An authoritative assessment of the changing relationship between the Bible and the arts In this unique Companion, 35 scholars, from world-famous to just beginning, explore the role of the Bible in art and of artistic motifs in the Bible. The specially commissioned chapters demonstrate that just as the arts have portrayed biblical stories in a variety of ways and media over the centuries, so what we call 'the' Bible is not actually a single entity but has been composed of fiercely contested translations of texts in many languages, whose selection has depended historically on a variety of cultural pressures, theological, social, and, not least, aesthetic. Key Features: * Divided into 3 sections, Inspiration and Theory, Art and Architecture, and Literature * Generously illustrated * Covers aesthetic interpretations of specific biblical books; of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles as a whole; the transmission of biblical texts; various bindings and illustrations of Bibles - in response to pressures as diverse as Islamic craftsmanship and the English Reformation * Includes pieces on biblical influences on poetry, painting, church architecture, decoration, and stained glass; on poetry, hymns, novels, plays, and fantasy literature * Spans the earliest days of the Christian era to the present

East Asia largely functions as a single film and media market, but behind it exists a multifaceted world of coproduction crossing linguistic and national borders. In "Coproducing Asia," Stephanie DeBoer guides readers through a rich genealogy of regional film and media coproduction, all the while introducing innovative methods for their examination across decades, locations, and scales of production in East Asia and beyond.

Beginning with the present and moving back in time, "Coproducing Asia" paints a picture of the assemblages of coproduction in East Asia and their negotiation of Cold War geopolitics and imperial legacies along with the emergence of China as a global market. Addressing wide-screen international romances of the early 1960s, technology transfers of Cold War action cinema, Sino-Japanese "friendship" TV collaborations, Asian omnibus film and video, and more recent China-centered blockbusters, DeBoer deftly contextualizes each case study while accounting for the difficulties involved in the cultural, creative, and industry mediations associated with coproduction.

Based on rarely seen archival research as well as interviews with producers in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Shanghai, "Coproducing Asia" provides compelling frames for understanding the significance of film and media coproduction in East Asia, making clear that it is not only a site of technological transformation but also an arena for competing senses of regional location and place.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, Japanese avant-garde filmmakers intensely explored the shifting role of the image in political activism and media events. Known as the "season of politics," the era was filled with widely covered dramatic events from hijackings and hostage crises to student protests. This season of politics was, Yuriko Furuhata argues, the season of "image" politics. Well-known directors, including Oshima Nagisa, Matsumoto Toshio, Wakamatsu Kōji, and Adachi Masao, appropriated the sensationalized media coverage of current events, turning news stories into material for timely critique and intermedial experimentation. "Cinema of Actuality" analyzes Japanese avant-garde filmmakers' struggle to radicalize cinema in light of the intensifying politics of spectacle and a rapidly changing media environment, one that was increasingly dominated by television. Furuhata demonstrates how avant-garde filmmaking intersected with media history, and how sophisticated debates about film theory emerged out of dialogues with photography, television, and other visual arts.

Collecting Mexico centers on the ways in which aesthetics and commercialism intersected in officially sanctioned public collections and displays in late nineteenth-century Mexico. Shelley E. Garrigan approaches questions of origin, citizenry, membership, and difference by reconstructing the lineage of institutionally collected objects around which a modern Mexican identity was negotiated. In doing so, she arrives at a deeper understanding of the ways in which displayed objects become linked with nationalistic meaning and why they exert such persuasive force. Spanning the Porfiriato period from 1867 to 1910, Collecting Mexico illuminates the creation and institutionalization of a Mexican cultural inheritance. Employing a wide range of examples-including the erection of public monuments, the culture of fine arts, and the representation of Mexico at the Paris World's Fair of 1889-Garrigan pursues two strands of thought that weave together in surprising ways: national heritage as a transcendental value and patrimony as potential commercial interest. Collecting Mexico shows that the patterns of institutional collecting reveal how Mexican public collections engendered social meaning. Using extensive archival materials, Garrigan's close readings of the processes of collection building offer a new vantage point for viewing larger issues of identity, social position, and cultural/capital exchange.

