The Infinite Image
Art, Time and the Aesthetic Dimension in Antiquity
Distributed for Reaktion Books
240 pages
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80 color plates, 30 halftones
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7 1/2 x 9 4/5
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© 2014
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction: Images into the Infinite
Ancient Art: The Aesthetic Dimension
What Is/Was an Image?
In the Time of Lapis Lazuli
The Double: Difference and Repetition
Realms of Art
The Monumental Force of the Law
The Speaking Image
Twilight of the Idols
References
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index
Ancient Art: The Aesthetic Dimension
What Is/Was an Image?
In the Time of Lapis Lazuli
The Double: Difference and Repetition
Realms of Art
The Monumental Force of the Law
The Speaking Image
Twilight of the Idols
References
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index
Review Quotes
Jas Elsner, Corpus Christi College Oxford and the University of Chicago
“This is a vibrant account of ancient Mesopotamian art, new, contemporary, compelling. It is informed by the long history of the influence of Sumerian visual culture from its collection by Greek satraps in the Hellenistic age to its significance for modern artists, archaeologists, and art historians in mapping out an aesthetic of antiquity in the twentieth century. The book is beautifully written and lavishly illustrated.”
W. J. T. Mitchell, author of Seeing Through Race
“Zainab Bahrani’s The Infinite Image is at once a massively important contribution to the study of ancient Mesopotamian art and a brilliant intervention into the history and theory of art and aesthetics. It decisively overturns the deeply entrenched clichès that regard art as a uniquely western European invention. But it also mobilizes a rich array of textual sources to reconstruct the whole discourse around images and their cultural lives in the ancient world, a discourse that will strike many readers as having an uncanny timeliness in the era of the pictorial turn. Magnificently illustrated with images from the ancient, classical, and modern worlds, this book will be essential reading for scholars of art history, visual culture, aesthetics, and iconology.”
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