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In 2006 Sophie Jugie, director of the
Dijon museum, suggested to the French
Regional American Museum Exchange
(FRAME) association that during restorat-
ion certain sculptures from the tombs could
be exhibited at all the member-institutions.
This was a generous offer: the sculptures
began their tour of seven US museums in
2010 and will arrive in Paris in 2012.
The artworks in question are 40 alaba-
ster mourner figures from the tomb of John
the Fearless. Both his and his father’s
tombs have the same structure: effigies of
the deceased lie on large slabs of black
marble supported on white marble Gothic
arcades containing the mourners. The
tombs reveal the developments made from
earlier medieval forms showing the transi or
corpse on the lower slab. Its replacement
with figures from the funeral procession
develops the cult of mourning towards the
costly displays that led seventeenth-century
English nobility to hold night-funerals,
thus avoiding expensively
well-attended ceremonies.
Though at first glance
the painted and gilded effi-
gies are what catch the eye,
closer inspection reveals
that the mourners are the
main attraction (Jugie even
provides a brief guide to
viewing them at the end
of the book). The figures
are a mix of clergymen,
choirboys, noblemen, and
hooded and bare-headed
pleurants. They were de-
signed to stand under the
arches of the arcades, their
deeply carved robes adding
to the play of light and
shade around the tombs.
When they are removed
from their places and seen
as individual pieces the
remarkable variety of their
forms can be appreciated.
Two-thirds of Jugie’s
book is devoted to photo-
graphs of the sculptures.
Each of John’s mourners
receives a full page with at
least two views of the figure; some of the
finest works have three or four images
across a double page. Here the patina of
the alabaster and the mix of expressions,
costumes and postures are revealed to best
advantage on deep black paper.The quality
of the carving is excellent, especially con-
sidering that none of the mourners is
taller than half a metre. Jugie’s description
of the tombs’ creation names a number of
sculptors, making the uniformity of ex-
ecution more impressive. Philip’s tomb
was commissioned in 1384 from Claus
Sluter, author of the well-known Well of
Moses also housed at Dijon, and completed
by his nephew Claus de Werwe. John’s
tomb was given to Jean de la Huerta and
Antoine le Moiturier, with the provision
that it resembled Philip’s as closely
as possible. In practice, as with all works
of this nature, there were other artists
involved. In 1410 Philip’s tomb was finally
installed in Dijon’s Carthusian charter-
house; John’s tomb was commissioned in
1419 but not erected beside his father’s
until 1470.
Jugie summarises the history of the
Dukes of Burgundy in relation to the rest
of France, followed by the building of the
charterhouse and the other art commis-
sioned for it. Like many French religious
buildings, it was dismantled in the
Revolution, and she gives a short account
of its later history and nineteenth-century
restoration, accompanied by illustrations
of Burgundian art of the relevant periods.
She then moves on to the tombs, describ-
ing them in turn in terms of materials,
techniques and significant dates. There is
an admission that despite surviving details
of payments to the artists there is no cer-
tainty around who actually designed them:
Sluter remains a best guess. Jugie con-
cludes with the mourners as a group and a
motif in medieval funerary art. She cites
the tomb of Louis IX’s brother, Philip
Dagobert, as the first in France to display
‘the funeral procession in all its compo-
nents and all its emotion’, and tracks this
development through to the monument
of Philippe Pot in the Louvre. Here the
deceased’s effigy is supported on the
shoulders of life-sized black-robed mour-
ners. Although this tomb was completed
a good ten years after that of John the Fear-
less it seems less sophisticated, whereas
the Burgundian tombs look forward to
Renaissance monuments, combining so-
lidity of form with delicate decoration.
Jugie is right to assert that ‘among
funerary monuments, the tombs of the
Dukes of Burgundy. . . stand out in and of
themselves’. They are not only fine exam-
ples of medieval polychrome sculpture but
also herald important developments in
funerary art and its mirroring of death
ritual. This book is a fine tribute to the
work of the sculptors who created and
assembled the tombs. More than just a
record of the carvings, the photographs
give us a view into the heart of the tombs
and the culture that created them: that is
indispensable.
matt cambridge
Art historian, Edinburgh
ART AND ARTIFACT:
THE MUSEUM AS MEDIUM
Revised edition
james putnam
Thames & Hudson 2010 d19.95 $34.95
216 pp. 239 col/51 mono illus
isbn 978-0 500-28835-1
Dist. Littlehampton Book Services Ltd
An early childhood interest in col-
lecting flowerpot fragments, rusty
iron and variously shaped stones
Jeande La Huerta and Antoine le Moiturier.
Mourner no.52,mourner withcowl pulleddown,
wiping his t ears o n his cloak with his righ t hand, left
handon his chest, 1443 --56 Alabaster rFRAME
(French Regional and American Museum
Exchange).FromThe Mourners:Tomb Sculptures
FromThe Court Of Burgundy by SophieJugie.
56 The ArtBook volume 17 issue 4 november 2010 r2010 the authors. journal compilation r2010 bpl/aah
Reviews
and arranging them in his glass-fronted
bookcase prefaced James Putnam’s later
career as an independent museum curator.
This current volume (first published 2001)
owes a vote of thanks to such childhood
curiosity. In this revised edition, Putnam
re-evaluates the ideas underpinning the
modern museum as a storage place where
ideas and materials collide. His premise is
that, as much as the museum’s classifying
principals and methods of display influ-
ence the contemporary artist, the reverse is
also true, and that artist plus museum
equals a living dynamic. Putnam’s aim is
to allow the works of both established and
emerging artists to speak for themselves
and he acknowledges that the book is
representative rather than definitive.
