Art Historians

"Although the enthroned figure with its large head and sex organ defies identification, it is like figures shown—the other unidentified—in a yoga posture. On either side of the enthroned yogi and above his arms, a tiger and an elephant are on his right, a rhinoceros and buffalo on his left, and two antelopes are below, that is, in front of his throne. The composition of this steatite relief is hieratic. The horn-crowned and enthroned yogi forms an isosceles triangle whose axis connects the middle of the bifurcating horns, the long nose, and the erect phallus of the deity."

"The money changers and other merchants known as ‘speciarii’ (sellers of aromatics) had their stalls under the portico of the church. A special office, or special court, called the Curia di s. Martino; it was located near the basilica, and the merchants themselves had to swear an oath not to commit fraud in the exercise of their trade. (p. 11)"

"That the simulacrum of Christ Crucified known as the Holy Face (which Dante also wanted to touch in his Poem) is very ancient is not to be doubted; all its characteristics, which we will discuss below, are those of an image of great antiquity and, in the opinion of many, of a Byzantine image. And although explicit records do not show it in the Cathedral of Lucca until the 12th century, and the coins bearing its effigy cannot be traced back beyond the 13th century, according to numismatists, such documents suggest that it existed long before that, and there are many reasonable inferences that demonstrate that its transfer to Lucca dates back to the end of the 8th century. (pp. 135-136)"

"This small temple [of the Holy Face in Lucca Cathedral] is extremely elegant. It was designed by Matteo Civitali in a composite style, both in terms of its proportions and its [modinature] and all the details that compose it, the ornaments with which it is decorated having been chosen with the finest taste from among the most beautiful and elegant examples of Roman architecture. (p. 143)"

"Although the Cathedral of Lucca is not one of the largest churches built in Italy during the Middle Ages, it is nevertheless one of the most remarkable for its structure and one of the most beautiful, especially inside, thanks to the harmonious lines and the admirable balance between the fantastic and the severe, which gives the building a truly sacred and solemn character, achieved in equal measure by very few of those that surpass it in size and richness of ornamentation. (p. 5)"

"The exterior of the Cathedral of San Martino in Lucca does not have the same harmony of style as the interior; on the contrary, the architectural features of the different centuries to which the various parts belong are clearly visible, and even a different style, due to the fact that it was designed by Comacine and Tuscan craftsmen. Many of these parts, however, are beautiful, notably the interior of the atrium, the north side and the rear. (pp. 5-6)"

"[...] in Lucca Cathedral [unlike that of Florence] it seems instead that the neglect [of the stained glass windows] has been very great, and perhaps no thought was ever given to repairing them until, due to the quantity of missing glass, they were in such a state that they could no longer be ignored; and even then, instead of having them carefully restored by a skilled craftsman, the repairs were carried out in such a way that they could not have been done worse. The only round window that remains and those of the choir, especially the large stained glass window that had suffered the most, clearly show how the work was carried out; that is, broken or damaged pieces of glass were replaced with other pieces of glass at random, of whatever colour they were, if coloured ones were available (perhaps remnants of some of the small windows that had been completely destroyed) or white ones, which were given any colour, without any concern for whether the designs of the figures and ornaments were badly distorted and disfigured. (p. 221)"

"The physical, conceptual, mental or temporal flexibility that the three projects propose de-construct the sacredness of national memory narratives (shaped strongly by collective traumas and their political exploitation)."

"In the context of South Africa, these questions inevitably touch upon the political and historical disposition of the space, as the historical surroundings inform us on a traumatic past of apartheid."

"The past is part of our identity and eve as i sit in Europe thousands miles away from my country, my mind is focused on my ancestors, my past and my culture."

"Artistic practices of performance in contemporary art and theater, through reenactments, involve the public in activities that question the status quo, mobilize, and render visible that, which has been obscured by the official gaze."

"I am not cowardly and I keep my word. I am faithful to myself, ferocious to myself, and indulgent to others. That is I, the man. I love the song of love—that is I, the woman. I consciously create for myself illusions and dreams, that is I the artist … I am much more a man than a woman. The desire to please and to pity alone make me a woman. I hear and I take note … I am neither man nor woman—I am I."

"This is not to say that fantasy is free of social relations and power, but she argues that its process “orchestrates and shatters relations of power."

