We could give this, our inaugural issue, a title ex post facto—something involving the words “American” and “Real”—but we are happy in this first issue for the themes to remain implicit, registered by Lapis as if by seismograph. Lapis is an effort to listen to and channel the concerns of early-career scholars in art, art conservation, art and architectural history, and archeology. Lapis is the stone and the pigment, the material and the art, the writing instrument and the receiving surface.
The four following articles deal with a range of art produced during a one-hundred-year period during which American art engaged the real in new ways, questioning the boundaries of art and life. To redraw the boundaries of art is a theme of modern art all the way through, and it took particular forms on this continent because modernity here progressed hand in hand with the subjection of native peoples (see the work of Marsden Hartley studied here by Dana Ostrander) and the trauma of slavery and its aftermath (an issue implicit in Santiago Sierra’s work, addressed here by Ivana Dizdar), and also due to the particular infrastructures of modern life here (as registered in the work by Joseph Stella discussed by Ramey Mize).The particular American formulation of these concerns then rebounded on Europe, especially after the war (as we see in the piece on the reception of Pollock and Dubuffet in London by Phoebe Herland).
The editorial board wishes to extend heartfelt thanks to our managing editor Conley Lowrance for his sure-handed and genial handling of the process that has led us to our first issue. His combination of focus and openness has allowed the fledgling journal to take flight, and we are grateful.
Sincerely,
Alexander Nagel
Faculty Editor, Lapis: The Journal of the Institute of Fine Arts
Professor of Fine Arts, The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
