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Art & Literature

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Essays

Rhythms of Construction

An Interview with C. de Portzamparc

by Cristelle Terroni & translated by Nicole Forstenzer, 23 May

Almost twenty years ago, Christian de Portzamparc was the first French architect to receive the Pritzker Prize. Today his Atelier, located in Paris, is more dynamic than ever, with ambitious (...)

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Reviews

Interweaving Eastern and Western Perspectives

About: Hans Belting, Florence et Bagdad. Une histoire du regard entre orient et occident, Paris 2012. (English translation: Hans Belting, Florence and Baghdad Renaissance Art and Arab Science, Harvard University Press, 2011.)

by Christian Joschke & translated by Nicole Forstenzer, 2 May

In Florence and Baghdad, Hans Belting writes a new history of the human gaze based on its symbolic value in relation to the image. His starting point is the cultural transfer between the East and (...)

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Reviews

Not Ruled by Time and Space

Reviewed: Alexander Nagel, Medieval Modern: Art out of Time, London, New York, Thames and Hudson, 2012, 312 pp, 134 illustrations.

by Elizabeth Williams, 18 March

Is an art historian looking at modern and contemporary art through the lens of medieval art necessarily risking anachronism? Breaking the taboo of cross-period comparison, Alexander Nagel’s (...)

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Essays

The Need to Compare

Jack Goody’s Historical Anthropology

by Thomas Grillot & translated by John Zvesper, 4 February

A highly respected figure in African studies, Jack Goody has become a distinctive voice in the torrent of academic critiques of western ethnocentrism. His work, spanning more than sixty years, (...)

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Essays

The Suspension of Meaning

An Interview with Jean Starobinski

by Sarah Al-Matary & translated by Susannah Dale, 28 January

Creating connections has been the aim of Jean Starobinski’s work for more than half a century. His body of work is large and shifting, created in response to life, lying somewhere between the (...)

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Reviews

How Paris Became a Museum

About:Ruth Fiori, L’invention du vieux Paris. Naissance d’une conscience patrimoniale dans la capitale, Wavre.

by Laure Bordonaba & translated by Eric Rosencrantz, 24 January

In L’invention du vieux Paris (“The Invention of Old Paris”) Ruth Fiori chronicles the rise of preservation societies in 19th century Paris that led to the patrimonialization of the capital. What (...)

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Dossiers

Debate, Democracy and the Public Sphere

by Lucie Campos, 8 January

In our second winter selection of reviews and essays, Books & Ideas takes a look back at a few important articles published over the last year on the current developments and trends affecting (...)

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Essays

Artistic Beauty as a Political Weapon

Contemporary Art from 1960 to 2010

by Vanina Géré & translated by Michael C. Behrent, 6 December 2012

Can art have an impact on sociopolitical reality? What matters most? Political content or aesthetic qualities? These questions have haunted contemporary art since the late sixties. Yet some (...)

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Essays

Thinking in Tongues

An interview with John A. Lucy

by Caroline Rossi, 8 October 2012

How does the language we speak affect the way we think? John A. Lucy’s unique answers to this question derive from his finding a middle ground between the opposing nativist universalist point of (...)

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Essays

Emergency Cinema

An Interview with Syrian Collective Abounaddara

by Cécile Boëx & translated by Susannah Dale, 5 October 2012

Since April 2011, a collective of Syrian filmmakers has been working on behalf of a people fighting for its freedom. Their short films invent a new cinematographic language adapted to the urgency (...)

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Reviews

For the Love of André

About: Aragon, Lettres à André Breton (1918-1931), Gallimard

by Daniel Bougnoux & translated by Eric Rosencrantz, 19 September 2012

Those I love create me, said the author of Le Fou d’Elsa. Aragon’s first great love was for André Breton: the letters he wrote to his mentor between 1918 and 1931 testify to the torments of a moral, (...)

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Reviews

Judges on Trial

About : Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, The Law in These Parts

by Yael Munk, 3 September 2012

The Occupied Territories are largely absent from the Israeli public sphere. Few movie directors even bother to tell their story anymore. Documentary maker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz has risen to the (...)

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Dossiers

The Power of Images

by Cristelle Terroni, 30 July 2012

How do images shape our worldview ? What do their study bring to our understanding of society ? Through interviews, essays and reviews this dossier shows how the close study of still or moving (...)

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Essays

What Images Show

An Interview with Philippe Descola

by Philippe Simay & translated by Michael C. Behrent, 5 April 2012

The curator of the recent La fabrique des images exhibit at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, anthropologist Philippe Descola offers a new approach of pictorial representations on the five (...)

