Short description:

The absent body is represented in two distinct periods of art: medieval art using the absent body for religious reflection and contemporary art using the absent body from a secular perspective. In this collection, some essays deal broadly with the human condition, such as the abstract notion of the unity or separateness of the mind and body or a need to distance art from the physically idealized body as a comment on the less than ideal nature of contemporary humanity, while other examples deal specifically with a particular body, such as the body of Christ or the body of the artist.

Long description:

This collection of essays considers artistic works that deal with the body without a visual representation. It explores a range of ways to represent this absence of the figure: from abject elements such as bodily fluids and waste to surrogate forms including reliquaries, manuscripts, and cloth. The collection focuses on two eras, medieval and modern, when images referencing the absent body have been far more prolific in the history of art. In medieval times, works of art became direct references to the absent corporal essence of a divine being, like Christ, or were used as devotional aids. By contrast, in the modern era artists often reject depictions of the physical body in order to distance themselves from the history of the idealized human form. Through these essays, it becomes apparent, even when the body is not visible in a work of art, it is often still present tangentially. Though the essays in this volume bridge two historical periods, they have coherent thematic links dealing with abjection, embodiment, and phenomenology. Whether figurative or abstract, sacred or secular, medieval or modern, the body maintains a presence in these works even when it is not at first apparent.

Table of Contents:

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Emily Kelley and Elizabeth Richards Rivenbark

Chapter 1: Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Milk: ?Fluid? Veneration in Medieval Devotional Art

Vibeke Olson

Chapter 2: "No Living Presence": Human Absence in the Early Work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg

Rebekah Scoggins

Chapter 3: Maria Ecclesia: The Aachen Marienschrein as an Alternate Body for the Virgin Mary

Lisa Ciresi

Chapter 4: Drawn to Scale: The Medieval Monastic?s Virtual Pilgrimage through Sacred Measurement

Natalie Mandziuk

Chapter 5: Cloth as a Sign of the Absent Body in American Sculpture from the 1960s

Elizabeth Richards Rivenbark

Chapter 6: Imagining the Sorrows of Death and Pains of Hell in the Hours of Catherine of Cleves

Jennifer Feltman

Chapter 7: The Absent Body as Divine Reflection in Parmigianino?s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Margaret Morse

Chapter 8: A Clear Preoccupation with Death: The Absent Body in Mark Rothko?s Mature Style

Michael R. Smith, Jr.

Bibliography

Index