Sculpture Workshops As Space And Concept

This book explores the multifaceted aspects of sculptor’s workshops from the Renaissance to the early nineteenth century. Contributors take a fresh look at the sculptor’s workshop as both a physical and discursive space. By studying some of the most prominent artists’ sculptural practices, the workshop appears as a multifaced, sociable and practical space. The book creates a narrative in which the sculptural workshop appears as a working laboratory where new measuring techniques, new materials and new instruments were tested and became part of the lived experience of the artist and central to the works coming into being. Artists covered include Donatello, Roubilliac, Thorvaldsen, Canova, and Christian Daniel Rauch. The book will be of interest to scholars studying art history, sculpture, artist workshops, and European studies.

This study is an analysis of 'high' and 'late' modernist criticism in New York during the 1960s and early 1970s. Through a close reading of a selection of key critics of the period—which will expand the remit beyond the canonical texts—the book examines the ways that modernist criticism’s discourse remains of especial disciplinary interest. Despite its alleged narrowness and exclusion, the debates of the 1960s raised fundamental questions concerning the nature of art writing. Those include arguments around the nature of value and judgement; the relationship between art criticism and art history; and the related problem of what we mean by the ‘contemporary.’ Stephen Moonie argues that within those often-fractious debates, there exists a shared discourse. And further, contrary to the current consensus that modernists were elitist, dogmatic, and irrelevant to contemporary debates on art, the study shows that there is much that we can learn from reconsidering their writings. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, modern art, art criticism, and literary studies.

Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art addresses how researchers can challenge stereotypical notions of Islam and Islamic art while avoiding the creation of new myths and the encouragement of nationalistic and ethnic attitudes. Despite its Orientalist origins, the field of Islamic art has continued to evolve and shape our understanding of the various civilizations of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Situated in this field, this book addresses how universities, museums, and other educational institutions can continue to challenge stereotypical or homogeneous notions of Islam and Islamic art. It reviews subtle and overt mythologies through scholarly research, museum collections and exhibitions, classroom perspectives, and artists’ initiatives. This collaborative volume addresses a conspicuous and persistent gap in the literature, which can only be filled by recognizing and resolving persistent myths regarding Islamic art from diverse academic and professional perspectives. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, museum studies, visual culture, and Middle Eastern studies.

This book traces the development of scientific conservation and technical art history. It takes as its starting point the final years of the nineteenth century, which saw the establishment of the first museum laboratory in Berlin, and ground-breaking international conferences on art history and conservation held in pre-World War I Germany. It follows the history of conservation and art history until the 1940s when, from the ruins of World War II, new institutions such as the Istituto Centrale del Restauro emerged, which would shape the post-war art and conservation world. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, conservation history, historiography, and history of science and humanities.

This book takes an interdisciplinary, transnational and cross-cultural approach to reflect on, critically examine and challenge the surprisingly robust practice of making art after death in an artist's name, through the lenses of scholars from the fields of art history, economics and law, as well as practicing artists. Works of art conceived as multiples, such as sculptures, etchings, prints, photographs and conceptual art, can be—and often are—remade from original models and plans long after the artist has passed. Recent sales have suggested a growing market embrace of posthumous works, contemporaneous with questioning on the part of art history. Legal norms seem unready for this surge in posthumous production and are beset by conflict across jurisdictions. Non-Western approaches to posthumous art, from Chinese emulations of non-living artists to Native American performances, take into account rituals of generational passage at odds with contemporary, market-driven approaches. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, the art market, art law, art management, museum studies and economics.

This volume uses the art of Rome to help us understand the radical historical break between the fundamental ancient pre-supposition that there is a natural world or cosmos situating human life, and the equally fundamental modern emphasis on human imagination and its creative power. Rome’s unique art history reveals a different side of the battle between ancients and moderns than that usually raised as an issue in the history of science and philosophy. The book traces the idea of a cosmos in pre-modern art in Rome, from the reception of Greek art in the Roman republic to the construction of the Pantheon, to early Christian art and architecture. It then sketches the disappearance of the presupposition of a cosmos in the High Renaissance and Baroque periods, as creativity became a new ideal. Through discussions of the art and architecture that defines proto-modern Rome— from Michelangelo’s terribilita’ in the Sistine Chapel, Caravaggio’s realism, Baroque illusionism, the infinities of Borromini’s architecture, to the Grand Tour’s representations of ruins— through an interpretation of such major issues and works, this book shows how modern art liberates us while leaving us feeling estranged from our grounding in the natural world. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, architectural history, classics, philosophy, and early modern history and culture.

Taking the visual arts as its focus, this anthology explores aspects of cultural exchange between Ireland and the United States. Art historians from both sides of the Atlantic examine the work of artists, art critics and art promoters. Through a close study of selected paintings and sculptures, photography and exhibitions from the nineteenth century to the present, the depth of the relationship between the two countries, as well as its complexity, is revealed. The book is intended for all who are interested in Irish/American interconnectedness and will be of particular interest to scholars and students of art history, visual culture, history, Irish studies and American studies.

A novel investigation into art pedagogy and constructions of national identities in Britain and Ireland, this collection explores the student-master relationship in case studies ranging chronologically from 1770 to 2013, and geographically over the national art schools of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Essays explore the manner in which the Old Masters were deployed in education; fuelled the individual creativity of art teachers and students; were used as a rhetorical tool for promoting cultural projects in the core and periphery of the British Isles; and united as well as divided opinions in response to changing expectations in discourse on art and education. Case studies examined in this book include the sophisticated tradition of 'academic' inquiry of establishment figures, like Joshua Reynolds and Frederic Leighton, as well as examples of radical reform undertaken by key individuals in the history of art education, such as Edward Poynter and William Coldstream. The role of 'Modern Masters' (like William Orpen, Augustus John, Gwen John and Jeff Wall) is also discussed along with the need for students and teachers to master the realm of art theory in their studio-based learning environments, and the ultimate pedagogical repercussions of postmodern assaults on the academic bastions of the Old Masters.