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Books > Arts & Architecture > Art forms, treatments & subjects > Sculpture & other three-dimensional art forms > Carving & carvings
Mary Slusser's work on the history of the art and culture of Nepal
is marked by a series of discoveries and critical reassessments
that have advanced our comprehension of this extraordinarily rich
culture and art in a revolutionary way. In The Antiquity of
Nepalese Wood Carving, Dr. Slusser drastically revises our
perception of the marvelous wooden sculpture of the Kathmandu
Valley. Previously considered to be no earlier than the thirteenth
century, the earliest of these wooden masterpieces have now been
clearly demonstrated to date from the sixth or seventh century, the
time of the Licchavis, lords of Nepal from about 300 to 850.
Slusser has used an important scientific tool, radiocarbon dating,
to help realign -- and correct -- our overly conservative accepted
perceptions of the antiquity of Nepalese wood sculpture. The book
is bolstered by the meticulous and painstaking research and
documentation that are among the hallmarks of Slusser's works. It
is also enriched by her extraordinary photographic archive.
Beautiful struts and architectural details that have long been
missing from the sites where Slusser first saw them are shown once
again in situ in this work, and new photographs, largely the work
of Neil Greentree, reveal a wealth of previously unsuspected
detail. Also included is an essay by Paul Jett that is both a brief
explanation of the science of radiocarbon testing and a validation
of the revised dating of Nepalese wood carving proposed in the
study.
As we mark the 150th anniversary of Barlach's birth in 2020, the
Ernst Barlach Haus in Hamburg pays tribute to the artist with a
comprehensive overview of his wood sculptures. Starting with its
own collection, the museum elaborately documented all available
figures between Lübeck and Zurich with new photographs. This book
is the result of this monumental project. It introduces 72 of the
84 extant wood sculptures and includes many fascinating
large-format colour plates presenting the statues and their
details. Wood held particular importance for Barlach as an artistic
material: he regarded it as animate matter. Consequently, woodwork
takes centre stage in Barlach's artistic practice - a fact that is
often obscured by the large number of mostly posthumous bronze
casts of his works. Around 1907, Barlach began to explore the
centuries-old medieval art of woodcarving without any prior
training. The poor, the homeless, the struggling, invalids, beggars
and outlaws: Barlach turned his attention to those pushed to the
margins of society and paid tribute to them by placing them at the
centre of his art. This book does justice to the reductive
character of his forms, which gestures at simplification and a
transcendence of time, by highlighting Barlach's contemporary
relevance. Text in English and German.
Thorough step-by-step guide discusses anatomy of horse, lion, and bull; methods of construction; tools, materials, etc. Also comprehensive exposition of casting in plaster. 63 full-page photographic plates. 138 drawings and diagrams.
This volume, the second catalogue of the Wyvern Collection,
celebrates an outstanding group of medieval ivory carvings and
small sculpture, the finest assemblage of its kind in private
hands. The book has pieces from every period of the Middle Ages,
including rare examples from the Early Christian era; spectacular
panels from the workshops of tenth-century Constantinople; objects
produced by the celebrated carvers active in south Italy in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries; and several important pieces from
the Romanesque period. At the heart of the collection is an
outstanding group of Gothic ivories whose highlights include one of
the most important secular medieval ivories discovered in recent
years. The collection also features a number of small amber,
hardstone, jet, wood and mother-of-pearl carvings. In addition to
their virtuoso craftsmanship, many of these objects have
illustrious histories as part of famous aristocratic or
ecclesiastical collections. This is a precious opportunity to study
these miniature masterpieces.
A study of woodcarving from the earliest times to the Georgian
period, with an emphasis on the role of carvers and their work for
the Crown over several hundred years. The central figure is
Grinling Gibbons, who is exemplified by his work at St Paul's
Cathedral, Windsor Castle, Petworth House, Hampton Court Palace and
other historic houses. It includes his business dealings with Sir
Christopher Wren and John Evelyn, and is illustrated with
reproductions of contemporary documents, photographs of period
carvings and drawings of ornamental carving styles.
The exhibition catalog is the first survey of Gothic ivories in
English. It contains essays by seven leading international
scholars, including Peter Barnet (Gothic Sculpture in Ivory: An
Introduction), Elizabeth Sears (Ivory and Ivory-Workers in Medieval
Paris), Richard H. Randall, Jr. (Popular Romances Carved in Ivory),
Harvey Stahl (Narrative Structure and Content in Some Gothic
Ivories of the Life of Christ), Charles T. Little (Opera Francigeno
et Germania: Gothic Ivory Carving in Germany), Danielle
Gaborit-Chopin (Polychrome Decoration of Gothic Ivories), and Paul
Williamson (Symbiosis across Scale: Gothic Ivories and Culture in
Stone and Wood in the Thirteenth Century). Nearly one hundred of
the most important examples of Gothic ivory carving from
collections in Europe and the United States are catalogued by
leading specialists. They are illustrated with mostly new
photography and collateral photographs where appropriate.
