Art & Photography Books
Bodleian Library Julia Margaret Cameron: A Poetry of Photography
Book SynopsisRenowned photographer Julia Margaret Cameron is famous for her evocative portraits of eminent Victorians, including John Herschel, Alfred Tennyson, Henry Taylor, George Frederic Watts, Ellen Terry and Julia Stephen. This study of her work reveals how deeply she was convinced of the poetic possibilities of her medium, particularly its capacity for suggestive rather than literal meaning. She did not get it right on all counts, and her practice violated the aesthetic orthodoxy of the day. But the blurring of the ‘real’ subject before her lens created unparalleled possibilities for a broader pursuit of the sublime and beautiful. Drawing on over 100 items from the photographic collections at the Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, as well as comparative works of art, this book celebrates a collection that illustrates the aesthetic development of the photographer from her earliest pictures to her most poetic photographs. It also includes her own poetry and the key images she created for her extraordinary Illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and Other Poems, demonstrating her fascination with the artistic connection between poetry and photography.Table of Contents1 Julia Margaret Cameron 11 2 The Life Poetic 29 3 Arresting Beauty 37 4 Picturing Poetry 45 5 A Poetry of Photography 53 6 Beautiful Shadows 63 Plates 69
£40.00
Bodleian Library Dark Room
Book SynopsisGarry Fabian Miller’s Dark Room is a photography book unlike any other. At its heart is the artist’s description of a life lived making pictures between the dark and the light, a deeply personal account woven against the history of photography from the moment of its birth in the 1830s to its decline, and some would say death, in the digital age almost two hundred years later. It is a memoir that reads at times like a manifesto, at others like a confession; a last testament to the dark room as both a site for the imagination, and a physical space for the alchemy that William Henry Fox Talbot once described as ‘a little bit of magic realised’. Dark Room charts Miller’s work over five decades, shifting from a camera-based practice in early career to the abstract picture making for which he has become internationally recognised, working without a camera to experiment with the possibilities of light as both medium and subject. At its core is the relationship with nature and place that has so sustained his way of life, and specifically with his home on Dartmoor and the cycle of daily walks that have been at the core of his practice for thirty years. The book also features an essay on Miller’s work by his friend the potter and writer Edmund de Waal and technical notes by Martin Barnes, senior photography curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum.Trade ReviewFabian Miller’s works dwell majestically, inviting pause, tempting immersion, evading final qualification. These rare encounters remind us of quite how magical the photographic arts are. * Amateur Photographer *We see a lot of books here at Amateur Photographer, and it’s safe to say that while many of them are excellent, it’s rare for one to give such pause for thought as Dark Room...to sit down and absorb the book, front-to back, is a fantastic experience that is hard to beat. * Amateur Photographer *Table of ContentsDark Room 13 Farewell to an Idea: Edmund de Waal 226 Catalogue 242 Technical Notes: Martin Barnes 256 Further Reading 259 Biography 260 Acknowledgements 262
£34.00
Bodleian Library Clare Leighton's Rural Life
Book SynopsisClare Leighton was one of the most prolific and highly regarded wood engravers of her time, leaving behind a body of work that reflected her rural life in Britain and North America. During the 1930s, as the world around her became increasingly technological, industrial, and urban, Leighton portrayed rural men and women and the ancient methods they used to work the land that would soon vanish forever. Her two best-loved publications, The Farmer’s Year and Four Hedges, reflect this passion for the British countryside. Less well known are her books illustrating and describing rural life in the United States of America, where she emigrated and became a naturalized citizen in 1945, including Southern Harvest and Where Land Meets Sea: The Tide Line of Cape Cod. Leighton also spent time in Canada with the logging community, winning the respect of Canadian lumberjacks by adopting their way of life. Her wood engravings depicting lumberjacks in the snow-covered forests of Canada are some of her most evocative prints. This lavish anthology includes beautifully reproduced extracts and a detailed introduction to the artist’s life and work, reflecting Leighton’s lifelong fascination with the virtues of the countryside and the people who worked the land.Trade ReviewA stunning tribute to a British-American artist who should be better known. * The Bay Magazine *'Here are her messages for our times, fresh as a boxwood shaving: "if I am defiant in my defence of the countryside, it is because I know it is the last hope for sanity…the strong, sane humour of the earth, without which there is no health. At no time has this been more needed, and at no time have we been at greater risk of losing it."' * Caught by the River *This beautiful book...will not only introduce a unique artist to a new audience, but serves to remind us of a bucolic world now lost. * The Lady *Table of ContentsIllustrations ix Introduction 1 1 The Farmer’s Year 15 2 Four Hedges 41 3 Canadian Lumber Camp 93 4 The Philosophy of Gardening 105 5 France & the Balkans 121 6 Traditional Skills 129 7 Country Matters 139 8 Southern Harvest 149 9 Where Land Meets Sea 155 Further Reading 173 Image Sources 177 Index 179
£25.50
Zone Books Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and
Book Synopsis
£19.00
Agraphia Press Country Diary Drawings
Book Synopsis36 new illustrations from the now legendary anarchist illustrator, together with an introduction from the writer Richard Boston.
£9.50
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art James Gillray: A Revolution in Satire
Book SynopsisA lavishly illustrated biography of James Gillray, inventor of the art of political caricature James Gillray (1756–1815) was late Georgian Britain’s funniest, most inventive, and most celebrated graphic satirist and continues to influence cartoonists today. His exceptional drawing, matched by his flair for clever dialogue and amusing titles, won him unprecedented fame; his sophisticated designs often parodied artists such as William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, and Henry Fuseli, while he borrowed and wittily redeployed celebrated passages from William Shakespeare and John Milton to send up politicians in an age—as now—where society was fast changing, anxieties abounded, truth was sometimes scarce, and public opinion mattered. Tim Clayton’s definitive biography explores Gillray’s life and work through his friends, publishers—the most important being women—and collaborators, aiming to identify those involved in inventing satirical prints and the people who bought them. Clayton thoughtfully explores the tensions between artistic independence, financial necessity, and the conflicting demands of patrons and self-appointed censors in a time of political and social turmoil. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British ArtTrade Review“James Gillray: A Revolution in Satire describes not just the caricaturist’s life and tragic end as creeping insanity took hold, but also the bracing effect he had on the art of satire itself.”—Michael Prodger, Times (UK), “Top 10 Art Books”“Mr. Clayton’s well-researched . . . study makes a strong case for Gillray as the creator of a genre of graphic art—and as a forceful commentator. . . . [The] selection takes readers on a journey through Georgian politics and society with a guide who spared no one . . . and reminds us just how potent satire can be.”—William Anthony Hay, Wall Street Journal“Tim Clayton’s new biography, the product of meticulous attention to the milieu printmakers worked in, suggests that in Gillray’s case circumstance and exceptional skill went hand in hand.”—Clare Bucknell, New York Review of Books“Nuanced and convincing. . . . The level of detail in this massive and masterly book is breathtaking.”—Martin Rowson, The Guardian“A fascinating, well-rounded life of Gillray. . . . Clayton has done an impressive, thorough job.”—Peter Brookes, Times (UK)“Clayton’s book is a magisterial study . . . and a biography that warrants comparison with the best ever done on an 18th-century artist.”—David Bromwich, London Review of Books“Exploring the tensions between patrons and censors, artistic independence, and financial necessity, this lavishly illustrated biography lights up a life and an anxious fast-changing society.”—Damian Thompson, World of Interiors, “Holiday Roundup”“A wonderful book. . . . Clayton guides us through every aspect—technical, practical, commercial and collaborative—of platemaking and printmaking in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and explains the markets at home and abroad to whose demanding tastes Gillray had to cater.”—Freya Johnston, Literary Review“The diversity of Gillray’s work across four decades displays both a rare technical ability to imbue his prints with dynamic energy and an imaginative, excoriating wit.”—Nicholas Babbington, Apollo
£45.00
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd Drawn to Life: Master Drawings from the Age of
Book SynopsisThis beautifully illustrated catalogue presents a selection of exceptional seventeenth-century Dutch drawings from the Peck Collection in the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Featuring many previously unpublished and rarely exhibited works, the catalogue brings together examples by some of the best-known artists of the era such as Rembrandt, Jacques de Gheyn II, Samuel van Hoogstraten, and Frans van Mieris.The collection was donated to the museum in 2017 by the late Drs. Sheldon and Leena Peck. The transformative gift is comprised of over 130 largely seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch and Flemish drawings, establishing the Ackland as one of a handful of university art museums in the United States where northern European drawings can be studied in depth.Drawn to Life presents around 70 works from this exceptional and diverse group of drawings amassed by the Pecks over four decades. Featuring new research and fresh insights into seventeenth-century drawing practice, the catalogue and accompanying exhibition celebrates the creativity and technical skills of Dutch artists who explored the beauty of the natural world and the multifaceted aspects of humanity.The catalogue features a broad selection of scenes of everyday life, landscapes, biblical and historical scenes, portraits, and preparatory studies, forming a dynamic and representative group of Dutch drawings made by some of the most outstanding artists of the period, including Abraham Bloemaert, Jacob van Ruisdael, Esaias van de Velde, Bartholomeus Breenbergh, Pieter Molijn, Aelbert Cuyp, Adriaen van Ostade, Ferdinand Bol, Nicolaes Maes, Jan Lievens, Gerard ter Borch, Adriaen van de Velde, Nicolaes Berchem, and Cornelis Dusart. Key sheets of remarkable quality by lesserknown artists such as Guillam Dubois, Herman Naiwincx, Willem Romeyn, and Jacobvan der Ulft, also comprise a core strength of the collection, and serve as a testament to the visual acuity of the Pecks as collectors.At the heart of the Peck Collection are several sheets by Rembrandt, including the sublime Noli me Tangere; a beautifully rendered late landscape, Canal and Boats with a Distant View of Amsterdam; and the superbly charming Studies of Women and Children, which was the last of Rembrandt’s seventeen known drawings with an inscription in his own hand to reach a public collection.Meticulously researched and written by Robert Fucci, Ph.D., Drawn to Life introduces both scholars and drawings enthusiasts to the depth and beauty of the Peck Collection at the Ackland Art Museum.Trade ReviewFrom an intellectual perspective this catalogue is a monumental achievement. It is also a splendidly designed book, beautifully illustrated and enriched with a sprinkling of enticing details that underscore so many of the salient characteristics of Dutch draftsmanship. * Misc US Reviewer *
£45.00
Zone Books Outlaw Territories: Environments of
Book Synopsis
£34.20
Lars Muller Publishers Geoffrey Bawa: Drawing from the Archives
Book SynopsisThe Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa (1919–2003) fused sensitivity for local context with the technological discoveries and design principles of modernism in his work. Accordingly, Bawa often incorporated materials (local stone and timber) and layouts (high roofs, cross-ventilation, vast overhangs) specific to Sri Lanka’s monsoon climate and storied architectural history – from the cave monasteries of the Anuradhapura period to the feudal Walauwa style of manor houses – into his modernist designs. Gathering essays by scholars and writers across a multitude of disciplines – including architecture, photography, geography, urban design and art history – this volume spotlights Bawa’s exceptionally beautiful architectural drawings, delving into the central, multipronged role of the medium in his practice, from ideation to instruction to post-construction review. The anthology also explores the identity of post-independence Sri Lanka, which Bawa helped to shape – aesthetically and, less overtly, ideologically. Featuring over 200 lush drawings and photographs, many of which have never been published before, the book promises to engage both general and scholarly audiences with interests in architecture, drawing and archives.
