Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward

Reviews / Votes

* Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2020 * Covering an impressive range of arts, essays touch on Meissen porcelain, etchings and engravings by Hogarth and Paul Revere, paintings by Goya and Copley, photographic portraiture of African American masons, and even masonic folk art in contemporary Haitian voodooism. * Choice * This postcolonial broadening of perspectives is perhaps the gratest yield of this outstanding anthology by Reva Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg...They demonstrate the power of images, whose analysis can reveal cultural transfers, both chronologically and spatially, that are difficult to grasp through written texts. At the same time, the volume shows how fruitful interdisciplinary studies of Freemasonry can be. * Zeitschrift der Deutschen Gesellschaft fuer die Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts * Readers of this book will be rewarded with a greater understanding of the history, importance, and pervasiveness of masonry over the centuries, and its important role in the development of our own country. * Journal of American Culture * This book is a wonderful, detailed scholarly work which explores the relationship between Freemasonry and the visual arts and vice versa ... The book is beautifully illustrated with numerous colour and black & white images that help reveal the way the visual arts, particularly architecture, were influenced by and in turn influenced Freemasonry. * Leonardo Reviews Archive * Freemasonry and the Visual Arts is in many ways a treasure chest of a book. [...] One of the merits of Freemasonry and the Visual Arts is the diversity of the materials assembled, reflecting the fact that Freemasonry itself is far from monolithic, but an adaptable and polymorphous phenomenon. [...] All things considered, Freemasonry and the Visual Arts is a daring publication with many unexpected insights. * Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide * Reva Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg have put together a very interesting lineup of scholarly articles that attempt to analyze the symbols of Freemasonry through an art-historical means of analysis, rather than looking at the symbols of Masonry through a purely historical lens ... This book is a great read for those interested in pursuing further research in this fascinating new area of Masonic art historical scholarship. * The Lamplight: The Quarterly Newsletter of the Chancellor Robert R Livingston Masonic Library of the Grand Lodge of New York * The book is copiously illustrated with 16 color plates and roughly 9 black-and-white figures illustrating each of the essays ... Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. * Choice * Explicating the vast network of interconnections between Freemasonry and the visual arts in multiple societies from the 18th century onward, this book is an invaluable resource of information and analysis. Wolf and Luxenberg have gathered a series of brilliantly insightful essays. * Edward J. Sullivan, Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of the History of Art, New York University, USA * The enormously rich visual culture generated by Freemasonry has not received the attention it deserves from art historians. This pioneering collection of essays provides fascinating and tantalising illustrations of the rich artistic legacy of Freemasonry in many different countries ranging from Europe and America to Haiti, Iran and India across media including paintings, prints, metalwork, jewellery, ceramics and architecture. * Andrew Prescott, Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Glasgow, Scotland * This is a much-needed book on an important subject. The links between freemasonry and the visual arts are many, but their scope has not been fully appreciated. Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward demonstrates how freemasonic symbols and ideas permeate a wide range of visual products, from architecture and urban planning to paintings and porcelain, and how freemasonry's influence can be detected in settings far from the lodges themselves. The book presents a global perspective on its subject, offering essays on Portugal, Iran, and Haiti alongside the better-studied settings of Britain and the United States. It likewise offers models for analyzing fragmentary or hidden historical experiences. Freemasonry and the Visual Arts suggests that art offers opportunities to tap into histories that otherwise would remain lost to us. * Michael Yonan, Professor of Art History, University of Missouri, USA * The enormously rich visual culture generated by Freemasonry has not received the attention it deserves from art historians. This pioneering collection of essays provides fascinating and tantalising illustrations of the rich artistic legacy of Freemasonry in many different countries ranging from Europe and America to Haiti, Iran and India across media including paintings, prints, metalwork, jewellery, ceramics and architecture. * Andrew Prescott, Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Glasgow, Scotland *