitus Ferdinandi Austriaci. Despite
al tokens carries similar agendas, but the move- banknote with Greco-Ro-
man architecture (Photo vividly simulated by computer pro- on an elevated foundation with four the debate of originality surrounding
diverges in political message via the ments, Credit: ECB “Denomina-
tions,” the illustration of gram and the watermark is augment- Ionian pilasters, following the classi- the universality of Roman-ness, the
drastic shift from political or cultur- such as
the banknote is sole used ed for security reasons. “The euro” is cal Greek tradition, ceremoniously representation of triumphal arches
al figures to generic representation of the age of for academic purposes
in the paper; printing or spelled in Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic displayed for users’ attention (Figure could be considered a shared Euro-
architectural elements. On the con- class and reproduction is strictly
prohibited) alphabet, as Bulgaria joined the EU 1). The majestically established arch pean legacy and an immediate en-
trary to contemporary figures, the iron archi-
in 2007 and adopted the euro as its in the middle—an invention of the counter with the classical past. The
concepts wielded by the euro extraor- tecture,
official currency.6 On the front of the Romans—tiles slightly upward, sug- slightly curved, two-storied facade
dinarily remark the scope of ages and loosely
bank note, either a doorway or a win- gesting the perceivers’ pause for won- in the background explicitly point-
evades any political figures or refer- cling to
dow is cropped out from the original der and emphasizing its grandiosity ed to the external design of the Col-
ences. Thus, the imbalance between the turn-of-the-century construc- al representations should be grasped
architectural piece and is positioned deserving well of being sought after. osseum as a formidable symbol for
the ostensively augmented iconog- tion of European-ness. Besides, as select intentions and explicitly
in the digitally colored sphere in a Triumphal arches have long been a power and competence, as if directly
raphy and the ambiguously buried while the Greek alphabet is wide- rendered clues to be deciphered with
solemn manner. Although the archi- self-sustainable architectural piece referencing the prospect for the euro.
political language requires an an- ly employed on the denomination, effort. The protruding windows,
quickly built for Both as the starting point of Western
swer—what do the architectural ele- Greece, unfortunately, was in the bridges, and doorways—forged
victorious entry to civilization and the most circulated
ments of the euro signify in its mon- center of the swamping Euro Crisis onto the denomination with great
conquered cities. denomination, 5-euro banknote pro-
etary and geopolitical dynamics? in late 2009. It is also undesirable to details and overlapping effects—
Such a Roman tra- vides an entering point to the series
First, it is unfruitful to expect trace the origin of each architectural contain emotive functions and di-
dition was widely worthy of refreshed attentiveness. 
or forge a singular answer, as there piece on the euro banknote and cor- alectical essences in order to cater
accepted across However, the 10- and 20-euro
exists great economic and political respondingly analyze the geograph- the underlying political prospects.       
Europe and was lay the foundation of a more person-
diversity in the EU members com- ical distribution within the linear
especially depicted al experience in the connection be-
mitting to the euro. The unavoidable chronology of architecture. This is Visual Compositions and Inten-
in Flemish paint- tween faith and inward inquiry (Fig-
contingency of the reception of the because all the architectural repre- tions in Iconography
ings of the Span- ures 2 and 3). The 10-euro banknote
euro banknote is characterized by sentations were digitally edited into To date, the euro banknote
ish Netherlands features a Romanesque gateway that
the intersection of monetary situa- abstracted embodiments of histori- has two physically issued series:
in the seventeenth historically leads to a medieval mon-
tion and cultural relevance. Factors cal European ‘style.’ Abstracted nar- the first series issued in 2002 and
century. For exam- astery, and the 20-euro banknote
such as the discrepancy in the pro- ratives of European history through the second series—issued on May
tectural element is rather isolated in ple, enormous triumphal arches were depicts a prominent feature of Cath-
portionality of possession and loans architecture were projected on the 25, 2019—dubbed with an elegant
the first series, the Europa series in- constructed in the city of Antwerp olic cathedrals: a Gothic stained-
of euro within the Eurozone and the banknote design although there was name, the Europa series. There is
6 European Central Bank, “Denominations.”
5 Pointon, “Money and Nationalism,” 229.
108 109
 issue n o 22
spiritual moment of contemplation within a chitecture on the 200-euro banknote specificity of particular individual identification and thus is abstracted
simple heed. In the background, the recessive manifests the society-shaping power users or architectural constructions into an inclusive collage. Such an idea
Gothic arches implicate the observers into the of industrialization and capitalism are obstructed in the digital abstrac- is later conceptualized into the “Eu-
vanishing point, heightening the spirituality of (Figure 6). The bright yellow color tion of the European-ness to satisfy rozone,” which will be analyzed in
the moment. However, it is insufficiently repre- of the denomination, by emanating the unprecedented demand for an the next section. This indefinite con-
sentative of the vast non-Christian population vibrancy, sparks prosperous expec- European unity construction. The nectivity has two aspects: the mean-
in Europe today, especially the geographical tations while the gigantic gateway only human figure—only used as an ing and history of the bridges repre-
