What was history painting and what is it now? / edited by Mark Salber Phillips and Jordan Bear.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Phillips, Mark, 1946- editor.

Bear, Jordan, editor.

Series:

McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation studies in art history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

History painting.

Physical Description:

viii, 311 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019.

Summary:

"The dominant visual language of European painting from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, history paintings were formidable in their monumental scale, ambitious moral lessons, and intricate narratives. With the rise of modernist avant-gardes, the genre receded from the forefront of artistic production into the realm of nostalgia. Yet history painting cast a shadow that would subtly colour even the works that sought to displace it. Exploring the resilience of this distinctive mode of visual representation, What Was History Painting and What Is It Now? brings together an internationally distinguished group of scholars to trace the endurance, adaptation, and mutation of history painting. These studies offer a reexamination of the fortunes of the genre from North America to Europe and Africa. Organized around illuminating themes, the book explores the creation of an audience attuned to the genre's didactic aims, the entry of history painting into the marketplace of commercial art and attractions, and the reimagination of the mode in response to the edicts of modern and contemporary art. Spanning the full range and diversity of history painting, this collection is a broad reconsideration of the tradition and the vibrant ways in which it resonates through the art of the present."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: what was history painting and what is it now? / Mark Salber Phillips. Part 1 Human figures and human viewers : Introduction / Jordan Bear

Figuring history and the end of the Renaissance: notes on Agnolo Bronzino's "Martyrdom of San Lorenzo" / Stuart Lingo

A Rococo aesthetic: history painting and the self's embodiment / Susanna Caviglia

History painting redistanced: from Benjamin West to David Wilkie / Mark Salber Phillips. Part 2 History painting in the marketplace : Introduction / Jordan Bear

James Gillray's "The Death of the Great Wolf" and the satiric alternative to history painting / Cynthia Ellen Roman

Historical distance and historic doubts: representing Napoleon in exile / Jordan Bear

Landscape and the problem of history: Thomas Cole and Anglo-Atlantic modernity / Tim Barringer. Part 3 History painting after modernism : Introduction / Jordan Bear

Myth, melancholy, and history: figural dialectics and José Clemente Orozco's "Epic of American Civilization" / Mary K. Coffey

History painting after conceptual art / James Nisbet

What is the history in contemporary history painting? / Dexter Dalwood

Unwritten history: William Kentridge's "Triumphs and Laments," Piazza Tevere, Rome, 2016 / Michael Godby

Reimagining global modernity in the age of neo-liberal patronage: the history paintings of Julie Mehretu / Elizabeth Harney

"Earth Death Pictures" as contemporary history painting / Mark A. Cheetham. Bibliography

Contributors

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: What was history painting and what is it now?

ISBN:

9780773558953

0773558950

9780773558960

0773558969

OCLC:

1096467436