Burlington Contemporary is the Burlington Magazine’s free online platform for reviews and research on international contemporary art.
Burlington Contemporary is the Burlington Magazine’s free online platform for reviews and research on international contemporary art.
A journal devoted to the history of art treads cautiously as it comes to examine the art of the recent past. In theory there is no reason why that should be. A historian's duty is to present the facts, to be as dispassionate as possible about the particular works and artists under investigation. We know from experience that such objectivity is desirable but rare. Critical opinion, personal bias and popular esteem colour the historian's selection. It is here that the more interesting if less accurate reading is to be found. A glance at the contents pages of this magazine, from its first number in 1903, vividly demonstrates that the historian changes the cut of his clothes like everyone else.
ON 1st June 1953 Time Magazine published a short article about Picasso's War and Peace. Entitles 'Murals from the Party', it described the paintings as communist statements, calling the figure on the far left in War 'the communist version of mankind's protector; a heroic Red peace partisan, with a peace dove shield.' A few weeks earlier the New York Times had reported that 'the new large canvas War seems political propaganda - for within the communist lexicon the reference to germ warfare is overtly anti-American, and the truth-justice figure is shielded by the Cominform's Peace Dove.'
CONSTANTIN Brancusi's Column of the Infinite constitutes, if not one of the most important contributions to modern sculpture, certainly one of the most exciting and original expressions of twentieth-century art. Unfortunately, little is known about the sculpture beyond a small circle of specialists and enthusiasts of 'Brancusiana'. The main reasons are simple enough: an awkward geographical location which renders access to the monuments difficult, and an inexplicably restricted amount of written material. This article is primarily concerned with putting forward a tentative elucidation of the as yet unexplained genesis of the Column, possible sources of inspiration and technical problems. It is an attempt to rekindle interest in a work of art that has been sadly neglected.
IN recent years, for reasons which include the magnitude of his contribution as a critic, the controversial prominence of Greenbergian formalist theory and the growing interest in Bloomsbury, Roger Fry had been much discussed. But usually this has been as a subject incidental to a writer's principal theme, and in the process Fry's views have often been distorted by over-simplification. As a painted, his work has been overshadowed by his fame as a critic to the point, seemingly, of near-invisibility, for such discussion as there has been has echoed received opinion rather than given evidence of familiarity with a range of actual examples.
