Dilettanti
Dilettanti

Author: Bruce Redford

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2008-08-07

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0892369248

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Bruce Redford re-creates the vibrant culture of connoisseurship in Enlightenment England by investigating the multifaceted activities and achievements of the Society of Dilettani. Elegantly and wittily he dissects the British connoisseurs whose expeditions, collections, and publications laid the groundwork for the Neoclassical revival and for the scholarly study of Graeco-Roman antiquity. After the foundation of the society in 1732, the Dilettani commissioned portraits of the members. Including a striking group of mock-classical and mock-religious representations, these portraits were painted by George Knapton, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Sir Thomas Lawrence. During the second half of the century, the society’s expeditions to the Levant yielded a series of pioneering architectural folios, beginning with the first volume The Antiquities of Athens in 1762. These monumental volumes aspired to empirical exactitude in text and image alike. They prepared the way for Specimens of Antient Sculpture (1809), which combines the didactic (detailed investigations into technique, condition, restoration, and provenance) with the connoisseurial (plates that bring the illustration of ancient sculpture to new artistic heights). The Society of Dilettanti’s projects and publications exemplify the Enlightenment ideal of the gentleman amateur, which is linked in turn to a culture of wide-ranging curiosity.

The Palestine Nakba
The Palestine Nakba

Author: Nur Masalha

Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.

Published: 2012-08-09

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 184813973X

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2012 marks the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba - the most traumatic catastrophe that ever befell Palestinians. This book explores new ways of remembering and commemorating the Nakba. In the context of Palestinian oral history, it explores 'social history from below', subaltern narratives of memory and the formation of collective identity. Masalha argues that to write more truthfully about the Nakba is not just to practise a professional historiography but an ethical imperative. The struggles of ordinary refugees to recover and publicly assert the truth about the Nakba is a vital way of protecting their rights and keeping the hope for peace with justice alive. This book is essential for understanding the place of the Palestine Nakba at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the vital role of memory in narratives of truth and reconciliation.

James Joyce and the Burden of Disease
James Joyce and the Burden of Disease

Author: Kathleen Ferris

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-10-21

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 0813184533

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James Joyce's near blindness, his peculiar gait, and his death from perforated ulcers are commonplace knowledge to most of his readers. But until now, most Joyce scholars have not recognized that these symptoms point to a diagnosis of syphilis. Kathleen Ferris traces Joyce's medical history as described in his correspondence, in the diaries of his brother Stanislaus, and in the memoirs of his acquaintances, to show that many of his symptoms match those of tabes dorsalis, a form of neurosyphilis which, untreated, eventually leads to paralysis. Combining literary analysis and medical detection, Ferris builds a convincing case that this dread disease is the subject of much of Joyce's autobiographical writing. Many of this characters, most notably Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, exhibit the same symptoms as their creator: stiffness of gait, digestive problems, hallucinations, and impaired vision. Ferris also demonstrates that the themes of sin, guilt, and retribution so prevalent in Joyce's works are almost certainly a consequence of his having contracted venereal disease as a young man while frequenting the brothels of Dublin and Paris. By tracing the images, puns, and metaphors in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, and by demonstrating their relationship to Joyce's experiences, Ferris shows the extent to which, for Joyce, art did indeed mirror life.

Paul Klee 1939
Paul Klee 1939

Author: Paul Klee

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-06-22

Total Pages: 73

ISBN-13: 1644230380

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The year before he died, in what was one of the most difficult yet prolific periods of his life, Paul Klee created some of his most surprising and innovative works. In 1939, the year before his death from a long illness and against a backdrop of sociopolitical turmoil and the outbreak of World War II, Klee worked with a vigor and inventiveness that rivaled even the most productive periods of his youth. This book illuminates the artist’s response to his personal difficulties and the era’s broader realities through imagery that is tirelessly inventive—by turns political, solemn, playful, humorous, and poetic. The works featured testify to Klee’s restless drive to experiment with form and material. His use of adhesive, grease, oil, chalk, and watercolor, among other media, resulted in surfaces that are not only visually striking, but also highly tactile and original. Not unlike a diary, the drawings are often meditative reflections on the pains and pleasures of life—their titles, among them Monsters in readiness and Struggles with himself, signal Klee’s frame of mind. Renowned art historian Dawn Ades looks at this group of paintings and drawings in the context of their time and as indicative of a pivotal moment in art history. Moved by this late period of Klee’s oeuvre, American artist Richard Tuttle responds to specific works in the form of dialogical poems. This stunning publication highlights the novelty and ingenuity of Klee’s late works, which deeply affected the generation of artists—including Anni Albers, Jean Dubuffet, Mark Tobey, and Zao Wou-Ki—that emerged after World War II and continues to captivate artists and viewers alike today

Towards Sustainable Society on Ubiquitous Networks
Towards Sustainable Society on Ubiquitous Networks

Author: Makoto Oya

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2008-09-02

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 0387856900

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The massive growth of the Internet has made an enormous amount of infor- tion available to us. However, it is becoming very difficult for users to acquire an - plicable one. Therefore, some techniques such as information filtering have been - troduced to address this issue. Recommender systems filter information that is useful to a user from a large amount of information. Many e-commerce sites use rec- mender systems to filter specific information that users want out of an overload of - formation [2]. For example, Amazon. com is a good example of the success of - commender systems [1]. Over the past several years, a considerable amount of research has been conducted on recommendation systems. In general, the usefulness of the recommendation is measured based on its accuracy [3]. Although a high - commendation accuracy can indicate a user's favorite items, there is a fault in that - ly similar items will be recommended. Several studies have reported that users might not be satisfied with a recommendation even though it exhibits high recommendation accuracy [4]. For this reason, we consider that a recommendation having only accuracy is - satisfactory. The serendipity of a recommendation is an important element when c- sidering a user's long-term profits. A recommendation that brings serendipity to users would solve the problem of “user weariness” and would lead to exploitation of users' tastes. The viewpoint of the diversity of the recommendation as well as its accuracy should be required for future recommender systems.