Face and Mask

Face and Mask PDF Author: Hans Belting
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691244596
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
A cultural history of the face in Western art, ranging from portraiture in painting and photography to film, theater, and mass media This fascinating book presents the first cultural history and anthropology of the face across centuries, continents, and media. Ranging from funerary masks and masks in drama to the figural work of contemporary artists including Cindy Sherman and Nam June Paik, renowned art historian Hans Belting emphasizes that while the face plays a critical role in human communication, it defies attempts at visual representation. Belting divides his book into three parts: faces as masks of the self, portraiture as a constantly evolving mask in Western culture, and the fate of the face in the age of mass media. Referencing a vast array of sources, Belting's insights draw on art history, philosophy, theories of visual culture, and cognitive science. He demonstrates that Western efforts to portray the face have repeatedly failed, even with the developments of new media such as photography and film, which promise ever-greater degrees of verisimilitude. In spite of sitting at the heart of human expression, the face resists possession, and creative endeavors to capture it inevitably result in masks—hollow signifiers of the humanity they're meant to embody. From creations by Van Eyck and August Sander to works by Francis Bacon, Ingmar Bergman, and Chuck Close, Face and Mask takes a remarkable look at how, through the centuries, the physical visage has inspired and evaded artistic interpretation.

Face and Mask

Face and Mask PDF Author: Hans Belting
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691244596
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
A cultural history of the face in Western art, ranging from portraiture in painting and photography to film, theater, and mass media This fascinating book presents the first cultural history and anthropology of the face across centuries, continents, and media. Ranging from funerary masks and masks in drama to the figural work of contemporary artists including Cindy Sherman and Nam June Paik, renowned art historian Hans Belting emphasizes that while the face plays a critical role in human communication, it defies attempts at visual representation. Belting divides his book into three parts: faces as masks of the self, portraiture as a constantly evolving mask in Western culture, and the fate of the face in the age of mass media. Referencing a vast array of sources, Belting's insights draw on art history, philosophy, theories of visual culture, and cognitive science. He demonstrates that Western efforts to portray the face have repeatedly failed, even with the developments of new media such as photography and film, which promise ever-greater degrees of verisimilitude. In spite of sitting at the heart of human expression, the face resists possession, and creative endeavors to capture it inevitably result in masks—hollow signifiers of the humanity they're meant to embody. From creations by Van Eyck and August Sander to works by Francis Bacon, Ingmar Bergman, and Chuck Close, Face and Mask takes a remarkable look at how, through the centuries, the physical visage has inspired and evaded artistic interpretation.

About Face

About Face PDF Author: James Mann
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Get Book Here

Book Description
The secret story, covering the years since Nixon's arrival at the White House, of how American leaders first courted China's Communist government and then belatedly changed their minds after the Tiananmen Square massacre and the Soviet collapse. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The Changing Face of Public History

The Changing Face of Public History PDF Author: Catherine M. Lewis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780875806020
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description
Spurred first by the civil rights debates of the 1960s and 1970s, then by the culture wars of the following decades, the Chicago Historical Society (CHS) increasingly sought to give visitors and patrons a voice in retelling the city's history. In response to debates over the authority to interpret the past, CHS engaged in community outreach and sponsored multicultural exhibits and programs. Yet, in this analysis of the society's evolving relationship with its diverse constituencies, Catherine M. Lewis finds that prevailing assumptions about the museum as a commemorative site dedicated to civic pride undermined CHS's bold attempts to create a public forum. Based on more than 250 interviews with staff at CHS and museums around the country, as well as research into formerly inaccessible public and private papers, The Changing Face of Public History offers a behind-the-scenes look at the ways in which one of the most innovative museums in the United States has continually grappled with issues confronting not only museum professionals but all those concerned about the role history plays in the lives of American citizens.

Changing Face of War

Changing Face of War PDF Author: Allan Douglas English
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 077356716X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
Part I deals with the evolution of military strategy and doctrine, from the Napoleonic Wars to today. Contributors look at the influence of great military thinkers, such as Carl von Clausewitz, on the armed forces of the Western world and examine how previous military leaders dealt with issues similar to those faced today, such as the effects of technology on strategy, the significance of the operational level of war, and ways of restructuring the armed forces in times of uncertainty and change. Part II examines warfare at the end of this century. Examples of the development of revolutionary warfare in Asia from Mao to Giap are used to underscore the cultural and situational influences on doctrines of revolutionary war. Part III looks at the future of conflict in the twenty-first century. Contributors investigate diverse issues, including the impact of computers on warfare, the effect of media coverage on strategy, space policy, arms control in the post-Cold War era, political systems and their relationship to the probability of war, and the prospects of stealth technology. In an era when armed forces around the world have come under increasing scrutiny and criticism, this collection of essays provides valuable lessons that may avert future military mistakes.

On the Judgment of History

On the Judgment of History PDF Author: Joan Wallach Scott
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231551908
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 80

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the face of conflict and despair, we often console ourselves by saying that history will be the judge. Today’s oppressors may escape being held responsible for their crimes, but the future will condemn them. Those who stand up for progressive values are on the right side of history. As ideas once condemned to the dustbin of history—white supremacy, hypernationalism, even fascism—return to the world, threatening democratic institutions and values, can we still hold out hope that history will render its verdict? Joan Wallach Scott critically examines the belief that history will redeem us, revealing the implicit politics of appeals to the judgment of history. She argues that the notion of a linear, ever-improving direction of history hides the persistence of power structures and hinders the pursuit of alternative futures. This vision of necessary progress perpetuates the assumption that the nation-state is the culmination of history and the ultimate source for rectifying injustice. Scott considers the Nuremberg Tribunal and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which claimed to carry out history’s judgment on Nazism and apartheid, and contrasts them with the movement for reparations for slavery in the United States. Advocates for reparations call into question a national history that has long ignored enslavement and its racist legacies. Only by this kind of critical questioning of the place of the nation-state as the final source of history’s judgment, this book shows, can we open up room for radically different conceptions of justice.

