Negating the Image

Negating the Image PDF Author: Jeffrey Johnson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351556606
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Why do people attack monuments and other public objects charged with authority by the societies that produced them? What do open assaults on images and artworks mean? Iconoclasm, the principled destruction of images, has recurred throughout human history as theory and practice. This book contains seven historical studies of the changing causes and meanings of iconoclasm and the radical transformations in the function of images it has brought about in societies around the world, from Ancient Egypt to Islamic India and Revolutionary Mexico, as well as Medieval and Reformation Europe. Scholars of art history, history and archaeology explore shifting definitions of art and the forms of representation in delineating varied forms of 'iconoclasm'.

Negating the Image

Negating the Image PDF Author: Jeffrey Johnson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351556606
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why do people attack monuments and other public objects charged with authority by the societies that produced them? What do open assaults on images and artworks mean? Iconoclasm, the principled destruction of images, has recurred throughout human history as theory and practice. This book contains seven historical studies of the changing causes and meanings of iconoclasm and the radical transformations in the function of images it has brought about in societies around the world, from Ancient Egypt to Islamic India and Revolutionary Mexico, as well as Medieval and Reformation Europe. Scholars of art history, history and archaeology explore shifting definitions of art and the forms of representation in delineating varied forms of 'iconoclasm'.

Picture Imperfect

Picture Imperfect PDF Author: Russell Jacoby
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231502974
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
"The choice we have is not between reasonable proposals and an unreasonable utopianism. Utopian thinking does not undermine or discount real reforms. Indeed, it is almost the opposite: practical reforms depend on utopian dreaming."--Russell Jacoby, Picture Imperfect Utopianism suffers from an image problem: A recent exhibition on utopias in Paris and New York included photographs of Hitler's Mein Kampf and a Nazi concentration camp. Many observers judge utopians and their sympathizers as foolhardy dreamers at best and murderous totalitarians at worst. However, as noted social critic and historian Russell Jacoby argues in this salient, polemical, and innovative work, not only has utopianism been unfairly characterized, a return to an iconoclastic utopian spirit is vital for today's society. Shaped by the works of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Gustav Landauer, and other predominantly Jewish thinkers, iconoclastic utopianism revives society's dormant political imagination and offers hope for a better future. Writing against the grain of history, Jacoby reexamines the anti-utopian mindset and identifies how utopian thought came to be regarded with such suspicion. He challenges standard readings of such anti-utopian classics as 1984 and Brave New World and offers stinging critiques of the influential liberal and anti-utopian theorists Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Karl Popper. He argues that these thinkers mistakenly equate utopianism with totalitarianism. The reputation of utopian thought has also suffered from the failures of, what Jacoby terms, the blueprint utopian tradition and its oppressive emphasis on detailing all aspects of society and providing fantastic images of the future. In contrast, the iconoclastic utopians, like those who follow God's prohibition against graven images, resist both the blueprinters' obsession with detail and the modern seduction of images. Jacoby suggests that by learning from the hopeful spirit of iconoclastic utopians and their willingness to accept new possibilities for society, we open ourselves to new and more imaginative ideas of the future.

Image, Action, and Idea in Contemporary Jewish Art

Image, Action, and Idea in Contemporary Jewish Art PDF Author: Ben Schachter
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271080825
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Contemporary Jewish art is a growing field that includes traditional as well as new creative practices, yet criticism of it is almost exclusively reliant on the Second Commandment’s prohibition of graven images. Arguing that this disregards the corpus of Jewish thought and a century of criticism and interpretation, Ben Schachter advocates instead a new approach focused on action and process. Departing from the traditional interpretation of the Second Commandment, Schachter addresses abstraction, conceptual art, performance art, and other styles that do not rely on imagery for meaning. He examines Jewish art through the concept of melachot—work-like “creative activities” as defined by the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides. Showing the similarity between art and melachot in the active processes of contemporary Jewish artists such as Ruth Weisberg, Allan Wexler, Archie Rand, and Nechama Golan, he explores the relationship between these artists’ methods and Judaism’s demanding attention to procedure. A compellingly written challenge to traditionalism, Image, Action, and Idea in Contemporary Jewish Art makes a well-argued case for artistic production, interpretation, and criticism that revels in the dual foundation of Judaism and art history.

The Female Face of God in Auschwitz

The Female Face of God in Auschwitz PDF Author: Melissa Raphael
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415236645
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The first full-length feminist dialogue with Holocaust theory, theology and social history. Considers women's reactions to the holy in the camps at Auschwitz.