£37.50
Monsa Narrow Homes
Book SynopsisThis book explores the fascinating and eminently necessary world of narrow dwellings worldwide. A careful selection of international projects shows how architects and designers have faced the challenge of creating functional and aesthetically pleasing homes in limited spaces. Each project includes high-quality photographs, plans, and detailed descriptions that enable the reader to understand the design decisions and practical considerations behind each home. In addition, the advantages of this type of building, such as energy efficiency and adaptability to different environments and needs, are discussed.
£16.79
Island Press The Bird-Friendly City: Creating Safe Urban
Book SynopsisHow does a bird experience a city? A backyard? A park? As the world has become more urban, noisier from increased traffic, and brighter from streetlights and office buildings, it has also become more dangerous for countless species of birds. Warblers become disoriented by nighttime lights and collide with buildings. Ground-feeding sparrows fall prey to feral cats. Hawks and other birds-of-prey are sickened by rat poison. These name just a few of the myriad hazards. How do our cities need to change in order to reduce the threats, often created unintentionally, that have resulted in nearly three billion birds lost in North America alone since the 1970s? In The Bird-Friendly City, Timothy Beatley, a longtime advocate for intertwining the built and natural environments, takes readers on a global tour of cities that are reinventing the status quo with birds in mind. Efforts span a fascinating breadth of approaches: public education, urban planning and design, habitat restoration, architecture, art, civil disobedience, and more. Beatley shares empowering examples, including: advocates for "catios," enclosed outdoor spaces that allow cats to enjoy backyards without being able to catch birds; a public relations campaign for vultures; and innovations in building design that balance aesthetics with preventing bird strikes. Through these changes and the others Beatley describes, it is possible to make our urban environments more welcoming to many bird species. Readers will come away motivated to implement and advocate for bird-friendly changes, with inspiring examples to draw from. Whether birds are migrating and need a temporary shelter or are taking up permanent residence in a backyard, when the environment is safer for birds, humans are happier as well.Table of ContentsPreface: Design of The Bird-Friendly City Chapter 1: The Benefits of Birds in a World Shaped by Humans Chapter 2: Birds in a Changing World of Cities Chapter 3: Protecting the Birds around Us: How Cities like Portland Are Nurturing Unlikely Alliances of Bird and Cat Lovers Chapter 4: Returning Home: Inspiring Work from London to Pittsburgh to Make Space for Migrating Birds Chapter 5: Replacing Habitats Lost: the Story of the Burrowing Owls of Phoenix and Efforts at Urban Relocation Chapter 6: Vertical Bird City: Singapore, Hornbills, and Beyond Chapter 7: Bird Appreciation Chapter 8: Design for Safe Passage: Cities Like San Francisco Lead the Way with Bird-Safe Buildings Chapter 9: Birds in Ravine City: Toronto’s Pioneering Work to Build Awareness and Design a Habitat City Chapter 10: Black Cockatoo Rising: The Struggle To Save Birds and Bush From a Proposed Highway Chapter 11: Birdicity: What Makes for a Deeply Bird-Friendly City and How Do We Measure It? Chapter 12: Cultivating a Bird-Caring Citizenry Bibliography
£24.70
Reaktion Books Ruins and Fragments: Tales of Loss and
Book SynopsisFor many of us, ruins are alluring, puzzling and endlessly fascinating: this elegant book seeks to explore why. What is it that makes us suspicious of works or histories that are too smooth, too continuous? Is it that urban experience is inherently discontinuous and fragmented, or that the only truths we can believe are partial ones? Ruins and Fragments guides us through ancient and modern worlds, sharing tales of loss, recovery and rediscovery. Beginning with ancient fragments, this book recounts how later history has recuperated, restored and exhibited them, and even how ruins have been found in unlikely places - such as a Hellenistic fragment from Pergamon located in remote Nottinghamshire. It considers modernist architecture's fragmentary effects, and how concrete made some buildings look prematurely ruined. It also explores architecture that has worked with ruins, from the Castelvecchio in Verona to the reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin. In literature, from T. S. Eliot to Laurence Sterne, writers revel in fragments and create anew from literary rubble.Some people deliberately construct or destroy to create ruin, Gordon Matta-Clark attacking buildings, for example, or dispossessed youth scribbling graffiti. Ultimately, destruction is balanced by attempts at reconstruction. Whether focusing on ancient or modern remnants, literature or the visual arts, Ruins and Fragments is poetic without being sentimental. Far from 'ruin lust', this book seeks to explore fragments without fetishizing them. In doing so it offers new ways of understanding the history of modernity, while delighting in our perception of the world as a puzzle and the ways in which we can construct new forms of meaning.
£33.25
Ridinghouse Talking Art: Interviews with Artists Since 1976.
Book SynopsisThis popular collection of the best of Art Monthly''s interviews since the magazine''s inception in the early 1970s provides a supplementary history of twentieth-century art, from over 150 perspectives, through discussions between artists and critics.The interviews provide the most immediate access to an artist''s thought processes and offer compelling narratives of changing creative activities. Many leading practitioners from Naum Gabo to Douglas Gordon have been interviewed, often at highly significant moments in their careers.The artist interview has occupied an important position in Art Monthly since its first issue, and the book was first published as part of the magazine''s 30th anniversary celebrations in 2007.
£17.95
Monsa Tiny Hideaways
Book SynopsisThis book explores tiny hideaways, which are a perfect example of the New Ecological Architecture.
£15.99
University Press of Florida The Architecture of James Gamble Rogers II in
Book SynopsisThis well-illustrated book illuminates the life and career of one of Florida’s premier architects, whose elegant homes and design aesthetic shaped the architectural character of Winter Park and influenced urban development throughout central Florida.
£21.56
University of Minnesota Press Art and Posthumanism: Essays, Encounters,
Book SynopsisA sustained engagement between contemporary art and philosophy relating to our place in, and responsibility to, the nonhuman world How do contemporary art and theory contemplate the problem of the “bio” of biopolitics and bioart? How do they understand the question of “life” that binds human and nonhuman worlds in their shared travail? In Art and Posthumanism, Cary Wolfe argues for the reconceptualization of nature in art and theory to turn the idea of the relationship between the human and the planet upside down.Wolfe explores a wide range of contemporary artworks—from Sue Coe’s illustrations of animals in factory farms and Eduardo Kac’s bioart to the famous performance pieces of Joseph Bueys and the video installations of Eija-Liisa Ahtila, among others—examining how posthumanist theory can illuminate, and be illuminated by, artists’ engagement with the more-than-human world. Looking at biological and social systems, the question of the animal, and biopolitics, Art and Posthumanism explores how contemporary art rivets our attention on the empirically thick, emotionally charged questions of “life” and the “living” amid ecological catastrophe.One of the foremost theorists of posthumanism, Wolfe pushes that philosophy out of the realm of the purely theoretical to show how a posthumanist engagement with particular works and their conceptual underpinnings help to develop more potent ethical and political commitments. Trade Review "Conversational in style yet highly ambitious in its ideas, this inspiring collection explores different ways of being in the world for humans and nonhumans alike. Cary Wolfe provides a unique approach to thinking both about art and with art—but also a new possibility for seeing and sensing the world through art."—Joanna Zylinska, King’s College London "Cary Wolfe is one of the few animal studies scholars thoroughly fluent in the complex language of contemporary visual arts culture, and he brings his talents for exquisite prose to Art and Posthumanism. I can think of no more valuable volume for makers engaged in the culture of interspecific ecological entanglements."—Mark Dion, visual artist "This important book provides readers with fascinating, crisscrossing paths into Wolfe’s entanglement of contemporary art world and posthumanist theory."—Ecozon@Table of ContentsContentsPreface1. In Lieu of an Introduction: A Conversation with Giovanni AloiPart I. Systems: Social, Biological, Ecological2. Lose the Building: Meaning and Form in Diller and Scofidio’s Blur3. Time as Architectural Medium: Koolhaas and Mau’s Tree City4. The Installation That Almost Ate MePart II. “The Animal”5. From Dead Meat to Glow-in-the-Dark Bunnies: Seeing “The Animal Question” in Contemporary Art6. Apes Like Us7. Condors at the End of the World: Rethinking Environmental Art8. Each Time Unique: The Poetics of ExtinctionPart III. The Biopolitical9. What Is the Bio- of Biopolitics and Bioart?10. No Immunity: The Biopolitical Worlds of Eija-Liisa Ahtila11. The Miracle of the Familiar: A Conversation with Eija-Liisa Ahtila12. The Biopolitical Drama of Joseph Beuys NotesIndex
£21.59
O'Brien Press Ltd Kerry: The Beautiful Kingdom
Book SynopsisTake a grand tour of Kerry and discover its people, landscape and wildlife from the lush pastures of the North to the tranquil lakes of Killarney, from the other-worldly Skellig Islands to the serenity of the Blaskets and the rainbows and snow-capped mountains of Macgillycuddy's Reeks.
