Art and Alchemy - Softcover

Wamberg, Jacob

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8763502674 ISBN 13: 9788763502672

Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006

Synopsis

Partly because of alchemy's dismissal from the Parnassus of rational sciences, the interplay between this esoteric knowledge and the visual arts is still a surprisingly neglected research area. This collection of articles covering the time span from the late middle ages to the 20th century intends, however, to challenge the current neglect. Areas on which its 12 authors cast new light include alchemical gender symbolism in Renaissance, Mannerist and modernist art, alchemical ideas of transformation in Italian 15th century landscape imagery, Dutch 17th century portrayals of alchemists, and alchemy's tortured status as a forerunner of photography. Art and Alchemy indicates that alchemy has several connections with art by examining some of the pictorial and literary books that disseminated alchemical symbols and ideas, delving into images, which in one way or another can be shown to appropriater and interpret alchemical ideas or environments, and expanding the scope of alchemical imagery by indicating structural affinities between alchemical processes and artistic creation. It is the editor's hope that this broad examination will contribute to showing without a doubt that the cosmological ideas of late medieval and early modern cultures overlap with alchemy in important areas, and that alchemy therefore does not need to be such an esoteric source for art as is often thought. Furthermore, through a couple of case studies from the period in which alchemy was declared epistemologically obsolete a scientific paradigm - the 19 and 20th centuries - it is hinted that alchemy continues its life in other guises.

About this title

Review:

"These essays emerged from a 2001 conference at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. As organisers Jan Backlund and Jacob Wamberg explain in their introduction, the collection redresses 'the current skepticism towards alchemy as a possible source for art' (9). The ten essays that follow, however, range far beyond that art historical agenda by exploring the fascinating intersections between alchemy and art from the late Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Despite the inherent challenges of interdisciplinarity, the well-illustrated volume makes clear that historians of alchemy and historians of art stand to benefit enormously from this kind of fruitful collaboration." - Tara E. Nummedal, Ambix, Vol. 55, No. 1, 2008

About the Author:

Jacob Wamberg is professor of art history at Aarhus University, Denmark.

About this edition

• Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 8763502674
• ISBN 13: 9788763502672
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 297