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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > 500 CE to 1400
Throughout the history of imperial China, the educated elite
used various means to criticize government policies and actions.
During the Song dynasty (960-1278), some members of this elite
found an elegant and subtle means of dissent: landscape
painting.
By examining literary archetypes, the titles of paintings,
contemporary inscriptions, and the historical context, Alfreda
Murck shows that certain paintings expressed strong political
opinions--some transparent, others deliberately concealed. She
argues that the coding of messages in seemingly innocuous paintings
was an important factor in the growing respect for painting among
the educated elite and that the capacity of painting's systems of
reference to allow scholars to express dissent with impunity
contributed to the art's vitality and longevity.
The Haggadot commissioned by wealthy patrons in the Middle Ages are
among the most beautifully decorated Hebrew manuscripts, and The
`Brother' Haggadah - so-called because of its close relationship to
The Rylands Haggadah in the collection of the John Rylands Library,
Manchester - is one of the finest of these to have survived.
Created by Sephardi - or southern - artists and scribes in
Catalonia in the second quarter of the 14th century, it sets out
the liturgy and sequence of the Passover Seder, a ritual feast by
which Jewish families give thanks for the liberation of the
Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt as described in the Book
of Exodus. This finely produced facsimile edition begins with an
introduction by medieval scholar Professor Marc Michael Epstein,
who sets out the background to the Passover and provides an
analysis of the manuscript's iconographic scheme. Following are
essays on the provenance of The `Brother' Haggadah by Ilana Tahan,
head of the Hebrew and Christian collections at the British
Library, and on the Shaltiel family, former owners of the
manuscript, by Hebrew scholar Eliezer Laine. The book also contains
a translation of the poems and commentary in the manuscript by the
late Raphael Lowe, former Goldsmid Professor of Hebrew at
University College London, and a translation of the Haggadah
liturgy.
A revelatory study exploring wood’s many material, ecological,
and symbolic meanings in the religious art of medieval Germany In
late medieval Germany, wood was a material laden with significance.
It was an important part of the local environment and economy, as
well as an object of religious devotion in and of
itself.  Gregory C. Bryda examines the multiple
meanings of wood and greenery within religious art—as a material,
as a feature of agrarian life, and as a symbol of the cross, whose
wood has resonances with other iconographies in the liturgy. Bryda
discusses how influential artists such as Matthias Grünewald,
known for the Isenheim Altarpiece, and the renowned sculptor Tilman
Riemenschneider exploited wood’s multivalent nature to connect
spiritual themes to the lived environment outside church walls.
Exploring the complex visual and material culture of the period,
this lavishly illustrated volume features works ranging from
monumental altarpieces to portable pictures and offers a fresh
understanding of how wood in art functioned to unlock the mysteries
of faith and the natural world in both liturgy and everyday life.
On June 6, 1913, George Groslier, a twenty-six year old French
explorer, set out with a small group of native porters on a
six-month trek in the Cambodian wilderness. A millennium earlier,
the Khmer empire had ruled the entire region. In the 15th century,
however, the kingdom mysteriously collapsed, with dense jungle
quickly covering its fabulous temples. The French government
charged Groslier with documenting the most remote edifices of the
Khmer legacy - among them Preah Vihear, Wat Phu, Beng Melea and
Banteay Chhmar - sites that remain isolated even a century later.
This modern edition - enhanced with 75 period illustrations and
detailed appendices - offers readers the first English translation
of the dangers, discoveries and people encountered on his solitary
adventure. Groslier's impressions and insights still fascinate
those who, even today, seek answers in the ancient shrines of
Cambodia. What we find in the shadow of Angkor is not merely an
extraordinary example of a dead civilization...but a dead
civilization whose torches have been kept alight and shine on.
George Groslier - Tonle Repou, July 12, 1913 The re-publication of
Groslier's book is a cause for celebration. While much interest
stems from descriptions of these temples as he saw them in 1913 -
when they were indeed virtually unknown to more than a few western
scholars - there is much more to be found in this book of lyrical,
and at times poetic, writing. Milton Osborne - Foreword
Transforming Type examines kinetic or moving type in a range of
fields including film credits, television idents, interactive
poetry and motion graphics. As the screen increasingly imitates the
properties of real-life environments, typographic sequences are
able to present letters that are active and reactive. These
environments invite new discussions about the difference between
motion and change, global and local transformation, and the
relationship between word and image. In this illuminating study,
Barbara Brownie explores the ways in which letterforms transform on
screen, and the consequences of such transformations. Drawing on
examples including Kyle Cooper's title sequence design, kinetic
poetry and MPC's idents for the UK's Channel 4, she differentiates
motion from other kinds of kineticism, with particular emphasis on
the transformation of letterforms into other forms and objects,
through construction, parallax and metamorphosis. She proposes that
each of these kinetic behaviours requires us to revisit existing
assumptions about the nature of alphabetic forms and the spaces in
which they are found.
