even large folio volumes that contain the prints after Raphael by contemporary and later engravers. Like the bulk of the collection, the Raphael oeuvre had been assembled and catalogued in 1717/18 by the Parisian bookseller, publisher and print dealer Jean Mariette in cooperation with his now more famous son Pierre-Jean Mariette. The lecture by Antoinette Friedenthal - who is currently preparing an annotated edition of the correspondence between Jean Mariette and Pierre-Jean Mariette, 1717-1719 - will explore this important chapter in the history of connoisseurship.

at the Palais Royal and then in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre by the 1690s — were of comparatively restricted attendance. Yet already contained in them was the tension between the rule-bound tradition of academic pedagogy and the more progressive tendencies of venturesome artists pandering to popular taste.

What had begun in the 1670s as the French Académie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture’s desire to foster artistic competition and thus progress, and as an invitation to a nascent public to scrutinize and judge the products of its Academicians, had evolved by the mid-eighteenth century into one of the most charged public forums for the exchange of aesthetic and political ideas. A catalyst was the emergence of the new literary genre of art criticism in the 1740s, which from the outset contained a strongly partisan wing highly critical of official art and of the Crown’s management of national art production. Aesthetic judgements were in this way often of a piece with political critiques, thus compounding the meanings and public impact of artworks and their interpretation.

As an arm of the French Crown, the Académie suffered a similar fate during the Revolution, being abolished in 1793 only to re-emerge as the Institut national and, later, as the École des Beaux Arts. These successive institutions managed the Salon fitfully. It endured in close alliance with official arts policy during the Empire and benefited from the more permissive era of the Bourbon Restoration. Later, having fully entered the popular imaginary through the explosion of modern press coverage after mid-century, it became the defining context that gave rise to modern art. Indeed, if the number of exhibitions and visitors doubled during Napoleon’s reign, by the last quarter of the century the Salon had reached an altogether different level of impact. Now featuring thousands of works viewed by tens of thousands of visitors, the Salon as an international cultural phenomenon can be seen as the precursor of today’s many biennales.

g original artworks by world-renowned artists such as Marc Chagall, Marino Marini, Victor Pasmore and Julian Trevelyan. Moreover, this year’s exhibition is giving special attention to and showcase the art works of Italian master etcher Gianfranco Ferroni.

Exhibiting artists include Paul Carbonaro, Marc Chagall, Gianfranco Ferroni, Eman Grima, Marino Marini, Luciano Micallef, Victor Pasmore, Richard Saliba, Giuseppe Santomaso, Gino Severini, Julian Trevelyan, Jesmond Vassallo, etc.

s etchings "Kräuterstücke” (herb pieces), in which he combined magnified foliage with dwarfed figures, thus amplifying the fantastic in nature.

The monumental colour woodcuts by Franz Gertsch (born 1930), too, are oversized depictions of plants, impressing the viewer with their ingenious mixture of richness of detail and abstraction.

Simone Nieweg (born 1962) explores suburban areas in her photographs and examines gardens in terms of “utilized landscapes”. Here, nature turns out to be an artificial construction.

For Natascha Borowsky (born 1964) a coastal strip near Bombay served as a fairytale forest, with branches draped with litter and fragments of various materials. Not unlike Kolbe, her photographs give rise to a cosmos in which human artefacts and nature become one.

xperimentation and utopian idealism, which produced some of the most iconic images in the history of graphic design.

The eruption of the First World War, the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and the subsequent civil war broke down established political and social structures and brought an end to the Tsarist Empire. Russia was split into antagonistic worlds: the Bolsheviks and the enemy, the proletariat and the exploiters, the collective and the private, the future and the past. The deft manipulation of public opinion was integral to the violent class struggle. Having seized power in 1917, the Bolsheviks immediately recognized posters as a critical means to tout the Revolution’s triumph and ensure its spread. Posters supplied the new iconography, converting Communist aspirations into readily accessible, urgent, public art.

This exhibition surveys genres and methods of early Soviet poster design and introduces the most prominent artists of the movement. Reflecting the turbulent and ultimately tragic history of Russia in the 1920s and 1930s, it charts the formative decades of the USSR and demonstrates the tight bond between Soviet art and ideology.

All works in this exhibition are generously lent by Svetlana and Eric Silverman ’85, P’19.

enes skillfully adapted the centuries-old techniques of ukiyo-e (woodblock printing) to achieve altogether new atmospheric and light effects. The Ackland’s exhibition Flash of Light, Fog of War examines how these printmakers created dynamic compositions—soldiers silhouetted against fiery pyrotechnic explosions, beams of bright white electrical light illuminating the hulls of steel warships, and the haze of spent gunpowder obscuring the brutal combat of the battlefield—that were part reportage and part dazzling artistic display.

Flash of Light, Fog of War draws on a gift of over 240 Japanese prints given to the Ackland Art Museum by Gene and Susan Roberts. For the exhibition, these prints have been supplemented with exciting new acquisitions and loans of Japanese textiles and ceramics from the collection of Jacqueline M. and Edward G. Atkins.

