Unboxing the Canon

Episode 14: Visible/Invisible In this final episode of Season 2, we re-think art historian Linda Nochlin’s famous question “why have there been no great women artists?” through an intersectional lens that addresses work by women artists of colour. This episode examines co-host Madeline Collin’s research on visibility, invisibility and marginalization in the work of contemporary artists. We talk about the politics of looking and how we might think about the gaze in the work of Kara Walker, Teresa Margolles, Ana Mendieta, and Mari Katayama. We also consider the notion of the absent body and its trace in several works of art. Sources + further reading: “All That’s Left: The Art of Teresa Margolles.” The Critical Flame. http://criticalflame.org/all-thats-left-the-art-of-teresa-margolles/. “Ana Mendieta - MoMA.” The Museum of Modern Art. https://www.moma.org/artists/3924. Burton, Laini, and Jana Melkumova-Reynolds. “‘My Leg Is a Giant Stiletto Heel’: Fashioning the Prosthetised Body.” Fashion Theory 23, no. 2 (2019): 195–218. Campion, Chris. “Punk Prosthetics: The Mesmerising Art of Living Sculpture Mari Katayama.” The Guardian, March 6, 2017, sec. Art and design. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/mar/06/mari-katayama-japanese-artist-disabilities-interview. “Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta.” NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale. https://nsuartmuseum.org/exhibition/covered-in-time-and-history-the-films-of-ana-mendieta/. “‘Each Bubble Is a Body.’ Teresa Margolles.” Seismopolite. http://www.seismopolite.com/each-bubble-is-a-body-teresa-margolles. “Kara Walker. Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b’tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart. 1994.” The Museum of Modern Art. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/110565. Matsumoto, Masanobu. “Meet the Rising Japanese Artist Who Uses Her Amputated Legs to Question What Is a ‘Correct Body.’” ARTnews.Com. April 27, 2022. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/meet-japanese-artist-mari-katayama-1234626715/. McKeon, Lucy. “The Controversies of Kara Walker.” Hyperallergic. March 19, 2013. http://hyperallergic.com/67125/the-controversies-of-kara-walker/. Nochlin, Linda. “From 1971: Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” ARTnews.Com. May 30, 2015. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/retrospective/why-have-there-been-no-great-women-artists-4201/. “Teresa Margolles.” Peter Kilchmann Gallery. https://www.peterkilchmann.com/artists/teresa-margolles/overview/sonidos-de-la-muerte-sounds-of-death-2008. Wuertz, Christopher Alessandrini, Stephanie. “Remembering Ana Mendieta.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/articles/2021/10/from-the-vaults-remembering-ana-mendieta. Credits Season 2 of Unboxing the Canon is produced by Professor Linda Steer for her course “Introduction to the History of Western Art” in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University. Our sound designer, co-host and contributing researcher is Madeline Collins. Brock University is located on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples, many of whom continue to live and work here today. This territory is covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and is within the land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement. Today this gathering place is home to many First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples and acknowledging reminds us that our great standard of living is directly related to the resources and friendship of Indigenous people. Our logo was created by Cherie Michels. The theme song has been adapted from “Night in Venice” Kevin MacLeod and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0. Grants from the Humanities Research Institute and from Match of Minds at Brock University support the production of this podcast, which is produced as an open educational resource. Unboxing the Canon is archived in the Brock Digital Repository. Find it at https://dr.library.brocku.ca

