Pictures of the Body
Subtitle: Pain and Metamorphosis
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: December 7, 1999
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780804730235
Subjects: Anthropology; Iconography, subjects depicted in art; Metamorphosis in art; Philosophy Of Art; Special Subjects In Art; Art & Art Instruction; Subjects & Themes - General; Art; Philosophy; History - General; Art / History / General; Criticism; Fine Arts; Human figure in art
First sentence: A diffuse pain exists somewhere inside the body.
Description: "In a wide-ranging argument moving from Sumerian demons to Lucian Freud, from Syriac prayer books to John Carpenter's film The Thing, this book explores the ways the body has been represented through time. A response to the vertiginous increase in writings on bodily representations, it attempts to form a single coherent account of the possible forms of representation of the body."--BOOK JACKET.

"This work brings together concerns, images, and concepts from a wide range of perspectives: art history and criticism, the history and philosophy of medicine, the history of race, phenomenological and post-phenomenological thought, studies of feminism and pornography, and the new interest in visual studies. Yet it is less a philosopher's look at history or a historian's foray into philosophy than a practical and critical look at the current constellation of art practices.

Above all, it is intended to be of immediate use in the conceptualization and production of visual art and its history."--BOOK JACKET.