Here is a sneak peek at Prof. Gertsman’s new book, Abstraction in Medieval Art, coming out this January! Read more about the book here. Prof. Gertsman professes undying gratitude to Reed O’Mara and Russell David Green for their copy editing help!

Table of Contents

Preface: Elina Gertsman, ‘Withdrawal and Presence’

Part I: Abstraction / Aporia / Unknowability 

Vincent Debiais, ‘Colour as Subject’

Aden Kumler, ‘Abstraction’s Gothic Grounds’

Adam S. Cohen and Linda Safran, ‘Abstraction in the Kennicott Bible’

Robert  Mills,  ‘Back-to-Front:  Abstraction and Figuration in Bosch’s Visions of the Hereafter’

Part II: Abstraction / Figuration / Signification 

Danny  Smith, ‘The  Painted  Logos:  Abstraction  as  Exegesis in the Ashburnham Pentateuch’

Benjamin C. Tilghman, ‘The Sign within the Form, the Form without the Sign: Monograms and Pseudo-Monograms as Abstractions in Mozarabic Antiphonaries’

Gia Toussaint, ‘Ornament and Abstraction: A New Approach to Understanding Ornamented Writing in the Making of Illuminated Manuscripts around 1000’

Nancy Thebaut, ‘The Double-Sided Image: Abstraction and Figuration in Early Medieval  Painting’

Part III: Abstraction / Epistemology / Perception

Danielle B. Joyner, ‘Birds of Defiance: Jewelled Resistance to Modern Abstractions

Megan C. McNamee, ‘Early Romanesque Abstraction and the “Unconditionally Two-Dimensional Surface”’

Taylor McCall, ‘Functional Abstraction in Medieval Anatomical Diagrams’

Julie Harris, ‘Imaging Perfection(s) in Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts’

Response: Herbert Kessler, ‘Astral Abstraction’

Coda: Charlotte Denoël, ‘Carolingian Art as Conceptual Art?’