Object And Apparition

"Based on thorough archival research combined with stunning visual analysis, Maya Stanfield-Mazzi demonstrates that Andeans were active agents in Catholic image-making and created a particularly Andean version of Catholicism. Object and Apparition describes the unique features of Andean Catholicism while illustrating its connections to both Spanish and Andean cultural traditions"--Provided by publisher.

When Christianity was imposed on Native peoples in the Andes, visual images played a fundamental role, yet few scholars have written about this significant aspect. Object and Apparition proposes that Christianity took root in the region only when both Spanish colonizers and native Andeans actively envisioned the principal deities of the new religion in two- and three-dimensional forms. The book explores principal works of art involved in this process, outlines early strategies for envisioning the Christian divine, and examines later, more effective approaches. Maya Stanfield-Mazzi demonstrates that among images of the divine there was constant interplay between concrete material objects and ephemeral visions or apparitions. Three-dimensional works of art, specifically large-scale statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary, were key to envisioning the Christian divine, the author contends. She presents in-depth analysis of three surviving statues: the Virgins of Pomata and Copacabana (Lake Titicaca region) and Christ of the Earthquakes from Cusco. Two-dimensional painted images of those statues emerged later. Such paintings depicted the miracle-working potential of specific statues and thus helped to spread the statues’ fame and attract devotees. “Statue paintings” that depict the statues enshrined on their altars also served the purpose of presenting images of local Andean divinities to believers outside church settings. Stanfield-Mazzi describes the unique features of Andean Catholicism while illustrating its connections to both Spanish and Andean cultural traditions. Based on thorough archival research combined with stunning visual analysis, Object and Apparition analyzes the range of artworks that gave visual form to Christianity in the Andes and ultimately caused the new religion to flourish.

Surface is one of the most intensely debated topics in recent arts, humanities and social science scholarship. The changing technologies which manufacture the actual and virtual surfaces of today are radically altering our perception of thresholds and borders. In contrast to the responses to preceding industrial revolutions, contemporary concerns with surface seem preoccupied with its function of mediation or passage, rather than with that of separation or boundary. In Surface and Apparition, each chapter explores a different meaning and function of the material and immaterial qualities of 'surface'. Case studies include various surfaces from computer screens, 'artisanal' engines and glass architecture to gauzy veils, the planetary surface of supply chain capitalism, and spatial embodiment in street markets. International scholars of design, architecture, film, media, fine art, fashion, textiles, silversmithing, woodworking and archival practices account for how the material and the immaterial draw attention to each other in both their everyday and artistic practice. Each chapter addresses particular systems (from the human body to manually operated tools and machines); materials (for instance cloth, wood and light); modes of attention, movement and engagement. 'Surface' therefore functions in this book as a multidisciplinary method for attending to critical issues concerning human creative and technological endeavours.

Due to the technological advances of the nineteenth century, an abundance of black drawing media exploded onto the market. Charcoal, conte crayon, and fabricated black chalks and crayons; fixatives; various papers; and many lifting devices gave rise to an unprecedented amount of experimentation. Indeed, innovation became the rule, as artists developed their own unique—and often experimental—processes. The exploration of black media in drawing is inextricably bound up with the exploration of black in prints, and this volume presents an integrated study that rises above specialization in one over the other. Noir brings together such diverse artists as Francisco de Goya, Maxime Lalanne, Gustave Courbet, Odilon Redon, and Georges Seurat and explores their inventive works on paper. Sidelining labels like “conservative” or “avant-garde,” the essays in this book employ all the tools that art history and modern conservation have given us, inviting the reader to look more broadly at the artists’ methods and materials. This volume accompanies an eponymous exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from February 9 to May 15, 2016.

Today established as one of the twentieth century's most important poets, Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) was also a gifted artist and collector of art and artifacts, many of which were collected from her years in Brazil. Objects and Apparitions explores for the first time Bishop's art: her delicate, miniaturist watercolors and gouaches of domestic vignettes; her tenderly fabricated, Cornell-esque constructions; and several works of art from her own collection, including family portraits and a bird cage modeled on a medieval cathedral. Many of these are reproduced here for the first time in full color, alongside poems, archival photographs and essays by Bishop scholars Joelle Biele, Dan Chiasson and Lloyd Schwartz that discuss Bishop's art and its relationship to her poetry. Published for a critically acclaimed show at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, this handsomely produced volume shows Bishop's visual instincts to be as flawlessly poised and exquisite as her poetical sensibility.

"The subject of ghosts or apparitions is one of the perennial fascination to mankind. In this book Celia Green and Charles McCreery quote several hundred first-hand accounts of ordinary men and women's encounters with ghostly figures, animals and even objects"--Book jacket.

In the modern lexicon, ‘object’ refers to an entity that is materially constituted, spatially defined, and functionally determined. In contrast, the Latin word ‘fantasia’ has, since antiquity, referred to an apparition or the ability to imagine something that could be equally an object, an image, or a concept. This tension prompts further inquiry into the interrelations and differences between the experience of tangible objects (their perception and handling) and the creation of new objects (their conception and formation). What correlations exist between object fantasies, the self-consciousness of subjects, and the concrete and imagined conditions of human beings’ social lives? By addressing this question, this interdisciplinary book opens new perspectives in the field of object studies.