Essays in the Arts4

Books in this series are critical in approach, drawing upon the fields of aesthetics, visual arts, music, literature, drama, cinema, and other theatrical arts. Contributions may develop an idea in any of the single fields, but preference is given to studies seeking to build bridges across these disciplines.

  • Inventing Falsehood, Making Truth Inventing Falsehood, Making Truth: Vico and Neapolitan Painting Malcolm Bull

    Can painting transform philosophy? In Inventing Falsehood, Making Truth, Malcolm Bull looks at Neapolitan art around 1700 through the eyes of the philosopher Giambattista Vico. Surrounded by extravagant examples of late Baroque painting...
  • The Melancholy Art The Melancholy Art Michael Ann Holly

    Melancholy is not only about sadness, despair, and loss. As Renaissance artists and philosophers acknowledged long ago, it can engender a certain kind of creativity born from a deep awareness of the mutability of life and the inevitable...
  • Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures Leonard Barkan

    Why do painters sometimes wish they were poets—and why do poets sometimes wish they were painters? What happens when Rembrandt spells out Hebrew in the sky or Poussin spells out Latin on a tombstone? What happens when Virgil, Ovid, or...
  • Wartime Kiss Wartime Kiss: Visions of the Moment in the 1940s Alexander Nemerov

    Wartime Kiss is a personal meditation on the haunting power of American photographs and films from World War II and the later 1940s. Starting with a stunning reinterpretation of one of the most famous photos of all time, Alfred...