Editors’ Introduction
Our newest issue of SEQUITUR, which takes as its theme two separate yet related ideas, Self + Portrait, explores ideas of identity, representation, and discovery. Although the genre of self portraiture dates back to antiquity, how we read and understand images and constructions of selfhood, personality, and identification has changed and developed over time. The essays and interviews in this issue reflect such evolutions in creative expressions of individuality. Our contributors explore the ways that artists have uncovered social constructs of identity, investigated how the self might be reflected in space and place, and creatively questioned the relationship between representation and identity.
Kathryn Kremnitzer’s featured essay, “Privately Public: D. Appleton and Co.’s Artistic Houses (New York, 1883-4),” investigates the ways in which domestic interiors can reflect the likenesses of their inhabitants’ characters. In so doing the essay showcases how photographed dwellings were styled to communicate their owners’ achievements during the American Gilded Age.
Senior Editor Jordan Karney Chaim’s interview with artist Martine Gutierrez deals with many of the issues relating to the theme of Self + Portrait, including how gender and identity function as social constructs and how we present, define and invent ourselves. The interview was conducted on October 13, 2016 at the opening of the exhibition Martine Gutierrez: True Story, mounted at the Stone Gallery at Boston University and curated by Chaim.
This issue’s research spotlight by Emily Watlington considers how the reception of a video trilogy by David Maljković can be a useful entry point for a researcher looking to understand the effects of their own Western gaze. Her investigation of representation and misintepretation in the video work comments on how trans-cultural art history can and should be written, and furthermore on how identity and selfhood figures into the role of the art historian.
In her visual essay “Vault Skirt: A Notion for Play,” artist Elizabeth Galvez modifies the skirt of Mexican folkloric dance to return the dancer to the unrestrained movements of childhood. The artist’s series of photographs communicate how notions of selfhood change with age and through her performative gestures and movements, her work leads viewers to contemplate their own relationships to play and amusement.
The issue includes eight outstanding exhibition reviews, which survey exhibitions from all over the world. For this issue we have expanded our review section, including reviews that do not fit within the issue’s theme, which we will continue to do in the future. Our reviewers analyze four exhibitions from Boston, two at the Museum of Fine Arts, one at Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum, and one at the Harvard Art Museums. These exhibitions present work from a broad range of time periods and locations, surveying work from the Renaissance to the Present and include artists from Asia, Italy, the United States and Colombia. Reviews of recent exhibitions at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal address the evolving role of the portrait in American identity and the place of architecture in historical memory, respectively. Finally, two analyses from Europe round out our lengthy review section for this issue. One is from London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, which examines the career of an architectural engineer, and the other, from the Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, surveys artistic reflections on the effects of travel and migration.
Although our authors take varying approaches to the theme of Self + Portrait, all address the relationship between selfhood and representation; in the process our contributors demonstrate how these intertwined concepts can be challenged and redefined. As an online journal we too are constantly redefining ourselves. We are delighted that SEQUITUR is growing as a venue for the publication of exhibition reviews and that we are continually able to exploit the myriad features of our online format. Ultimately, what this issue of SEQUITUR shows is that identity and medium are fluid, and should continue to evolve as such.