The Art of Small Things - Softcover

John Mack

3.5

10 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0714150460 ISBN 13: 9780714150468

Publisher: British Museum Press, 2007

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218 pages with 200 colour illustrations

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

This lavishly illustrated compendium of miniature art explores our fascination with "the outer limits of visual perception and technical precision." Mack delves into the materials and technologies involved in the production of tiny artifacts, and the daunting skills required. (The contemporary micro-miniaturist Willard Wigan, who mounts sculptures in the eye of a needle, moves his diamond-tipped tools only in the middle of a heartbeat.) The book brims with captivating detail: intricately carved Japanese netsuke, used to suspend small belongings from the belt of a kimono, were also made to feel pleasant in the hand; Elizabethan mini-portraits worn as jewelry afforded the "private pleasure" of ownership. But, Mack concludes, miniatures are finally so desirable because they resist total possession: "We are forever denied ultimate access to their interiority and the secrets they may contain."

Mack draws from many cultures to meditate on the aesthetic and cultural values seemingly embodied in small works of art. His examples range from Aztec to Indian, English to Greek and cover many media. Beginning with a comparison of small works of art with the colossal, Mack discusses miniature portraits, maps, sculptures (usually of the human figure), talismans and fetishes, and the private nature of small pieces...The illustrations, frequently with details, are good; some are larger than life, providing a sense of the wonder such tiny things can evoke.--Jack Perry Brown"Library Journal" (03/01/2008)

For most, miniature art tends only to conjure up a culture's lonely eccentricities--toy trains, dusty runes, weekend hobbyists tweezing ships into bottles. But John Mack's absorbing new book, "The Art of Small Things", argues persuasively that the miniature is society writ small: Squint hard at the world's knickknackery and find the cultures that produced it...For those determined to browse, nearly every page boasts gorgeous color plates, many of which are by necessity larger than the objects being photographed. But more than a catalog of tiny curiosities, "The Art of Small Things" is a study of how we relate to objects of all sizes, and of how the miniature strangely enables experiences of the vast or ephemeral....The pleasure of this encyclopedic book lies in the resonances Mr. Mack finds between his many historical anecdotes. Mr. Mack's roving, capacious sections are not organized within an academic thesis so much as they are arranged like a bouquet of flowers, in evocative rather than linear groupings. The book itself enacts a kind of miniaturization by surveying so many artifacts in one volume.--Jeremy Axelrod"New York Sun" (01/09/2008)

Synopsis:

This is an intriguing book exploring the timeless appeal of miniature objects and worlds, and the fascinating implications that lie behind their creation.There is a true fascination with all things miniature and with the skills involved in creating a miniature masterpiece. Miniatures have an intrinsic aesthetic quality: they are objects of allure, or of awe. Who could fail to be beguiled by an exquisite Elizabethan miniature painting, an intricately carved Japanese netsuke, the words of the "Lord's Prayer" written on a minute jewelled clasp, or an eighteenth-century Italian micro-mosaic (a gem-like work of technical virtuosity)?But small things also possess a capacity to act upon the world and evoke responses which far exceed their physical dimensions. They might be imbued, for instance, with talismanic, religious or magical properties.In this thought-provoking book, the author not only celebrates the art of the miniature object, but looks beyond it at the many aspects of 'small worlds'. He explores the concentrated messages that can be conveyed in the miniature form and how this is exploited in different cultural contexts for a variety of purposes.

He also assesses the importance of relative scale and questions how 'miniature' can be defined. How large or small can a miniature be? Is a map a miniaturization of a larger world? What is the point of something that is almost too small to be seen by the human eye? From Gulliver to King Kong, classical art to surrealism, Aristotle to the Yoruba - in this intriguing book can be found the exquisite and the esoteric; the wondrous and the weird.The chapters and themes are as follows: Small is Beautiful: The mathematics of the miniature, materials, the miniaturist, micro mosaics, the microcoscopist, of lice and lace; The Colossal and the Diminutive: The measure of all things, Hercules and the Gods, temples and temple carts, museums as arks, microcosms and models, the gross and the exquisite; Visualising Small Worlds: Artists and boxes, gardens as small worlds, maps and microcosms, pilgrim sites; Seeing Hidden Things: Divining the world, sightedness; Small Bodies:The body as microcosm, shrunken heads, child marriage, constructing childhood, toys and dolls, living dolls; Small as Powerful: Empowered material, magical gems, medicines; and Private Pleasures: Courtly dalliance, the discreet charm of the netsuke, miniatures and proverbs, and the secret and the esoteric.

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