regions beyond Southern France where mon- leading to the inside is accidentally anti-counterfeiting mark for the sec- sented on the back of the banknote
asteries are especially concentrated. Neverthe- left ajar—making reference to the ond euro series—Europa abducted and the euro itself as an innovation
less, the 10- and 20-euro provide the occasion Central Market in Budapest and the by Zeus in Ancient Greek mythol- in international monetary policy.
to narrow the grandeur narratives of history Central Station, a railroad station in ogy, is the last humanistic touch of Contrasting the enchanting
into unhindered connections on a personal level. Newcastle—as if the last chance to the euro banknote as the imperson- and instantly recognizable archi-
They enrich the dimension of cultural references con- share a slice of the profitable capital al experience dominates the sheerly tectural elements on the front, the
tained in the euro with respect to the immediate effect market or tp hoop on the all-con- architectural design in the first se- representations of bridges on the
on users without specific engagement with Christianity.    necting train would extinguish in ries, which digressed from the hu- banknotes’ verso are comparatively
   The Renaissance windows with triangular and minutes during the Victorian Era. manist anthropocentric tradition. less distinguished and prone to be
semi-circular ornaments and Baroque facade on the 50- and By employing a variety of visual lan- perceived as generic (Figure 7). How-
100-banknote , respectively, confidently give out the mes- guages and carefully implanted con- Capital is Always Global: The In- ever, the positioning of these bridges
sage of monetary prosperity and the accompanying achieve- notations, the banknote of the euro definite Connectivity is more noteworthy than the lack of
(Figure 5, top) 100-euro
ments in the humanities (Figures 4 and 5). In view of the shift banknote with Baroque ar- provides an extensive narrative of the Although the illustrations of geographical diversity of the prove-
chitecture (Photo Credit:
to global interconnectivity during the geographical discov- ECB “Denominations,” the constructed glamorous past of Eu- architecture pieces provide visual nance of the bridges. In the Europa
eries of the new continent, colonies, and trading companies illustration of the banknote
rope as a unity. The selective depic- appeal, the question remains: why is series, all bridges are shifted from a
glass window. is sole used for academic
in the far East, it is in fact unclear how the singular articula- purposes in the paper; tion and the intentional emission of the understanding of these iconog- two-dimensional frontal overview in
These designs tion of a seventeenth century facade manages to incorporate users on printing or reproduction is
strictly prohibited) certain critical episodes of economic raphies contingent on the nature of the first series to a three-dimensional
unmistakably point to Christianity as the affiliated territories and islands which were a part of the global cap-
(Figure 6, bottom) 200- history attempt to maneuver the us- the euro? Theforemost answer is the scene with elevation and space. The
major shaping force of Europe from the fifth to fifteenth centu- italist and colonialist system. The lack of the ocean and seas, which euro banknote with twenti- ers in emotive conveyance of politi- prospect for unprecedented openness bridges’ icons seem to be excerpt-
ries. Saturated in crimson color, the repetitive patterns on the Ro- were and continue to be the area of crucial ports of maritime trans- eth century modern ar-
chitecture (Photo Credit: cal messages greatly supplied by the and connectivity throughout the EU. ed under focus. Correspondingly,
manesque facade mystify the sacred territory of Europe concealed portations, might be a compromised decision to keep the consisten- ECB “Denominations,” the
illustration of the banknote ECB. In fact, the euro as a currency The connection brought to Europe the exact origin and destination are
behind thick walkways and tempt the observer to pay an unfor- cy in architectural elements instead of cultural and traditional tools. is sole used for academic is assimilated in the conceptual func- and other areas by the euro is a kind inexplicably omitted beyond the
gettable visit. Romanesque architecture boasts massive design and Although the Baroque facades mainly belonged to wealthy families purposes in the paper;
printing or reproduction is tions of the critical architectural el- of indefinite connectivity instead of frame of the banknote as it is pre-
masonry and its representation on currency grounds the value of the in city-states and various Christian sects, the visual exclusion of the strictly prohibited)
ements. Money is never the end in conventional bilateral collaboration. sented on the back of the 5-euro
banknote series beyond its cotton paper materiality. On the other working class throughout all historical periods, who are currently the itself to be attained but is the means The euro as a monetary token and an banknote. Such intentional choice in
hand, Gothic stained glass is tremendous in scale and exquisitely main population making transactions in cash, celebrates unreachable to accomplish greater political proj- economic tool valorizes the potential design manifests that the euro itself
ingenious in quality, which remarks the apotheosis of both artistic wealth and mystifies the status of colonizers and capital possessors.  ects and serve the agenda of cen- to negotiate, trade, and collaborate as an abstractly connective bridge
design and glass technology. Confronting the divine art in the most Last but not the least, the nineteenth century iron and glass ar- tralized, powerful institutions. The with partners without preliminary draws connections across the physi-
elaborated form, the architectural shorthand invites an ephemeral,
110 111
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22

