Ashgate Publishing Co.
Aboriginal religions in Australia; recent writings.
Mostly anthropologists but also advocates for and representatives of aboriginal Australians discuss scholarly revaluations of aboriginal religions, religious business, sacred places, art and religion, different dreaming, religions and law, and religious exchanges. The specific topics include big businesswomen, sacred geography, Yolngu art and the creativity of the inside, life and land in aboriginal Australia, the religious factor in land rights, and faith and fear in aboriginal Christianity. The anthology, a sequel to the 1984 Religion in Aboriginal Australia: An Anthology, samples recent work to demonstrate how thinking on the matter has changed over the past two decades. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Advancing sustainability at the sub-national level; the potential and limitations of planning.
The Fourth Urban Planning and Environment Symposium was scheduled for March 2001 in Haifa, but was canceled because of the Second Intifada. A decision was made to publish 14 of the papers written for it anyway. Urban and regional planners, geographers, and environmental scientists explore the role their established professions could play in development efforts around the world. They point out that the schemes devised for poor countries focus on planning at the national or even supra-national scale, a practice that was long ago abandoned in favor of local and regional planning in the industrialized countries who make the rules for development. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Aesthetics and environment; variations on a theme.
Berleant (philosophy emeritus, Long Island U.) continues exploring a theory of aesthetics in which creation, appreciation, performance and object are the main, and interrelated elements. In this set of essays on environmental and social aesthetics he explores specific natural and built (cultural) environments and cases, testing and expanding his theory, and realizing the significance of the human presence and human relationships on both. He describes aesthetic dimensions in environmental design and the coastal environment, the wilderness city, and in virtual space, and within culture, the social evaluation of art and subsidization as social policy, the ethics of art, and ideas about social aesthetics. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Aesthetics and rock art.
In speaking of rock art aesthetics, editors Heyd (philosophy, U. of Victoria, Canada) and Clegg (School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, U. of Sydney, Australia) mean "the study, in a general way, of attentiveness to marks on rock when those marks become of interest for and in themselves as objects of perception" and, more concretely, the study of the diverse aspects, ways of seeing, forms of analysis, and areas of cultural knowledge that are relevant to the appreciation of rock art. They present 17 papers exploring this topic, first exploring whether aesthetics can and should have a place in encounters in rock art before considering factor that constitute the aesthetic values found in rock art (ranging from the material and physical trace on rock to the makers of the rock are and the reception of marks or rocks). The essays conclude with case studies of the application of the aesthetic perspective to rock art found in Scandinavia, Mesoamerica, Indonesia, and South Africa. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Baroque self-invention and historical truth; Hercules at the crossroads.
Building on Heidegger's comment that "Art is truth setting itself to work," Braider (French and comparative literature, U. of Colorado) examines the argument between history and truth in the high culture of the European baroque, and how that argument reflected changes in perception of the self. Topics of his five extended essays include the culture's compulsion for visual bedazzlement and its translation into gendered images that perpetuate violence against women; the increasingly personal interpretation of Pauline ontology in both the southern Catholic Caravaggio and the northern Protestant Rembrandt; the tension of indecision in Caracci's depiction of Hercules; and the creation and destruction of imaginary selves in the examples set by Descartes, Pascal, and Cyrano. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Between union and liberation; women artists in South Africa 1910-1994.
These essays investigate art made by South African women between 1910, the year of the Union, and 1994, the year of the first democratic election. The contributors explore gender theory in relation to 20th-century visual culture and discuss economic conditions and regional geographies as well as notions of identity. They also examine the influence of educational and cultural institutions on art practice, debates about material culture, the power of nationalist ideologies, and the role of feminist theories in a changing country. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Butler matters; Judith Butler's impact on feminist and queer studies.
American, European, and Australian scholars in a wide range of humanities and social sciences explain how Butler's work has influenced thinking about gender and sexuality since her groundbreaking Gender Trouble (1990). After introductions and an interview with her, they cover language, melancholia, and subjectivity; archaeology, literature, and pedagogy; and agency, post-structuralism, and pragmatism. Among the specific topics are the images of theory, the archaeology of gender, Gender Trouble in the literature classroom, and the political pragmatism of poststructuralism. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Byron, Sully, and the power of portraiture.
