"Byzantine Things in the World" by Glenn Peers

Byzantine Things in the World Glenn Peers, Charles Barber, Stephen Caffey, Henri Rico Franses, Richard Shiff

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Format:: Hardback
Publication date:: 18 Jun 2013
ISBN:: 9780300191783
Imprint:: The Menil Collection
Dimensions:: 192 pages: 216 x 267mm
Illustrations:: 100 color illus.
Sales territories:: World

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How did Byzantine culture understand its own objects we now call “art”? This enlightening publication proposes that they saw and experienced clay pilgrim tokens, relief stamps, and icons of saints as dynamic and fully active and alive in the world. The materials used and the sensory impressions they created were an integral part of the Byzantine God-saturated world. Gold was considered a living material and tokens from locations associated with a saint’s physical life extended his or her presence into pilgrims' lives.

This book attempts to overturn conventional art historical thought through a combination of material investigation, historical recovery, and hermeneutic clearing. Distinguished authors argue that categorizing these objects made for Medieval Greek Christians as art is incorrect, instead suggesting that they were rooted in a world with an animistic view of living things.

Provocatively interweaving Byzantine material culture and art with analogs like Kongo nkondi figures and works by James Lee Byars, Donald Judd, and Yves Klein, this volume features the Menil Collection’s superb holdings and fresh perspectives by a range of art historians.

Glenn Peers is a professor of early medieval and Byzantine art at the University of Texas at Austin.