Download or read book Germany written by Neil MacGregor and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental europe. Twenty-five years ago a new German state came into being. How much do we really understand this new Germany, and how do its people understand themselves? Neil MacGregor argues that, uniquely for any European country, no coherent, overarching narrative of Germany's history can be constructed, for in Germany both geography and history have always been unstable. Its frontiers have constantly shifted. Königsberg, home to the greatest German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, is now Kaliningrad, Russia; Strasbourg, in whose cathedral Wolfgang von Geothe, Germany's greatest writer, discovered the distinctiveness of his country's art and history, now lies within the borders of France. For most of the five hundred years covered by this book Germany has been composed of many separate political units, each with a distinct history. And any comfortable national story Germans might have told themselves before 1914 was destroyed by the events of the following thirty years. German history may be inherently fragmented, but it contains a large number of widely shared memories, awarenesses, and experiences; examining some of these is the purpose of this book. MacGregor chooses objects and ideas, people and places that still resonate in the new Germany—porcelain from Dresden and rubble from its ruins, Bauhaus design and the German sausage, the crown of Charlemagne and the gates of Buchenwald—to show us something of its collective imagination. There has never been a book about Germany quite like it.

Download or read book The Post Colonial Museum written by Anna Brus and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2022-07-31 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The African museum landscape is changing. A new generation of scholars and curators is setting international standards for the reappraisal and revision of colonial collections, the conception of curatorial spaces, and the integration of new groups of actors. In the face of the ghostly survival of colonial epistemologies in archives, displays, and architectures, it is a matter of breaking up institutional encrustations and infrastructures, inventing new museum practices, and bringing archives to life. Scholars and museum experts predominantly working in Africa and South America discuss the post/colonial history of museums, their political-economic entanglements, the significance of diasporic objects, as well as the prospects for restitution and its consequences. The contributions to this issue of ZfK are all presented in English. Based on the works of Waverly Duck and Anne Rawls, the debate section is devoted to forms of everyday racism and the way interaction orders of race are institutionalized.

Download or read book The Legend of Veronica in Early Modern Art written by Katherine T. Brown and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Legend of Veronica in Early Modern Art, Katherine T. Brown explores the lore of the apocryphal character of Veronica and the history of the “true image” relic as factors in the Franciscans’ placement of her character into the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) as the Sixth Station, in both Jerusalem and Western Europe, around the turn of the fifteenth century. Katherine T. Brown examines how the Franciscans adopted and adapted the legend of Veronica to meet their own evangelical goals by intervening in the fabric of Jerusalem to incorporate her narrative − which is not found in the Gospels − into an urban path constructed for pilgrims, as well as in similar participatory installations in churchyards and naves across Western Europe. This book proposes plausible reasons for the subsequent proliferation of works of art depicting Veronica, both within and independent of the Stations of the Cross, from the early fifteenth through the mid-seventeenth centuries. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, theology, and medieval and Renaissance studies.

Download or read book Late Gothic written by Julien Chapuis and published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. This book was released on 2021-01-01 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kaum eine Epoche der Kunst ist von so durchgreifenden Veränderungen geprägt wie die Spätgotik im 15. Jahrhundert. Angeregt durch niederländische Vorbilder werden Licht und Schatten, Körper und Raum zunehmend wirklichkeitsnah dargestellt. Der Alltag hält Einzug in die Künste. Mit der Erfindung der Drucktechnik kommt es zu einer ungeahnten Verbreitung von Bildern und Texten. Künstler wie Nicolaus Gerhaert oder Martin Schongauer erlangen überregionale Berühmtheit und nehmen über alle Gattungen hinweg Einfluss auf die Entwicklung der Bildkünste in ganz Europa. Die Gegenüberstellung der unterschiedlichen Gattungen macht den Katalog zu einem Handbuch der Kunst am Übergang zur Neuzeit.

