This book deals with the early intellectual reception of the cinema and the manner in which art theorists, philosophers, cultural theorists, and especially artists of the first decades of the twentieth century responded to its advent. While the idea persists that early writers on film were troubled by the cinema’s lowly form, this work proposes that there was another, largely unrecognized, strain in the reception of it. Far from anxious about film’s provenance in popular entertainment, som...

Cubism and futurism were related movements that vied with each other in the economy of renown. Perception, dynamism, and the dynamism of perception—these issues passed back and forth between the two. Cubism and Futurism shows how movement became, in the traditional visual arts, a central factor with the advent of the cinema: gone were the days when an artwork strived merely to lift experience out the realm of change and flow.The cinema at this time was understood as an ele...

What do images of the body, which recent poets and filmmakers have given us, tell us about ourselves, about the way we think and about the culture in which we live?In his new book A Body of Vision, R. Bruce Elder situates contemporary poetic and cinematic body images in their cultural context.Elder examines how recent artists have tried to recognize and to convey primordial forms of experiences. He proposes the daring thesis that in their efforts to do so,...

Paul Gauguin was first a sailor, then a successful stockbroker in Paris. In 1874 he began to paint at weekends as a Sunday painter. Nine years later, after a stock-market crash, he felt confident of his ability to earn a living for his family by painting and he resigned his position and took up the painter’s brush full time. Following the lead of Cézanne, Gauguin painted still-lifes from the very beginning of his artistic career. He even owned a still-life by Cézanne, which is shown in Gau...

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian painter credited as being among the first to truly venture into abstract art. He persisted in expressing his internal world of abstraction despite negative criticism from his peers. He veered away from painting that could be viewed as representational in order to express his emotions, leading to his unique use of colour and form. Although his works received heavy censure at the time, in later years they would become greatly influential.

Rembrandt is completely mysterious in his spirit, his character, his life, his work and his method of painting. What we can divine of his essential nature comes through his painting and the trivial or tragic incidents of his unfortunate life; his penchant for ostentatious living forced him to declare bankruptcy. His misfortunes are not entirely explicable, and his oeuvre reflects disturbing notions and contradictory impulses emerging from the depths of his being, like the light and shade o...

Michelangelo is considered by many art experts to be the greatest Renaissance artist, surpassing even Leonardo da Vinci. Not only was he an exceptional sculptor but also a formidable painter, architect, and poet. Michelangelo’s primary material was marble and the results of his talent and work speak for themselves: Can anything compare to his statue of David or the Pietà he carved at the age of 24? Michelangelo lived to be 88 years old, and he worked until the very end of his life. His las...

Francesco Lazzaro Guardi (1712 – 1793) was a Venetian painter of veduta (a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting or, actually more often print, of a cityscape or some other vista), a member of the Venetian School. His early vedutas show influence both from Canaletto and Luca Carlevarijs. Francesco Guardi's most important later works include the Doge's Feasts, a series of twelve canvases celebrating the ceremonies held in 1763 for the election of Doge Alvise IV Mocenigo. In his late...

This sensitive and compelling biography sheds new light on John Singer Sargent’s art through an intimate history of his family. Karen Corsano and Daniel Williman focus especially on his niece and muse, Rose-Marie Ormond, telling her story for the first time. In a score of paintings created between 1906 and 1912, John Singer Sargent documented the idyllic teenage summers of Rose-Marie and his own deepening affection for her serene beauty and good-hearted, candid charm. Rose-Marie married Ro...

Cinema has been undergoing a profound technological shift: celluloid film is being replaced by digital media in the production, distribution, and reception of moving images. Concerned with the debate surrounding digital cinema’s ontology and the interrelationship between cinema cultures, From Light to Byte investigates the very idea of change as it is expressed in the current technological transition. Markos Hadjioannou asks what is different in the way digital movies depict the w...

From the time he set up his first studio at the tender age of sixteen, Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) was a legend in the art world. Rubens, whom he studied with as a child, said that he was his most talented pupil, and he went on to spectacularly fulfill this promise with a career as a celebrated court painter in England and Spain. Historians, scholars, and art lovers alike continue to recognize the sophistication and timeless beauty of his works. In this fascinating compendium of Van D...

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian painter credited as being among the first to truly venture into abstract art. He persisted in expressing his internal world of abstraction despite negative criticism from his peers. He veered away from painting that could be viewed as representational in order to express his emotions, leading to his unique use of colour and form. Although his works received heavy censure at the time, in later years they would become greatly influential.