£14.39
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd Medieval Bologna: Art for a University City
Book SynopsisAccompanying an exhibition at the Frist Art Museum, this lavishly illustrated catalogue is the first major study in English about manuscript illumination, painting, and sculpture in the northern Italian city of Bologna between the years 1200 and 1400. By focusing on Bologna, Europe’s first university city, this publication aims to expand our understanding of art and its purposes in the medieval world.Universities are a medieval invention, and Bologna has the distinction of having the oldest one in Europe. Its origins have been traced to the late 11th century, when masters and students started gathering in the city to study Roman law. The academic setting gave rise to Bologna’s unique artistic culture. Professors enjoyed high social status and were buried in impressive tombs carved with classroom scenes. Most importantly, teachers and students created a tremendous demand for books. By the mid-13th century, the city had become the preeminent center for manuscript production in Italy. Most books were made outside traditional monastic scriptoria, within a revolutionary commercial system involving stationers, parchment makers, scribes, illuminators, and clients. A new style of script, called the littera Bononiensis, distinguished Bolognese books, and the city’s illuminators were celebrated in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The legal textbooks produced in great numbers in the city are remarkable for their heft and size. In addition to illuminations, which include colorful narrative scenes, these manuscripts often contain in their margins the notes, corrections, and doodles of their original owners.The seven essays in this publication – by academics, a conservator, curators, and a museum educator – create a rich context for the nearly seventy works of art in the exhibition, which are drawn primarily from American libraries, museums, and private collections. Many of these works have never been studied in depth or published before. The authors explore medieval Bologna – its porticoed streets, towers, communal buildings, main piazza, and mendicant churches – and how the city became a center for higher learning at the end of the Middle Ages. They describe the way books were made there, including identifying the pigments used by illuminators. The authors also discuss the illustrious foreign artists called to work in the city, most notably Cimabue and Giotto; the devastating impact of the Black Death; and the political resurgence of Bologna at the end of the 14th century that led to the construction of the Basilica of San Petronio, one of the largest churches in the world, in honor of the city’s patron saint.Trade ReviewUltimately, through Kennedy’s careful editing and curating, Medieval Bologna provides readers with a beautiful view of a thriving 13th – and 14th - century Italian hub of creativity. The high production value of the catalogue reinforces the logical that a book about books should be so luxurious. Every detail has clearly been thought through from the dusty rose flyleaf to the glossy gold lettering on the front cover to the elegant typeface used. The quality of the essays is also a shining feature of this catalogue, at times offering new insights into the methodology of art history as it relates to books and at other times probing deeply the style and aesthetics of these objects as a means of better understanding the socio-political and religious contexts in which they were made. This collection of words and images does justice to the rich historical tradition of book production and use in medieval Bologna and makes fresh an area of art history that promises exciting new intellectual pathways for scholars to explore. * Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture 01/12/2022 *
£42.75
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd The Human Touch
Book SynopsisTouch is our first sense. Through touch we make art, stake a claim to what we own and those we love, express our faith, our belief, our anger. Touch is how we leave our mark and find our place in the world; touch is how we connect. Drawing on works of art spanning four thousand years and from across the globe, this book explores the fundamental role of touch in human experience, and offers new ways of looking. In a series of lavishly illustrated essays, the authors explore anatomy and skin; the relationship between the brain, hand, and creativity; touch, desire and possession; ideological touch; reverence and iconoclasm. A final section collects a range of reflections, historic and contemporary, on touch. Objects range from anonymous ancient Egyptian limestone sculpture, to medieval manuscripts and panel paintings, to devotional and spiritual objects from across the world, to love tokens and fede rings. Drawings, paintings, prints and sculpture by Raphael, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Carracci, Hogarth, Turner, Rodin, Degas, and Kollwitz are explored, along with work by contemporary artists Judy Chicago, Frank Auerbach, Richard Long, the Chapman Brothers, and Richard Rawlins. The events of 2020 have made us newly alive to the preciousness and the dangers of touch, making this exploration of our most fundamental sense particularly timely and resonant.Trade Review...‘The Human Touch’ is a melancholy triumph. * Apollo 02/06/2021 *A timely exhibition showcasing objects that explore touch – across millennia and in all its associations – is accompanied by a publication that reminds us just how important a sense it is… * Art Quarterly 12/05/2021 *
£33.25
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd Diana Armfield: A Lyrical Eye
Book SynopsisDiana Armfield RA Hon RWS NEAC has a highly personal attachment to subject and a subtly distinctive affinity with the rhythms of form and tone. These qualities make her an important, influential figure in modern British art - and a very popular one. Flower paintings have brought her wide acclaim, but this book - created to mark her 100th birthday - also richly represents Diana's feeling for landscape and place. Including an inspiring number of more recent works, it brings her fascinating artistic and life story up to date.'I think I was born making things', Diana comments to Andrew Lambirth, whose absorbing interview with her forms the narrative thread of Diana Armfi eld: A Lyrical Eye. Diana's was a creative childhood steeped in experiments with drawing, pottery and embroidery, played out against the backdrop of a picture-fi lled house, a lovely garden and an artistic family. She studied at Bournemouth, Slade and Central art schools, starting out as a talented textile designer - a legacy that lent her a unique approach to the geometry, cadences and colour qualities of a painting. After organising cultural activities for workers and troops in World War II, Diana became one half of a successful partnership designing textiles and wallpaper, whose work featured in the Festival of Britain in 1951. The 1960s brought a turn to painting and from 1966 Diana has been a regular exhibitor at the prestigious Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. She has continued to paint and draw throughout her life and, as this book clearly demonstrates, always thinks afresh about each subject she tackles in order to respond to it with a close,warm sincerity.Diana Armfi eld: A Lyrical Eye charts Diana's personal and artistic journey with over 200 beautiful reproductions of her work, tracing favourite subjects and events - from a Welsh landscape to an informal fl ower display or the much-loved location of a painting trip in Italy or France. Andrew Lambirth's interview also explores the unique bond with her husband, painter Bernard Dunstan, who died in 2017, looking at how two leading artists interwove their personal and creative lives over a marriage of almost 70 years. As well as this interview, Andrew has contributed an essay on Diana's work to the book. Diana's standing and popularity have led to regular exhibitions, especially at prominent London gallery Browse& Darby. Her work is held in private and public collections worldwide, from London's V&Ato the Yale Center for British Art.Trade Review"Beautiful new book. . . . A treat for the senses." * Leisure Painter *"Armfield's work is well served by this generous testimonial to art." * The Jackdaw *
£35.62
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd Claude Gillot: Satire in the Age of Reason
Book SynopsisThis scholarly publication presents the work of the designer, painter and illustrator Claude Gillot (1673–1722). The first volume on the artist in English, it accompanies a major exhibition at the Morgan Library& Museum that explores Gillot’s inventive and highly original draftsmanship and places his work in the context of artistic and intellectual activity in Paris ca. 1700.The history of eighteenth-century French art under the ancien régime is dominated by great names. But the artistic scene in Paris at the dawn of the century was diverse and included artists who forged careers largely outside of the Royal Academy. Among them was Claude Gillot. Known primarily as a draftsman, Gillot specialized in witty scenes taken from the Italian commedia dell’arte plays performed at fairground theaters and vignettes of satyrs enacting rituals that expose human folly. The book will address Gillot’s work as a designer, painter, and book illustrator, and advance a chronology for his career. Crafting a timeline for Gillot’s life and work will clarify his relationship with his younger collaborators Antoine Watteau and Nicolas Lancret.Through an artistic biography and six chapters, each devoted to an aspect of his oeuvre, Gillot’s role in developing quintessential rococo subjects is established. We follow Gillot from his start as the son of a decorative painter in the bishopric of Langres to his arrival in Paris in the 1690s, as the city and its secular entertainments flourished apart from the royal court at Versailles. Myriad opportunities awaited artists outside official channels, and Gillot built his career working in the theater and as a painter and designer long before seeking official academic status. His involvement with writers, playwrights, and printmakers helped define his sphere. Gillot’s preference for theatrical subjects brought him critical attention, and also attracted talented assistants such as Watteau and Lancret. Gillot came to prominence around 1712 working at the Paris Opéra and as a printmaker and illustrator of books, lending his droll humor to satires. By 1720, Gillot was enlisted to design costumes for the last royal ballet, one of the final projects of his career. He died nine months after his most celebrated pupil, Watteau. The sale of his estate, which including his designs and many etched copper plates, provided material for printmakers and publishers and ensured Gillot’s lasting fame among print connoisseurs. His oeuvre as a draftsman and painter, however, was largely forgotten until drawings and canvases began to emerge in the first half of the twentieth century.Trade ReviewUntil now, there has been no full-length study of Gillot in English, which makes Jennifer Tonkovich’s book very welcome. Produced to accompany an exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, it stands on its own as a major work of scholarship. * The Art Newspaper *As beautifully proposed in ‘Claude Gillot: Satire in the Age of Reason’—a novel, revelatory exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum organized by Jennifer Tonkovich, curator of prints and drawings—the artist’s neglected story and oeuvre are ripe for another look. * The Wall Street Journal *[S]omething to marvel at. * The New York Sun *[The] artist shines, delivering proto-rococo gaiety with a delightful edge. * The New Yorker *
£38.00
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd The Artist Helen Coombe (1864–1937): The Tragedy
Book SynopsisThis fascinating book presents the first biography of Helen Coombe, a woman admired not only for her artistic skill, but also for her intellect, personality and wit. It reveals her family background and education, her place in the Arts and Crafts Movement and her outstanding artistic output.
