The Trouble with Space in Visual Art

Controversies, Contradictions and its Rise to Prominence

James Hyde, a practicing painter, boldly revises the concept of space in the European history of art. He presents it as a concept bound to historical circumstance, developing —sometimes contentiously—in philosophy, mathematics and science, and finally emerging in 20th century theorizations of art. Using primary documents, Hyde exposes what many will find surprising—that space only becomes part of the descriptive and analytic apparatus of art and architecture at the turn of the 20th century, not earlier.

Hyde examines narratives that have shaped our understanding of the history of art and their explanatory efficacy in the context of the transformations of 13th and 15th century Italian art. He offers insights into the relationship between painting, architecture, icons and narrative pictures, the effects of St. Francis’s miracles on painting and the essential diagrammatical nature of Renaissance perspective. The arrival of space into discussions about art introduces Kant, Leibniz, Apollonaire and Adolf von Hildebrand into the story. Hyde considers how and why artists and historians appropriated space at the end of the 19th century, as well as how space moved from the discourse of Neoclassical sculpture and Cubism to its prominence in discussions of art today.

Hyde’s original reading of the definition of space and the cultural forces that shaped it provides a re-envisioning of the foundations of art history and the philosophy of art.

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