Feeding the Eye : Essays

by Anne Hollander

• ISBN13: 9780374282011
• ISBN10: 0374282013
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1999-10-07
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

A new book on the nourishing powers of visual art-film, painting, dance, and clothes. Since the advent of cinema more than a hundred years ago, visual art has tended to be perceived as if it were in motion, and as the century ends, we notice that artists create less often in fresco or carved stone and more on film or tape, on the dance stage or in the ever changing, ever moving medium of clothes. In this remarkable collection of writing that ranges over art of the past century with unusual depth of historical insight, the noted critic Anne Hollander explores these rich, diverse visual treasures and the underlying themes that connect them. Feeding the Eye opens with a wonderful array of "modern legends"-essays on celebrated figures from Balanchine to Cartier-Bresson, from Kafka to Chanel, from Isadora Duncan to Simone de Beauvoir-who have helped to define our world. Other sections of the book are devoted to the arts of dressing or decorating the human body-Hollander is particularly celebrated for her bold and original interpretations of this theme-and to classic, often misinterpreted artists of the cinema: Chaplin and Garbo, among others. Hollander concludes by asking us to consider how great paintings of the past continue, in many different ways and contexts, to startle us with "the tonic effect of acute optical experience, which is the whole world's natural birthright."

Author Biography

Anne Hollander, past president of PEN American Center, is the author of several books, including Sex and Suits and Moving Pictures. She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
I Some Modern Legends
Isadora Duncan	3	(8)
Franz Kafka	11	(7)
Gabrielle Chanel	18	(10)
Vaslav Nijinsky	28	(7)
Martha Graham	35	(11)
Alix Gres	46	(6)
George Balanchine	52	(17)
Henri Cartier-Bresson	69	(9)
Simone de Beauvoir	78	(13)
Yves St. Laurent	91	(14)
II Modern Arts: Dress
Accounting for Fashion	105	(10)
The Decorated Body	115	(6)
The Tight Corset	121	(7)
Kimono	128	(10)
Men in Black	138	(4)
Fashion and Image	142	(6)
Androgyny	148	(13)
Transvestism	161	(18)
III Modern Arts: Film
Chaplin	179	(12)
Silent Movies	191	(8)
Woman's Movies	199	(7)
Garbo	206	(8)
Elizabeth Taylor	214	(5)
Little Women in the Movies	219	(10)
IV Other Arts, Other Legends
Little Women: The Book	229	(11)
Mary Magdalen	240	(13)
The Power of Images	253	(20)
The Culture of Flowers	273	(13)
Caspar David Friedrich	286	(15)
Schapiro on Impressionism	301	(10)
Titian and Women	311	(14)
Index	325