Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of Modern Art (Belknap Press) [Paperback]

Arnold Hauser (Author)

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Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation)

Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press (March 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674548159
• ISBN-13: 978-0674548152
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 6.7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,827,521 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #38 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Mannerism

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic work, November 27, 2007

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magellan (Santa Clara, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of Modern Art (Belknap Press) (Paperback)

Wow, almost 700 pages just on Mannerism, and in large paperback format, too. But for those with the stamina to stick it out, this considerable work has probably never been equalled.

Mannerism was a style known for its anti-classical elements, intellectual conceits, irrational and distorted space and bodily proportions, and irrational lighting, to name several of them. It was a fascinating period, and one worthy of the efforts of a scholar of Hauser's talents.

Famous for his multivolume A Social History of Art, this book concentrates on this important period which immediately succeeded the High Renaissance. Hauser depicts the period as a turbulent and dynamic one, rejecting the venerated and ideal harmonies of the Renaissance canon. But he also maintains that the apparent ubiquitousness and harmony of high Renaissance standards was just a temporary hiatus which only briefly contained and concealed disturbing forces beneath its highly polished surface, forces that would soon overthrow it. In that sense Mannerism, construed as "painting in the manner of Michelangelo," never existed.

Hauser is a great scholar, no doubt about it, and getting through this book is no mean feat. Obviously, if you're reading this review, you're probably an advanced student of art history, or maybe like me, a passionate amateur who just likes to read art history but who was educated in something else (psychology and applied math). And if you learn everything in this book, I suspect you could pass any class on it and perhaps even your doctoral orals if this is your specialty.

This is certainly a great book, and in my humble opinion might represent the zenith of scholarship on the subject, and my only reservation about it is more a matter of perspective or viewpoint. Hauser may be right that Mannerism was a complete rejection of Renaissance values and represents a revolution in the art of the time. However, there is the tendency, even for great scholars such as Hauser, to see greater differences in artistic ideas, styles, and methods than actually exists, because the human mind sees patterns and exaggerates and imposes them even where they don't exist. To me, Mannerism is clearly related to the High Renaissance even if there are obvious as well as more subtle differences.

And even if the period was truly revolutionary as Hauser says, one must remember that in the early Renaissance, Botticelli's art has been said to represent a crisis in art in several respects: a crisis in the artist's relationship to society, a crisis in his relationship to his subject matter, and a technical crisis in the representation of spatial relationships and the use of geometrical perspective. So in that sense every new period in art can be said in some sense to be "revolutionary." It makes for a dramatic thesis and presentation, but is it really the case?

However, there is no doubt that Mannerism, and later the Rococo and the other periods that succeeded it, produced great art that is different as well as similar to the great Renaissance masters. How that came about, and what those differences really signified, is the subject of this book. For Hauser, even great art can't be separated from its historical milieu, and he is a master at discovering and elucidating those connections. Whether one agrees with his main thesis about Mannerism or not, he's a great scholar and writer of art history and I learned a lot from this book.