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by Peter Gillgren (Author)
Michelangelo's originality as an artist lay not only in ideas about perfection and beauty, but also in his unique approach to the artistic process and art's site specificity. Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel and the sculptures of the Medici chapel and Julius II's tomb should all be understood as dramatic interventions at their sites. Instead of adapting to and blending in with their surroundings, these are works that interact with the space, the ceremonies, and the music. In addition, the many uncompleted works and the artist's own writings point to an aesthetic of continuous processing, where the fundamentals remain as important as the finished work. In Siting Michelangelo, Peter Gillgren investigates Michelangelo's works as conceived with the aim of altering and rearranging what was already in place. Gillgren's study shows that not only must we look closely at works of art, but we must fully consider them as embodiments of their sitedness. This original and thought-provoking book applies a fresh critical perspective to the essentials of the discipline of art history.
Author Biography
Peter Gillgren is a Swedish art historian and holder of the Anders Zorn professorship at Stockholm University. He received his PhD from Uppsala University in 1995 on a dissertation about painted memorial tablets in Early Modern Sweden. He has published numerous articles on Renaissance and Baroque art, as well as on the theories of Art History. In 2009 he published a book on art and identity in 16th century Sweden, and his book on the spectatorship and site specificity of Federico Barocci's art was published by Ashgate in 2011.