"Inevitably, the admission of women to the rank of exhibitors upsets the patriarchal hegemony of avant-garde creativity and introduces new relationships of power between people in the group."

"It is clear that aspects of the performative are relevant to psychoanalytical theory in general and feminist art historical enquiry in particular."

"That is why today, an intercultural event around the concept of the limits and excesses of the body can give food for thought on our present."

"This recent spectacular growth on the number of art students has certainly boosted the interest for art-related events but not necessarily produced more quality artists on the national and international scene yet"

"In an Arabo-Islamic country, it is important that artists remind and highlight the importance of the body in the private, social, and cultural life."

"I am particularly motivated to promote the work of Tunisian and North African contemporary artists who live in their countries, and don’t have enough international visibility."

"The history of the cult of in Rome has been well investigated and is well known ... In 204 B.C. a meteorite was brought from in to Rome. It came on a ship named Salvia up the Tiber. When the ship got stuck in the shallow waters, , an aristocratic maiden, freed it and drew it upstream with her belt. This miracle is reported by Ovid (Fasti, 4, 291-348) in the time of Augustus. It is still represented on an altar in the Capitoline Museum dedicated by Claudia Syntyche, probably in the Antonine period ... The same event is represented on a medallion for , that is after death and deification in 141 A.D. by her husband the emperor ... The statue, or rather the sacred stone, representing Cybele was then brought up to the , where under lively participation by the aristocracy was dedicated to the and a temple was erected and dedicated in 191 B.C. Augustus restored this temple as he did many other temples in Rome."

"I am to archaeologists what the is to tourists. They keep coming to see if the old lady is still around. And working."

"We owe our knowledge of pre-Greek art in Crete in large measure to the excavations of . The six volumes of Evans' publication of The Palace of Minos at Knossos, which appeared between 1921 and 1936, aroused a storm of enthusiasm for this marvelous civilization until then unknown. Cretan art is not only fundamentally different from but aesthetically superior to Egyptian and Oriental art. was from the beginning a close observer of this newly-discovered civilization and an important contributor to the vast literature which sprang up as a consequence of the many problems surrounding . I remember his guided tours for Fellows of the , whose director he became. They introduced us to this new civilization in the same clear and competent manner that I now find in his last book, written when he was 88 years old. … It is the best first introduction to Cretan art I know."

"The floral gift from the Netherlands and the province of the Dutch Church to the pope in Rome is too special not to give it continuity."

"The internal peace in the city of Bologna is matched by a new development of the arts, especially of architecture: so that the destruction of the Palazzo Bentivoglio [in C.E.1507] really seems to mark the death of the elegance and minute and hackneyed decorations of the fifteenth century and the beginning of a new rebirth by classical examples. (p. 116)"

"The formation of the Italian kingdom favored the development of an eclectic architecture and the renewed consciousness of our people soon led to grandiose building renovations and the applications of recent hygienic and sanitary conquests: but perhaps one day the regret will be great in thinking about which the master plans of Italian cities were entrusted to inexperienced hands. The sudden desire for demolitions and the sudden love for large spaces and large streets mathematically straight and intersecting at right angles prevented the coordination of the needs of traffic and hygiene with those of history and art and of preserving together with the fruits of new arts, the witnesses of the past and the picturesque aspects and the reasons for these aspects. (p. 164)"

"Guido Zucchini, Bologna, Italian Institute of Graphic Arts, Bergamo, C.E.1905."

"Bologna is not as well known as it deserves: its severe beauties, the gloomy appearance of the streets and houses, the escapes of endless porticoes, the play of shadows and lights of its winding streets and its bright squares , the solemn atriums and the sumptuous staircases, the decorative details of its terracottas, the calmness of the C.E.17th-century decorations do not allow the hasty traveler immediate enjoyment and do not elicit cries of admiration. The city, which first of all had an ancient civilization, which radiated so much light through the Studio allied to the flourishing of the highly democratic and humanitarian Municipality, which produced painters to support Baroque art with a magnificent brush, must be loved patiently, must be discovered step by step, corner by corner, act by act, intention by intention. (pp. 170-171)"

"Giovanni II Bentivoglio He did not neglect to make friends of the people with lavish celebrations and tournaments and splendid banquets and courtships, to considerably improve the city by favoring and procuring embellishments to the streets, houses, temples, to call to his small court of writers and artists and to show how, like the other lords, he too could aspire to the title of father of the country. (p. 80)"

