Foreign Rights

Anita Albus

The Art of Arts

There once was a time where science was regarded as art and art as science. In a competition of the senses the eye triumphed over the ear and painting represented the art of all arts. It was the painter‘s aim to reconcile the sensorial side with the intelligible side, and his wish was to disappear in the detail like the good Lord.

Anita Albus describes the development of illusory painting in the 15th, 16th and 17th century by using a few examples of works of art by well known and lesser known European masters. As a scientist, she stands in the tradition of Panofsky; as a painter she sees things that have never been perceived by anyone else; as a narrator she knows how to describe abstract things vividly and suspensefully. Her method demands being able to distinguish between different levels and to be able to synthesize, like the old technique of painting in layers.

The first twelve chapters of the book are devoted to the visibility of the invisible in Jan van Eyck‘s art, in his view, perspective, painting technique and philosophy. The description of the genre "woodland scenery", "still life" and "forest soil" takes up the second part. Among butter- flies, bumble-bees and dragonflies Vladimir Nabokov appears as a witness for the fact that that which has been condemned to disappear in the fine arts lives on in literature. After a glance at the presence of the past and some conjecture as to its future, in the third part focuses on the substance that colours pigment, which became a victim of paint method production in the 19th century.