National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries

Titling artworks

NICAI — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 23:15:08 GMT

At the end of every semester one or two of the Fine Arts Library staff invariably get asked; “Do you have any books on titling artworks?”

There is no one resource that answers this question. So here's a list of helpful tips and resources.

“Titles of works of art” is a great search term to use either in the Library Catalogue or in Databases.

One of the best books for exploring the history of art titles is:
Welchman, John C. Invisible Colors: A Visual History of Titles. Yale University Press, 1997.
709.04 W439i

E.H. Gombrich (1985) and Stephen Bann (1985) are also great starting points.

Academics have also explored the linguistic or psychological responses that viewers can have in relation to titles (Franklin 1988; Leder et al 2006; Malt and Steven 2007).

More tips...

Look at how other artists title their work
Choose a book on one of your favourite artists and see whether their titles are discussed
Think about what you want to convey
Don’t be too prescriptive / restrictive
Start off by using a working title. This might help to jump start your ideas
Don’t pressure yourself into finding a title
Remember some artworks name themselves

References and notes

Gombrich, E. H. "Image and Word in Twentieth-Century Art." Word & Image 1.3 (1985): 213-41.
Bann, Stephen. "The Mythical Conception is the Name: Titles and Names in Modern and Post-Modern Painting." Word & image 1.2 (1985): 176-89. Print.
Franklin, Margery B. ""Museum of the Mind": An Inquiry into the Titling of Artworks." Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 3.1 (1988): 157-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms0303_4
Leder, Helmut, Claus-Christian Carbon, and Ai-Leen Ripsas. "Entitling Art: Influence of Title Information on Understanding and Appreciation of Paintings." Acta Psychologica 121.2 (2006): 176-98. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/10.1016/j.actpsy.2005.08.005
Malt, Barbara C., and Steven A. Sloman. "Category Essence Or Essentially Pragmatic? Creator’s Intention in Naming and what’s really what." Cognition 105.3 (2007): 615-48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2006.10.001

Victoria Passau

Fine Arts Library

Student Learning support at the Fine Arts Library

NICAI — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 03:07:35 GMT

Over the next few months, Annette Keogh, Learning Advisor from Student Learning Services, will be in the Fine Arts Library twice a week to help you with your writing, research or study queries. This support is available to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of Fine Arts and Art History.

If you need help:
• getting started
• analysing essay or research questions
• developing your writing skills
• structuring essays
• referencing / citations

...then come along and see her for some friendly advice. No appointment necessary.

Annette will be available in the Fine Arts Library:
Tuesday 9-11.30
Thursday 2-4

For more information on the study support provided by Student Learning Services go to:
http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/student-learning/

Fine Arts Library

Desma Waltham Russell - Assistant-in-Charge (1962-1963)

NICAI — Thu, 23 May 2013 01:47:32 GMT

To celebrate The University of Auckland’s 130^th Anniversary we have decided to profile the Fine Arts Library’s first qualified Assistant-in-Charge - Desma Waltham Russell (née Butler) who worked at the Library from 1962 until late 1963.

Mrs Russell studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts between 1942 and 1953 - receiving her Diploma of Fine Arts majoring in Modelling in 1953.* She went on to complete her Certificate of the New Zealand Library School in 1959, with her final research paper focusing on picture loan collections as library resources (Butler, 1959).

Mrs Russell was offered the position of Assistant-in-Charge at Elam in late 1961 while she was working at Auckland Public Libraries. The Auckland University College Librarian, Arthur Sandall, would have identified her as a prime candidate for the role due to her knowledge of librarianship and her experience in the Fine Arts.

From 1950 until 1962 the Elam School of Fine Arts reading room was housed on the site of the old Newton West Primary School on the corners of Great North Road and Brisbane and Potatau Streets. On her arrival Mrs Russell found a reading room consisting of ‘one room with a few [uncatalogued] books’, which she believed to number less than 100. Robert Ellis, a lecturer at Elam (1957 until 1995) described the collection at the Newton West site between 1957 and 1959 as follows “the art library consisted [of] one locked cupboard and in that cupboard were about 40 or 50 books, those 40 or 50 books nothing later than about 1850” (Ellis & Tapper, c.1983).

Russell and Ellis may have slightly under estimated the number of books held by the library, shown by the acquisition records (Complete orders 1951-1956, 1957-1960), to have been 416 books and 39 periodicals by the end of 1962 (The University of Auckland Library, 1963). However, both recollections illustrate that the library was perceived by Elam staff as being a rather limited resource.

The library was one of four branch libraries that included collections at the School of Architecture, School of Engineering and the Waikato Branch. It was described in a 1963 library staff newsletter as follows,

’These collections are (and enjoy being called) “special”. The reason is they’re specialised – narrower but deeper than our General Library, and so are justified in spoon-feeding (to some extent) their clients, who included many practising architects and engineers.’ (Grapevine, 1963).

Despite the Library being quite a distance from the city campus Mrs Russell utilised the cataloguing facilities at the Main University of Auckland College Library once a week.

