Scale and the Incas

Description

A groundbreaking work on how the topic of scale provides an entirely new understanding of Inca material culture Although questions of form and style are fundamental to art history, the issue of scale has been surprisingly neglected. Yet, scale and scaled relationships are essential to the visual cultures of many societies from around the world, es

Andrew James Hamilton is a lecturer in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.

"[Scale and the Incas] is a very beautiful book. . . . It is also an important book. . . . No previous study has mapped the aspect of scale in a single society and related it to a more general consideration of its meanings in the wider world of art and human creativity. . . . This is an invigorating and suggestive work, opening up new avenues and sight-lines for further research, and it brings welcome freshness to a well-trodden and arid field."---Nigel Barley, World of Interiors "This book raises the important question of whether scale should be considered an aspect within tightly defined disciplinary fields or shape our approach to an understanding of cultural production."---Alexander Adams, Sculpture Journal "Hamilton's book is an innovative and compelling contribution to the ongoing process of recovering intellectual traditions that were, as he laments, devastated by the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. . . . Through his unique, aesthetically compelling, and erudite presentation, Hamilton makes Inca scale more accessible and intelligible to modern audiences. His sophisticated study reveals the webs of meaning that scale inspired and sustained for the Incas. Perhaps just as important, it presents these webs of meaning in a way that allows them to be put into conversation with other cultures at other times and in other places around the globe."---Julia Guernsey, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians