Background
He was born in Andernach, Germany in 1935.
(This fascinating book investigates what is specifically G...)
This fascinating book investigates what is specifically German about German art, focusing on the attitudes Germans have had toward their art from the Romantic period to the present and discussing the ways in which they have tried to find their identity as a nation through this art. Hans Belting proposes that the history of German art criticism has been coloured by division, a split caused both by opposing ideologies and by the contradiction between what the Germans have wanted their artand their nation - to be and the reality of what they were.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300076169/?tag=2022091-20
1998
(A cultural history of the face in Western art, ranging fr...)
A cultural history of the face in Western art, ranging from portraiture in painting and photography to film, theater, and mass media This fascinating book presents the first cultural history and anthropology of the face across centuries, continents, and media. Ranging from funerary masks and masks in drama to the figural work of contemporary artists including Cindy Sherman and Nam June Paik, renowned art historian Hans Belting emphasizes that while the face plays a critical role in human communication, it defies attempts at visual representation. Belting divides his book into three parts: faces as masks of the self, portraiture as a constantly evolving mask in Western culture, and the fate of the face in the age of mass media. Referencing a vast array of sources, Belting's insights draw on art history, philosophy, theories of visual culture, and cognitive science. He demonstrates that Western efforts to portray the face have repeatedly failed, even with the developments of new media such as photography and film, which promise ever-greater degrees of verisimilitude. In spite of sitting at the heart of human expression, the face resists possession, and creative endeavors to capture it inevitably result in masks―hollow signifiers of the humanity they're meant to embody. From creations by Van Eyck and August Sander to works by Francis Bacon, Ingmar Bergman, and Chuck Close, Face and Mask takes a remarkable look at how, through the centuries, the physical visage has inspired and evaded artistic interpretation.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691162352/?tag=2022091-20
("Art history after modernism" does not only mean that art...)
"Art history after modernism" does not only mean that art looks different today; it also means that our discourse on art has taken a different direction, if it is safe to say it has taken a direction at all. So begins Hans Belting's brilliant, iconoclastic reconsideration of art and art history at the end of the millennium, which builds upon his earlier and highly successful volume, The End of the History of Art?. "Known for his striking and original theories about the nature of art," according to the Economist, Belting here examines how art is made, viewed, and interpreted today. Arguing that contemporary art has burst out of the frame that art history had built for it, Belting calls for an entirely new approach to thinking and writing about art. He moves effortlessly between contemporary issues—the rise of global and minority art and its consequences for Western art history, installation and video art, and the troubled institution of the art museum—and questions central to art history's definition of itself, such as the distinction between high and low culture, art criticism versus art history, and the invention of modernism in art history. Forty-eight black and white images illustrate the text, perfectly reflecting the state of contemporary art. With Art History after Modernism, Belting retains his place as one of the most original thinkers working in the visual arts today. "Art history after modernism" does not only mean that art looks different today; it also means that our discourse on art has taken a different direction, if it is safe to say it has taken a direction at all. So begins Hans Belting's brilliant, iconoclastic reconsideration of art and art history at the end of the millennium, which builds upon his earlier and highly successful volume, The End of the History of Art?. "Known for his striking and original theories about the nature of art," according to the Economist, Belting here examines how art is made, viewed, and interpreted today. Arguing that contemporary art has burst out of the frame that art history had built for it, Belting calls for an entirely new approach to thinking and writing about art. He moves effortlessly between contemporary issues—the rise of global and minority art and its consequences for Western art history, installation and video art, and the troubled institution of the art museum—and questions central to art history's definition of itself, such as the distinction between high and low culture, art criticism versus art history, and the invention of modernism in art history. Forty-eight black and white images illustrate the text, perfectly reflecting the state of contemporary art. With Art History after Modernism, Belting retains his place as one of the most original thinkers working in the visual arts today.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226041859/?tag=2022091-20
(Looking through Duchamp's Door: Art and Perspective in th...)
