Description
Margareta Ingrid Christian unpacks the ways in which, around 1900, art scholars, critics, and choreographers wrote about the artwork as an actual object in real time and space, surrounded and fluently connected to the viewer through the very air we breathe. Theorists such as Aby Warburg, Alois Riegl, Rainer Maria Rilke, and the choreographer Rudolf Laban drew on the science of their time to examine air as the material space surrounding an artwork, establishing its "milieu," "atmosphere," or "environment." Christian explores how the artwork's external space was seen to work as an aesthetic category in its own right, beginning with Rainer Maria Rilke's observation that Rodin's sculpture "exhales an atmosphere" and that Cezanne's colors create "a calm, silken air" that pervades the empty rooms where the paintings are exhibited.
Writers created an early theory of unbounded form that described what Christian calls an artwork's ecstasis or its ability to stray outside its limits and engender its own space. Objects viewed in this perspective complicate the now-fashionable discourse of empathy aesthetics, the attention to self-projecting subjects, and the idea of the modernist self-contained artwork. For example, Christian invites us to historicize the immersive spatial installations and "environments" that have arisen since the 1960s and to consider their origins in turn-of-the-twentieth-century aesthetics. Throughout this beautifully written work, Christian offers ways for us to rethink entrenched narratives of aesthetics and modernism and to revisit alternatives.
About the Author
Margareta Ingrid Christian is assistant professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago. She has published articles in a range of contributed volumes and journals, among them PMLA, German Studies Review, and History of Photography.
Reviews
"In Objects in Air, Christian offers a compelling and innovative investigation of the history and theory of the physical and represented space that fills, permeates, or surrounds two- and three-dimensional works of art." * Choice *
"Objects in Air is a book deserving of praise. Christian brings tremendous nuance to her analysis of the texts at hand." * German Studies Review *
"In this thoroughly original book, Christian traces discourses on the external spaces and atmospheres that surround works of art. She thereby elucidates the artwork's ec-stasis-its reaching out into its environment-as an aesthetic category in its own right. A stylistic and intellectual pleasure to read, Objects in Air adds significantly to our understanding of early twentieth-century aesthetic thought." -- Lucia Ruprecht, author of Gestural Imaginaries: Dance and Cultural Theory in the Early Twentieth Century
"Objects in Air is an important and finely conceptualized study of turn-of-the-century writing about the aesthetics of visual phenomena and the conceptualizing of art history. It brings to light a new understanding of the artwork as making its impact, not as a self-contained bounded object, but by way of expanding outward beyond itself in space and time. The carefully honed historical analysis of thinking about the work of art in its spatial and temporal milieus stands as a study in aesthetic theory in its own right, timely and engagingly readable." -- Alex Potts, author of Experiments in Modern Realism: World Making, Politics and the Everyday in Postwar European and American Art
"This book takes the reader on a journey with surprising views on art and modernism. Focusing on the aerial dimensions, the in-between, and the environmental space of works of art, Christian provides an exciting reframing of the aesthetic and kinesthetic dimensions of art and art theory. She turns our attention to what might be the dance within objects of art: movement, breath, and unboundedness of form." -- Gabriele Brandstetter, author of Poetics of Dance: Body, Image, and Space in the Historical Avant-Gardes
Book Information
ISBN 9780226764771
Author Margareta Ingrid Christian
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 680g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 25mm
Writers created an early theory of unbounded form that described what Christian calls an artwork's ecstasis or its ability to stray outside its limits and engender its own space. Objects viewed in this perspective complicate the now-fashionable discourse of empathy aesthetics, the attention to self-projecting subjects, and the idea of the modernist self-contained artwork. For example, Christian invites us to historicize the immersive spatial installations and "environments" that have arisen since the 1960s and to consider their origins in turn-of-the-twentieth-century aesthetics. Throughout this beautifully written work, Christian offers ways for us to rethink entrenched narratives of aesthetics and modernism and to revisit alternatives.
About the Author
Margareta Ingrid Christian is assistant professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago. She has published articles in a range of contributed volumes and journals, among them PMLA, German Studies Review, and History of Photography.
Reviews
"In Objects in Air, Christian offers a compelling and innovative investigation of the history and theory of the physical and represented space that fills, permeates, or surrounds two- and three-dimensional works of art." * Choice *
"Objects in Air is a book deserving of praise. Christian brings tremendous nuance to her analysis of the texts at hand." * German Studies Review *
"In this thoroughly original book, Christian traces discourses on the external spaces and atmospheres that surround works of art. She thereby elucidates the artwork's ec-stasis-its reaching out into its environment-as an aesthetic category in its own right. A stylistic and intellectual pleasure to read, Objects in Air adds significantly to our understanding of early twentieth-century aesthetic thought." -- Lucia Ruprecht, author of Gestural Imaginaries: Dance and Cultural Theory in the Early Twentieth Century
"Objects in Air is an important and finely conceptualized study of turn-of-the-century writing about the aesthetics of visual phenomena and the conceptualizing of art history. It brings to light a new understanding of the artwork as making its impact, not as a self-contained bounded object, but by way of expanding outward beyond itself in space and time. The carefully honed historical analysis of thinking about the work of art in its spatial and temporal milieus stands as a study in aesthetic theory in its own right, timely and engagingly readable." -- Alex Potts, author of Experiments in Modern Realism: World Making, Politics and the Everyday in Postwar European and American Art
"This book takes the reader on a journey with surprising views on art and modernism. Focusing on the aerial dimensions, the in-between, and the environmental space of works of art, Christian provides an exciting reframing of the aesthetic and kinesthetic dimensions of art and art theory. She turns our attention to what might be the dance within objects of art: movement, breath, and unboundedness of form." -- Gabriele Brandstetter, author of Poetics of Dance: Body, Image, and Space in the Historical Avant-Gardes
Book Information
ISBN 9780226764771
Author Margareta Ingrid Christian
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 680g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 25mm
