Blindness: The History of a Mental Image in Western Thought (Paperback)

by Moshe Barasch (Author) "Few periods in history, if indeed any, have been so fascinated with various figures of the blind, and have so deeply and vividly experienced the..." (more)
Key Phrases: secular blind, blind figure, sur les aveugles, Middle Ages, New Testament, Northern Europe (more...)

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Product Description
Blindness is a remarkable study of how Western culture has imagined what it is like to be blind, especially as it is represented in that most visual of arts, painting. Art historian Moshe Barasch here draws upon not only the span of art history from antiquity to the eighteenth century but also the classical and biblical traditions that underpin so much of artistic representation: Blind Homer, the healing of the blind, blind musicians, blindness as a punishment, blindness as a special mark. The book discusses blindness in antiquity, in the Early Christian world, in the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance, with a final long consideration of Diderot. Blindness explores the fascinating paradoxes in the Western representation of blindness, revealing the ways in which the idea of absence of vision has been central in the history of our visual culture.

About the Author
Moshe Barasch is Jack Cotton Professor of Architecture and Fine Arts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of many books on art history and the theory of art. A winner of the Israel Prize in 1996, he was recently elected corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (April 11, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415927439
• ISBN-13: 978-0415927437
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
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• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,720,491 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
  
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• In-Print Editions: Library Binding (1) |  All Editions