Mimesis or imitation comes in many forms, from animal and plant mimicry to artistic copies 'from life'. This book offers eighteen essays addressing mimesis from diverse perspectives. From the recreation of galaxies to Iron Age torcs, from counterfeit dragons to modern waxworks, each chapter explores facets of material mimesis from prehistory to the present day. The Matter of Mimesis invites readers to compare practices of imitating, faking, and synthesising materials and objects in nature, art and science, raising questions about skills, techniques and politics of making that transcend historical and disciplinary boundaries and inform both our past and future worlds.
Author(s): Marjolijn Bol, E. C. Spary
Series: Studies in Art & Materiality, 7
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 595
City: Leiden
Contents
Figures
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Part I
Substitution
Introduction
1
Counterfeiting Materials, Imitating Nature
2
Looking into Renaissance Wood Intarsia
3
Firing Porphyry in the Italian Renaissance Kiln
Part II
Added-Value
Introduction
4
More (or Less) Than Meets the Eye? Torcs of the European Iron Age
5
Nomadic Silver: Refinement, Transaction, Transformation
6
Restoring, Patinating, Copying, Faking Material Authenticity
Part III
Materialising the Impossible
Introduction
7
Fictitiousness in Non-Polychrome Renaissance Sculpture
8
The Fleshiness of Bronze
9
Anatomical Preparations and Mimetic Expertise
10
The Fleshiness of Wax
Part IV
Preservation
Introduction
11
Scales, Skins, and Carapaces in Antwerp Collections
12
‘Some Slight Eruptive Disease’: Victorian Verisimilitude in Photography and Plastercasting
13
Time and Its Teeth: On Art, Survival and Material
Part V
Making Material Knowledge
Introduction
14
Fake Specimens in the Renaissance
15
Fertile Stones
16
Embodied Making
Part VI
Mimesis Beyond ‘Matter’?
Introduction
17
Material as Subtext in Ephemeral Art
18
“Mock Observations” of Galaxies
Looking Back, Crafting Futures
Afterword
Index
