Lapis: The Journal of the Institute of Fine Arts debuted in 2019 as a forum for students and scholars in art and architectural history, conservation, and criticism to present work by emerging voices in the field. Lapis publishes new work gathered from the wellspring of the discipline—or mined, as it were, from the source. In preparing the fourth issue of Lapis, we have reflected on the Journal’s mission to showcase research and writing from early career scholars.
Lapis is not the first journal to be run by the Institute’s graduate students. Its predecessor, Marsyas, Studies in the History of Art, published the work of Institute students between 1941 and 1986. In Greek myth, Marsyas was the audacious flute player who challenged Apollo to a musical competition. Though flayed alive for hubris, Marsyas’ bold charge preserved his legacy for millennia. Many field-defining scholars took their own first steps by publishing in Marsyas, and the Lapis editorial board is pleased to continue providing a platform for early-career scholars and their work.
Yet there were also ways in which Marsyas was not audacious enough. With few exceptions, the Journal favored submissions from Institute students. It reflected the prevailing concerns and approaches of art history as practiced by the department: documentary research, iconographic studies, and historical reconstructions. Lapis thus departs from its predecessor by encouraging contributions from scholars at the Institute and elsewhere who work beyond the remit of traditional disciplinary boundaries. We also publish in an open-access digital format to serve the widest audience possible.
With these aims in mind, we are delighted to share the fourth issue of Lapis: The Journal of the Institute of Fine Arts, published at the Institute’s James B. Duke House. The articles in this issue cover a broad geographical and chronological sweep and use disparate approaches to reinterpret art historical narratives. Meghan Doyle’s close study of Ed Ruscha’s painting Frozen but Fallen (1962) illuminates the work’s chain of references to mid-twentieth century advertising and the implications of Ruscha’s borrowings. Doyle’s discussion of the artist’s semiotic preoccupations in this early example of West Coast Pop Art is timely, coinciding with the recent opening of the Ruscha retrospective this fall at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). In their technical article on the conservation of Mexican lacquerware, co-authors Tamia Anaya, Rebecca Ploegr, and Aaron Shugar document the history of lacquerware production in the Mexican city of Olinalá. The authors draw insights from a combination of ethnohistorical and scientific analyses, and use their findings as the basis for an informed conservation approach to this ancient indigenous craft. And in “Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione’s Oriental Heads: Fashioning Genoese Artistic Identity in Seicento Rome,” Claire Sabitt argues that two series of eccentric etchings by the artist contributed to his artistic self-fashioning and ability to attract patrons. Sabitt emphasizes Castiglione’s business savvy by constructing a context for the circulation and distribution of his prints in seventeenth-century Rome.
In a nod to the journal that preceded Lapis, we have also chosen to include Richard E. Stone’s article “Tullio Lombardo’s Adam from the Vendramin Tomb: A New Terminus Ante Quem,” originally published in Marsyas 26 (1972-1973). Stone’s article exemplifies the methods used most frequently by articles published in Marsyas: object-based study, often of a work in the nearby Metropolitan Museum of Art, supplemented by documentary analysis. It remains an important source on Lombardo’s sculpture while also pointing to the Institute’s long-standing support of impactful, early-career scholarship.
We are excited to present these articles and look forward to receiving new submissions to our new Call for Papers, released alongside this issue.
For further information about Lapis, please contact the editors.
Sincerely,
Christine Bootes, Claire Davis, Corey Loftus, Noah Margulis, Maria Olivia Davalos Stanton, Jade Chuyu Xiong
The Editorial Board, Lapis: The Journal of the Institute of Fine Arts
