Wistful about Writing: Tughra
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 ...
Read Article
< Back to Curator's Corner
Curator's Corner
Hispanic Heritage Month: Mixtec Culture
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, ...
Read Article
Curator's Corner
A Multicultural Proclaimer: Safavid Dynasty
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 ...
Read Article
Curator's Corner
What's in a Snake 2: Deccan Painting
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 ...
Read Article
Curator's Corner
Letters Are Beautiful
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 ...
Read Article
Curator's Corner
World Watercolor Month
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 ...
Read Article
Curator's Corner
Survey No. 9: What is Romanticism?
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 ...
Read Article
Curator's Corner
Survey No. 8: Neoclassicism
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 ...
Read Article
Curator's Corner
Survey No. 7: The 1700s
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 ...
Read Article
Curator's Corner
Hierarchical Size
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 ...
Read Article
