Overview

This collection of articles covering the time span from the Late Middle Ages to the twentieth century intends to challenge the current neglect of the interplay between esoteric knowledge and the visual arts. 'Art and Alchemy' indicates that alchemy indeed has several connections with art by examining some of the pictorial and literary books that disseminated alchemical symbols and ideas, delving into images, which in one way or another can be shown to appropriate and interpret alchemical ideas or environments, and expanding the scope of alchemical imagery by indicating structural affinities between alchemical processes and artistic creation.

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"""These essays emerged from a 2001 conference at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. As organisers Jan Backlund and Jacob Wamberg explain in their introduction, the collection redresses 'the current skepticism towards alchemy as a possible source for art' (9). The ten essays that follow, however, range far beyond that art historical agenda by exploring the fascinating intersections between alchemy and art from the late Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Despite the inherent challenges of interdisciplinarity, the well-illustrated volume makes clear that historians of alchemy and historians of art stand to benefit enormously from this kind of fruitful collaboration."" - Tara E. Nummedal, Ambix, Vol. 55, No. 1, 2008"

These essays emerged from a 2001 conference at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. As organisers Jan Backlund and Jacob Wamberg explain in their introduction, the collection redresses the current skepticism towards alchemy as a possible source for art (9). The ten essays that follow, however, range far beyond that art historical agenda by exploring the fascinating intersections between alchemy and art from the late Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Despite the inherent challenges of interdisciplinarity, the well-illustrated volume makes clear that historians of alchemy and historians of art stand to benefit enormously from this kind of fruitful collaboration. - Tara E. Nummedal, Ambix, Vol. 55, No. 1, 2008

Author Information

Jacob Wamberg is Professor of Art at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. He works on evolutionistic theories of the history of the visual arts, especially in relation to nature and technology, focussing periodically in the Renaissance and 20 and 21 centuries.

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