Awash in Color ed. by Chelsea Foxwell, Anne Leonard (review)

Reviews 245 to religious institutions. For example, Kate Maxwell’s “Quant j’eus tout recordé par ordre” focuses on Guillaume de Machaut’s poems and the motivation and role of memory in their creation.“Changes of Aristocratic Identity,” by Elisabeth van Houts, provides a refreshingly new look at women in medieval times and at their central role as keepers of family or ancestral memory and lore. Of particular interest to students of modern French culture,the last section offers three studies that look back at medieval France from much more recent times and demonstrate the important role imagination and motivation play in the functioning of historical memory. To paraphrase a question raised by Elizabeth Emery in “Pierre Loti’s ‘Memories’ of the Middle Ages,” how can someone without first-hand memories of the medieval past remember it well enough to recreate or bring it back to life in an authentic or truthful manner? Or, stated differently, how close to the original iteration of an event are imagined memories of past times? Aimed at students of the Middle Ages, this richly documented and well-illustrated volume provides provocative perspectives on the subjective role of remembrance of things past. The subjective memories of earlier times that are created are then transmitted down through the ages to enhance the understanding of the modern medievalist. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Rosalie A. Vermette Foxwell, Chelsea, and Anne Leonard, eds. Awash in Color. Chicago: UP of Chicago, 2012. ISBN 978-0-9355-7351-0. Pp. 192. $30. In this collection of essays, a group of North American scholars attempt to reconstruct and make sense of the complex case of cultural exchange revolving around French and Japanese printmaking. Sumptuously illustrated, the book honors the works displayed in the Smart Museum exhibition, the starting point of the project. The editors present a diverse group of European and East Asian color prints with the objective of drawing attention to underappreciated prints by placing them alongside conventionally canonized works of well-known artists such as Hiroshige and ToulouseLautrec . The project is ambitious: it spans vast territories, a broad time frame and a wide range of printmaking techniques. Insofar as the goal is to whet scholars’appetites by showing the high quality of printmaking that predates the popular nineteenthcentury French works influenced by Japanese esthetics,or japonisme,it is very successful. However, the editors aspire to a loftier goal: to argue“that printmaking developments predating the normalization of trade and diplomatic relations between [France and Japan] in the 1850s are what allowed the two traditions to engage with each other so productively in later years”(10). The ostensible underlying purpose is to demonstrate the strengths of both traditions independent of each other. Unfortunately, there is no connecting thread building this important argument through the book, so it will be difficult for many readers to grasp the full picture. Each essay presents a different piece of the process by which printmaking developed from many aesthetic and technological exchanges that took place between several countries over time. Although the editors wish to present a balanced historic perspective, the contributing authors repeatedly underscore the successful incorporation of European technological innovations in Japanese prints and Japanese aesthetics in French prints but do not equally emphasize the triumphs of Japanese technical influence and French aesthetic impact. Readers may remain unconvinced that efforts of French artists to use Japanese techniques and Japanese artists to use French aesthetics were “productive,” whereas in fact they were. In short, the editors aspire to more than this small collection of essays can deliver. An explanatory conclusion tying the essays together and clarifying how they support the editors’ message would have made them more effective and accessible to a wider audience. Nevertheless, the book gets its main point across: focusing exclusively on japonisme is an oversimplification that ignores the rich technical and aesthetic diversity predating this famous cultural exchange. As a result, this collection can serve as an excellent springboard for more research, and we can hope for future Japanese and French perspectives on the editors’ argument. Southwestern University (TX) Lisa Gustavson Freedman, Jeffrey. Books without Borders in Enlightenment Europe. Philadelphia: UP of Pennsylvania, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8122-4389-5...