With the rise of naturalism in the art of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance there developed an extensive and diverse literature about art which helped to explain, justify and shape its new aims. In this book, David Summers provides an investigation of the philosophical and psychological notions invoked in this new theory and criticism. From a thorough examination of the sources, he shows how the medieval language of mental discourse derived from an understanding of classical thought.

The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics (Ideas in Context, Series Number 5)

Politics & Social Sciences

Summers, David

Philosophy

Cambridge University Press

With the rise of naturalism in the art of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance there developed an extensive and diverse literature about art which helped to explain, justify and shape its new aims. In this book, David Summers provides an investigation of the philosophical and psychological notions invoked in this new theory and criticism. From a thorough examination of the sources, he shows how the medieval language of mental discourse derived from an understanding of classical thought.

Plasmids are closed, circular pieces of DNA that are able to self-replicate and are carried by many bacteria. They provide unique functions for bacteria by allowing them to sexually replicate and to pass on genetic material between each other. Plasmids are also responsible for the genetic factors that give resistance to antibiotics, and provide the enzymes needed to break down poorly metabolised food resources. The author has provided an updated treatment of the structure, function and application of plasmids suitable for undergraduates and medical students. Employing an original teaching perspective--examining plasmids as living organisms with either a symbiotic or parasitic mode of survival--this text provides an important framework for understanding the structure and function of plasmids in an evolutionary context. 
<ul>
<li>The most up to date text on plasmids</li> <li>An innovative teaching perspective makes for easy student understanding</li> <li>Contains crucial chapters on the importance of plasmids for clinical and biological research</li> </ul>

The Biology of Plasmids

Sociology

Wiley/Blackwell

The description for this book, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, will be forthcoming.

Michelangelo and the Language of Art

Arts & Photography

Princeton University Press

The description for this book, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, will be forthcoming.

Addressing fundamental problems in modern Western approaches to art, this bold, brilliant and important book proposes a new and flexible conceptual frame-work for the analysis and understanding of all art by replacing the notion of the 'visual arts' with that of 
the 'spatial arts', which comprise two fundamental categories: 'real space' and 'virtual space'. Real space 
is the space we share with other people and things, and its fundamental arts are sculpture - the art of personal space - and architecture, the art of social space. Virtual space, representing real space in two dimensions, as in paintings, drawings and prints, always entails a format in real space, thus making real space the primary category. 
Using these distinctions and adopting a wide definition of art that in principle embraces anything 
that is made, the author examines some of the basic characteristics of all art in a survey that traces the development of human skill from the first hominid tools to the sophisticated universal three-dimensional grid of modern technology, which he describes as 
'metaoptical' space. Successive chapters deal with facture, refinement and the discovery of abstract relations; the making of places, boundaries and alignments; the creation of centres and the relations between art, order and political power; the origins of three-dimensional, planar and virtual images; planarity and the development of measures, ratios and grids; virtual images, the development of perspective and the essentially centreless metaoptical world of Western modernism. 
This new conceptual framework enables us to treat all traditions on an equal footing and to understand opposition and conflict both within and between cultures. Formalism and other Western approaches to art are not rejected, but are recognised without universal validity being claimed for them. 
Throughout, the author insists that art can never be separated from the primary spatial conditions of its uses. His long-awaited study will stimulate people to think in new and fruitful ways about the human purposes of art, and also to think more deeply and critically about the relations between art, political order and technology.

Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism

History & Criticism

Phaidon Press

Spanning more than 2,500 years in the history of art, Vision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting demonstrates how the rise and diffusion of the science of optics in ancient Greece and the Mediterranean world correlated to pictorial illusion in the development of Western painting from Hellenistic Greece to the present. Using examples from the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, David Summers argues that scene-painting (architectural backdrops) and shadow-painting (in which forms are modeled or shown as if in relation to a source of light) not only evolved in close association with geometric optics toward the end of the fifth century B.C.E., but also contributed substantially to the foundations of the new science. The spread of understanding of how light is transmitted, reflected, and refracted is evident in the works of artists such as Brunelleschi, van Eyck, Alberti, and Leonardo. The interplay between optics and painting that influenced the course of Western art, Summers says, persisted as a framework for the realism of Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Goya and continues today in modern photography and film.

Vision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting

The University of North Carolina Press

The poisoner and others: Poems

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Hippopotamus Press

Annie, One, Two, Three

Playstage

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

Books by Summers, David

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

The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics (Ideas in Context, Series Number 5)

The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics (Ideas in Context, Series Number 5)

The Biology of Plasmids

Michelangelo and the Language of Art

Michelangelo and the Language of Art

Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism

Vision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting

The poisoner and others: Poems

Annie, One, Two, Three