Behind the Angel of History: The "Angelus Novus" and Its Interleaf - Hardcover

Bourneuf, Annie

 
9780226816708: Behind the Angel of History: The "Angelus Novus" and Its Interleaf
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0226816702 ISBN 13: 9780226816708
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2022

Synopsis

The story of artist R. H. Quaytman’s discovery of an engraving hidden behind a famous artwork by Paul Klee.
 
This book begins with artist R. H. Quaytman uncovering something startling about a picture by Paul Klee. Pasted beneath Klee’s 1920 Angelus Novus―famous for its role in the writings of its first owner, Walter Benjamin―Quaytman found that Klee had interleaved a nineteenth-century engraving of Martin Luther, leaving just enough visible to provoke questions.
 
Behind the Angel of History reveals why this hidden face matters, delving into the intertwined artistic, political, and theological issues consuming Germany in the wake of the Great War. With the Angelus Novus, Klee responded to a growing call for a new religious art. For Benjamin, Klee’s Angelus became bound up with the prospect of meaningful dialogue among religions in Germany.
 
Reflecting on Klee’s, Benjamin’s, and Quaytman’s strategies of superimposing conflicting images, Annie Bourneuf reveals new dimensions of complexity in this iconic work and the writing it inspired.

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About the Author

Annie Bourneuf is professor of art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of Paul Klee: The Visible and the Legible, which was also published by the University of Chicago Press and won the 2016 Robert Motherwell Book Award.

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Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Publication date
2022
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0226816702
ISBN 13 
9780226816708
Binding
Hardcover
Edition number
1
Number of pages
176