Ittai Weinryb – författare

A concise illustrated history of one of art’s most important and elusive elementsOver the millennia, humans have used pigments to decorate, narrate, and instruct. Charred bone, ground earth, stones, bugs, and blood were the first pigments. New pigments were manufactured by simple processes such as corrosion and calcination until the Industrial Revolution introduced colors outside the spectrum of the natural world. Pigments brings together leading art historians and conservators to trace the history of the materials used to create color and their invention across diverse cultures and time periods. This richly illustrated book features incisive historical essays and case studies that shed light on the many forms of pigments—the organic and inorganic; the edible and the toxic; and those that are more precious than gold. It shows how pigments were as central to the earliest art forms and global trade networks as they are to commerce, ornamentation, and artistic expression today. The book reveals the innate instability and mutability of most pigments and discusses how few artworks or objects look as they did when they were first created.From cave paintings to contemporary art, Pigments demonstrates how a material understanding of color opens new perspectives on visual culture and the history of art.

Votive objects or ex-votos are a broad category of material artifacts produced with the intention of being offered as acts of faith. Common across historical periods, religions, and cultures, they are presented as tokens of gratitude for prayers answered, as well as the physical manifestation of hopes and anxieties. Agents of Faith explores votive offerings in the context of material culture, art history, and religious studies to better understand their history and present-day importance. By looking at what humans have chosen to offer in their votive transactions, this volume uncovers their most intimate moments in life and questions the nature, role, and function of one of the most fundamental aspects of the relationship between people and things—the imbuing of objects with sentiment. Encompassing exquisite works of art as well as votives of humble origin and material, with objects dating from 2000 B.C. to the twenty‐first century, the beautiful illustrations and wide-ranging text expose the global reach of votive practices and the profoundly personal nature behind their creation.Distributed for the Bard Graduate CenterExhibition Schedule:Bard Graduate Center(09/14/18–01/06/19)

Why modern and contemporary art—and art conservation—can’t be understood without taking account of the revolutionary impact of plasticsModern and contemporary art wouldn’t exist without the invention of plastics. From sculpture to paint, and photography to film, plastics have shaped every major medium of art. In turn, plastics have revolutionized art conservation, transforming the possibilities of preservation but also producing new challenges for conservators struggling to preserve toxic and degrading material. Hailed as utopian in the twentieth century, plastics today are often understood as pollution and waste—a central cause of ecological crisis. Plastics is the first book to address the multifaceted history of plastics from the perspective of artists, art historians, conservators, and environmental scientists.Plastics demonstrates that this material cannot easily be summarized as toxic or utopian, catastrophic or necessary. Instead, plastics define the modern world in both its possibility and failures. The book also reveals how artists have been a critical overlooked voice in debates about plastics, and how they have offered theories of the material through works that explore its potential and harmfulness.Presenting a variety of perspectives on the world of plastics through the lens of art, artmaking, art history, and art conservation, Plastics shows why and how coming to terms with this material is critical to understanding not only modern and contemporary art and art conservation but also the crises of the twenty-first century.

How vibrant cultural and material exchanges at the Black Sea frontier shaped European art and material culture in the Middle AgesBeginning in the thirteenth century, a new site of commercial and cultural exchanges formed in the Black Sea region at the meeting place of sea and land, steppe and settlement. A dynamic cultural crossroads marked by political change, shifting trade networks, and human mobility, this frontier shaped the future of European art and material culture for centuries to come. Art and Frontier argues that artifacts circulating in this region shaped tastes from east Asia to western Europe in a period of nascent globalization, where hubs of commerce catered to elites’ greed, ambition, and desire for luxury art.Ittai Weinryb examines the place of art and material culture at a time when consumption and production intensified dramatically in the later Middle Ages. As Genoese and Venetian trading posts on the Black Sea shores transformed the region into a commercial frontier, it became a dynamic contact zone where traveling merchants interacted with local communities and Mongol elites. Through these encounters, the territory came to be seen by Europeans as a profitable region that could be integrated into global trade networks, bringing the aesthetics of mercantilism at the Black Sea frontier into the heart of interiors around the Mediterranean. By tracing how artifacts originating in the Black Sea entered Italian domestic life, Weinryb demonstrates how European expansion fundamentally altered artistic identity, consumption, and concepts of heritage. Art and Frontier make a bold case for the entangled histories of humans, animals, and things on and off the shores of the Black Sea.Beautifully illustrated, Art and Frontier looks at fashion, materials, craft-technologies, and forms of brand-making, revealing the lasting impact of exchanges between the newly formed Mongol world and the emerging proto-capitalist culture of late medieval Italy.

