On Beauty by Umberto Eco

On Beauty by Umberto Eco

Beauty is neither a history of art, nor a history of aesthetics but Umberto Eco draws on the histories of both these disciplines to define the ideas of beauty that have informed sensibilities from the classical world to modern times. In terms of form and style, Beauty has been conceived for a vast and diversified readership: taking in painting, sculpture, architecture, film, photography, the decorative arts, novels and poems, it offers a rich and intelligent panorama of this huge subject. It traces the philosophy of aesthetics through history and examines some of the many treatises that have sought to define it. Beauty is Umberto Eco at his most captivating and eclectic: we read not only of Botticelli and Michelangelo but of how the fashion of the 1960s owes much to ancient Egyptian dress, and how ancient Roman and eighteenth-century hairstyles have much in common. It makes the familiar new, and sheds a brilliant new light on the unfamiliar. Illustrated in full colour throughout and produced to the highest standards, Beauty is an indispensable book.

"A book to ogle, but also a subtle provocative cultural history" Peter Conrad, Observer 20041221

Umberto Eco is the author of four bestselling novels, The Name of The Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of The Day Before and, most recently, Baudolino. His collections of essays include Five Moral Pieces, Kant and the Platypus, Serendipities, Travels In Hyperreality, and How To Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays. A Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna, Umberto Eco lives in Italy.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780436205170
ISBN 10	0436205173
Title	On Beauty
Author	Umberto Eco
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	Vintage Publishing
Year published	2004-10-21
Number of pages	440
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable