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New perspectives on early globalisms from objects and images Tales
Things Tell offers new perspectives on histories of connectivity
between Africa, Asia, and Europe in the period before the Mongol
conquests of the thirteenth century. Reflected in objects and
materials whose circulation and reception defined aesthetic,
economic, and technological networks that existed outside
established political and sectarian boundaries, many of these
histories are not documented in the written sources on which
historians usually rely. Tales Things Tell charts bold new
directions in art history, making a compelling case for the
archival value of mobile artifacts and images in reconstructing the
past. In this beautifully illustrated book, Finbarr Barry Flood and
Beate Fricke present six illuminating case studies from the sixth
to the thirteenth centuries to show how portable objects mediated
the mobility of concepts, iconographies, and techniques. The case
studies range from metalwork to stone reliefs, manuscript
paintings, and objects using natural materials such as coconut and
rock crystal. Whether as booty, commodities, gifts, or souvenirs,
many of the objects discussed in Tales Things Tell functioned as
sources of aesthetic, iconographic, or technical knowledge in the
lands in which they came to rest. Remapping the histories of
exchange between medieval Islam and Christendom, from Europe to the
Indian Ocean, Tales Things Tell ventures beyond standard narratives
drawn from written archival records to demonstrate the value of
objects and images as documents of early globalisms.
Religious art from four continents and across cultures – seeing
and smelling the sacred. Holy Smoke: Censers Across Cultures
investigates the practice of incense – the use of material
objects to communicate with the divine – in religious context as
it has been used in cultures worldwide across historical periods,
religions, and cultures. The fragrant smoke of incense filling the
air can be witnessed in any tradition, whether polytheistic or
monotheistic, whether in the Ancient Near East, or Medieval Europe.
Censers are ubiquitous among religious paraphernalia, and on a
truly global scale. Focusing on case studies not only places the
censer in a constellation of other religious artefacts, but also
relocates the importance of rituals that have long been placed at
the margins of the study of religion, art and ritual. Emerging from
this, we hope, is a better grasp of the role of sensorial elements
in the fostering of the devotional practices of world religions.
To write about works that cannot be sensually perceived involves
considerable strain. Absent the object, art historians must stretch
their methods to, or even past, the breaking point. This concise
volume addresses the problems inherent in studying medieval works
of art, artifacts, and monuments that have disappeared, have been
destroyed, or perhaps never existed in the first place. The
contributors to this volume are confronted with the full expanse of
what they cannot see, handle, or know. Connecting object histories,
the anthropology of images, and historiography, they seek to
understand how people have made sense of the past by examining
objects, images, and architectural and urban spaces. Intersecting
these approaches is a deep current of reflection upon the
theorization of historical analysis and the ways in which the past
is inscribed into layers of evidence that are only ever revealed in
the historian’s present tense. Highly original and theoretically
sophisticated, this volume will stimulate debate among art
historians about the critical practices used to confront the
formative presence of destruction, loss, obscurity, and existential
uncertainty within the history of art and the study of historical
material and visual cultures. In addition to the editors, the
contributors to this volume are Michele Bacci, Claudia Brittenham,
Sonja Drimmer, JaÅ› Elsner, Peter Geimer, Danielle B. Joyner,
Kristopher W. Kersey, Lena Liepe, Meekyung MacMurdie, and Michelle
McCoy.
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