Before the Renaissance and Reformation, holy images were treated not as "art" but as objects of veneration which possessed the tangible presence of the Holy. the faithful believed that these images served as relics and were able to work miracles, deliver oracles, and bring victory to the battlefield. In this magisterial book, Hans Belting traces the long history of the sacral image and its changing role--from surrogate for the represented image to an original work of art--in European culture. Likeness and Presence looks at the beliefs, superstitions, hopes, and fears that come into play as people handle and respond to sacred images, and presents a compelling interpretation of the place of the image in Western history. -- Back cover
History as Art, Art as History pioneers methods for using contemporary works of art in the social studies and art classroom to enhance an understanding of visual culture and history. The fully-illustrated interdisciplinary teaching toolkit provides an invaluable pedagogical resource—complete with theoretical background and practical suggestions for teaching U.S. history topics through close readings of both primary sources and provocative works of contemporary art. History as Art, Art as History is an experientially grounded, practically minded pedagogical investigation meant to push teachers and students to think critically without sacrificing their ability to succeed in a standards-driven educational climate. Amid the educational debate surrounding rigid, unimaginative tests, classroom scripts, and bureaucratic mandates, this innovative book insists on an alternate set of educational priorities that promotes engagement with creative and critical thinking. Features include: A thought-provoking series of framing essays and interviews with contemporary artists address the pivotal questions that arise when one attempts to think about history and contemporary visual art together. An 8-page, full color insert of contemporary art, plus over 50 black and white illustrations throughout. A Teaching Toolkit covering major themes in U.S. history provides an archive of suggested primary documents, plus discussion suggestions and activities for putting theory into practice. Teaching activities keyed to the social studies and art curricula and teaching standards Resources include annotated bibliographies for further study and lists of arts and media organizations. This sophisticated yet accessible textbook is a must-read resource for any teacher looking to draw upon visual and historical texts in their teaching and to develop innovative curriculum and meaningful student engagement.
In science and technology, the images used to depict ideas, data, and reactions can be as striking and explosive as the concepts and processes they embody—both works of art and generative forces in their own right. Drawing on a close dialogue between the histories of art, science, and technology, The Technical Image explores these images not as mere illustrations or examples, but as productive agents and distinctive, multilayered elements of the process of generating knowledge. Using beautifully reproduced visuals, this book not only reveals how scientific images play a constructive role in shaping the findings and insights they illustrate, but also—however mechanical or detached from individual researchers’ choices their appearances may be—how they come to embody the styles of a period, a mindset, a research collective, or a device. Opening with a set of key questions about artistic representation in science, technology, and medicine, The Technical Image then investigates historical case studies focusing on specific images, such as James Watson’s models of genes, drawings of Darwin’s finches, and images of early modern musical automata. These case studies in turn are used to illustrate broad themes ranging from “Digital Images” to “Objectivity and Evidence” and to define and elaborate upon fundamental terms in the field. Taken as a whole, this collection will provide analytical tools for the interpretation and application of scientific and technological imagery.
Creating Their Own Image marks the first comprehensive history of African-American women artists, from slavery to the present day. Using an analysis of stereotypes of Africans and African-Americans in western art and culture as a springboard, Lisa E. Farrington here richly details hundreds ofimportant works--many of which deliberately challenge these same identity myths, of the carnal Jezebel, the asexual Mammy, the imperious Matriarch--in crafting a portrait of artistic creativity unprecedented in its scope and ambition. In these lavishly illustrated pages, some of which feature imagesnever before published, we learn of the efforts of Elizabeth Keckley, fashion designer to Mary Todd Lincoln; the acclaimed sculptor Edmonia Lewis, internationally renowned for her neoclassical works in marble; and the artist Nancy Elizabeth Prophet and her innovative teaching techniques. We meetLaura Wheeler Waring who portrayed women of color as members of a socially elite class in stark contrast to the prevalent images of compliant maids, impoverished malcontents, and exotics "others" that proliferated in the inter-war period. We read of the painter Barbara Jones-Hogu's collaboration onthe famed Wall of Respect, even as we view a rare photograph of Hogu in the process of painting the mural. Farrington expertly guides us through the fertile period of the Harlem Renaissance and the "New Negro Movement," which produced an entirely new crop of artists who consciously imbued their workwith a social and political agenda, and through the tumultuous, explosive years of the civil rights movement. Drawing on revealing interviews with numerous contemporary artists, such as Betye Saar, Faith Ringgold, Nanette Carter, Camille Billops, Xenobia Bailey, and many others, the second half ofCreating Their Own Image probes more recent stylistic developments, such as abstraction, conceptualism, and post-modernism, never losing sight of the struggles and challenges that have consistently influenced this body of work. Weaving together an expansive collection of artists, styles, andperiods, Farrington argues that for centuries African-American women artists have created an alternative vision of how women of color can, are, and might be represented in American culture. From utilitarian objects such as quilts and baskets to a wide array of fine arts, Creating Their Own Imageserves up compelling evidence of the fundamental human need to convey one's life, one's emotions, one's experiences, on a canvas of one's own making.
