Christina Maranci

Designed to guide learners through the often disorienting experience of taking a first art history class, this book addresses all aspectsof that total experience. KEY TOPICS Specific chapter topics cover note-taking during lecture, studying for and taking slide exams, writing response papers, methodology, how to critique secondary scholarship, and what to do with an art history degree. For individuals with little or no experience in art history, and an interest in the powerful images that can provide a rich perspective on social, political, and cultural history.

A Survival Guide for Art History Students

Though immediately recognizable in public discourse as a modern state in a political "hot zone," Armenia has a material history and visual culture that reaches back to the Paleolithic era. This book presents a timely and much-needed survey of the arts of Armenia from antiquity to the early eighteenth century C.E. Divided chronologically, it brings into discussion a wide range of media, including architecture, stone sculpture, works in metal, wood, and cloth, manuscript illumination, and ceramic arts. Critically, The Art of Armenia presents this material within historical and archaeological contexts, incorporating the results of specialist literature in various languages. It also positions Armenian art within a range of broader comparative contexts including, but not limited to, the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, Byzantium, the Islamic world, Yuan-dynasty China, and seventeenth-century Europe. The Art of Armenia offers students, scholars, and heritage readers of the Armenian community something long desired but never before available: a complete and authoritative introduction to three thousand years of Armenian art, archaeology, architecture, and design.

An Introduction

The Art of Armenia

Ina Baghdiantz McCabe

Sheila R. Canby

Helen C. Evans

Yolande Crowe

Constance Alchermes

Anna Ballian

Kathrin Colburn

Michael Daniel Findikyan

Rachel Goshgarian

Grigor Grigoryan

Zsuzsanna Gulácsi

Asoghik Karapetian

Anna Leyloyan-Yekmalyan

Sylvie L. Merian

Erin Piñon

Earnestine M. Qiu

Ioanna Rapti

Joanna Rydzkowska-Kozak

Suzan Yalman

At the foot of Mount Ararat on the crossroads of the eastern and western worlds, medieval Armenians dominated international trading routes that reached from Europe to China and India to Russia. As the first people to convert officially to Christianity, they commissioned and produced some of the most extraordinary religious objects of the Middle Ages. These objects&mdash;from sumptuous illuminated manuscripts to handsome carvings, liturgical furnishings, gilded reliquaries, exquisite textiles, and printed books&mdash;show the strong persistence of their own cultural identity, as well as the multicultural influences of Armenia’s interactions with Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Muslims, Mongols, Ottomans, and Europeans. This unprecedented volume, written by a team of international scholars and members of the Armenian religious community, contextualizes and celebrates the compelling works of art that define Armenian medieval culture. It features breathtaking photographs of archaeological sites and stunning churches and monasteries that help fill out this unique history. With groundbreaking essays and exquisite illustrations, Armenia illuminates the singular achievements of a great medieval civilization. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana}

Art, Religion, and Trade in the Middle Ages

Armenia

The monuments of medieval Armenia have been interpreted variously over the centuries as Gothic, Byzantine, Iranian, and "Saracen". However, few scholars have offered satisfactory answers regarding their origins and relations to other architectural traditions. This study examines the scholarship on the subject in East and West and offers a persuasive explanation for the current scholarly impasse. Maranci highlights Josef Strzygowski (1865-1941), a prominent figure in the Vienna School of art history, who was closely allied to the pan-German movements of the early twentieth century. Using unpublished archival materials as well as Strzygowski's numerous publications, the author shows how the ideology of race and nation pervaded Strzygowski's theories of art, and how his ideas and persona have informed - and inhibited - subsequent generations of scholars. The concluding chapter outlines a revised study of Armenian architecture, moving from issues of architectural style to contextual inquiries of patronage and crosscultural exchange. As a detailed survey of medieval monuments and as a historiographical case study, the work addresses a broad audience: not just art historians but all readers interested in how ideology shapes our critical faculties. Christina Maranci received her Ph.D. from the department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University for a dissertation on Armenian architecture. Recipient of Gulbenkian and Mellow Fellowships, she has taught Armenian and Byzantine art at the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Boston University. She is currently a professor of medieval art at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Constructions of Race and Nation

Medieval Armenian Architecture

Christina Maranci

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