Episode 12: Where is the Land in Landscape? “Where is the Land in Landscape?” investigates the histories of landscape painting in the canon of Western Art and assesses a few contemporary works of art that counter European modes of thinking about land, territory, nature and the environment. In the first part of the episode we cover historical painters working in Dutch, French, British and American landscape traditions. In the second part we at contemporary art including Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick’s paintings of place and space, the protest performance art piece Mirror Shield Project: Water Serpent Action at the Oceti Sakowin initiated by Cannupa Hanska Luger and Rory Wakemup, and Rebecca Belmore’s Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother. Sources + further reading: Adams, Ann Jensen. “Competing Communities in the ‘Great Bog of Europe’: Identity and Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape Painting.” In Mitchell (see below). Auricchio, Authors: Laura. “The Transformation of Landscape Painting in France.” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/lafr/hd_lafr.htm. Baetjer, Authors: Katharine. “Claude Lorrain (1604/5?–1682).” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/clau/hd_clau.htm. Belmore, Rebecca. Artist’s website. https://www.rebeccabelmore.com/. Benally, Razelle. How to Build Mirror Shields for Standing Rock Water Protectors, 2016. https://vimeo.com/191394747. Cole, Thomas. View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow. Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10497. Hanska, Cannupa. “MIRROR SHIELD PROJECT.” Accessed December 12, 2021. http://www.cannupahanska.com/mniwiconi. Harris, Beth and Steven Zucker. "Constable and the English Landscape." Smarthistory, August 9, 2015. https://smarthistory.org/constable-and-the-english-landscape/. Liedtke, Authors: Walter. “Landscape Painting in the Netherlands.” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/lpnd/hd_lpnd.htm. Mitchell, W. J. T. Landscape and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Morris, Kate. Shifting Grounds: Landscape in Contemporary Native American Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019. Tate. “Landscape – Art Term.” Tate. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/l/landscape. WalkingStick, “Kay. Artist’s website. http://www.kaywalkingstick.com/. Music Credits: Alfred Cellier (British) - The Pirates of Penzance (Overture) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DOyly_Carte_1957_-_The_Pirates_of_Penzance_01_-_Overture.ogg Hector Berlioz (French) - Symphonie Fantastique 2nd movement excerpt https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hector_Berlioz_Symphonie_fantastique_2nd_movement_excerpt.mp3 Patrick Gilmore (American) - When Johnny Comes Marching Home https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:When_Johnny_Comes_Marching_Home,_U.S._Military_Academy_Band.wav Standing Rock Water Protestors https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Call_to_block_Pipeline_CannonBall_,North_Dakota_SACRED_STONE_CAMP.webm Credits: Season 2 of Unboxing the Canon is produced by Professor Linda Steer for her course “Introduction to the History of Western Art” in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University. Our sound designer, co-host and contributing researcher is Madeline Collins. Brock University is located on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples, many of whom continue to live and work here today. This territory is covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and is within the land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement. Today this gathering place is home to many First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples and acknowledging reminds us that our great standard of living is directly related to the resources and friendship of Indigenous people. Our logo was created by Cherie Michels. The theme song has been adapted from “Night in Ve

Episode 8: Appropriation & Copying November 25, 2020. In this episode, “Appropriation & Copying,” I take a look at the ways in which artists refer to the work of their predecessors through copying and appropriation. Art instruction uses copying as a method to learn. In addition, artists refer to their predecessors in a myriad of ways by quoting or remaking existing works of art. We can think of the history of Western art as a conversation between works of art, past and present. Appropriation differs. Appropriation art takes a known work of art and uses it in a way that reveals something about the original, but also creates a new work of art. Sometimes the differences between the original and the new work of art are theoretical, yet not visible. As a form of cultural critique, appropriation can reveal sublimated meanings in a work of art, political meanings, or socio-cultural meanings. While the verb “appropriate” has various meanings, in this episode, to appropriate means taking a work of art and re-making it in a way that reveals the original’s meaning and simultaneously creates new meanings for the appropriation. This episode will briefly consider the modern work of Manet and Duchamp before turning towards contemporary art by Kehinde Wiley, Kara Walker, and Yasumasa Morimura, all of which appropriate the content or forms (or both) of the canon of Western art. Sources + further reading: Detroit Institute of Arts, “Officer of the Hussars,” Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 89 (2015), https://www.dia.org/art/collection/object/officer-hussars-98007 Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/Marcel_Duchamp%2C_1919%2C_L.H.O.O.Q.jpg Alexxa Gotthardt, “The Japanese Photographer Placing Himself in Art History’s Most Famous Scenes,” Artsy, October 18, 2018, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-yasumasa-morimura-places-art-historys-famous-scenes “Rijksstudio,” Rijksmuseum, https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio. Tate, “Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus – Look Closer,” Tate https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/kara-walker-2674/kara-walkers-fons-americanus Kara Walker, “I’m an Unreliable Narrator,” Tate, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV_L3fceGNA “Kara Walker,” Kara Walker, http://www.karawalkerstudio.com “2019,” Kara Walker, http://www.karawalkerstudio.com/2019 “Kehinde Wiley Studio - Brooklyn, NY,” https://kehindewiley.com/ Mimi Wong, “Ego Obscura,” Art Asia Pacific Magazine, http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/WebExclusives/EgoObscura Credits Unboxing the Canon is hosted and produced by Linda Steer for her course “Introduction to the History of Western Art” in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University. Brock University is located on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples. Our sound designer and editor is Devin Dempsey, who is also reading these credits. Our logo was created by Cherie Michels. The music for this podcast has been adapted from “Night in Venice” and “Inspired” by Kevin MacLeod. Both are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0. Additional music in this episode is from Bach, “The Well Tempered Clavier,” Book I, BWV 846-869, musicians unknown. We are grateful to Alison Innes from the Faculty of Humanities for her sharing her podcasting wisdom and offering support. This podcast is funded by the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University.

