Philippe Forêt, Andreas Kaplony (eds.): The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road (2008)

“This book covers new ground on the diffusion and transmission of geographical knowledge that occurred at critical junctures in the long history of the Silk Road.

Much of twentieth-century scholarship on the Silk Road examined the ancient archaeological objects and medieval historical records found within each cultural area, while the consequences of long-distance interaction across Eurasia remained poorly studied. Here ample attention is given to the journeys that notions and objects undertook to transmit spatial values to other civilizations. In retracing the steps of four major circuits right across the many civilizations that shared the Silk Road, The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road traces the ways in which maps and images surmounted spatial, historical and cultural divisions.”

Publisher BRILL, 2008
Volume 21 of Brill’s Inner Asian library
ISBN 9004171657, 9789004171657
243 pages

review (Ron Sela, Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology)
review (Liano Cai, International Journal of Middle East Studies)

Publisher

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Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (1979/1996)

“Since the 1979 publication of The Writings of Robert Smithson, Robert Smithson’s significance as a spokesman for a generation of artists has been widely acknowledged and the importance of his thinking to contemporary artists and art critics continues to grow. In addition to a new introduction by Jack Flam, The Collected Writings includes previously unpublished essays by Smithson and gathers hard-to-find articles, interviews, and photographs. Together these provide a full picture of his wide-ranging views on art and culture.”

First published as The Writings of Robert Smithson, New York University Press, 1979.

Revised and Expanded edition
Edited, with an Introduction by Jack Flam
Publisher University of California Press, 1996
ISBN 0520203852, 9780520203853
385 pages
via dhr

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PDF (18 MB, OCR, updated on 2016-12-15)

Renzo Dubbini: Geography of the Gaze: Urban and Rural Vision in Early Modern Europe (1994/2002)

Geography of the Gaze offers a new history and theory of how the way we look at things influences what we see. Focusing on Western Europe from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, Renzo Dubbini shows how developments in science, art, mapping, and visual epistemology affected the ways natural and artificial landscapes were perceived and portrayed.

He begins with the idea of the “view,” explaining its role in the invention of landscape painting and in the definition of landscape as a cultural space. Among other topics, Dubbini explores how the descriptive and pictorial techniques used in mariners’ charts, view-oriented atlases, military cartography, and garden design were linked to the proliferation of highly realistic paintings of landscapes and city scenes; how the “picturesque” system for defining and composing landscapes affected not just art but also archaeology and engineering; and how the everchanging modern cityscapes inspired new ways of seeing and representing the urban scene in Impressionist painting, photography, and stereoscopy. A marvelous history of viewing, Geography of the Gaze will interest everyone from scientists to artists.

Originally published as Geografie dello sguardo: Visione e paesaggio in età moderna, Giulio Einaudi, Torino, 1994
Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane
Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2002
ISBN 0226167372, 9780226167374
251 pages

publisher
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