Looking through Duchamp's Door: Art and Perspective in the Work of Duchamp, Sugimoto and Jeff Wall by Hans Belting (2010-02-28) [Hans Belting] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K3Q2H6K/?tag=2022091-20
(The use of perspective in Renaissance painting caused a r...)
The use of perspective in Renaissance painting caused a revolution in the history of seeing, allowing artists to depict the world from a spectator's point of view. But the theory of perspective that changed the course of Western art originated elsewhere-it was formulated in Baghdad by the eleventh-century mathematician Ibn al Haithan, known in the West as Alhazen. Using the metaphor of the mutual gaze, or exchanged glances, Hans Belting-preeminent historian and theorist of medieval, Renaissance, and contemporary art-narrates the historical encounter between science and art, between Arab Baghdad and Renaissance Florence, that has had a lasting effect on the culture of the West. In this lavishly illustrated study, Belting deals with the double history of perspective, as a visual theory based on geometrical abstraction (in the Middle East) and as pictorial theory (in Europe). How could geometrical abstraction be reconceived as a theory for making pictures? During the Middle Ages, Arab mathematics, free from religious discourse, gave rise to a theory of perspective that, later in the West, was transformed into art when European painters adopted the human gaze as their focal point. In the Islamic world, where theology and the visual arts remained closely intertwined, the science of perspective did not become the cornerstone of Islamic art. Florence and Baghdad addresses a provocative question that reaches beyond the realm of aesthetics and mathematics: What happens when Muslims and Christians look upon each other and find their way of viewing the world transformed as a result?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674050045/?tag=2022091-20
(Now available in a new edition, this book explores Hieron...)
Now available in a new edition, this book explores Hieronymus Bosch’s masterpiece Garden of Earthly Delights. Few paintings inspire the kind of intense study and speculation as Garden of Earthly Delights, the world-famous triptych by Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch. The painting has been interpreted as a heretical masterpiece, an opulent illustration of the Creation, and a premonition of the end of the world. In this book, renowned art historian Hans Belting offers a radical reinterpretation of the work, which he sees not as apocalyptic but utopian, portraying how the world would exist had the Fall not happened. Taking readers through each panel, Belting discusses various schools of thought and explores Bosch’s life and times. This fascinating study is an important contribution to the literature and theory surrounding one of the world’s most enigmatic artists.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3791382055/?tag=2022091-20
anthropologist historian professor
He was born in Andernach, Germany in 1935.
Hans Belting studied at the universities of Mainz and Rome, and took his doctorate in art history from the University of Mainz.
Hans Belting taught as a professor of art history at the University of Heidelberg, and from 1980 to 1992 as a professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität at Munich. From 1992 until his retirement in 2002, he was a professor at the Institute for Art History and Media Theory at the State College of Design in Karlsruhe.
From October 2004 until the end of September 2007, Belting served as Director of the Internationalen Forschungszentrums Kulturwissenschaften (International Research Centre for Cultural Studies) in Vienna.
In 2016 Belting donated his private library to Center of Early Medieval Studies of Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University because its students impressed him and he considers this department as one of the best in Europe. Hence the university named the new library after him.
(This fascinating book investigates what is specifically G...)
1998(A cultural history of the face in Western art, ranging fr...)
("Art history after modernism" does not only mean that art...)
(The use of perspective in Renaissance painting caused a r...)
(Looking through Duchamp's Door: Art and Perspective in th...)
(Now available in a new edition, this book explores Hieron...)
Hans Belting proposes that the disciplines of art history and art criticism should be combined in a single method that emphasizes a historical and anthropological approach.
Belting is a member of various scientific academies in Germany and the U.S., including the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, honorary member of the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin (since 2006), a member of German Archaeological Institute and North Rhine-Westphalia Academy for Sciences and Arts. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation Vienna (MUMOK). He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992.
German Archaeological Institute , Germany
North Rhine-Westphalia Academy for Sciences and Arts , Germany
Heidelberg Academy for Sciences and Humanities , Germany
