Art and Alchemy

Description

Partly because of alchemy's dismissal from the Parnassus of rational sciences, the interplay between this esoteric knowledge and the visual arts is still a surprisingly neglected research area. This collection of articles covering the time span from the late middle ages to the 20th century intends, however, to challenge the current neglect. Areas on which its 12 authors cast new light include alchemical gender symbolism in Renaissance, Mannerist and modernist art, alchemical ideas of transformation in Italian 15th century landscape imagery, Dutch 17th century portrayals of alchemists, and alchemy's tortured status as a forerunner of photography. Art and Alchemy indicates that alchemy has several connections with art by examining some of the pictorial and literary books that disseminated alchemical symbols and ideas, delving into images, which in one way or another can be shown to appropriater and interpret alchemical ideas or environments, and expanding the scope of alchemical imagery by indicating structural affinities between alchemical processes and artistic creation. It is the editor's hope that this broad examination will contribute to showing without a doubt that the cosmological ideas of late medieval and early modern cultures overlap with alchemy in important areas, and that alchemy therefore does not need to be such an esoteric source for art as is often thought. Furthermore, through a couple of case studies from the period in which alchemy was declared epistemologically obsolete a scientific paradigm - the 19 and 20th centuries - it is hinted that alchemy continues its life in other guises.