Bøger af Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann

A fresh, corrective view of 'mad' Habsburg ruler Rudolf II.

The collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe opened the doors to cultural treasures that for decades had been hidden, forgotten, or misinterpreted. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann looks at Central Europe as a cultural entity while chronicling more than three hundred years of painting, sculpture, and architecture in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Ukraine, Lithuania and western parts of the Russian Federation. Kaufmann surveys a remarkable range of art and artifacts created from the coming of the Renaissance through to the Enlightenment. "Kaufmann throws considerable light on one of the more neglected and least understood periods in art history."--Philadelphia Inquirer "A wonderful book which does justice both to a formal analysis of the art and to an explanation of broader political and economic forces at work."--Virginia Quarterly Review "Important and stimulating, Kaufmann's study examines the cultural legacy of a region too little known and understood."--Choice "Peaks of the creative heritage which [Kaufmann] describes reserve their message--and their surprises--for those who visit them in situ. But invest in Kaufmann's volume before you go."--R. J. W. Evans, New York Review of Books

Art history traditionally classifies works of art by country as well as period, but often political borders and cultural boundaries are highly complex and fluid. Questions of identity, policy, and exchange make it difficult to determine the "place" of art, and often the art itself results from these conflicts of geography and culture. Addressing an important approach to art history, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann's book offers essays that focus on the intricacies of accounting for the geographical dimension of art history during the early modern period in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Toward a Geography of Art presents a historical overview of these complexities, debates contemporary concerns, and completes its exploration with a diverse collection of case studies. Employing the author's expertise in a variety of fields, the book delves into critical issues such as transculturation of indigenous traditions, mestizaje, the artistic metropolis, artistic diffusion, transfer, circulation, subversion, and center and periphery. What results is a foundational study that establishes the geography of art as a subject and forces us to reconsider assumptions about the place of art that underlie the longstanding narratives of art history.

Central Europe occupies a prominent place in many realms of eighteenth-century culture. This volume is the catalogue of an exhibition of drawings, organized in 1989 by The Art Museum, Princeton University, which presents some of the little-known accomplishments of artists from the region of present-day East and West Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and parts of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Providing the first available survey of drawings of the period in English, the illustrated introduction to the catalogue considers the works in historical and artistic context. The book includes important drawings by artists such as Cosmas Damian Asam, Egid Quirin Asam, Matthus Gnther, and Adrian Zingg. Published for the first time are unique drawings by such important sculptors as Georg Raphael Donner and Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. The fully illustrated catalogue contains 105 entries, many of which deal with major issues of art of the time and treat the drawings exhibited in relation to works elsewhere. Biographies are presented for all the artists exhibited.

'Toward a Geography of Art' offers essays that examine the intricacies of accounting for the geographical dimension of art history during the early modern period in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

In Giuseppe Arcimboldo's famous paintings, grapes, fish, and even the beaks of birds form human hair. This title offers an overview of Arcimboldo's life and work, exploring the artist's early years in sixteenth-century Lombardy, his grounding in Leonardesque traditions, and his tenure as a Habsburg court portraitist in Vienna and Prague.

A thorough foundation for the fresh recognition of one of the great painters of eighteenth-century Europe, a leading fresco painter who is a colorist worthy of comparison to the best of his contemporaries.