Why the West Rules - For Now

Why the West Rules - For Now PDF Author: Ian Morris
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 1551995816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 767

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why does the West rule? In this magnum opus, eminent Stanford polymath Ian Morris answers this provocative question, drawing on 50,000 years of history, archeology, and the methods of social science, to make sense of when, how, and why the paths of development differed in the East and West — and what this portends for the 21st century. There are two broad schools of thought on why the West rules. Proponents of "Long-Term Lock-In" theories such as Jared Diamond suggest that from time immemorial, some critical factor — geography, climate, or culture perhaps — made East and West unalterably different, and determined that the industrial revolution would happen in the West and push it further ahead of the East. But the East led the West between 500 and 1600, so this development can't have been inevitable; and so proponents of "Short-Term Accident" theories argue that Western rule was a temporary aberration that is now coming to an end, with Japan, China, and India resuming their rightful places on the world stage. However, as the West led for 9,000 of the previous 10,000 years, it wasn't just a temporary aberration. So, if we want to know why the West rules, we need a whole new theory. Ian Morris, boldly entering the turf of Jared Diamond and Niall Ferguson, provides the broader approach that is necessary, combining the textual historian's focus on context, the anthropological archaeologist's awareness of the deep past, and the social scientist's comparative methods to make sense of the past, present, and future — in a way no one has ever done before.

The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the History of Medicine

The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the History of Medicine PDF Author: Owsei Temkin
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801885471
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 578

Get Book Here

Book Description
Preeminent historian of medicine Owsei Temkin brought to his writing an awesome range of scholarship, for he was at home in the classical, the medieval, and the modern eras. The essays gathered in this volume deal with all the topics that Temkin considered most important in his work. They were widely commended for their originality, intelligent analysis, and impressive continuity of thought. Temkin explores the history of basic medical sciences, of health and disease, and of surgery and drug therapy, as well as general questions concerning the historical and philosophical approach to medicine from antiquity to the early twentieth century. In a retrospective introduction which gives the book its name, Temkin relates his writings to his career as a scholar in Germany and the United States. He situates the writings against the background of the development of the study of medical history and provides recollections of such prominent figures as Karl Sudhoff, Henry E. Sigerist, William H. Welch, and Richard H. Shryock.

The Face of Battle

The Face of Battle PDF Author: John Keegan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440673993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book Here

Book Description
John Keegan's groundbreaking portrayal of the common soldier in the heat of battle -- a masterpiece that explores the physical and mental aspects of warfare The Face of Battle is military history from the battlefield: a look at the direct experience of individuals at the "point of maximum danger." Without the myth-making elements of rhetoric and xenophobia, and breaking away from the stylized format of battle descriptions, John Keegan has written what is probably the definitive model for military historians. And in his scrupulous reassessment of three battles representative of three different time periods, he manages to convey what the experience of combat meant for the participants, whether they were facing the arrow cloud at the battle of Agincourt, the musket balls at Waterloo, or the steel rain of the Somme. The Face of Battle is a companion volume to John Keegan's classic study of the individual soldier, The Mask of Command: together they form a masterpiece of military and human history.

New Perspectives on the History of Facial Hair

New Perspectives on the History of Facial Hair PDF Author: Jennifer Evans
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319734970
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume brings together a range of scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to re-examine the histories of facial hair and its place in discussions of gender, the military, travel and art, amongst others. Chapters in the first section of the collection explore the intricate history of beard wearing and shaving, including facial hair fashions in long historical perspective, and the depiction of beards in portraiture. Section Two explores the shifting meanings of the moustache, both as a manly symbol in the nineteenth century, and also as the focus of the material culture of personal grooming. The final section of the collection charts the often-complex relationship between men, women and facial hair. It explores how women used facial hair to appropriate masculine identity, and how women’s own hair was read as a sign of excessive and illicit sexuality.

Face Paint

Face Paint PDF Author: Lisa Eldridge
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1613128185
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 537

Get Book Here

Book Description
The “exquisite and richly illustrated” New York Times bestseller from the renowned makeup artist, “a retrospective written for all women, everywhere” (Vogue France). Makeup, as we know it, has only been commercially available in the last 100 years, but applying decoration to the face and body may be one of the oldest global social practices. In Face Paint, Lisa Eldridge reveals the entire history of the art form, from Egyptian and Classical times up through the Victorian age and golden era of Hollywood, and also surveys the cutting-edge makeup science of today and tomorrow. Face Paint explores the practical and idiosyncratic reasons behind makeup’s use, the actual materials employed over generations, and the glamorous icons that people emulate, it is also a social history of women and the ways in which we can understand their lives through the prism and impact of makeup. “Makeup artist and Lancome global creative director Lisa Eldridge drops serious knowledge in Face Paint, her book on the history of beautifying.” —Marie Claire “Clear your coffee table and turn off YouTube—Lisa Eldridge’s book is a must read.” —Teen Vogue “The book is not only rich with history but also with a series of paintings, sketches and photographs in an intense array of colors, selected by the make-up artist herself in the most aesthetically pleasing universal statement to women you’ll ever see.” —Vogue France “Face Paint delves into the history of makeup, with glossy pictures to match . . . the book’s cover is striking.” —New York Post