Real Spaces
Encyclopedia
Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism is an influential non-fiction book by art historian David Summers
, who aims to reconcile Western art history
to artistic cultural production around the world from all time periods.
In the book, Summers creates his own art history methodology to explore spatial attributes of art and architecture and their connection to social functions throughout time. He disregards traditional formal and iconographical art historical models, aiming to explore cultural traditions from around the world within the chapters.
’s Salt Cellar of Francis I, of 1539-43 to other artworks like Late Neolithic Arrowheads. The conceptual themes, such as fracture, become critical tools throughout the book.
Hogan
.
’s, Untitled (Looking Down from the Wireless Tower, Berlin) of 1932.
artistic interpretation that privileges the form or shape of the art object. Throughout the text, Summers uses various definitions he creates or reinterprets as a way to understand art objects based primarily on their form, which Summers believes, leads into cultural or social meanings of art.
David Summers
David Summers is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Art Theory and Italian Renaissance Art at the University of Virginia. He holds a B.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D. from Yale University . He taught at Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pittsburgh before accepting an appointment to...
, who aims to reconcile Western art history
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
to artistic cultural production around the world from all time periods.
In the book, Summers creates his own art history methodology to explore spatial attributes of art and architecture and their connection to social functions throughout time. He disregards traditional formal and iconographical art historical models, aiming to explore cultural traditions from around the world within the chapters.
Introduction
Summers divides the world into "Real Space," the space we share with other people and objects and "Virtual Space," space that exists within two dimensions which people "seem to see." He explains, “Real space is the space we find ourselves sharing with other people and things; virtual space is space represented on a surface, space we ‘”seem to see.’ In fact, space can only be represented visually as virtual, but at the same time we always encounter a virtual space in a real space.”Facture
Facture is understood as an indication that an object has been made. Summers considers concepts of form, such as seriality, diachronicity, etc. Some are given new definitions, others are adjusted in relation to the existing literature; others do not change meaning at all. Summers relates and interconnects the concepts together in relationship to artworks such as Benvenuto CelliniBenvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, painter, soldier and musician, who also wrote a famous autobiography. He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism.-Youth:...
’s Salt Cellar of Francis I, of 1539-43 to other artworks like Late Neolithic Arrowheads. The conceptual themes, such as fracture, become critical tools throughout the book.
Places
Places is based on that “places, as real social spaces, provide the possibility for the actual statement of relations of difference" The chapter discusses the concepts of difference (emphasizing its spatial qualities), centers and diasporas, shrines precincts, boundaries, paths, alignments and orientations, and the idea of a periphery and division of land outside the sanctum. For example, a NajahoNavajo people
The Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...
Hogan
Hogan
A hogan is the primary traditional home of the Navajo people. Other traditional structures include the summer shelter, the underground home, and the sweat house...
The Appropriation of the Centre
The Appropriation of the Centre gathers Egyptian, Akkadian, Roman, Khmer, Chinese, and French examples to articulate the change from cultures in which rulers appropriate the center. Rulers use centre as, “the point where the world is defined, with its values of collective generation, and the combination of notional ‘cosmic’ order and vital centrality provides the political order” For example, Shi Huangdi’s capital of XianyangXianyang
Xianyang is a former capital of China in Shaanxi province, on the Wei River, a few kilometers upstream from Xi'an. It has an area of...
.
Images
Images opens with a realignment of discussions on the origins of images, proposing that "images are fashioned in order to make present in social spaces what for some reason is not present" They are therefore substitutive, and it is important to study their "conditions of presentation" and "the relations of those conditions to our own spatiotemporality."Planarity
Planarity follows the development of planar orders "as they shape and enable all kinds of routine, second-natural practices and activities" Concepts that follow from planarity include order (which is one of the basic relations between parts of an image, but is also "analogous to the order of the parts of something to which the image refers," measure and proportion, hierarchy, framing and division, symmetries, oppositions, profiles and frontal figures, harmony, ratio, grids, and maps.Virtuality
Virtuality concerns the capacity to complete images by seeing three dimensions in two or by perceiving what is absent from what is given. Virtuality raises the problem of illusion, and effigies, narratives, and doubting or skepticism.Conditions of Modernity
Conditions of Modernity examines “the conditions of presentation, trying to characterize the formation of Western modernity as a tradition of place and image-making traditions.” Summers examines László Moholy-NagyLászló Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...
’s, Untitled (Looking Down from the Wireless Tower, Berlin) of 1932.
Post-Formalism
Summers proposes that Western art history and world art history can be united by Post-Formalism, a new type of formalistFormalism (art)
In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content...
artistic interpretation that privileges the form or shape of the art object. Throughout the text, Summers uses various definitions he creates or reinterprets as a way to understand art objects based primarily on their form, which Summers believes, leads into cultural or social meanings of art.