Medieval images, especially manuscript illuminations, have long been treated independently of the contexts in which they were created. These beautiful miniature paintings, frequently valued as keepers of documentary evidence or as curious artistic commodities, have only recently become the focus of art historians concerned with new questions related to artistic working methods, audience and the status of the visual in the Middle Ages and the modern era. Excavating the Medieval Image argues that the illuminated image is best understood as thoroughly integrated in the material context of the manuscript - and thus, integrated in a cultural context of production and reception. Seen in this way, the illuminated manuscript becomes a kind of archaeological site, which must be carefully unearthed layer by layer. The fourteen essays gathered here are written by scholars of both medieval and Renaissance art history, and demonstrate varied methodological approaches that combine the pursuits of traditional connoisseurship and iconography with those of critical theory and historiography. In addition, the authors contribute more broadly to important interdisciplinary issues such as the study of gender, text and image, and the history of literacy and the book.

Structured around in-depth and interconnected case studies and driven by a methodology of material, contextual, and iconographic analysis, this book argues that early European single-sheet prints, in both the north and south, are best understood as highly accessible objects shaped and framed by individual viewers. Author David Areford offers a synthetic historical narrative of early prints that stresses their unusual material nature, as well as their accessibility to a variety of viewers, both lay and monastic. This volume represents a shift in the study of the early printed image, one that mirrors the widespread movement in art history away from issues of production, style, and the artist toward issues of reception, function, and the viewer. Areford's approach is intensely grounded in the object, especially the unacknowledged material complexity of the print as a portable, malleable, and accessible image that depended on a response that was not only visual but often physical, emotional, and psychological. Recognizing that early prints were not primarily designed for aesthetic appreciation, the author analyzes how their meanings stemmed from specific functions involving private devotion, protection, indulgences, the cult of saints, pilgrimage, exorcism, the art of memory, and anti-Semitic propaganda. Although the medium's first century was clearly transitional and experimental, Areford explores how its potential to impact viewers in new ways"both positive and negative"was quickly realized.

Structured around in-depth and interconnected case studies and driven by a methodology of material, contextual, and iconographic analysis, this book argues that early European single-sheet prints, in both the north and south, are best understood as highly accessible objects shaped and framed by individual viewers. Author David Areford offers a synthetic historical narrative of early prints that stresses their unusual material nature, as well as their accessibility to a variety of viewers, both lay and monastic. This volume represents a shift in the study of the early printed image, one that mirrors the widespread movement in art history away from issues of production, style, and the artist toward issues of reception, function, and the viewer. Areford's approach is intensely grounded in the object, especially the unacknowledged material complexity of the print as a portable, malleable, and accessible image that depended on a response that was not only visual but often physical, emotional, and psychological. Recognizing that early prints were not primarily designed for aesthetic appreciation, the author analyzes how their meanings stemmed from specific functions involving private devotion, protection, indulgences, the cult of saints, pilgrimage, exorcism, the art of memory, and anti-Semitic propaganda. Although the medium's first century was clearly transitional and experimental, Areford explores how its potential to impact viewers in new ways"both positive and negative"was quickly realized.

A revelatory consideration of the wide-ranging practice of one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century A pioneer of minimalism and conceptual art, Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) is best known for his monumental wall drawings. LeWitt's broad artistic practice, however, also included sculpture, printmaking, photography, artist's books, drawings, gouaches, and folded and ripped paper works. From the familiar to the underappreciated aspects of LeWitt's oeuvre, this book examines the ways that his art was multidisciplinary, humorous, philosophical, and even religious. Locating Sol LeWitt contains nine new essays that explore the artist's work across media and address topics such as LeWitt's formative friendships with colleagues at the Museum of Modern Art in the early 1960s; his photographs of Manhattan's Lower East Side; his 1979 collaboration with Lucinda Childs and Philip Glass and its impact on his printmaking; and his commissions linked to Jewish history and the Holocaust. The essays offer insights into the role of parody, experimentation, and uncertainty in the artist's practice, and investigate issues of site, space, and movement. Together, these studies reveal the full scope of LeWitt's creativity and offer a multifaceted reassessment of this singular and influential artist.

A landmark survey of Sol LeWitt's printmaking practice The conceptual artist Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) is best known for his programmatic wall drawings and modular structures, but alongside these works he generated more than 350 print projects, comprising thousands of lithographs, silkscreens, etchings, aquatints, woodcuts, and linocuts. This generously illustrated volume is the first to take a comprehensive look at LeWitt's significant yet underexplored printmaking practice. Drawing together new archival research, interviews, and careful material and visual analyses, David S. Areford brilliantly situates LeWitt's prints within the broader context of his serial-, system-, and rule-based approach to artmaking. The specific processes of print media, Areford argues, were perfectly suited for LeWitt's particular brand of conceptual art, in which the "idea becomes the machine that makes the art." With over 400 illustrations, many never before published, this study offers a more complete picture of LeWitt's oeuvre-and the essential place printmaking holds in it. The result will deepen the understanding not only of the variety of LeWitt's output but of the genealogy of his distinct geometric and linear formal language.