In this episode, called “Light and Luxe,” we take a look at the connections between Dutch painting, trade, and luxury during the so-called “Dutch Golden Age” of painting. We will focus on post-1650 genre painting as well as a new form of still life painting called Pronkstilleven (loosely translated as “ostentatious” or “sumptuous” still life) that emerged around the mid-17th century. Artists covered include Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch, and Willem Kalf. Sources + further reading: All episodes of this podcast, along with transcripts, are archived in the Brock University Digital Repository: https://dr.library.brocku.ca/handle/10464/14905 “Complete Catalogue of the Painting of Johannes Vermeer.” Accessed October 19, 2020. http://www.essentialvermeer.com/vermeer_painting_part_one.html. Denny, Walter. “Islamic Carpets in European Paintings.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/isca/hd_isca.htm. Franits, Wayne. "Genre Painting in Seventeenth-Century Europe." In Blackwell Companions to Art History: A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art, by Babette Bohn, and James M. Saslow. Wiley, 2013. Kalf, Willem. Still Life with a Chinese Bowl, Nautilus Cup and Other Objects. 1662. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. https://www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/kalf-willem/still-life-chinese-bowl-nautilus-cup-and-other-objects. Liedtke, Walter. “Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) and The Milkmaid.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/milk/hd_milk.htm Ter Borch, Gerard. Lady at Her Toilette. 1660. Detroit Institute of Arts. https://www.dia.org/art/collection/object/lady-her-toilette-63323. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Nautilus Cup. Dutch, Utrecht.” https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/193582. Tokumitsu, Miya. “The Currencies of Naturalism in Dutch Pronk Still-Life Painting: Luxury, Craft, Envisioned Affluence.” RACAR : Revue d’art Canadienne / Canadian Art Review 41, no. 2 (2016): 30–43. https://doi.org/10.7202/1038070ar. Vermeer, Johannes. The Milkmaid. C. 1660. Rijksmuseum. Accessed October 14, 2020. https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-2344. Vermeer, Johannes. Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman aka The Music Lesson. Early 1660s. Royal Collection Trust. Accessed October 14, 2020. https://www.rct.uk/collection/405346/lady-at-the-virginals-with-a-gentleman. Vermeer, Johannes. The Lacemaker. Louvre. 1669-70. Museum. https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/lacemaker. “Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry.” Exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, USA. https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2017/vermeer-and-the-masters-of-genre-painting.html. Wieseman, Marjorie E., Wayne Franits, and H. Perry Chapman. Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence. New Haven and Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, in association with Yale University Press, 2011. Credits Unboxing the Canon is hosted and produced by Linda Steer for her course “Introduction to the History of Western Art” in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University. Brock University is located on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples. Our sound designer and editor is Devin Dempsey, who is also reading these credits. Our logo was created by Cherie Michels. The music for this podcast has been adapted from “Night in Venice” and “Inspired” by Kevin MacLeod. Both are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0. Additional music in this episode is from Bach, “The Well Tempered Clavier,” Book I, BWV 846-869, musicians unknown. We are grateful to Alison Innes from the Faculty of Humanities for her sharing her podcasting wisdom and offering support. This podcast is funded by the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University.

In this episode, called “Swallowed Whole,” Dr. Steer considers Gothic cathedrals as an art form and examines their relationship to European power structures. The episode begins with the earliest Christian art, in the catacombs of Rome, and ends with a brief consideration of the role and function of Western European churches today. This episode also covers the important role of relics in Medieval Christianity, the rise of pilgrimage culture in Europe and its connections to economics and architectural innovation, as well as the affective impact of the interior spaces of cathedrals. Sources + further reading: “A Beginner’s Guide to Romanesque Art – Smarthistory.” https://smarthistory.org/a-beginners-guide-to-romanesque-art/. “Basilica of San Vitale.” http://www.turismo.ra.it/eng/Discover-the-area/Art-and-culture/Unesco-world-heritage/Basilica-of-San-Vitale. “Feminae: Details Page.” https://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/DetailsPage.aspx?Feminae_ID=31968. Harris, Beth and Steven Zucker. "Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres." in Smarthistory, December 18, 2015. https://smarthistory.org/cathedral-of-notre-dame-de-chartres-part-1-of-3/. “Medieval Chartres- The North Transept Rose Window.” http://www.medart.pitt.edu/image/France/Chartres/Chartres-Cathedral/Windows/Transept-windows/121A-North-Rose/Chartres-121NorthRose.HTM. “More Oude Kerk - Amsterdam Art.” https://www.amsterdamart.com/events/516/more-oude-kerk. Oude kerk. “Sarah van Sonsbeeck.” https://oudekerk.nl/en/programma/sarah-van-sonsbeeck/. Sorabella, Jean. “Pilgrimage in Medieval Europe.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pilg/hd_pilg.htm. “Visit the Catacombs.” http://www.catacombepriscilla.com/visita_catacomba_en.html. Credits Unboxing the Canon is hosted and produced by Linda Steer for her course “Introduction to the History of Western Art” in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University. Brock University is located on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples. Our sound designer and editor is Devin Dempsey, who is also reading these credits. Our logo was created by Cherie Michels. The music for this podcast has been adapted from “Night in Venice” and “Inspired” by Kevin MacLeod. Both are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0. The Gregorian chanting was adapted from ramagochi’s “Binaural catholic gregorian chant mass liturgy” licensed under CC BY 3.0. We are grateful to Alison Innes from the Faculty of Humanities for her sharing her podcasting wisdom and offering support. This podcast is funded by the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University.

