Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"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
Table of ContentsIntroduction. Artworks and Their Modalities of Egress: The Air within and without Artworks
Politics of Extravagation
Mesologies of Form
Medium and Milieu, or the Material Spaces of Air
World Loss, Sitelessness, and the Artwork’s Environments
Aurai and Aura (Form and Space)
Empathetic Artworks, Extensive Subjects
1. Aer, Aurae, Venti: Warburg’s Aerial Forms and Historical Milieus
Anima Fiorentina
Inspiration
Stimmung/Atmosphere
Milieu as Air Ambiant
The Accessories’ Milieu
Botticelli’s Milieu
The Physiology of Influence
Disciplinary Milieus
2. Luftraum: Riegl’s Vitalist Mesology of Form
Horror vacui
Umgebung
Indehiscent Forms
Cubic Space (“Air-Filled Empty Space”)
Air Space
Respiración
External Unity
Kunstwollen
3. Saturated Forms: Rilke’s and Rodin’s Sculpture of Environment
Reticence and Radiance
Aesthetico-Biological Endeavors
“Archaic Torso of Apollo”
Aesthetic Metabolisms
Absorbed Milieus
Gravid Forms
Forms Striving for Incompletion
Temporal Ecstasis
4. The “Kinesphere” and the Body’s Other Spatial Envelopes in Rudolf Laban’s Theory of Dance
Choreutics
Spatiomaterial Radiance
Psychophysiologically Saturated Space
Anima, Air, Atmosphere: Laban and Kandinsky
Luftkur, Plein Air
Dance’s Biological and Architectural Lifeworlds
Coda. Space as Form
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
