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Books > Arts & Architecture > Art forms, treatments & subjects > Art treatments & subjects > Iconography, subjects depicted in art > Human figures depicted in art > Portraits in art
Moving with the Magdalen is the first art-historical book dedicated
to the cult of Mary Magdalen in the late medieval Alps. Its seven
case study chapters focus on the artworks commissioned for key
churches that belonged to both parish and pilgrimage networks in
order to explore the role of artistic workshops, commissioning
patrons and diverse devotees in the development and transfer of the
saint's iconography across the mountain range. Together they
underscore how the Magdalen's cult and contingent imagery
interacted with the environmental conditions and landscape of the
Alps along late medieval routes.
Major General Sir Isaac Brock is remembered as the Hero of Upper
Canada for his defence of what is now Ontario during the War of
1812, and also for his noble death at the Battle of Queenston
Heights. In the more than two centuries since then, Brock's
likeness has been lost in a confusing array of portraits-most of
which are misidentified or conceptual. The 1824 monument
constructed to honour Brock's sacrifice was destroyed in 1840 by
Benjamin Lett, a disgruntled disciple of William Lyon Mackenzie and
critic of the Upper Canadian elite. The replacement and subsequent
commemorations emphasized a patriotic desire to visualize the
hero's appearance. But despite uncovering an authentic portrait
painted only a few years before Brock's death, a series of false
faces were promoted to serve competing claims and agendas. St-Denis
situates Brock's portraits within an emerging English Canadian
imperial nationalism that sought a heroic past which reflected
their own aspirations and ambitions. A work of detailed scholarship
and a fascinating detective story, The True Face of Sir Isaac Brock
details the sometimes petty world of self-proclaimed guardians of
the past, the complex process of identification and
misidentification that often occurs even at esteemed Canadian
institutions, and St-Denis' own meticulous work as he separates
fact from fiction to finally reveal Brock's true face.
As we approach the bicentennial, in 2017, of the birth of Henry
David Thoreau, there is considerable debate and confusion as to
what he may, or may not have, contributed to American life and
culture. Almost every American has heard of Thoreau, but only a few
are aware that he was deeply engaged with most of the important
issues of his day, from slavery to "Manifest Destiny" and the
rights of the individual in a democratic society. Many of these
issues are still affecting us today, as we move toward the second
quarter of the twenty-first century. By studying how various
American artists have chosen to portray Thoreau over the years
since the publication of Walden in 1854, we can gain a clear
understanding of how he has been interpreted (or misinterpreted)
throughout the years since his death in 1862. But along the way, we
might also find something useful, for our times, in the insights
that Thoreau gained as he wrestled with the most urgent problems
being experienced by American society in his day.
Portraits. We know what they are, but why do we make them?
Americans have been celebrating themselves in portraits since the
arrival of the first itinerant portrait painters to the colonies.
They created images to commemorate loved ones, glorify the famous,
establish our national myths, and honor our shared heroes. Whether
painting in oil, carving in stone, casting in bronze, capturing on
film, or calculating in binary code, we spend considerable time
creating, contemplating, and collecting our likenesses. In this
sumptuously illustrated book, Richard H. Saunders explores our
collective understanding of portraiture, its history in America,
how it shapes our individual and national identity, and why we make
portraits-whether for propaganda and public influence or for
personal and private appreciation. American Faces is a rich and
fascinating view of ourselves.
The popularity of the comic performers of late-Georgian and Regency
England and their frequent depiction in portraits, caricatures and
prints is beyond dispute, yet until now little has been written on
the subject. In this unique study Jim Davis considers the
representation of English low comic actors, such as Joseph Munden,
John Liston, Charles Mathews and John Emery, in the visual arts of
the period, the ways in which such representations became part of
the visual culture of their time, and the impact of visual
representation and art theory on prose descriptions of comic
actors. Davis reveals how many of the actors discussed also
exhibited or collected paintings and used painterly techniques to
evoke the world around them. Drawing particularly on the influence
of Hogarth and Wilkie, he goes on to examine portraiture as
critique and what the actors themselves represented in terms of
notions of national and regional identity.
English summary: The "Zeitgesicht" (face of the time), in which
citizens matched their own appearance to the image of the emperor,
constitutes an important phenomenon in Roman portrait art. After
300 years, at the time of Constantine the Great, however, this
clear expression of the previously prevailing ideology of the
Principate was abandoned, and in particular members of the imperial
aristocracy started looking for more adequate forms of image
representation that were unconnected to the emperor's appearance.
At the same time in Greece, the old elites were using the medium of
the portrait as an expression of a specific discourse on the past.