Flash of Light, Fog of War is accompanied by a full-color exhibition catalogue.

This exhibition has been made possible by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Ackland’s Ruth and Sherman Lee Fund for Asian Art. Support for the exhibition catalogue was provided by Gene and Susan Roberts.

ndscape became a favorite subject for print artists, who portrayed the crowded streets and nighttime entertainments. In Café District in Shinjuku (Shinjuku kafe gai) of 1930 by Oda Kazuma (1882–1956), revelers make their way home down a darkened narrow street lit only by shop signs. The city is also the subject of one of the most famous Japanese print series of modern times, the landmark Recollections of Tokyo (Tokyo kaiko zue). When this set was issued in 1945, many original and recut blocks from the 1930s were used. In these images, well-known sites of the city such as Tokyo Station and the Ginza area are frozen in time, shown in their more thriving prewar versions.

Among Japanese city dwellers, the rapid urbanization process sparked nostalgia for the scenery of the countryside and of their hometowns, or furusato. Many felt that foreign collectors would not buy prints featuring the modern city—that rather, they would prefer a more traditional and serene vision of Japan. As a result, artists produced idealized visions of rural Japan that would appeal to those both at home and abroad. In Catching Whitebait at Nakaumi in Izumo (Izumo Nakaumi Shirauo tori) of 1924, also by Oda Kazuma, a lone fisherman plies along under the moon and stars, and lanterns create dancing reflections on the currents. He gazes out upon the distant hills described in beautiful shades of deep blue.

The kind of life seen in the placid views of fishermen and farmhouses was disappearing, and life in Tokyo would never be the same after World War II. In these images, however, they both remain unchanged. This exhibition offer views of the city juxtaposed across the gallery space with with images of the country, allowing viewers the opportunity to compare these two sides of modern Japan.

e work of art is more than a visual object. It has surface, texture that can be touched, and emits or evokes sounds, smells and tastes. Recently, academic studies on the Senses have flourished, especially in the context of the material approach to visual studies; meanwhile, museums and art institutions have been considering new ways to augment visitor experience through the Senses, and better engage with visitors who have sensory impairments; and in contemporary art, performance, video and sound can incorporate more than one Sense at a time, and calls into question the primacy of the visual. This Graduate Seminar Series, 'Art and the Senses', seeks to appreciate the roles of the Senses in visual culture, explore the Senses’ problematic and pleasurable qualities, and ultimately offer participants the opportunity to engage with their own Senses.

were part of an initiative of the revolutionary government to develop cultural awareness and dialogue after Fidel Castro and the guerrilla forces overthrew the brutal dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 altered not only politics, society, and the economy but the cultural sphere as well, greatly expanding access to and engagement with the arts, particularly cinema, for a large portion of the population. During the early years of the Revolution, poster designers had few material resources and operated in an almost artisanal manner, using the silkscreen technique. While the limited resources imposed by the embargo inspired many of the design decisions, revolutionary ideals also influenced these graphic artists. The approximately 40 posters featured in the exhibition—which promoted films such as Singin’ in the Rain, Cabaret, and Silence of the Lambs as well as a few select Cuban films, such as a documentary about Marilyn Monroe—are astonishing in their composition, stylistic diversity, and craft. Hollywood in Havana showcases how design and visual imagery in film posters, which are ubiquitous in Los Angeles, can infiltrate our lives and inform our ideas about the world.

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ALSO ON VIEW: "LA Redux: Reduction Linocuts by Dave Lefner" (August 20, 2017–January 7, 2018)

For the last twenty-five years native Angeleno and one of the country’s foremost reduction linocut artists Dave Lefner (b. 1969) has explored and recorded the historic and vintage characteristics of Los Angeles, from the sleek lines of mid-century American automobiles, to roadside signage and dilapidated neon theater marquees. A self-professed “old soul,” Lefner preserves the icons of America’s Golden Age in the exacting, time-consuming, and relatively lost art of reduction linocuts. The artist’s prints depict a nostalgia for the glamour of old Los Angeles with both a playfulness and masterful precision that belies their complex creation. LA Redux: Reduction Linocuts by Dave Lefner explores Lefner’s prints and process, presenting a vivid picture of Los Angeles’s past and present as well as the ingenuity and creative processes the city continues to inspire.

On view in the PMCA’s Project Room, the exhibition celebrates the artist’s significance as part of the Los Angeles and PMCA community. Not only does Lefner live and work at The Brewery, the world’s largest artist colony, he also regularly leads printmaking workshops at the PMCA and is one of the honorees at the Museum’s ¡Fiesta Cubana! gala in fall 2017. Featuring approximately 10 prints, LA Redux, like the artist’s retro prints, revives the bygone architecture, signage, and automobiles of Los Angeles while shining a neon spotlight on the artist’s dedication to craft and the perpetuation of culture.