This thought-provoking and original book argues that hyperimages—calculated displays of images on walls or pages—have played a major role in the history of art. In exhibitions, illustrated art books, and classrooms, artworks or their photographic reproductions are arranged as calculated ensembles that have their own importance. In this volume, Felix Thürlemann develops a theory of this type of image use, arguing that with each new gathering of images, an art object is reinterpreted. These hyperimages have played a major role in the history of art since the seventeenth century, and the main actors of the art world are all hyperimage creators. In part because the hyperimage is not permanently available, this interplay of images has been largely unexplored. Through case studies organized within three groups of producers—collectors and curators, art historians, and artists—Thürlemann proposes a theory of the hyperimage, explores the semiotic nature of this plural image use, and discusses the arrangement and interpretation of such pictures in order to illuminate the phenomenon of Western image culture from the beginning of the seventeenth century until today. His analysis of the ways in which images are assembled and associated provides a crucial context for the explosive present-day deployment of images on digital devices.
Visual Time offers a rare consideration of the idea of time in art history. Non-Western art histories currently have an unprecedented prominence in the discipline. To what extent are their artistic narratives commensurate with those told about Western art? Does time run at the same speed in all places? Keith Moxey argues that the discipline of art history has been too attached to interpreting works of art based on a teleological categorization—demonstrating how each work influences the next as part of a linear sequence—which he sees as tied to Western notions of modernity. In contrast, he emphasizes how the experience of viewing art creates its own aesthetic time, where the viewer is entranced by the work itself rather than what it represents about the historical moment when it was created. Moxey discusses the art, and writing about the art, of modern and contemporary artists, such as Gerard Sekoto, Thomas Demand, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Cindy Sherman, as well as the sixteenth-century figures Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald, and Hans Holbein. In the process, he addresses the phenomenological turn in the study of the image, its application to the understanding of particular artists, the ways verisimilitude eludes time in both the past and the present, and the role of time in nationalist accounts of the past.
On museum visits, we pass by beautiful, well-preserved vases from ancient Greece—but how often do we understand what the images on them depict? In Image and Myth, Luca Giuliani tells the stories behind the pictures, exploring how artists of antiquity had to determine which motifs or historical and mythic events to use to tell an underlying story while also keeping in mind the tastes and expectations of paying clients. Covering the range of Greek style and its growth between the early Archaic and Hellenistic periods, Giuliani describes the intellectual, social, and artistic contexts in which the images were created. He reveals that developments in Greek vase painting were driven as much by the times as they were by tradition—the better-known the story, the less leeway the artists had in interpreting it. As literary culture transformed from an oral tradition, in which stories were always in flux, to the stability of written texts, the images produced by artists eventually became nothing more than illustrations of canonical works. At once a work of cultural and art history, Image and Myth builds a new way of understanding the visual culture of ancient Greece.
"This learned and heavy volume should be placed on the shelves of every art historical library."—E. H. Gombrich, New York Review of Books "This is an engaged and passionate work by a writer with powerful convictions about art, images, aesthetics, the art establishment, and especially the discipline of art history. It is animated by an extraordinary erudition."—Arthur C. Danto, The Art Bulletin "Freedberg's ethnographic and historical range is simply stunning. . . . The Power of Images is an extraordinary critical achievement, exhilarating in its polemic against aesthetic orthodoxy, endlessly fascinating in its details. . . . This is a powerful, disturbing book."—T. J. Jackson Lears, Wilson Quarterly "Freedberg helps us to see that one cannot do justice to the images of art unless one recognizes in them the entire range of human responses, from the lowly impulses prevailing in popular imagery to their refinement in the great visions of the ages."—Rudolf Arnheim, Times Literary Supplement
According to Didi-Huberman, visual representation has an "underside" in which intelligible forms lose clarity and defy rational understanding. Art historians, he contends, fail to engage this underside, and he suggests that art historians look to Freud's concept of the "dreamwork", a mobile process that often involves substitution and contradiction.
