Essay Abstracts


Anne of Austria, Louis XIV, and Philippe de France, with the Battle of Rocroi in the Background / Anonymous
 
Barbara Gaehtgens, "Prints, Politics, and a Child King: The Battle of Rocroi in 1643," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 1–18.

In 1643, when Louis XIV became king of France, he was a four-year-old child whose mother, Queen Anne of Austria, took over the government as regent. A regency demanded new ways of political communication by visually spreading images of the young king and his mother displaying their shared government. This paper investigates the early days and weeks of the regency when the victories of the young general Louis de Bourbon, duc d'Enghien, posed a threat to the throne. Contemporary prints and engravings provide insight into the royal propaganda that sought to hold the challenger at bay.

Facade of the Chapel of the Third Order of Saint Francis of Assisi, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil / O Aleijadinho
 
Amy J. Buono, "Historicity, Achronicity, and the Materiality of Cultures in Colonial Brazil," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 19–34.

Much of the visual and material culture of colonial Brazil has been omitted from scholarly accounts because it falls outside the familiar repertoire of art-historical forms and materials, and also defies categorization by cultural origin and period style. Turning especially to Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann's notion of histoire croisée (intercrossed history), this article examines the methodological implications of incorporating such uncomfortable art objects into scholarly accounts by attending to three disparate kinds of artifacts especially characteristic of colonial Brazil: Tupinambá featherwork, Portuguese Atlantic mandinga bags, and architectural tilework. Each of these exemplifies the complex, transcultural processes that take place within colonial contexts, transgressing cultural, religious, and linguistic boundaries, and moving across continents, oceans, and centuries.

Four photographic portraits with Urdu and English captions / Daroga Haji Abbas Ali
 
Alka Patel, "The Photographic Albums of Abbas Ali as Continuations of the Mughal Muraqqaʿ Tradition," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 35–52.

Scholarship on nineteenth-century Indian photography claims that a relationship with Indian painting was discernible in both the compositions and content of the productions of Indian photographers. Scholars have most often delineated this "influence" in general rather than concrete terms, frequently relying on a monolithically conceived Indian painting tradition rather than specific genres. This essay contributes to the discourse by examining the oeuvre of Daroga Haji Abbas Ali, an Indian photographer based in Lucknow, one of the principal centers for the patronage of painting techniques, styles and subjects descended from the Mughal period (1526–1857). Ali's work evinces traces of the Muraqqaʿ (albums of collated paintings), possibly the modes of conveyance bringing 16th- through 18th-century subjects, compositions, and aesthetic concerns into the 19th century. The Muraqqaʿ was not simply a repository of historical masterpieces; it continued to be a patronized mode of artistic production into the age of photography. Thus, the Muraqqaʿ could be considered a relevant force in the emergence of Indian photography in general.

Case Study House 21, West Hollywood, California, 1958 / Koenig
 
Neil Jackson, "Case Study House 21: The (Re)making of a Collector's Item," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 53–66.

This essay, based upon material held in the Pierre Koenig Papers in the Getty Research Institute's Special Collections, describes the restoration of Case Study House 21 (the Bailey House) by the original architect from 1997 to 1999, 40 years after it was built. Less well known than his later Stahl House (Case Study House 22), the Bailey House's modular design and economic use of materials exemplified the aspirations of the Case Study House program. In the remaking of the building, Koenig demonstrated an extraordinary level of care for his favorite house. Supported by clients who allowed him to have his own way with his own building, this essay describes how Koenig returned the house to a level of perfection that not only attained new rewards and recognition but also allowed it eventually to be commoditized as a collector's item.


Photography's Past Futures


Infant Photography Gives the Painter an Additional Brush / Rejlander
 
Jan von Brevern, "The Eternal Child: On Expectations in the History of Photography," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 67–80.

