Heaven on Earth: Painting and the Life to Come

Author:   T. J. Clark
Publisher:   Thames & Hudson Ltd
ISBN:  

9780500295540


Pages:   288
Publication Date:   06 February 2020
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

Our Price $39.99 Quantity:  
Add to Cart

Share |

Heaven on Earth: Painting and the Life to Come


Add your own review!

Overview

The idea of heaven on earth haunts the human imagination. The day will come, say believers, when the pain and confusion of mortal life will give way to a transfigured community. Such a vision of the world seems indelible. Even politics, some reckon, has not escaped from the realm of the sacred: its dreams of the future still borrow their imagery from the prophets. In Heaven on Earth, T.J. Clark sets out to investigate the very different ways painting has given form to the dream of God's kingdom come. He goes back to the late Middle Ages and Renaissance - to Giotto in Padua, Bruegel facing the horrors of religious war, Poussin painting the Sacraments, Veronese unfolding the human comedy. Was it to painting's advantage, is Clark's question, that in an age of enforced orthodoxy (threats of hellfire, burnings at the stake) artists could reflect on the powers and limitations of religion without putting their thoughts into words? At the heart of the book stands Bruegel's ironic but tender picture of The Land of Cockaigne, and also Veronese's inscrutable Allegory of Love. The story ends with Picasso's Fall of Icarus, made for UNESCO in 1958, which already seems to signal - perhaps to prescribe - an age when all futures are dead.

Full Product Details

Author:   T. J. Clark
Publisher:   Thames & Hudson Ltd
Imprint:   Thames & Hudson Ltd
Weight:   0.650kg
ISBN:  

9780500295540


ISBN 10:   0500295549
Pages:   288
Publication Date:   06 February 2020
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

Table of Contents

Reviews

''Remarkable ... You don't have to be religious to get it. You just have to have faith in the force of belief'' - New York Times, Best Art Books of 2018 ''Utopian modernism has been Clark's lifetime study, to which this book is an imaginative, heartfelt coda ... gracefully skims a tightrope between attentive looking and political thinking'' - Financial Times ''A more novel and compelling book about art's version of the afterlife, and how it is inflected by worldly politics and reality, can hardly be imagined' ' - Observer, Books of the Year 2018


Author Information

T.J. Clark is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Painting of Modern Life and Farewell to an Idea. He writes art criticism regularly for the London Review of Books. His other publications include Image of the People, also published by Thames & Hudson.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions
Latest Reading Guide

ls

Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty
Shopping cart
Mailing List