Holly, M.: The Melancholy Art (eBook and Hardcover).

8/10/16, 12:54

Google full text of our books:

Princeton Custom Search

Title

New Book E-mails

New In Print
PUP Blog

Google Search Full Text

The Melancholy Art

Michael Ann Holly
Hardcover | 2013 | $29.95 | 22.95 | ISBN: 9780691139340
224 pp. | 6 x 9 | 41 halftones.

Videos/Audios
Princeton APPS

Add to Shopping Cart

eBook | ISBN: 9781400844951 |
Our eBook editions are available from these online vendors

Sample Chapters
Subjects
Series

Reviews | Table of Contents

Chapter 1[PDF]
Google full text of this book:

Catalogs
Princeton Legacy
Library
Exam/Desk Copy
Textbooks
Media/Reviewers
Rights/Permissions
Ordering
Recent Awards
Princeton Shorts
Freshman Reading

Melancholy is not only about sadness, despair, and loss. As Renaissance artists and philosophers acknowledged long ago,
it can engender a certain kind of creativity born from a deep awareness of the mutability of life and the inevitable cycle of
birth and death. Drawing on psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the intellectual history of the history of art, The Melancholy Art
explores the unique connections between melancholy and the art historian's craft.
Though the objects art historians study are materially present in our world, the worlds from which they come are forever lost
to time. In this eloquent and inspiring book, Michael Ann Holly traces how this disjunction courses through the history of art
and shows how it can give rise to melancholic sentiments in historians who write about art. She confronts pivotal and vexing
questions in her discipline: Why do art historians write in the first place? What kinds of psychic exchanges occur between art
objects and those who write about them? What institutional and personal needs does art history serve? What is lost in
historical writing about art?
The Melancholy Art looks at how melancholy suffuses the work of some of the twentieth century's most powerful and poetic
writers on the history of art, including Alois Riegl, Franz Wickhoff, Adrian Stokes, Michael Baxandall, Meyer Schapiro, and
Jacques Derrida. A disarmingly personal meditation by one of our most distinguished art historians, this book explains why
to write about art is to share in a kind of intertwined pleasure and loss that is the very essence of melancholy.
Reviews:

PUP Europe
About Us

"Enchanting."--Holland Cotter, New York Times

Contact Us

"Nostalgic and plaintive, this title's examination of the work of art historians is an enjoyable literary exercise that will foster
discussion among art historians and their students."--Library Journal

Links
F.A.Q.

"To consider melancholy in art beyond the limits of despondency, loss, and grief is a refreshing way to induce a different
space and energy between the past of the artwork and the viewer's present. In these erudite essays, art historian Michael
Ann Holly makes case for works of art--'these beautiful orphans'--that reinvest in melancholia as the signifier and the
signified."--Greta Aart, Cerise Press

PUP Home

"In support of her argument, Holly marshals a wealth of erudition indicative of formidable trans-historical, interdisciplinary
expertise. . . . With the utmost refinement, Holly's own poetic resonance echoes from artful analogy and suggestive
imagery."--Giovanna Costantini, Leonardo Reviews
"While the driving power of melancholy remains unclear, many readers will be intrigued by this highly personal take on the
profession."--Choice
"Holly's elegant and thoughtful book focuses on the encounter of the viewer with the work of art."--Kathryn Murphy, Apollo
Magazine

Send me emails
about new books in:
Art
European History
World History /
Comparative History
More Choices

"Exemplary."--Ivan Gaskell, Brooklyn Rail

More reviews
Table of Contents:
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xxiii
1 The Melancholy Art 1
2 Viennese Ghosts 25
3 Stones of Solace 53
4 Patterns in the Shadows 73
5 Mourning and Method 95
Postscript 117

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9965.html

Page 1 of 2

Holly, M.: The Melancholy Art (eBook and Hardcover).

8/10/16, 12:54

Notes 133
Bibliography 165
Index 183
Series:
Essays in the Arts
Subject Areas:
Art
European History
World History / Comparative History

Shopping Cart options:

For ebooks:
Our eBook editions are available
from these online vendors:
Google Play eBook Store
Intel Education Study eBook
Store

Many of our ebooks are available through

library electronic resources including these platforms:
Books at JSTOR
Ebrary
Ebook Library
EBSCO Ebooks
MyiLibrary
Dawsonera (UK)

For hardcover/paperback orders in United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia,

and Australia

Hardcover : $29.95 ISBN: 9780691139340

For hardcover/paperback orders in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India, and
Pakistan

Hardcover : 22.95 ISBN: 9780691139340

Prices subject to change without notice

File created: 8/5/2016
Questions and comments to: webmaster@press.princeton.edu
Princeton University Press

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9965.html

Page 2 of 2