Description
Book SynopsisPaolo D’Angelo traces the history of concealing art—which Italian calls
sprezzatura—from ancient rhetoric to our own times. Finding the precept that art must be hidden from cosmetics to interior design, politics to poetry, the English garden to shabby chic,
Sprezzatura is an erudite and surprising tour of aesthetics, philosophy, and art history.
Trade ReviewA brilliant and lively essay on a fundamental aesthetic concept. Broad-ranging both philosophically and historically, the author treats the wit and paradox of explaining a rhetorical and performative action of speech or art-making that must conceal its artfulness for the sake of beauty, eloquence, and grace. -- Lydia Goehr, Columbia University
In
Sprezzatura, Paolo D’Angelo offers a ‘history of ideas’ that is typical of the best Italian scholarship in terms of its wide‐ranging erudition and historical breadth, which are all too rare in English‐language scholarship. It is very readable—hiding, as it were, the effort with which it was written. It shows how a ‘history of an idea’ can be written with both historical and philosophical panache. -- Paul Kottman, New School for Social Research
This is an important and unique book on art and aesthetics that brings together classical and modern aesthetic theories, from Schelling and Kant to Danto and Dickie. D’Angelo’s study is a
tour de force through some of the most seminal texts of Western poetics, rhetoric, and philosophy, and it constitutes a mine of erudition and scholarly reflection. -- Massimo Verdicchio, University of Alberta
In this brilliant volume D'Angelo explicates a simple term. . . and follows this concept through time and place. . . . Essential. * Choice *
Table of ContentsPreface to the First Edition
Note to the Second Italian Edition
1. Concealment
2. Part of Eloquence Is to Hide Eloquence
3. The Concealed Ornament
4. Art or Nature?
5. In the Garden
6. Iki
7. Those Who Cannot Dissimulate Cannot Rule Either
8. True Eloquence Mocks Eloquence
9. Ready-Mades
Notes
Index