Der Mond ist ein zentrales Thema in der chinesischen Malerei, wurde aber bisher noch nicht umfassend erforscht. Im ersten Teil der vorliegenden Arbeit werden Bildthemen mit Mond-Landschaften der Song- bis Qing-Zeit interpretiert. Dabei wird besonders die Beziehung der chinesischen Gelehrten zum Mond, wie sie sich in der reichhaltigen chinesischen Poesie und Prosa bis zur Song-Zeit ausdruckt, berucksichtigt. Der Mond als kompositorisches Element in der chinesischen Landschaftsmalerel wird im zweiten Teil der Arbeit thematisiert. Dabei gilt den nicht dargestellten, aber vom Betrachter nachvollziehbaren Beziehungslinie zwischen dem Gelehrten und dem Mond besondere Aufmerksamkeit. Der dritte Teil behandelt den Mond als Lichtquelle und greift damit einen zentralen Problemkomplex ostasiatischer Malerei auf: die Wiedergabe des mondbeschienenen Luftraumes, die Schattierung von Gegenstanden im Mondlicht, Schlagschatten und Beleuchtung sowie verschiedene Darstellungen des reflektierten Lichtes. Den Abschluss der Arbeit bildet eine Zusammenfassung der Charakteristika chinesischer Mond-Landschaften. 90 Abbildungen illustrieren die Ausfuhrungen der Verfasserin.

Evaporating Suns explores myths from the Arabian Gulf through contemporary art. Based on the concept that the mythical and the factual are like two sides of the same coin, the catalogue accompanying the exhibition shows that myths do not simply convey fictions, but that they are instead capable of presenting truth much more vividly than statistics and facts ever could. The publication showcases the work of 13 contemporary artists from the Arabian peninsula, who explore the folklore and popular myths of their homelands, and use cynicism, satire and fiction to build their universes and rewrite the parallel history of their contemporary societies. Completed by essays by authors from the region, myths are being seen as an opportunity to offer a new approach to negotiate current issues such as the environment, gender, and social structures of power.

Art is continuously subjected to insidious forms of censorship. This may be by the Church to guard against moral degeneration, by the State to promote a specific political agenda or by the art market, to elevate one artist above another. Now, and in the last century, artwork that touches on ethnic, religious, sexual, national or institutional sensitivities is liable to be destroyed or hidden away, ignored or side-lined. Drawing from new research into historical and contemporary case-studies, Censoring Art: Silencing the Artwork provides diverse ways of understanding the purpose and mechanisms of art censorship across distinct geopolitical and cultural contexts from Iran, Japan, and Uzbekistan to Britain, Ireland, Canada, Macedonia, Soviet Russia, and Cyprus. Its contributions uncover the impact of this silent control of the production and exhibition of art and consider how censorship has affected art practice and public perceptions of artworks.

A panoramic exploration of peoples, objects and beliefs over 40,000 years from the celebrated author of A History of the World in 100 Objects and Germany, following the new BBC Radio 4 documentary and British Museum exhibition. One of the central facts of human existence is that every society shares a set of beliefs and assumptions - a faith, an ideology, a religion - that goes far beyond the life of the individual. These beliefs are an essential part of a shared identity. They have a unique power to define - and to divide - us, and are a driving force in the politics of much of the world today. Throughout history they have most often been, in the widest sense, religious. Yet this book is not a history of religion, nor an argument in favour of faith. It is about the stories which give shape to our lives, and the different ways in which societies imagine their place in the world. Looking across history and around the globe, it interrogates objects, places and human activities to try to understand what shared beliefs can mean in the public life of a community or a nation, how they shape the relationship between the individual and the state, and how they help give us our sense of who we are. For in deciding how we live with our gods, we also decide how to live with each other. 'The new blockbuster by the museums maestro Neil MacGregor ... The man who chronicles world history through objects is back ... examining a new set of objects to explore the theme of faith in society' Sunday Times

Art and Public History: Approaches, Opportunities, and Challenges examines the relationship between art and public history, outlining opportunities, challenges, and insights drawn from recent initiatives. With a special eye towards audience engagement and challenging historical narratives, all of the case studies and projects combine historical interpretation with contemporary and historical forms of visual art in unique and insightful ways. In addition to emphasizing the kind of practical advice found in the best case studies, this volume also offers a critical discussion of the concepts, tools, skills and technologies that contribute to fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration. These issues are addressed through sections on projects related to historical artworks; contemporary art and artists; and public art and the built environment. It addresses how public historians can incorporate art into their practice by outlining opportunities, challenges, and insights drawn from recent projects in the United States and Britain. These projects have taken place across a variety of platforms, including local and national history museums; art galleries; digital archives; classrooms; historical markers; and public art projects. The case studies incorporate the perspectives of different stakeholders, including public historians, artists, and audiences. The book will provide both public history practitioners and academics with useful guidance on how art can be integrated into public history initiatives, through critical discussion of tools, strategies, and technologies that contribute to fruitful collaboration and audience engagement across a variety of platforms. Readers will walk away with new ideas, strategies, and practical considerations for interdisciplinary projects to attract audiences in new ways.

