Humanity in the Arts
Scholarship On Humanity Through Sculpture
There is no central or classic study of the theme of the idea of humanity either in the arts or more specifically in sculpture. However, there are classic studies such as Herbert Read's The Art of Sculpture (1956) and Tom Flynn's The Body in Three Dimensions (1998) that consider the chronological development of sculpture in Western culture in relation to artistic presentation of and cultural attitudes toward the body. Kenneth Clark's masterful The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1956) is a carefully argued art historical analysis of the cultural concepts of the naked and the nude with a subtext that the body is a conveyor of cultural and religious values. The art historian Moshe Barasch expands the boundaries of Read, Flynn, and Clark to include gestures, postures, and philosophic attitudes toward the body as transmitter of culture and values in his collected essays published as Imago Hominis: Studies in the Language of Art (1991). The now classic texts of Margaret Walters's The Male Nude (1978) and Bernard Rudofsky's The Unfashionable Human Body (1971) are specialized studies that initiated a series of critical questions related to the body and gender well in advance of scholarly interest in the marginalized. A variety of intriguing texts including Linda Nochlin's The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity (1994), Marcia R. Pointon's Naked Authority: The Body in Western Painting (1990), and Margaret R. Miles's Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (1989) provide a feminist lens through which to analyze and critique the depiction of the human form in the visual arts. Similarly Caroline Walker Bynum's The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity (1995) and Bram Dijkstra's Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture (1986) provide specialized studies of theological, cultural, and philosophic depictions of specific engendered renderings of humanity in the arts. The reality of both the interdisciplinary motif and methodology for the study of the idea of humanity through sculpture has been privileged by Western scholars within the frame of Western cultural history. The three singular exceptions, simultaneously the only culturally comparative works on a closely identified theme, are the exhibition and catalog for In Her Image: The Great Goddess in Indian Asia and the Madonna in Christian Culture by Rebecca P. Gowen, Gerald J. Larson, and Pratapaditya Pal (1980); the exhibition and catalog for The Human Image edited by J. C. N. King (2000); and several special issues of P Art and Culture Magazine, which is published in Turkey.
See also Buddhism; Christianity: Overview; Classicism; Dress; Gender in Art; Gender: Overview; Gesture; Hinduism; Men and Masculinity; Motherhood and Maternity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adler, Kathleen, and Marcia Pointon, eds. The Body Imaged: The Human Form and Visual Culture since the Renaissance. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Arscott, Caroline, and Katie Scott, eds. Manifestations of Venus: Art and Sexuality. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2000.
Barasch, Moshe. Imago Hominis: Studies in the Language of Art. Vienna: IRSA, 1991.
Baring, Anne, and Cashford, Jules. The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image. London: Penguin, 1993.
Bernal, Martin. Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilisation. London: Vintage, 1991.
Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece. London: British Museum Press, 1995.
Bowie, Theodore, and Cornelia V. Christenson, eds. Studies in Erotic Art. New York: Basic Books, 1970.
Broude, Norma, and Mary D. Garrard, eds. The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History. New York: Icon Harper-Collins, 1992.
——. Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany. New York: Harper and Row, 1982.
Bynum, Caroline Walker. The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
Carson, Fiona, and Claire Pajaczkowska, eds. Feminist Visual Culture. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Clark, Kenneth. 1956. The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Dijkstra, Bram. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Dutton, Kenneth R. The Perfectible Body: The Western Ideal of Physical Perfection. London: Cassell, 1995.
Feher, Michel, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi, eds. Fragments for a History of the Human Body. 3 vols. New York: Zone Books, 1989.
Freedberg, David. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Flynn, Tom. The Body in Three Dimensions. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. Published in the U.K. as The Body in Sculpture. London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1998.
Gowen, Rebecca, Gerald J. Larson, and Pratapaditya Pal, eds. In Her Image: The Great Goddess in Indian Asia and the Madonna in Christian Culture. Santa Barbara: UCSB Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1980. Exhibition catalog.
Hollander, Anne. Seeing through Clothes. New York: Viking Press, 1978.
Kemp, Martin, and Marina Wallace. Spectacular Bodies: The Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Exhibition catalog.
King, J. C. N., ed. The Human Image. London: British Museum Press, 2000. Exhibition catalog.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Lucie-Smith, Edward. Sexuality in Western Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991.
Mellor, Philip A., and Chris Shilling. Re-Forming the Body: Religion, Community, and Modernity. London: Thousand Oaks, 1997.
Miles, Margaret R. Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West. Boston: Beacon, 1989.
Mullins, Edwin. The Painted Witch: How Western Artists Have Viewed the Sexuality of Women. London: Secker and Warburg, 1985.
Nochlin, Linda. The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity. London: Thames and Hudson, 1994.
Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990.
Perry, Gill, ed. Gender and Art. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999.
Pointon, Marcia R. Naked Authority: The Body in Western Painting, 1830–1908. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Read, Herbert. The Art of Sculpture. New York: Pantheon, 1956.
Rudofsky, Bernard. The Unfashionable Human Body. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971.
Saunders, Gill. The Nude: A New Perspective. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.
Sennett, Richard. Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilisation. London: Faber, 1994.
Shilling, Chris. The Body and Social Theory. London: Thousand Oaks, 1993.
Smith, Alison. The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality, and Art. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.
——, ed. Exposed: The Victorian Nude. London: Tate, 2001. Exhibition catalog.
Steinberg, Leo. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion. 2nd rev. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Suleiman, Susan Rubin, ed. The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Üster, Celâl, ed. "Nude in Art." P Art and Culture Magazine 9 (spring 2003): 1–132. Special issue.
Vernant, Jean-Pierre. Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays, edited by Froma I. Zeitlin. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Walters, Margaret. The Nude Male. London: Penguin, 1979.
Diane Apostolos-Cappadona
Additional topics
- Humanity in the Arts - Bibliography
- Humanity in the Arts - Comparative Studies In World Cultures
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