£75.99
£75.99
A corrosive energy gnaws at Western culture. This book looks to 2500 years of history, showing the power of beauty to shape and enrich our civilization. It asks if today's crises are rooted in the repression of beauty, and dares to suggest that "Beauty can save the world."
In Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, Umberto Eco asserts that Boethius (480-525 AD), experiencing the collapse of Roman civilization, was living in “an age of profound crisis, an age occupied with the destruction of seemingly irreplaceable values.” In the last 120 years there has been a growing negative and corrosive energy gnawing at Western culture, a nihilism and darkness visible in the sculpture, painting, and literature, and, increasingly, in the culture at large.
This book argues that a look at the previous 2500 years (from the Ancients, to the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Romantics, Victorians) shows the power and significance beauty has had in shaping, enriching, and growing the best in what we call Western culture. In this regard the author takes James Hillman’s (1998) question to heart: “Could the causes of major social, political, and economic issues of our time also be found in the repression of beauty?” One answer comes from Dostoevsky’s character in The Idiot, who claims that “Beauty can save the world.”
This pioneering book introduces the “feminine,” a dimension of film not reducible to women’s experience. Exploring this Jungian concept through movies spanning seven decades, it enhances the appreciation of film as a depth psychological medium.
This is the first monograph dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci’s commission for The Virgin of the Rocks, which he painted twice. It opens up Leonardo’s world and unveils the secret realms of human dissection and philosophy that inspired the creation of the painter’s two masterpieces
This wide-ranging collection breaks new ground in feminist film theory, offering close analyses of films from Hitchcock to 21st-century horror. Praised as a “splendid contribution,” it lends readers ‘new eyes’. “Should be required reading for students and scholars.”
Why did we evolve a sense of beauty? This book answers from the perspective of scientists with deep knowledge of the arts, weaving together experimental science with art, music, and more. They show how all our senses are similar under the hood in shaping our aesthetic experience.
This conference proceedings brings together researchers, artists, art historians, and activists to collaboratively map the uncharted territories of new forms of botanical knowledge, and to capitalize on contemporary art’s ability to productively unhinge scientific theories.
This publication focuses on the various vectors of visual communication, particularly contemporary brands as social phenomena, culture and the way people communicate and create meanings, from a designer’s perspective.
Millais exposes the myths that surround Le Corbusier, detailing the endless failures of his proposals and his projects and arguing that his influence on architecture was disastrous, as traditional buildings were destroyed and replaced by featureless boxes of varying sizes.
Redwood undertakes a close formal analysis of Tarkovsky’s later films. Charting the stylistic and narrative innovations in Mirror, Stalker, Nostalghia and The Sacrifice, he succeeds in shedding new light on these celebrated, but often misunderstood, masterpieces.
This collection of essays explores the enduring afterlife of medieval art and architecture. It examines how medieval works were preserved, restored, and appropriated from the 16th to 20th centuries to shape modern political, religious, and cultural practices.
This accessible collection offers a fresh approach to photography and literature. Essays by acknowledged experts consider both key literary figures, from Proust to Sebald, and photographic practitioners to give a commanding, ground-breaking overview of the subject.
For writers like Thoreau, Jeffers, and Snyder, the writing project is inseparable from the living project. This book examines how their houses shaped their work, asking a larger question: How shall we live the best lives we can, every day?
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