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Fleshing out surfaces is the first English-language book on skin and flesh tones in art. It considers flesh and skin in art theory, image making and medical discourse in seventeenth to nineteenth-century France. Describing a gradual shift between the early modern and the modern period, it argues that what artists made when imitating human nakedness was not always the same. Initially understood in terms of the body's substance, of flesh tones and body colour, it became increasingly a matter of skin, skin colour and surfaces. Each chapter is dedicated to a different notion of skin and its colour, from flesh tones via a membrane imbued with nervous energy to hermetic borderline. Looking in particular at works by Fragonard, David, Girodet, Benoist and Ingres, the focus is on portraits, as facial skin is a special arena for testing painterly skills and a site where the body and the image become equally expressive.
In the 19 years which passed since the first edition was published, several important developments have taken place in the theory of surfaces. The most sensational one concerns the differentiable structure of surfaces. Twenty years ago very little was known about differentiable structures on 4-manifolds, but in the meantime Donaldson on the one hand and Seiberg and Witten on the other hand, have found, inspired by gauge theory, totally new invariants. Strikingly, together with the theory explained in this book these invariants yield a wealth of new results about the differentiable structure of algebraic surfaces. Other developments include the systematic use of nef-divisors (in ac cordance w...
Developed over more than a century, and still an active area of research today, the classification of algebraic surfaces is an intricate and fascinating branch of mathematics. In this book Professor BeauviIle gives a lucid and concise account of the subject, following the strategy of F. Enriques, but expressed simply in the language of modern topology and sheaf theory, so as to be accessible to any budding geometer. This volume is self contained and the exercises succeed both in giving the flavour of the extraordinary wealth of examples in the classical subject, and in equipping the reader with most of the techniques needed for research.
This book presents fundamentals from the theory of algebraic surfaces, including areas such as rational singularities of surfaces and their relation with Grothendieck duality theory, numerical criteria for contractibility of curves on an algebraic surface, and the problem of minimal models of surfaces. In fact, the classification of surfaces is the main scope of this book and the author presents the approach developed by Mumford and Bombieri. Chapters also cover the Zariski decomposition of effective divisors and graded algebras.
One of the most widely used texts in its field, this volume introduces the differential geometry of curves and surfaces in both local and global aspects. The presentation departs from the traditional approach with its more extensive use of elementary linear algebra and its emphasis on basic geometrical facts rather than machinery or random details. Many examples and exercises enhance the clear, well-written exposition, along with hints and answers to some of the problems. The treatment begins with a chapter on curves, followed by explorations of regular surfaces, the geometry of the Gauss map, the intrinsic geometry of surfaces, and global differential geometry. Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of mathematics, this text's prerequisites include an undergraduate course in linear algebra and some familiarity with the calculus of several variables. For this second edition, the author has corrected, revised, and updated the entire volume.
Graphs drawn on two-dimensional surfaces have always attracted researchers by their beauty and by the variety of difficult questions to which they give rise. The theory of such embedded graphs, which long seemed rather isolated, has witnessed the appearance of entirely unexpected new applications in recent decades, ranging from Galois theory to quantum gravity models, and has become a kind of a focus of a vast field of research. The book provides an accessible introduction to this new domain, including such topics as coverings of Riemann surfaces, the Galois group action on embedded graphs (Grothendieck's theory of "dessins d'enfants"), the matrix integral method, moduli spaces of curves, the topology of meromorphic functions, and combinatorial aspects of Vassiliev's knot invariants and, in an appendix by Don Zagier, the use of finite group representation theory. The presentation is concrete throughout, with numerous figures, examples (including computer calculations) and exercises, and should appeal to both graduate students and researchers.
With Sensuous Surfaces, Jonathan Hay offers one of the most richly illustrated and in-depth introductions to the decorative arts of Ming and Qing dynasty China to date. Examining an immense number of works, he explores the materials and techniques, as well as the effects of patronage and taste, that together have formed a loose system of informal rules that define the decorative arts in early modern China. Hay demonstrates how this system—by engaging the actual and metaphorical potential of surface—guided the production and use of decorative arts from the late sixteenth century through the middle of the nineteenth, a period of explosive growth. He shows how the understanding of decorative arts made a fundamental contribution to the sensory education of China’s early modern urban population. Enriching his study with 280 color plates, he ultimately offers an elegant meditation, not only on Ming and Qing art but on the importance of the erotic in the form and function of decorations of all eras.
The problem of enumerating maps (a map is a set of polygonal "countries" on a world of a certain topology, not necessarily the plane or the sphere) is an important problem in mathematics and physics, and it has many applications ranging from statistical physics, geometry, particle physics, telecommunications, biology, ... etc. This problem has been studied by many communities of researchers, mostly combinatorists, probabilists, and physicists. Since 1978, physicists have invented a method called "matrix models" to address that problem, and many results have been obtained. Besides, another important problem in mathematics and physics (in particular string theory), is to count Riemann surfaces...
"...Ben has been the world-wide guru of this technology, providing support to applications of all types. His genius lies in handling the extremely complex mathematics, while at the same time seeing the practical matters involved in applying the results. As this book clearly shows, Ben is able to relate to novices interested in using frequency selective surfaces and to explain technical details in an understandable way, liberally spiced with his special brand of humor... Ben Munk has written a book that represents the epitome of practical understanding of Frequency Selective Surfaces. He deserves all honors that might befall him for this achievement." -William F. Bahret. Mr. W. Bahret was wit...
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