Author: Barbara BaertThe sieve exhibits a wide-ranging symbolism that extends across art history, philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and gender studies. Barbara Baert looks at the sieve from an interdisciplinary perspective and from four different innovative methodological angles: as motif and symbol, as technique and as paradigm.The sieve as motif goes back to Roman stories the Vestal Virgins. In later times, their impermeable sieve, which, according to legend, they used to fetch water from the River Tiber, was iconographically transferred to Elisabeth I as a sign of her integrity. Furthermore, the long durée life of sieves as symbolic-technical utilitarian object is investigated: in examples from the Jewish folklore, the Berber culture, and ancient Egypt. ISBN 9783110606140. Birkhauser Verlag. pb. 120 pages. 52 colour ills. 23 x 15.5 cm.available