Mrs Russell remembered having positive contact with the Elam staff during her time at Newton West especially when using the shared staff common room. Interestingly the amount of contact was reduced after the move to the Whitaker Place site in December 1962. This may have been a result of the Fine Arts Library having its own staff facilities.

Mrs Russell tendered her resignation in late 1963 when she and her husband decide to start a family. While Mrs Russell only worked at the library for two years it was during an intense period of organisational change which included:

· The end of the University of New Zealand and the subsequent establishment of The University of Auckland as an autonomous institution

· The creation of the Chair of Fine Arts and the History and Theory of Art paper

· The physical movement of the Library from Newton West to Whitaker Place

· The library transitioning from a small departmental collection into being a part of the wider Library infrastructure

Mrs Russell, now 85, recently wrote that “I always enjoyed the connection with staff and students.”

I would like to thank Mrs Russell for kindly agreeing to participate in the writing of this article and for providing the images of Newton West c.1962.

References:

* Mrs Russell was a full-time student during 1942-1945 and then attended evening classes between 1946 and 1952.

Butler, D. W. (1959). Picture loan collections. (Unpublished Paper produced in partial fulfillment of the course requirements of the New Zealand Library School). New Zealand Library School, Wellington.
Ellis, R., & Tapper, G. (c.1983). Interview by Barbi de Lange. [Tape Recording]. (05-188). Elam Archive, Fine Arts Library, The University of Auckland, Auckland.
Complete orders 1951-1956, 1957-1960. (1951-1956). [Acquisition records]. Fine Arts Library Archive. Elam Archive, Fine Arts Library, The University of Auckland, Auckland.
University of Auckland Library. (1963). University of Auckland Libraries and Archives report for the year 1962. Auckland The University of Auckland Library.
University of Auckland Library (April, 1963), Outposts, Grapevine, no.2.

Victoria Passau
Fine Arts Library

Celebrating 100 Years of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps

NICAI — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:39:05 GMT

This month we have another guest post, this time from one of our students, Sasha Rasmussen, who was the 2012/2013 Summer Scholar working on Stravinsky and the premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring).

2013 marks the centenary of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a work which sparked such controversy at its premiere at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris that the audience broke into a riot. Commissioned for the Ballets Russes dance company by the Russian expatriate Sergei Diaghilev, The Rite of Spring represented an ambitious collaboration between Vaslav Nijinsky, the choreographer, Nicholas Roerich, responsible for set and costumes, and Stravinsky, an up-and-coming immigrant composer of only 28 years of age.
The ballet was ill-received by the majority of the public and press critics. Nijinsky’s choreography – which inverted traditional ballet posture and principles, with pigeon-toed, hunched dancers stamping and jumping in time to the music – provoked strong emotions ranging from ridicule to disgust, and was described by one critic as ‘a crime against grace’. Stravinsky’s score fared little better in the initial round of press reviews, criticised as ‘barbaric’ and overly-dissonant, repetitive and abrasive to the ear. The critics of Paris understood The Rite as a unified (and unsavoury) spectacle, with the composite art forms being inseparable from each other and from the narrative they told.
But, in the world of musicology at least, the collaborative origins have been largely forgotten, and the work is remembered as an autonomous and self-contained musical whole. The music itself in isolation has been the subject of countless analytical approaches from music theorists such as Allen Forte, Daniel Chua, Richard Taruskin and Gretchen Horlacher. Students engage with the hulking monument of the score, orchestras perform the music in concert halls, and the choreography is remembered as an historical quirk at best, if not entirely ignored.
Stravinsky himself contributed significantly to this legacy by declaring in 1920 that he had composed ‘an architectural, not an anecdotal, work’. This contradicts his later statements that The Rite was inspired by a visual conception of the sacrificial maiden, although Stravinsky is notorious for his inconsistency and questionable testimony. However, as early as 1914, a mere ten months after its initial presentation as a ballet, The Rite of Spring was removed from its original ballet context when it was performed in the Casino de Paris as part of a series of orchestral matinees conducted by Pierre Monteux. In this setting, the music received far better reviews from the press, who claimed that without the visual distraction of the choreography, they were better able to appreciate the complexity and colour of the score.
This joint decision from Monteux and Stravinsky to divorce the score of The Rite from its choreography marks the beginning of a fraught relationship between music and gesture in The Rite’s history, and more broadly in the history of dance music in the concert hall. In a sense, the music has been transformed from a narrative programme into an absolute entity, and this characterises how we engage with The Rite today. Our experience of The Rite rests on the values of Modernism in the early twentieth century, and the interesting tension between The Rite’s conception and its canonical status today will hopefully prompt us as musicians to reconsider the relationship between music and (absent) dance.

