Bøger af Edith Balas

There are no surviving documents that explain Michelangelo's complex sculptural program for the Medici Chapel. The work as we have it is no more than an unfinished, fragmentary realization of the artist's original conception. Here, Balas contends that the artist deliberately veiled his meaning in obscurity, making his images, like the language of Neoplatonic philosophers, intelligible only to an intellectual elite. Assuming the role of the Magus, Michelangelo conceived a cryptic, magical world of potent allegorical images designed not simply or primarily to commemorate the departed Medici but to help achieve elevation for their souls. Illustrations.

Joseph Csaky (1888-1971), a neglected pioneer of early Modernism, was a native of Hungary who became a dedicated member of the Parisian avant-garde. He took part in the 1912 Section d'Or Exhibition, considered by many to mark the high point of the Cubist movement. He was an intimate friend of such innovative giants as Picasso, Braque, & Lager. One of the first artists to apply Cubist principles to sculpture, Csaky produced a substantial body of work comparable in quality to that of Brancusi & Archipenko; yet he spent the last 30 years of his life in obscurity & was virtually destitute at his death. This ground breaking study includes a detailed discussion of his career, over 100 illus. of his major sculpture, & a translation of the artist's autobio. that provides a wealth of new info. about the early Parisian avant-garde.