• Rochelle Gurstein, "Written in Water: The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art" (Yale UP, 2024)

  • Oct 13 2024
  • Length: 1 hr and 5 mins
  • Podcast

Rochelle Gurstein, "Written in Water: The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art" (Yale UP, 2024)

  • Summary

  • Is there such a thing as a timeless classic? More than a decade ago, Dr. Rochelle Gurstein set out to explore and establish a solid foundation for the classic in the history of taste. To her surprise, that history instead revealed repeated episodes of soaring and falling reputations, rediscoveries of long-forgotten artists, and radical shifts in the canon, all of which went so completely against common knowledge that it was hard to believe it was true. Where does the idea of the timeless classic come from? And how has it become so fiercely contested? By recovering disputes about works of art from the eighteenth century to the close of the twentieth, in Written in Water: The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art (Yale University Press, 2024) Dr. Gurstein takes us into unfamiliar aesthetic and moral terrain, providing a richly imagined historical alternative to accounts offered by both cultural theorists advancing attacks on the politics of taste and those who continue to cling to the ideal of universal values embodied in the classic. As Gurstein brings to life the competing responses of generations of artists, art lovers, and critics to specific works of art, she makes us see the same object vividly and directly through their eyes and feel, in all its enlarging intensity, what they felt. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
    Show More Show Less
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2
activate_samplebutton_t1

What listeners say about Rochelle Gurstein, "Written in Water: The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art" (Yale UP, 2024)

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.