Behind the Angel of History

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A01=Annie Bourneuf
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Age Group_Uncategorized
Angelus Novus
Author_Annie Bourneuf
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AG
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_art-fashion-photography
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
First World War
German-Jewish
Language_English
Martin Luther
PA=Available
Paul Klee
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
R. H. Quaytman
softlaunch
Walter Benjamin

Product details

  • ISBN 9780226816708
  • Weight: 739g
  • Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
  • Publication Date: 24 Sep 2022
  • Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
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The story of artist R. H. Quaytman’s discovery of an engraving hidden behind a famous artwork by Paul Klee.
 
This book begins with artist R. H. Quaytman uncovering something startling about a picture by Paul Klee. Pasted beneath Klee’s 1920 Angelus Novus—famous for its role in the writings of its first owner, Walter Benjamin—Quaytman found that Klee had interleaved a nineteenth-century engraving of Martin Luther, leaving just enough visible to provoke questions.
 
Behind the Angel of History reveals why this hidden face matters, delving into the intertwined artistic, political, and theological issues consuming Germany in the wake of the Great War. With the Angelus Novus, Klee responded to a growing call for a new religious art. For Benjamin, Klee’s Angelus became bound up with the prospect of meaningful dialogue among religions in Germany.
 
Reflecting on Klee’s, Benjamin’s, and Quaytman’s strategies of superimposing conflicting images, Annie Bourneuf reveals new dimensions of complexity in this iconic work and the writing it inspired.
 
Annie Bourneuf is professor of art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of Paul Klee: The Visible and the Legible, which was also published by the University of Chicago Press and won the 2016 Robert Motherwell Book Award.
 

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