To draw is to understand what we see. In The Undressed Art, writer-naturalist Peter Steinhart investigates the rituals, struggles, and joys of drawing. Reflecting on what is known about the brain’s role in the drawing process, Steinhart explores the visual learning curve: how children begin to draw, how most of them stop, and what brings adults back to this deeply human art form later in life. He considers why the face and figure are such commanding subjects and describes the delicate collaboration of the artist and model. Here is a powerful reminder that no revolution in art or technology can undermine our vital need to draw.

Collects essays about the years the author spent as a professional nude model.

Representations of sexual difference (whether visual or textual) have become an area of much theoretical concern and investigation in recent feminist scholarship. Yet although a wide range of relevant evidence survives from the ancient Near East, it has been exceptional for those studying women in the ancient world to stray outside the traditional bounds of Greece and Rome. Women of Babylon is a much-needed historical/art historical study that investigates the concepts of femininity which prevailed in Assyro-Babylonian society. Zainab Bahrani's detailed analysis of how the culture of ancient Mesopotamia defined sexuality and gender roles both in, and through, representation is enhanced by a rich selection of visual material extending from 6500 BC - 1891 AD. Professor Bahrani also investigates the ways in which women of the ancient Near East have been perceived in classical scholarship up to the nineteenth century.

Exploring the popularity and meaning of neoclassical dress in the 1790s, this book traces its evolution in Europe and relationship to other artistic media.

A gloriously illustrated examination of the origins and development of the nude as an artistic subject in Renaissance Europe Reflecting an era when Europe looked to both the classical past and a global future, this volume explores the emergence and acceptance of the nude as an artistic subject. It engages with the numerous and complex connotations of the human body in more than 250 artworks by the greatest masters of the Renaissance. Paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, and book illustrations reveal private, sometimes shocking, preoccupations as well as surprising public beliefs—the Age of Humanism from an entirely new perspective. This book presents works by Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, and Martin Schongauer in the north and Donatello, Raphael, and Giorgione in the south; it also introduces names that deserve to be known better. A publication this rich in scholarship could only be produced by a variety of expert scholars; the sixteen contributors are preeminent in their fields and wide-ranging in their knowledge and curiosity. The structure of the volume—essays alternating with shorter texts on individual artworks—permits studies both broad and granular. From the religious to the magical and the poetic to the erotic, encompassing male and female, infancy, youth, and old age, The Renaissance Nude examines in a profound way what it is to be human.

Is there a need for books about women in the arts, exhibitions of women painters, readings of women’s poetry, concerts of music by women composers, and conferences highlighting women in the arts? One might believe that, today, the playing field is level, but categories still place the word “woman” before the discipline: woman composer, woman poet, woman artist, and so on. The ultimate goal is to move the debate away from gender categories which reinforce the notion that men’s creativity is not only the norm but better. There are many women challenging the status quo, and succeeding. Change comes slowly since many men and some women in positions of power do not see gender stereotyping as a problem. It’s been nearly a millennium since Hildegard von Bingen composed music and illuminated manuscripts. Shouldn’t the time when it was unusual to be a “woman composer” have past? As the great 20th century pedagogue and composer Nadia Boulanger said, “I've been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that’s a job where I don’t think sex plays much part.” Indeed, books like Women in the Arts: Eccentric Essays II serve to bring society just a little closer to equality by keeping the accomplishments of women at the forefront of consciousness. Technology today is a great asset in documenting the productivity of women, and all artistic creations can be codified and archived, in contrast to earlier times when creative women’s birth and death dates are unknown, not even taking into account all their lost creations. The essays contained in Women in the Arts: Eccentric Essays II reflect the lives of creative artists, whether they are teachers, scholars and researchers recovering previous generations of women artists, or practicing artists creating new masterpieces. The promotion of the roles of women in the arts is integral, so that they may serve as a resource for future generations of students, scholars and researchers, and to enhance generations to come, enriching culture through the arts.