Description: "These writings explore the dynamics of iconoclasm, which in these unstable times is gaining fresh traction as an area of study. Freedberg is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost experts on iconoclasm in the world. This book collects the best of his texts, including a new essay and a freshly written up-to-date survey of the subject. The texts range in subject matter from the furious religious battles over image in the Reformation to government repression in modern South Africa and the US culture wars of the early 1990s"--
Brief description:
David Freedberg is Pierre Matisse Professor of the History of Art and Director of The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. His books include The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response, also published by the University of Chicago Press; The Prints of Bruegel the Elder; Art in History, History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture (with Jan de Vries); Rubens: The Life of Christ after the Passion; and Dutch Landscape Prints of the Seventeenth Century. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society as well as of the Accademia Nazionale di Agricultura and the Istituto Veneto
di Scienze, Lettere e Arti.
Review Quotes: "Long before image surpassed word in the battle for our hearts and minds in a virtual world, David Freedberg studied the fascinating, invasive phenomenon of iconoclasm. His visionary work changed the course of art history and visual studies, pointing our attention to our ambiguous relationship to art works, images, and the universal drive to both worship and destroy them. This sample of his very best analyses is nothing less than a must-read for everybody interested in the tremendous power of images and iconoclasm, from antiquity till now. Combining impressively broad scholarship with amazing writing, this book is literally an eye-opener."--Koenraad Jonckheere, author of Antwerp Art After Iconoclasm: Experiments in Decorum, 1566-1585