What Was History Painting and What Is It Now? (Volume 28) (McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History)

How the most prestigious genre of painting collapsed into obscurity, only to rise again in new guises. How the most prestigious genre of painting collapsed into obscurity, only to rise again in new guises. "The dominant visual language of European painting from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, history paintings were formidable in their monumental scale, ambitious moral lessons, and intricate narratives. With the rise of modernist avant-gardes, the genre receded from the forefront of artistic production into the realm of nostalgia. Yet history painting cast a shadow that would subtly colour even the works that sought to displace it. Exploring the resilience of this distinctive mode of visual representation, What Was History Painting and What Is It Now? brings together an internationally distinguished group of scholars to trace the endurance, adaptation, and mutation of history painting. These studies offer a reexamination of the fortunes of the genre from North America to Europe and Africa. Organized around illuminating themes, the book explores the creation of an audience attuned to the genre's didactic aims, the entry of history painting into the marketplace of commercial art and attractions, and the reimagination of the mode in response to the edicts of modern and contemporary art. Spanning the full range and diversity of history painting, this collection is a broad reconsideration of the tradition and the vibrant ways in which it resonates through the art of the present."-- Provided by publisher. "The dominant visual language of European painting from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, history paintings were formidable in their monumental scale, ambitious moral lessons, and intricate narratives. With the rise of modernist avant-gardes, the genre receded from the forefront of artistic production into the realm of nostalgia. Yet history painting cast a shadow that would subtly colour even the works that sought to displace it. Exploring the resilience of this distinctive mode of visual representation, What Was History Painting and What Is It Now? brings together an internationally distinguished group of scholars to trace the endurance, adaptation, and mutation of history painting. These studies offer a reexamination of the fortunes of the genre from North America to Europe and Africa. Organized around illuminating themes, the book explores the creation of an audience attuned to the genre's didactic aims, the entry of history painting into the marketplace of commercial art and attractions, and the reimagination of the mode in response to the edicts of modern and contemporary art. Spanning the full range and diversity of history painting, this collection is a broad reconsideration of the tradition and the vibrant ways in which it resonates through the art of the present."--Résumé de l'éditeur Cover What Was History Painting and What Is It Now? Title Copyright Contents 1 Introduction: What Was History Painting and What Is It Now? Part One Human Figures and Human Viewers: Introduction 2 Figuring History at the End of the Renaissance: Notes on Agnolo Bronzino’s Martyrdom of San Lorenzo 3 A Rococo Aesthetic: History Painting and the Self’s Embodiment 4 History Painting Redistanced: From Benjamin West to David Wilkie Part Two History Painting in the Marketplace: Introduction 5 James Gillray’s The Death of the Great Wolf and the Satiric Alternative to History Painting 6 Historical Distance and Historic Doubts: Representing Napoleon in Exile 7 Landscape and the Problem of History: Thomas Cole and Anglo-Atlantic Modernity Part Three History Painting after Modernism: Introduction 8 Myth, Melancholy, and History: Figural Dialectics and José Clemente Orozco’s Epic of American Civilization 9 History Painting after Conceptual Art 10 What Is the History in Contemporary History Painting? 11 Unwritten History: William Kentridge’s Triumphs and Laments, Piazza Tevere, Rome, 2016 12 Reimagining Global Modernity in the Age of Neo-Liberal Patronage: The History Paintings of Julie Mehretu 13 “Earth Death Pictures” as Contemporary History Painting Bibliography Contributors Index