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A review by rachelleahdorn
History of Beauty by Umberto Eco
4.0
Dense.
I had to simply assign myself to get through the book. Though I read the book and made an honest attempt to absorb a goodly amount of the information, I suspect that I missed entire theses in my reading.
One reason is that the writing in supported with both images and text. Before I began the book I thought it was mostly an art historical history of beauty. I didn't realize how great a role writing, especially poetry and philosophy, would play in the theories expressed and discussed in the book. I am an artist and art instructor, but my grounding in philosophy is mediocre and my poetry background is almost nil. I was much better able to understand the arguments and explanations when they referred to art images (those included in the book or those left out) than when they were supported by poetry, philosophy, literature or music.
The writing is very academic and the book is full of both quality color reproductions of artworks and excerpts from many many written works. In the written works context was sometimes limited and this added to my feeling of being lost or confused.
I would expect the book to be used more as a textbook--a graduate level textbook supported by other text, readings and discussions. This is not a light read.
I had to simply assign myself to get through the book. Though I read the book and made an honest attempt to absorb a goodly amount of the information, I suspect that I missed entire theses in my reading.
One reason is that the writing in supported with both images and text. Before I began the book I thought it was mostly an art historical history of beauty. I didn't realize how great a role writing, especially poetry and philosophy, would play in the theories expressed and discussed in the book. I am an artist and art instructor, but my grounding in philosophy is mediocre and my poetry background is almost nil. I was much better able to understand the arguments and explanations when they referred to art images (those included in the book or those left out) than when they were supported by poetry, philosophy, literature or music.
The writing is very academic and the book is full of both quality color reproductions of artworks and excerpts from many many written works. In the written works context was sometimes limited and this added to my feeling of being lost or confused.
I would expect the book to be used more as a textbook--a graduate level textbook supported by other text, readings and discussions. This is not a light read.