Imagining childhood
"The images of children that abound in Western art do not simply mirror reality; they are imaginative constructs, representing childhood as a special stage of human life, or emblematic of the human condition itself. In a compelling book ranging widely across time, national boundaries, and genres from ancient Egyptian amulets to Picasso's "Guernica," Erika Langmuir demonstrates that no historic period has a monopoly on the 'discovery of childhood'. Famous pictures by great artists, as well as barely known anonymous artefacts, illustrate not only Western society's perennially ambivalent attitudes to children, but also the many and varied functions that works of art have played throughout its history."--Alibris
Print Book, English, ©2006
Yale University Press, New Haven [Conn.], ©2006
Bildband
263 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm
9780300101317, 0300101317
64336178
Introduction : mainly about parents
The vulnerable child
Protection
Innocent victims
Mourning and consolation
Stages of childhood
'The vilest state of human nature' : swaddled infancy
First steps and the baby walker
'Better to keep still' : playful childhood and adult laughter
'Jean qui pleure et Jean qui rit', and 'as the old have sung so pipe the young'
Miniature adults
Children's dynastic portraits
Conclusion : bubbles