From the time of its introduction onward, photography was loaded with expectations. Scientists and artists were convinced that its future would bring many yet-unforeseeable applications and discoveries. Where did this confidence in the future come from, and how did it shape the ways in which photography was used? Does it make sense for historians of the medium to take what could have happened as serious as what actually did happen? By looking at photography's past futures, the essay explores the possibility of writing a history of expectations.

A Japanese Artist at Work
 
Ann-Sophie Lehmann, "The Transparency of Color: Aesthetics, Materials, and Practices of Hand Coloring Photographs between Rochester and Yokohama," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 81–96.

An inconspicuous yet unique coloring booklet titled Peerless Japanese Transparent Water-Colors (1902) in the Getty Research Institute holdings contains instructions on how to color photographs as well as the colorants to do so. The analysis of its origin, instructional text, and colors sheds some new light on the production and import of large amounts of Japanese hand-colored photographs to the United States around 1900 and ultimately shows how the histories of hand-colored photographs and early color photography are related through materials, practices, and aesthetics.

Odeonsplatz / Hoffmann
 
Peter Geimer, "Photography as a 'Space of Experience': On the Retrospective Legibility of Historic Photographs," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 97–108.

The historian and theorist Reinhart Koselleck, having posited a distinction between "space of experience" and "horizon of expectation," has suggested "that during Neuzeit (literally "new time," the period since ca. 1500) the difference between experience and expectation has increasingly expanded; more precisely, that Neuzeit is first understood as a neue Zeit from the time that expectations have distanced themselves evermore from all previous experience." The temporalization of the arts was not without consequences for the pictorial representation of history: in the history painting, the "space of experience" becomes visible as the past. Against this backdrop, and drawing in detail on the thinking of the Weimar-era writer and theorist Siegfried Kracauer, the following essay is an inquiry into the historiographic potential of photography. As fixed evidence of a past world, every historic photograph is a record of survival. The photographic "space of experience" radicalizes the tendency toward temporalization that Koselleck has described as a characteristic of Neuzeit. The finality of the past corresponds to the temporality of the photographic image: photography constantly produces that which is past. The visual "space of experience" does not recreate the past; on the contrary, it is the visible evidence of its being over.

The Bow / Bragaglia
 
Katja Müller-Helle, "The Past Future of Futurist Movement Photography," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 109–23.

Since the second half of the 19th century, new media technologies established manifold ideas of how to think about the future. The way in which the future was conceptualized by way of the image technologies of photography and film fundamentally changed between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. Through an analysis of the Italian futurist Anton Giulio Bragaglia's experiments on movement photography between the years of 1911 and 1913, this article argues that expectations for the future shifted from one of technological optimization (from still photography to film) to an alternate paradigm of recurrence, recombination, and reconceptualization of older image techniques. By reassessing the so-called failures, or incapacities, of the chronophotographic practices of the 1880s and considering their reevaluation as a new mode of representing what Bragaglia called "the inner logic of movement," the futurist photographs question the linear teleology of technological optimization typically found within the history of photography. Instead, they propose a recursive structure that refers to preexisting, "outmoded" image techniques that open up unexpected horizons of the future.


Tools of Scholarship


Detail of cupid in acanthus / Montagny
 
Delphine Burlot and Martine Denoyelle, "'Digital Montagny': An Introspective Experience in Art History," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 125–32.

The way in which art-historical research is conducted and published has changed greatly with the increasing use of information technology. Digital Montagny is a research project that examines an album of antique works documented by Élie-Honoré Montagny, a French artist of the early 19th century. This seemingly traditional object is significant for the way that it opens up questions about art-historical methodologies and the ways in which the discipline is being revitalized today. The research project, a partnership between the Getty Research Institute and the Institut national d'histoire de l'art, has helped to establish the foundations of the Getty Scholars' Workspace, a new digital environment being developed by the Research Institute. Built upon lessons learned in the very first Scholars' Workspace project, Pietro Mellini's Inventory in Verse, 1681: A Digital Facsimile with Translation and Commentary, the Digital Montagny project compiles the multilevel information contained in the images to produce a born-digital publication of Montagny's album Recueil d'antiquités . . . (1804–37) that will include functionalities that a traditional print publication could not offer. The complexity of the Montagny album lends itself particularly to a digital and collaborative research approach, and one of the most obvious benefits of collaborating in a digital environment like the Scholars' Workspace is that research can progress despite geographic distance or barriers.

