S. Maria della Pace, cloister

In her two essays “Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in America,” first published in October 3 and 4 (spring and fall 1977), Rosalind Krauss articulated an idea for defining the diverse genres and styles of art in the 1970s. Rightly or wrongly, she defined this idea as an index. This placed art in a context first...

Author’s note: The following text is a fragment. It represents two interrelated concerns: the first is my long-standing interest in the permeability of the concepts of figure and ground, and how Mies’s work—in particular the evolution of his column section—can be taken as a symptom of his concern for this problem; second, this text...

~THE WRITINGS of Colonna (1499) and of Pacioli (1509) roughly bracket the first decade of the sixteenth century, a decade which marks that peak of achievement in the visual arts known as the High Renaissance, as represented by the painting of Leonardo and Giorgione, the sculpture of Michelangelo, and the architecture of Bramante. It would be strange...