A sense of stillness and silence pervades Manet's works, whose flattened, sometimes fragmented figures appear to exist absentmindedly in a world entirely lacking speech. It is this silence that James Rubin explores in a essay that shows Manet as we see him - naturally, in pictures that articulate their own purely visual terms. Manet's figural works, whether the early bohemian subjects or the elusive portraits and modern-life themes of the later 1860s and 1870s, depend on visual exchanges and confrontations, or patterns of gazes, not on narrative. The "aesthetics of silence" to be found in these works is poetically embodied in the displays of evocative flower-studies and other still-lifes that Manet worked at throughout his career. Incorporating insights into Manet's achievement, and into certain writings of three literary associates - Baudelaire, Zola and Stephane Mallarme - the book sets out to explain why Manet's paintings continue to fascinate and elude us more than a century after his death.

Manets Silence and the Poetics of Bouquets

Rubin, James Henry

Arts & Photography

Reaktion Books Ltd.

Christ's Crucifixion is one of the most recognized images in Western culture, and it has come to stand as a universal symbol of both suffering and salvation. But often overlooked is the fact that ultimately the Crucifixion is a scene of capital punishment. Mitchell Merback reconstructs the religious, legal, and historical context of the Crucifixion and of other images of public torture. The result is a fascinating account of a time when criminal justice and religion were entirely interrelated and punishment was a visual spectacle devoured by a popular audience.Merback compares the images of Christ's Crucifixion with those of the two thieves who met their fate beside Jesus. In paintings by well-known Northern European masters and provincial painters alike, Merback finds the two thieves subjected to incredible cruelty, cruelty that artists could not depict in their scenes of Christ's Crucifixion because of theological requirements. Through these representations Merback explores the ways audiences in early modern Europe understood images of physical suffering and execution. The frequently shocking works also provide a perspective from which Merback examines the live spectacle of public torture and execution and how audiences were encouraged by the Church and the State to react to the experience. Throughout, Merback traces the intricate and extraordinary connections among religious art, devotional practice, bodily pain, punishment, and judicial spectatorship.Keenly aware of the difficulties involved in discussing images of atrocious violence but determined to make them historically comprehensible, Merback has written an informed and provocative study that reveals the rituals of medieval criminal justice and the visual experiences they engendered.

The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe by Mitchell B. Merback (1999-07-01)

Merback, Mitchell B.

History & Criticism

Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800

In the early twenty-first century animals are news. Parliamentary debates, protests against fox hunting and television programmes like Animal Hospital all focus on the way in which we treat animals and on what that says about our own humanity. As vegetarianism becomes ever more popular, and animal experimentation more controversial, it is time to trace the background to contemporary debates and to situate them in a broader historical context. Hilda Kean looks at the cultural and social role of animals from 1800 to the present at the way in which visual images and myths captured the popular imagination and encouraged sympathy for animals and outrage at their exploitation. From early campaigns against the beating of cattle and ill-treatment of horses to concern for dogs in war and cats in laboratories, she explores the relationship between popular images and public debate and action. She also illustrates how interest in animal rights and welfare was closely aligned with campaigns for political and social reform by feminists, radicals and socialists.

Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain Since 1800

Politics & Social Sciences

Hilda Kean

Philosophy

Global Interests: Renaissance Art Between East and West (Picturing History)

In this groundbreaking, highly provocative examination of the Renaissance, Jerry Brotton and Lisa Jardine raise questions about the formation of cultural identity in Western Europe. Through an analysis of the circulation of art and luxury objects, the authors challenge the view that Renaissance culture defined itself in large part against an exotic, dangerous, always marginal East. Featuring more than seventy illustrations, including many in color and some published for the first time, their book provides fascinating insights into the works of Pisanello, Leonardo, Dürer, Holbein, and Titian. Global Interests explores the trade in portrait medals, tapestries, and equestrian art, all items that Brotton and Jardine demonstrate were markers of power and influence in both the West and the East. The authors reveal that this trade represented a remarkably equal exchange between Renaissance Europe and the Ottoman East. Their findings lead them to argue that the East, and in particular the Ottoman Empire of Mehmet the Conqueror and Suleiman the Magnificent, was not the antithetical "other" to the emergence of a Western European identity in the sixteenth century. Instead, Paris, Venice, and London were linked with Istanbul and the East through networks of shared political and commercial interests. By showing that the traditional view of Renaissance culture is misleading, the authors offer a more truly global understanding of historical experience.

Jerry Brotton

Lisa Jardine

Anthropology

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