Synopses & Reviews
Michelangelo was one of the biggest international art stars of his time, but being Michelangelo was no easy thing: he was stalked by fans, lauded and lambasted by critics, and depicted in unauthorized portraits.
Still Lives traces the process by which artists such as Michelangelo, Dürer, and Titian became early modern celebrities.
Artists had been subjects of biographies since antiquity, but Renaissance artists were the first whose faces were sometimes as recognizable as their art. Maria Loh shows how this transformation was aided by the rapid expansion of portraiture and self-portraiture as independent genres in painting and sculpture. She examines the challenges confronting artists in this new image economy: What did it mean to be an image maker haunted by one's own image? How did these changes affect the everyday realities of artists and their workshops? And how did images of artists contribute to the way they envisioned themselves as figures in a history that would outlive them?
Richly illustrated, Still Lives is an original exploration of the invention of the artist portrait and a new form of secular stardom.
Synopsis
How portraits of artists during the Renaissance helped create the first art stars in modern history
Michelangelo was one of the biggest international art stars of his time, but being Michelangelo was no easy thing: he was stalked by fans, lauded and lambasted by critics, and depicted in unauthorized portraits. Still Lives traces the process by which artists such as Michelangelo, D rer, and Titian became early modern celebrities.
Artists had been subjects of biographies since antiquity, but Renaissance artists were the first whose faces were sometimes as recognizable as their art. Maria Loh shows how this transformation was aided by the rapid expansion of portraiture and self-portraiture as independent genres in painting and sculpture. She examines the challenges confronting artists in this new image economy: What did it mean to be an image maker haunted by one's own image? How did these changes affect the everyday realities of artists and their workshops? And how did images of artists contribute to the way they envisioned themselves as figures in a history that would outlive them?
Richly illustrated, Still Lives is an original exploration of the invention of the artist portrait and a new form of secular stardom.
Synopsis
"This ambitious and complex book opens up the study of the Italian Renaissance with renewed theoretical and scholarly vigor. Maria Loh paints a vivid portrait of the messy politics of studio culture and the new pictorial economies resulting from the printing press."
--Todd Olson, University of California, Berkeley"With fresh and original interpretations, Maria Loh deepens our understanding of portraiture by considering the physicality of making and the tense relationship between the body and representation."--Jodi Cranston, Boston University
About the Author
Maria H. Loh teaches art history at University College London. She is the author of Titian Remade: Repetition and the Transformation of Early Modern Italian Art.
Table of Contents
USER'S GUIDE ix
Getting Started ix
Basics xv
Advanced Features xvi
Troubleshooting xix
FAQs xx
Credits xxi
I. THE TREACHERY OF IMAGES 1
Me, Myself, and I 1
Losing Face (Damnatio Memoriae) 19
Face Value 30
Bad Hair Days 41
II. THE ARTIST'S BODY OF WORK 56
Body of Work 56
The Long Good-bye 60
Noli Me Tangere / Ostentatio Vulnerum 73
Not in a Good Place 87
All That Remains (Vestigium) 100
III. EXQUISITE CORPSE 113
The Pleasure of Disegno 113
Daydreamers in Plato's Cave 125
The Action Hero's Journey 135
The Exquisite Corpse 155
IV. A BODY TOO MUCH 171
Historical Fiction 171
Distant Voices, Still Lives 174
A Temple for All Gods 183
A Ghost Is Born 198
Science Fiction 207
POST/FACE 226
Notes 235
Bibliography 273
Image Credits 293
Index 295