Spontaneous ObjectsRebecca ZorachLabel: Pennsylvania State University PressDescription: In the late medieval and early modern periods European artists theorists and natural philosophers imagined Nature not simply as a force of reproduction but as an artist in its own right—a creative power capable of generating images artifacts and objects of beauty. Tracing this idea from the fifteenth through early nineteenth centuries Rebecca Zorach challenges assumptions about human artistic genius and intention that have long dominated histories of art and science.With inspiration from new materialist theory Zorach reclaims a largely disregarded undercurrent of historical thought about the powers of nature. Through case studies ranging from Renaissance centaurs and snails to Adam Smith’s beaver hat and Kant’s travelers’ tales Zorach investigates how ideas about nature’s generative power unsettled conventional definitions of image artifact and artistic intention. At the same time Zorach also confronts the violent legacies of a different vision of nature’s power: as European empires expanded emerging natural philosophies contributed to global colonial imaginaries and racial hierarchies reframing nature as a force to be classified controlled and exploited. In seeking to understand whether and how these views of nature cohere Zorach excavates how the historical formation of the “human and the “natural depends on ideas about artistic production and artistic intention.A significant contribution to art history visual culture and environmental humanities Spontaneous Objects will engage scholars interested in the intersections of art science theology and colonial modernity.
