Book picks similar to
Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance by Edgar Wind
art
history
renaissance
art-history
The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture and Literature
José Ortega y Gasset - 1925
In the essay, originally published in Spanish in 1925, Ortega grappled philosophically with the newness of nonrepresentational art and sought to make it more understandable to a public confused by it. Many embraced the essay as a manifesto extolling the virtues of vanguard artists and promoting their efforts to abandon the realism and the romanticism of the nineteenth century.The dehumanization of the title, which was meant descriptively rather than pejoratively, referred most literally to the absence of human forms in nonrepresentational art, but also to its insistent unpopularity, its indifference to the past, and its iconoclasm. Ortega championed what he saw as a new cultural politics with the goal of a total transformation of society.Ortega was an immensely gifted writer in the best belletristic tradition. His work has been compared to an iceberg because it hides the critical mass of its erudition beneath the surface, and because it is deceptive, appearing to be more spontaneous and informal than it really is.Princeton published the first English translation of the essay paired with another entitled Notes on the Novel. Three essays were later added to make an expanded edition, published in 1968, under the title The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture and Literature .
Wagner's Ring: Turning the Sky Around. An Introduction to The Ring of the Nibelung
Mark Owen Lee - 1990
"Anyone, whether knowledgeable or not, will profit by reading it..." - Opera Quarterly
KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money
J.M.R. Higgs - 2012
They had awards, credibility, commercial success and creative freedom. They deleted their records, erased themselves from musical history and burnt their last million pounds in a boathouse on the Isle of Jura.And they couldn’t say why.This is the story of The KLF, told through the ideas that drove them. It is a story about Carl Jung, Alan Moore, Robert Anton Wilson, Ken Campbell, Dada, Situationism, Discordianism, magic, chaos, punk, rave and the alchemical symbolism of Doctor Who. Wildly unauthorised and totally unlike any other music biography, ‘KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money’ is a trawl through chaos on the trail of a beautiful accidental mythology.
Lords Of The Left Hand Path: A History Of Spiritual Dissent
Stephen E. Flowers - 2012
Ancient paths include the Egyptian cult of Set, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, the Yezidis, Neoplatonists and the Greeks, the Germanics, the Slavs, the Assassins, Dualist sects, the Faustian path, the Hellfire Club, de Sade, Marx and the sinister aspects of Bolshevism. A whole chapter is devoted to Hitler and Himmler and the occult practices of Nazism. Other modern individuals analyzed include Blavatsky, Gurdjieff, Crowley, Spare, Gregorius and Gerald Gardner.
Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism
Hal Foster - 2005
Adopting an innovative year-by-year approach, Foster, Krauss, Bois and Buchloh present more than one hundred short essays, each focusing on a crucial event - such as the creation of a seminal work, the publication of an artistic manifesto, or the opening of a major exhibition - to tell the story of the dazzling diversity of practice and interpretation that characterized the art of the period. are explored in depth, as are the frequent and sustained antimodernist reactions that proposed alternative visions of art and the world. Illustrating the authors' fine texts are more than six hundred of the most important works of the century, most reproduced in full colour. The book's flexible structure and extensive cross-referencing allow readers to plot their own course through the book and to follow any one of the many narratives that unfold through the century, whether that be the history of a medium such as photography or painting, the development of art in a particular country, the influence of a movement such as Surrealism or feminism, or the emergence of a stylistic or conceptual category like abstraction or minimalism. and issues surrounding the art. In their perceptive introductions, the four authors set out and explain the different methods of art history at work in the book, providing the reader with the conceptual tools to further his or her own study. Two roundtable discussions - one at mid-century, the other at the close of the book - consider some of the questions raised by the preceding decades and look ahead to the art of the future. A glossary of terms and concepts completes this extraordinary volume.
Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering
Makoto Fujimura - 2016
His artistic faith journey overlaps with Endo's as he uncovers deep layers of meaning in Japanese history and literature, expressed in art both past and present. He finds connections to how faith is lived in contemporary contexts of trauma and glimpses of how the gospel is conveyed in Christ-hidden cultures. In this world of pain and suffering, God often seems silent. Fujimura's reflections show that light is yet present in darkness, and that silence speaks with hidden beauty and truth.
