Scenography and Art History

The editors of this provocative and stimulating collection of essays use the concepts of scenography and art history to mutually challenge and expand the analytic potential of each to provide important new strategies for exploring the increasingly complex world of contemporary art. * Marvin Carlson, Distinguished Professor, Theatre and Performance, CUNY, USA *
The essays collected in the present volume shift the conversation with scenography away from definitions, and this opens terminology—scenography, scenographics—but also theoretical parameters. … The anthology seeks to give scenography its voice and in so doing, challenges easy boundaries between disciplines and forges new methodologies for thinking with and through scenographic agency. … Scenography and Art History opens its dialogue with art and its histories … at a time when reconceiving the material and imaginative encounters between times, spaces and bodies has never been more urgent and necessary. * Marsha Meskimmon, Professor of Transnational Art and Feminism, and Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies, Loughborough University, UK *
A book devoted to the interfaces of scenography and art history is long overdue for numerous reasons. ... As the authors deftly argue, art history has been as ready to dismiss scenography on the same grounds that, until recently, allowed theatre and performance scholars to brush it off as purely decorative (as a practice) or vocational (as a form of thinking). The marriage of these subjects is, consequently, a welcome and exciting addition to the growing library of scenography scholarship and its many possible futures beyond theatre. * Rachel Hann, Senior Lecturer in Performance & Design, Northumbria University, UK *
Scenography and Art History is a thrillingly multifaceted and innovative collection of cross-disciplinary case studies unlocking the potentials of scenography as an overlooked sphere, concept and phenomenon in relation to art history as well as to other aesthetic disciplines. * Andrea Kollnitz, Associate professor in Art History, Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, Sweden *
Spatial, temporal, affective, critical, and embodied dimensions of scenographic perspectives inform this cross-disciplinary, multifaceted anthology. An unprecedented dialogue between art history and scenography, this volume is both urgent and necessary, exploring the multisensory workings that can shape culture through scenographic phenomena. * Donatella Barbieri, Senior Research Fellow and Principal Lecturer in design for performance, University of the Arts London, UK *
This important study shifts our perceptions and understandings of what scenography is. It shows us how agential modes of creative practice can lead towards new theoretical frameworks and how the expanded relationality between objects, subjects, spaces, and ideas can help us forging new realities within and outside the world of art history. * Alda Terracciano, Participatory Design Consultant at The Sloane Lab (AHRC TaNC Programme), UCL Department of Information Studies, UK *
The book is a very important contribution to current discussions on multisensory art historical and contemporary events by proposing scenography both as a theoretical concept and as a practical exercise in the field of art history and related disciplines. * Andrea Sommer-Mathis, Former Senior Research Asscociate at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria *
Bypassing conventional interdisciplinary anthologies, this collection illuminates the primacy of the physical body and the spatial and material allure it evinces on stage and in visual artistry. Contributions from diverse scholars, sometimes working in direct collaboration, illuminate the many ways in which the performative operates both in real time and in allusive visual form. * Sarah R Cohen, Professor and Chair, Department of Art and Art History, University at Albany, SUNY, USA *