For most, miniature art tends only to conjure up a culture's lonely
eccentricities--toy trains, dusty runes, weekend hobbyists tweezing
ships into bottles. But John Mack's absorbing new book, "The Art of
Small Things", argues persuasively that the miniature is society
writ small: Squint hard at the world's knickknackery and find the
cultures that produced it...For those determined to browse, nearly
every page boasts gorgeous color plates, many of which are by
necessity larger than the objects being photographed. But more than
a catalog of tiny curiosities, "The Art of Small Things" is a study
of how we relate to objects of all sizes, and of how the miniature
strangely enables experiences of the vast or ephemeral....The
pleasure of this encyclopedic book lies in the resonances Mr. Mack
finds between his many historical anecdotes. Mr. Mack's roving,
capacious sections are not organized within an academic thesis so
much as they are arranged like a bouquet of flowers, in evocative
rather than linear groupings. The book itself enacts a kind of
miniaturization by surveying so many artifacts in one
volume.--Jeremy Axelrod"New York Sun" (01/09/2008)
Mack draws from many cultures to meditate on the aesthetic and
cultural values seemingly embodied in small works of art. His
examples range from Aztec to Indian, English to Greek and cover
many media. Beginning with a comparison of small works of art with
the colossal, Mack discusses miniature portraits, maps, sculptures
(usually of the human figure), talismans and fetishes, and the
private nature of small pieces...The illustrations, frequently with
details, are good; some are larger than life, providing a sense of
the wonder such tiny things can evoke.--Jack Perry Brown"Library
Journal" (03/01/2008)
This lavishly illustrated compendium of miniature art explores our
fascination with "the outer limits of visual perception and
technical precision." Mack delves into the materials and
technologies involved in the production of tiny artifacts, and the
daunting skills required. (The contemporary micro-miniaturist
Willard Wigan, who mounts sculptures in the eye of a needle, moves
his diamond-tipped tools only in the middle of a heartbeat.) The
book brims with captivating detail: intricately carved Japanese
netsuke, used to suspend small belongings from the belt of a
kimono, were also made to feel pleasant in the hand; Elizabethan
mini-portraits worn as jewelry afforded the "private pleasure" of
ownership. But, Mack concludes, miniatures are finally so desirable
because they resist total possession: "We are forever denied
ultimate access to their interiority and the secrets they may
contain."
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