Believing is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art - Softcover

Staniszewski, Mary Anne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140168249 ISBN 13: 9780140168242

Publisher: Penguin, 1995

Synopsis

This is a look at the principles of art history. Working from the thesis that modernity is the culture that invented what art is, the author by means of the pictorial essay offers a cultural critique of the contemporary circumstances that have influenced our notions of what art actually is, how we attempt to value it, how we have come to make a business of it. Like film, photography and other forms of mass culture, the author studies how popular taste influences the aesthetic criteria that determine its worth.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Why are the paleolithic Venus of Willendorf, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes, and Marcel Duchamp's ready-made urinal all considered works of art? Why, strictly speaking, is a Cindy Sherman photograph more "art-like" than a Da Vinci portrait? How did the painters and sculptors of the Renaissance see their creations? And who decides what art is today? In the tradition of Marshall McLuhan and John Berger, this learned and deliciously subversive book gives us a new way of seeing our artistic heritage. Believing Is Seeing is a work of multicultural scope and glittering intelligence that bridges the gulf between classical Japanese painting and the films of Spike Lee, between high theory and pop culture. Probing beyond the rhetorical surface of standard art histories and drawing on a panoramic array of illustrative material, Mary Anne Staniszewski throws a fresh light on individual works and the often mystifying criteria by which they are valued.

About the Author:

Mary Anne Staniszewski studies culture and art in relation to political and social notions. Her books are Believing Is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art and The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art .Staniszewski organized a symposium on contemporary slavery at Exit Art in New York. Staniszewski holds a PhD in Art History from the Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York, and is a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0140168249
• ISBN 13: 9780140168242
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320