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English
Seagull Books London Ltd
17 May 2024
A brief study of select Western art from Italy's foremost philosopher.

In Renaissance palaces, the studiolo was a small room to which the prince withdrew to meditate or read, surrounded by paintings he particularly loved. This book is a kind of studiolo for its author, Giorgio Agamben, as he turns his philosophical lens on the world of Western art.

Studiolo is a fascinating take on a selection of artworks created over millennia; some are easily identifiable, others rarer. Though they were produced over an arc of time stretching from 5000 BCE to the present, only now have they achieved their true legibility. Agamben contends that we must understand that the images bequeathed by the past are really addressed to us, here and now; otherwise, our historical awareness is broken. Notwithstanding the attention to detail and the critical precautions that characterize the author's method—they provoke us with a force, even a violence, that we cannot escape. When we understand why Dostoevsky feared losing his faith before Holbein's Body of the Dead Christ, when Chardin's Still Life with Hare is suddenly revealed to our gaze as a crucifixion or Twombly's sculpture shows that beauty must ultimately fall, the artwork is torn from its museological context and restored to its almost prehistoric emergence. These artworks are beautifully reproduced in color throughout Agamben's short but significant addition to his scholarly oeuvre in English translation.
By:  
Translated by:  
Imprint:   Seagull Books London Ltd
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 197mm,  Width: 140mm,  Spine: 10mm
Weight:   172g
ISBN:   9781803093680
ISBN 10:   1803093684
Series:   The Italian List
Pages:   130
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
A Note on the Text 1.The Old Man and the Nude 2.The Folds of the World 3.The Dormition of Art 4.The White Place of Painting 5.What Is Inspiration? 6.The Blanket and the Sea 7.The Well and the Void 8.The Icon and Death 9.A Winter in God 10.No More Secrets 11.The Absent Cross 12.The Art of Thresholds 13.Beauty That Falls 14.The Gaze of Ancient Man 15.The Body of Light 16.The Everyday and Mystery 17.The Clogs in God 18.Prehistory Here and Now 19.Making the Visible Visible 20.Anatomy of the Angel 21.Vision and Horror Works Cited

Giorgio Agamben is one of Italy’s foremost contemporary thinkers. He recently brought to a close his widely influential archaeology of Western politics, the nine-volume Homo Sacer series. Alberto Toscano teaches and researches at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.

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