(Figure 7) The back of 5-euro

banknote with an aqueduct
and the representation of
European territory (The
illustration of the banknote
is solely used for academic
purposes in the paper; print- (Figure 8)
ing or reproduction is strictly Alcántara bridge,
prohibited) view from the
west.

cal segregation imposed by the water body. erected by the Romans without Christine Lagarde, the president of the ance of the euro with the indefinite connec-
In fact, bridges and aqueducts, represented the pretense of ornamental entabla- European Central Bank, one-third of the tivity, the control of national governments
on the verso of the 5-euro banknote specif- tures.7 With such interpretation, the euro not 23 billion physical euro banknotes in circula- subsided as currency from other territories
ically, have strong Roman roots and suggest is also designed to channel the flow of capi- the only tion, which adds to €1.26 trillion in value, are penetrated the presumed national borders.12
branching effects both in geographical con- tal in contemporary scenarios over the his- euro mitigate the used beyond the territory of the Eurozone.10 Accordingly, the euro further departed
nectivity and long-lasting duration of time.  torically negotiated and stipulated bound- indicates the barriers of exchange The flow of capital is totally free despite the from this “celebratory” use and instead ad-
Pont du Gard, the first-century aq- aries constantly shaped in modern Europe.  determination of the ECB rates but also solidify the frequent on- imbalance of various EU members as the opted a “democratic vision of a community
ueduct in the Roman colony in present-day Another prominent example of the that the newly issued money should both tran- and-off cooperation in the EU due to the un- OCA theory firmly holds the capacity with- brought forward both by the elite and the
southern France, a former Roman colony, prototype of connective bridges is the Alcán- scend the modern national boundaries and be likely reversible commitment to the euro as in a unified currency to adjust itself in light citizens.”13 By connecting people across po-
channeled water over 31 miles and found- tara bridge in present-day Spain, which was as stable and long-lasting as Roman bridges. the only official currency. In the OCA theory, of the predictable tendency of the market.  litical climates and the hierarchical structure
ed the prosperity of agriculture and econo- designed and constructed by Romans in the The indefinite connectivity can fur- the political tension shifts from agreements Furthermore, the euro serves as the of human constructions, the euro mani-
my. The three-storied structure remarks the second century (Figure 8). Despite the widely ther be understood from the mission and between two political parties or economic emblematic announcement against the fests an egalitarian idea that “‘Europe’ is all
aesthetic simplicity of elegance and utili- utilized Roman arches as the main structure, theory behind the euro. The euro was first entities to infinite modality of connections principle of “one-nation-one-money.” This around us—but is nowhere in particular.”14 
tarianism. The multi-layered construction the translated Latin inscription “…bridge to conceptualized based on the bold economic with new partners without biased politi- notion existed since the late nineteenth
suggests the connectivity in Roman infra- last forever in the ages of the perpetual world” model of the Optimal Currency Area (OCA) cal scrutiny. The connectivity also branches century when nation-states executed power Architecture, Territorialization, and
structure and intelligence across the definite in a dedicated temple remarks the essence in theory, which holds that an independent and out from economical centers in Europe to over their conscious geographic and mon- Identity in Construction
divisions of regions. The conceptual sig- Roman bridges to resist erosion throughout singular currency significantly brings about peripheral areas without authoritative ma- etary territories.11 According to economic Despite the possibilities opened up by
nificance, as architectural scholars put it, is the duration of time.8 The representation of macroeconomic flexibility.9 The euro, serving nipulation of the currency. According to analyst Benjamin Cohen, with the appear- the euro, the architectural components on
pronounced by the truly national structures various styles of bridges from antiquity on as the ultimate medium for exchange, should 10 European Central Bank, “Welcome Address.”
7 Butler, “The Roman Aqueducts as Monuments of Architecture,” 177. 11 Kaelberer, “The Euro and European Identity,” 165.
8 Original Latin text: “pontem perpetui mansurum in saecula mundi fecit divina nobilis arte Lacer.” Translation by author. 12 Kaelberer, 165.
9 Pomfret, “Optimum currency area (OCA) theory,” 3. 13 Salgó, “Europa’s Sacred Gaze,” 93.
14 Hymans, “The Changing Color of Money,” 22.
112 113
 nor t hwes t er n ar t review issue n o 22
the denomination, from windows monetary division laid during the boundary of the contracted territo- neo-liberal marketization.17 On the other tory that 12 sovereign countries renounced sp191127~3ad384365f.en.html. Accessed 15 Apr.

