"A new study of the early Renaissance portrait"--

"In this authoritative book, the first of its kind in English, Christopher Wood tracks the evolution of the historical study of art from the late middle ages through the rise of the modern scholarly discipline of art history. Synthesizing and assessing a vast array of writings, episodes, and personalities, this original and accessible account of the development of art-historical thinking will appeal to readers both inside and outside the discipline. The book shows that the pioneering chroniclers of the Italian Renaissance--Lorenzo Ghiberti and Giorgio Vasari--measured every epoch against fixed standards of quality. Only in the Romantic era did art historians discover the virtues of medieval art, anticipating the relativism of the later nineteenth century, when art history learned to admire the art of all societies and to value every work as an index of its times. The major art historians of the modern era, however--Jacob Burckhardt, Aby Warburg, Heinrich Wölfflin, Erwin Panofsky, Meyer Schapiro, and Ernst Gombrich--struggled to adapt their work to the rupture of artistic modernism, leading to the current predicaments of the discipline. Combining erudition with clarity, this book makes a landmark contribution to the understanding of art history."--from book jacket

Formerly a British colony, the island of Cyprus is now a divided country, where histories of political and cultural conflicts, as well as competing identities, are still contested. Cyprus provides the ideal case study for this innovative exploration, extensively illustrated, of how the practice of photography in relation to its political, cultural and economic contexts both contributes and responds to the formation of identity. Contributors from Cyprus, Greece, the UK and the USA, representing diverse disciplines, draw from photography theory, art history, anthropology and sociology to explore how the island and its people have been represented photographically. They reveal how the different gazes- colonial, political, gendered, and within art photography- contribute to the creation of individual and national identities and, by extension, to the creation and re-creation of imagery of Cyprus as place. While Photography and Cyprus focuses on one geographical and cultural territory, the questions this book asks and the themes and arguments it follows apply also to other places characterized by their colonial heritage. The intriguing example of Cyprus thus serves as a fitting test-ground for current debates relating to photography, place and identity.

A collection of unposed and engaging portraits from around the world.

In 1846, Edgar Allen Poe wrote that 'the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic topic in the world'. The conjuction of death, art and femininity forms a rich and disturbing strata of Western culture, explored here in fascinating detail by Elisabeth Bronfen. Her examples range from Carmen to Little Nell, from Wuthering Heights to Vertigo, from Snow White to Frankenstein. The text is richly illustrated throughout with thirty-seven paintings and photographs.

This is a truly interdisciplinary work. Whilst all of the contributions focus upon the central problem of the relationship between literature and the visual arts, they come from contributors working in a large number of different areas. Represented are academics from the worlds of German studies, French studies, English studies, art history and film studies. in literature, etc.

Rachel Lyon's first novel – soon to be made into a major motion picture starring Zoë Kravitz and Thomasin McKenzie Lu Rile is a relentlessly focused young photographer struggling to make ends meet. Working three jobs, and worrying that the crumbling warehouse she lives in is being sold to developers, she is at a point of desperation. Until, by pure chance, Lu discovers she’s captured a tragedy in the background of a self portrait; a boy falling to his death. The photograph turns out to be the best work of art she’s ever made. It’s an image that could change her life – if she lets it. Set in early 90s Brooklyn on the brink of gentrification, Self-Portrait with Boy is a provocative commentary about the emotional dues that must be paid on the road to success. ‘Beautifully imagined and flawlessly executed’ Joyce Carol Oates ‘A sparkling debut’ New York Times Book Review

Think about your life as a bookshelf. The author invites you to sit down with him and pull out the various stories that make up your life. Examples are the Book of Love or Birth, occupation and travel, but also hidden away, the Book of Death. You will go on a journey with the author to explore the various aspects of story telling relating to your life and the world. The book explores how narration is interwoven into our world. The level of the self is explored, and a model of the "embodied and embedded Self" is proposed and discussed. Positive illusions are key in keeping us going via narration. The concept of the other is examined. What is special about a family, and what type of stories are told? The family portrait as frozen time. The other is often perceived as evil such as witches, the political other, or outsiders. How do we use the other to shape stories about the self and groups we belong to? Contemporary issues are investigated for stories such as racism, capitalism, democracy, or conspiracy theories. Which aspects are true and where does story telling start? Does liquid power indicate a constant circulation of elites, or are we getting closer to a truly democratic society? To understand the present, we need to revisit the past. The author takes you back, far back to the exit from the existential cave. What traits emerged during evolution that are still playing out today in shaping our view of the world? Is inequality an economical problem, or a psychological viewpoint, or is this question wrong? We will look at how humans emerged and question the simplistic view that it was an increase in cognition or language acquisition. Is this not another story told by scientists? Could there be a more violent and dark side to human nature that lurks underneath the surface? If we look at contemporary events, it often appears that way. On the journey, you will encounter various thinkers and philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Norbert Elias, Stephen Pinker, Martin Heidegger, and Judith Shklar. There will be a movie night with The Sopranos, The Wire, and Breaking Bad. Make sure you have the popcorn ready. Detective novels and serial killer dramas will be explored to look at our most cherished heroes. Is the detective just a modern day angel? Why do the good guys always win in the end? The book ends with a consolidated system of thought, a Gedankensystem. Disagree or agree, but you are invited to propose your own and join the discussion.

In this book a leading researcher and artist explores how we see pictures and how they can communicate messages to us, both directly and indirectly by making allusions to objects in space or to stored images in our minds. Originally published in 1990, Dr Wade provides fascinating examples of pictures that communicate hidden messages, either by implying something else, or by a shape or portrait which is carried covertly within another design. He analyses image processing stages in vision, demonstrating that the various stages may be related to styles in representational art. He shows how the way we have been taught to look at and recognise objects, affects the way we see them. The book lavishly illustrates with original examples of visual allusions and includes detailed practical advice on how photographers and designers can create them. Essential reading for photographers, designers, artists, people in film and television, and anyone involved in visual science , visual communication and advertising.

This book provides qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze and better understand phenomena that change in space and time. An innovative approach is to incorporate ideas and methods from dynamical systems and equivariant bifurcation theory to model, analyze and predict the behavior of mathematical models. In addition, real-life data is incorporated in the derivation of certain models. For instance, the model for a fluxgate magnetometer includes experiments in support of the model. The book is intended for interdisciplinary scientists in STEM fields, who might be interested in learning the skills to derive a mathematical representation for explaining the evolution of a real system. Overall, the book could be adapted in undergraduate- and postgraduate-level courses, with students from various STEM fields, including: mathematics, physics, engineering and biology.