A beautifully illustrated look at how weaving has influenced art, industry, and society worldwideWeaving is one of humanity's oldest technologies and remains central to our global economies. Yet because of the fragility of textiles and their association with women's labor and craft, they have often been marginalized in art history. From the early-modern Andes to the contemporary artist's studio, weaving has shaped artistic practice and raised important questions for conservators and museums responsible for preserving these delicate materials.At its core, weaving is an act of material transformation in which discrete threads are organized into coherent cloth. This book brings together some of today's leading conservationists and art historians to examines this process, highlighting the structural principles that underlie an art often assumed to be intuitive. The contributors explore how weaving reshaped material production and social life across cultures and historical periods, creating networks of skilled makers and new forms of exchange and shared knowledge.Taking readers from the human labor of the handloom to the mechanized production of the industrial age, Weaving demonstrates how a practice at the intersection of art, science, and community has shaped social, technological, and economic histories around the globe.

A beautifully illustrated look at how weaving has influenced art, industry, and society worldwideWeaving is one of humanity's oldest technologies and remains central to our global economies. Yet because of the fragility of textiles and their association with women's labor and craft, they have often been marginalized in art history. From the early-modern Andes to the contemporary artist's studio, weaving has shaped artistic practice and raised important questions for conservators and museums responsible for preserving these delicate materials.At its core, weaving is an act of material transformation in which discrete threads are organized into coherent cloth. This book brings together some of today's leading conservationists and art historians to examines this process, highlighting the structural principles that underlie an art often assumed to be intuitive. The contributors explore how weaving reshaped material production and social life across cultures and historical periods, creating networks of skilled makers and new forms of exchange and shared knowledge.Taking readers from the human labor of the handloom to the mechanized production of the industrial age, Weaving demonstrates how a practice at the intersection of art, science, and community has shaped social, technological, and economic histories around the globe.

This book presents the first full length study in English of monumental bronzes in the Middle Ages. Taking as its point of departure the common medieval reception of bronze sculpture as living or animated, the study closely analyzes the practice of lost wax casting (cire perdue) in western Europe and explores the cultural responses to large scale bronzes in the Middle Ages. Starting with mining, smelting, and the production of alloys, and ending with automata, water clocks and fountains, the book uncovers networks of meaning around which bronze sculptures were produced and consumed. The book is a path-breaking contribution to the study of metalwork in the Middle Ages and to the re-evaluation of medieval art more broadly, presenting an understudied body of work to reconsider what the materials and techniques embodied in public monuments meant to the medieval spectator.

This book presents the first full length study in English of monumental bronzes in the Middle Ages. Taking as its point of departure the common medieval reception of bronze sculpture as living or animated, the study closely analyzes the practice of lost wax casting (cire perdue) in western Europe and explores the cultural responses to large scale bronzes in the Middle Ages. Starting with mining, smelting, and the production of alloys, and ending with automata, water clocks and fountains, the book uncovers networks of meaning around which bronze sculptures were produced and consumed. The book is a path-breaking contribution to the study of metalwork in the Middle Ages and to the re-evaluation of medieval art more broadly, presenting an understudied body of work to reconsider what the materials and techniques embodied in public monuments meant to the medieval spectator.