menu
{ "item_title" : "The Contact Image", "item_author" : [" Johanna Malt "], "item_description" : "A new conceptual tool for understanding the history of artFrom ancient cave paintings to contemporary sculpture, forms of indexical trace are vital to the human practice of artmaking. Through this wide-ranging exploration, Johanna Malt shows how casts, molds, and imprints (contact images) offer a paradigm for thinking about our relationship to objects and their surfaces as sites of meaning. Engaging and complicating philosophical dualities of absence and presence, art and non-art, original and copy, Malt introduces the contact image as an important new concept for the study of Western art.Close reading examples from 30,000 years of art history, Malt cuts across eras and media to unite diverse forms of artistic production created through instances of contact with the objects of the world. From holy relics to Napoleon's death mask to life casts of the human body by artists such as Duane Hanson and Janine Antoni, as well as conceptual and performance work by Jasper Johns and Yves Klein, The Contact Image traces themes of selfhood, time, negation, and vestige in these tactile encounters.Revisiting fundamental questions about representation, perception, and aesthetics, The Contact Image is a sophisticated provocation for a theory of art built on the tension and oscillations that emerge when we explore how artworks embody opposites.Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/51/791/538/1517915384_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "40.00", "online_price" : "40.00", "our_price" : "40.00", "club_price" : "40.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }
The Contact Image|Johanna Malt

The Contact Image : Casts, Imprints, and Other Traces in Art

PRE-ORDER NOW:
local_shippingShip to Me
Preorder. This item will be available on December 22, 2026 .
FREE Shipping for Club Members help

Other Available Formats

Paperback
40.00
Hardcover
$160.00

show all formats

Overview

A new conceptual tool for understanding the history of art

From ancient cave paintings to contemporary sculpture, forms of indexical trace are vital to the human practice of artmaking. Through this wide-ranging exploration, Johanna Malt shows how casts, molds, and imprints ("contact images") offer a paradigm for thinking about our relationship to objects and their surfaces as sites of meaning. Engaging and complicating philosophical dualities of absence and presence, art and non-art, original and copy, Malt introduces the contact image as an important new concept for the study of Western art.

Close reading examples from 30,000 years of art history, Malt cuts across eras and media to unite diverse forms of artistic production created through instances of contact with "the objects of the world." From holy relics to Napoleon's death mask to life casts of the human body by artists such as Duane Hanson and Janine Antoni, as well as conceptual and performance work by Jasper Johns and Yves Klein, The Contact Image traces themes of selfhood, time, negation, and vestige in these tactile encounters.

Revisiting fundamental questions about representation, perception, and aesthetics, The Contact Image is a sophisticated provocation for a theory of art built on the tension and oscillations that emerge when we explore how artworks embody opposites.

Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

This item is Non-Returnable

Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781517915384
  • ISBN-10: 1517915384
  • Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
  • Publish Date: December 2026
  • Shipping Weight: 0.93 pounds
  • Page Count: 272

Related Categories

You May Also Like...

    1

BAM Customer Reviews