Real Spaces

Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism is a non-fiction book by art historian David Summers, who aims to reconcile Western art history to artistic cultural production around the world from all time periods. In the book, Summers creates his own art history methodology to explore spatial attributes of art and architecture and their connection to social functions throughout time. He disregards traditional formal and iconographical art historical models, aiming to explore cultural traditions from around the world within the chapters. Summers divides the world into "Real Space", the space we share with other people and objects, and "Virtual Space", the space that exists within two dimensions which people "seem to see." He explains, “Real space is the space we find ourselves sharing with other people and things; virtual space is space represented on a surface, space we ‘”seem to see.’ In fact, space can only be represented visually as virtual, but at the same time we always encounter a virtual space in a real space.” Facture is understood as an indication that an object has been made. Summers considers concepts of form, such as seriality, diachronicity, etc. Some are given new definitions, others are adjusted in relation to the existing literature; others do not change meaning at all. Summers relates and interconnects the concepts together in relationship to artworks such as Benvenuto Cellini’s Salt Cellar of Francis I, of 1539-43 to other artworks like Late Neolithic Arrowheads. The conceptual themes, such as fracture, become critical tools throughout the book. Places is based on that “places, as real social spaces, provide the possibility for the actual statement of relations of difference" The chapter discusses the concepts of difference (emphasizing its spatial qualities), centers and diasporas, shrines precincts, boundaries, paths, alignments and orientations, and the idea of a periphery and division of land outside the sanctum. For example, a Navajo hogan.