Sasha Rasmussen
Music and Dance Library

A Short History of the Architecture & Planning Library

NICAI — Fri, 17 May 2013 03:24:34 GMT

The origins of the Architecture Library are synonymous with the School of Architecture. In 1926 the first Professor of Architecture, Prof. C. R. Knight, created the beginnings of the Architecture Library. The foundation was laid by making a small collection of his personal books available for the first students to consult as a reference collection. Professor Knight had always been convinced of the value of a library service for architects. His enthusiasm for libraries was made clear in one of his early Studio Programmes in 1929, which reads as follows:

“A gentleman has bequeathed to a University School of Architecture a large collection of books on architectural and related subjects which it is his wish should become a nucleus of a library for the use of students of architecture in particular...".

The total area specified was 4,000 square feet.

Unfortunately it took until 1947, when the School of Architecture moved onto its Symonds Street site, for the Architecture Library to assume its own identity within the University Library system. Ever since then the Architecture Library has been regarded as an integral part of the Schools life and teaching.

1958 saw the commencement of the teaching of the Town Planning course in the Faculty of Architecture, and the consequent addition of planning materials to the Architecture Library.

Now 87 years on from that first small reference collection The Architecture & Planning Library flourishes, and is still viewed as an integral part of the School of Architecture and Planning.

The School of Architecture Library, 1963.

Valerie Richards (nee Lockwood) in the School of Architecture Library, 1963.

Wendy Garvey
Architecture & Planning Librarian

Recent acquisitions at the Fine Arts Library

NICAI — Fri, 17 May 2013 01:56:04 GMT

We have a selection of new books on display in our velvet-lined cabinet.

Britain Creates: Fashion and Art Collusion is a collaborative project that combines the talents of artists and fashion designers. Included in the display is a poster by the New Zealand aritst Francis Upritchard and the designer Peter Pilotto.

Francis Upritchard : a hand of cards ; Alfred Kubin : the other side is another recent addition featuring Upritchard and accompanies an exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary in 2012.

Watermarking / David Bennewith, William Hsu, Marnie Slater ; curated by Melanie Oliver and Laura Preston was made as part of the artists’ collaborative contribution to the 2012 Liverpool Biennial.¹

While The liquid dossier: Nick Austin was created during Austin’s 2012 Frances Hodgkins Fellowship at the University of Otago.²

The display also contains a pagework by John Ward Knox in the Bulletin of the Christchurch Art Gallery, issue number 171.

Additional resources:

¹ http://bit.ly/15RvHBp

²http://www.otago.ac.nz/library/hocken/otago042171.html

Melanie Kung
Fine Arts Library

Artists' book tutorial in progress

NICAI — Wed, 01 May 2013 22:26:46 GMT

A group of Elam students are currently exploring our Artists' book collection. They are focusing on materiality, authorship and collaboration.

Fine Arts Library

5th Auckland Triennial

NICAI — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 02:31:23 GMT

The 5th Auckland Triennial runs from the 10th of May until the 11th of August. Many events will be taking place across the city including exhibitions at The University of Auckland’s Gus Fisher and George Fraser Galleries. This year’s triennial has been curated by renowned Chinese curator Hou Hanru who has invited over 30 New Zealand and international artists to participate. Using the theme If you were to live here….. Hanru has asked artists, collectives and architects to respond to or directly involve the places they inhabit. Locality, public space, creative exchange and sustainability are some of the many ideas being explored.

Past and present Elam students and staff are taking part in the exhibition including Local Time (Danny Butt, Jon Bywater, Alex Monteith, Natalie Robertson), Luke Willis Thompson, both exhibiting at the Auckland Art Gallery. While Peter Robinson exhibits at the Auckland Museum and Tahi Moore at the Gus Fisher Gallery.

Previous Elam Artists-in-Residence, Emory Douglas and Amie Siegel, will also be exhibiting at Fresh Gallery and the Auckland Art Gallery, respectively.

A selection of books and ephemera relating to some of the artists involved in the Triennial will be on display at the Fine Arts Library. If you would like to borrow any of them, please ask at the front desk.

Exhibiting at the Gus Fisher Gallery:

Tahi Moore
Claire Fontaine
Anri Sala

Also on at the Gus Fisher, Elam graduate Rebecca Boswell has curated the exhibition ‘Girl, Empire’ with Jack Hadley, Jacqueline Fraser, Juliet Carpenter & E.R Graham, Victoria Wynne-Jones

Exhibiting at the George Fraser Gallery:

Yangiang Group

Melanie Kung
Fine Arts Library

Tahi Moore

New Journal: ISON

NICAI — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 02:22:18 GMT

As a follow up to Bryn Roberts' review of the ARC: Student Journal of the Royal College of Art, London, here is the first issue of her own publishing venture ISON. Named after a comet set to blaze a trail through our skies later this year, ISON Issue#1 is concerned with all things 'early2013', here and now. Content includes cultural theory, fashion, visual art, erotic literature and music reviews written by friends and fellow art students. More information can be found at ISONonline.org

Bryn Roberts currently works as a part-time Desk Assistant at the Fine Arts Library.

Presents in the Ruskin Room

NICAI — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 20:22:49 GMT

A kindly soul has wrapped two of Ruskin's tomes.

Fine Arts Library