Goethe, Portrait of the Artist


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Goethe on Art


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Goethe: Life as a Work of Art


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A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Economist and Kirkus Reviews This “splendid biography” (Wall Street Journal) of Goethe presents his life and work as an essential touchstone for the modern age. A masterful intellectual portrait, Goethe: Life as a Work of Art is celebrated as the seminal twenty-first-century biography of the writer considered to be the Shakespeare of German literature. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), a remarkably prolific poet, playwright, novelist, and—as Rüdiger Safranksi emphasizes—a statesman and naturalist, first awakened not only a burgeoning German nation but the European continent with his electrifying novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Safranski has scoured Goethe’s entire oeuvre, relying exclusively on primary sources, including his correspondence with contemporaries, to produce a “fresh and authentic” (Economist) portrait of the avatar of the Romantic era. Skillfully blending “artistic analysis with swift, sharp renderings” of the great political and intellectual figures Goethe encountered, “[Safranski’s] portrait of the prolific genius leaves the reader with lasting awe, even envy” of a monumental legacy (The New Yorker). As Safranski ultimately shows, Goethe’s greatest creation, even in comparison to his masterpiece Faust, was his own life.




Nine Letters on Landscape Painting


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Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869)--court physician to the king of Saxony--was a naturalist, amateur painter, and theoretician of landscape painting whose Nine Letters on Landscape Painting is an important document of early German romanticism and an elegant appeal for the integration of art and science. Carus was inspired by and had contacts with the greatest German intellectuals of his day. Carus prefaced his work with a letter from his correspondence with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was his primary mentor in both science and art. His writings also reflect, however, the influence of the German natural philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, especially Schelling's notion of a world soul, and the writings of the naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Carus played a role in the revolution in landscape painting taking place in Saxony around Caspar David Friedrich. The first edition appears here in English for the first time.




German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe


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Goethe's lifetime (1749-1832) was a period of extraordinary importance in the history of German printmaking. From a style which had been strongly derivative of French and Dutch prototypes, German printmakers evolved a distinctive approach of their own. Etching remained the principal vehicle of the period but the invention of lithography introduced another medium which was explored with great subtlety by German artists. Over 200 works by nearly 70 artists are described in this illustrated catalogue, showing the great richness and diversity of production and examining the way in which patronage and the print market operated at the time.




Poetry, Painting, Park


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Imbued with a pulsating energy that emanates from the sun, Claude Lorrain's landscape draws on the interplay of light and darkness to effect a 'living whole' and evoke the symbolic. In a life-long conversation with Lorrain - recorded in texts as diverse as 'Amor as Landscape Painter', Faust, and the Doctrine of Colours - Goethe conducts an inquiry into the dialectics of nature and art, imitation and invention, subject and object. Goethe seeks to comprehend Lorrain by reenacting him in words, in ekphrastic mode, as an experience and an idea. The inquiry remains open-ended for landscape is a paradox: the real, the spiritual, and the affective meet without merging. This aesthetic discovery and visualization of nature as landscape is consonant with the attempt to grasp the world and our place in it. The three sister arts of poetry, painting, and horticulture serve as mirrors for Goethe's self-understanding as an artist, including his ambivalence vis-à-vis the English Garden as articulated, for instance, in the novel Elective Affinities. Franz R. Kempf is Professor of German Studies at Bard College.




Portraits of the Artist


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Gedo's pathbreaking exploration of the psychology of creativity incorporates first-hand material drawn from his extensive clinical work with artists, musicians, and other exceptionally creative individuals. Using this body of clinical knowledge as conceptual anchorage, he then offers illuminating reassessments of the artistic productivity of van Gogh, Picasso, Gauguin, and Caravaggio, and the literary productivity of Nietzsche, Jung, and Freud.




Conversations With Eckermann: Being Appreciations and Criticisms On Many Subjects


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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.




Agua Viva


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Discusses life, time, beauty, experience, meaning, music, and art.




Van Gogh on Demand


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In a manufacturing metropolis in south China lies Dafen, an urban village that famously houses thousands of workers who paint van Goghs, Da Vincis, Warhols, and other Western masterpieces for the world market, producing an astonishing five million paintings a year. To write about work and life in Dafen, Winnie Wong infiltrated this world, first investigating the work of conceptual artists who made projects there; then working as a dealer; apprenticing as a painter; surveying wholesalers and retailers in Europe, East Asia and North America; establishing relationships with local leaders; and organizing a conceptual art exhibition for the Shanghai World Expo. The result is Van Gogh on Demand, a fascinating book about a little-known aspect of the global art world—one that sheds surprising light on the workings of art, artists, and individual genius. Confronting big questions about the definition of art, the ownership of an image, and the meaning of originality and imitation, Wong describes an art world in which idealistic migrant workers, lofty propaganda makers, savvy dealers, and international artists make up a global supply chain of art and creativity. She examines how Berlin-based conceptual artist Christian Jankowski, who collaborated with Dafen’s painters to reimagine the Dafen Art Museum, unwittingly appropriated the work of a Hong Kong-based photographer Michael Wolf. She recounts how Liu Ding, a Beijing-based conceptual artist, asked Dafen “assembly-line” painters to perform at the Guangzhou Triennial, neatly styling himself into a Dafen boss. Taking the Shenzhen-based photojournalist Yu Haibo’s award-winning photograph from the Amsterdam's World Press Photo organization, she finds and meets the Dafen painter pictured in it and traces his paintings back to an unlikely place in Amsterdam. Through such cases, Wong shows how Dafen’s painters force us to reexamine our preconceptions about creativity, and the role of Chinese workers in redefining global art. Providing a valuable account of art practices in an ascendant China, Van Gogh on Demand is a rich and detailed look at the implications of a world that can offer countless copies of everything that has ever been called “art.”




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