Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet
Author: Georges Riat
Publisher: Parkstone Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2008
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Child of materialism and positivism, Courbet was without a doubt one of the most complex painters of the nineteenth century. Symbolising the rejection of traditions, Courbet did not hesitate to confront the public with the truth by liberating painting of conventional rules. He became from then on the leader of pictorial realism.

Metamorphoses

Metamorphoses
Author: Emanuele Coccia
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2021-06-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1509545689

We are all fascinated by the mystery of metamorphosis – of the caterpillar that transforms itself into a butterfly. Their bodies have almost nothing in common. They don’t share the same world: one crawls on the ground and the other flutters its wings in the air. And yet they are one and the same life. Emanuele Coccia argues that metamorphosis – the phenomenon that allows the same life to subsist in disparate bodies – is the relationship that binds all species together and unites the living with the non-living. Bacteria, viruses, fungi, plants, animals: they are all one and the same life. Each species, including the human species, is the metamorphosis of all those that preceded it – the same life, cobbling together a new body and a new form in order to exist differently. And there is no opposition between the living and the non-living: life is always the reincarnation of the non-living, a carnival of the telluric substance of a planet – the Earth – that continually draws new faces and new ways of being out of even the smallest particle of its disparate body. By highlighting what joins humans together with other forms of life, Coccia’s brilliant reflection on metamorphosis encourages us to abandon our view of the human species as static and independent and to recognize instead that we are part of a much larger and interconnected form of life.

Byzantium After Byzantium

Byzantium After Byzantium
Author: Nicolae Iorga
Publisher: Center For Romanian Studies
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2023-01-24
Genre: Byzantine Empire
ISBN: 9781592111367

Originally published in French in 1935, the author's formula Byzantium after Byzantium defines several centuries of world history. Iorga points out the great contributions of Byzantine civilization to the Western world, especially during the Renaissance. He demonstrates that Byzantium survived through its people and local autonomies, as well as through its exiles--clerics, scholars, merchants, and political officials. One of the most important expressions of this was found in the Romanian principalities where Greeks from the Phanar district of Istanbul played a major role in Romanian political life, defining an entire period of Romanian history--the Phanariot Period. They continued the Byzantine ideas, aspirations, education, and way of life. All of this allows us to speak of a Byzantium after Byzantium.

The Open Work

The Open Work
Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1989
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780674639768

This book is significant for its concept of "openness"--the artist's decision to leave arrangements of some constituents of a work to the public or to chance--and for its anticipation of two themes of literary theory: the element of multiplicity and plurality in art, and the insistence on literary response as an interaction between reader and text.

Florentine Renaissance Sculpture

Florentine Renaissance Sculpture
Author: Charles Avery
Publisher: John Murray Pubs Limited
Total Pages: 274
Release: 1970
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780719519321

"Some of the greatest names in the history of art are those of Florentine sculptors: Ghiberti, Donatello and Luca della Robbia; Verrocchio and Michelangelo; Cellini and Giovanni Bologna. These were the creators of a school of sculpture that remained supreme for over two centuries."--BOOK COVER.

Eastern Approaches to Byzantium

Eastern Approaches to Byzantium
Author: Antony Eastmond
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN:

The eastern frontier of Byzantium and the interaction of the peoples that lived along it are the themes of this book. With a focus on the ninth to thirteenth centuries and dealing with both art history and history, the essays provide reconsiderations of Byzantine policy on its eastern borders, new interpretations and new materials on Byzantine relations with the Georgians, Armenians and Seljuqs, as well as studies on the writing of history among these peoples. Presenting research from Russia and Georgia as well as Europe and the USA, the contributors stress the interaction and interdependence of all the peoples along this frontier zone, and consider the different ways in which the political and cultural power of Byzantium was appropriated. They provide important comparative evidence for the relationship between local and Byzantine cultures, and open up new avenues for research into the history of eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus. The volume arises from the thirty-third Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies held at the University of Warwick in March 1999.