Full Description
This collection of essays considers artistic works that deal with the body without a visual representation. It explores a range of ways to represent this absence of the figure: from abject elements such as bodily fluids and waste to surrogate forms including reliquaries, manuscripts, and cloth. The collection focuses on two eras, medieval and modern, when images referencing the absent body have been far more prolific in the history of art. In medieval times, works of art became direct references to the absent corporal essence of a divine being, like Christ, or were used as devotional aids. By contrast, in the modern era artists often reject depictions of the physical body in order to distance themselves from the history of the idealized human form. Through these essays, it becomes apparent, even when the body is not visible in a work of art, it is often still present tangentially. Though the essays in this volume bridge two historical periods, they have coherent thematic links dealing with abjection, embodiment, and phenomenology. Whether figurative or abstract, sacred or secular, medieval or modern, the body maintains a presence in these works even when it is not at first apparent.
Contents
Table of Contents List of Figures List of Tables Notes on Contributors Introduction Emily Kelley and Elizabeth Richards Rivenbark The Abject Body Chapter 1: Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Milk: 'Fluid' Veneration in Medieval Devotional Art Vibeke Olson Chapter 2: No Living Presence: Human Absence in the Early Work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg Rebekah Scoggins The Virtual Body Chapter 3: Maria Ecclesia: The Aachen Marienschrein as an Alternate Body for the Virgin Mary Lisa Ciresi Chapter 4: Drawn to Scale: The Medieval Monastic's Virtual Pilgrimage through Sacred Measurement Natalie Mandziuk Chapter 5: Cloth as a Sign of the Absent Body in American Sculpture from the 1960s Elizabeth Richards Rivenbark The Alternate Body Chapter 6: Imagining the Sorrows of Death and Pains of Hell in the Hours of Catherine of Cleves Jennifer Feltman Chapter 7: The Absent Body as Divine Reflection in Parmigianino's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror Margaret Morse Chapter 8: A Clear Preoccupation with Death: The Absent Body in Mark Rothko's Mature Style Michael R. Smith, Jr. Bibliography Index