"The forty-two years, in which Giovanni II Bentivoglio with the name of gonfaloniere for life, granted to him by the conventions of Paul II (C.E.1465), he was a true lord, mark an era of splendor never reached again in the history of the city [of Bologna]. Giovanni's prudent and shrewd lordship led to immediate benefits and a notable degree of prosperity and independence. (p. 79)"

"The mark left by Bentivoglio in the field of the arts was truly great: he was responsible for much of the current layout of the main streets and squares of Bologna and his desire to offer the foreigners who gathered here illustrious weddings and for splendid tournaments the view of a renewed city proud of its importance. The fortresses of the countryside and the walls and gates of the city were reinforced according to what the new science of war and the new obsidian methods required: his palace it was finished and enriched with a large tower and gardens, and rooms painted and decorated with gold ceilings (Gigli) and vast stables: the buildings of the Municipality and the Podestà at his behest they were restored and covered with new architecture: private individuals competed to erect houses and palaces so that in a short time the majority of the city was renovated and every man tried to build to the pleasure of Signor Messer Joane (Gaspare Nadi). Architects and bricklayers came from Lombardy and Veneto, sculptors from Tuscany, painters and illuminators from Ferrara and Modena; new and rich decorations in brightly colored terracotta, elegant candlesticks and boulder decorations came to adorn the facades of the houses, new paintings and frescoes enriched the churches, and Bologna was soon «bold, fantastic, shapely» (G. Carducci). (p. 81)"

"To him Aristotele Fioravanti we owe in all probability the model of the Palazzo del Podestà ordered by the Regiment in C.E.1472, since it was necessary to repair the façade towards the main square that the Burselli said it was ruinous for its antiquity. And the Municipality must have done well to entrust the study of the new works to , then the height of his fame, sought after and envied by the courts of Italy and abroad, wandering in those years between Rome, Naples (C.E.1471) and Bologna. It was better for no one than him to solve the problem of redoing the large portico and the Romanesque façade without completely demolishing either one or the other, but only covering them with new forms. (p. 83)"

"Towards C.E.1199, Bologna saw the two most singular and famous towers rise simultaneously: slender and vibrant, like a sword pointed towards the sky, the one built by the Asinelli and thrown upwards for more than ninety-seven meters above a square base of approximately eight meters on each side; slightly less wide, still resting on a base covered with selenite blocks, but inclined towards the east and unfinished due to the subsidence of the land, that of the Garisendi, who in the new competition of noble emulation had to stop the construction of the symbol of their strength. (pp. 28-30)"

"The freedom conquered [by the Bolognese] against the Viscontis, the desire to seal the new republican regime with a grandiose construction, dedicated to a local saint, perhaps emulation, which pushed them to surpass the cathedral of Milan and that of Florence, were the causes of the erection of San Petronio. (p. 54)"

"As the towers thickened, the great bell tower of San Pietro was added to the marvelous group of two hundred dark brick piers, built by Alberto, inzigniero of the Municipality and the Chapter in pure Romanesque style: at his feet the bishop Enrico della Fratta raised his episcopal seat by adorning it with a very high portico with round columns and circular arches. (pp. 38-39)"

"Aristotele Fioravanti [...] architect and engineer of the Municipality of Bologna, very skilled in regulating water and designing new hydraulic works, in straightening towers, in moving tenement buildings, good ' 'machine maker, as Filarete called him, and 'good expert in measurements. (pp. 82-83)"

"[...] if the decorations of the candlesticks and the capitals and moldings are due to Tuscan stonecutters, the architectural ensemble of the [del Podestà] palace appears to be the creation of a local craftsman who, in designing the model, had guided by the technical needs of the construction, the new renaissance forms and especially the design of the pilasters imported from Pagno di Lapo and finally some purely local uses, such as that of placing small circular windows in the frieze to illuminate the large and traditional flat ceiling rich in carved wood and paintings. (p. 83)"

"In reality, then, it was the Swiss historian, Jakob Burckhardt, who in 1860 established the concept that has been current in our time—the idea of a Renaissance as a general movement, particularly associated with the fifteenth century, coming to its climax around the year 1500, and primarily taking place in Italy. It was Burckhardt who conceived of the term Renaissance as descriptive of a whole historical period, as a great chapter in Italian history, and as a decisive stage or turning-point in the development of an entire civilisation, so that things which had hitherto been considered separate—the development of the modern state, for example—had now become enveloped by the concept too. And Burckhardt was one of the founders of what we call Kulturgeschichte, coming to this particular subject, indeed, with many of the prepossessions of the art-historian."

