C.V.? Say what?

So, it is Friday night and naturally a girl’s* thoughts turn to updating her C.V. While I am aware of the basic, essential rules of C.V. writing (always tailor your C.V. to the post you are applying to; never include ‘modelling a life-size model of Benedict Cumberbatch out of Fimo’ under ‘Personal Interests’), I felt like I should definitely brush up on the conventions of writing an academic C.V.

I found some really helpful (and free!) resources online, which I thought it would be useful to share with you, dear reader:

• Some very comprehensive and clearly set out advice from Vitae, an organisation ‘championing the personal, professional and career development of doctoral researchers and research staff in higher education institutions and research institutes.’
• More concise advice from the University of London Careers group on writing C.V.s for PhD Students.
• Careers advice from jobs.ac.uk - where would I be without their Sunday email job alerts of joy?
• Advice on CV lay out from early career academics (MLA say no periods apparently), from the College Art Association.

I am sure there is more and I am most certain that I have a lot more to learn, but please do let me know if you find these resources useful or if you have more suggestions. I will also upload a copy of my academic C.V. for your scrutiny, so if you have any questions or feedback please do let me know in the comments section.

Essential materials for updating the art historian’s C.V.

*for girl, read = slightly anxious, aspiring academic.

Resolutions

 

 Oh dear – I can only put down the lack of activity on my blog down to one thing – finishing. I have recently been finishing a lot of things. I handed in my PhD thesis – hurrah! I finished living in London. I edited my third issue of immediations and stepped down as editor-in-chief. 

 

I have also been exploring lots of new projects. I have been teaching as a visiting lecturer, rather than as someone else’s teaching assistant. I have feel very privileged to be able to be co-teaching a masters course at the Courtauld with Professor Caroline Arscott and I also taught a course for first year undergraduates about sculpture in London. I have been continuing with my work for the Public Programmes department at the Courtauld Gallery and this has meant learning and writing about artists as diverse as Peter Lely and Pablo Picasso. 

From now on, I hope to use this blog as a record and aid to my new research projects as I try and make my way in the (slightly terrifying) world of early career academia. In the spirit of this motivational mood, here are my aims for the rest of 2013:

- submit at least three journal articles for publication

- keep pursuing postdoctoral opportunities

- plan a new course for undergraduate teaching

- work out a postdoctoral book proposal

Will I achieve all of these dear reader? Only time will tell, but I promise I will share any exciting research and news I come across on the way. 

Anish Kapoor at Waddesdon Manor

While we might associate Anish Kapoor’s sculpture with ultra-contemporary urban spaces,  for example, his  ArcelorMittar Orbit which is climbing ever higher above the Olympic Park in Stratford , visitors to Waddesdon Manor can see his work in an entirely different context. Mountain, a work in aluminium from 2001, is currently on display in Waddesdon’s Aviary, surrounded by rococo-style garden sculpture and bird song emanating from the chinoiserie cages.

In comparison with the flamboyant carpet bedding and architecture of the aviary, Mountain makes a subtle intervention into this historic landscape. The sculpture is cleverly placed beneath the aviary roof, which tightly encloses it and casts lace-like shadows across its skin. This intimate interaction between sculpture and architecture is unusual in Kapoor’s works, which are usually so dramatic that they need space and time in order to resonate.  His sculptures can be characterised as glossy and  high-impact works, often with incorporating movement and theatrical effects, as characterised by the dramatic use of red wax in his retrospective at the Royal Academy last year or the ‘Bean’ in Chicago. In contrast the gentle slopes of Mountain,  constructed from 120 of jet-cut matt aluminium layers seem to emphasize the careful and thoughtful observation and accumulation of information and surface. The water-washed sides of Mountain allude to the natural process of erosion and bely the high-tech processes behind its making.

Mountain will be on display at Waddesdon Manor until October. Also on display in the Coach House are Andy Warhol’s Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century.

Photos: Author’s own.

Mass Observation Project

The Mass Observation Archive was founded in 1937 by three young men who wanted to

Waiting for their Majesties in Piccadilly, 12th May 1937, The Royal Collection

create an ‘anthropology of ourselves’. They recruited a team of observers and some volunteer writers to record their everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain. The project continued up until the 1950s. In the 1970s the archive was given to the University of Sussex, who now hold it as part of their special collections and is open to all bona fide researchers and members of the public free of charge.

