Lester B. Holland, professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, addresses the puzzle of Doric entablature, suggesting that the persistence of the form of the entablature is due to its mimicry of earlier fortifications.

A. L. Frothingham, one of the founding fathers of Art History as a discipline, answers the question “What is Art? ”

Porter explains the sudden appearance of Romanesque sculpture in the 12th century AD by suggesting an origin in the sculpture of Lombardy.

William Dinsmoor, one of the experts who directed the first reconstruction of the Athenian Acropolis, here addresses the problem of the arrangement of the sculptures on the parapet of the temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis.

In this paper John Bonnel argues that the representation of the serpent in Eden as having a human head originated in the mystery plays of the 13th century, where the serpent was played by an actor and had a head.

This paper presents a careful chronology of white lechythoi and demonstrates the methods by which pottery dating was established before modern equipment allowed carbon dating of organic residue.

This paper reviews these competing theories of the definition of 'Gothic' and the way in which this style developed, presenting an overview of the difficulties involved in assigning a single name to a developing form of human expression

Chase describes three tripods found in Etruscan tombs and discusses the extent to which they represent Etruscan adoption of Greek tripod-offering customs.

In this paper Houghton addresses two problematic Italian Renaissance sculptures whose artists are unknown, the portrait bust of a youth and that of a Roman emperor.

Arthur Frothingham, one of the founding fathers of Art History, here discusses the problem of the Arch of Constantine, whose form and artwork is at odds with the artwork of the era of Constantine.

These two volumes present a new and comprehensive theory concerning the manner in which landscapes in Western pictorial art may be interpreted in relation to the cultures that created them. Its point of departure is a hitherto unexplored developmental pattern that characterises landscape representation from Palaeolithic cave paintings through to 19th-century modernity. A structuralist comparison between this pattern and three additional fields of analysis -- self-consciousness, socially-determined perception of nature, and world picture -- reveals a fascinating insight into culture's macrohistorical organisation. Controversially, this book argues that culture at a certain level of observation is marked by directional evolution. In Volume I the author traces the pictorial depth of field from its Palaeolithic beginnings, in which only separate bodies are portrayed, and on to antiquity and the Middle Ages with their quasi-perspectival vistas. This gradual accentuation of a viewpoint is interpreted as a sign of how self-consciousness -- the notion of an T detached from nature -- develops. Similarly, the raw rocky terrain and vividly coloured skies that are introduced in ancient and medieval landscape images are taken as a testimony of how cosmos splits into a chaotic Mother Earth and an indestructible masculine heaven. Finally, Volume I demonstrates that the ancient landscape images' exclusion of traces of cultivation (e.g. fields, roads, hedges, fences) is the result of work-shyness, a longing for the Golden Age, among the powers-that-be. The topic of Volume II is the breakthrough of the modern landscape image and its new perspectival vistas, transient time and cultivated - or completely deserted - terrains. This post-medieval paradigm shift is construed as the mature stage in the evolution of self-consciousness, with an urban individual contemplating nature at an aesthetic distance. Apart from being structurally equivalent with the new Copernican cosmos and the colonial expansion of Western culture, the new territorial landscape image is shown to develop in close interaction with the early modern work ethic, republicanism and capitalism. It is also demonstrated that this landscape image is at odds with the idealising Italian Renaissance vision, a conflict condensed in the imagery of strangely artificial rock formations.

Few lives provide as much history or drama as those of monarchs. Filmmakers from the silent era to onward have displayed a deep fascination with the lives of royalty and with queens in particular. Still, the question remains: what do these films really tell us about the women beneath the crowns? Drawing on films from the 1930s to those of today, Royal Portraits in Hollywood: Filming the Lives of Queens investigates the ways in which these films reproduce history and represent women. Though hardly progressive in nature, many early films offered an acceptable, nonthreatening way to present strong female characters in an economic and social landscape run almost exclusively by men. Authors Elizabeth Ford and Deborah Mitchell track the evolution of queens on film, noting how depictions of prominent women have changed over the past several decades and calling attention to the ways in which films both reflect and dictate the social norms of their eras.By comparing historical records of monarchs such as Queen Christina of Sweden, Catherine the Great, Cleopatra, and Elizabeth I with their onscreen personas, and examining the biographical details of the actresses who portrayed these women, Ford and Mitchell present a fascinating inquiry into issues of historical accuracy and gender politics in film.