"Their knowledge and their faculty of observation were extraordinary. By their study of the world the Greeks illuminate not only their own nature but that of all other ancient peoples; without them, and the phillhellenic Romans, there would be no knowledge of past times, for all other nations attended to nothing but themselves, their own citadels, temples and gods."

"In the life of the mind they [the Greeks] reached frontiers which the rest of mankind cannot permit themselves to fall short of, at least in their attempts to acknowledge and to profit, even where they are inferior to the Greeks in the capacity for achievement. It is for this reason that posterity needs to study the Greeks; if we ignore them we are simply accepting our own decline."

"All subsequent objective perception of the world is only elaboration on the framework the Greeks began. We see with the eyes of the Greeks and use their phrases when we speak."

"Burckhardt's Cultur der Renaissance in Italien is the most penetrating and subtle treatise on the history of civilisation that exists in literature; but its merit lies in the originality with which the author uses common books, rather than in actually new investigations."

"[About The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich] It's the introductory bible to our history. And I love it because it is for everyone. The fact that he writes in such beautiful prose that anyone can understand, you want to — you have heard of a term such as the Renaissance or the Baroque, and you can look that up in Gombrich. But he doesn't include any woman artist. He only includes one in his 16th edition, which is crazy. And the fact that I loved this book growing up, I wanted to write — if he was going to leave that women, I thought I'd leave out men."

"[T]his is the ultimate question that I want to ask my predecessors from 100 years ago: What happened to these women artists? It's almost as though they were consciously written out of art history. I don't really know. Was it ignorance or was it purposeful?"

"I don't agree that we should dismiss certain art forms and we should create a hierarchy. That's what the academies in the 18th century really did. They said painting and sculpture is at the top, and embroidery and craft like decorative arts is at the bottom. And what did women have access to? Decorative arts and craft."

"New York is such an instrumental city for art, and it’s extraordinary the impact that America’s had in art history, especially in the 20th century."

"So much of the time, when I read a short, 150-word bio of a female artist, male artists are referenced in relation to them. To be honest, I got a bit sick of it. Dora Maar is always being referred to as Picasso's lover, and actually what I want to do is scream and say Dora Maar was an incredible street photographer and Surrealist, and she was amazing. But how often does her name come up in telling his story?"

"Women have been artists for millennia, since the cave paintings. And yet Gombrich and Janson, their first editions didn't include a single woman artist. So it's actually down to who has been able to tell the story of art history. And of course, there are so many sexist barriers that the women had to jump over. Women artists in Europe weren't even allowed to be admitted to the life drawing studio until the 1890s. The fact that they even became professional artists despite these boundaries and everything being against them is so remarkable."

"I walked into the art fair, and I suddenly realized that none of the works were by women. It just was this epiphany moment. I had just finished a B.A. in art history, and I had to ask myself—could I name 20 women artists? The answer was no. I challenged myself to write an article about female Baroque and Renaissance artists, and suddenly I was learning about Elisabetta Sirani and Artemisia Gentileschi and Sofonisba Anguissola. I was unearthing all these stories—but they’re all there, and we shouldn’t have to hunt for them."

"[About the Guerilla Girls] Essentially, what they unveiled was the fact that museums are celebrating the history of patriarchy, as opposed to the history of art. And if we're not seeing art by a wide range of people and subjects of a wide range of people, then we’re not seeing society as a whole."

"There is a lot one can do with science students as this aspect of the arts lies very much in the domain of sciences. The arts and sciences interface in ways that we are yet to fully enjoy the benefits of such synergy. While my considerations may be aesthetically inclined, a student of science could tap into this expertise of an artist working in a familiar terrain. Students of engineering and chemistry can interact with the ceramics unit of the Department of Creative Arts in mould making, working with refractory bodies and compounding glazes from local resources. The same applies to the arts and architecture; both are two sides of a coin."