Publications and Presentations

Center 41

Center publications include collections of essays based on symposia and seminars, web presentations, reference works, and special publications.

Two publications appeared from the Bollingen Series published by Princeton University Press in association with the National Gallery of Art. Based on the 67th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, Brutal Aesthetics: Dubuffet, Bataille, Jorn, Paolozzi, Oldenburg by Hal Foster, Princeton University, was published in November 2020. The Thief Who Stole My Heart: The Material Life of Sacred Bronzes from Chola India, 855–1280 by Vidya Dehejia, Columbia University, was published in May 2021, and stems from the 65th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts.

Recent Publications

Brutal Aesthetics: Dubuffet, Bataille, Jorn, Paolozzi, Oldenburg
Hal Foster
Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series
November 2020

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The Thief Who Stole My Heart: The Material Life of Sacred Bronzes from Chola India, 855–1280
Vidya Dehejia
Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series
May 2021

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Upcoming Publications

Beauty Born of Struggle: The Art of Black Washington, edited by Jeffrey C. Stewart, Studies in the History of Art, vol. 83, Symposium Papers LX

Boundary Trouble: The Self-Taught Artist and American Avant-Gardes, edited by Lynne Cooke, Studies in the History of Art, vol. 84, Symposium Papers LXI

Black Modernisms, edited by Steven Nelson and Huey Copeland, Seminar Papers, vol. 4

Recent Web Presentations

Reflections on the Collection: The Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professors at the National Gallery of Art

To our left, a young woman sits facing us on a low stone wall at the base of the vertical, black bars of an iron fence and a young girl stands facing away from us to our right in this horizontal painting. Both have pale skin. The woman looks directly at us with dark eyes as she holds an open book, a closed red fan, and a sleeping brown and white puppy in her lap. Her long auburn hair falls down over her shoulders. Her navy-blue dress is accented with white piping on the skirt, collar, and sleeves, and has three large, white buttons down the front and her black hat is adorned with two red poppies and a daisy. The girl wears a sleeveless white, knee-length dress belted with a marine-blue sash tied in a large bow at her back. The girl’s blond hair is pulled up and tied with a black ribbon. She raises her left hand to grasp the bar of the fence she faces. A bunch of green grapes lies on the low wall to our right. A plume of steam fills much of the space beyond the black fence, which spans the width of the painting and extends off the top edge. A few details can be made out beyond the fence, including a stone-gray building with two wooden doors to our left and a bridge along the right edge.

Edouard Manet, The Railway, 1873, oil on canvas, Gift of Horace Havemeyer in memory of his mother, Louisine W. Havemeyer, 1956.10.1

David Bomford on Édouard Manet’s The Railway (1873)
Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, 2018
Released September 2020
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A woman climbs a ladder propped against a tall base of a white stone sculpture with a sledgehammer over one shoulder in this vertical, arched painting. The statue stands in a narrow town square hemmed in with buildings on each side. About a dozen people look on from the ground and from a balcony to our right. All the people have pale skin and wear dresses, robes, or cloaks in topaz blue, red, harvest yellow, or black. The base of the statue is twice as tall as any of the onlookers, and the statue atop is life sized. The base has eagles standing astride garlands, with flame-like leaves flaring above their heads. The statue is of a nude male with chin-length hair. He holds a gold staff in one hand and what appears to be a branch in the other. The woman climbing the ladder wears a carnation-pink dress, a gold crown, and has a gold, disk-like halo. Two more women brace the foot of the ladder, and another stands nearby. The three-story building behind them has a white façade with a carved, pink entablature across the top of the first level. More women and men gather to our right in front of a terracotta-orange building with a wide, arch opening on the ground level. Four women look down from a balcony on the second level. The face of that building is carved over the door to read, “EVSEBIV.” A tree grows beyond an enclosing wall at the far side of the square, between the buildings, beneath an azure-blue sky.

Giovanni d'Alemagna, Saint Apollonia Destroys a Pagan Idol, c. 1442/1445, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.7

Thomas Kren on Giovanni d’Alemagna’s Saint Apollonia Destroys a Pagan Idol (c. 1442/1445)
Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, 2016
Released June 2020
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