Abstract Bodies

Abstract Bodies
Author: David J. Getsy
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2015-11-03
Genre: Art
ISBN: 030019675X

Original and theoretically astute, Abstract Bodies is the first book to apply the interdisciplinary field of transgender studies to the discipline of art history. It recasts debates around abstraction and figuration in 1960s art through a discussion of gender’s mutability and multiplicity. In that decade, sculpture purged representation and figuration but continued to explore the human as an implicit reference. Even as the statue and the figure were left behind, artists and critics asked how the human, and particularly gender and sexuality, related to abstract sculptural objects that refused the human form. This book examines abstract sculpture in the 1960s that came to propose unconventional and open accounts of bodies, persons, and genders. Drawing on transgender and queer theory, David J. Getsy offers innovative and archivally rich new interpretations of artworks by and critical writing about four major artists—Dan Flavin (1933–1996), Nancy Grossman (b. 1940), John Chamberlain (1927–2011), and David Smith (1906–1965). Abstract Bodies makes a case for abstraction as a resource in reconsidering gender’s multiple capacities and offers an ambitious contribution to this burgeoning interdisciplinary field.

Eloquent Bodies

Eloquent Bodies
Author: Jacqueline E. Jung
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0300214014

A radical reassessment of the role of movement, emotion, and the viewing experience in Gothic sculpture Gothic cathedrals in northern Europe dazzle visitors with arrays of sculpted saints, angels, and noble patrons adorning their portals and interiors. In this highly original and erudite volume, Jacqueline E. Jung explores how medieval sculptors used a form of bodily poetics—involving facial expression, gesture, stance, and torsion—to create meanings beyond conventional iconography and to subtly manipulate spatial dynamics, forging connections between the sculptures and beholders. Filled with more than 500 images that capture the suppleness and dynamism of cathedral sculpture, often through multiple angles, Eloquent Bodies demonstrates how viewers confronted and, in turn, were addressed by sculptures at major cathedrals in France and Germany, from Chartres and Reims to Strasbourg, Bamberg, Magdeburg, and Naumburg. Shedding new light on the charismatic and kinetic qualities of Gothic sculpture, this book also illuminates the ways artistic ingenuity and technical skill converged to enliven sacred spaces.

Bodies and Ruins

Bodies and Ruins
Author: David F. Crew
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2017-05-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0472130137

Explores visual representations of the Allied bombing war on Germany to reveal how Germans remembered and commemorated WWII

How Our Emotions and Bodies are Vital for Abstract Thought

How Our Emotions and Bodies are Vital for Abstract Thought
Author: Anna Sverdlik
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2018-06-18
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1351344757

If mathematics is the purest form of knowledge, the perfect foundation of all the hard sciences, and a uniquely precise discipline, then how can the human brain, an imperfect and imprecise organ, process mathematical ideas? Is mathematics made up of eternal, universal truths? Or, as some have claimed, could mathematics simply be a human invention, a kind of tool or metaphor? These questions are among the greatest enigmas of science and epistemology, discussed at length by mathematicians, physicians, and philosophers. But, curiously enough, neuroscientists have been absent in the debate, even though it is precisely the field of neuroscience—which studies the brain’s mechanisms for thinking and reasoning—that ought to be at the very center of these discussions. How our Emotions and Bodies are Vital for Abstract Thought explores the unique mechanisms of cooperation between the body, emotions, and the cortex, based on fundamental physical principles. It is these mechanisms that help us to overcome the limitations of our physiology and allow our imperfect, human brains to make transcendent mathematical discoveries. This book is written for anyone who is interested in the nature of abstract thought, including mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists.

Abstract Bodies

Abstract Bodies
Author: David J. Getsy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-04-18
Genre:
ISBN: 9780300271898

An innovative analysis of 1960s abstract sculpture that draws on transgender studies and queer theory

Bodies in Flux

Bodies in Flux
Author: Christa Teston
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2017-05-05
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 022645083X

Doctors, scientists, and patients have long grappled with the dubious nature of “certainty” in medical practice. To help navigate the chaos caused by ongoing bodily change we rely on scientific reductions and deductions. We take what we know now and make best guesses about what will be. But bodies in flux always outpace the human gaze. Particularly in cancer care, processes deep within our bodies are at work long before we even know where to look. In the face of constant biological and technological change, how do medical professionals ultimately make decisions about care? Bodies in Flux explores the inventive ways humans and nonhumans work together to manufacture medical evidence. Each chapter draws on rhetorical theory to investigate a specific scientific method for negotiating medical uncertainty in cancer care, including evidential visualization, assessment, synthesis, and computation. Case studies unveil how doctors rely on visuals when deliberating about a patient’s treatment options, how members of the FDA use inferential statistics to predict a drug’s effectiveness, how researchers synthesize hundreds of clinical trials into a single evidence-based recommendation, and how genetic testing companies compute and commoditize human health. Teston concludes by advocating for an ethic of care that pushes back against the fetishization of certainty—an ethic of care that honors human fragility and bodily flux.

Abstract Art

Abstract Art
Author: Pepe Karmel
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-11-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0500239584

A leading authority on the subject presents a radically new approach to the understanding of abstract art, in this richly illustrated and persuasive history. In his fresh take on abstract art, noted art historian Pepe Karmel chronicles the movement from a global perspective, while embedding abstraction in a recognizable reality. Moving beyond the canonical terrain of abstract art, the author demonstrates how artists from around the world have used abstract imagery to express social, cultural, and spiritual experience. Karmel builds this fresh approach to abstract art around five inclusive themes: body, landscape, cosmology, architecture, and man-made signs and patterns. In the process, this history develops a series of narratives that go far beyond the established figures and movements traditionally associated with abstract art. Each narrative is complemented by a number of featured abstract works, arranged in thought-provoking pairings with accompanying extended captions that provide an in-depth analysis. This wide-ranging examination incorporates work from Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America, as well as Europe and North America, through artists ranging from Wu Guanzhong, Joan Miró, Jackson Pollock, to Hilma af Klint, and Odili Donald Odita. Breaking new ground, Karmel has forged a new history of this key art movement.

The Sociology of the Body

The Sociology of the Body
Author: Kate Cregan
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2006-04-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780761940241

This lucid and authoritative text: Provides a critical evaluation of the work of Elias, Aries, Foucault, Bourdieu, Mary Douglas, Kristeva, Butler, Haraway and Bordo; Guides the reader through the inter-disciplinary influence of these ideas; Gives a clear and compelling analysis of the significance of the 'turn' towards the body; Helps to understand the complex way in which embodiment is formed across different social formations. Clearly organized and powerfully expressed the book provides the best available guide to the 'turn to the body' in the social sciences.

Bodies That Matter

Bodies That Matter
Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2014-09-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134711417

In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most "material" dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the inquiries she began in Gender Trouble, Butler offers an original reformulation of the materiality of bodies, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain "sex" from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She offers a clarification of the notion of "performativity" introduced in Gender Trouble and explores the meaning of a citational politics. The text includes readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud on the formation of materiality and bodily boundaries; "Paris is Burning," Nella Larsen's "Passing," and short stories by Willa Cather; along with a reconsideration of "performativity" and politics in feminist, queer, and radical democratic theory.