Blog Search results: african

Julia Reinhard Lupton

Professor of English and Comparative Literature, The University of California, Irvine

With its extraordinary image collection and sensitive search functions, Artstor has changed the way I teach Shakespeare. Images of the Globe Theater and panoramic maps of Elizabethan London set the stage for our engagement with the plays. When teaching The Merchant of Venice and Othello, I use paintings by Venetian artists to introduce students to this city of canals, carnival, and liturgical spectacle. Ignazio Danti’s full-color map provides an aerial view of the city in Shakespeare’s century. Veronese’s Wedding at Cana puts the cosmopolitan world of sixteenth-century Venice on extravagant display, with an African cup-bearer, turbaned Turks and Moors, court musicians, fantastical wedding costumes, and a stage-like setting. Gentile Bellini’s Procession in Piazza San Marco graphs the political and theological axes of public pageantry in Renaissance Venice. A thoughtful illumination of a man and woman dressed for carnival gives further insight into the Venetian theater of life. Jacob de Barbari’s woodcut map of Venice provides a detail of the Jewish ghetto, which I supplement with photographs of the ghetto today. Images of Epiphany kings represent noble Africans as members of a Pauline community, a theme tapped by Shakespeare in Othello.

Sandro Botticelli, The Third Episode of the Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, 1483. (c) 2006, SCALA, Florence / ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Jacopo del Sellaio, Banquet of Ahasuerus, c. 1490. Galleria degli Uffizi .(c) 2006, SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Venice: Map of City, 16th C

Globe Theatre (Southwark, London, England), Ref.: development 1580-90(i): possible intermediate steps in the early development of English theaters

Paolo Veronese, Marriage at Cana; detail, 1563. Musée du Louvre. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

When I teach A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale, I develop the extensive analogies between the metamorphic, seasonal, and amatory mythologies of Shakespeare’s plays and Botticelli’s Primavera. All three works display the glorious weave of holiday celebration, natural history, mythography, and courtship narratives in the Renaissance society of festival. I supplement Botticelli with examples of medieval and Renaissance calendar art. We also discuss the cassone tradition (marriage chests painted with mythological scenes) and their relevance to both the artistic output of Botticelli and the ways in which humanists and artisans in northern Europe wove classical mythology into the décor of daily life through tapestries, embroideries, and other household objects.

The Taming of the Shrew draws on falconry and animal husbandry discourses, which I introduce to students through medieval falconry guides. I also fill out Shakespeare’s bestiary with images of the hunt and animal social life.

I illuminate Richard II through the Wilton Diptych, a portable votive portrait depicting the coronation of the King by Mary and a host of angels. The painting demonstrates the power of political theology in Richard’s lifetime, tropes that Shakespeare both takes apart and rebuilds over the course of his play.

Banquets figure as settings for key scenes in plays as diverse as Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, and The Taming of the Shrew. At court, Shakespeare’s plays were performed in banqueting houses. Images of Renaissance banquets bring to life the intimate relationship between hospitality, commensality and theater in the Renaissance.

Finally, in addition to these more historical and illustrative uses of visual art, I design backdrops for student readings of scenes from Shakespeare using Artstor images (often updated in Photoshop). By projecting the images against a screen, I can create instant environments for our in-class performances, greatly enhancing student learning and experience.

Colette Apelian
Fine Art faculty, Berkeley City College

As the Islamic art historian in the Art Department of Berkeley City College (BCC), I explain how North African to South Asian art and architecture are relevant to design students less familiar with pre-modern and non-western material cultures. Course logistics add to the challenge. Art 48VR, Introduction to Islamic Art History, is one of the few, if not the only online survey of Islamic art presented to a community college audience. To better address student needs, I organize the class thematically rather than chronologically, and focus upon a carefully chosen combination of fine and utilitarian objects and buildings. Presentations must be compressed so that BCC’s course management system, Moodle, properly stores and displays them. An example of how I use Artstor in Art 48VR can be viewed in one image group for the lecture “Architectural Solutions to Climate Problems in the Islamic World.”

