EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Art Bulletin’s Bumper Issue

This month’s Art Bulletin, the magazine of the U.S. College Art Association, is a bumper issue as far as we are all concerned. One article by Michael Lobel reveals how John Sloan, a member of the Ashcan School in early twentieth-century America, posed figures in his street scenes as artists “painting” the scene and on one occasion even presented himself as a female hairdresser “painting” a client’s hair (above). Part of his proof is that Sloan, rail-thin, fused some of his own features into the face of the plump hairdresser! Lobel also demonstrates that Sloan suggests “paintbrushes” and “palettes” through objects with a similar shape.

In a separate article Joost Keiser argues that the young Michelangelo’s cartoon for The Battle of Cascina represents the first significant work of art to break away from its own supposed narrative to represent nothing other than itself: “a work of art.”

Both are highly important contributions to our own project, of which both authors seem unaware. If they were, someone would have noticed that the two are linked. However, as I frequently note, academic art historians are specialists today and so narrowly focused that they tend to see differences where a generalist sees similarities. It is therefore doubtful that either author, or even an editor, has seen how these two articles are related.

I will be writing more about each in the coming weeks to give you their arguments in more detail and show how closely their own examples match ours. Each is a very welcome addition to our project on its own; to have two in one issue is bliss.