Download or read book Colour in Sculpture written by Hannelore Hägele and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-11 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces the reader to the art of sculpture across five millennia up to the present, and from the Near East to the west. In each of the eleven chapters, a number of selected works are discussed to exemplify the circumstances and conditions for making pieces of sculpture – objects peculiar to place, time and context. Within each cultural framework, characteristics are observable that suggest various reasons for the use of colour in sculpture. These encompass local preferences, customs or cultural requirements; and others point to an impulse to enhance the expression of the phenomenal. Whether colour is really necessary or even essential to sculpted works of art is a question especially pertinent since the Renaissance. Surface finishes of sculptural representations may allude to the sensory world of colour without even having pigment applied to them. What makes polychromy so special is that it functions as an overlay of another dimension that sometimes carries further encoded meaning. In nature, the colour is integral to the given object. What the present survey suggests is that the relationship between colour and sculpture is a matter of intentional expression, even where the colour is intrinsic – as in the sculptor’s materials.

Download or read book The Conservation of Medieval Polychrome Wood Sculpture written by Michele D. Marincola and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first English-language book to comprehensively discuss the history and methodology of conserving medieval polychrome wood sculpture. Medieval polychrome wood sculptures are highly complex objects, bearers of histories that begin with their original carving and adornment and continue through long centuries of repainting, deterioration, restoration, and conservation. Abundantly illustrated, this book is the first in English to offer a comprehensive overview of the conservation of medieval painted wood sculpture for conservators, curators, and others charged with their care. Beginning with an illuminating discussion of the history, techniques, and meanings of these works, it continues with their examination and documentation, including chapters on the identification of both the wooden support and the polychromy itself—the paint layers, metal leaf, and other materials used for these sculptures. The volume also covers the many aspects of treatment: the process of determining the best approach; consolidation and adhesion of paint, ground, and support; overpaint removal and surface cleaning; and compensation. Four case studies on artworks in the collection of The Cloisters in New York, a comprehensive bibliography, and a checklist to aid in documentation complement the text.

Download or read book The Renaissance Portrait written by Patricia Lee Rubin and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2011 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in conjunction with an exhibition held at the Bode-Museum, Berlin, Aug. 25-Nov. 20, 2011, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Dec. 21, 2011-Mar. 18, 2012.

Download or read book Wilhelm Bode and the Art Market written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-12-05 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume exposes the modus operandi of Wilhelm Bode’s strategic involvement in the art market and the formation and dissolution of public and private collections, showcasing his complex agency within the art marketplace of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Download or read book The Visual Culture of al Andalus in the Christian Kingdoms of Iberia written by Inés Monteira and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-11 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the reception of Islamic visual culture by the northern Iberian kingdoms, by systematically comparing works of art from both sides and fleshing out their historical context. This study includes figurative and iconographic motifs, architectural forms, and even the spolia from constructions and Arabic inscriptions that were embedded in Christian buildings. The Islamic visual culture of al-Andalus was often transformed as it was recreated by Christian hands, bringing to the fore various nuances in the relationship between the two religious communities. Artistic transfer was conditioned by social coexistence between Christians and Muslims—both in the caliphate al-Andalus and in the northern realms—and military conflict. To approach the different ways in which Andalusi visual culture was received in the northern kingdoms, while embracing the vast diversity of case studies available, this book is divided into three thematic sections: Reinterpretation, Appropriation, and Artistic Transfers. This book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, and medieval studies.

Download or read book Envisioning Worlds in Late Antique Art written by Anna Cecilia Olovsdotter and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been an accepted assumption that the abstracted mode of visual representation that emerged in late antiquity reflected a collective shift from the outer-directed and ’material’ world-view of classical antiquity to an inner-directed, ’spiritual’ mentality informed by Christianity: the purpose of this volume is to offer a more nuanced and diverse image of the nature and meanings of abstraction and symbolism in late antique and early medieval art, beyond normative intepretation models, and from a number of different methodological and interpretative perspectives. In ten chapters, ten authors specialised in various fields of late-antique and Byzantine art explore the historiographical background of the ’spiritual’ interpretation paradigm, neuroscientific and theological dimensions of Christian visual aesthetics, meanings and motive factors behind apparently wholly abstract and aniconic compositions, symbolic motifs and schemes for visualising cosmic order and the cosmic state of Christ, and the re-use of symbolic Greco-Roman themes in Christian contexts. The result is a multi-focal image of late antique abstraction and symbolism that illuminates the heterogeneity and complexity of the phenomena and of their study.

