The Presence of Images

Presenting a long-term informal interview, this book’s contents span the spring of 2017 and early January 2023. This was a conversation between friends, protracted by phone calls and home visits, but with that spark of electric excitement fed by shared interests and desires. Here, Hans Belting, one of the greatest art historians ever, recounts his intellectual parabola. Wandering from post-war Germany to the United States in the late 1950s, to Europe in the second half of the twentieth century and into the beginning of the new millennium, readers will slowly uncover the common threads of his life story: the shimmering function of images between body and object, an openness to collaboration and interdisciplinarity, and of course, a fascination with the history of images from the Middle Ages up to the contemporary moment.

• Ivan Foletti, Introduction. Meeting Hans Belting
• part 1 The artist and writer on experiencing art. A dance between past and present
• part 2 Remembering the masters
• part 3 The “icon” as a bridge between East and West
• part 4 From the “tableau” to the Invisible Masterpiece
• part 5 New encounters and new directions
• To conclude. An ongoing dialogue
• Endnotes
• Ivan Foletti, A Biography. In search of the other
• Index
• Copyrights

typesetting & graphic design: Anna Kelblová

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