In this episode we examine contemporary Cree artist Kent Monkman's diptych mistikôsiwak on view now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The monumental paintings were completed in 2019 and are called Welcoming the Newcomers and Resurgence of the People. In his words, Monkman aims to “reverse the gaze” from white settlers looking at Indigenous people to Indigenous people looking at settlers. Welcoming the Newcomers adapts figures and poses from a variety of works of art that depict the Indigenous people of Turtle Island from the point of view of white Europeans and settlers to present a different story and a different point of view about first contact. Resurgence of the People uses Emmanuel Leutze's 1851 Washington Crossing the Delaware as a source to picture contemporary immigration from Monkman's point of view. Sources + Further Reading Artist Interview—Kent Monkman: mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 20, 2019. https://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/video/collections/modern/kent-monkman-great-hall-mistikosiwak-wooden-boat-people Delacroix, Eugène. The Natchez. 1823–24 and 1835. Oil on canvas. 35 1/2 x 46 in. (90.2 x 116.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436180. Gotthardt, Alexxa. “How Contemporary Artists Have Used ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’ to Challenge History.” Artsy, February 14, 2020. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-contemporary-artists-washington-crossing-delaware-challenge-history. Griffey, Randall. “Kent Monkman Reverses Art History’s Colonial Gaze.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 17, 2019. https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/2019/kent-monkman-mistikosiwak-wooden-boat-people-colonial-gaze. Loggans, Regan de. “Mistikôsiwak: Monkman at the Met.” Canadian Art, April 29, 2020. https://canadianart.ca/essays/mistikosiwak-kent-monkman-at-the-met/. Madill, Shirley. “Introducing Miss Chief by Shirley Madill,” Art Canada Institute - Institut de l’art canadien. https://www.aci-iac.ca/the-essay/introducing-miss-chief-by-shirley-madill. Michelson, Alan. “Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware.” In “Native Perspectives,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/curatorial-departments/the-american-wing/native-perspectives. Monkman, Kent. Welcoming the Newcomers, 2019. Acrylic on canvas, 132 x 264 in. (335.28 x 670.6 cm). Monkman, Kent. Resurgence of the People, 2019. Acrylic on canvas, 132 x 264 in. (335.28 x 670.6 cm). Phillips, Ruth B. and Mark Salber Phillips. “‘Welcoming the Newcomers: Decolonizing History Painting, Revisioning History.’” Art Canada Institute - Institut de l’art canadien. https://www.aci-iac.ca/the-essay/decolonizing-history-painting-by-ruth-b-phillips-and-mark-salber-phillips. Tuck, Eve and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 1.1 (2012): 1-40. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630/15554 Zygmont, Bryan. "Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware." Smarthistory, August 9, 2015. https://smarthistory.org/leutze-washington-crossing-the-delaware/. Credits Unboxing the Canon is hosted and produced by Linda Steer for her course “Introduction to the History of Western Art” in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University. Brock University is located on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples. Our sound designer and editor is Devin Dempsey, who is also reading these credits. Our logo was created by Cherie Michels. The music for this podcast has been adapted from “Night in Venice” and “Inspired” by Kevin MacLeod. Both are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0. We are grateful to Alison Innes from the Faculty of Humanities for her sharing her podcasting wisdom and offering support. This podcast is funded by the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University.

“Unboxing the Canon” will take a deeper look at the history of Western art. The first episode airs September 9. Credits: Unboxing the Canon is hosted and produced by Linda Steer for her course “Introduction to the History of Western Art” in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University. Brock University is located on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishaabe peoples. Our sound designer and editor is Devin Dempsey. Our logo was created by Cherie Michels. The music for this podcast has been adapted from Night In Venice by Kevin MacLeod and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0. We are grateful to Alison Innes from the Faculty of Humanities for her sharing her podcasting wisdom and offering support. This podcast is funded by the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University.