Kat Balkoski
Spring 2011

Jean-Michel Basquiat – Gift of the Elegant Clochard

"I'd rather have a Jean-Michel [Basquiat] than a Cy Twombly. I do not live in the classical city. My neighborhood is unsafe. Also, I want my home to look like a pile of junk to burglars."1 So joked René Ricard in his groundbreaking piece on Jean-Michel Basquiat for Artforum, "The Radiant Child," in 1981. This kind of characterization of Basquiat's art as "junk" and Ricard's later description of the young artist having the affected "elegance of the clochard who lights up a megot with his pinkie raised" helped set the stage for the art world's problematic fascination with Basquiat as the "true voice of the ghetto." 2

[ download complete paper ]

Aliza Kathryn Minogue-Nachison
Fall 2008

SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: A “NEW DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE”

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City is a masterpiece in the oeuvre of Frank Lloyd Wright. It successfully demonstrates his principles of organic architecture by abstracting forms from nature and translating them into architectural design. It evokes awe from both outside and in. As a gallery, the architecture of the Guggenheim is a mark of pioneering genius in the way it brings the force of Nature, which Wright believed unites all living things, to the artwork inside; it is a “temple of non-objectivity” and also of the soul.1 The spiraling rotunda allows the main gallery space to flow continuously and brings the works of art into the organic architecture by displaying them in ever-changing nuances of natural light and against a backwards slanting wall, the inside of the upwardly expanding structure seen from the outside. Of the slanting walls Wright said, “this is the chief characteristic of our building. This idea is new but sound.”2 The rotunda rejects the traditional format of display in favor of an unconventional one that harmoniously unites the visitor with the art and architecture. Thus Man, Art, and Architecture are united through Wright’s exquisite spiral design in which Nature resounds.

[ download complete paper ]

Michael Snyder
Fall 2008

The Rise of the Subject and the Artist in Northern European Portraiture

Hans Memling’s Portrait of a Man, painted in 1470, might well pass for a Raphael at first glance. The subject, surrounded by a narrow, gray window frame, occupies the center and the vast majority of the picture. Outside the window, the lush green land runs to a crystalline blue sky, ranging by a seamless gradient from white at the horizon line to a deep cerulean blue at the top of the canvas. Two small buildings stand on the horizon, one over each of the man’s shoulders— delightful architectural studies reminiscent of the towers found in many of Raphael’s paintings— pointed out by the diagonal lines of the subject’s garment, which create a V-shape at the painting’s center. The bottom point of this V meets near the subject’s hand, which serves as a kind of anchor for the piece, sitting nearly at the center of the painting’s base, powerfully grasping the black sash whose ridges on the subject’s shoulder mimic those created by hills on the horizon. Memling offers us an Italian Renaissance landscape behind a man that, were it not for his conservative, clearly Northern European garb, might fit nicely in an Italian painting. Memling’s Portrait of a Man is certainly exquisite, but it is also nearly anonymous; the man that is its subject has no name, the landscape no clear place, and that artist’s name appears no where. A study in balance and order, rather than tension or drama, this painting depicts a world of total ease, held together by a single, peripheral hand, holding onto the sash, but without any sign of tension.

[ download complete paper ]

Emily Clader
Olivia Powell
Spring 2008

How Long?: Opposition and Motion in The Vision of Saint John

In many ways, Christianity is a religion of contradictions.  God is a trinity, yet He is one; Christ is mortal, yet divine; the Lord is merciful, yet His ever-present gaze knows and judges our every sin.  For this reason, depicting the Christian theological canon in art almost inevitably involves teetering on the edge between dichotomies, and El Greco’s The Vision of Saint John is no exception to this trend.  Its world resides in the threshold between worlds, the fitful and precarious fringe that bridges contrary forces.  Heaven and Earth, sleep and wakefulness, mercy and vengeance, grace and contortion, death and life—in this painting, opposites converge in a dizzying dance whose shock value is only matched by its theatrical narrative appeal.  Ultimately, the effect of this opposition is to create a sense of restless movement that not only relays the Biblical story at hand, but also draws the viewer into the first-personal experience of Saint John.

[ download complete paper ]

Daniel Mazori
Melanie Ventilla
Fall 2007

With a Child On Top

The Alice in Wonderland Monument in Central Park (on East 74th Street near 5th Avenue) does its title justice, for it inspires a sense of wonder in whoever views it objectively. The most striking feature of the sculpture (early in the morning, before it has any visitors) is the disunity of its main characters--a consequence of how they are arranged, both vertically and horizontally. From the vertical perspective, the young Alice commands the sculpture's center. The Mad Hatter lies to her east; the March Hare, her west. Such spatial individuality divides the sculpture into separate vertical sections--one central and two peripheral--with no commonality. The sculpture is also halved horizontally by the head of the central mushroom. As such, Alice exists completely in the upper half, while the Mad Hatter and the March Hare lie noticeably beneath her. That the three do not even share common ground leaves the viewer, from his very first glance, with the impression that the sculpture is incohesive.

[ download complete paper ]