The Arabesque from Kant to Comics
 tracks the life and afterlife of the arabesque in its surprising 
transformation from an iconoclastic literary theory of early German 
Romanticism to aesthetic experimentation in both avant-garde art and 
popular culture. Its explosive growth in popularity was followed 
by an inevitable taming as arabesques became staples in book 
illustration, poetry publications, and even the decoration of printed 
scores. The subversive potential of the arabesque was preserved in one 
of its most surprising offspring, the comic strip: born at the moment 
when the cholera pandemic first swept through Europe, the comic 
translated the arabesque’s rank growth into unnerving lawlessness and 
sequences of contagious visual slapstick. Focusing roughly on the period
 between 1780 and 1880, this book illuminates the intersecting histories
 of avant-garde theories of writing, visual culture, and even the 
disciplinary origins of art history. In the process, it explores media 
history and intermediality, social networks and cultural transfer, as 
well as the rise of new and nontraditional art forms. This book 
will be of particular interest to scholars of art history, intellectual 
history, European art, aesthetics, book illustration, material culture, 
reproduction, comics, and German history.

The Arabesque from Kant to Comics PDF

The list of books you might like