to facades, should still be treated as late-nineteenth century, the repre- rial notion of the Eurozone as it is hand, the select architectural pieces major- their currently issued money to switch to a 2022.

contrived constructions both phys- sentation of the map of the EU on questionable whether nearly twen- ly from West and Southern Europe on the shared banknote. In sight of the unprece- Hymans, Jacques E. C. “The Changing Color of Money: Eu-
ically and conceptually. The drastic the verso of the banknotes, or what ty members of the EU can bear the banknotes affirm the traditional conception dented design with architectural represen- ropean Currency Iconography and Collective Iden-

shift of the euro from an alterna- is to be Europe in general, draws name involving the whole conti- of Europe despite the Anglo-centric stereo- tation, the euro greatly bears flattered trust, tity.” European Journal of International Relations vol.

tive to previous national currencies extraordinary attention. On the nent (Figure 9). In such a way, the types and historical borders. These histor- unforeseen risk, and shared hope to con- 10 (2004): 5–31.

to the only official current of Eu- back of the Europa series, Europe architectural nature of the invented ical architectural elements also encourage struct a union across monetary and geopo- Kaelberer, Matthias. “The Euro and European Identity: Sym-
rope might be excessive in nature is highlighted from the geographi- banknote leaves limited space for the euro users to make nuanced distinctions litical boundaries. Beyond the typical anal- bols, Power and the Politics of European Monetary

concerning the emergence of the cally connected territory, including countries that are not adopting the between the currency of Europe and the ysis on monetary policies and international Union.” Review of International Studies vol. 30,

digital age. But the euro thrives in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa euro as they face the newly erected American dollar across the Atlantic Ocean.  relations, this paper provides a numismatic no. 2 (2004): 161–78. http://www.jstor.org/sta-

transactions greatly involving cash: (Figure 7). The representa- Signifying widely borrowed archi- examination of the art historical and polit- ble/20097908.