Through his consideration of the significance for Federal America of the only portrait of Byron painted by a major artist, Clubbe examines British and American portraiture of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In particular, Clubbe looks at Thomas Lawrence and Sully, his American counterpart. After describing Byron's importance to early America and Sully's career and influences, Clubbe concludes that Sully's portrait of Byron is a worthy interpretation of that celebrated and controversial figure. Clubbe is joint president of the International Byron Society. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The church of Santa Maria Donna Regina; art, iconography, and patronage in fourteenth-century Naples.
Historians of architecture, of late medieval Italy, and those interested in the patronage of women will find much of value in this collection of nine essays on the church, built originally for Clarissan nuns. The essays describe aspects of the architecture, its context within the city of Naples, its 20th-century restoration, and the patronage of Maria of Hungary. Four essays concern the church's frescoes, including the Passion cycle, Golden Legend, Last Judgement, and life of Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia-Hungary. The volume is well illustrated with b&w and a series of color plates. The contributors are art historians and archaeologists in the US, Canada, Japan, Italy, and the UK. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Cities of culture; staging international festivals and the urban agenda, 1851-2000.
What would make a city go mad and stage an international sporting or cultural event? Is it the joy of feeding locust-like hordes of tourists? Is it the gaiety of herding vans bristling with surly broadcasting engineers? Is it just the filthy lucre? Not so, state Gold (urban geography, Oxford Brookes U.) and Gold (arts management, London Metropolitan U.) International festivals figure materially as well as symbolically in ritual, religion, and national identity, and have a long and noble history from classical times. The authors closely examine events of the past 150 years, including the Great Exhibition of 1851, the New York World's Fair of 1939, Expo 67, various Summer Olympics and the new European Cities of Culture program. They find varying intentions and outcomes, be they cultural or financial, but a consistency in seeking to become the envy of the planet, if only for a short time. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
City status in the British Isles, 1830-2002.
In the US a city is an incorporated entity. In the UK, a city could be a place with a certain population, but that is not entirely true because some cities do not meet that criteria, or the site of a cathedral, but that was over with since 1888, or a geographic location thought to have the position of a city by its environs, but not really. It appears that the best way to become a city in the nineteenth century was to stand above the mill towns and working- class enclaves springing up, and in the twentieth it all had to do with promotion. Beckett (English regional history, U. of Nottingham) sorts out all the reasons why towns became cities under widely different criteria at various times, and explains that in any case, attitude seemed to count most of all. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Conflicting visions; war and visual culture in Britain and France, c. 1700-1830.
Looking at paintings and prints, maps and topographical drawings, commemorative sculpture, and historical artifacts, the nine papers presented here by Bonehill (history of art, U. of Leicester, UK) and Quilley (Curator of Maritime Art, National Maritime Museum, UK) explore the relation of visual culture and aesthetics in Britain and France during the "long" 18th Century to military conflict. Topics include the monument to General Wolfe in Westminster Abbey as a legitimization of the British Empire, representations of the British West Indian colonies during the American Revolutionary War as mobilizers of public opinion, festival celebrations commemorating French military heroes as attempts to legitimate the early Napoleonic regime, and the construction of meaning in the display of battlefield artifacts from Waterloo. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Critical voices; women and art criticism in Britain 1880-1905.
Clarke (art history, U. of Sussex, UK) focuses on the work of Alice Maynell, Florence Fenwick-Miller and Elizabeth Robins Pennell to demonstrate the significant contribution British women made to the art world at the turn of the 20th century. She addresses the themes shared by the three women: an interest in debates concerning the Royal Academy and modernity and in attitudes toward women artists. Clarke draws on diverse sources, including diaries, letters and periodicals, to argue that understanding the role of women in the construction of art history is essential to understanding contemporary debates about art. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Cuban-American art in Miami; exile, identity and the neo-Baroque.