This is the complete history of a building that began as a hunting lodge, late in the eleventh century and that grew to be the principal house of the manor of Theydon Mount in Essex, a small country retreat within easy reach of London. In 1556, the house was acquired by Sir Thomas Smith (1512-77), a man of humble origins but precocious intellect who became Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge at the age of thirty and Chancellor of the University two years later. He then forsook academic for political life, becoming Master of Requests to the Lord Protector Somerset. From 1557, Smith rebuilt the house in French-influenced classical style and decorated it with wall paintings of Cupid and Psyche and King Hezekiah, conveying complex messages of morality and affinity as part of a coherent programme of images in paint, glass and tiles. Four centuries on, the house was first used as an open prison, then, in 1969, largely gutted by fire and finally, in 1980, taken into the care of the Department of the Environment. Archaeological excavation and detailed recording of the surviving fabric took place prior to the restoration of the house and its mural paintings, the results of which are now presented in this copiously illustrated account of one of the most important and influential houses to be built in Elizabethan England.

Women have been involved with jazz since its inception, but all too often their achievements were not as well known as those of their male counterparts. Some Liked It Hot looks at all-girl bands and jazz women from the 1920s through the 1950s and how they fit into the nascent mass culture, particularly film and television, to uncover some of the historical motivations for excluding women from the now firmly established jazz canon. This well-illustrated book chronicles who appeared where and when in over 80 performances, captured in both popular Hollywood productions and in relatively unknown films and television shows. As McGee shows, these performances reflected complex racial attitudes emerging in American culture during the first half of the twentieth century. Her analysis illuminates the heavily mediated representational strategies that jazz women adopted, highlighting the role that race played in constituting public performances of various styles of jazz from "swing" to "hot" and "sweet." The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Hazel Scott, the Ingenues, Peggy Lee, and Paul Whiteman are just a few of the performers covered in the book, which also includes a detailed filmography.

Did Alaska create the music of John Luther Adams, or did the music create his Alaska? For the past thirty years, the vastness of Alaska has swept through the distant reaches of the composer's imagination and every corner of his compositions. In this new book Adams proposes an ideal of musical ecology, the philosophical foundation on which his largest, most complex musical work is based. This installation, also called The Place Where You Go to Listen, is a sound and light environment that gives voice to the cycles of sunlight and darkness, the phases of the moon, the seismic rhythms of the earth, and the dance of the aurora borealis. Adams describes this work as "a place for hearing the unheard music of the world around us." The book includes two seminal essays, the composer's journal telling the story of the day-to-day emergence of The Place, as well as musical notations, graphs and illustrations of geophysical phenomena.

Hal Ashby set the standard for subsequent independent filmmakers by crafting unique, thoughtful, and challenging films that continue to influence new generations of directors. Initially finding success as an editor, Ashby won an Academy Award for editing In the Heat of the Night (1967), and he translated his skills as an editor into a career as one of the quintessential directors of 1970s. Perhaps best remembered for the enduring cult classic Harold and Maude (1971), Ashby quickly became known for melding quirky comedy and intense drama with performances from A-list actors such as Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail (1973), Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn in Shampoo (1975), Jon Voight and Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978), and Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine in Being There (1979). Ashby's personal life was difficult. He endured his parents' divorce, his father's suicide, and his own failed marriage all before the age of nineteen, and his notorious drug abuse contributed to the decline of his career near the end of his life. Ashby always operated outside Hollywood's conventions, and though his output was tragically limited, the quality of his films continues to inspire modern directors as varied and talented as Judd Apatow and Wes Anderson, both of whom acknowledge Ashby as a primary influence. In Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel, the first full-length biography of the maverick filmmaker, author Nick Dawson masterfully tells the turbulent story of Ashby's life and career.