"RAA" AND THE DIFFICULTIES IN ITS USEAuthor(s): James L. BarrettSource: ARLIS/NA Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 6 (OCTOBER 1975), p. 111Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27945497 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 18:54

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The University of Chicago Press and Art Libraries Society of North America are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to ARLIS/NA Newsletter.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.40 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:54:56 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

RAA AND THE DIFFICULTIES IN ITS USE The R?pertoire D'Art et D'Arch?ologie, RAA, is most difficult to use for the period 1926-33, accor

ding to authoritative opinion, because of the index's "detailed and rigid" classification scheme at that time (ARLIS/NA Newsletter, II, no. 5, Summer 1974, p. 58). This investigation ofthat assertion

was furthered by an issue of Paris Match that told about the Louvre's recent spending of the equiva lent of a million dollars for a canvas painting, sup posedly wrongly regarded as one of the works of Fragonard. The article said that the eighteenth century original was owned by a marquis, whose collection was one of the best ones of eighteenth century French paintings. The collection also con tained works by Poussin, Bourdon and Greuze. It was decided to employ these French artists as sub

jects of investigation in order to determine how troublesome it was to use the RAA volumes in question.

The first volume perused was the one for 1932. In the front part of it are seven pages listing the

periodicals indexed. Also there is the Tables des Mati?res, whose first category is G?n?ralit?s, which covers forty-four pages in the text and is further subdivided into topics like Histoire g?n?rale de Tart, Iconographie, Esth?tique et

technique, critique d'art, and Art populaire. Then the indexed material is organized chrono logically into prehistory, antiquity, middle ages and Renaissance, all subdivided into generalities, architecture, sculpture, painting, and engraving, further divided by countries and centuries, along with minor arts, like ceramics, ivory and bone.

Then divisions by centuries follow through Contemporary Art, which is in turn divided into decorative arts, etc. The last categories are Islam and the Far East, subdivided by form and coun

try, as well as the Ancient Arts of Black Africa, of America, of the Pacific, and of the Arctic -

Regions.

Using the 1932 volume, beginning at 8:20 p.m., information about Fragonard was sought, looking first under the classification "XVIIe? XVIIe Si?cles," then "Peinture et Gravure," and "France." At this point eighty-one entries were found, numbered 2704-2785. To find articles and reproductions dealing with Fragonard in the text, all of the entries had to be read. Seven references were discovered.

The search was completed by 9:10 p.m.; it took about forty minutes to finish?the first time such a one was carried out.

The next artist investigated, Sebastien Bourdon, was not an eighteenth century painter contrary to an impression that might be gained from the Match article. Instead, he lived in the previous century, was a court painter to Queen Christina of Sweden, and now his Self-Portrait is in the Louvre.

The search for information about Bourdon in the 1929 RAA began at 2:20 p.m. For France of the "XVIIe Si?cle", the twenty-three entries were numbered 2268-2291. Number 2271 was a reference to a piece in England's Old Master Drawings, about a "Beau dessin, Mo?se et Pharon, qu'on pourrait

a "Beau dessin,Mo?se etPharon, qu'on pourrait ?tre tent? d'attribuer ? Poussin, mais que M. De monts (author of the article) croit ?tre de la main de Seb. Bourdon." Number 2291 had been read by 2:30 p.m., ten minutes after the beginning of the search.

If one thought that Bourdon was an eighteenth century painter and looked at the entries for that

century in RAA, no direct references to him would be located, after about fifteen minutes of searching for some.

Jean Greuze (1725-1805) was a painter of very popular pictures, which he showed only at his studio.

Many of them were of adolescent girls. "The delicate flesh tones and soft coloring of these pictures reveal a . . . sensuous aspect of his art." {Encyclopedia of World Art, VII, p. 173). An enthusiastic supporter of him was Diderot, the French encyclopedist, who

particularly liked Greuze's The Paralytic Cared for by his Children, believing that works of art should teach morals. Greuze's popularity faded after the French Revolution, and he died penniless.

To find information about Greuze, the 1926 volume was searched. There were forty entries for eighteenth century France in that work. One of them was an article about Greuze, with twelve illustrations, in Estampes. It took about twelve

minutes to read these entries. Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), again, was not an

eighteenth century person. He studied anatomy in a hospital, painted four Bacchanals for Cardinal Richelieu, was once introduced by Pope Urban III as a "young man with the devil in him," but he nonetheless became the "greatest of the French Classical painters." (Praeger Encyclopedia of Art, IV, p. 1614).

The 1927 RAA volume consulted for works on Poussin had not been used for such a long time, it was tightly stuck to the ones adjoining it, and had to be pried loose. The search began at 4:05 p.m. The seventeen annotations for the seventeenth cen

tury were read in six minutes. One of the entries was relevant to the search, a German article in M?nchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst.

The statistics for the four searches are as follows:

S?ARCR

Fragonard Bourdon

Greuze

Poussin

TIME SPENT READING ENTRIES READ

40 minutes 81

10 23 12 40

6 17

AVERAGE NUMBER OF ENTRIES READ PER MINUTE INCLU DING DISTRACTIONS AND THINKING TIME

2.2 2.3 3.3 2.8

It can be seen that with more familiarity with the tool, the quantity of material perused increased. The searching was not "difficult;" it would only be hard if one had practically no knowledge of French, It was just time-consuming. Librarians often do not have the luxury of spending forty minutes to answer a reference question. Not infre quently, the demand for information is such that answers must be provided immediately, if not sooner.

?James L. Barrett

Wayne State University

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.40 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:54:56 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions