Old Masters In New Interpretations

The volume offers a variety of new interpretations of a selection of well-known and culturally established works of verbal and visual culture. It demonstrates how the two spheres of literature and broadly understood art, as well as the two qualities of old and new, interfuse, affect, re-shape, and complement each other. The focus here is particularly directed towards the perception of the canonical texts of culture by the modern, often young, addressee. Who are the Old Masters? Are contemporary works of art influenced by them? Is it possible to create ‘new classics’ without reference to the established conventions? These basic questions serve as a starting point for a stimulating academic discussion and a vibrant intellectual exchange.

This book decodes the imagery of more than 150 of the most influential and admired artworks of all time.

The encounter - sometimes conflict - between traditional Renaissance studies and poststructuralism occasions this book. In it, the author analyzes "old masteries," certain notions of freedom, individualism, and control long associated with the Renaissance, in relation to the ideologies of non-mastery that recur in theory today. This book has a dual purpose. First, it recontextualizes the debates on freedom and determinism presented by five "masters" - Petrarch, Luther, Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and Galileo - by showing that their paradigmatic discourses on will share a distinct rhetorical strategy. Second, it argues that the dominant critical paradigms of the late twentieth century, while ostensibly rejecting and transcending early modern ideas of subjecthood, actually recast Renaissance debates on freedom and power. In many ways, the early modern functions as the unconscious of critical theory.

As a result of the Napoleonic wars, vast numbers of Old Master paintings were released on to the market from public and private collections across continental Europe. The knock-on effect was the growth of the market for Old Masters from the 1790s up to the early 1930s, when the Great Depression put an end to its expansion. This book explores the global movement of Old Master paintings and investigates some of the changes in the art market that took place as a result of this new interest. Arguably, the most important phenomenon was the diminishing of the traditional figure of the art agent and the rise of more visible, increasingly professional, dealerships; firms such as Colnaghi and Agnew's in Britain, Goupil in France and Knoedler in the USA, came into existence. Old Masters Worldwide explores the ways in which the pioneering practices of such businesses contributed to shape a changing market.

The T. S. Eliot Studies Annual features the year’s best scholarship on this major literary figure.

When in their lives do great artists produce their greatest art? Do they strive for creative perfection throughout decades of painstaking and frustrating experimentation, or do they achieve it confidently and decisively, through meticulous planning that yields masterpieces early in their lives? By examining the careers not only of great painters but also of important sculptors, poets, novelists, and movie directors, Old Masters and Young Geniuses offers a profound new understanding of artistic creativity. Using a wide range of evidence, David Galenson demonstrates that there are two fundamentally different approaches to innovation, and that each is associated with a distinct pattern of discovery over a lifetime. Experimental innovators work by trial and error, and arrive at their major contributions gradually, late in life. In contrast, conceptual innovators make sudden breakthroughs by formulating new ideas, usually at an early age. Galenson shows why such artists as Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Cézanne, Jackson Pollock, Virginia Woolf, Robert Frost, and Alfred Hitchcock were experimental old masters, and why Vermeer, van Gogh, Picasso, Herman Melville, James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, and Orson Welles were conceptual young geniuses. He also explains how this changes our understanding of art and its past. Experimental innovators seek, and conceptual innovators find. By illuminating the differences between them, this pioneering book provides vivid new insights into the mysterious processes of human creativity.

Historical Ditionary of Children's Literature, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 700 cross-referenced entries. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about children's literature.

Why Eleven Antilleans Knelt before Chopin's Heart is not your usual musical scholarship. In October 1999, eleven Antilleans attended the service held to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Frédéric Chopin’s death. This service, held in the Warsaw church where the composer’s heart is kept in an urn, was an opportunity for these Antilleans to express their debt of gratitude to Chopin, whose influence is central to Antillean music history. Press coverage of this event caused Dutch novelist and author Jan Brokken (b. 1949) to start writing this book, based on notes he took while living on Curaçao from 1993 to 2002. Anyone hoping to discover an overlooked chapter of Caribbean music and music history will be amply rewarded with this Dutch-Caribbean perspective on the pan-Caribbean process of creolization. On Curaçao, the history and legacy of slavery shaped culture and music, affecting all the New World. Brokken’s portraits of prominent Dutch Antillean composers are interspersed with cultural and music history. He puts the Dutch Caribbean’s contributions into a broader context by also examining the nineteenth-century works by pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk from New Orleans and Manuel Saumell from Cuba. Brokken explores the African component of Dutch Antillean music—examining the history of the rhythm and music known as tambú as well as American jazz pianist Chick Corea’s fascination with the tumba rhythm from Curaçao. The book ends with a discussion of how recent Dutch Caribbean adaptations of European dance forms have shifted from a classical approach to contemporary forms of Latin jazz.