Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, Preposterous History

By Mieke Bal

Book Overview

As period, as style, as sensibility, the Baroque remains elusive, its definition subject to dispute. Perhaps this is so in part because baroque vision resists separation of mind and body, form and matter, line and color, image and discourse. In Quoting Caravaggio, Mieke Bal deploys this insight of entanglement as a form of art analysis, exploring its consequences for both contemporary and historical art, as well as for current conceptions of history.

Mieke Bal's primary object of investigation in Quoting Caravaggio is not the great seventeenth-century painter, but rather the issue of temporality in art. In order to retheorize linear notions of influence in cultural production, Bal analyzes the productive relationship between Caravaggio and a number of late-twentieth-century artists who "quote" the baroque master in their own works. These artists include Andres Serrano, Carrie Mae Weems, Ken Aptekar, David Reed, and Ana Mendieta, among others. Each chapter of Quoting Caravaggio shows particular ways in which quotation is vital to the new art but also to the source from which it is derived. Through such dialogue between present and past, Bal argues for a notion of "preposterous history" where works that appear chronologically first operate as an aftereffect caused by the images of subsequent artists.

Quoting Caravaggio is a rigorous, rewarding work: it is at once a meditation on history as creative, nonlinear process; a study of the work of Caravaggio and the Baroque; and, not least, a brilliant critical exposition of contemporary artistic representation and practice.

" A] profoundly enlivening exercise in art criticism, in which the lens of theory magnifies rather than diminishes its object. . . . A] remarkable book. . . . The power of Quoting Caravaggio resides in the intelligence and authority of the writer."--Roger Malbert, Times Literary Supplement

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226035573
• ISBN13: 9780226035574
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 2.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.8" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

visual narratology

This is a joy to read for someone who loves Caravaggio and who's interested in modern art. The book is full of wonderful prints of art works and reading the comparisons between baroque masterpieces and modern installation art and paintings increases my pleasure in both. In addition, Mieke Bal is a prominent narratologist, and her discussions of the narrative aspects of the visual art she discusses are fascinating. She proposes a narratology that surpasses the limited formalist categories, and theorises a narration in visual art, both in art with textual components and seemingly abstract, or at least non-figurative art. This interdisciplinary is very valuable at a time when discussions of narrative in visual art and new media generally are divided into an exaggerated formalist denial of narrativity or a naive assumption that "everything is narrative".

Spectacular images, intelligent writing

I've never seen such high quality color reproduction in an academic text. Chicago UP should be congratulated for doing such a fine job. Gorgeous images. And the choice of images is thought-provoking - a wonderful array of artists. Bal's argument made me think about artists like Serrano in a new way. I wasn't familiar with Ken Aptekar, but I'll definitely try to find out more about his work. Bal's writing is lucid, intelligent - stimulating stuff.

gorgeous provocative book

a terrific study of history and questions of influence in the arts...spectacular design and color illustrations.