Bosch (art history, State U. of New York, Geneseo) has assembled a thoughtful and much-needed survey of the Cuban-American art movement fluorishing in Miami. In six chapters, Bosch describes the early history of Cuban immigration to Miami and the establishment of an art scene there. She then surveys the lives and work of more than 20 artists, paying particular attention to the influences on their art. Among the artists included are Baruj Salinas, Osvaldo Gutiérrez, Rafael Soriano, María Brito, Pablo Cano, and Paul Sierra. An introductory chapter describes the exhibition history of Cuban- American art. Lund Humphries is part of Ashgate Publishing. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Culture and class in English public museums, 1850-1914.
Examining the birth and development of publicly funded municipal museums In England during the period, Hill (history, U. of Lincoln) asks why so many hopes and fears were pinned on them, how they acted on society, and how society acted on them. She argues that they were local institutions with local priorities, and need to be seen as part of the machinery for contesting and negotiating class, status, and interest claims in Victorian towns. Among her perspectives are negotiating the new urban environment, the social characteristics of the museums, reading the objects, decoding the displays and layout, and museum visitors. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Cyprus and the devotional arts of Byzantium in the era of the Crusades.
The eleven articles of this collection, previously published between 1982-1995, are reproduced in their original format, with the original notes and pagination. The articles reflect Carr's (art history, Southern Methodist U., Dallas, Texas) interest in the icons, illuminated manuscripts, wall painting, and other arts produced in the monasteries, churches, and courts of medieval Cyprus, which experienced rule under Byzantium, western Crusaders, and Italy. Among the topics are the links between Byzantine and Armenian art, Comnenian gospel frontispieces, 12th-century Byzantine illuminated music manuscripts, and two manuscripts at the Monastery of Saint Neophytos. Each article includes b&w plates. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
De re metallica; the uses of metal in the Middle Ages.
The metalworking traditions of the Middle Ages are important both for their intrinsic interest and as links between their ancient antecedents and their modern sequels, say European and American historians of art, architecture, and technology. They provide a sampling of current scholarship on metal for secular display, metal reliquaries and liturgical objects, metals for everyday use in war and peace, metal in medieval architecture, and late medieval writings on metal production. Among the specific topics are the production of ornamental metalwork in ninth-century Northumbria, the princess-abbesses of Essen and The Golden Virgin, the metallurgy of medieval arrowheads, a jigsaw puzzle in Salisbury Cathedral's spire, and the 1548 mining law for the Schlackenwalden tin mines in Bohemia. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Dealing with the visual; art history, aesthetics, and visual culture.
Van Eck (architectural history, Universities of Ghent & Groningen, UK) & Winters (painting & drawing, West Dean College, Sussex, UK) introduce this volume by discussing traditional ways of considering art, such as defining art as a record of what the artist saw, or later, defining art as merely a depiction of shapes, colors, and patterns. Next presented is the concept of vision not being a physical function, but rather a social construct (visuality) that can be read in the same way that we read text. The rest of the book consists of 12 articles by van Eck & Winters and other scholars, investigating different constructs of visuality in both art and architecture. The book includes black & white drawings, photographs, and reproductions of paintings & engravings. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Elizabethan triumphal processions.
Elizabethan processions have long been regarded as triumphant events demonstrating the mutual love of Queen and common people. Leahy (English, Brunel U., London) takes a fresh look at these processions, and reveals the mixture of responses from the commoners, as well as the complexity of royal motives. The book includes extensive reviews of previous scholarship on the subject, and concludes with a reinterpretation of the only known painting of Elizabeth I on procession. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Excavating the medieval image; manuscripts, artists, audiences; essays in honor of Sandra Hindman.
The 14 essays of this volume were solicited in honor of the retirement of Hindman, an art historian, from Northwestern U. in Chicago. The essays consider various medieval manuscripts, with a focus on the relationship of text and image and the contexts of the manuscript as a book. Among the manuscripts and illuminators considered are Villard de Honnecourt, Matthew Paris, the Breviary of Anne de Prye, Eleanor of Toledos' Book of Hours, and the Sarajevo Haggadah. Areford (U. of Massachusetts, Boston), Rowe (Fordham U., New York), and other former graduate students of Hindman are joined by more well known figures in manuscript studies, including J.J.G. Alexander, Roger Wieck, and Rowan Watson. The essays are illustrated with b&w plates. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