£42.75
University of Nevada Press Memorials Matter: Emotion, Environment and Public
Book SynopsisFrom the sculptured peaks of Mount Rushmore to the Coloradan prairie lands at Sand Creek to the idyllic islands of the Pacific, the West's signature environments add a new dimension to the study of memorials. In such diverse and often dramatic landscapes, how do the natural and built environments shape our emotions?In Memorials Matter, author Jennifer Ladino investigates the natural and physical environments of seven diverse National Park Service (NPS) sites in the American West and how they influence emotions about historical conflict and national identity. Chapters center around the region's diverse inhabitants (Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, African, and Native Americans) and the variously traumatic histories these groups endured—histories of oppression, exploitation, incarceration, slavery, and genocide. Drawing on material ecocritical theory, Ladino emphasizes the ideological and political importance of memorials and how they evoke visceral responses that are not always explicitly 'storied,' but nevertheless matter in powerful ways. In this unique blend of narrative scholarship and critical theory, Ladino demonstrates how these memorial sites and their surrounding landscapes, combined with written texts, generate emotion and shape our collective memory of traumatic events. She urges us to consider our everyday environments and to become attuned to features and feelings we might have otherwise overlooked.Table of ContentsTable of Contents Preface xi Introduction: Feeling Like a Mountain: Scale, Patriotism, and Affective Agency at Mount Rushmore National Memorial 1 1. “Fears Made Manifest”: Desert Creatures and Border Anxiety at Coronado National Memorial 41 2. Placing Historical Trauma: Guilt, Regret, and Compassion at Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site 82 3. Performing Patriotism: Reenactment, Historicity, and Thing-Power at Golden Spike National Historic Site 121 4. Remembering War in Paradise: Grief, Aloha, and Techno-patriotism at WWII Valor in the Pacific National Monument 157 5. Mountains, Monuments, and other Matter: Reckoning with Racism and Simulating Shame at Manzanar National Historic Site 195 6. “We have died. Remember us.”: Fear, Wonder, and Overlooking the Buffalo Soldiers at Golden Gate National Recreation Area 227 Postscript: Going Rogue with the Alt-NPS: Managing Love and Hate for an Alternative Anthropocene 261 Acknowledgments 275 Bibliography 277 Index 287 About the Author 297
£24.71
Random House USA Inc Millennial Loteria: El Midlife Crisis Expansion
Book SynopsisIf you think TikTok is just an old Ke$ha song and your back feels like it's gonna crack any time you bend over, this Millennial Lotería: El Mid-Life Crisis Expansion Pack is perfect for you. With new cards like El Back Pain, La Insomnia, and El Dad Bod, you'll not only feel seen, but attacked as well. Because if you can't laugh at yourself, Gen Z will do it for you. Millennial Lotería: El Mid-Life Crisis Expansion Pack includes: • 10 new cards • 10 extra game boards • 108 extra bitcoin tokens OMG Important Info: This expansion pack does not contain the full Millennial Lotería game, which is sold separately. If you don't own it yet, make sure to add one to your cart. Like, right now!
£19.42
Monsa Building with Earth
Book SynopsisRammed earth construction is an ancient technique used worldwide for centuries. Today, it has been revitalised as a sustainable, cost-effective building solution for the 21st century. In this book, architects present their projects through plans and photographs, allowing readers to explore how they have used this method to create aesthetically pleasing, sustainable structures that seamlessly integrate into the natural landscape.
£16.79
Thoth Uitgeverij 333 Birds: Peter Vos
Book SynopsisThis beautiful publication presents a facsimile of a sketchbook by the Dutch artist and illustrator Peter Vos (1935-2010), along with a volume of introductory essays. The title derives from the sketchbook's detailed drawings of 333 birds.From time immemorial people have been fascinated by birds and have created images of their winged companions. The artist Peter Vos was one of them. He kept bird diaries in which he noted down the birds he came across and captured them in pen and ink and watercolour. He took pleasure in entrusting all elements of a bird to paper - their characteristics, but mostly their characters. Hunched down or in full stretch, in the water and on land, on their behinds, their necks turned ninety or a hundred and eighty degrees, foreshortened or in three-quarter view, preening their plumage and their wings poised for flight: Peter Vos often depicted his birds several times on one sheet so that you really get to know them.333 birds was a project, a task Vos set himself: fill an empty book with 333 birds drawn as beautifully as possible. He completed it over a period of eighteen months - from June 1980 to December 1981. He began by going to zoos to sketch the birds. Days later the sketches were worked out in the book. With the meticulous layout and the Latin names, Vos was referencing the field guides and the nineteenth-century books of plates. But he, unlike the creators of those books, was trying to draw the individual bird not the species. Crooked feathers are not straightened, an odd pose uncorrected and the blind eye simply drawn. Peter Vos's drawings are records of his encounters with individual birds. We should see 333 birds as an expression of curiosity for his companions. He loved those winged friends he presents to us in a long line in all their glory and individualities - true to nature and with an understanding of their characters, honestly, as befits friends.
£38.00
Ianthe Press Limited Bringing Heaven to Earth Silver Jewellery and
Book SynopsisA groundbreaking study of a little-known and virtually undocumented area of the Chinese decorative arts from 1850 to 1930.Trade Review''Ultimately, Herridge … expertly begins to unwind the complicated histories of the collection. * National Jeweler *Commendable and useful ... the story of jewellery is never just about personal adornment." * Jewelley History Today *A beautifully designed book with a wealth of material … enjoyable strictly for the beautiful photography, but also for anyone with a serious interest in Chinese jewellery. * Textile Research Centre *
£38.00
University of Minnesota Press The Metabolist Imagination: Visions of the City
Book SynopsisJapan’s postwar urban imagination through the Metabolism architecture movement and visionary science fiction authors The devastation of the Second World War gave rise to imaginations both utopian and apocalyptic. In Japan, a fascinating confluence of architects and science fiction writers took advantage of this space to begin remaking urban design. In The Metabolist Imagination, William O. Gardner explores the unique Metabolism movement, which allied with science fiction authors to foresee the global cities that would emerge in the postwar era.This first comparative study of postwar Japanese architecture and science fiction builds on the resurgence of interest in Metabolist architecture while establishing new directions for exploration. Gardner focuses on how these innovators created unique versions of shared concepts—including futurity, megastructures, capsules, and cybercities—making lasting contributions that resonate with contemporary conversations around cyberpunk, climate change, anime, and more.The Metabolist Imagination features original documentation of collaborations between giants of postwar Japanese art and architecture, such as the landmark 1970 Osaka Expo. It also provides the most sustained English-language discussion to date of the work of Komatsu Sakyō, considered one of the “big three” authors of postwar Japanese science fiction. These studies are underscored by Gardner’s insightful approach—treating architecture as a form of speculative fiction while positioning science fiction as an intervention into urban design—making it a necessary read for today’s visionaries.Trade Review"A compelling and visionary analysis. William O. Gardner traces shared imaginations of the future city in postwar Japanese fiction, film, and architecture, brilliantly demonstrating the originality of Japanese visions of cities and societies to come. At the same time, he shows how even the most innovative urban visions of recent novels and anime are anchored in ancient Japanese aesthetic and building traditions. A must-read for anyone interested in urban studies, architecture, and science fiction—or, quite simply, the future."—Ursula K. Heise, author of Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species"The Metabolist Imagination is an ambitious and meticulously researched study of the intersections of science fiction and architectural discourse in postwar through contemporary Japan, an innovative pairing that leads to numerous insights across disciplines."—Seiji Lippit, author of Topographies of Japanese Modernism"William O. Gardner is a splendid scholar-critic of Japanese cityscape. The Metabolist Imagination brilliantly foregrounds the postmodern transactions between cutting edge architecture and emergent Japanese science fiction. No one has ever succeeded in exploring so provocatively the singular point between Metabolist works exhibited at EXPO70 and hardcore science fiction novels as represented by Sakyo Komatsu, one of the producers of the very exposition."—Takayuki Tatsumi, Keio University"The Metabolist Imagination—dense and scholarly but highly enjoyable and revealing, especially for someone who likes Japanese architecture and the occasional anime."—Daily Dose of Architecture"Eye-opening in more ways than one."—ArchiECHO"The Metabolist Imagination is a thrilling new contribution that disentangles Japan’s complex 1960s and 1970s from the vantage of interdisciplinary insight."—Journal of Asian Studies "The significant contribution of this book is to invite us to consider our relationship to the ever-changing natural/cultural environment by exploring the interrelationship between future-oriented architecture (and the city) and science fiction."—Journal of Japanese Studies "The Metabolist Imagination is an important contribution to Japanese urban studies and to the burgeoning scholarly discussion of Japan’s 1960s and 1970s. In its attention to architecture, popular literature, film, anime, collage, performance, and the ferment among those, it admirably demonstrates the rewards of an intermedial approach."—Monumenta NipponicaTable of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. City Visions: Metabolism and Science Fiction2. Ruined Cities: Isozaki Arata and Komatsu Sakyô3. Planetary Cities: Komatsu Sakyô’s Disaster Fiction4. Future City: The 1970 Osaka Expo5. Liquid Cities: The Technopolis from Expo to Cyberpunk6. Metabolist Echoes: Akira, Patlabor, and Yanobe KenjiNotesSelected FilmographyBibliographyIndex
£20.69
Bodleian Library Catesbys Natural History
Book Synopsis
£40.00
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd Towards the Sun: The Artist-Traveller at the Turn