Iconostasis
Pavel Florensky - 1922
By the time of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, Fr Pavel had become a leading voice in Russia's great movement in religious philosophy, a movement whose roots lay in the rich ground of nineteenth-century Russian monasticism and whose branches included the work of Bulgakov, Berdiaev, and Solovyev. In the 1920s and 1930s the Soviets violently destroyed this splendor of Russian religious thought. In 1922, Fr Pavel was silenced, and, after a decade of forced scientific work for the regime, he was arrested on false charges, tried, imprisoned, and, in 1937, murdered by KGB directive. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn honored Fr Pavel in The Gulag Archipelago. Iconostasis is Fr Pavel's final theological work. Composed in 1922, it explores in highly original terms the significance of the icon: its philosophic depth, its spiritual history, its empirical technique. In doing so, Fr Pavel also sketched a new history of both Western religious art and the Orthodox icon: a history under the direct operation of the Holy Spirit. The work is original, challenging and profoundly articulate. This translation is the first complete English version.
The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
C.S. Lewis - 1964
Lewis' The Discarded Image paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, as historical and cultural background to the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It describes the image discarded by later ages as the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe. This, Lewis' last book, was hailed as the final memorial to the work of a great scholar and teacher and a wise and noble mind.
World Religions: The Great Faiths Explored and Explained
John Bowker - 1997
This comprehensive guide is the perfect companion for those beginning their exploration into faith, or for those just needing a quick reference tool.With clarity, insight, and sensitivity, World Religions details the beliefs from Scientology to Zoroastrianism and everything in between.
Black Athena: Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. 1: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785-1985
Martin Bernal - 1987
The Aryan Model, which is current today, claims that Greek culture arose as the result of the conquest from the north by Indo-European speakers, or "Aryans," of the native "pre-Hellenes." The Ancient Model, which was maintained in Classical Greece, held that the native population of Greece had initially been civilized by Egyptian and Phoenician colonists and that additional Near Eastern culture had been introduced to Greece by Greeks studying in Egypt and Southwest Asia. Moving beyond these prevailing models, Bernal proposes a Revised Ancient Model, which suggests that classical civilization in fact had deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures.This long-awaited third and final volume of the series is concerned with the linguistic evidence that contradicts the Aryan Model of ancient Greece. Bernal shows how nearly 40 percent of the Greek vocabulary has been plausibly derived from two Afroasiatic languages-Ancient Egyptian and West Semitic. He also reveals how these derivations are not limited to matters of trade, but extended to the sophisticated language of politics, religion, and philosophy. This evidence, according to Bernal, confirms the fact that in Greece an Indo-European people was culturally dominated by speakers of Ancient Egyptian and West Semitic.Provocative, passionate, and colossal in scope, this volume caps a thoughtful rewriting of history that has been stirring academic and political controversy since the publication of the first volume.
Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War
Hito Steyerl - 2017
They extend from a region where the audience is pumped for tweets to a future of "neurocurating," in which paintings surveil their audience via facial recognition and eye tracking to assess their popularity and to scan for suspicious activity.In Duty Free Art, filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl wonders how we can appreciate, or even make art, in the present age.What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor museums, and some of the world's most valuable artworks are used as currency in a global futures market detached from productive work? Can we distinguish between information, fake news, and the digital white noise that bombards our everyday lives? Exploring subjects as diverse as video games, WikiLeaks files, the proliferation of freeports, and political actions, she exposes the paradoxes within globalization, political economies, visual culture, and the status of art production.
