{"title":":<i>Art and Ocean Objects of Early Modern Eurasia: Shells, Bodies, and Materiality</i>","authors":"Marsely Kehoe","doi":"10.1086/728342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/728342","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53917,"journal":{"name":"West 86th-A Journal of Decorative Arts Design History and Material Culture","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“The Uniformity of a Distinctive National Character”: Loops, Knots, and Bernardo de Gálvez’s Calligraphic Equestrian Portrait","authors":"Aaron M. Hyman","doi":"10.1086/728331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/728331","url":null,"abstract":"This essay treats an extraordinary equestrian portrait of the New Spanish viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez created from little more than a looping, calligraphic line. Unique among viceregal painting, it has eluded definitive scholarly interpretation. A previously unexplored, printed calligraphic model is proposed. At stake, however, is not just source hunting but a reappraisal of the picture’s intellectual context within a network of the period’s renowned academicians and their thinking about handwriting. Moreover, new technical findings allow a revised dating of the picture in exposing the sitter’s shifting identity. What emerges is a political reading of the portrait’s original function as an act of deference to the Spanish crown and sign of investment in the renewal of Iberian culture’s proper formation of imperial citizens—on both sides of the Atlantic. Ultimately, the essay thus points to the art-historical potential of wrestling with the history of writing, a domain often segregated from other visual arts but one that was critical for early modern artists and their audiences.","PeriodicalId":53917,"journal":{"name":"West 86th-A Journal of Decorative Arts Design History and Material Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Notes on the Prehistory of Camouflage and Mimicry as Cultural Techniques","authors":"Caroline van Eck","doi":"10.1086/728330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/728330","url":null,"abstract":"The relations between human and animal camouflage have rarely been investigated. Current scholarship, focusing on the evolutionary and military aspects of camouflage, has overshadowed earlier thinking about camouflage and mimicry as shared animal and human features. Reconstructing some of the main elements of those early views, this article argues that, in humans, camouflage should be considered as a cultural technique. Three stages in the “prehistory” of camouflage, which are also three varieties of cultural contexts, are discussed: the hunt, in which camouflage behavior is shared by animals and humans; camouflage behavior among humans, analyzed in terms of simulation and conceived or figured in terms of animal behavior; and camouflage seen as the manifestation of emerging human material culture.","PeriodicalId":53917,"journal":{"name":"West 86th-A Journal of Decorative Arts Design History and Material Culture","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}