Book SynopsisWhile there have been monographs on British artist-travellers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there has been no equivalent survey of what the writer, Henry Blackburn, described as ‘artistic travel' a hundred years later. By 1900, the ‘Grand Tourist' became a ‘globe-trotter' equipped with a camera, and despite the development of ‘knapsack photography', visual recording by the oldmedia of oil and watercolour on-the-spot sketching remained ever-popular.Kenneth McConkey's exciting new book explores the complex reasons for this in a series of chapters that take the reader from southern Europe to north Africa, the Middle East, India and Japan revealing many artist-travellers whose lives and works are scarcely remembered today. He alerts us to a generation of painters, trained in academies and artists' colonies in Europe that acted as crèches for those would go on to explore life and landscape further afi eld. The seeds of wanderlust were sown in student years in places where tuition was conducted in French or German, and models were often Spanish, Italian, or North African. At fi rst the countries of western Europe were explored afresh and cities like Tangier became artists' haunts. Training that prioritized plein air naturalism led to the common belief that a well-schooled young painter should be capable of working anywhere, and in any circumstances.At the height of British Imperial power, and facilitated by engineering and technological advance, the burgeoning tourism and travel industry rippled into the production of specialist goods and services that included a dedicated publishing sector. Essential to this phenomenon, the artist-traveller was often commissioned by London dealers to supply themed exhibitions that coincided with contracts for colour-illustrated books recording those exotic parts of the world that were newly available to the tourist, traveller, explorer, emigrant, or colonial civil servant.These works were not, however, value-neutral, and in some instances, they directly address Orientalism, Imperialism, and the Post-Colonial, in pictures that hybridize, or mimic indigenous ways of life. Behind each there is a range of interesting questions. Does experience live up to expectation? Is the street more desirable than the ancient ruin or sacred site? How were older ideas of the ‘picturesque' reborn in an age when ‘Grand Tours' once confi ned to Italy, now encompassed the globe? McConkey's widerangingsurvey hopes to address some of these issues.This richly illustrated book explores key sites visited by artist-travellers and investigates artists including Frank Brangwyn, Mary Cameron, Alfred East, John Lavery, Arthur Melville, Mortimer Menpes, as well as other under-researched British artists. Drawing the strands together, it redefi nes the picturesque, by considering issues of visualization and verisimilitude, dissemination and aesthetic value.Trade ReviewThis beautifully produced book offers a splendid survey of a staple of British art around 1900. * The Art Newspaper *
£45.00
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd Sublime Ideas: Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Book SynopsisThis beautiful publication accompanies an exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum of the work of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778). It is the most important study of Piranesi’s drawings to appear in more than a generation. In a letter written near the end of his life, Giovanni Battista Piranesi explained to his sister that he had lived away from his native Venice because he could find no patronsthere willing to support “the sublimity of my ideas.” He resided instead in Rome, where he became internationally famous working as a printmaker, designer, architect, archaeologist, theorist, dealer, and polemicist. While Piranesi’s lasting fame is based above all on his etchings, he was also an intense, accomplished, and versatile draftsman, and much of his work was first developed in vigorous drawings.The Morgan Library& Museum holds what is arguably the largest and most important collection of these works, more than 100 drawings that include early architectural caprices, studies for prints, measured design drawings, sketches for a range of decorative objects, a variety of figural drawings, and views of Rome and Pompeii. These works form the core of the book, which will be published on the occasion of the Morgan’s Spring 2023 exhibition of Piranesi drawings. More than merely an exhibition catalogue or a study of the Morgan’s Piranesi holdings, however, this publication is a monograph that offers a complete survey of Piranesi’s work as a draftsman. It includes discussion of Piranesi’s drawings in public and private collections worldwide, with particular attention paid to the large surviving groups of drawings in New York, Berlin, Hamburg, and London; it also puts the large newly discovered cache of Piranesi material in Karlsruhe in context.The most comprehensive study of Piranesi’s drawings to appear in more than a generation, the book includes more than 200 illustrations, and while focused on the drawings it offers insights on Piranesi’s print publications, his church of Santa Maria del Priorato, and his work as a designer and dealer. In sum, the present work offers a new account of Piranesi’s life and work, based on the evidence of his drawings.Trade ReviewThese efforts do much to explain his remarkable staying power and the current relevance of even his loopiest creations. * New York Review of Books *Centuries later, Piranesi still enraptures. * The Architect's Newspaper *
£38.00
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick: Plays, Painting
Book SynopsisIn London in 1770 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) remarked, ‘What a work could be written on Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick! There is something similar in the genius of all three.’ Two-and-a-half centuries on, Robin Simon’s highly original and illuminating book takes up the challenge.William Hogarth (1697–1764) and David Garrick (1717–1779) closely associated themselves with Shakespeare, embodying a relationship between plays, painting and performance that had been understood since Antiquity and which shaped the rules for history painting drawn up by the Académie royale in Paris in the seventeenth century.History painting was considered the highest form of art: a picture illustrating a moment drawn from just a few lines in a revered text. Hogarth’s David Garrick as Richard III (1745) transformed those ideas because, although it looked like a history painting, it was also a portrait of an actor in performance. With it, Hogarth established the genre of theatrical portraiture, a new and distinctively British kind ofhistory painting.This book offers a fresh examination of theatrical portraits through close analysis of the pictures and of the texts used in performance. It also examines the central role of the theatre in British culture, while highlighting the significance of Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick in the European Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism. In this context another trio of genius features prominently: Lichtenberg, GottholdEphraim Lessing and Denis Diderot.Familiar paintings and performances are seen in an entirely new light, while unfamiliar pictures are also introduced, including major paintings and drawings that have never been published.The final chapter shows that the inter-relationship between plays, painting and performance survived into the age of cinema, revealing the pictorial sources of Laurence Olivier’s legendary film Richard III.
£49.50
Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd Connecting Worlds: Artists and Travel
Book SynopsisArtists and travel have for centuries been intertwined where the desire to explore beyond the confines of one’s home has provoked a truly astonishing outpouring of creativity, much of which was captured through drawings and prints. Comprising over 100 such works, Connecting Worlds: Artists& Travel will be the first exhibition to approach the subject through the lens of artists’ experiences of travel from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, before the establishment of the railroad and use of photography as a means of recording changed these experiences deeply. A collaboration between the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Katrin Bellinger Collection, London, the exhibition will include works by major artists, lesser known professionals as well as amateurs, mostly from Northern Europe, amongst them Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Wenceslaus Hollar, Zacharias Wagner, Valentin Klotz, Maria Sibylla Merian, Angelika Kauffmann, Franz Pforr, Augusta von Buttlar, Julie von Egloffstein,Ludwig Richter, and Friedrich Preller the Elder.Divided into three sections, “On the road”, “Destination Rome”, and “Dresden”, the exhibition begins by exploring artists on the road and what they regarded as important to record in sketchbooks and individual sheets. The second section looks at Rome as one of the most important destinations for Northern travellers, with its incomparable remains of antiquity and as the seat of the Catholic Church that celebrated its religious and administrative life through processions and public spectacle.The journey ends in Dresden, as a centre for collecting, cultural exchange and glamorous festivities, ambitiously competing with other international courts since the time of Augustus the Strong. A different kind of travel, made possible by collecting images and stories of landscapes, flora, fauna, and cultures previously unknown in Europe, is explored. This section closes with the story of the IndonesianRomantic artist Raden Saleh, who first visited Dresden in 1839, and was warmly welcomed by the Saxon court.The richly illustrated catalogue will feature essays by an international panel of experts addressing such topics as the uses of artist sketchbooks across time, written and visual accounts of travel in books and prints, encounters with the Ottoman world, travel and collecting at the Saxon court.
£42.75
Stanford University Press Present Pasts
Book SynopsisMemory of historical trauma has a unique power to generate works of art. This book analyzes the relation of public memory to history, forgetting, and selective memory in Berlin, Buenos Aires, and New Yorkthree late-twentieth-century cities that have confronted major social or political traumas. Berlin experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall and the city's reemergence as the German capital; Buenos Aires lived through the dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s and their legacy of state terror and disappearances; and New York City faces a set of public memory issues concerning the symbolic value of Times Square as threatened public space and the daunting task of commemorating and rebuilding after the attack on the World Trade Center. Focusing on the issue of monumentalization in divergent artistic and media practices, the book demonstrates that the transformation of spatial and temporal experience by memory politics is a major cultural effect of globalization. Trade Review"Fascinating reading, this is a profound, original, and timely book about the world's current obsession with the past, as well as the form which this obsession has taken: memory. Huyssen considers what our obsession with memory means, and examines a number of material forms that it has taken, as well as the social, cultural, and aesthetic functions they have served." -Kaja Silverman, University of California, BerkeleyTable of ContentsPresent pasts - media, politics, amnesia; Monumental seduction - Christo in Berlin; The voids of Berlin; After the war - Berlin as palimpsest; Fear of mice - the Times Square redevelopment; Memory sites in an expanded field - the Memory Park inBuenos Aires; Doris Salcedo's memory sculpture unland - the Orphan's Tunic; Of mice and mimesis - reading Spiegelman's Maus with Adorno; Rewritings and new beginnings - W.G. Sebald and the literature on the air war; Twin memories - after-images of nine/eleven.
