In this beautifully illustrated study of intellectual and art history; Dorothy Johnson explores the representation of classical myths by renowned French artists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; demonstrating the extraordinary influence of the natural sciences and psychology on artistic depiction of myth. Highlighting the work of major painters such as David; Girodet; Gerard; Ingres; and Delacroix and sculptors such as Houdon and Pajou; David to Delacroix reveals how these artists offered innovative reinterpretations of myth while incorporating contemporaneous and revolutionary discoveries in the disciplines of anatomy; biology; physiology; psychology; and medicine. The interplay among these disciplines; Johnson argues; led to a reexamination by visual artists of the historical and intellectual structures of myth; its social and psychological dimensions; and its construction as a vital means of understanding the self and the individuals role in society. This confluence is studied in depth for the first time here; and each chapter includes rich examples chosen from the vast number of mythological representations of the period. While focused on mythical subjects; French Romantic artists; Johnson argues; were creating increasingly modern modes of interpreting and meditating on culture and the human condition.
#127868 in eBooks 2011-01-15 2011-01-15File Name: B004P8J3SI
Review
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. A corrective lens for our collective visionBy Sussu"Troubling vision" is an insightful and wide-ranging work of impeccable scholarship. It is accessible to readers outside academia. while it grapples with complex. highly theoretical concepts. Fleetwood analyzes visuality and blackness in popular music. conceptual art as well as family and neighborhood portraiture and other forms of cultural production. It is specifically this great breadth of material that illustrates the reach of her concepts. While showing how our vision is troubled and troubling. she suggests and discovers strategies of survival and subversion. and never loses sight of the whole while she examines the particulars. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in issues of perception and projection. and of race and class. In fact. I feel that everyone who thinks they know what they think about these issues. should read Fleetwoods book. She probes gently and insistently. requesting that the reader study the artists she discusses as nakedly as some of them perform.3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. sophisticated. readable theoryBy onlinejTeaching this in my current doctoral seminar on African American visual aesthetics. Really glad I chose it to teach even before Id finished reading all of it. Smart. insightful. lucid.2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Provocative and timelyBy ProfedeambienteTroubling Vision: Performance. Visuality and Blackness is a provocative and timely meditation on the how black subjects of cultural production trouble visual discourse and how black cultural producers negotiate. re-imagine and transform ways of seeing and being seen in different visual mediums. It is clear. well-written and presents a eclectic archive that is illuminated though its assemblage. By moving beyond any single medium or visual genre. the author is able to articulate how visual tropes of blackness circulate across different visual fields. while never losing sight of the unique visual logics of the various mediums she examines. The book will certainly be of interest to scholars of African-American and African diaspora studies. feminist and transnational media studies. visual studies. popular culture and art history.
