Katherine Robbins Robbins itibaren Texas itibaren Texas

1920'lerde rezervasyon hayatı. Belki de yazılarının en güzel örneği değil.

Bunun için büyük bir uzun şaşırtıcı inceleme yazdım ama daha iyi bir görünüm elde etmek için kapağı tıklattı geri ok tıkladı ve inanılmaz inceleme gitti. Yeniden yazma isteğine sahip olduğumu sanmıyorum, bu yüzden sizi bu notla bırakıyorum. Bunu sevdim. Bu bir utanç çünkü benim inceleme sevdim eminim. (:

Bu iyi bir öğleden sonra okundu.

In the wake of The Da Vinci Code, the field of art history has had a curious relationship with pop culture, especially mainstream literature. These books remain infinitely more accessible to readers than scholarly writings, and are marketed as if they carry the same amount of factual evidence, but with an enticing story so no one gets bored (overlooking the fact that the subjects were real people, and even as geniuses, were inherently boring). The result is a public that feels informed, but in fact has a sensationalized understanding of artists as heroes and their work as divine manifestations, which serves no purpose except to sell books. The Agony and the Ecstasy is no different, except that it predates The Da Vinci Code by about forty years. It discusses the life of Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti, and its depiction of Michelangelo as a divine figure among us, like Giorgio Vasari's, is largely responsible for Michelangelo's popularity today. So why did I pick up this book in the first place? Simply to make an abstract moral point on a literature-based networking site made up of people with relatively the same intellectual and financial status as myself? No. I can postulate about the publishing industry's negative effects on our culture's self-perception until the cows come home, but the reason I picked this book up is because I cannot remove myself from pop culture. I read it on the reccomendation of art history professors who told me it was upwards towards fabulous. I read it based on comments from family members and friends who talked about the enjoyable experience of artist biography. What a mistake. The book was published in 1961, a time when our understanding of Michelangelo was completely different. Part of this was a result of scholars' refusal to accept the homosexual undertones of his work and life due to contemporary morality. Even so, Stone's bibliography is primarily made up of books published in the nineteenth century, which seems to me to be a direct refusal of any real understanding of Michelangelo, ignoring important biographical information revealed about Michelangelo during the first half of the twentieth century (such as the location of his childhood home) and instead selecting certain outdated facts which create a more easily understood narrative. Yet the purposeful ignorance behind this book is more of a disservice to Michelangelo than other contemporary pop-art history books. A deeper understanding of Michelangelo is neither boring nor confusing but instead gives a more precise explanation for his interest in the human body, muscle and flesh, passion, death, intense joy, melancholy, stone, resurrection, and other ideas left untouched by his contemporaries. This picture of Michelangelo is more human, more relatable than that portrayed by Stone's novel, which inherently blocks the reader from truly understanding Michelangelo and instead forces them on their knees at the altar of a cultural genius.

The best book I have read in a very long time. I will recommend this to everyone and anyone who asks. What a great story, loved the characters, the writing style, the changing voices, everything. I want a sequel because I miss the characters!