The book has a preface, introduction,
seven chapters, notes, a bibliography,
illustrations and index. In the introduc-
tion, Putnam examines the history of the
relationship between artist and museums
beginning with the Wunderkammers (cab-
inets of curiosities), the early ancestors of
the museum, which abounded in Europe
between the sixteenth and eighteenth
centuries. These pre-Enlightenment col-
lections were influenced by the growth of
exploration, and the desire to gather the
exotic. They combined strange objects in
an arrangement designed to arouse awe
and aesthetic pleasure. Although their
unscientific form eventually led to the
dispersal of their contents and the birth of
the modern museum, their subversion of
natural order found a later voice in Dada
and Surrealism. The Wunderkammer also
encapsulated the idea of how the entire
cosmos could be captured in one room
or cabinet and many twentieth-century
artists have followed such a collecting
principle. This Sammeltrieb, the ancient
urge to collect, is also a form of memory,
yet Putnam distinguishes between hobby-
ist and artist in that the artist often uses
the found objects in his or her work. For
example, Kurt Schwitters used discarded
tram tickets in his collages; Max Ernst
used printed illustrations; and in 1917
Marcel Duchamp developed the principal
of the ‘Readymade’, giving a urinal the
name Fountain and transforming it into an
art object.
The museum’s function and role have
changed greatly over the last 200 years,
moving from a custodial view of history in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to
one that has become informed by growing
artist participation. Museums of modern
and contemporary art increased rapidly
in the twentieth century and Chapter 1
examines ‘the museum effect’, where
artists began to apply museological meth-
ods to the production and presentation of
their work, such as in vitrines or display
cases. Chapter 2, ‘Art or artifact’, concen-
trates on the activity of collecting and the
objet trouve
´. Chapter 3, ‘Public inquiry’,
considers the way artists question, through
their work, the hierarchical systems of
museums, such as how museums are
funded, and the link between the museum
and the art market. For example, Rose
Finn-Kelcey, at the Matts Gallery, London
(1988), questioned the sale of Van Gogh’s
Sunflowers to a Japanese insurance company
for a record auction price by recreating
the work using gold, silver and copper-
coloured coins. Chapter 4, ‘Framing the
frame’, focuses on photography, where the
artist is both observer and participant
‘creating images of display which are in
turn themselves displayed’ and where the
photograph that conserves a moment in
time replicates natural history museum
specimens in formaldehyde. Chapter 5,
‘Curator/creator’, explores the role of artist
as curator, using a museum’s collections
as their working material. Chapter 6
considers the dialogue that is created
within the museum by juxtaposing con-
temporary art with short-term and perma-
nent exhibitions. Chapter 7 concludes the
volume by revealing new trends in mu-
seum diversity, such as the transmission of
art via the Internet, the employment of off-
site projects, and the intersection of artists’
ideas with architects, designers and mu-
seums to implement new designs for art
installations. Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather
Project (2003) in the Turbine Hall of
London’s Tate Modern is one such parti-
cularly successful example, attracting 2.3
million visitors in six months. In reading
this I was reminded of graffiti artist
Banksy’s exhibition at Bristol’s City Mu-
seum & Art Gallery in June 2009. Only four
of the museum’s staff, sworn to secrecy,
knew of the plans until the hugely
successful exhibition opened. In the cata-
logue Banksy wrote: ‘Maybe one day
graffiti art will hang in lots of museums
and be viewed in the same way as other
modern art, although personally I hope it
never sinks that low’.
This is a fascinating, clearly written
book, beautifully laid out, capturing
the writer’s passion for his subject and
encouraging us to see art museums from
a fresh perspective. The multitude of
images and incisive captions illustrating
the chapter’s themes successfully fulfil
Putnam’s aims of bringing together the
many and varied aspects that link museum
and contemporary artist. It will inform and
satisfy the needs of those wanting a
historical understanding of the modern
art museum, as well as those researching
contemporary art practices.
darrelyn gunzburg
The University of Bristol
THE TRIUMPH OF MODERNISM
INDIA’S ARTISTS AND THE
AVANT-GARDE 1922–1947
partha mitter
Reaktion Books 2007 d22.50 $45.00
271 pp. Fully illustrated
isbn 978-1-86189-318-5
NEW VISION
ARAB CONTEMPORARY ART IN
THE 21
ST
CENTURY
hoseein amirsadeghi et al. (eds)
TransGlobe and Thames & Hudson 2009 d48.00
288 pp. 531 col illus
isbn 97805500976982
DISSIDENT SYRIA: MAKING
OPPOSITIONAL ARTS OFFICIAL
miriam cooke
Duke University Press 2007 d58.00 $74.95 (H)
d14.99 $21.95 (P)
208 pp. 13 mono illus
isbn 978-08223-4016-4 (h) 978-0-8223-4035-5 (p)
Partha Mitter’s The Triumph of Modern-
ism (a sequel to his Art and National-
ism in Colonial India 1850–1922,
Cambridge 1994) repositions South Asian
modernism in its own context and its
own terms. The title intentionally in-
vokes Irving Sandler’s Triumph of American
Painting,A History of Abstract Expressionism,
but Mitter has distinguished modern-
ism in South Asia as an endeavour driven
by a specific social context. He ‘engages
precisely this issue of artistic produc-
tion and the construction of national
identity in late colonial India’. The inter-
relationship of modernism and national-
ism, and the connection of stylistic
change with the independence move-
ment in India, are treated in four topics:
‘The formalist prelude’ ‘The Indian dis-
course on primitivism,’ ‘Naturalists in
the age of modernism,’ and ‘Contested
nationalism: The New Delhi and India
r2010 the authors. journal compilation r2010 bpl/aah volume 17 issue 4 november 2010 Th e A rt Book 57
Reviews