Download or read book Christianity and Monasticism in Alexandria and the Egyptian Deserts written by Gawdat Gabra and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legacies of the Coptic Christian presence in Alexandria and the Egyptian Deserts from the fourth century to the present day The great city of Alexandria is undoubtedly the cradle of Egyptian Christianity, where the Catechetical School was established in the second century and became a leading center in the study of biblical exegesis and theology. According to tradition St. Mark the Evangelist brought Christianity to Alexandria in the middle of the first century and was martyred in that city, which was to become the residence of Egypt’s Coptic patriarchs for nearly eleven centuries. By the fourth century Egyptian monasticism had begun to flourish in the Egyptian deserts and countryside. The contributors to this volume, international specialists in Coptology from around the world, examine the various aspects of Coptic civilization in Alexandria and its environs and in the Egyptian deserts over the past two millennia. The contributions explore Coptic art, archaeology, architecture, language, and literature. The impact of Alexandrian theology and its cultural heritage as well as the archaeology of its university are highlighted. Christian epigraphy in the Kharga Oasis, the art and architecture of the Bagawat cemetery, and the archaeological site of Kellis (Ismant al-Kharab) with its Manichaean texts are also discussed. Contributors Elizabeth Agaiby, Fr. Anthony, David Brakke, Jan Ciglenečki , Jean-Daniel Dubois, Bishop Epiphanius, Lois M. Farag, Frank Feder, Cäcilia Fluck, Sherin Sadek El Gendi, Mary Ghattas, Gisèle Hadji-Minaglou, Intisar Hazawi, Karel Innemée, Mary Kupelian, Grzegorz Majcherek, Bishop Martyros, Samuel Moawad, Ashraf Nageh, Adel F. Sadek, Ashraf Alexander Sadek, Ibrahim Saweros, Mark Sheridan, Fr. Bigoul al-Suriany, Hany Takla, Gertrud J.M. van Loon, Jacques van der Vliet, Youhanna Nessim Youssef, Ewa D. Zakrzewska, Nader Alfy Zekry

Download or read book Living with the Gods written by Neil MacGregor and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the same format as his best-selling books A History of the World in 100 Objects and Germany: Memories of a Nation—the acclaimed art historian now gives us a magnificent new book that explores the relationship between faith and society. Until fairly recently, religion as a major influence on the nature of individual societies around the world seemed to be on the wane. Now, far from being marginalized, the relationship between faith and society has moved to the center of politics and global conversation. Neil MacGregor's new book traces the ways in which different societies have understood and articulated their places in the cosmic scheme. It examines mankind's beliefs not from the perspective of institutional religions but according to how shared narratives have shaped societies—and what happens when different narratives run up against each other. As he did in A History of the World in 100 Objects and Germany: Memories of a Nation, MacGregor brilliantly combines objects, places, and ideas to examine and, ultimately, illuminate these pressing contemporary concerns.

Download or read book Riding Costume in Egypt written by Cäcilia Fluck and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2003-11-01 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extremely rare and conspicuous find of oriental riding costumes in the late antique necropolis of Antinoopolis (Middle Egypt) brought together a number of specialists piecing together their evolution and historical context. The first part deals with the evolution and distribution of the oriental riding costume in the Middle and Near East through the ages and the historical background on the find spot. The second part focuses on the original costumes in various museum collections including much so far unpublished material, technical researches and reconstructions. Surprising new insights on the social background of their owners has been obtained by carefully studying and piecing together the finding context. Also the representations of riding costumes in and on different monuments are carefully examined. The book is richly illustrated with colour and black and white plates.