Today, Thursday 12th of May, they have given an open invitation to become a Mass Observer for the day. You can find the instructions on how to join in here. I’ve written my entry, although it mostly seemed to be about buses and tea!

Virginia Woolf and the Elgin Marbles

I’ve been thinking about the persistence and importance of classical and especially antique sculpture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century a lot recently. Yesterday I came across this passage in Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day, which seemed an apt summation of my thoughts/general wistful mood and also satisfies my desire to relate Virginia Woolf to everything!

But instead of going straight back to the office to-day, Mary turned into the British Museum, and strolled down the gallery with the shapes of stone until she found an empty seat directly beneath the gaze of the Elgin marbles. She looked at them, and seemed, as usual, borne up on some wave of exaltation and emotion, by which her life at once became solemn and beautiful–an impression which was due as much, perhaps, to the solitude and chill and silence of the gallery as to the actual beauty of the statues. One must suppose, at least, that her emotions were not purely aesthetic, because after she had gazed at the Ulysses for a minute or two, she began to think about Ralph Denham. So secure did she feel with these silent shapes that she almost yielded to an impulse to say “I am in love with you” aloud. The presence of this immense and enduring beauty made her almost alarmingly conscious of her desire, and at the same time proud of a feeling which did not display anything like the same proportions when she was going about her daily work.

Night and Day (1919), (London: Vintage, 2000), p. 72

Photo: Author’s own.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Study after the Elgin Marbles, V&A Collections

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

See some beautiful images of the pieces in the Met’s Alexander McQueen Exhibit — from New York Magazine’s The Cut.

“[I love the] washed out colors [in the collection]. Julia Margaret Cameron. Hand-painted Victorian pictures. So, it’s not really black, it’s grey. And, it’s not really white, it’s dirty white. And, the pink is like the powder on the face.”

Hamo Thornycroft and Aesthetic Dress

At the moment I’m working on a chapter on Hamo Thornycroft, one of the leading members of the New Sculpture movement, and his interest in dress, drapery and movement. A few weeks ago I was doing a customary trawl through the V&A collections and discovered that Hamo had designed and had made a dress for his wife Agatha.

Although the dress is usually cocooned safely in Blythe House, it’s currently on display as part of the Cult of Beauty exhibition. Hamo married Agatha Cox in 1884 and and this dress was made the year after. It’s designed to be worn without a corset and to follow the ‘natural’ shape of the female body. Instead of the whiplash curves created by a boned corset, the dress is gently gathered with smocking at and under the bust and has a fitted waistband. The skirt is neither so narrow as to hobble the wearer nor so wide and heavy to make walking an effort, although a fashionable bustle effect is retained at the back. The sleeves are loose and comfortable but practically smocked at the elbow. The Liberty fabric is washed silk and was patterned with blue and white stripes, although the blue dye has almost completely faded.

Hamo was a very active man and always tried to involve Agatha in his outdoor pursuits, including cycling. Here we can see Agatha bestrode her bicycle, wearing a dress similar to the one held in the V&A, although it seems to be gathered in at the waist with a wide sash rather than smocking. This plaque, which is from 1897, dates from around the same time that Hamo and Agatha became involved with the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union, a society for the promotion of healthy and beautiful dress for women and men. The president was the illustrator and painter Henry Holiday. The Union produced a handsomely illustrated journal called Aglaia, which you can read today in the National Art Library. In the second issue, published in the spring of 1894, Thornycroft’s Artemis was featured as a frontispiece. The editorial explained:

[This is] not given as our suggestion for a walking dress to be worn in Regent Street. [It is] included in “Aglaia” as reminders of what the unspoiled figure is, how supple and full of life and grace is every movement, and to show how lovely drapery can be when that grace “is made manifest” in it.

Thorncroft’s interest in dress and drapery seems to be an important part of his artistic practice and brings together his reverence for classical Greek sculpture with his concern for the lack of beauty in everyday life.