Between Figure and Ground

The terms "figure" and "ground" became fundamental to art-historical analysis and writing over the course of the twentieth century. But is this dichotomy suited to describe premodern art and artifacts? In Between Figure and Ground: Seeing in Premodernity, essays by Claudia Blümle, Gottfried Boehm, Péter Bokody, Beate Fricke, Bruno Haas, David Young Kim, Aden Kumler, Christopher Lakey, Karin Leonhard, Jürgen Müller, Veronica Peselmann, Christoph Poetsch, Raphael Rosenberg, Tom Steinert, Nicola Suthor, Noa Turel, and Saskia C. Quené call into question long-standing habits of seeing and understanding figure-ground relations, expand art-historical vocabularies, and productively challenge anachronistic attachments to modernist paradigms. Offering new approaches and methodological reflections from art history and theory, Bildwissenschaft, and art historiography, this volume provides stimulating answers to the question: What can be seen and described between premodern figures and grounds?

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• Figure and ground in the context of art-historical analysis
• Transcends binary structures
• seeing and understanding figure-ground relations