"This learned and heavy volume should be placed on the shelves of every art historical library."—E. H. Gombrich, New York Review of Books "This is an engaged and passionate work by a writer with powerful convictions about art, images, aesthetics, the art establishment, and especially the discipline of art history. It is animated by an extraordinary erudition."—Arthur C. Danto, The Art Bulletin "Freedberg's ethnographic and historical range is simply stunning. . . . The Power of Images is an extraordinary critical achievement, exhilarating in its polemic against aesthetic orthodoxy, endlessly fascinating in its details. . . . This is a powerful, disturbing book."—T. J. Jackson Lears, Wilson Quarterly "Freedberg helps us to see that one cannot do justice to the images of art unless one recognizes in them the entire range of human responses, from the lowly impulses prevailing in popular imagery to their refinement in the great visions of the ages."—Rudolf Arnheim, Times Literary Supplement

The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response

Arts & Photography

Freedberg, David

History & Criticism

University of Chicago Press

"This learned and heavy volume should be placed on the shelves of every art historical library."—E. H. Gombrich, New York Review of Books "This is an engaged and passionate work by a writer with powerful convictions about art, images, aesthetics, the art establishment, and especially the discipline of art history. It is animated by an extraordinary erudition."—Arthur C. Danto, The Art Bulletin "Freedberg's ethnographic and historical range is simply stunning. . . . The Power of Images is an extraordinary critical achievement, exhilarating in its polemic against aesthetic orthodoxy, endlessly fascinating in its details. . . . This is a powerful, disturbing book."—T. J. Jackson Lears, Wilson Quarterly "Freedberg helps us to see that one cannot do justice to the images of art unless one recognizes in them the entire range of human responses, from the lowly impulses prevailing in popular imagery to their refinement in the great visions of the ages."—Rudolf Arnheim, Times Literary Supplement

History

Some years ago, David Freedberg opened a dusty cupboard at Windsor Castle and discovered hundreds of vividly colored, masterfully precise drawings of all sorts of plants and animals from the Old and New Worlds. Coming upon thousands more drawings like them across Europe, Freedberg finally traced them all back to a little-known scientific organization from seventeenth-century Italy called the Academy of Linceans (or Lynxes). Founded by Prince Federico Cesi in 1603, the Linceans took as their task nothing less than the documentation and classification of all of nature in pictorial form. In this first book-length study of the Linceans to appear in English, Freedberg focuses especially on their unprecedented use of drawings based on microscopic observation and other new techniques of visualization. Where previous thinkers had classified objects based mainly on similarities of external appearance, the Linceans instead turned increasingly to sectioning, dissection, and observation of internal structures. They applied their new research techniques to an incredible variety of subjects, from the objects in the heavens studied by their most famous (and infamous) member Galileo Galilei—whom they supported at the most critical moments of his career—to the flora and fauna of Mexico, bees, fossils, and the reproduction of plants and fungi. But by demonstrating the inadequacy of surface structures for ordering the world, the Linceans unwittingly planted the seeds for the demise of their own favorite method—visual description-as a mode of scientific classification. Profusely illustrated and engagingly written, Eye of the Lynx uncovers a crucial episode in the development of visual representation and natural history. And perhaps as important, it offers readers a dazzling array of early modern drawings, from magnificently depicted birds and flowers to frogs in amber, monstrously misshapen citrus fruits, and more.

The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History

Europe

Graphic Design

With new surges of activity from religious, political, and military extremists, the destruction of images has become increasingly relevant on a global scale. A founder of the study of early modern and contemporary iconoclasm, David Freedberg has addressed this topic for five decades. His work has brought this subject to a central place in art history, critical to the understanding not only of art but of all images in society.&nbsp; This volume collects the most significant of Freedberg's texts on iconoclasm and censorship, bringing five key works back into print alongside new assessments of contemporary iconoclasm in places ranging from the Near and Middle East to the United States, as well as a fresh survey of the entire subject. The writings in this compact volume explore the dynamics and history of iconoclasm, from the furious battles over images in the Reformation to government repression in modern South Africa, the American culture wars of the early 1990s, and today's cancel culture.&nbsp; Freedberg combines fresh thinking with deep expertise to address the renewed significance of iconoclasm, its ideologies, and its impact. &nbsp;This volume also provides a supplement to Freedberg's essay on idolatry and iconoclasm from his pathbreaking book, The Power of Images. Freedberg's writings are of foundational importance to this discussion, and this volume will be a welcome resource for historians, museum professionals, international law specialists, preservationists, and students.

Iconoclasm

Religion & Spirituality

Dutch Landscape Prints : Of The Seventeenth Century

Dutch Landscape Prints of the Seventeenth Century (British Museum Prints and Drawings Series)

British Museum Publications

Art in History/History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture (Issues & Debates)

This series explores open questions at the intersection of art history and the humanities.
Historians and art historians provide a critique of existing methodologies and an interdisciplinary inquiry into seventeenth-century Dutch art and culture.

The Getty Center For The History Of Art

Art in History/History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture considers the potential for a reciprocally illuminating relationship between art history and history in light of recent methodological developments in both fields. The volume opens with contributions from a historian and an art historian; they examine the weaknesses of an art history without a social or economic history and lay the groundwork for the ensuing discussions of how the procedures and methods of each discipline may serve the aims of the other. A wide critique of approaches to the interpretation of realism in Dutch pictures forms the second section of the book. Included are critical views of recent iconographic developments, as well as contributions by a plant taxonomist and a marine historian. In the volume's third section new statistical and numerical models for the study of Dutch art in Dutch society are presented by three economic historians. The concluding essay provides a constructive critique of existing methodologies within each field. Art in History/History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture offers the most secure basis to date for future work on the interaction between the two disciplines and between the content of pictures and the cultures that produce them.

Aiming to bring an understanding of the contexts of treasures of the past closer to contemporary concerns, three experts discuss Titian's Europa and Rubens's Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, as well as Rubens's Rape of Europa from the Prado Museum and Titian's Francesco Maria della Rovere from the Uffizi. By exploring the dynamic relationship between art and power and how both artists manipulated their style to express the political power of their clients - no less a relevant issue today - an important era comes to life for today's readers.

Titian and Rubens: Power, Politics, and Style

Goldfarb, Hilliard T.

Marques, Manuela B. Mena

Isabella Stewart Gardner

At the height of the controversy over government funding for "obscene" works of art, internationally renowned conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth created "The Brooklyn Museum Collection: The Play of the Unmentionable," an exhibit about censorship. His installation, one of the best-attended, most widely reviewed of the year, juxtaposed works of art from throughout history that had been deemed politically, religiously, or sexually objectionable, with statements about the role of art in society by writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde, Adolf Hitler, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This handsome book documents the exhibit with twenty-one pages of color and more than a hundred duotone photographs along with a major essay by art historian David Freedberg.

The Play of the Unmentionable: An Installation by Joseph Kosuth at the Brooklyn Museum

KOSUTH, Joseph

New Press, The

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Freedberg, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Freedberg, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Freedberg, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response

The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response

The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History

The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History

Iconoclasm

Dutch Landscape Prints of the Seventeenth Century (British Museum Prints and Drawings Series)

Art in History/History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture (Issues & Debates)

Art in History/History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture (Issues & Debates)

Titian and Rubens: Power, Politics, and Style

The Play of the Unmentionable: An Installation by Joseph Kosuth at the Brooklyn Museum