Comparativism in Art History

Comparativism in Art History PDF Author: Jas Elsner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351571397
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Featuring some of the major voices in the world of art history, this volume explores the methodological aspects of comparison in the historiography of the discipline. The chapters assess the strengths and weaknesses of comparative practice in the history of art, and consider the larger issue of the place of comparative in how art history may develop in the future. The contributors represent a comprehensive range of period and geographic command from antiquity to modernity, from China and Islam to Europe, from various forms of art history to archaeology, anthropology and material culture studies. Art history is less a single discipline than a series of divergent scholarly fields ? in very different historical, geographic and cultural contexts ? but all with a visual emphasis on the close examination of objects. These fields focus on different, often incompatible temporal and cultural contexts, yet nonetheless they regard themselves as one coherent discipline ? namely the history of art. There are substantive problems in how the sub-fields within the broad-brush generalization called 'art history' can speak coherently to each other. These are more urgent since the shift from an art history centered on the western tradition to one that is consciously global.

Comparativism in Art History

Comparativism in Art History PDF Author: Jas Elsner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351571397
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
Featuring some of the major voices in the world of art history, this volume explores the methodological aspects of comparison in the historiography of the discipline. The chapters assess the strengths and weaknesses of comparative practice in the history of art, and consider the larger issue of the place of comparative in how art history may develop in the future. The contributors represent a comprehensive range of period and geographic command from antiquity to modernity, from China and Islam to Europe, from various forms of art history to archaeology, anthropology and material culture studies. Art history is less a single discipline than a series of divergent scholarly fields ? in very different historical, geographic and cultural contexts ? but all with a visual emphasis on the close examination of objects. These fields focus on different, often incompatible temporal and cultural contexts, yet nonetheless they regard themselves as one coherent discipline ? namely the history of art. There are substantive problems in how the sub-fields within the broad-brush generalization called 'art history' can speak coherently to each other. These are more urgent since the shift from an art history centered on the western tradition to one that is consciously global.

History and Art History

History and Art History PDF Author: Nicholas Chare
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000226190
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Through a series of cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary interventions, leading international scholars of history and art history explore ways in which the study of images enhances knowledge of the past and informs our understanding of the present. Spanning a diverse range of time periods and places, the contributions cumulatively showcase ways in which ongoing dialogue between history and art history raises important aesthetic, ethical and political questions for the disciplines. The volume fosters a methodological awareness that enriches exchanges across these distinct fields of knowledge. This innovative book will be of interest to scholars in art history, cultural studies, history, visual culture and historiography.

Comparativism in Art History

Comparativism in Art History PDF Author: Jas Elsner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351571389
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
Featuring some of the major voices in the world of art history, this volume explores the methodological aspects of comparison in the historiography of the discipline. The chapters assess the strengths and weaknesses of comparative practice in the history of art, and consider the larger issue of the place of comparative in how art history may develop in the future. The contributors represent a comprehensive range of period and geographic command from antiquity to modernity, from China and Islam to Europe, from various forms of art history to archaeology, anthropology and material culture studies. Art history is less a single discipline than a series of divergent scholarly fields ? in very different historical, geographic and cultural contexts ? but all with a visual emphasis on the close examination of objects. These fields focus on different, often incompatible temporal and cultural contexts, yet nonetheless they regard themselves as one coherent discipline ? namely the history of art. There are substantive problems in how the sub-fields within the broad-brush generalization called 'art history' can speak coherently to each other. These are more urgent since the shift from an art history centered on the western tradition to one that is consciously global.

Visuality and Virtuality

Visuality and Virtuality PDF Author: Whitney Davis
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691245908
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
A provocative and challenging new conceptual framework for the study of images This book builds on the groundbreaking theoretical framework established in Whitney Davis’s acclaimed previous book, A General Theory of Visual Culture, in which he shows how certain culturally constituted aspects of artifacts and pictures are visible to informed viewers. Here, Davis uses revealing archaeological and historical case studies to further develop his theory, presenting an exacting new account of the interaction that occurs when a viewer looks at a picture. Davis argues that pictoriality—the depiction intended by its maker to be seen—emerges at a particular standpoint in space and time. Reconstruction of this standpoint is the first step of the art historian’s craft. Because standpoints are inherently mutable and mobile, pictoriality constantly shifts in form and possible meaning. To capture this complexity, Davis develops new concepts of radical pictorial ambiguity, including “bivisibility” (the fact that pictures can always be seen in ways other than intended), pictorial naturalism, and the behavior of pictures under changing angles of view. He then applies these concepts to four cases—Paleolithic cave painting; ancient Egyptian tomb decoration; classical Greek architectural sculpture, with a focus on the Parthenon frieze; and Renaissance perspective as invented by Brunelleschi. A profound new theory of the work of both makers and viewers by one of the discipline’s most esteemed and engaged thinkers, Visuality and Virtuality is essential reading for art historians, architects, archaeologists, and philosophers of art and visual theory.

