The Power Of Things And The Flow Of Cultural Transformations

"This volume presents contributions from a lecture series held in the winter semester 2009/10 at the University of Heidelberg's Cluster of Excellence 'Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows.' The central theme is the power of things--works of art, luxury goods, and ideas--in cultural processes"--P. 8.

Beyond Boundaries: East and West Cross-Cultural Encounters is a collection of essays which span several countries, centuries and disciplines in their exploration of East-West cultural exchanges and interactions. The chapters are arranged in chronological and thematic order, and encompass the cutting edge research of a diverse group of international scholars. The subjects range from archaeology, art history and photography, to conservation, sociology and cultural studies, with cross-disciplinary examples of classical, modern and contemporary periods. The book seeks to inspire new ideas and stimulate further scholarly debate on the convergence, dissimilarities and mutual influences of the visual arts and material culture of Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students working in the fields of art and cultural history as well as intercultural studies. It will be equally useful to collectors, artists and curators of global art and world cultures.

In Courtly Mediators, Leah R. Clark investigates the exchange of a range of materials and objects, including metalware, ceramic drug jars, Chinese porcelain, and aromatics, across the early modern Italian, Mamluk, and Ottoman courts. She provides a new narrative that places Aragonese Naples at the center of an international courtly culture, where cosmopolitanism and the transcultural flourished, and in which artists, ambassadors, and luxury goods actively participated. By articulating how and why transcultural objects were exchanged, displayed, copied, and framed, she provides a new methodological framework that transforms our understanding of the Italian Renaissance court. Clark's volume provides a multi-sensorial, innovative reading of Italian Renaissance art. It demonstrates that the early modern culture of collecting was more than a humanistic enterprise associated with the European roots of the Renaissance. Rather, it was sustained by interactions with global material cultures from the Islamic world and beyond.

In Conflict, Commerce, and an Aesthetic of Appropriation in the Italian Maritime Cities, 1000-1150, Karen Rose Mathews analyzes the relationship between war, trade, and the use of spolia (appropriated objects from past and foreign cultures) as architectural decoration in the public monuments of the Italian maritime republics in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

This book argues that the provenance of early modern and medieval objects from Islamic lands was largely forgotten until the "long" eighteenth century, when the first efforts were made to reconnect them with the historical contexts in which they were produced. For the first time, these Islamicate objects were read, studied and classified – and given a new place in history. Freed by scientific interest, they were used in new ways and found new homes, including in museums. More generally, the process of "rediscovery" opened up the prehistory of the discipline of Islamic art history and had a significant impact on conceptions of cultural boundaries, differences and identity. The book will be of interest to scholars working in the history of art, the art of the Islamic world, early modern history and art historiography.

This volume comprises a multidisciplinary study of Pisa’s socio-economic, cultural, and political history, art history, and archaeology at the time of the city’s greatest fame and prosperity during the transformative period of the Middle Ages.

This volume of the Haskins Society Journal furthers the Society's commitment to historical and interdisciplinary research on the early and central Middle Ages, especially in the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and Angevin worlds but also on the continent. The topics of the essays it contains range from the curious place of Francia in the historiography of medieval Europe to strategies of royal land distribution in tenth-century Anglo-Saxon England to the representation of men and masculinity in the works of Anglo-Norman historians. Essays on the place of polemical literature in Frutolf of Michelsberg's Chronicle, exploration of the relationship between chivalry and crusading in Baudry of Bourgeuil's History, and Cosmas of Prague's manipulation of historical memory in the service of ecclesiastical privilege and priority each extend the volume's engagement with medieval historiography, employing rich continental examples to do so. Investigations of comital personnel in Anjou and Henry II's management of royal forests and his foresters shed new light on the evolving nature of secular governance in the twelfth centuries and challenge and refine important aspects of our view of medieval rule in this period. The volume ends with a wide-ranging reflection on the continuing importance of the art object itself in medieval history and visual studies. Contributors: H.F. Doherty, Kathryn Dutton, Kirsten Fenton, Paul Fouracre, Herbert Kessler, Ryan Lavelle, Thomas J.H. McCarthy, Lisa Wolverton, Simon Yarrow.

This book explores a series of powerful artifacts associated with King Solomon via legendary or extracanonical textual sources. Tracing their cultural resonance throughout history, art historian Allegra Iafrate delivers exciting insights into these objects and interrogates the ways in which magic manifests itself at a material level. Each chapter focuses on a different Solomonic object: a ring used to control demons; a mysterious set of bottles that constrain evil forces; an endless knot or seal with similar properties; the shamir, known for its supernatural ability to cut through stone; and a flying carpet that can bring the sitter anywhere he desires. Taken together, these chapters constitute a study on the reception of the figure of Solomon, but they are also cultural biographies of these magical objects and their inherent aesthetic, morphological, and technical qualities. Thought-provoking and engaging, Iafrate’s study shows how ancient magic artifacts live on in our imagination, in items such as Sauron’s ring of power, Aladdin’s lamp, and the magic carpet. It will appeal to historians of art, religion, folklore, and literature.