Early Medieval Art

I have just returned from the annual meeting of the College Art Association, and on the plane trip there, I read an article in the Harvard Magazine on how “visual, audio, and interactive media are transforming the college classroom.” Sadly, I am not at all surprised that the article makes no reference to the leadership of those in attendance at the conference.

The skills of art history – namely, the analysis and interpretation of images – should place us at the vanguard of the new visual pedagogy.  But while scientists and historians are demonstrating a passion for presenting their materials visually, at CAA, when art historians presented their own work, they showed surprisingly minimal concern for the visual presentation of their objects and monuments.

The rooms at such conferences are generally deeper than they are wide, with most attendees at a fair distance from a small screen adjacent to the podium, yet speakers seldom made an effort to maximize the visibility of their images.  I saw too many slides with jarring white backgrounds or distracting cloudy blue backgrounds.  Text competed with image to the clear disadvantage of the object or monument represented.  And the temptation to overload slides with multiple images was not quashed by the necessary diminution of each individual image.  Even if a speaker sensibly limited a slide to one image, he or she would neglect to expand the image to fill the slide, leaving useless blank space, or would neglect to crop the photo so that a grey sky or some other empty space crowded out the work of art.   Speakers spoke of details that attendees had no chance of seeing, and their images became elevator music for the eyes.

So it is with sadness that I read the enthusiastic words of professors from a variety of other disciplines about the importance of training students to look.  In the article linked to above, professor of History, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich argues

“We have a very visually oriented group out there.  But they are not necessarily savvy at analyzing visual images.  They absorb it, they’re used to it, they expect it, but it sometimes fades into the background like wallpaper.  I’m trying to make them more aware of the things they constantly consume.  You have to teach people to look.“

In the next paragraph, I find echoes of my teaching philosophy:

“Indeed, if images and soundtracks are the future of pedagogy, then teaching the young to look must become a high priority. This is yet another area in which technology has outpaced the human capacity to cope with it. People believe—complacently—that they know how to read, but can they really see? Engaging with images in a sophisticated and critical manner is an uncommon skill, even among the younger generation that has grown up with them. Educational institutions have evolved an advanced verbal culture, but sounds and images occupy a far more primitive academic habitat. Librarians deploy powerful tools, for example, for cataloging books and words, but the intellectual technology for classifying images lags far behind. Professors of the future will need not only to expose their classes to pictures, but to teach students how to question them.”

How can there possibly be no mention of art history?  Sadly, I think that we have only ourselves to blame.  Art historians should provide models for the incorporation of visual sources into teaching.  We should be among the most sophisticated in our use of technologies that make our monuments and objects more visible.  We should lead in this task of educating students to prolong their looking and to articulate what they see.  And yet other fields pass us by and put us to shame.  We lose our chance to make art history relevant and essential to the future of liberal arts education, as others take up the task that should most naturally fall to us.

I am absolutely amazed by the photographs of Gordon Plumb on Flickr of various stained glass windows in France and England.  And how generous for him to make them visible in such extremely high resolution!

A good set of broader views of the frescoes at the Monastery di Torba in Gornate Olona, in Lombardy.

Antiquité Tardive for Late Antique art in French collections

I am back to teaching after a brief stint in the museum world, and as I will be teaching the survey of ancient and medieval art many times this upcoming year, most of my postings will likely be over at my other web site.  But I will check in here from time to time, as the spirit moves me.

In the meantime, I have discovered that a great source for photographs of church art, Sacred Destinations, now has a photostream on Flickr (only to imply that it is only more recent than when I last taught in the Spring of 2008).  I have found many photos for teaching on Sacred Destinations and always assumed that they were a travel agency, or something like that, but just by reading their “About Us”, I realize it is one individual and her husband.  Amazing.

Oldest known portrait of St Paul revealed by Vatican archaeologists

Pope Says Tests ‘Seem to Conclude’ Bones Are the Apostle Paul’s

An Expected Update:

First, let’s imagine that a university art museum has among its treasures a small painted chamber from a site that it excavated many years ago.  This small painted chamber is no ordinary painted chamber of antiquity (if there is such a thing), but one which features in every survey of western art.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the state of this chamber’s preservation is deplorable.  In fact, the chamber is preserved in a number of panels of plaster on which no paint remains (at least, so it is reported, for no outside scholar has been permitted to view them for decades).

Now, let’s say that the museum, as it plans for the re-installation of its ancient galleries, has a plan for their conservation.  They will simply repaint the original plaster to recreate the original program.  Yes, repaint.

Am I the only art historian who would finds this intellectually dishonest?

Now, I specialize in wall painting, and the church that figures most centrally in my research, that of the Monastery of Saint John in Muestair, Switzerland, has suffered from repaintings and retouchings.  Plaster, similarly removed, but merely retouched,  languishes in the off-site storage  of the Landesmuseum in Zurich.  But at least it is preserved.   And conservators painstakingly reverse the retouchings that paintings still on the wall were subjected to in the mid-twentieth century.  But full repaintings were reversed soon after they were made, their offense quickly understood.

I appreciate the usefulness of a recreation.  The Museo Archeologico dell’Alto Adige in Bolzano/Bozen usefully recreates the interior of the Chapel of Saint Benedict in Malles/Mals.  You can see a small photo of it here.

But such recreations should not come at the cost of the original, such as this museum has planned.  The panels of plaster, although no longer the bearers of art, should still be preserved as artifacts.  Isn’t it possible that one day, elements of the wall painting, invisible to the naked or even microscopic eye, could one day be discovered on or within the original plaster?  Why can’t the museum just use new plaster, which would simulate much more authentically the original visual effect?  Does this imminent action by the museum warrant coordinated scholarly outrage?

At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard

A Turnaround Specialist Takes on Italy’s Museums

Although I rather enjoy the challenge of finding obscure objects in Italy’s poorly-presented museums, it would be better for the cultral patrimony itself, if the visitor were more of a priority; so, I am inclined to look forward to the changes promised by Mario Resca.