Spring 2019 (5.1)
Articles
The Girl Behind the Counter: Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones and the Modern Shop Girl
A focused examination of the artist’s portrayals of the shop girl, alongside an understanding of what that role represented in the early twentieth century, offers a more complicated picture of the working woman and the association of middle-class consumers with her.
In the Round
Amateurism and American Visual Culture: An Introduction
Artists employ amateurism, both overtly and obliquely, for a number of reasons—to find relief from the burdens of expertise, to heighten the authenticity of their work, or to casually incorporate a new craft or technology into their fine art. But again and again, the amateur attitude works to dissipate the aura of authority that hangs around learned and professional practices.
Bully Pulpit
A more satisfying definition entails important ethical and often activist dimensions relating to both human and other-than-human life.
Responses
Joni Adamson, Professor, Department of English, Arizona State University
Subhankar Banerjee, Lannan Chair and Professor of Art & Ecology, University of New Mexico
Alan C. Braddock, Ralph H. Wark Associate Professor of Art History & American Studies, William & Mary
T. J. Demos, Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture, and Director, Center for Creative Ecologies, University of California, Santa Cruz
Stephen F. Eisenman, Professor, Art History, Northwestern University
Jessica L. Horton, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, University of Delaware
Sarah Kanouse, Associate Professor of Art and Design, Northeastern University
Research Notes
Asher Durand’s Progress Reconsidered
Why would Durand, who believed so strongly that the role of landscape was to turn viewers’ thoughts from human activities to the work of God, take on a subject such as Progress?
