"An Ashgate book"--Cover. Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-201) and index.
Contents:
Introduction: a conundrum of the Viennese modern body -- "The semblance of things": re-visioning Viennese expressionism -- "The woman emerges": medical vision and the spectacle of hysteria -- Performing hysteria: a vogue for hystero-theatrical gestures -- A tale of three hysterics: Elektra, Isolde, and Salome -- The inanimate body speaks: the language of the marionette theater -- Pathological puppets: the body and the marionette in Viennese expressionism.
Summary:
"This book takes a new, interdisciplinary approach to analyzing modern Viennese visual culture, informed by Austro-German theater, contemporary medical treatises centered on hysteria, and an original examination of dramatic gestures in expressionist artworks. It centers on the following question: How and to what end was the human body discussed, portrayed, and utilized as an aesthetic metaphor in turn-of-the-century Vienna? By scrutinizing theatrically "hysterical" performances, avant-garde puppet plays, and images created by Oskar Kokoschka, Koloman Moser, Egon Schiele and others, Nathan J. Timpano discusses how Viennese artists favored the pathological or puppet-like body as their contribution to European modernism."--Page i.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.