Michelangelo, God's Architect: The Story of His Final Years and Greatest Masterpiece
William E. Wallace - 2019
Anguished by the death of friends and discouraged by the loss of commissions to younger artists, this supreme painter and sculptor began carving his own tomb. It was at this unlikely moment that fate intervened to task Michelangelo with the most ambitious and daunting project of his long creative life.Michelangelo, God's Architect is the first book to tell the full story of Michelangelo's final two decades, when the peerless artist refashioned himself into the master architect of St. Peter's Basilica and other major buildings. When the Pope handed Michelangelo control of the St. Peter's project in 1546, it was a study in architectural mismanagement, plagued by flawed design and faulty engineering. Assessing the situation with his uncompromising eye and razor-sharp intellect, Michelangelo overcame the furious resistance of Church officials to persuade the Pope that it was time to start over.In this richly illustrated book, leading Michelangelo expert William Wallace sheds new light on this least familiar part of Michelangelo's biography, revealing a creative genius who was also a skilled engineer and enterprising businessman. The challenge of building St. Peter's deepened Michelangelo's faith, Wallace shows. Fighting the intrigues of Church politics and his own declining health, Michelangelo became convinced that he was destined to build the largest and most magnificent church ever conceived. And he was determined to live long enough that no other architect could alter his design.
Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations
Martin Goodman - 2007
Sixty years later, after further violent rebellions and the city’s final destruction, Hadrian built the new city of Aelia Capitolina where Jerusalem had once stood. Jews were barred from entering its territory. They were taxed simply for being Jewish. They were forbidden to worship their god. They were wholly reviled.What brought about this conflict between the Romans and the subjects they had previously treated with tolerance? Martin Goodman—equally renowned in Jewish and in Roman studies—examines this conflict, its causes, and its consequences with unprecedented authority and thoroughness. He delineates the incompatibility between the cultural, political, and religious beliefs and practices of the two peoples. He explains how Rome’s interests were served by a policy of brutality against the Jews. He makes clear how the original Christians first distanced themselves from their origins, and then became increasingly hostile toward Jews as Christian influence spread within the empire. The book thus also offers an exceptional account of the origins of anti-Semitism, the history of which reverberates still.An indispensable book.
The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain from Vienna 1900 to the Present
Eric R. Kandel - 2012
Kandel, The Age of Insight takes us to Vienna 1900, where leaders in science, medicine, and art began a revolution that changed forever how we think about the human mind—our conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions—and how mind and brain relate to art. At the turn of the century, Vienna was the cultural capital of Europe. Artists and scientists met in glittering salons, where they freely exchanged ideas that led to revolutionary breakthroughs in psychology, brain science, literature, and art. Kandel takes us into the world of Vienna to trace, in rich and rewarding detail, the ideas and advances made then, and their enduring influence today. The Vienna School of Medicine led the way with its realization that truth lies hidden beneath the surface. That principle infused Viennese culture and strongly influenced the other pioneers of Vienna 1900. Sigmund Freud shocked the world with his insights into how our everyday unconscious aggressive and erotic desires are repressed and disguised in symbols, dreams, and behavior. Arthur Schnitzler revealed women’s unconscious sexuality in his novels through his innovative use of the interior monologue. Gustav Klimt, Oscar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele created startlingly evocative and honest portraits that expressed unconscious lust, desire, anxiety, and the fear of death. Kandel tells the story of how these pioneers—Freud, Schnitzler, Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele—inspired by the Vienna School of Medicine, in turn influenced the founders of the Vienna School of Art History to ask pivotal questions such as What does the viewer bring to a work of art? How does the beholder respond to it? These questions prompted new and ongoing discoveries in psychology and brain biology, leading to revelations about how we see and perceive, how we think and feel, and how we respond to and create works of art. Kandel, one of the leading scientific thinkers of our time, places these five innovators in the context of today’s cutting-edge science and gives us a new understanding of the modernist art of Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele, as well as the school of thought of Freud and Schnitzler. Reinvigorating the intellectual enquiry that began in Vienna 1900, The Age of Insight is a wonderfully written, superbly researched, and beautifully illustrated book that also provides a foundation for future work in neuroscience and the humanities. It is an extraordinary book from an international leader in neuroscience and intellectual history.
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
Camille Paglia - 1990
It ultimately challenges the cultural assumptions of both conservatives and traditional liberals. 47 photographs.