Picturing Performance

Thomas F. Heck has assembled an impressive collection of informative essays which aim "to raise consciousness within the profession . . . of the opportunities that lie at hand to seek, to find, and to use in appropriate ways the pictorial materials that relate to the performing art we call theatre" as well as to music and dance (138; emphasis added). This collection is both long overdue and extremely timely. As many examples clarify beyond doubt, too many scholars have taken pictorial documents at face value, without duly considering the various constraints that influence the conception and realization of a painting, statue, etching, or a photograph or video. Concurrently, new technology [End Page 173] makes it increasingly easy to view and study pictures on a computer screen in a manner that, only ten years ago, required solid knowledge of art collections around the world, the desire to view these depictions first hand, and considerable travel funds. Heck has assembled a vademecum for performance, music, and dance scholars to use in theoretical and practical ways in researching and assessing visual documentation

Art · Dance · Documentation · Iconography · Painting · Performing arts · Sculpture · Statue · Value (mathematics · Visual arts · Computer Science · Diverse Musicological Studies · Diversity and Impact of Dance