Glittering Images
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | Camille Paglia |
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| Cover artist | Peter Mendelsund |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Applied and visual arts |
| Published | 2012 (Pantheon Books) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 202 |
| ISBN | |
Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars is a 2012 book by American academic and cultural critic Camille Paglia. She discusses notable works of applied and visual art from ancient to modern times in the book, writing that she intended it to be a personalized "journey" through art history, focusing on Western works. Paglia writes that she felt inspired to write given that she worries 21st century Americans are overexposed to visual stimulation by the "all-pervasive mass media" and must fight to keep their capacity for contemplation.
The book features twenty-nine sections, with glossy full-color illustrations, each focused on a specific piece. Artists detailed include Titian, Manet, Picasso, and Jackson Pollock among others. After its October 16, 2012 release, the book received positive reviews from publications such as The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal, while it also picked up more critical, negative reviews from publications such as The New York Times Book Review.
While touching on the themes of Paglia's previous work, Glittering Images focuses on modern cultural ignorance. Paglia wrote what she intended as a personalized "journey" through art history since she believes people today have become visually overexposed by the mass-media and disconnected from the past. In it, she argues, "the eye is assaulted, coerced, desensitized."
Paglia discusses twenty-nine examples of visual artwork. Paglia begins by describing the ancient Egyptian funerary images of Queen Nefertari, a royal whose name means "the most beautiful of them all". Paglia refers to how the civilization "dreamed of conquering the terrors of death", and she notes how "Egyptian painted figures float in an abstract space that is neither here nor there", describing the visual power of this "eternal present" depicted. She then turns to the Cycladic statuettes carved by Bronze Age residents of several Aegean Sea islands, which feature "coolly geometric" designs unlike that of the voluptuous figures carved by earlier, Stone Age people (such as the 'Venus of Willendorf') while still displaying vulvae markings and prominent breasts that convey femininity. These pieces of Cycladic art are cited as "daring explorations of form and structure" foreshadowing the future.
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