The Erotics of Looking

The Erotics of Looking: Early Modern Netherlandish Art presents a collection of provocative essays that explore the material qualities of early Dutch art to reveal ways new forms of visual imagery solicit a beholder’s involvement. Explores how descriptive pictures during the early modern Dutch art period operated as social things and were designed to pleasurably engage the eye and prompt discussion and debate Shows how these works potentially raised ethical and political questions about the interconnectedness of engaging with pictures and the material world Represents a major contribution to the field of early modern Netherlandish art and to general debates about the status and functions of descriptive art Features essays addressing a variety of aspects of the field, from the historiography of Dutch art to closely attentive readings of particular works Crafts an original theoretical framework by applying recent insights about the making of early modern publics and the study of material things to the analysis of Netherlandish art

6 Notes on Contributors 8 Chapter 1 The Erotics of Looking: Materiality, Solicitation and Netherlandish Visual Culture Angela Vanhaelen and Bronwen Wilson 20 Chapter 2 Beer and Loafing in Antwerp Bret Rothstein 42 Chapter 3 Perspectives in Flux: Viewing Dutch Pictures in Real Time Celeste Brusati 68 Chapter 4 Entropic Segers Christopher P. Heuer 92 Chapter 5 The Turn of the Skull: Andreas Vesalius and the Early Modern Memento Mori Rose Marie San Juan 110 Chapter 6 Laying the Table: The Procedures of Still Life Joanna Woodall 138 Chapter 7 Boredom’s Threshold: Dutch Realism Angela Vanhaelen 158 Chapter 8 Response: Art/Matter(s) Larry Silver 170 Chapter 9 Response: On the Impulse of Mapping, or How a Flat Earth Theory of Dutch Maps Distorts the Thickness and Pictorial Proclivities of Early Modern Dutch Cartography (and Misses Its Picturing Impulse) Benjamin Schmidt 184 Chapter 10 Response: Reflections on Temporality in Netherlandish Art Lyle Massey 192 Chapter 11 Response: The Work of Realism Bronwen Wilson 209 Index