The FullLength Mirror A Global Visual History

Beautifully illustrated, a stirring and wide-ranging reflection on art, technology, culture—and the full-length mirror.
 
This book tells two stories about the full-length mirror. One story, through time and space, crisscrosses the globe to introduce a broad range of historical actors: kings and slaves, artists and writers, merchants and craftsmen, courtesans, and commoners. The other story explores the connections among objects, painting, and photography, the full-length mirror providing a new perspective on historical artifacts and their images in art and visual culture. The Full-Length Mirror represents a new kind of global art history in which “global” is understood in terms of both geography and visual medium, a history encompassing Europe, Asia, and North America, and spanning over two millennia from the fourth century BCE to the early twentieth century.

Wu Hung is the Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor, director for the Center for the Art of East Asia, and consulting curator at the Smart Museum of Art, all at the University of Chicago.