Читать книгу A History of Roman Art онлайн

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The obvious question is why we might need a new book on Roman art. We seem tolerably well stocked with them. I began writing this book because the options for textbooks on Roman art, organized chronologically as I taught my classes, were limited. Factor in the need for many illustrations at a reasonable cost and the options were even more limited. It seemed that an alternative book with those features that emphasized the context of art within Roman social structure and politics and the contributions of various styles to Roman art would fill a niche. Below I outline some of the elements that make up the book and were part of what we perceived would set the book apart.

One of the goals of the book is to integrate the arts into a discussion of the broader cultural context in which they are created. As such the social, political, and cultural environment will be critical to a full understanding of the art. Each chapter, therefore, has some discussion of the non‐art events in the world that affected the form of the arts. These are brief but designed to make the sequence of changes far less arbitrary. A second goal is to avoid what many introductory art history texts convey as a sense of inevitability. Some narratives seem to imply a trajectory of improvement: as artists get better, art improves and new techniques for portraying the human form and landscape, linear perspective, etc. are invented or discovered and then things get better, before they fall apart in the Middle Ages. In this book we reject that perspective. It is necessary to study what might be termed the leading styles of particular periods. Nevertheless, these are not presented as inevitable developments over previous styles. They don’t exist as evolutionary models or improvements. The changes that occur in the art of a particular period represent the response of the visual world to the needs of its makers: artists, patrons, audience, and their selection for their ability to convey the selected lessons or messages to the audience. Some specifics on the book might illustrate this approach.