Christine Lagarde regards the euro tion of Europe is by no means tectural elements of Classical, Romanesque, ical knowledge intersecting at the design Pointon, Marcia. “Money and Nationalism.” Imagining
banknote as the lifeblood of the accurate or even close to real- Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and the Age of of Ages and Styles. The ingenious architec- Nations. ed. G. Cubitt, Manchester: Manchester

European economy, as approxi- ity. Compared to the illustra- Iron and Glass in the European architectural tural shorthand should be grasped as select University Press, 1998.

mately 79 percent of all transac- tion of current EU members history, windows, gateways and bridges on intentions by the EU and the European Pomfret, Richard. “Optimum currency area (OCA) theory,”
tions are physically marked using and EU members which are the euro banknote series complicate the na- Central Bank to be thoroughly deciphered. The Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy,

cash, adding up to nearly half of the committed to the euro as the ture of openness and co-operation by estab- Windows, bridges, and doorways—forged edited by Kenneth A. Reinert, and Ramkishen S.

total value of all payments made sole currency, the depiction lishing cultural and political confrontations onto the denomination with great details Rajan, Princeton University Press, 1st edition, 2010.

with the euro.15 On the one hand, on the banknote proposes an at thresholds. By placing emphasis on thresh- and overlapping effects—contain emotive Salgó, Eszter. “Europa’s Sacred Gaze.” Images from Paradise:
the conceptual construction of the idealized vision of the unifi- olds and portals, boundaries are implied in a functions and dialectical essences in order The Visual Communication of the European Union’s

integration of the EU becomes cation of all territory with- euphemistic way. It doesn’t represent a broad to cater the underlying political prospects.    Federalist Utopia. Berghahn Books, 2017.

tangible as the euro users have the out boundaries. The twelve and embracing communication but the se- Smith, A. J. “Imagining geographies of the ‘new Europe’:

psychological stability with the yellow stars on the flag of the lective permeability of monetary and human Bibliography geo-economic power and the new European archi-

physical banknotes in hand. On EU hover over the entire con- resources under a loosely constructed united Alesina, Alberto, and Robert J. Barro. “Currency Unions.” tecture of integration.” Political Geography vol. 21

the other hand, the euro tiles up tinent, although Switzerland geopolitical identity in the EU. The euro sug- Quarterly Journal of Economics, May (2002): 409- (2002): 647–70.

the facades of the economy of the and the Balkan countries are gests a dialectic harmony of contemporary 36.

EU with visual engagement and not either voluntarily or tem- Europe in dynamism and the thresholds un- Butler, Howard Crosby. “The Roman Aqueducts as Mon-

inviting contemplation of the hu- porarily, a part of the contem- der the unified control of the European Cen- uments of Architecture.” American Journal of

manist ideals in European History. porary EU self-conscious- tral Bank, which overlooks the communica- Archaeology vol. 5, no. 2 (1901): 175–99. https://
(Figure 9) EU members in
The euro has been employed ness. For the EU members that have facade rooted in the “shared” aes- blue, EU members using the tion both between the people of Europe and doi.org/10.2307/496768.
euro in dark blue.
as a supplemental construction of physical banknotes on the market, thetic history. The magnetism built between Europe and the rest of the world. European Central Bank. “Denominations.” https://www.ecb.

the identity and self-recognition of the exaggerated inclusive vision of into the name of “euro” and “euro- europa.eu/euro/banknotes/denominations/html/

the EU in the reciprocal relation- Europe projects illusive prospects zone” facilitates the territorializa- The euro, which was physically is- index.en.html#es1-005. Accessed 15 Apr. 2022.

ship between money and collec- beyond the euro’s experimental tion with a focus on East-Central sued on January 1, 2002, remarks one of the European Central Bank. “Welcome Address.” https://www.

tive identity.16 To counteract the nature. It further complicates the Europe’s repositioning through the boldest moves in the European Union’s his- ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2019/html/ecb.
15 European Central Bank, “Welcome Address.” 17 Smith, “Imagining geographies,” 650.
16 Kaelberer, “The Euro and European Identity,” 161.
114 115
Front cover
Maurizo Catelan, Comedian, 2019. Banana, duct tape. 

Back cover 
Left column, top to bottom: 
Yao Lu, Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms, no. 1. Inkjet
print.
The Eames House. Photograph by Matthew Tait.
Still from La Dolce Vita, 1960, featuring Marcello Mastroianni.
James Doolin, Twilight, 1999. Oil on canvas.
Installation view of James Rosenquist, F-111 at the Leo Castelli
Gallery, New York, 1965.

Right column, top to bottom: 

Alice Neel, Nancy and the Rubber Plant, 1975. Oil on canvas.
Photographer unknown, Princess Nazlı Hanım, 1870s-80s 
Tomb of the Anina, 250 BCE. 

116 117
118