Friday. Jan. 22. 1960
University Daily Kansan
Page 5
Professors Have Art Articles Published
Two KU faculty members have articles published in the first semester edition of the Register of the Museum of Art.
Marilyn Stokstad, assistant professor of art history, wrote a descriptive article of an English alabaster. St. John the Baptist, one of the Museum's acquisitions this year.
Calder M. Pickett, associate professor of journalism, recounted the 1937-41 controversy which surrounded the murals of Kansas artist John Steuart Curry in the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka.
Maser is Editor
A third article was written by Philippe Verdier, curator of Medieval and Subsequent Decorative Arts at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Md. His topic is the museum's French Renaissance enamel dish." The Crossing of the Red Sea."
The 56-page register was edited by Edward A. Maser, director of the Museum of Art for the past six years. Two volumes—one each semester—are published annually.
"The register is the only major art publication in the Midwest," said Mr. Maser, "and probably the only one of its calibre published by a university this side of the Appalachian Mountains."
Mr. Maser has accepted an invitation to speak at the American Assn. of Museums convention in Boston in May, telling how he has integrated the •- register into the University by including articles written by faculty members other than art historians.
Sculpture Described
Prof. Stokstad's detailed description of the St. John the Baptist—ranging from anatomy to clothing—reveals hours of scrutiny of the figure.
She pointed out that the figure's large hands and feet with extremely long fingers and toes, represented simply by parallel incised lines, are typical of the style among alabaster carvers of the 14th and 15th centuries.
"One of the great beauties of late Gothic art is the elegant handling of draperies." Prof. Stokstad said. "The Kansas St. John wears a cloak decorated with gold and lined with red. His dress of richly textured and gilded camel's skin serves as a foil to the cloak in color, texture and design."
Prof. Stokstad believes the Kansas St. John is unusually well-preserved, although she indicates the figure's base, eyes and lashes may have been repainted.
She also discussed other famous alabasters and related the history of the alabaster industry, which was one of the first to be organized for mass production. The industry began about 1349 and the use of alabaster images was widespread by the end of the Middle Ages.
News Is Fenced-In
PENDLETON, Ind. — (UPI) — The sports staff of the Pendleton Reflector regretfully turned down an invitation to a St. Louis wrestling match explaining, "Time' does not permit us to attend functions outside our own neighborhood." The paper is published by inmates of the Indiana reformatory.
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The preliminary oil sketches for the controversial Kansas State Capitol murals are displayed in the John Steuart Curry Room of the Kansas Union.
"They are the sole remaining evidence of work planned, but only partly executed, by the Kansas-born painter, whose paintings were shown in a retrospective exhibition at the University in 1957," wrote Prof. Pickett. "It was the first Curry exhibit ever held in the artist's native state."
There was conflict over the murals almost from the day Mr. Curry was commissioned to paint them in 1937.
"One faction believed the painter's portrayal of Kansas should be 'raw, rough and true.' Another preferred waving wheat fields, sunflowers and scenes of industry," related Prof. Pickett.
Mr. Curry planned the murals in three parts: the settlement of Kansas, the life of the homesteader and pastoral prosperity. Most of the preliminary sketches were completed by 1839. Then the real arguments began.
Kansans argued about tornadoes, dust storms, grasshopper plagues, long-legged cattle and pits whose tails weren't supposed to curl.
A final controversy marked the painting of the murals. Mr. Curry had planned to tell the story of Kansas in three acts, but one act was left uncompleted because the State Executive Council refused to remove the imported Italian marble from the rotunda, where the third installation of murals would have been located.
Mr. Curry refused to sign the murals because "this project is uncompleted and does not represent my true idea."
"But the John Broyn mural—the most dramatic part of the paintings—excited the greatest dispute," wrote Prof. Pickett. "In it there was a tornado, and the snout of the storm reminded a good many state-house visitors of an elephant's trunk and some of them thought it was a portrayal of the return of the GOP to power with the New Dealers disappearing in the cloud of dust at the foot of the hill."
In addition to describing the "Crossing of the Red Sea" enamel dish and discussing the 16th century French Renaissance, Philippe Verdier reflects on a mystery.
The artist of the enamel dish and other enamel works simply signed himself "I.C."
"Who is the artist who signed himself I. C.?" asked Mr. Verdier.
"The problem of identifying the master I. C. is an important one to the scholar, for in his search for the objective bases for his attributions, he must seek such evidence."
"Scholars no longer agree that the initials designate a member of the Pierre Courteys family, whose first name would have been Jean. Certainly a Jehan Courteys lived at Limoges in 1545 where Pierre Courteys had a house in 1568, but nowhere do documents mention that he was an enameller."
Mr. Verdier wrote that the issue of the identity of I.C. is confused by the suspicion that two artists seem to be concealed under the same monogram, one of them being a whole generation younger than the
man who signed himself I.C. on I.D.C. I.C. "junior" seems to have been active about 1600.
"There is agreement today that the other enamels signed I. C. 'senior' are by the same hand, or come from the same workshop, as pieces initialed I. D. C. and that either signature should be read as that of Jean Court or de Court.
"That Master I.C. and Master ID.C. are the same person is evident from the style and technique of their signed enamels and from corroborative evidence."
Mr. Verdier suggested a hypothesis:
"I would like to advance the hypothesis that the two artists shared the same workshop in Limoges, signed fully only their best pieces or the pieces which had been especially commissioned from either of them, and for the rest of the production of their shop were satisfied with hall marking it with their initials. Their monograms would indicate the semi-anonymous character of the factory, then so prevalent, and its double-headed management."
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