Taking a variety of literary and epigraphic sources into
consideration, this study aims to provide a cultural-historical
classification of portraits in later antiquity, along with an
exploration of the significance of the genre of portrait sculpture
for its contemporaries at the end of classical antiquity, and
ultimately to discuss why it was eventually abandoned as a
representational form. German description: Ein wichtiges Phanomen
im romischen Portrat ist das "Zeitgesicht," die Angleichung der
Burger an das Bildnis des Kaisers. Zur Zeit Konstantins des Grossen
wird jedoch nach 300 Jahren dieser unmittelbar erfahrbare Reflex
der zuvor pragenden Prinzipatsideologie aufgegeben und insbesondere
die Vertreter der Reichsaristokratie suchen fortan nach
angemesseneren und vom Herrscherbild entkoppelten Formen der
Bildnisreprasentation. Gleichzeitig nutzen in Griechenland alte
Eliten das Medium des Portrats als Ausdruck eines ganz besonderen
Vergangenheitsdiskurses. Die Arbeit bemuht sich unter
Berucksichtigung einer Vielzahl literarischer und epigraphischer
Quellen um eine kulturgeschichtliche Einordnung des spatantiken
Portrats, um eine Ergrundung der Bedeutung der Gattung der
Portratstatue fur ihre Zeitgenossen am Ende der Antike, und
letztlich um eine Diskussion der Frage, weshalb sie schliesslich
als Reprasentationsobjekt aufgegeben wurde.
Gaze, Intentionality, and Manipulation Battling for the National
Icon The Filming of a Memory Melancholia for Marti Afterthoughts:
Resisting Cuban Melancholia
A fascinating literary detective story charting the surprising,
true history of a recently discovered painting of Shakespeare held
by the same family for 400 years -- adding new drama to the Bard's
life.When author Stephanie Nolen reported the discovery of the only
portrait of William Shakespeare painted while he was alive, the
announcement ignited furious controversy around the world.
Now, in this provocative biography of the portrait, she tells
the riveting story of how a rare image of the young Bard at
thirty-nine came to reside in the suburban home of a retired
engineer, whose grandmother kept the family treasure under her bed,
and how he embarked on authenticating it. The ultimate "Antiques
Roadshow" dream, the portrait has been confirmed by six years of
painstaking forensic studies to date from around 1600, and it has
not been altered since.
The exhibition "Space/Sight/Self" was designed to study the role of
portraiture in contemporary art as a nexus of three issues -
identity, vision and place. The goal was to produce a portrait, as
it were, of contemporary portraiture. This catalogue documents the
exhibition and helps to facilitate viewers' reflections and
responses about the spaces, sights and selves that enable us to
construct and question our identity.
The portrait has historically been understood as an artistic
representation of a human subject. Its purpose was to provide a
visual or psychological likenesses or an expression of personal,
familial or social identity; it was typically associated with the
privileged individual subject of Western modernity. Recent
scholarship in the humanities and social sciences however has
responded to the complex nature of twenty-first century
subjectivity and proffered fresh conceptual models and theories to
analyse it. The contributors to Anti-Portraiture examine
subjectivity via a range of media including sculpture, photography
and installation, and make a convincing case for an expanded
definition of portraiture. By offering a timely reappraisal of the
terms through which this genre is approached, the chapter authors
volunteer new paradigms in which to consider selfhood, embodiment
and representation. In doing so they further this exciting academic
debate and challenge the curatorial practices and acquisition
policies of museums and galleries.
One of the most remarkable artistic achievements of the Mughal
Empire was the emergence in the early seventeenth century of
portraits of identifiable individuals, unprecedented in both South
Asia and the Islamic world. Appearing at a time of increasing
contact between Europe and Asia, portraits from the reigns of the
great Mughal emperor-patrons Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan are
among the best-known paintings produced in South Asia. In the
following centuries portraiture became more widespread in the
visual culture of South Asia, especially in the rich and varied
traditions of painting, but also in sculpture and later prints and
photography. This collection seeks to understand the intended
purpose of a range of portrait traditions in South Asia and how
their style, setting and representation may have advanced a range
of aesthetic, social and political functions. The chapters range
across a wide historical period, exploring ideals of portraiture in
Sanskrit and Persian literature, the emergence and political
symbolism of Mughal portraiture, through to the paintings of the
Rajput courts, sculpture in Tamil temples and the transformation of
portraiture in colonial north India and post-independence Pakistan.
This specially commissioned collection of studies from a strong
list of established scholars and rising stars makes a significant
contribution to South Asian history, art and visual culture.
Previously announcedThis original and eloquent study brings
Frederic Leighton's portrait of May Sartoris to life as an
expression of the artist's remarkable friendship with May's mother,
celebrated opera singer Adelaide Sartoris. The young Leighton
frequented Adelaide's artistic and literary salon in Rome in the
early 1850s, and was on intimate terms with her by the time he
painted her daughter's likeness in England around 1860. Malcolm
Warner places the work both within the tradition of British child
portraiture since Joshua Reynolds and within its immediate
biographical setting. Bringing together much new research into the
circumstances of its creation, he suggests that its wistful mood
and intimations of mortality reflect Adelaide Sartoris's melancholy
temperament as well as Victorian views of childhood. Distributed
for the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
Crossing disciplinary and chronological boundaries, this volume
integrates text and image, essays and object pages to explore the
processes inherent in gender representation, rather than
resituating women in particular categories or spheres as other
scholarly publications and exhibitions have done. Taking its lead
from the 'Picturing' Women project on which it reflects and builds,
the volume makes a substantial methodological contribution to the
analysis of gender discourse and visuality. It offers new and
stimulating scholarship that confronts historical patterns of
representation that have defined what women were and are seen to
be, and presents new contexts for unveiling what art historian
Linda Nochlin has called the 'mixed messages' of representations of
women.
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