Foreword by Jonathan Green For over fifty years, John and Vivian Hewitt visited galleries, artists' studios, and exhibitions in the United States, the Caribbean, and elsewhere in the Americas, collecting hundreds of paintings, etchings, and sketches. The John and Vivian Hewitt Collection of African-American Art represents fifty-eight works that celebrate the expression and passion of twenty artists, including Romare Bearden, Margaret Burroughs, Jonathan Green, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Ann Tanksley, and Henry Ossawa Tanner. The Hewitts believed that sharing their collection with the public would enhance the visibility of artists of African descent and showcase their cultural contributions. The Hewitt Collection was subsequently acquired by the Bank of America and generously donated to The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts and Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina. This book contains all fifty-eight works from the collection, exquisitely reproduced in full color. Grace C. Stanislaus provides a text on the significance of the collection that is supplemented by interviews with Vivian Hewitt, David Taylor of the Gantt Center, and art collectors Harmon and Harriett Kelley, and Nancy Washington.

Situated at the interface of philosophy, aesthetics and art history, this collection brings together a series of creative responses to the recent speculative turn in Continental philosophy. It gives you both a genealogy of speculative art history and a provocatively experimental counter-discourse of new speculative art histories. The contributors include philosophers, art historians, architects and art practitioners who go beyond the mere complementarity of philosophy and art history. They are generous with the types of art they examine, including architecture, cinema, dance and new media, and the philosophical trajectories they engage with. Speculative Art Histories is published in association with Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam.

When Catholics in the Southwest ask God or a saint for help, many of them do not merely pray. They also promise or present a gift - a tiny metal object known as a milagro. A milagro, which means "miracle" in Spanish, depicts the object for which a miracle is sought, such as a crippled leg or a new house. Milagros are offered for everything people pray for, and so they can represent almost anything imaginable - arms, lungs, hearts, and eyes; men, women, and children; animals, cars, boats - even lost handbags and imprisoned men. In Answered Prayers, the Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Tohono O'odham, and Yaquis who practice this tradition share their stories of unwavering faith and divine intervention. Anthropologist and photographer Eileen Oktavec has spent more than two decades documenting this fascinating tradition in the Arizona-Mexico borderlands. Quoting extensive interviews, she explains the beliefs of the people who perform this ancient folk ritual and the many rules guiding this practice. She also describes the many places where milagros are offered - from the elaborate Mexican baroque Mission San Xavier near Tucson, Arizona, to tiny household shrines and hospitals on both sides of the border. Oktavec also explains how milagros are made, where they are bought, and how they are used in jewelry, sculpture, and art.

John Mawurndjul is one of Australia's leading Aboriginal artists, if not the greatest of the living. This is a comprehensive look at the many facets and avenues of Mawurndjul's works, but following up on daily, practical, and theoretical issues influencing Australian indigenous art. Mawurndjul is an innovator who has developed Kuwinjku bark painting from an iconic art form into a nonfigurative style with compelling geometry, building on the work of older leading Kuwinjku artists. He has, over the years, forged a new way of painting out of the old, transforming the dot infill X-ray method derived from figurative rock art and body painting into one employing masses of rarrk (cross hatching), unrelieved by figurative motifs. His complex and understated geometry, which is made up of infinitesimal, moire-like cross-hatched variations--occasioning multiple shifts and optical gyrations within the paint layer--is no longer contained within the figurative envelope. Mawurndjul invented a geometry that takes up the entire surface of the painting and today must be seen as the central focus of his work. As Judith Ryan, curator for indigenous art at the National Gallery of Victoria explains, the rarrk itself is indicative of ancestral potency and points to hidden internalized layers of past and present ceremonial practice.

Published in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of The Newark Museum, this fully illustrated book highlights the extensive and diverse collections of New Jersey's largest museum. The Museum boasts the most significant historical collection of Tibetan art in the Western Hemisphere. The American Art collection is one of the best in the country and includes a superb collection of Hudson River landscape paintings, as well as major works of modern art and contemporary art.Fine examples from the extensive African collection include masks, figural sculpture, textiles and dress, pottery, jewelery, furniture, photography and paintings. Also featured are works from the classical collections from Egypt, the Near East, Greece and Rome, as well as a collection of ceramics, glass, furniture and textiles displayed in 19th-century Ballantine House. In addition to its comprehensive art collections, The Newark Museum also features the natural sciences. This handsome volume will be of interest to all visitors to the Museum and all those interested in art from around the world.