Reed building screen, detail, Morocco. Image: 1982. Image and original data provided by Walter B. Denny

Bagh-e Fin, exterior, through screen of entrance portal, toward court. Image: 1978. Image and original data provided by Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom

Alhambra Palace - (Partal Gardens), Granada, Spain, Main construction 14th century. Image and original data provided by Shmuel Magal, Sites and Photos

'Alawi Abu Bakr al-Kaf, Dar al-Salam, Exterior, Image: 2005. Tarim, the Hadramaut Valley, Yemen. James Conlon: Mali and Yemen Sites and Architecture

Alhambra Palace - (Generalife Market Garden),Granada, Spain. Begun in the early 14th century, redecorated in 1313-1324. Image and original data provided by Shmuel Magal, Sites and Photos

In addition to illustrating specific motifs, pictures in the group show technology, materials, and plans that naturally temper hot and dry conditions. There are reed, mud brick, stone, and wooden screens (musharabiyya and jails, among other terms), which are used to mitigate the sun’s glare and heat in North African, Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and Indian contexts. Screens also allow air to flow freely while preserving privacy and demarcating private and religious spaces from public and secular locales. There is an Iranian badgir (wind tower) at Mir Chaqmaq (1436-37 CE) that, without electricity, circulates fresh and cool air through multi-story structures. An example from the United Arab Emirates indicates how the idea spread. The image group additionally has historic to contemporary mud brick architecture from Egypt and Yemen. Mud brick insulates interiors from excessive heat and cold, uses inexpensive local resources, and can been crafted into a multitude of styles, including quasi-Rococo and neo-Classical in some Yemeni examples. Images of the Alhambra in Spain, Bagh-e Fin in Iran, and the Sahrij Madrassa in Morocco display architects’ and engineers’ use of water channels, pools, and fountains to cool and hydrate. Medieval waterwheels and a recent qanat demonstrate more methods to harness natural power and supply water. In Egypt and Morocco, central courtyard planned structures and narrow urban streets flanked by windowless buildings cool private and public spaces while providing light, seclusion, and ventilation.

Artstor has helped me create digital bridges between students, subject matter, and Moodle in other ways. I have most appreciated the ability to create presentations in OIV 3.1. After organizing and downloading an image group to my laptop, OIV allows me to create a slide show quickly complete with captions and copyright information. The opportunity to choose compression levels means few size problems when uploading to the course website. Artstor’s varied content has also helped me be more efficient. I can find most of the images I need in one location without additional searches, imports, and scans.

Artstor celebrates the life and work of James Conlon, Director of the Visual Media Center at Columbia University, who passed away suddenly on July 17, 2009 at the young age of 37. He was a wonderful friend, colleague, and champion for the use of new technologies to enable the documentation and study of cultural heritage sites and monuments.

In 2008, Conlon contributed his personal collection of digital photographs of art, architecture, and sites throughout Mali and Yemen to the Artstor Digital Library to enable students and scholars around the world to teach and study with his images. He was about to embark on an Artstor-sponsored campaign this summer to photograph the Dogon region in Mali, West Africa. Together with Susan Vogel, Professor of African Art and Architecture at Columbia University, and other experts, they were to create approximately 200 QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) panoramas of important sites and architecture on the sandstone Cliffs of Bandiagara, which were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1989. In addition, the team was to capture the cultural landscape of the region through approximately 1,200 still digital photographs of the core towns and significant areas on the Bandiagara escarpment, ranging from ritual dances and other ceremonies to the practices connected with the design and use of individual works of art. Unfortunately, this campaign is now on hold until further arrangements may be made.

Conlon studied the social history of the Near East at the University of Rochester and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. He also completed a post-graduate certificate in the Conservation of Archaeological Sites and Historic Buildings from Columbia University. At Columbia, he explored the potential of new media to facilitate the interpretation and conservation of the built environment. He eventually became the Director of the Visual Media Center at Columbia and participated in several important projects to document major monuments around the globe. We at Artstor had the pleasure of working with a generous, knowledgeable, and kind expert. Artstor will preserve and share Conlon’s beautiful collection of photographs with you now and for many years to come.