The publication conveys to the reader the major changes that
occurred in art and society during the Gothic period and the rise
of ivory carving for both religious and secular purposes. Organized
chronologically, the catalog tells the story of the development of
this art form; the people who carved, commissioned, and made use of
ivories in the Middle Ages; and the impact historical developments
had on the growth and eventual demise of the art form.
The appearance during the first millennium A.D. of small,
exquisitely carved artifacts of walrus ivory in the Bering Strait
region marks the beginning of an extraordinary florescence in the
art and culture of North America. The discovery in the 1930s and
1940s of world-class carvings of animals, mythical beasts,
shape-shifting creatures, masks, and human figurines astounded
scholars and excited collectors. Nevertheless, the extraordinary
objects that belong to this fascinating, sometimes frightening,
world of hunting-related art remain largely unknown. Gifts from the
Ancestors examines ancient ivories from the coast of Bering Strait,
western Alaska, and the islands in between-illuminating their
sophisticated formal aesthetic, cultural complexity, and individual
histories. Many of the pieces discussed are from recent Russian
excavations and are presented here for the first time in English;
others are from private collections not usually open to the public.
The essays, written by an international group of scholars, adopt a
refreshing interdisciplinary approach that gives voice to the
various competing, and now sometimes cooperating, stakeholders,
including Native groups, museums, archaeologists, art historians,
art dealers, and private collectors. Distributed for the Princeton
University Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Princeton University Art
Museum (October 3, 2009 - January 10, 2010)
This concise, beautifully illustrated guide explores the enigmatic
Franks Casket, carved from whalebone in 8th century northern
England, and decorated with scenes from tales both pagan and
Christian, as well as runic inscriptions. Leslie Webster helps the
general reader to make sense of its iconography and meaning, the
processes of its manufacture, and its somewhat confused history -
it was rediscovered in modern times in France, whilst one panel
remains in Florence.
A Hopi Indian will tell you that a kachina is a supernatural being
who is impersonated by a man wearing a mask. Small wooden dolls
carved in the likenesses of the various kachinas are used to help
to teach Hopi children the tribal religion and traditions. Each
child receives a doll made especially for him by his male
relatives. He treasures the doll and studies it so that he can
learn to recognised and respect the host of spirit kachinas that
people the Hopi world. Kachinas are difficult to classify because
different Hopi pueblos have different ideas about their appearance
and their functions. The late Dr Harold Colton identified 266
different kinds of kachina dolls, and in this book he describes the
meaning, the making, and the principal features of all of them.
National Jewish Book Awards Finalist for the Visual Arts Award,
2017. The carved wooden Torah arks found in eastern Europe from the
seventeenth to nineteenth centuries were magnificent structures,
unparalleled in their beauty and mystical significance. The work of
Jewish artisans, they dominated the synagogues of numerous towns
both large and small throughout the former Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, inspiring worshippers with their monumental scale and
intricate motifs. Virtually none of these superb pieces survived
the devastation of the two world wars. Bracha Yaniv's pioneering
work therefore breathes new life into a lost genre, making it
accessible to scholars and students of Jewish art, Jewish heritage,
and religious art more generally. Making use of hundreds of pre-war
photographs housed in local archives, she develops a vivid portrait
of the history and artistic development of these arks, the scope
and depth of her meticulous research successfully compensating for
the absence of physical remains. In this way she has succeeded in
producing a richly illustrated and comprehensive overview of a
classic Jewish religious art form. Professor Yaniv's analysis of
the historical context in which these arks emerged includes a broad
survey of the traditions that characterized the local workshops of
Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. She also provides a detailed
analysis of the motifs carved into the Torah arks and explains
their mystical significance, among them representations of Temple
imagery and messianic themes-and even daring visual metaphors for
God. Fourteen arks are discussed in particular detail, with full
supporting documentation; appendices relating to the inscriptions
on the arks and to the artisans' names will further facilitate
future research. This seminal work throws new light on
long-forgotten traditions of Jewish craftsmanship and religious
understanding.
