Between the third and sixth centuries, the ancient gods,
goddesses, and heroes who had populated the imagination of
humankind for a millennium were replaced by a new imagery of Christ
and his saints. ...Thomas Mathews explores the many different, often
surprising, artistic images and religious interpretations of Christ
during this period. He challenges the accepted theory of the
"Emperor Mystique," which, interpreting Christ as king, derives the
vocabulary of Christian art from the propagandistic imagery of the
Roman emperor. This revised edition contains a new preface by the
author and a new chapter on the origin and development of icons in
private domestic cult.
In this lucid, witty, and forceful book, Shelly Errington argues that Primitive Art was invented as a new type of art object at the beginning of the twentieth century but that now, at the century's ...end, it has died a double but contradictory death. Authenticity and primitivism, both attacked by cultural critics, have died as concepts. At the same time, the penetration of nation-states, the tourist industry, and transnational corporations into regions that formerly produced these artifacts has severely reduced supplies of "primitive art," bringing about a second "death."
Errington argues that the construction of the primitive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (and the kinds of objects chosen to exemplify it) must be understood as a product of discourses of progress—from the nineteenth-century European narrative of technological progress, to the twentieth-century narrative of modernism, to the late- twentieth-century narrative of the triumph of the free market. In Part One she charts a provocative argument ranging through the worlds of museums, art theorists, mail-order catalogs, boutiques, tourism, and world events, tracing a loosely historical account of the transformations of meanings of primitive art in this century. In Part Two she explores an eclectic collection of public sites in Mexico and Indonesia—a national museum of anthropology, a cultural theme park, an airport, and a ninth-century Buddhist monument (newly refurbished)—to show how the idea of the primitive can be used in the interests of promoting nationalism and economic development.
Errington's dissection of discourses about progress and primitivism in the contemporary world is both a lively introduction to anthropological studies of art institutions and a dramatic new contribution to the growing field of cultural studies.
Other Icons Maguire, Henry; Maguire, Eunice Dauterman
2023, 2023-11-14
eBook
An entirely new perspective on Byzantine art and culture through the lens of secular art
A winged centaur with the spotted body of a leopard playing a lute; a naked man with an animal head; a ...goat-footed Pan; a four-bodied lion; sphinxes and hippocamps. Few would associate these forms of art with the Byzantine era, a period dominated by religious art. However, art of strikingly secular expression was not only common to Byzantine culture but key to defining it. In Other Icons , Eunice Dauterman Maguire and Henry Maguire offer the first comprehensive view of this unofficial Byzantine art, demonstrating the role it played in dialogue with traditional Christian Byzantine art.
With wide-ranging examples, this beautifully illustrated book vividly demonstrates how the surprise of this profane art is not only in its subjects of mythic creatures, exotic imagery, and eroticism but also in the ubiquity and beauty of their placement—within churches and without, woven into silk, illuminated on manuscripts, engraved into pottery, painted in frescoes, and taking life in marble, bone, and ivory.
Presenting and exploring this profane art, Other Icons offers a surprising new way of seeing Byzantine art.
The classic book on William Blake as prophet of the New
Age William Blake (1757-1827) inhabited a remarkable inner
world, one that he brought vividly to life in his poetry, painting,
and printmaking. ...Blake and Antiquity situates this
brilliant and enigmatic artist within the Western esoteric canon,
revealing his indebtedness to Neoplatonism, the Gnostics, alchemy,
and astrology. In this book, Kathleen Raine demonstrates how Blake
rejected conventional orthodoxy and went in search among the occult
traditions of antiquity for symbols that might expand the mind's
awareness into a spiritual state where space, time, and even death
are transcended.
An illuminating look at the iconography of the early
church and its important place in the history of Christian
art In this book, historian André Grabar demonstrates how
early Christian iconography ...assimilated contemporary imagery of the
time. Grabar looks at the most characteristic examples of
paleo-Christian iconography, dwelling on their nature, form, and
content. He explores the limits of originality in such art, its
debt to figurative art, and the broader cultural climate in the
Roman Empire, drawing a distinction between expressive images-that
is, genuine works of art-and informative ones. Throughout, Grabar
establishes the importance of imperial iconography in the
development of Christian portraits and sheds light on the role they
played alongside other forms of Christian piety in their day.
At a time when crises—ecological, migratory, pandemic—all have to do with the question of inhabiting and habitability, the history of art can allow us to look at this issue of common, at the ...confluence of the sensitive and representations, imaginations and forms of life. It is the journey towards this observation that the ecological crisis is above all a crisis of representations that Bruno Latour retraces here, in the company of Matthieu Duperrex, by taking a retrospective look at the fruitful links he maintained throughout his life with the environment. 'the history of art.
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