£18.89
Duke University Press We Flew over the Bridge
Book SynopsisAfrican American artist Faith Ringgold narrates the events of her life from her childhood in 1930s Harlem to her stellar careers as both a best-selling children's writer and well-respected artist whose "story quilts" are displayed in museums worldwide.Trade Review“Bridging is the major motif of Ringgold’s life. . . . She is a bridge between the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights era. She is a bridge between her mother’s applied art of fashion design and her own fine art of painting and story quilts. She is a bridge between the black power movement and the women’s movement. And she is a bridge between the abstract art that dominated the ‘60s and the issue-oriented art that connected with viewers’ hearts—and lives.”—Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer“Faith Ringgold has already won my heart as an artist, as a woman, as an African American, and now with her entry into the world of autobiography (where I dwell), she has taken my heart again. She writes so beautifully.”—Maya Angelou“Faith Ringgold has created a rich and highly informative work not only of her own life as an American in general but as an African American in particular. These memoirs are a part of American history—of what it means to be an artist, a writer, and a philosopher in our society.”—Jacob Lawrence“Faith Ringgold’s exuberant and original art has made her one of America’s more important artists and a feminist heroine. Now her wonderfully honest memoirs will resonate with all political and creative women who are still fighting the battles Ringgold has won.”—Lucy Lippard, author of The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Essays on Feminist Art“In words that are as direct, honest, full of color and life as her paintings, Ringgold gives each reader the greatest gift of all—courage to be one’s own unique and universal self.”—Gloria Steinem“The story of Ringgold’s triumph—achieved through sheer determination, savvy, and self-conviction—is both accessible and inspiring.”—Lowery Stokes Sims, executive director, the Studio Museum in Harlem“Ringgold provides juicy autobiographical stories, supplemented with personal photographs as well as ample illustrations and descriptions of her work. It is a memoir every artist should read. . . . The book is informative, forthright, and fun, and is a great teaching tool for both emerging and established artists.” -- Joyce Owens Anderson * Journal of African American History *Table of ContentsPreface xi Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Harlem Born and Bred 1. From the Cradle to the Classroom in the 1930s 3 2. Growing Up on Sugar Hill in the 1940s 25 Part II: Men, Marriage, and Motherhood 3. Men and Marriage in the 1950s and 1960s 39 4. My Mother Was Perfect, or So She Said 67 5. Parental Politics: My Daughters and Me 81 Color Plates 97 Part III: Making Art, Making Waves, and Making Money 6. A European Trip Ends with a Death in the Family 131 7. The 1960s: Is There a Black Art? 143 8. The End of the 1960s: Out of the Studio and into the Streets 165 9. The 1970s: Is There a Women's Art? 173 10. Teaching Art: Those Who Can Should 217 11. We Flew over the Bridge: Performance Art, Story Quilts, and Tar Beach 237 Appendix: Matisse's Chapel 273 Faith Ringgold Chronology 275 Public and Private Collections 283 Index 285
£21.84
Rizzoli International Publications At Home in France
Book Synopsis
£40.00
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection Teotihuacan
Book Synopsis
£53.51
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection Garden as Art
Book Synopsis
£34.81
Zone Books The Life of Forms in Art
Book Synopsis
£18.00
Duke University Press Written in Stone
Book SynopsisTwentieth Anniversary Edition with a new preface and afterword From the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans in the spring of 2017 to the violent aftermath of the white nationalist march on the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville later that summer, debates and conflicts over the memorialization of Confederate “heroes” have stormed to the forefront of popular American political and cultural discourse. In Written in Stone Sanford Levinson considers the tangled responses to controversial monuments and commemorations while examining how those with political power configure public spaces in ways that shape public memory and politics. Paying particular attention to the American South, though drawing examples as well from elsewhere in the United States and throughout the world, Levinson shows how the social and legal arguments regarding the display, construction, modification, and destruction of public monuments mark the seemingly endless cTrade Review"Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty." -- W. C. Johnson * Choice *"Levinson offers more questions than answers, which I find appealing. . . . It is a short and highly readable book, which also makes it ideal for classroom use. If one wanted to provoke a lively debate in class, this book would be the ideal work." -- Jeffrey E. Smith * Journal of American Culture *Table of ContentsPreface to the 2018 Edition xiWritten in Stone An Introduction 1 Afterword 125 Acknowledgments 203
£19.94
Duke University Press How to Make Art at the End of the World
Book SynopsisIn recent years, the rise of research-creation—a scholarly activity that considers art practices as research methods in their own right—has emerged from the organic convergences of the arts and interdisciplinary humanities, and it has been fostered by universities wishing to enhance their public profiles. In How to Make Art at the End of the World Natalie Loveless draws on diverse perspectives—from feminist science studies to psychoanalytic theory, as well as her own experience advising undergraduate and graduate students—to argue for research-creation as both a means to produce innovative scholarship and a way to transform pedagogy and research within the contemporary neoliberal university. Championing experimental, artistically driven methods of teaching, researching, and publication, research-creation works to render daily life in the academy more pedagogically, politically, and affectively sustainable, as well as more responsive to issues of social anTrade Review“In this beautifully argued, eminently readable book, stories are the center of attention. Morphing art and knowledge in the neoliberal university situates thinking and pedagogy. Curiosity-driven transdisciplinary practice is both motor and object of analysis. Natalie Loveless asks how stories craft worlds in politically and sensually attuned modes. I treasure the extensive knowledge of modernist performance art and art activism broadly, as well as rich semiotic and psychoanalytic readings of stories and performance. This book is itself a loving act of research-creation.” -- Donna J. Haraway, author of * Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene *“In her evocative book How to Make Art at the End of the World, Natalie Loveless has captured the most urgent and far-reaching question concerning our cultural environment, that is, how to inhabit it in an era of geopolitical uncertainty. This is a daunting task; her ambitious answer, grounded in examples of alternative critical pedagogies, aims to reduce the toxic colonial footprint in arts education by developing a sustainable research-creation model based on differential multiplicities. And that gives us hope.” -- Mary Kelly, Judge Widney Professor, USC Roski School of Art and Design“In this succinct book, Natalie Loveless explores the claim that art-making practices are well situated to challenge and change existing knowledge-making practices in the contemporary research university…. Her primary audience, researchers in art and fine art, will find the manifesto gives a sophisticated form to an emerging desire—an eros and 'attunement'—to not just study the world, but to have an impact on it.” -- David Theodore * RACAR * “A necessary read for artists and scholars who are drawn to, or already working with, artistically driven methods of teaching and researching.... Through the text, readers will gain a deeper understanding of how research-creation, beyond doing artistic research, is about creatively intervening in feminist and anti-racist research practices.” -- Jo Billows and Stephanie Springgay * Journal for Artistic Research *
£17.99
Duke University Press Wages Against Artwork
Book SynopsisLeigh Claire La Berge shows how socially engaged art responds to and critiques what she calls decommodified laborthe slow diminishment of wages alongside an increase of demands of workas a way to work toward social justice and economic equality.Trade Review“This highly original work of Marxist aesthetic theory is a must-read for anyone interested in art and capitalism. Leigh Claire La Berge's thought experiment on how labor might go unpaid and still in a nontrivial way remain labor intersects in fascinating ways with arguments about reproductive labor made by feminists and brilliantly cleaves through mainstream academic culture's increasingly entrenched alternatives of using either ‘biopolitics’ and ‘real subsumption’ to understand our contemporary economy. I learned so much from this book and it still keeps me thinking.” -- Sianne Ngai, author of * Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting *“In elaborating a concept of ‘decommodified labor,’ Leigh Claire La Berge offers a fresh and provocative frame that changes how we understand the dynamics of art, labor, and social change. Marshalling a range of case studies on both established and emerging artists, Wages against Artwork is a fantastic contribution to an ongoing dialogue on the arts, on economics, and on how we define the social in socially engaged art.” -- Shannon Jackson, author of * Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics *“The biggest contribution of this book is to put economic and aesthetic theory together, to see what happens when the aesthetic is subjected to a Marxist analysis.... La Berge’s well-reasoned, engaging, and thorough book is a wonderful addition to the fields of Marxism, aesthetics, and performance.” -- Joseph Richards * Houston Review of Books *Table of ContentsPreface: The Argument ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Socially Engaged Art and Decommodified Labor 1 1. Art Student, Art Worker: The Decommodified Labor of Studentdom 34 2. Institutions as Art: The Collective Forms of Decommodified Labor 75 3. Art Worker Animal: Animals as Socially Engaged Artists in a Post-Labor Era 118 4. The Artwork of Children's Labor: Socially Engaged Art and the Future of Work 157 Epilogue: Liberal Arts 198 Notes 205 Bibliography 239 Index 249
£19.79
Duke University Press A Time of Ones Own
Book SynopsisIn A Time of One’s Own Catherine Grant examines how contemporary feminist artists are turning to broad histories of feminism ranging from political organizing and artworks from the 1970s to queer art and activism in the 1990s. Exploring artworks from 2002 to 2017 by artists including Sharon Hayes, Mary Kelly, Allyson Mitchell, Deirdre Logue, Lubaina Himid, Pauline Boudry, and Renate Lorenz, Grant maps a revival of feminism that takes up the creative and political implications of forging feminist communities across time and space. Grant characterizes these artists’ engagement with feminism as a fannish, autodidactic, and collective form of learning from history. This fandom of feminism allows artists to build relationships with previous feminist ideas, artworks, and communities that reject a generational model and embrace aspects of feminism that might be seen as embarrassing, queer, or anachronistic. Accounting for the growing interest in feminist art, politics, and Trade Review"Grant’s evocative writing delineates the affective contours of collective art participation, and she vividly transports the reader with her on various expeditions – to an outdoor group performance in a wintry Trafalgar Square, to cacophonous choral readings of feminist texts or sitting alone on the last quiet days of a gallery exhibition. One of the true pleasures of the volume is its deep attentiveness to the textures, materials and experience of works of art, interwoven with the author’s compelling account of how cultural encounters strengthened her feminist consciousness." -- Victoria Horne * Burlington Contemporary *"Grant’s writing opens avenues for imagining possible feminist pasts, presents, and futures." -- Julia Alting * Trigger *“An original, associative and compelling account of archival fever and fandom in feminist practice … An exemplar for the ways we can, and should, learn together.” -- Susannah Thompson * Art History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Anachronizing Feminism 1 1. Fans of Feminism 21 2. Killjoy’s Kastle in London 47 3. A Time of One’s Own 67 4. A Feminist Chorus 87 5. Conversations and Constellations 109 Conclusion. Rooms of Our Own 133 Notes 151 Bibliography 179 Index 205
£18.99
Duke University Press Probing Arts and Emergent Forms of Life
