Nature and Imagination in Ancient and Early Modern Roman Art

Nature and Imagination in Ancient and Early Modern Roman Art
Author: Gabriel Pihas
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2022-07-27
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000613461

This volume uses the art of Rome to help us understand the radical historical break between the fundamental ancient pre-supposition that there is a natural world or cosmos situating human life, and the equally fundamental modern emphasis on human imagination and its creative power. Rome’s unique art history reveals a different side of the battle between ancients and moderns than that usually raised as an issue in the history of science and philosophy. The book traces the idea of a cosmos in pre-modern art in Rome, from the reception of Greek art in the Roman republic to the construction of the Pantheon, to early Christian art and architecture. It then sketches the disappearance of the presupposition of a cosmos in the High Renaissance and Baroque periods, as creativity became a new ideal. Through discussions of the art and architecture that defines proto-modern Rome— from Michelangelo’s terribilita’ in the Sistine Chapel, Caravaggio’s realism, Baroque illusionism, the infinities of Borromini’s architecture, to the Grand Tour’s representations of ruins— through an interpretation of such major issues and works, this book shows how modern art liberates us while leaving us feeling estranged from our grounding in the natural world. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, architectural history, classics, philosophy, and early modern history and culture.

The Virtual Liturgy and Ritual Artifacts in Medieval and Early Modern Studies

The Virtual Liturgy and Ritual Artifacts in Medieval and Early Modern Studies
Author: Katharine D. Scherff
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2023-03-03
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000841863

Examining the history of altar decorations, this study of the visual liturgy grapples with many of the previous theoretical frameworks to reveal the evolution and function of these ritual objects. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book uses traditional art-historical methodologies and media technology theory to reexamine ritual objects. Previous analysis has not considered the in-between nature of these objects as deliberate and virtual conduits to the divine. The liturgy, the altarpiece, the altar environment, relics, and their reliquaries are media. In a series of case studies, several objects tell a different story about culture and society in medieval Europe. In essence, they reveal that media and media technologies generate and modulate the individual and collective structure of feelings of sacredness among assemblages of humans and nonhumans. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, medieval studies, early modern studies, and architectural history.

Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design

Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design
Author: Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2022-09-23
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000646068

Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design challenges the received narrative on the artists, exhibitions, and interpretations of Viennese Modernism. The book centers on three main erasures—the erasure of Jewish artists and critics; erasures relating to gender and sexual identification; and erasures of other marginalized figures and movements. Restoring missing elements to the story of the visual arts in early twentieth-century Vienna, authors investigate issues of gender, race, ethnic and sexual identity, and political affiliation. Both well-studied artists and organizations—such as the Secession and the Austrian Werkbund, and iconic figures such as Klimt and Hoffmann—are explored, as are lesser known figures and movements. The book’s thought-provoking chapters expand the chronological contours and canon of artists surrounding Viennese Modernism to offer original, nuanced, and rich readings of individual works, while offering a more diverse portrait of the period from 1890, through World War II and into the present. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, history, design history, architectural history, and European studies.

Whistler and Artistic Exchange between Japan and the West

Whistler and Artistic Exchange between Japan and the West
Author: Ayako Ono
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2023-04-28
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000877094

Ono examines cross-cultural artistic exchange between the West and Japan from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Studies of Japonisme have been dominated by searching out relationships of influence between artworks–trying to identify which specific works influenced a particular artist. Ono argues that a more holistic understanding of 'spillover effects' is necessary in fully comprehending the nuances of these relationships. She bases this argument on documents and works of art in the context of globalisation, looking at the relationships between James McNeill Whistler and others with their contemporaries in the Japanese artistic and literary worlds. This was a more complex two-way exchange than is often appreciated, with Western artists taking inspiration from (to them) new Japanese styles, while Japanese artists and writers were trying to craft a 'modern', more western-influences style to reflect the modern nation of Japan emerging onto the world stage after centuries of relative isolation. A fascinating analysis of the role of globalisation and cultural exchange in the development of new and hybrid artforms, that will be essential reading for scholars of this fascinating period in international art history.

Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà and its Afterlives

Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà and its Afterlives
Author: Lisa M. Rafanelli
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2022-12-30
Genre: Art
ISBN: 100083378X

This book offers a fresh perspective on Michelangelo’s well-known masterpiece, the Vatican Pietà, by tracing the shifting meaning of the work of art over time. Lisa M. Rafanelli chronicles the object history of the Vatican Pietà and the active role played by its many reproductions. The sculpture has been on continuous view for over 500 years, during which time its cultural, theological, and artistic significance has shifted. Equally important is the fact that over its long life it has been relocated numerous times and has also been reproduced in images and objects produced both during Michelangelo’s lifetime and long after, described here as artistic progeny: large-scale, unique sculpted variants, smaller-scale statuettes, plaster and bronze casts, and engraved prints. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Renaissance studies, early modern studies, religion, Christianity, and theology.

