Overview
In this groundbreaking book, renowned art historian Hans Belting proposes a new anthropological theory for interpreting human picture making. Rather than focus exclusively on pictures as they are embodied in various media such as painting, sculpture, or photography, he links pictures to our mental images and therefore our bodies. The body is understood as a ""living medium"" that produces, perceives, or remembers images that are different from the images we encounter through handmade or technical pictures. Refusing to reduce images to their material embodiment yet acknowledging the importance of the historical media in which images are manifested, An Anthropology of Images presents a challenging and provocative new account of what pictures are and how they function. The book demonstrates these ideas with a series of compelling case studies, ranging from Dante's picture theory to post-photography. One chapter explores the tension between image and medium in two ""media of the body,"" the coat of arms and the portrait painting.Another, central chapter looks at the relationship between image and death, tracing picture production, including the first use of the mask, to early funerary rituals in which pictures served to represent the missing bodies of the dead. Pictures were tools to re-embody the deceased, to make them present again, a fact that offers a surprising clue to the riddle of presence and absence in most pictures and that reveals a genealogy of pictures obscured by Platonic picture theory.
Full Product Details
Author: Hans Belting ,
Thomas Dunlap
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.30cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.425kg
ISBN: 9780691160962
ISBN 10: 0691160961
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 21 July 2014
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Language: English
Reviews
Belting is one of the most brilliant and most prolific art historians. --Choice [A] fascinating if not revolutionary look at the way we interact with other 'embodied' images such as sculptures, photographs, films, paintings and more... Brilliant. --William Yeoman, West Australian
""Belting is one of the most brilliant and most prolific art historians.""--Choice ""[A] fascinating if not revolutionary look at the way we interact with other 'embodied' images such as sculptures, photographs, films, paintings and more... Brilliant.""--William Yeoman, West Australian
Belting is one of the most brilliant and most prolific art historians. -- Choice [A] fascinating if not revolutionary look at the way we interact with other 'embodied' images such as sculptures, photographs, films, paintings and more... Brilliant. --William Yeoman, West Australian
Author Information
Hans Belting has held chairs in art history at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich and has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Columbia, and Northwestern. He also cofounded and taught at the School for New Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. His many books include Likeness and Presence, The End of the History of Art?, The Invisible Masterpiece, Art History after Modernism, and Looking through Duchamp's Door.