Download or read book Museums in a Time of Migration written by Pieter Bevelander and published by . This book was released on 2018-06-06 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Migration has, across time, contributed to the development and reshaping of societies and urban spaces. Today, migration movements have become a global phenomenon, where the number of countries affected--socially, economically and culturally--by migration is continually increasing. As in past times, the reasons why people move are varied and often intertwined. Sometimes it is about people fleeing poverty, war, ethnic conflicts, environmental disasters or different forms of persecution--for example religious. However, people also move for other reasons, such as work and studies in other countries, or out of curiosity and a sense of adventure. International migration and mobility have implications for many sectors in society, including the museum sector. To be in tune with the times and relevant to all citizens, the museum sector needs, more than ever, to address issues that transcend national borders. As important educational institutions often visited by, amongst others, schoolchildren, museums have the potential to affect our notions of the world. By making museums places for exploring and learning about both the past and the present of issues such as migration, mobility, transnational connections and human rights, they not only become more relevant as cultural institutions, but may also facilitate positive changes in how people relate to each other in the wider society--thereby ultimately contributing to society's sustainable development. This book seeks to contribute to the discussion about how museums can improve their engagement in issues of migration and becoming more inclusive. The book provides both relevant theoretical reflections and new and innovative empirical examples on museums' engagement in migration from several parts of the world. Several distinguished scholars and curators discuss and reflect on museums' perspectives, collecting practices, collaborations, and representations of migration.

Download or read book Iconography Beyond the Crossroads written by Pamela A. Patton and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2023-03-23 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Breastfeeding and Mothering in Antiquity and Early Byzantium written by Stavroula Constantinou and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-29 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers the first comparative, interdisciplinary, and intercultural examination of the lactating woman – biological mother and othermother – in antiquity and early Byzantium. Adopting methodologies and knowledge deriving from a variety of disciplines, the volume’s contributors investigate the close interrelationship between a woman and her lactating breasts, as well as the social, ideological, theological, and medical meanings and uses of motherhood, childbirth, and breastfeeding, along with their visual and literary representations. Breastfeeding and the work of mothering are explored through the study of a great variety of sources, mainly works of Greek-speaking cultures, written and visual, anonymous and eponymous, which were mostly produced between the first and the seventh century AD. Due to their multiple interdisciplinary dimensions, ancient and early Byzantine lactating women are approached through three interconnected thematic strands having a twofold focus: society and ideology, medicine and practice, and art and literature. By developing the model of the lactating woman, the volume offers a new analytical framework for understanding a significant part of the still unwritten cultural history of the period. At the same time, the volume significantly contributes to the emerging fields of breast and motherhood studies. The new and significant knowledge generated in the fields of ancient and Byzantine studies may also prove useful for cultural historians in general and other disciplines, such as literary studies, art history, history of medicine, philosophy, theology, sociology, anthropology, and gender studies.

Download or read book Art and Violence in Early Renaissance Florence written by Scott Nethersole and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is the first to examine the relationship between art and violence in 15th-century Florence, exposing the underbelly of a period more often celebrated for enlightened and progressive ideas. Renaissance Florentines were constantly subjected to the sight of violence, whether in carefully staged rituals of execution or images of the suffering inflicted on Christ. There was nothing new in this culture of pain, unlike the aesthetic of violence that developed towards the end of the 15th century. It emerged in the work of artists such as Piero di Cosimo, Bertoldo di Giovanni, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, and the young Michelangelo. Inspired by the art of antiquity, they painted, engraved, and sculpted images of deadly battles, ultimately normalizing representations of brutal violence. Drawing on work in social and literary history, as well as art history, Scott Nethersole sheds light on the relationship between these Renaissance images, violence, and ideas of artistic invention and authorship.