The Pictures Generation at Hallwalls

The Pictures Generation at Hallwalls
Author: Vera Dika
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2023-06-16
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000895009

In this book, Vera Dika rewrites the story of the Pictures Generation from the perspective of the Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY. Her work is based on interviews with living artists, archival research, and personal collections, including films, videotapes, and sound recordings. At once aesthetic, cultural, and political, this renewed perspective asks new questions and rewrites past assumptions about the artists’ work. The legendary members of the East Coast Pictures Generation emerged at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo in the mid-1970s. These young people had started Hallwalls, an artist-run organization that invited artists from a variety of mediums to show their work. It also featured productions by the founding members themselves: Robert Longo, Charles Clough, Cindy Sherman, Nancy Dwyer, and Michael Zwack. The works discussed in the volume include performance, video, films, painting, music, and literature, and have been chosen because of the way they foreground states of the body in relationship to conditions of their medium. As a distinguishing feature of Hallwalls artists’ work, the practice uses these traces to make metaphors on the process of mechanical reproduction itself. The Hallwalls artists’ work also gives testament to Buffalo and to New York City, the cities that formed their historical contexts. This book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, performance studies, film studies, and gender studies.

State Construction and Art in East Central Europe, 1918-2018

State Construction and Art in East Central Europe, 1918-2018
Author: Agnieszka Chmielewska
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2022-09-19
Genre: Art
ISBN: 100065561X

This volume offers a comprehensive perspective on the relationship between the art scene and agencies of the state in countries of the region, throughout four consecutive yet highly diverse historical periods: from the period of state integration after World War I, through the communist era post 1945 and the time of political transformation after 1989, to the present-day globalisation (including counter-reactions to westernisation and cultural homogenisation). With twenty-three theoretically and/or empirically oriented articles by authors from sixteen countries (East Central Europe and beyond, including the United States and Australia), the book discusses interconnections between state policies and artistic institutions, trends and the art market from diverse research perspectives. The contributors explore subjects such as the impact of war on the formation of national identities, the role of artists in image-building for the new national states emerging after 1918, the impact of political systems on artists’ attitudes, the discourses of art history, museum studies, monument conservation and exhibition practices. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, cultural politics, cultural history, and East Central European studies and history.

Egon Schiele and the Art of Popular Illustration

Egon Schiele and the Art of Popular Illustration
Author: Claude Cernuschi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2022-09-02
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000648354

Presenting a radically different picture of Egon Schiele’s work, this study documents (in one-to-one comparisons) the extent of the artist’s visual borrowings from the Viennese humoristic journal, Die Muskete. Claude Cernuschi analyzes each comparison on a case-by-case basis, primarily because the interpretation of cartoons and caricatures is highly contingent on their specific historical and cultural context. Although this connection has gone unnoticed in the literature, in retrospect, this correlation makes perfect sense. Not only was Schiele’s artistic production frequently compared to caricature (and derided for being “grotesque”), but Expressionism and caricature are natural allies. One may belong to “high” art and the other to “popular” culture, yet both presuppose similar assumptions and deploy a similar rhetorical position: namely, that the exaggeration of human physiognomy allows deeper psychological “truths” to emerge. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, popular culture, and politics.

Gerhard Richter, Individualism, and Belonging in West Germany

Gerhard Richter, Individualism, and Belonging in West Germany
Author: Luke Smythe
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2022-07-29
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000625214

This book reevaluates the art of Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) in relation to his efforts to achieve belonging in the face of West Germany’s increasing individualism between the 1960s and the 1990s. Richter fled East Germany in 1961 to escape the constraints of socialist collectivism. His varied and extensive output in the West attests to his greater freedom under capitalism, but also to his struggles with belonging in a highly individualised society, a problem he was far from alone in facing. The dynamic of increasing individualism has been closely examined by sociologists, but has yet to be employed as a framework for understanding broader trends in recent German art history. Rather than critique this development from a socialist perspective or experiment with new communal structures like a number of his colleagues, Richter sought and found security in traditional modes of bourgeois collectivity, like the family, religion, painting and the democratic capitalist state. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history as well as German history, culture and politics.

Translating Nature Into Art

Translating Nature Into Art
Author: Jeanne Nuechterlein
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2011
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780271036922

"Explores how the Renaissance artist Hans Holbein the Younger came to develop his mature artistic styles through the key historical contexts framing his work: the controversies of the Reformation and Renaissance debates about rhetoric"--Provided by publisher.