Art and Auctions


Book Description



















Luxury Arts of the Renaissance


Book Description

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.




Culture: urban future


Book Description

Report presents a series of analyses and recommendations for fostering the role of culture for sustainable development. Drawing on a global survey implemented with nine regional partners and insights from scholars, NGOs and urban thinkers, the report offers a global overview of urban heritage safeguarding, conservation and management, as well as the promotion of cultural and creative industries, highlighting their role as resources for sustainable urban development. Report is intended as a policy framework document to support governments in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Urban Development and the New Urban Agenda.




Pastiches Et Melanges by Marcel Proust


Book Description

This is the first translation into English in its entirety of Marcel Proust's Pastiches et Mélanges, published by Gaston Gallimard in 1919. The first part, Pastiches, contains nine literary parodies about a fraudster, Henri Lemoine, who claimed to be able to manufacture diamonds. The pastiches are in the manner of Balzac, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, Henri de Régnier, Michelet, Émile Faguet, Renan and the Goncourt brothers. The second part, Mélanges, consists of four sections: the destruction of cathedrals in the First World War, the separation of church and state, a drama about madness, and Proust's love of reading. Proust is best known for writing À la recherche du temps perdu (variously translated as Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time), widely considered to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. The Melody beneath the Words is the first translation into English in its entirety of Marcel Proust's Pastiches et Mélanges, published by Gaston Gallimard in 1919. The first part, Pastiches, contains nine literary parodies about a fraudster, Henri Lemoine, who claimed to be able to manufacture diamonds. The pastiches are in the manner of Balzac, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, Henri de Régnier, Michelet, Émile Faguet, Renan and the Goncourt brothers. The second part, Mélanges, consists of four sections: the destruction of cathedrals in the First World War, the separation of church and state, a drama about madness, and Proust's love of reading. Proust is best known for writing À la recherche du temps perdu (variously translated as Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time), widely considered to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. The Melody beneath the Words is the first translation into English in its entirety of Marcel Proust's Pastiches et Mélanges, published by Gaston Gallimard in 1919. The first part, Pastiches, contains nine literary parodies about a fraudster, Henri Lemoine, who claimed to be able to manufacture diamonds. The pastiches are in the manner of Balzac, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, Henri de Régnier, Michelet, Émile Faguet, Renan and the Goncourt brothers. The second part, Mélanges, consists of four sections: the destruction of cathedrals in the First World War, the separation of church and state, a drama about madness, and Proust's love of reading. Proust is best known for writing À la recherche du temps perdu (variously translated as Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time), widely considered to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century.




When I Was a Photographer


Book Description

The first complete English translation of Nadar's intelligent and witty memoir, a series of vignettes that capture his experiences in the early days of photography. Celebrated nineteenth-century photographer—and writer, actor, caricaturist, inventor, and balloonist—Félix Nadar published this memoir of his photographic life in 1900 at the age of eighty. Composed as a series of vignettes (we might view them as a series of “written photographs”), this intelligent and witty book offers stories of Nadar's experiences in the early years of photography, memorable character sketches, and meditations on history. It is a classic work, cited by writers from Walter Benjamin to Rosalind Krauss. This is its first and only complete English translation. In When I Was a Photographer (Quand j'étais photographe), Nadar tells us about his descent into the sewers and catacombs of Paris, where he experimented with the use of artificial lighting, and his ascent into the skies over Paris in a hot air balloon, from which he took the first aerial photographs. He recounts his “postal photography” during the 1870-1871 Siege of Paris—an amazing scheme involving micrographic images and carrier pigeons. He describes technical innovations and important figures in photography, and offers a thoughtful consideration of society and culture; but he also writes entertainingly about such matters as Balzac's terror of being photographed, the impact of a photograph on a celebrated murder case, and the difference between male and female clients. Nadar's memoir captures, as surely as his photographs, traces of a vanished era.