Standing. Seated. Reclining. Kneeling. Bending. Crouching. Running. World-renowned photographer
Mark Edward Smith has captured women of every age and form in every type of movement, then gathered his striking, unusual images into The Nude Female Figure. An indispensable reference for
artists who have limited access to live figure models,
this remarkable book features striking images
of shapely young women as well as elegiac photos of
more mature women. The models in these...

Anyone who has strolled through the halls of a museum knows that portraits occupy a central place in the history of art. But did portraits, as such, exist in the medieval era? Stephen Perkinson s "The Likeness of the King" challenges the canonical account of the invention of modern portrait practices, offering a case against the tendency of recent scholarship to identify likenesses of historical personages as the first modern portraits.

Unwilling to accept the anachronistic nature of these claims, Perkinson both resists and complicates grand narratives of portraiture art that ignore...

Since the late 1970s human remains in museum collections have been subject to claims and controversies, such as demands for repatriation by indigenous groups who suffered under colonization. These requests have been strongly contested by scientists who research the material and consider it unique evidence.

This book charts the influences at play on the contestation over human remains and examines the construction of this problem from a cultural perspective. It shows that claims on dead bodies are not confined to once colonized groups. A group of British Pagans, Honouring...

Acknowledging that representations of men confronting violence and pain can reinforce ideas of manly tenacity, Kent L. Brintnall also argues that they reveal the...

While best know for his landscapes, French painter Camille Corot nonetheless left in his wake a considerable number of rarely exhibited yet highly sought figure paintings. And while Corot initially used these oil studies to improve the quality of his free composition for later historical and narrative landscapes, it was not long before his figure paintings became autonomous works, prized for their direct portrayal of emotional and spiritual states. Standing out in Corot's creative output is the remarkable oil painting "A Girl Reading." This volume puts this impressive painting into context...

Since The Turkish Bath (1863) by the French painter Ingres, the Far Eastern woman has to many been a symbol of pleasures out of reach or forbidden. Seafaring explorers, military adventurers and simple travellers from Europe over the centuries have all been enthralled by the exotic nature of the oriental woman, her foreignness accentuated by the gentle pallor of her skin. Thus arose the myth that she, of all women, was in possession of the knowledge of certain refi ned pleasures. Historically, in the traditions of both China and Japan, women have been required to respond at least...