Stories of Art is James Elkins's intimate history of art. Concise and original, this engaging book is an antidote to the behemoth art history textbooks from which we were all taught. As he demonstrates so persuasively, there can never be one story of art.

Cultures have their own stories - about themselves, about other cultures - and to hear them all is one way to hear the multiple stories that art tells. But each of us also has our own story of art, a kind of private art history made up of th...

A bold reorientation of art history that bridges the divide between fine art and material culture through an examination of objects and their usesArt history is often viewed through cultural or national lenses that define some works as fine art while relegating others to the category of craft. Global Objects points the way to an interconnected history of art, examining a broad array of functional aesthetic objects that transcend geographic and temporal boundaries and challenging preconceived ...

This richly illustrated, four-colour textbook introduces the art and archaeology of ancient Greece, from the Bronze Age through to the Roman conquest. Suitable for students with no prior knowledge of ancient art, this textbook reviews the main objects and monuments of the ancient Greek world, emphasizing the context and function of these artefacts in their particular place and time. Students are led to a rich understanding of how objects were meant to be perceived, what 'messages' they transm...

Focusing on the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy and Hungary, countries that represent key variations in European public administration, this textbook explores how the cultural, organizational, personnel and financial dimensions of public administration compare. The guiding questions are whether, to what extent and why the politico-administrative systems and their reforms show convergence or divergence from Europeanization. Key features of the second edition: Country profiles, comparative r...

We are no strangers today to visual representations of human suffering at sea: the refugee crisis that continues to play out in the seascape between Europe and Africa (and not only there) yields an ever-growing archive of humanitarian tragedy. As both a visual backdrop and a lethal medium of unequal mobility, maritime space and landscape play a significant role in mediating the ethical demands of this crisis. Yet there has been little exploration of the longer history of morality’s role in ...

The earliest painting by Rembrandt whose owner is documented depicts the prophet Balaam, on his way to blessing Israel. The man who bought it was a Sephardi Jew in the service of Cardinal Richelieu of France. The first known buyer of an etching plate by Rembrandt, depicting Abraham Dismissing Hagar and Ishmael, was a Sephardi Jew of Amsterdam. Seen through their eyes, Rembrandt was the creator of images with a special meaning to Jews. They have been followed through the centuries by Jewish c...

At the crossroads of philosophy, artistic practice, and art history.Though Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari were not strictly art historians, they reinvigorated ontological and formal approaches to art, and simultaneously borrowed art historical concepts for their own philosophical work. They were dedicated modernists, inspired by the German school of expressionist art historians such as Riegl, Wölfflin, and Worringer and the great modernist art critics such as Rosenberg, Steinberg, Greenbe...

How did objects move between places and people, and how did they reshape the Republic’s arts, cultures and sciences?

‘Objects’ were vitally significant for the early modern Dutch Republic, which is known as an early consumer society, a place famous for its exhaustive production of books, visual arts and scientific instruments. What happens when we push these objects and their materiality to the centre of our research? How do they invite us to develop new perspectives on the early moder...

It is no coincidence that a historical figure such as Patrice Emery Lumumba, independent Congo’s first prime minister, who was killed in 1961, has lived in the realm of the cultural imaginary and occupied an afterlife in the arts. After all, his project remained unfinished and his corpse unburied. The figure of Lumumba has been imagined through painting, photography, cinema, poetry, literature, theatre, music, sculpture, fashion, cartoons and stamps, and also through historiography and in p...