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Essays

Anastasie and Massouda

The Two Faces of Israeli Censorship

by Jérôme Bourdon, 19 January 2012

How can journalists accept certain forms of censorship in a state which claims to be democratic? The following article looks at the different threats in Israel to freedom of speech, and shows the (...)

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Reviews

Challenging Mainstream Art

About: G. Allen, Artists’ Magazines, an alternative space for art, MIT Press.

by Cristelle Terroni, 13 January 2012

Towards the end of the 1960s the dematerialized forms of conceptual art transformed the modes of art production. The advent of art works which could be printed and reproduced in the pages of (...)

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Essays

The Rise and Fall of Alternative Spaces

by Cristelle Terroni, 7 October 2011

Throughout the 1970s, New York’s alternative spaces appeared through the spontaneous initiatives of avant-garde artists whose wish was to emancipate art from the institutional and commercial (...)

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Reviews

Picturing Fantasies

About: R. Irwin, Visions of the Jinn: Illustrators of the Arabian Nights, Oxford University Press.

by Claire Gallien, 7 September 2011

Robert Irwin’s Visions of the Jinn looks at the illustrations of the Arabian Nights and provides a unique account of the history of publishing in modern Europe. By engaging this central work of (...)

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Reviews

A Corrective History of Chinese Urban Cinema

About: Y. Braester, Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract, Duke University Press.

by Madeleine Wilcox, 9 March 2011

This study of the role of moving images within the discourse on urban planning is a reflection on the effects of the visual culture of Chinese cities on policy and development. It demonstrates a (...)

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Reviews

Collecting as Infatuation

by Philippe Simay, 9 February 2011

What is it that drives the collector of primitive art? According to a new study carried out by two ethnologists it is neither a taste for speculation nor acquisitiveness but rather an intuitive (...)

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Reviews

We Have Always Been Modern

About: P-D. Huyghe, Modernes sans modernité, Éloge des mondes sans style, Nouvelles Éditions Lignes.

by Anne Boissière, 26 November 2010

What does it mean to be modern? Is the modern era over, as proponents of post-modernism claim? Flying in the face of conventional definitions, Pierre-Damien Huyghe defends a conception of the (...)

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Reviews

Seeing Double

About: C. Chéroux, Diplopie, Le Point du Jour.

by Gérôme Truc, 16 September 2010

Why is the photographic record of 9/11, the most photographed event in history, limited to an endlessly repeated loop of a handful of images? In a book as rich as it is concise, Clément Chéroux, a (...)

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Reviews

Multilingualism Is a Humanism

About : F. Ost, Traduire. Défense et illustration du multilinguisme, Fayard.

by Leyla Dakhli, 15 April 2010

As Umberto Eco once said, “the language of Europe is translation”. In an essay that strikes a political chord, François Ost rises up in defence of the diversity and invincibility of languages. (...)

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Essays

Portrait of the intellectual as a DJ

Wikipedia and the question of scientific expertise

by Philippe Lacour, 12 March 2010

Wikipedia is on its way to becoming something of an institution in today’s intellectual landscape. What role, one might ask, is scientific expertise going to play here? According to Philippe (...)

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Reviews

What Remains of Dance

About: F. Pouillaude, Le Désœuvrement chorégraphique, Vrin.

by Bernard Sève, 11 February 2010

The various dance notation systems invented over the years have never succeeded in becoming part of choregraphic practices. Works are almost completely absorbed by the performance and are only (...)

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Essays

Rebel with a Prescription: Eminem, or America on Drugs

by Sylvie Laurent, 23 October 2009

Eminem, like millions of Americans, just strolls down to his local pharmacist. Thus at a time when the country is questioning its future state of health, the inspired artist exposes the hidden (...)

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Reviews

The art market before the French Revolution

About: C. Guichard, Les Amateurs d’art à Paris au XVIIIe siècle, Champ Vallon.

by Colin Jones, 8 April 2009

Charlotte Guichard highlights the role of the amateur d’art in the XVIIIth century art market. Although he played a key role in the rise of French art in the last half century of the Ancien (...)

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Reviews

Samuel Beckett in history

About: P. Temkine, Warten auf Godot. Das Absurde und die Geschichte, Matthes & Seitz.

by Ariel Suhamy, 13 November 2008

Waiting for Godot: jewel of absurdist theatre or historical play? Valentin and Pierre Temkine topple the interpretation of this classic play by replacing it within the context of its creation. (...)

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Essays

Designing wisdom through the Web: The passion of ranking

by Gloria Origgi, 30 September 2008

How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers? Gloria Origgi claims that Internet is a giant network of (...)

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