Traditions of Maimonideanism

Traditions of Maimonideanism PDF Author: Carlos Fraenkel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004173331
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
The goal of the present volume is to shed light on a number of traditions of Maimonideanism that have hitherto little been explored. Maimonides (1138 1204) was the most important medieval Jewish philosopher and also made lasting contributions to many other fields. The essays in the first part examine aspects of his work in medicine, Jewish law, and liturgy. The essays in the second part look at how Maimonides was read, misread, and creatively reinvented in a wide range of contexts in the East and in the West from medieval Cairo to Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Written by a group of leading scholars, the essays illustrate the breadth of Maimonides' work and the fascinating history of its reception from the 13th century to the present.

The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History

The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History PDF Author: W. Rubinstein
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230304664
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1083

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Book Description
This authoritative and comprehensive guide to key people and events in Anglo-Jewish history stretches from Cromwell's re-admittance of the Jews in 1656 to the present day and contains nearly 3000 entries, the vast majority of which are not featured in any other sources.

The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age

The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age PDF Author: Mel Alexenberg
Publisher: Intellect Books
ISBN: 1841505056
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
In The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age, artist and educator Mel Alexenberg offers a vision of a postdigital future that reveals a paradigm shift from the Hellenistic to the Hebraic roots of Western culture. He ventures beyond the digital to explore postdigital perspectives rising from creative encounters among art, science, technology and human consciousness. The interrelationships between these perspectives demonstrate the confluence between postdigital art and the dynamic, Jewish structure of consciousness. Alexenberg’s pioneering artwork – a fusion of spiritual and technological realms – exemplifies the theoretical thesis of this investigation into interactive and collaborative forms that imaginatively envisages the vast potential of art in a postdigital future.

Religion, Feminism, and Idoloclasm

Religion, Feminism, and Idoloclasm PDF Author: Melissa Raphael
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351780069
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Religion, Feminism, and Idoloclasm identifies religious and secular feminism’s common critical moment as that of idol-breaking. It reads the women’s liberation movement as founded upon a philosophically and emotionally risky attempt to liberate women’s consciousness from a three-fold cognitive captivity to the self-idolizing god called ‘Man’; the ‘God’ who is a projection of his power, and the idol of the feminine called ‘Woman’ that the god-called-God created for ‘Man’. Examining a period of feminist theory, theology, and culture from about 1965 to 2010, this book shows that secular, as well as Christian, Jewish, and post-Christian feminists drew on ancient and modern tropes of redemption from slavery to idols or false ideas as a means of overcoming the alienation of women’s being from their own becoming. With an understanding of feminist theology as a pivotal contribution to the feminist criticism of culture, this original book also examines idoloclasm in feminist visual art, literature, direct action, and theory, not least that of the sexual politics of romantic love, the diet and beauty industry, sex robots, and other phenomena whose idolization of women reduces them to figures of the feminine same, experienced as a de-realization or death of the self. This book demonstrates that secular and religious feminist critical engagements with the modern trauma of dehumanization were far more closely related than is often supposed. As such, it will be vital reading for scholars in theology, religious studies, gender studies, visual studies, and philosophy.

Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism

Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism PDF Author: Menachem Kellner
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 190982108X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Maimonides’ vision of Judaism was deeply elitist, but at the same time profoundly universalistic. He was highly critical of the regnant Jewish culture of his day, which he perceived as so heavily influenced by ancient Jewish mysticism as to be debased. While focusing on that critique, Menachem Kellner skilfully and accessibly demonstrates how Maimonides used philosophy to purify a corrupted and paganized religion, and to present distinctions fundamental to Judaism as institutional, sociological, and historical, rather than ontological. In Maimonides’ hands, metaphysical distinctions are translated into moral challenges.

Modernist Diaspora

Modernist Diaspora PDF Author: Richard D. Sonn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350185329
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
In the years before, during, and after the First World War, hundreds of young Jews flocked to Paris, artistic capital of the world and center of modernist experimentation. Some arrived with prior training from art academies in Kraków, Vilna, and Vitebsk; others came armed only with hope and a few memorized phrases in French. They had little Jewish tradition in painting and sculpture to draw on, yet despite these obstacles, these young Jews produced the greatest efflorescence of art in the long history of the Jewish people. The paintings of Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, and Emmanuel Mané-Katz, the sculptures of Jacques Lipchitz, Ossip Zadkine, Chana Orloff, and works by many other artists now grace the world's museums. As the École de Paris was the most cosmopolitan artistic movement the world had seen, the left-bank neighborhood of Montparnasse became a meeting place for diverse cultures. How did the tolerant, bohemian atmosphere of Montparnasse encourage an international style of art in an era of bellicose nationalism, not to mention racism and antisemitism? How did immigrants not only absorb but profoundly influence a culture? This book examines how the clash of cultures produced genius.