Book SynopsisIn Probing Arts and Emergent Forms of Life Michael M. J. Fischer calls for a new anthropology of the arts that attends to the materialities and technologies of the world as it exists today. Fischer examines the work of key Southeast and East Asian artists within the crucibles of unequal access, geopolitics, reverberating past traumas, and emergent socialities. He outlines the work of artist-theorists---including Entang Wiharso, Sally Smart, Charles Lim, Zai Kuning, and Kiran Kumar---who speculate about changing the world in ways that are attuned to its cultivation, repair, and rethinking in the Anthropocene. Their artistic vocabulary not only undoes Western art models and categories; it probes the unfolding future, addresses past trauma, and creates contested, vibrant, and flourishing spaces. Throughout Indonesia, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam---and from Kumar’s experimental dance to Kuning’s rattan and beeswax ghost ships to Lim’s videography of SingTrade Review"[A] dynamic ethnography of prominent works by contemporary artists in Asia ... Probing Arts and Emergent Forms of Life goes far beyond introducing innovative artists and describing their artworks. It situates contemporary Asian art within ethnographic and geo-political contexts." -- Robin Visser * Journal of Contemporary Asia *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Challenging Art as Cultural Systems 12 2. Synthetic Realism: Postcinema in the Anthropocene 31 3. Feminage, Warang, and the Nervous System (Hauntology and Curation) 71 4. Nomadic Video in Turbulent Sea States: How Art Becomes Critique 100 5. Water Notes on Rattan Strings 132 6. Raw Moves and Layered Communication across the Archipelago Seas 165 Epilogue. Probing Art and Emerging Forms of Life 197 Appendix. The Year 2020 and the Camouflage Painting Series: Conversations with Entang Wiharso 215 Notes 221 References 253 Index 281
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Duke University Press Biennial Boom
Book SynopsisIn Biennial Boom, Paloma Checa-Gismero traces an archeology of contemporary art biennials to uncover the processes that prompted these exhibitions to become the global art world’s defining events at the end of the twentieth century. Returning to the early post-Cold War years, Checa-Gismero examines the early iterations of three well-known biennials at the borders of North Atlantic liberalism: the Bienal de La Habana, inSITE, and Manifesta. She draws on archival and oral history fieldwork in Cuba, Mexico, the US/Mexico borderlands, and the Netherlands, showing how these biennials reflected a post-Cold War optimism for a pacified world by which artistic and knowledge production would help mend social, political, and cultural divisions. Checa-Gismero argues that, in reflecting this optimism, biennials facilitated the conversion of subaltern aesthetic genealogies into forms that were legible to a nascent cosmopolitan global elite—all under the pretense of cultural exchan
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Stanford University Press The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization
Book SynopsisA novel account of the relationship between postindustrial capitalism and postmodern culture, this book looks at American poetry and art of the last fifty years in light of the massive changes in people's working lives. Over the last few decades, we have seen the shift from an economy based on the production of goods to one based on the provision of services, the entry of large numbers of women into the workforce, and the emergence of new digital technologies that have transformed the way people work. The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization argues that art and literature not only reflected the transformation of the workplace but anticipated and may have contributed to it as well, providing some of the terms through which resistance to labor was expressed. As firms continue to tout creativity and to reorganize in response to this resistance, they increasingly rely on models of labor that derive from values and ideas found in the experimental poetry and conceptual art of decades past.Trade Review"The originality of this study of postwar literature and capitalism lies not just in its focus on production as opposed to consumption, or on the effects that transformations of labor have had on what kind of art was made, by whom, and how. It lies also in its rigorous attention to the effects that aesthetic concepts have exerted on the transformation of labor, and to how art responds when wage labor is recast in explicitly aesthetic terms. Bernes's book goes beyond reflectionist arguments and elective affinities. Sobering and optimistic at once, it gives us new tools to think about the relation between art and labor, even as the two seem to be converging irreversibly." -- Sianne Ngai * Stanford University *"Far from wanting to tout any hoary theory of the artist-as-prophet, Bernes is working with a remarkably sophisticated and resilient new critical model which will doubtless have a lot of traction in the years ahead." -- Julian Murphet * Affirmations: Of the Modern *"Bernes poses the question of whether the quintessentially unproductive, workless realm of poetry may be instructive for what our precarious and workless capitalist future holds. The result is an intellectually rich, dynamic and lucidly written book...The theses Bernes puts forward concerning poetry's instrumentalization by capitalism will be of interest to all scholars of modern literature, not merely those interested in the postwar American poets and artists studied in detail here."––Benjamin Pickford, Literature & History"Developments in poetry and art, Bernes argues, also feed reciprocally into...transformations in the workplace, as 'aspects of the artistic critique, such as the critique of work from the standpoint of participation, became essential parts of the restructuring undertaken by capitalists to improve profitability'....[With] acute sensitivity to poetic form and [a] profound grasp of historical capitalism as filtered through their chosen sites of the gendered body and the workplace...Bernes [avoids] reductively optimistic or pessimistic claims about either poetry's total immunity or its total complicity." -- Walt Hunter * American Literary History *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts0Introduction chapter abstractAn overview of the argument of the book, the Introduction discusses postwar literature and art in light of the transformation of advanced capitalist economies, in particular the shift from the production of goods to the provision of services and the expansion of white-collar and in-person service work. Through an examination of some key examples, Bernes argues that the neo-avant-garde language of "participation," aiming to overcome the hierarchical relationship between writer and reader, artist and audience, anticipated and contributed to a shift in management theory toward new horizontal forms of corporate structure, undertaken in response to the widespread rebellion against the "anachronistic authoritarianism" of the postwar workplace. Bernes summarizes the main chapters of the book as well as its conclusions and finishes with a general discussion of periodization and historicization, elucidating his unique methodology in light of Marxist debates about historical causality. 1Lyric and the Service Sector: Frank O'Hara at Work chapter abstractO'Hara's "I do this, I do that" poems detail the poet's movements through the city during periods of leisure. In this chapter, Bernes argues that such leisure periods are usually, implicitly or explicitly, circumscribed by periods of work. This is especially true in Lunch Poems, where the conceit of the book is that many of the poems were written during his "lunch hour." O'Hara's lunch-hour pastorals are not so much opposed to the workday and its unfree time of getting things done as they are a space for an alternative kind of work. This chapter proposes that we see O'Hara as poet of service work as much as poet of consumption, reorienting ourselves to the presence of labor (his own and others') within the poems. In particular, Bernes argues, O'Hara adapts the resources of the lyric poem to the transactional space of service work. 2John Ashbery's Free Indirect Labor chapter abstractThe early poems of John Ashbery must be read as a meditation on the plight of labor, particularly white-collar labor, in the postwar United States. Beginning with an early poem, "The Instruction Manual" (1956), and its exploration of the ambiguous class position of white-collar workers, this chapter tracks themes of both labor and management in Ashbery's experimental second book, The Tennis Court Oath. In this book the standpoint of the earlier poem gives way to an explosion of shifting voices as Ashbery's distinctive use of free indirect discourse and other techniques of point of view registers the contemporary breakdown in labor relations and the crisis for established modes of management. In Ashbery's mature style of the 1970s, this chaotic play of voices yields to a comparatively measured technology of point of view, which reflects the new modes of management that followed the crises of the 1960s and 1970s. 3The Poetry of Feedback chapter abstractEmerging from the military-industrial research programs of World War II, cybernetics presents an image of social self-regulation based on reciprocal, horizontal, and participatory relations rather than explicit hierarchies. This is appealing both to firms looking for a way to cut administrative bloat and trim costs and to artists and writers interested in developing a "participatory" practice, one that undoes the division of labor between reader and writer, spectator and art maker. Cybernetics promises a mode of collaboration and collectivity that liberates art from the narrow confines of artists. This chapter examines Hannah Weiner's Code Poems alongside Dan Graham's Works for Magazine Pages, both of which sit at the interstices of experimental poetry and conceptual art and both of which put cybernetic discourse to work to model alternative social relations. In each case, the laboratory of social relations takes postwar labor as its subject. 4The Feminization of Speedup chapter abstractEngaging debates around the status of unpaid reproductive labor, this chapter investigates Bernadette Mayer's multifarious project Memory, which is simultaneously a performance, a conceptual work, an installation, and an epic poem. In attempting to document, down to the smallest detail, every aspect of her life for thirty days—using photographs, audio recordings, and written notation—Mayer effectively demonstrates the subsumption of the entirety of life by the protocols and routines of work as well as the transformation of the relationship between unpaid reproductive work and feminized wage labor. Mayer's "total" artwork, which merges different technologies into a single apparatus, prefigures the reorganization of office work around the personal computer, a technology that has probably done more than anything else to ensure that work and home life are unified by enabling white-collar workers to accomplish tasks from home and, in that sense, never leave work. 5Art, Work, and Endlessness in the 2000s chapter abstractThis chapter skips forward several decades, to the 2000s, and looks at the legacy of the transformations discussed in the preceding chapters. Bernes examines the debates that followed the emergence of "Flarf" and "conceptual poetry," both movements that foregrounded their relationship to contemporary office work. He focuses in particular on the relationship between Flarf poetry, with its rebellious use of work time, work machinery, and work jargon, and the increase in interworker aggression, which he attributes to the inability of workers to find outlets for resistance. Bernes links this horizontalized aggression with the phenomenon of the "Internet troll," who responds to the emasculation that male workers feel as a consequence of the restructuring of labor. By the 2000s, firms had so thoroughly neutralized the aesthetic critique of labor mobilized by preceding generations of artists that it persisted only in various forms of minor rebellion and acting out. 6Epilogue: Overflow chapter abstractThe Epilogue considers the possible fate of the artistic critique of labor in the decades to come. As demand for labor weakens because of ongoing structural transformations, the link between art and labor will likewise weaken, Bernes argues. Thus, artists would do well to revive older traditions linking the poet to wagelessness. The Epilogue examines these traditions, beginning with the Renaissance ballad and continuing through the Romantic poetry of vagrancy and the African American fugitive lyric, linking this poetic history to a theoretical investigation of what Karl Marx calls "surplus populations." The long history of the poetics of wagelessness gives some indication of the aesthetic outlines of the coming era. In closing, Bernes looks at two contemporary poets, Fred Moten and Wendy Trevino, who engage this long tradition and mobilize it to meet the specific conditions of twenty-first-century capitalism.