The Imagination of the Mind in Classical Athens

The Imagination of the Mind in Classical Athens PDF Author: Emily Clifford
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000912671
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
This book explores the imaginative processes at work in the artefacts of Classical Athens. When ancient Athenians strove to grasp ‘justice’ or ‘war’ or ‘death’, when they dreamt or deliberated, how did they do it? Did they think about what they were doing? Did they imagine an imagining mind? European histories of the imagination have often begun with thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. By contrast, this volume is premised upon the idea that imaginative activity, and especially efforts to articulate it, can take place in the absence of technical terminology. In exploring an ancient culture of imagination mediated by art and literature, the book scopes out the roots of later, more explicit, theoretical enquiry. Chapters hone in on a range of visual and verbal artefacts from the Classical period. Approaching the topic from different angles – philosophical, historical, philological, literary, and art historical – they also investigate how these artefacts stimulate affective, sensory, meditative – in short, ‘imaginative’ – encounters between imagining bodies and their world. The Imagination of the Mind in Classical Athens offers a ground-breaking reassessment of ‘imagination’ in ancient Greek culture and thought: it will be essential reading for those interested in not only philosophies of mind, but also ancient Greek image, text, and culture more broadly.

New Narratives of Russian and East European Art

New Narratives of Russian and East European Art PDF Author: Galina Mardilovich
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429639783
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This book brings together thirteen scholars to introduce the newest and most cutting-edge research in the field of Russian and East European art history. Reconsidering canonical figures, re-examining prevalent debates, and revisiting aesthetic developments, the book challenges accepted histories and entrenched dichotomies in art and architecture from the nineteenth century to the present. In doing so, it resituates the artistic production of this region within broader socio-cultural currents and analyzes its interconnections with international discourse, competing political and aesthetic ideologies, and continuous discussions over identity.

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads PDF Author: Pamela A. Patton
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271093005
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 483

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Book Description
This volume assesses how current approaches to iconology and iconography break new ground in understanding the signification and reception of medieval images, both in their own time and in the modern world. Framed by critical essays that apply explicitly historiographical and sociopolitical perspectives to key moments in the evolution of the field, the volume’s case studies focus on how iconographic meaning is shaped by factors such as medieval modes of dialectical thought, the problem of representing time, the movement of the viewer in space, the fragmentation and injury of both image and subject, and the complex strategy of comparing distant cultural paradigms. The contributions are linked by a commitment to understanding how medieval images made meaning; to highlighting the heuristic value of new perspectives and methods in exploring the work of the image in both the Middle Ages and our own time; and to recognizing how subtle entanglements between scholarship and society can provoke mutual and unexpected transformations in both. Collectively, the essays demonstrate the expansiveness, flexibility, and dynamism of iconographic studies as a scholarly field that is still heartily engaged in the challenge of its own remaking. Along with the volume editors, the contributors include Madeline H. Caviness, Beatrice Kitzinger, Aden Kumler, Christopher R. Lakey, Glenn Peers, Jennifer Purtle, and Elizabeth Sears.

Objects of Authority

Objects of Authority PDF Author: Jakub Stejskal
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000637549
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Is the celebrated elegance of Cycladic marble figurines an effect their Early Bronze Age producers intended? Can one adequately appreciate an Assyrian regal statue described by a cuneiform inscription as beautiful? What to make of the apparent aesthetic richness of the traditional cultures of Melanesia, which, however, engage in virtually no recognizable aesthetic discourse? Questions such as these have been formulated and discussed by scholars of remote cultures against the backdrop of a general scepticism about the prospects of escaping the conditioning of one’s own aesthetic culture and attuning to the norms of a remote one. This book makes a radical move: it treats the remote observers’ lack of aesthetic insight not as a hindrance to aesthetic analysis, but as a condition requiring an aesthetic theory that would make room for an aesthetic analysis independent of the model of competent aesthetic judgement or appreciation. Objects of Authority represents a rare effort at bringing together methods and concepts that are often addressed by separate disciplines. It will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on philosophical, art-historical, and anthropological theories of visual art and material culture.

Figurines

Figurines PDF Author: Jaś Elsner
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198861095
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
As touchable objects, figurines have potential for a potent agency in relation to those who use them. This volume considers the figurine as a key conceptual and material problematic in the art history of antiquity through comparative juxtaposition and deep art-historical engagement with Chinese, pre-Columbian Mesoamerican, and Greco-Roman cultures.

The Medieval Mediterranean City

The Medieval Mediterranean City PDF Author: Felicity Ratté
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476678111
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
This book is a study of architecture and urban design across the Mediterranean Sea from the 12th to the 14th Century, a time when there was no single, hegemonic power dominating the area. The focus of the study--four cities on the Italian peninsula, and four in Syria and Egypt--is the interconnectedness of the design and use of urban structures, streets and open space. Each chapter offers an historical analysis of the buildings and spaces used for trade, education, political display and public action. The work includes historical and social analyses of the mercantile, social, political and educational cultures of the eight cities, highlighting similarities and differences between Christian and Islamic practices. Sixteen new maps drawn specifically for this book are based on the writings of medieval travelers.