The Agency of Art Objects in Northern Europe, 1380-1520

By Antoni Ziemba

This monograph book offers a new interpretation of northern European art of the fifteenth century. The author presents it as a conglomerate of objects-things which act on the recipient in a specific - material and spatial - way. He analyzes macro-scale objects that impose movement on the viewer, and micro-scale objects that encourage manipulation. Inspired by the anti-anthropocentric concept of "returning to things" (B. Latour, A. Gell and others), the author searches for the "agency of things" in late-medieval art objects, which evoke specific liturgical, devotional, propaganda-political behaviors, or establish the status of social owner of the object that once co-created the network of material and spiritual culture. This methodologically innovative approach is part of the latest research in early art in Western Europe and the United States.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3631821239
• ISBN13: 9783631821237
• Release Date: March 2021
• Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der W
• Length: 1032 Pages