Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, Preposterous History

by Mieke Bal

Book Overview

As period, as style, as sensibility, the Baroque remains elusive, its definition subject to dispute. Perhaps this is so in part because baroque vision resists separation of mind and body, form and matter, line and color, image and discourse. In Quoting Caravaggio, Mieke Bal deploys this insight of entanglement as a form of art analysis, exploring its consequences for both contemporary and historical art, as well as for current conceptions...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226035573
• ISBN13: 9780226035574
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 2.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.8" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

visual narratology

This is a joy to read for someone who loves Caravaggio and who's interested in modern art. The book is full of wonderful prints of art works and reading the comparisons between baroque masterpieces and modern installation art and paintings increases my pleasure in both. In addition, Mieke Bal is a prominent narratologist, and her discussions of the narrative aspects of the visual art she discusses are fascinating. She proposes a narratology that surpasses the limited formalist categories, and theorises a narration in visual art, both in art with textual components and seemingly abstract, or at least non-figurative art. This interdisciplinary is very valuable at a time when discussions of narrative in visual art and new media generally are divided into an exaggerated formalist denial of narrativity or a naive assumption that "everything is narrative".

Spectacular images, intelligent writing

I've never seen such high quality color reproduction in an academic text. Chicago UP should be congratulated for doing such a fine job. Gorgeous images. And the choice of images is thought-provoking - a wonderful array of artists. Bal's argument made me think about artists like Serrano in a new way. I wasn't familiar with Ken Aptekar, but I'll definitely try to find out more about his work. Bal's writing is lucid, intelligent - stimulating stuff.

gorgeous provocative book

a terrific study of history and questions of influence in the arts...spectacular design and color illustrations.