Art historian views Van Gogh as a modern professional, not tortured hero

"Van Gogh's Progress: Utopia, Modernity, and Late-Nineteenth-Century Art" reflects the way the UB professor likes to do art history, using the artist as "a lens on the broader culture."

"The two major thrusts of the book come out of the fact that I'm a social historian of art and I'm a feminist," Zemel said. Her work presents Van Gogh as "a determined modern professional, rather than the tortured romantic hero that legend has given us," according to the publisher.

Zemel has been chosen as the next chair of the Department of Art History, succeeding Jack Quinan in the fall. As a member of the Women's Studies Steering Committee, actively concerned with the presence of women faculty and students at UB, she is eager to take her position as one of the few women chairs.

"There need to be more women" in leadership at UB, she asserts, describing herself as "an advocate for women's issues on this campus and within arts and letters."

The changing role of women in society is one of the themes she addresses in her study of Van Gogh and his era, a century ago. Her book "shows how the issues entangled in Van Gogh's work-issues of the market, gender and class-were also knotted into the work of many avant-garde artists of the late 19th century.

"Each one embodies a specific societal crisis for Van Gogh's generation: women and sexuality, the rural artisan, republican citizenry, professional identity, the burgeoning art market and the construction of a modern rural idea," according to the publisher's introduction.

"I felt there was always a kind of optimistic view of the future" in Van Gogh's work, Zemel said. Using the "notion of spiritual and social progress" reminiscent of one of Van Gogh's favorite books, Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Zemel examines the artist's painting as a series of utopian projects. "Again and again, with great enthusiasm and energy, Van Gogh developed strategies to reach broader audiences, to promote popular art forms, to represent alternatives to urban civilization and to foster creative communities," she writes in her book.

Zemel is not finished with the Van Gogh family, however. She is writing a short cultural feminist biography of Van Gogh's youngest sister, Wilhelmina, who aspired to be a writer. "She's clearly another talented Van Gogh. Because she's a woman, her life takes different turns," Zemel said.

After the Van Gogh project, Zemel will have more time for her other main interest as an art historian-visual culture and the thriving European Jewish community between World War I and II, "diaspora culture in the positive sense of the term."

She is focusing on Jewish photographers and their "role in framing a kind of modern Jewish culture." Her research also looks at early Jewish artists such as Chagall and some contemporary artists such as French Canadians.

Zemel and Claire Kahane of the English Department taught a course on the Holocaust last semester. Preparing for the course and another on art between the two world wars stimulated Zemel's interest in that period's emerging Jewish culture that has been overshadowed by the Holocaust.

"The Holocaust is immensely difficult to write about and to discuss and to teach. It's very difficult to penetrate the cliches of good and evil," she said. "There's a fashion for Holocaust studies. I don't think it's a bad thing." She hopes to be able to teach the course again in the future.

Her own interest in the "very thriving, modern but distinct" European Jewish community before the Holocaust "raises pressing questions about multicultural societies" today, Zemel said.

As she considers her coming role as chairman of the Art History Department, Zemel draws a parallel with her study of Van Gogh. "These are gloomy times in the university, but I'm optimistic in gloomy times."

The Center for the Arts is just part of what makes the present "expansive and interesting," she said. She sees her department moving toward a more professional focus. Although the plans are still very preliminary, the department is interested in developing as a museological training program, while continuing offerings in general art history. The expanded program would include more art critical courses, art and the law, and arts management to bolster professional training.

"You'll have an answer for parents about what you can do with an art history degree," Zemel said.

She also wants to see the department develop its multicultural dimension, represented now by Jolene Rickard, whose specialty is indigenous culture. For instance, UB's large Asian student population suggests the value of enlarging the study of Asian art, Zemel said.

"We're an active department," shesaid, pointing to two other faculty members who recently published books. Dorothy F. Glass wrote "Portals, Pilgrimage, and Crusade in Western Tuscany." L. Vance Watrous has a new book entitled "The Cave Sanctuary of Zeus at Psychro: A Study of Extra-Urban Sanctuaries in Minoan and Early Iron Age Crete."

Zemel came to UB in 1978 from the faculty of the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Her interest in Van Gogh stems from research for her dissertation at Columbia University, later published as "The Formation of a Legend: Van Gogh Criticism." She also is the author of "Vincent Van Gogh," published in 1993.