“Style” has been one of the cornerstones not only of the modern discipline of art history but also of social and cultural history. In this volume, the writers consider the inadequacy of the concept of style as essential to a person, people, place, or period. While the subject matter of this book is specific to religious practices and artifacts from New Mexico between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the implications of these investigations are far reaching historically, methodologically, and theoretically.
The essays collected here explore the Catholic instruments of religious devotion produced in New Mexico from around 1760 until the radical transformation of the tradition in the twentieth century. The writers in this volume make three key arguments. First, they make a case for bringing new theoretical perspectives and research strategies to bear on the New Mexican materials and other colonial contexts. Second, they demonstrate that the New Mexican materials provide an excellent case study for rethinking many of the most fundamental questions in art-historical and anthropological study. Third, the authors collectively argue that the New Mexican images had, and still have, importance to diverse audiences and makers. 
The distinctiveness of New Mexican santos consists not only in their subjects (which conformed to Catholic Reformation tastes) but also in elements that may appear to have been “merely decorative”: graphically striking and frequently elaborate abstract design motifs and landscape references. Despite their anonymity, the images are, as a group, readily distinguished from local products anywhere else in the Spanish colonial world. This distinctiveness suggests that we should inquire not so much about the individual identities of their makers as about the collective identity of the society and place that produced and used them.

Transforming Images: New Mexican Santos in-between Worlds

Arts & Photography

Pierce, Donna

Farago, Claire

History & Criticism

Penn State University Press

Compelling Visuality: The Work Of Art In And Out Of History

Explores what we actually see, touch, and experience when looking at art. Typically, art history is an enterprise of recovery--of searching out the provenance, the original intentions, the physical setting, and historical conditions behind a work of art. The essays in Compelling Visuality address some of the "other" questions that are less frequently asked--and, in doing so, show how much is to be learned and gained by going beyond the traditional approaches of art history. In particular, the contributors take up the commonly unexplored question of what is actually present in a work of art--what we see, touch, and experience when confronted with Renaissance or Baroque works that have survived the vicissitudes of time. International and interdisciplinary, this volume conducts readers into an ongoing discussion of the value and significance of personal response to works of art.

Univ. of Minnesota Press

Art Is Not What You Think It Is

Art Is Not What You Think It Is utilizes original research to present a series of critical incursions into the current state of debate on the idea of art, making manifest what has been largely missing or unsaid in those discussions. <ul>
<li>Links museology, history, theory, and criticism to the realities of contemporary social conditions and shows how they have structurally functioned in a variety of contexts</li> <li>Deals with divisive and controversial problems such as blasphemy and idolatry, and the problem of artistic truth</li> <li>Addresses relations between European notions about art and artifice and those developed in other and especially indigenous cultural traditions</li> </ul>

Preziosi, Donald

Wiley/Blackwell

Art Is Not What You Think It Is utilizes original research to present a series of critical incursions into the current state of debate on the idea of art, making manifest what has been largely missing or unsaid in those discussions.   Links museology, history, theory, and criticism to the realities of contemporary social conditions and shows how they have structurally functioned in a variety of contexts Deals with divisive and controversial problems such as blasphemy and idolatry, and the problem of artistic truth Addresses relations between European notions about art and artifice and those developed in other and especially indigenous cultural traditions

Leonardo da Vinci's arguments for the supremacy of painting over the arts of poetry, music, and sculpture address issues that have been relevant to debates over the nature of representation since the time Plato discussed imitation until today, maintains Claire Farago in this wide-ranging critical analysis of the first important modern contribution to the comparison of the arts. This study systematically examines 46 passages compiled in the mid-sixteenth century from eighteen of Leonardo's notebooks and their relationship to the artist's holograph writings on painting, providing a critical transcription newly made from the Codex Vaticanus Urbinas 1270 and a new English translation with extensive notes that take into account Leonardo's scientific terminology, the highly contrived form of his rhetorical argumentation, and the role played by his original editors.

Leonardo Da Vinci's Paragone: A Critical Interpretation With a New Edition of the Text in the Codex Urbinas (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History) (English, Italian and Italian Edition)

Painting

Brill Academic Pub

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Farago, Claire. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Farago, Claire

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Farago, Claire. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Transforming Images: New Mexican Santos in-between Worlds

Compelling Visuality: The Work Of Art In And Out Of History

Compelling Visuality: The Work Of Art In And Out Of History

Art Is Not What You Think It Is

Art Is Not What You Think It Is

Leonardo Da Vinci's Paragone: A Critical Interpretation With a New Edition of the Text in the Codex Urbinas (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History) (English, Italian and Italian Edition)