An interdisciplinary examination of nineteenth-century French art pertaining to religion, exile, and the nation’s demise as a world power, this study concerns the consequences for visual culture of a series of national crises—from the assault on Catholicism and the flight of émigrés during the Revolution of 1789, to the collapse of the Empire and the dashing of hope raised by the Revolution of 1830. The central claim is that imaginative response to these politically charged experiences of loss constitutes a major shaping force in French Romantic art, and that pursuit of this theme in light of parallel developments in literature and political debate reveals a pattern of disenchantment transmuted into cultural capital. Focusing on imagery that spoke to loss through visual and verbal idioms particular to France in the aftermath of the Revolution and Empire, the book illuminates canonical works by major figures such as Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Chassériau, and Camille Corot, as well as long-forgotten images freighted with significance for nineteenth-century viewers. A study in national bereavement—an urgent theme in the present moment—the book provides a new lens through which to view the coincidence of imagination and strife at the heart of French Romanticism. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, French literature, French history, French politics, and religious studies.

This book examines the development of national emblems, photographic portraiture, oil painting, world expositions, modern spaces for art exhibitions, university programs of visual arts, and other agencies of modern art in Korea. With few books on modern art in Korea available in English, this book is an authoritative volume on the topic and provides a comparative perspective on Asian modernism including Japan, China, and India. In turn, these essays also shed a light on Asian reception of and response to the Orientalism and exoticism popular in Europe and North America in the early twentieth century. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, the history of Asia, Asian studies, colonialism, nationalism, and cultural identity.

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.

This edited collection explores the intersection of historical studies and the artistic representation of the past in the long nineteenth century. The case studies provide not just an account of the pursuit of history in art within Western Europe but also examples from beyond that sphere. These cover canonical and conventional examples of history painting as well as more inclusive, ‘popular’ and vernacular visual cultural phenomena. General themes explored include the problematics internal to the theory and practice of academic history painting and historical genre painting, including compositional devices and the authenticity of artefacts depicted; relationships of power and purpose in historical art; the use of historical art for alternative Liberal and authoritarian ideals; the international cross-fertilisation of ideas about historical art; and exploration of the diverse influences of socioeconomic and geopolitical factors. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of the histories of nineteenth-century art and culture.

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 volume is a groundbreaking discussion of the role of digital media in research on ancient painting, and a deep reflection on the effectiveness of digital media in opening the field to new audiences. The study of classical art always oscillates between archaeology and classics, between the study of ancient texts and archaeological material. For this reason, it is often difficult to collect all the data, to have access to both types of information on an equal basis. The increasing development of digital collections and databases dedicated to both archaeological material and ancient texts is a direct response to this problem. The book’s central theme is the role of the digital humanities, especially digital collection,s such as the Digital Milliet, in the study of ancient Greek and Roman painting. Part 1 focuses on the transition between the original print version of the Recueil Milliet and its digital incarnation. Part 2 addresses the application of digital tools to the analysis of ancient art. Part 3 focuses on ancient wall painting. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, classics, archaeology, and digital humanities.

This study reveals the broad material, devotional, and cultural implications of sculpture in Renaissance Venice. Examining a wide range of sources—the era’s art-theoretical and devotional literature, guidebooks and travel diaries, and artworks in various media—Lorenzo Buonanno recovers the sculptural values permeating a city most famous for its painting. The book traces the interconnected phenomena of audience response, display and thematization of sculptural bravura, and artistic self-fashioning. It will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Renaissance history, early modern art and architecture, material culture, and Italian studies.

This volume examines the visual culture of Japan’s transition to modernity, from 1868 to the first decades of the twentieth century. Through this important moment in Japanese history, contributors reflect on Japan’s transcultural artistic imagination vis-a-vis the discernment, negotiation, assimilation, and assemblage of diverse aesthetic concepts and visual pursuits. The collected chapters show how new cultural notions were partially modified and integrated to become the artistic methods of modern Japan, based on the hybridization of major ideologies, visualities, technologies, productions, formulations, and modes of representation. The book presents case studies of creative transformation demonstrating how new concepts and methods were perceived and altered to match views and theories prevalent in Meiji Japan, and by what means different practitioners negotiated between their existing skills and the knowledge generated from incoming ideas to create innovative modes of practice and representation that reflected the specificity of modern Japanese artistic circumstances. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Japanese studies, Asian studies, and Japanese history, as well as those who use approaches and methods related to globalization, cross-cultural studies, transcultural exchange, and interdisciplinary studies.

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.