Mount Saos from the water / Blakely
 
Sandra Blakely, "Human Geography, GIS Technology, and Ancient Mysteries: A Case Study from the Island of Samothrace," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 133–42.

The spatial turn in the humanities has yielded a rich set of theoretical paradigms and new technologies for incorporating space into the analysis of cultural forms. Qualitative geographic information systems (GIS) represent a new pathway for investigation into two uniquely challenging, but historically central, cultural phenomena of the ancient Mediterranean world: the mystery cult of the Great Gods of Samothrace and the seafaring that was central to Greek economy and identity. The cult of the Great Gods was celebrated in the northeastern Aegean from 600 BCE to 400 CE, and while its procedures were sealed by secrecy, its promise was as well known as it was unusual: safety in travel at sea. This promise has not been part of the scholarly investigation of the rites to date. GIS provides tools to test the hypothesis that the rituals worked, in that they created a social network of communicating, cooperating, mutually supportive nodes. The project shines historical light on one of the most famous of the ancient Greek mystery cults, contributes to discussions of methodology for historical GIS, and opens a new chapter in the long relationship between classics and anthropology.


Acquisitions and Discoveries


Pieta / Carpaccio
 
Sara Menato, "Carpaccio Gleanings: Discoveries in the Photo Archive of the Getty Research Institute," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 143–50.

This article presents a few of the many research possibilities offered by the Photo Archive and Special Collections of the Getty Research Institute. On the basis of some annotated photographs, it has been possible to add to the information regarding a privately owned and little-studied Pietà, here attributed to Vittore Carpaccio. A previously unknown photograph, from the William Suhr Papers, shows the painting during restoration. The second work discussed is a little-known painting, a Head of Christ from the Carnegie Museum of Art. Adolfo Venturi published a small photograph of it, a copy of which is in the Photo Archive of the Research Institute and reproduced here. Attributed to Carpaccio early on in its critical history, the painting is now more convincingly assigned to the ambit of Francesco Bissolo. The changed attribution is based on the present condition of the canvas, which at some point must have undergone restoration.

A large-scale decorated initial / From the Getty Gratian
 
Leena Löfstedt, "Traces of Saint Thomas Becket in the Getty Gratian (J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig XIV 2)," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 151–56.

The early history of the Getty Gratian (Ms. Ludwig XIV 2) before 1599, when it turned up in France, is undocumented, but the characteristic mise-en-page and particular decorative style of this late 12th-century copy of Gratian's Decretum have led art historians to associate it with a number of strikingly similar manuscripts that were given to Christ Church Priory at Canterbury Cathedral by Thomas Becket and members of his intellectual circle. This brief article focuses on the text, especially the early marginal and interlinear glosses and commentaries, which have been largely overlooked by scholars. Close study of the early annotations corroborates the connection to Becket, making it a rare relic, of sorts, of the saint.

Portrait Bust of Angelika Kauffman / Hewetson
 
Wendy Wassyng Roworth, "The Angelica Kauffmann Inventories: An Artist's Property and Legacy in Early-Nineteenth-Century Rome," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 157–68.

A collection of documents at the Getty Research Institute related to the estates of Swiss-Austrian artist Angelica Kauffmann (1741–1807) and her cousin includes inventories of their properties and an Italian translation of her cousin's last will and testament. This article clarifies the identity of Kauffmann's cousin as Johann Kauffmann (1751–1829), not the sculptor Peter Kaufmann (1764–1829), and provides an overview of the manuscripts. Both inventories contain descriptions and appraisals of furniture, artworks, decorative objects, books, jewelry, and common household items; Angelica's inventory lists the contents of her well-equipped studio, including paintings left unfinished or unclaimed at the time of her death. These documents offer insight into her life and work, domestic arrangements, and professional practice at the end of a long and successful career, and information in the inventories helps trace the history of her paintings as well as her collection of artworks by others. The Getty documents also contain material for broader studies of the art business, collecting, taste, fashion, and social networks in the international community of artists and scholars in Rome during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

18. Great Hall, Carnac / Malan
 
Peter Louis Bonfitto, "'Harmony in Contrast': The Drawings of Solomon Caesar Malan," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 169–76.

