The Sun. Source of Light in Art

For as long as humans have been making art, they have turned the the sun as the source of light, warmth and life itself. It appears as a symbol of limitless power, as the personification of gods and of Christ, and as a harbinger of change. Artists have also used the sun as a means of exploring light and colour and as an entrée into the discussions about climate. The first of its kind, this catalogue investigates visual representations of the sun from antiquity to the present day. It is divided into seven roughly chronological sections that look at both epoch-spanning and period specific examples, including symbolic, allegorical representations, the iconography of mythological subjects, and mimetic qualities such as typology, phenomenology, and emotional effect.

It includes more that 200 stunning  reproductions of well- and lesser-known works. Incisive and enlightening texts explore how solar symbolism figures in pre-Christian objects through 17th-century depictions of the “Sun King” Louix XIV; how artists such as Rubens and Monet employed the sun in their narrative paintings; how the impressionists first investigated the sun’s effects on a landscape; how Neo-Impressionist such as Seurat experimented with colour based on Newtonian analysis of the solar spectrum; and how 20th-century artists incorporated a broad array of abstract, surrealistic, and transformative modes of solar representation into a variety of media.

449,00kr.