Abstraction In Medieval Art

Abstraction haunts medieval art, both withdrawing figuration and suggesting elusive presence. How does it make or destroy meaning in the process? Does it suggest the failure of figuration, the faltering of iconography? Does medieval abstraction function because it is imperfect, incomplete, and uncorrected-and therefore cognitively, visually demanding? Is it, conversely, precisely about perfection? To what extent is the abstract predicated on theorization of the unrepresentable and imperceptible? Does medieval abstraction pit aesthetics against metaphysics, or does it enrich it, or frame it, or both? Essays in this collection explore these and other questions that coalesce around three broad themes: medieval abstraction as the untethering of image from what it purports to represent, abstraction as a vehicle for signification, and abstraction as a form of figuration. Contributors approach the concept of medieval abstraction from a multitude of perspectives-formal, semiotic, iconographic, material, phenomenological, epistemological.

Earliest Christian art - Saints and holy places - Holy images - Artistic production for the wealthy - Icons & iconography.

The holy and the faithful -- The sinful and the spectral -- Daily life and its fictions -- Death and its aftermath

An alternative genealogy of abstract art, featuring the crucial role of 19th-century German literature in shaping it aesthetically, culturally, and socially.

A wildly entertaining and surprisingly educational dive into art history as you've never seen it before, from the host of the beloved ArtCurious podcast We're all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you also know that Monet and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? And while you probably know the tale of Vincent van Gogh's suicide, you may not be aware that there's pretty compelling evidence that the artist didn't die by his own hand but was accidentally killed--or even murdered. Or how about the fact that one of Andy Warhol's most enduring legacies involves Caroline Kennedy's moldy birthday cake and a collection of toenail clippings? ArtCurious is a colorful look at the world of art history, revealing some of the strangest, funniest, and most fascinating stories behind the world's great artists and masterpieces. Through these and other incredible, weird, and wonderful tales, ArtCurious presents an engaging look at why art history is, and continues to be, a riveting and relevant world to explore.

A leading authority on the subject presents a radically new approach to the understanding of abstract art, in this richly illustrated and persuasive history. In his fresh take on abstract art, noted art historian Pepe Karmel chronicles the movement from a global perspective, while embedding abstraction in a recognizable reality. Moving beyond the canonical terrain of abstract art, the author demonstrates how artists from around the world have used abstract imagery to express social, cultural, and spiritual experience. Karmel builds this fresh approach to abstract art around five inclusive themes: body, landscape, cosmology, architecture, and man-made signs and patterns. In the process, this history develops a series of narratives that go far beyond the established figures and movements traditionally associated with abstract art. Each narrative is complemented by a number of featured abstract works, arranged in thought-provoking pairings with accompanying extended captions that provide an in-depth analysis. This wide-ranging examination incorporates work from Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America, as well as Europe and North America, through artists ranging from Wu Guanzhong, Joan Miró, Jackson Pollock, to Hilma af Klint, and Odili Donald Odita. Breaking new ground, Karmel has forged a new history of this key art movement.

This book explores the development of abstraction from the moment of its declaration around 1912 to its establishment as the foundation of avant-garde practice in the mid-1920s. The book brings together many of the most influential works in abstractions early history to draw a cross-media portrait of this watershed moment in which traditional art was reinvented in a wholesale way. Works are presented in groups that serve as case studies, each engaging a key topic in abstractions first years: an artist, a movement, an exhibition or thematic concern. Key focal points include Vasily Kandinskys ambitious Compositions V, VI and VII; a selection of Piet Mondrians work that offers a distilled narrative of his trajectory to Neo-plasticism; and all the extant Suprematist pictures that Kazimir Malevich showed in the landmark 0.10 exhibition in 1915.0Exhibition: MoMA, New York, USA (23.12.2012-15.4.2013).

This important and overdue book examines illuminated manuscripts and other book arts of the Global Middle Ages. Illuminated manuscripts and illustrated or decorated books—like today’s museums—preserve a rich array of information about how premodern peoples conceived of and perceived the world, its many cultures, and everyone’s place in it. Often a Eurocentric field of study, manuscripts are prisms through which we can glimpse the interconnected global history of humanity. Toward a Global Middle Ages is the first publication to examine decorated books produced across the globe during the period traditionally known as medieval. Through essays and case studies, the volume’s multidisciplinary contributors expand the historiography, chronology, and geography of manuscript studies to embrace a diversity of objects, individuals, narratives, and materials from Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas—an approach that both engages with and contributes to the emerging field of scholarly inquiry known as the Global Middle Ages. Featuring more than 160 color illustrations, this wide-ranging and provocative collection is intended for all who are interested in engaging in a dialogue about how books and other textual objects contributed to world-making strategies from about 400 to 1600.