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Anita Albus
The Art of Arts
Rediscovering Painting
$21.95, £12.95 paperback
978-0-520-22964-8
Available Now
396 pages, 4-3/4 x 8-3/8 inches, 36 color illustrations, 4 black-and-white illustrations, 10 line drawings
October 2001, Available worldwide
Categories: Art; Art History; Art Criticism; Renaissance History
October 2001, Available worldwide
Categories: Art; Art History; Art Criticism; Renaissance History
"The Art of Arts, a reverie about painting and seeing, begins with a description of a mere painting of the world, but by the time you've got to the end of this startlingly beautiful volume, with its two-color Renaissance typeface and exquisite gatefold reproductions, you feel like you've been everywhere and done everything. This is because Albus doesn't just show you things; she teaches you how to see for yourself."—Daniel Mendelsohn, New York
"A work of deep scholarship, passionate argumentation, and exhilarating eccentricity. It is a bravura performance, full of dazzling leaps and unexpected turns. . . . It will enable you to rediscover, or see for the first time, the sensuous vitality that is possible in the life of the mind."—Brigitte Frase, Ruminator Review
"A work of deep scholarship, passionate argumentation, and exhilarating eccentricity. It is a bravura performance, full of dazzling leaps and unexpected turns. . . . It will enable you to rediscover, or see for the first time, the sensuous vitality that is possible in the life of the mind."—Brigitte Frase, Ruminator Review
"I haven't seen such a fascinating work in years. Nobody has ever studied Erwin Panofsky so accurately and sensitively as Anita Albus has here."—Gerda Panofsky
"With Albus's book, we have been given a masterpiece. The author is a versatile genius, and this mighty work is unique in its highly original combination of knowledge of art history and technical experience."—William S. Heckscher, coauthor of Art and Literature: Studies in Relationship
"This book enchants me with its revelations. I do not think anyone has ever succeeded so well in making clear that--contrary to popular belief--painting does not consist of taking three-dimensional objects and representing them in a two-dimensional way, but rather in the transformation of three-dimensional objects into another object which also has three dimensions--namely, the picture itself."—Claude Lévi-Strauss
"With Albus's book, we have been given a masterpiece. The author is a versatile genius, and this mighty work is unique in its highly original combination of knowledge of art history and technical experience."—William S. Heckscher, coauthor of Art and Literature: Studies in Relationship
"This book enchants me with its revelations. I do not think anyone has ever succeeded so well in making clear that--contrary to popular belief--painting does not consist of taking three-dimensional objects and representing them in a two-dimensional way, but rather in the transformation of three-dimensional objects into another object which also has three dimensions--namely, the picture itself."—Claude Lévi-Strauss
In this utterly original book, Anita Albus tells the story--in the birth and triumph of oil painting, the creation of perspective, and the very nature of paint itself--of how, when, and why the eye became king of all the senses.
Albus's subjects are the inventors of easel painting in oils, the van Eyck brothers and their followers. It was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in northern Europe that oil painting radically changed the way we perceived the world: the ear, through which we had previously received all knowledge, was replaced in importance by the eye. A painter of distinction herself, Albus re-creates this revolutionary time in all its intricacies, its familiarity, and its strangeness.
The Art of Arts is thus both a dazzling cultural history and the story of two explosive inventions: the so-called third dimension of deep space through perspective, and the shockingly vivid colors of a new kind of paint. Albus makes abundantly clear how, taken together, these breakthroughs not only created a new art but altered forever our perception of the world.
Albus's subjects are the inventors of easel painting in oils, the van Eyck brothers and their followers. It was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in northern Europe that oil painting radically changed the way we perceived the world: the ear, through which we had previously received all knowledge, was replaced in importance by the eye. A painter of distinction herself, Albus re-creates this revolutionary time in all its intricacies, its familiarity, and its strangeness.
The Art of Arts is thus both a dazzling cultural history and the story of two explosive inventions: the so-called third dimension of deep space through perspective, and the shockingly vivid colors of a new kind of paint. Albus makes abundantly clear how, taken together, these breakthroughs not only created a new art but altered forever our perception of the world.