Theories and universals of representation: Heinrich Schäfer and Egyptian art

Abstract

Abstract The fundamental work on representation in Egyptian art is Heinrich Schäfer’s Von ägyptischer Kunst (English edition, Principles of Egyptian art). This solves, with outstanding success, many problems in the analysis of non-perspective pictorial representation. The book provides insights that affect the understanding of an enormous range of representational art, Egyptian or other; and this was the author’s intention, for he argued that his discoveries had important implications for the study of pictorial representation as such (xiii xxviii). These broader implications are significant for more general debates among art historians, of which many are reviewed by E. H.