Solomon Caesar Malan (1812–94) was an exceptional scholar of languages and religion. He traveled widely, from England to India. Malan had a remarkable technical command of drawing and recorded the beautiful views he encountered. In 1856 he published a small book that offered guidelines for other artists to follow. It is evident that his philosophy on art is a reflection of his own artistic practice as it developed over time. This article discusses the relationship between Malan's publication on drawing and a large group of his watercolors and drawings recently acquired by the Getty Research Institute.

from Heinrich Wolfflin, Die Jugendwerke des Michelangelo / Ackermann
 
Andrew James Hopkins, "Heinrich Wölfflin's Own Annotated Books," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 177–84.

The four books by Heinrich Wölfflin (Swiss, 1864–1945) that are owned by the Getty Research Institute are the author's copies containing Wölfflin's subsequent annotations. These books, along with a number of other books owned and annotated by Wölfflin and written by historians such as Jacob Burckhardt, are the subjects of this notice.

Miner, 1931 / Rivera
 
Mari-Tere Álvarez and Charlene Villaseñor Black, "Diego Rivera's 'California Miners' Sketchbook (1931): New Research on the Artist in California during the Great Depression," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 185–98.

While in San Francisco, California, in 1930 and 1931 to execute several mural commissions, including The Allegory of California and The Making of a Fresco, the famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera also produced an associated sketchbook. In 49 charcoal drawings, plus two additional watercolor landscapes, Rivera sketched the land, industry, and people of Northern California, in particular miners and the mining environment, as well as important patrons of his work. In this article, we contextualize the sketchbook within the history of California, identify several sitters for Rivera's portrait sketches, and additionally suggest reattributing one of the sketches to the artist's wife, Frida Kahlo.

Assassination of Secret Police, Hungarian Uprising / Sadovy
 
Isotta Poggi, "The Photographic Memory and Impact of the Hungarian 1956 Uprising during the Cold War Era," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 197–206.

John Sadovy, a freelance photographer commissioned by Life magazine, witnessed one of the most reprehensible moments of the 1956 Hungarian uprising: the assassination of secret police officers in Budapest's Republic Square. His iconic photographs of this summary execution were widely redistributed and repurposed in the highly polarized climate of the cold war by the Western media and by the Soviet propaganda machine. The West saw the images as symbols of hatred against tyranny, while the Soviet media used them as evidence of a major threat to the socialist value system. The bloody uprising, which was crushed by the Soviets soon after it began, scarred the country, leading it into the era known as Goulash Communism. Photographs and artifacts from this era attest to the transition from a pre-1956 world shaped by the utopian accomplishments of socialism to the disenchanted spirit of the workers, artists, and intellectuals of the new generation.

Harald Szeemann in front of Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass / Shunk
 
Pietro Rigolo, "Harald Szeemann's La Mamma: Notes on an Unrealized Exhibition," Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 207–13.

Through the analysis of unpublished notes preserved in the Harald Szeemann Papers, now at the Getty Research Institute, this essay analyzes the possible content of La Mamma, an unrealized exhibition the curator planned in the mid-1970s. The project is particularly significant as it was envisioned to be the second chapter in a trilogy through which Szeemann sought to experiment with the exhibition format as a medium for the visualization of abstract and complex concepts, with topics as various as theosophy, literature, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and current political affairs. Through these projects, Szeemann was developing an original theory of the creative process while at the same time creating a new role for himself as a highly innovative professional figure—what we would refer to today as an "independent curator."