
Forgery, Replica, Fiction
Temporalities of German Renaissance Art
Christopher Wood(Author)
University of Chicago Press
Published on 1. April 2008
Book
Hardback
416 pages
978-0-226-90597-6 (ISBN)
Description
Today we often identify artifacts with the period when they were made. In more traditional cultures, however, such objects as pictures, effigies, and buildings were valued not as much for their chronological age as for their perceived links to the remote origins of religions, nations, monasteries, and families. As a result, Christopher Wood argues, premodern Germans tended not to distinguish between older buildings and their newer replacements, or between ancient icons and more recent forgeries.But Wood shows that over the course of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, emerging replication technologies - such as woodcut, copper engraving, and movable type - altered the relationship between artifacts and time. Mechanization highlighted the artifice, materials, and individual authorship necessary to create an object, calling into question the replica's ability to represent a history that was not its own. Meanwhile, print catalyzed the new discipline of archaeological scholarship, which began to draw sharp distinctions between true and false claims about the past.
Ultimately, as forged replicas lost their value as historical evidence, they found a new identity as the intentionally fictional image-making we have come to understand as art.
Ultimately, as forged replicas lost their value as historical evidence, they found a new identity as the intentionally fictional image-making we have come to understand as art.
Reviews / Votes
"A remarkably rich, learned, and ingeniously argued history of referential confusion, error, forgery, and fraud in the age before fictionality. I am utterly astonished by the ambition of this book, its synthetic and revisionist daring, and the analytical brilliance Christopher Wood displays throughout in pursuing his theory and its truly far-reaching implications." - Mitchell Merback, author of The Thief, the Cross, and the Wheel"More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
116 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 263 mm
Width: 187 mm
Weight
1132 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-90597-6 (9780226905976)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Christopher Wood is professor of art history at Yale University. He is the author of Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, also published by the University of Chicago Press.