Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. Already a member? Sign in.
|
|||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
How Art Made the World: A Journey to the Origins of Human Creativity by Nigel Spivey  (3)
|
How Art Made the World DVD ~ David Attenborough  (20)
$23.99
|
Editorial Reviews
Times Literary Supplement
"Spivey's historical knowledge is enjoyable, and his commentary is sane and humane."
Product Description
Nigel Spivey takes on one of the greatest taboos in Western culture in this brilliantly original work of cultural history: why is so much pain depicted in the art of the West? Beginning with a meditation on Auschwitz, the prizewinning author then takes us on a journey that encompasses the stone-bound screams of classical sculpture, the many depictions of the Crucifixion, the Massacre of the Innocents and St. Sebastians pierced with arrows, self-portraits of the aging Rembrandt, and the tortured art of Vincent van Gogh. Exploring the tender, complex rapport between art and pain, Spivey guides us through the twentieth-century photographs of casualties of war, Edvard Munch's The Scream, and back to the recorded horrors of the Holocaust.
Beauty and disfigurement, violence and thrill, horror and comfort--these are pairings fostered throughout Western art, for causes as various as religious martyrdom, judicial torment, artistic virtuosity, and erotic gratification. The ancient Greeks invented tragic drama: but how far was pity for tragedy's victims tempered by the notion of just deserts? The first Christians preached Christ Crucified: why then did it take some five hundred years before images appeared of Christ on the cross? The Massacre of the Innocents was an event that never happened: for what reasons were artists of the Italian Renaissance so eager to show it convincingly?
Enduring Creation reveals the amazing power of art to console, to warn, to prepare the viewer for the harsher experiences of life, raising intriguing questions: Can pain be beautiful? Do we always pity suffering? Are sainthood and sadomasochism linked? This compelling study concludes with a positive message of hope for the enduring human spirit.
See all Editorial Reviews
"Spivey's historical knowledge is enjoyable, and his commentary is sane and humane."
Product Description
Nigel Spivey takes on one of the greatest taboos in Western culture in this brilliantly original work of cultural history: why is so much pain depicted in the art of the West? Beginning with a meditation on Auschwitz, the prizewinning author then takes us on a journey that encompasses the stone-bound screams of classical sculpture, the many depictions of the Crucifixion, the Massacre of the Innocents and St. Sebastians pierced with arrows, self-portraits of the aging Rembrandt, and the tortured art of Vincent van Gogh. Exploring the tender, complex rapport between art and pain, Spivey guides us through the twentieth-century photographs of casualties of war, Edvard Munch's The Scream, and back to the recorded horrors of the Holocaust.
Beauty and disfigurement, violence and thrill, horror and comfort--these are pairings fostered throughout Western art, for causes as various as religious martyrdom, judicial torment, artistic virtuosity, and erotic gratification. The ancient Greeks invented tragic drama: but how far was pity for tragedy's victims tempered by the notion of just deserts? The first Christians preached Christ Crucified: why then did it take some five hundred years before images appeared of Christ on the cross? The Massacre of the Innocents was an event that never happened: for what reasons were artists of the Italian Renaissance so eager to show it convincingly?
Enduring Creation reveals the amazing power of art to console, to warn, to prepare the viewer for the harsher experiences of life, raising intriguing questions: Can pain be beautiful? Do we always pity suffering? Are sainthood and sadomasochism linked? This compelling study concludes with a positive message of hope for the enduring human spirit.
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Look Inside This Book
Citations
(learn more)
9
books
cite this book:
See all 9 books citing this book
- La souffrance portée au langage dans la prose de Samuel Beckett (Faux Titre 266) (Faux Titre) by Diane Luescher-Morata on page 144, and Back Matter
- Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics (Reflective Bioethics) by Rita Charon on page 214, and page 217
- Tragedy: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Adrian Poole in Back Matter
- The Passion in Art (Ashgate Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts) (Ashgate Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts) (Ashgate Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts) by Richard Harries in Back Matter
- How Art Made the World by Nigel Spivey in Back Matter
See all 9 books citing this book