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Michelangelo and the reinvention of the human body

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: London Chatto & Windus 2005Description: 311 pages 25cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0701172703
Subject(s): Summary: "In this study, the art critic James Hall explores the body-language of Michelangelo's figures, and his preoccupation with the male nude. He answers many of the major puzzles - his stern Madonnas and their lack of maternal feeling; his concern with colossal scale and size; his passion for anatomical dissection; the meaning of the drawings made for his young lover Tommasco da Cavalieri. By asking basic questions about Michelandgelo and his times, Hall sheds dramatic new light on many of his most familiar works, including the statue of David and the narratives of the Sistine Chaple ceiling, and his haunting late images of the dead Christ." "This book re-assesses the popular idea of Michelangelo as an artist-superman possessed of titanic mental and physical powers, and the long-held view of him as brilliant but unbalanced, obsessed with the male nude. Hall sees him as the first artist to put the unadorned human body centre stage, giving him a profound relevance to our own time, in which visual artists and writers are so fixated on 'the body'. If we really want to understand our own culture, he argues, we need to understand Michelangelo. This new study offers us a way to do so." - BOOK JACKET.
Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Non-Fiction Davis (Central) Library Non-Fiction Non-Fiction 759.2 MIC 1 Available T00308427
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

'. . . Michelangelo was constantly flaying dead bodies, in order to study the secrets of anatomy, thus beginning to give perfection to the great knowledge of design that he afterwards acquired.' Giorgio Vasari, Life of Michelangelo, 1568.Michelangeo's art is exhilarating, but also bewildering. What is the source of its incomparable power? In this imaginative and detailed study, the art critic James Hall explores some of the major puzzles - the unmaternal nature of Michelangelo's Madonnas and their lack of responsiveness; his concern with colossal scale and size; the way that anatomical dissections affected his attitude to the human body; the passionate, anxious placing of solitary, heroic figures against a background of troubling crowds. In the process he arrives at a more precise appreciation of the body language of his figures, and offers new explanations of many of the most familiar sculptures, paintings and drawings, including the statue of David and the narratives of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the complex iconography of the Medici tombs in the Sacristy of San Lorenzo and his powerful late images of the dead Christ. Hall dispels the notion of an artist-superman possessed of titanic mental and physical powers, embodying the sublime spirit of his age, and also topples the long-held view of Michelangelo as brilliant but unbalanced, obsessed with the male nude. Instead he redefines him as the first artist to put the human body centre stage, giving his study a profound relevance to our own time, in which artists, film-makers, writers and scholars are so fixated on 'the body'. If we really want to understand our own culture, Hall argues, we need to understand Michelangelo. This fine, elaborate study offers us a way to do so.

Formerly CIP.

Includes bibliographical references and index

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"In this study, the art critic James Hall explores the body-language of Michelangelo's figures, and his preoccupation with the male nude. He answers many of the major puzzles - his stern Madonnas and their lack of maternal feeling; his concern with colossal scale and size; his passion for anatomical dissection; the meaning of the drawings made for his young lover Tommasco da Cavalieri. By asking basic questions about Michelandgelo and his times, Hall sheds dramatic new light on many of his most familiar works, including the statue of David and the narratives of the Sistine Chaple ceiling, and his haunting late images of the dead Christ." "This book re-assesses the popular idea of Michelangelo as an artist-superman possessed of titanic mental and physical powers, and the long-held view of him as brilliant but unbalanced, obsessed with the male nude. Hall sees him as the first artist to put the unadorned human body centre stage, giving him a profound relevance to our own time, in which visual artists and writers are so fixated on 'the body'. If we really want to understand our own culture, he argues, we need to understand Michelangelo. This new study offers us a way to do so." - BOOK JACKET.

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