This fascinating new book explores the world of portraiture from a number of vantage points, and asks key questions about its nature. How has portraiture changed over the centuries? How have portraits represented their subjects, and how have they been interpreted? Issues of identity, modernity, and gender are considered within a cultural and historical context.Shearer West uncovers much intriguing detail about a genre that has often been seen as purely representational, featuring examples from African tribes to Renaissance princes, and from (...) 'stars' such as David and Victoria Beckham to ordinary people. In the process, she shows us how to communicate with the past in an exciting new way. (shrink)

"General and theoretical study devoted entirely to portraiture. Drawing on a broad range of images from Antiquity to the twentieth century, which includes paintings, sculptures, prints, cartoons, postage stamps, medals, documents and photographs... Richard Brilliant investigates the genre as a particular phenomenon in Western art that is especially sensitive to changes in the perceived nature of the individual in society... Brilliant presents a thematic and cogent analysis of the connections between the subject-matter of portraits and the beholders's response--the response he (...) or she makes to the image itself and to the person it represents... the power of this imaginative transaction between the subject, the artist and the beholder... With 85 illustrations, 10 in full colour"--Back cover. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of cultural theorists have made important contributions to the study of the body’s surface. Despite their importance, however, none of these contributions provides us with a systematic framework for understanding why the body’s surface — its skin — matters to the extent that it does. In this article, I seek to provide such a framework and, in doing so, to shed light on why the skin and the self seem to share a special and sometimes (...) strained relationship. To this end, I will present a critical introduction to the work of two contemporary Anglo-American psychoanalysts: Esther Bick and Thomas Ogden. Throughout this introduction, I will show how both Bick and Ogden — despite the fact that they are almost completely unknown outside clinical circles — offer up a host of conceptual tools that could prove useful to cultural theorists interested in making sense of the relationship between the skin and the self. (shrink)