The Secret Lives of Artworks: Exploring the Boundaries between Art and Life - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9087281390 ISBN 13: 9789087281397

Publisher: Leiden University Press, 2013

Synopsis

The Secret Lives of Artworks is a collection of essays on the phenomenon that viewers treat works of art as living beings: they attribute life, personhood and agency to them, kiss them, beat them, or claim that portraits look at viewers, and that statues move, breathe and speak. This volume engages in existent theories of these phenomena in art history, psychology, aesthetics and anthropology developed by the members of the Leiden 'Art, Agency and Living Presence' group. The Secret Lives of Art Works identifies new areas of research and presents the theoretical and historical account exploring the boundaries between 'Art and Life'.

About this title

Review

"This book offers a very interesting collection of essays on a very interesting topic. The collection as a whole is coherent, the individual essays are all convincing, the general approach and even tone and style of writing is quite harmonious. Remarkably so for a book that grows out of a conference."--Bart Verschaffel, Ghent University

This book offers a very interesting collection of essays on a very interesting topic. The collection as a whole is coherent, the individual essays are all convincing, the general approach and even tone and style of writing is quite harmonious. Remarkably so for a book that grows out of a conference. --Bart Verschaffel, Ghent University"

From the Back Cover

Over the centuries viewers have attributed life, personhood and agency works of art; they kiss them, beat them, or claim that portraits look at viewers, and that statues move, breathe and speak. In the past decades such attributions of life to images have become a central topic in art history, anthropology and psychology. The Secret Lives of Art Works is the first collection of essays to present case studies from the visual arts, architecture, sculpture and numismatics, and to engage critically with theoretical perspectives from art history, psychology, aesthetics and anthropology. It thus not only offers a state of the art overview of approaches to this wide spread phenomenon, but also identifies new avenues of inquiry. Caroline van Eck is professor of the History and Theory of Art and Architecture to 1800 at Leiden University. Joris van Gastel is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Warwick, and a visiting fellow at Hamburg University. Elsje van Kessel is lecturer in Art History at the University of St. Andrew's, Scotland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Leiden University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 9087281390
• ISBN 13: 9789087281397
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 411
• Editor: Eck Caroline Van, Kessel Elsje Van, Gastel Joris Van