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Curator's Corner

Wistful about Writing: Tughra

Monday, July 11, 2022 | Karl Cole

I am painfully aware that very few people learn to write in cursive these days. When I was a teaching assistant in grad school, some students couldn’t read my grading remarks because I wrote the ...

Curator's Corner

Hispanic Heritage Month: Mixtec Culture

Monday, September 30, 2019 | Karl Cole

The final post in my Hispanic Heritage Month series features the Mixtec culture. Throughout Mesoamerica, the great cultures of the Classic period (ca. 250–900 CE), the Mayan, Teotihuacán, ...

Curator's Corner

A Multicultural Proclaimer: Safavid Dynasty

Monday, December 18, 2017 | Karl Cole

Westerners usually think of the Archangel Gabriel in terms of Christmas cards depicting the Annunciation, when he proclaimed to Mary that she would conceive Jesus. Well, it turns out that he was a mul ...

Curator's Corner

What's in a Snake 2: Deccan Painting

Tuesday, February 7, 2017 | Karl Cole

Yesterday I introduced the snake as a subject in art. Here’s an example of a sinister serpent/person in Hindu tradition. Aghasura was a demon follower of the evil (pseudo-demon) king Kamsa (of M ...

Curator's Corner

Letters Are Beautiful

Thursday, October 13, 2016 | Karl Cole

I learned long ago how venerated calligraphy is in some cultures, and we speak of that in many of our Davis books. A short while ago as I was reading about contemporary Iranian artist Parastou Forouha ...

Curator's Corner

World Watercolor Month

Friday, July 8, 2016 | Karl Cole

July is World Watercolor Month. I’m always happy to celebrate a medium in which I am really not terribly good. I have a feeling it’s because I’m an impatient Virgo who can’t st ...

Curator's Corner

Survey No. 9: What is Romanticism?

Monday, January 12, 2015 | Karl Cole

Last week I discussed the stylistic designation “classicism” in both Western and non-Western art produced in the 1800s. For today’s New Slant on Art History, I continue to look at th ...

Curator's Corner

Survey No. 8: Neoclassicism

Monday, January 5, 2015 | Karl Cole

Art is produced steadily on a second-by-second basis throughout the world. In our art history survey, we are now entering the 1800s, a period in world history when the influence of art from non-Wester ...

Curator's Corner

Survey No. 7: The 1700s

Monday, December 22, 2014 | Karl Cole

As we approach the 1800s in our Art History Survey, just so we do not forget (as if) that art was being produced in other parts of the world besides the West, let’s look elsewhere at art produce ...

Curator's Corner

Hierarchical Size

Tuesday, October 14, 2014 | Karl Cole

Hierarchy is the level of importance allotted to an object, or, for the sake of this posting, a person. Hierarchical size deals with the principle of design known as proportion. Proportion has to do w ...

Curator's Corner

Calligraphy/Typeface as Abstraction

Monday, September 23, 2013 | Karl Cole

Abstraction is defined as the reduction of form to simple (geometric, or organic) or decorative (a word I hate) shapes. I’ve blogged briefly about calligraphy in the past, but I rarely get a cha ...

Curator's Corner

Illuminated Manuscript Obsession

Monday, March 4, 2013 | Karl Cole

I’ve posted about manuscripts previously, because I LOVE THEM! That love has since extended to myriad cultures around the globe that produce such artworks. Therefore, in this post I won’t ...

Curator's Corner

New Acquisitions: Treasured Renaissance Book

Tuesday, June 14, 2011 | Karl Cole

I’ve really admired the work of manuscript illuminators since I went to the Newbury Library at the University of Chicago while in grad school. I got to actually hold some of these precious works ...

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Wistful about Writing: Tughra

Hispanic Heritage Month: Mixtec Culture

A Multicultural Proclaimer: Safavid Dynasty

What's in a Snake 2: Deccan Painting

Letters Are Beautiful

World Watercolor Month

Survey No. 9: What is Romanticism?

Survey No. 8: Neoclassicism

Survey No. 7: The 1700s

Hierarchical Size

Calligraphy/Typeface as Abstraction

Illuminated Manuscript Obsession

New Acquisitions: Treasured Renaissance Book

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