On behalf of the editorial board, I am proud to present the 2017 issue of immediations, which features four articles that span broadly across artistic time and media, and yet are connected through the exploration of represented human experience. Leah Gouget-Levy considers temporality in the promotion of Parisian couture in the 1939 film La Mode rêvée through Henri Bergson’s (1859–1941) theory of duration and simultaneity. Molly K. Eckel investigates Victorian imperial identity through the lens of the visual history and culture of the Wardian fern case, which was used to transport and store plants from across the globe. Through an in-depth study of a fourteenth-century book of hours, Robyn Barrow considers the implications and practices of female viewership and devotional visual culture in the late medieval period. Jessica Davidson explores Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s (1836–1912) complex relationship between the past and present by considering how his painted figures represent humanity’s transcendence of time.
Now in its fourteenth year, immediations continues to provide an outlet not only to showcase the rigorous scholarship of the Courtauld postgraduate community, but also to raise questions regarding tradition, institution and artistic practice. It is particularly fitting then that this issue features the artwork of Phyllida Barlow (b.1944). The journal’s cover showcases a view of folly, her provocative installation as the British representative to the 2017 Venice Biennale. Members of the editorial board had the exciting opportunity to interview the artist about her career, artistic process and thoughts on the art world, and we are privileged to include an extended text of this conversation.
The issue also features book reviews by Costanza Beltrami and Giulio Dalvit that address a wide methodological and geographic span of art from the early modern period. We are also pleased to continue the precedent set in the previous issue by including reviews of recent exhibitions. Marie Collier looks collectively at the exhibitions at The Royal Academy of Art, the Design Museum, and the British Library that commemorated the centenary of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, and Boris Čučković Berger reviews Yuri Pattison’s 2016 exhibition ‘user, space’ at the Chisenhale Gallery, London. Following in the footsteps of our predecessors, the 2017 issue is available both in print and online, allowing immediations to continue to push the boundaries of the traditional peer-reviewed publication.
We extend our warmest thanks to our external advisory board, Dr. Alixe Bovey and the staff of the Research Forum, our designers Dr. Fern Insh (online) and Janina Zylinksa (print), Karin Kyburz, Soraya Rodriguez, the British Council and Phyllida Barlow.
This journal was selected, edited and organised through the tremendous efforts of our editorial board, which is comprised of Peter Crack, Caitlin Doley, Teresa Lane, Kyle Leyden, Anna Merlini, Patricia Smithen (book reviews editor) and Denis Stolyarov (subscriptions manager) – they have my sincerest thanks.
Maggie Crosland, Editor-in-chief
Editorial Group
Maggie Crosland (Editor-in-Chief); Peter Crack; Caitlin Doley; Teresa Lane; Kyle Leyden; Anna Merlini; Patricia Smithen; Denis Stolyarov
Designed by Janina Zylinska (print) and Fern Insh (digital)
External Advisory Group
Susan Aberth (Bard College)
Leonard-Daniel Aldea (University of Oxford)
Simon Baker (Tate)
Durdja Bartlett
Bauduin (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
Jane Bradney
Wolfgang Brückle
Molly Brunson (Yale University)
Caroline Campbell (The National Gallery, London)
Annemarie Weyl Carr (Southern Methodist University)
Judith Clark (London College of Fashion)
David Peters Corbett (University of East Anglia and The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Finola O’Kane Crimmins (University College Dublin)
David Cunningham (University of Westminster)
Michael Duffy (MoMA, New York)
Helen Evans (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Jacob Gaboury (University of California Berkeley)
Rhonda Garelick (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Barbara Gates
Linda Goddard (University of St Andrews)
Pia Gottschaller (Getty Conservation Institute)
Isabel Horovitz (The Painting Conservation Studio)
Sarah James (UCL)
Sabine Kriebel (University College Cork)
Angeliki Lymberopoulou (Open University)
Vasileios Marinis (Yale University)
Malcolm Miles (Plymouth University)
Martin Myrone (Tate Britain)
Diana Newall (Open University)
Jeanne Nuechterlein (The University of York)
Anna Russakoff (American University of Paris)
Wendy Salmond (Chapman University, CA)
Stephanie Schwartz (UCL)
Nat Silver (The Frick Collection)
Frances Spalding (University of Cambridge)
Catherine Spencer (University of St Andrews)
Anne Rudloff Stanton (University of Missouri)
John Paul Stonard (Burlington Magazine)
Lisa Turvey (Artforum)
Dr Sarah Tyler Brooks (James Madison University)
Jane Tynan (Central Saint Martins)
Sabine Wieber (University of Glasgow)
Beth Williamson (University of Bristol)
Kim Woods (Open University)
Peter Zusi (UCL)
Cover and Web Banner Cover
Phyllida Barlow, folly, British Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale. Courtesy: the artist and Hauser & Wirth; photograph: Ruth Clark © British Council.
immediations is an annual, peer-reviewed journal of art history. The editors welcome submissions from current members of the postgraduate research community of The Courtauld Institute of Art and from pre-doctoral and recent post-doctoral scholars who have spent part of their postgraduate career there.
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