The poetry of the late Roman world has a fascinating history.
Sometimes an object of derision, sometimes an object of admiration,
it has found numerous detractors and defenders among classicists
and Latin literary critics. This volume explores the scholarly
approaches to late Latin poetry that have developed over the last
40 years, and it seeks especially to develop, complement and
challenge the seminal concept of the ‘Jeweled Style’ proposed
by Michael Roberts in 1989. While Roberts’s monograph has long
been a vade mecum within the world of late antique literary
studies, a critical reassessment of its validity as a concept is
overdue. This volume invites established and emerging scholars from
different research traditions to return to the influential
conclusions put forward by Roberts. It asks them to examine the
continued relevance of The Jeweled Style and to suggest new ways to
engage it. In a joint effort, the nineteen chapters of this volume
define and map the jeweled style, extending it to new genres,
geographic regions, time periods and methodologies. Each
contribution seeks to provide insightful analysis that integrates
the last 30 years of scholarship while pursuing ambitious
applications of the jeweled style within and beyond the world of
late antiquity.
A mixed ancestry kid, at his desk Richard 'imitates' Yerka or
'paints' Bolero (see the insider). By his very nature, he likes to
like and hates to hate. Richard stopped painting at his 8 years.
With this collection of 10 paintings and 11 poems, he fundraises
for the museums, with an initial goal to cover the entrance tickets
for 1-10 kids who are seriously in love with the visual arts.
2013 Reprint of 1945 Edition. Full facsimile of the original
edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Camillo
Sitte (1843-1903) was a noted Austrian architect, painter and
theoretician who exercised great influence on the development of
urban planning in Europe and the United States. The publication at
Vienna in May 1889 of "Der Stadtebau nach seinen kunstlerischen
Grundsatzen" ("The Art of Building Cities") began a new era in
Germanic city planning. Sitte strongly criticized the current
emphasis on broad, straight boulevards, public squares arranged
primarily for the convenience of traffic, and efforts to strip
major public or religious landmarks of adjoining smaller structures
regarded as encumbering such monuments of the past. Sitte proposed
instead to follow what he believed to be the design objectives of
those whose streets and buildings shaped medieval cities. He
advocated curving or irregular street alignments to provide
ever-changing vistas. He called for T-intersections to reduce the
number of possible conflicts among streams of moving traffic. He
pointed out the advantages of what came to be know as "turbine
squares"--civic spaces served by streets entering in such a way as
to resemble a pin-wheel in plan. His teachings became widely
accepted in Austria, Germany, and Scandinavia, and in less than a
decade his style of urban design came to be accepted as the norm in
those countries.
Art historian, Cecily Hennessy, explores medieval Byzantine wall
paintings in churches cut out of the beautiful landscape of central
Turkey. Many of these were decorated by local artists, sometimes
monks, or by the finest artists brought from other centres, such as
Constantinople. This book is designed for both intrigued visitors
and for those looking for art-historical information and
understanding. It serves as a travel guide to the most important
painted churches with numerous colour illustrations, plans and
maps. It also encourages close examination of the painting, its
meaning and its style and execution and provides background
knowledge of Byzantine artistic and cultural practice.
Illustrations and major decoration of sixteen Anglo-Saxon
manuscripts, fully described and indexed, are reproduced here in
454 photographs, many for the first time. Manuscripts included are:
the Athelstan Psalter, the Harley Psalter, the Bury Psalter, the
Paris Psalter, the Boulogne Gospels, the Arenberg Gospels, the
Trinity Gospels, the Eadui Codex, Pembroke College MS 301, the Bury
Gospels, the Judith of Flanders Gospels (Pierpont Morgan MSS 709
and 708), the Monte Casino Gospel Book, the Hereford Gospels, the
Psychomachia of Prudentius, and the Junius Manuscript.
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