Few decorative crafts can claim to be more ancient than stone
carving, with the earliest carved objects being dated well into
prehistory. The greatest monuments to human civilization, from the
temples of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to the great cathedrals of
Medieval Europe, are richly ornamented with decorative relief and
sculpture carved in stone. Alan Micklethwaite, a stone carver with
many years' experience in the conservation of historic monuments
and sculpture, introduces the reader to the techniques and
methodology of restoration stone carving, from simple relief to
complex sculpture in the round, set against a sound conservation
philosophy. The book provides a thorough understanding of stone as
a material and describes its use in sculpture and the agents of its
decay, as well as the method by which disfigured carvings can be
forensically reconstructed, resulting in the re-emergence of
beautifully carved historic architectural sculpture. The book is
intended as a detailed introduction to restoration stone carving,
and is aimed at those who are learning to carve stone or have an
interest in pursuing a career in the conservation of stone
sculpture and ancient monuments. While having a depth of detail
which will allow it to serve as a reference manual for the
professional, it will also inspire the beginner and fuel the
interest of those who harbour a desire to pursue traditional
crafts.
When Zulu women potters innovate or move to a more urban setting,
they are asked why they have abandoned tradition. Yet when they
continue to follow convention or choose to stay in rural areas, art
historians speak of their work as unchanging symbols of the past.
Burnished rejects both stereotypes, acknowledging the agency of
rural women as innovative artists and complex individuals
negotiating a biased set of power structures. Featuring 90 color
images, Burnished engages directly with individual artists and
specific vessels, fracturing assumptions that Zulu ceramicists are
resistant to rural transformation and insulated from urban
realities. Elizabeth Perrill shares compelling narratives of women
ceramic artists and the sophisticated beer pots they create-their
aesthetic choices, audiences, production, and artistic lives.
Simultaneously, Perrill documents the manner in which and reasons
why ceramic arts, and at times the artists themselves, capitalize
upon bucolic stereotypes of rural womanhood, are constrained by
artistic methods, or chafe against definitions of what qualifies as
a Zulu pot. Revealing how white South Africans and global art
gatekeepers have continually twisted the designation of Zulu
ceramics before, during, and after apartheid, Burnished provides an
engaging look at the artistry of entrepreneurial Black women too
often erased from historical records.
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The "Wu Family Shrines," one of the most important cultural
monuments of early China, comprise approximately fifty stone slabs
from the so-called Wu cemetery in Shandong province. Depicting
emperors and kings, heroic women, filial sons, and mythological
subjects, these famous carved and engraved reliefs may have been
intended to reflect such basic themes as loyalty to the emperor,
filial piety, and wifely devotion; centuries later, they vividly
bring to life the art, social conditions, and Confucian ideology of
the Eastern Han.This generously illustrated book examines the stone
slabs and their rubbings as artifacts with a complex cultural
history from the second century to the present, and addresses
questions about the traditional identification of the structures as
Han dynasty shrines of the Wu family. Written by a team of
distinguished scholars in the fields of Chinese art and history,
the book includes a novel examination of Han burial items in
relation to burial belief, pictorial carvings, and funerary
architecture. Distributed for the Princeton University Art Museum
Exhibition Schedule: Princeton University Art Museum, March 5 -
June 26, 2005
In Puritan New England, with its abiding concern for things not of
this world and its distrust of forms and ceremonies, one art
flourished: the symbolic art of mortuary monument stonecarvers.
This carefully researched, beautifully illustrated work was the
first to consider this art in depth as a meaningful
aesthetic-spiritual expression. It is reissued for today's readers,
with a new preface outlining changes in the field since the book
appeared in 1966.
Jacobo Castellano, (Jaen, 1976), is one of the most complex and
solid contemporary Spanish artists. He uses engraving to create a
body of work based on the emotions and sensations that are hidden
in his personal memory. In his work he uses elements such as
curtains, wire, small piggy banks, coffins or those rhombuses that
were placed on the top of the TV screen. These elements are
superimposed creating structures that seem to be on the verge of
collapse and that seem to want to hide something or point to a
place to hide and protect themselves from imminent collapse. The
work of Jacobo Castellano follows a defined line in which the
recovery of remembrances stored in his memory leads to a deep
reflection on essential issues such as identity, or life and death.
Numerous collections of contemporary art have their production,
like ARTIUM. Basque Center-Museum of Contemporary Art; CAAC.
Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art; CGAC. Galician Center of
Contemporary Art; Montenmedio Contemporary Art Foundation; or the
Rafael Boti Provincial Plastic Arts Foundation, among others.
Contents: Rincones polvorientos de la vida / Life's Dusty Corners,
by Javier Hontoria El juego sin fin (notas de un coleccionista /
The Endless Game (Notes of a Collector) by Luis Caballero Martinez
Conversation with Joao Mourao and Luis Silva Text in English and
Spanish.
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