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Stanford University Press The Politics of Art: Dissent and Cultural
Book SynopsisOver the last three decades, a new generation of conceptual artists has come to the fore in the Arab Middle East. As wars, peace treaties, sanctions, and large-scale economic developments have reshaped the region, this cohort of cultural producers has also found themselves at the center of intergenerational debates on the role of art in society. Central to these cultural debates is a steady stream of support from North American and European funding organizations—resources that only increased with the start of the Arab uprisings in the early 2010s. The Politics of Art offers an unprecedented look into the entanglement of art and international politics in Beirut, Ramallah, and Amman to understand the aesthetics of material production within liberal economies. Hanan Toukan outlines the political and social functions of transnationally connected and internationally funded arts organizations and initiatives, and reveals how the production of art within global frameworks can contribute to hegemonic structures even as it is critiquing them—or how it can be counterhegemonic even when it first appears not to be. In so doing, Toukan proposes not only a new way of reading contemporary art practices as they situate themselves globally, but also a new way of reading the domestic politics of the region from the vantage point of art.Trade Review"There are few books out there that bring together a deep, critical knowledge of the arts in the Middle East with theoretical sophistication and shimmering ethnographic observations. Hanan Toukan's The Politics of Art does this abundantly, and it does so in beautiful, absorbing prose, with great care and tenderness."—Laleh Khalili, Queen Mary University of London"The Politics of Art is a game changer. Hanan Toukan brilliantly reveals a critical, often hidden component of art-making in the Middle East: how powerful political and economic interests have shaped what kinds of art are even possible. A brave intervention and required reading for anyone working in the fields of cultural politics and diplomacy."—Jessica Winegar, Northwestern University"In a detailed, revealing, and thought-provoking sociological account, Hanan Toukan explores how a contemporary art scene in Amman, Beirut, and Ramallah grew under the patronage of Western-funded NGOs alongside rising inequality. In these circumstances, might an idealistic commitment to diversity and decolonization produce a new form of homogeneity and domination?"—Julian Stallabrass, Courtauld Institute of Art"The Politics of Art is a dissonant account of how art, without recognition of its ties with power, upholds the very structures it claims to critique."—Ophelia Lai, ArtAsiaPacific"The Politics of Art is beautifully written and engages the relevant literatures from mainstream debates to more critical thinkers from the Frankfurt School to Rancière and Foucault. Written without jargon, the book is both theoretically sophisticated and accessible.... The book will be of interest not only to larger debates not only on cultural production but also on the diverse effects of neoliberalism, political dissent, the politics of urban space, and foreign development aid."—Jillian Schwedler, Perspectives on Politics"Overall, the book moves with a mocking spirit that tickles the funny bone at the same time that it hurts. As a Palestinian reader, one identifies with many things the author addresses, and one even smiles sometimes when reading specific sentences that make perfect sense, however painful."—Maysoon Shibi, Critical Inquiry"By rendering the implicit explicit, Toukan's text speaks to the quiet anxieties of both artists and academics who navigate international funding regimes, offering an important and highly interdisciplinary contribution to understandings of soft power and the politics of cultural production."—Melissa Scott, H-AMCA"The Politics of Art is, in short, a path-clearing work that should point the way for a new generation of art, performance, and music researchers to propose other formulations of the political by which to read, appreciate, and be in conversation with their performing and multidisciplinary artist contemporaries in the Mashriq."—Rayya El Zein, International Journal of Middle East StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: n/a 1. Cultural Wars and the Politics of Diplomacy 2. "An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist" 3. The Dissonance of Dissent: Art and Artists after 1990 4. Beirut: The Rise and Rise of Postwar Art 5. Amman: Uneasy Lie the Arts 6. Ramallah: The Paintbrush Is Mightier than the M16 Conclusion: n/a
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Stanford University Press The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval
Book SynopsisIn 2010, the world's wealthiest art institution, the J. Paul Getty Museum, found itself confronted by a century-old genocide. The Armenian Church was suing for the return of eight pages from the Zeytun Gospels, a manuscript illuminated by the greatest medieval Armenian artist, Toros Roslin. Protected for centuries in a remote church, the holy manuscript had followed the waves of displaced people exterminated during the Armenian genocide. Passed from hand to hand, caught in the confusion and brutality of the First World War, it was cleaved in two. Decades later, the manuscript found its way to the Republic of Armenia, while its missing eight pages came to the Getty. The Missing Pages is the biography of a manuscript that is at once art, sacred object, and cultural heritage. Its tale mirrors the story of its scattered community as Armenians have struggled to redefine themselves after genocide and in the absence of a homeland. Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh follows in the manuscript's footsteps through seven centuries, from medieval Armenia to the killing fields of 1915 Anatolia, the refugee camps of Aleppo, Ellis Island, and Soviet Armenia, and ultimately to a Los Angeles courtroom. Reconstructing the path of the pages, Watenpaugh uncovers the rich tapestry of an extraordinary artwork and the people touched by it. At once a story of genocide and survival, of unimaginable loss and resilience, The Missing Pages captures the human costs of war and persuasively makes the case for a human right to art.Trade Review"In this compelling and original work, Heghnar Watenpaugh traces the dramatic and epic journey of a sacred work of art. The Missing Pages brings together an understanding of the deeper layers of culture and history with the ethical issues surrounding art, identity, and ownership."—Peter Balakian, author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response"Heghnar Watenpaugh is a superb scholar and rare sleuth. But what makes The Missing Pages truly remarkable is her gift of storytelling. This is a book with the soul of language—moving, affirming, illuminating."—Mark Arax, author of The Dreamt Land: Chasing Dust and Water Across California"Heghnar Watenpaugh writes with colorful prose and deep historical texture. The Missing Pages adds much to how we understand the written word in medieval Armenia, as well as the tragic events surrounding the Genocide itself."—Eric Bogosian, author of Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide"In the fracturing of the Zeytun Gospels, Heghnar Watenpaugh captures the everlasting violence of genocide as it shears and slices into human lives across time and place. Written with both erudition and passion, The Missing Pages is a labor of love and a must-read for anyone concerned with the human right to art."—Fatma Müge Göçek, author of Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009"The Missing Pages is a well-told tale of the history of the Armenian people. Heghnar Watenpaugh takes us on a wondrous and terrifically engrossing journey of this sacred religious object and priceless work of art."—Michael Bazyler, author of Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America's Courts"In The Missing Pages, Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh tells the gripping story of the Zeytun Gospels, a 'survivor object' that bears the traces of centuries of Armenian history and culture. Moving across eras and national borders, Watenpaugh's powerful narrative offers a unique perspective on the fate of cultural heritage in the face of genocide and denial. An essential book for all who are concerned with art, human rights, and post-traumatic resilience."—Michael Rothberg, author of Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization"[Watenpaugh's] book alerts us to the urgent moral and political questions still to be addressed even in the rarefied world of the museum and the library: she forces us to attend to the human agonies, cultural calamities, and moral ambiguities that lie behind many apparently tranquil museum exhibits."—Eamon Duffy, The New York Review of Books"[A] gripping, and at times unsettling, history of what is known as the Zeytun Gospels, a lavishly illuminated Armenian book that miraculously survived centuries of war, conquest and dispossession.In addition to supplying an important account of a celebrated object, Ms. Watenpaugh has written an impassioned polemic. She invites us to consider how the 'power of curation,' as well as the publicity and wealth attendant upon modern museum culture, can transform an object of specific liturgical use into a highly valued work of art, and what that might mean for all involved."—Ernest Hilbert, The Wall Street Journal"The Missing Pages is a work that only Watenpaugh could write with her mastery of Arabic, Turkish, and especially Western Armenian....[She] is certain to attract the attention of scholars outside her field promising to usher forth a conversation about the relationship between cultural heritage and human rights."—Elyse Semerdjian, Critical Inquiry"The Missing Pages... takes up issues of both more recent and long-standing art historical concern and, insofar as it is a narrative that unfolds between legal charges and settlement, as a whole adds real substance and nuance to debates on provenance and repatriation."—Lisa Mahoney, Manuscript Studies"The history of the [Zeytun Gospels] manuscript, which spans the better part of a millennium, represents a compelling example of why provenance research can also serve the cause of historical justice... [Watenpaugh] further discusses the need for museums to come to terms with the complicated and often controversial trajectories by which the objects they enshrine as art made their ways to their institutional homes, and how they also therefore speak with very human voices not only of terrible tragedy but also of the inseparable links between memory and material relics."—Jeffrey F. Hamburger, West 86th"It is hoped that The Missing Pages will contribute to and inform the ongoing debate over survivor objects and the positionality of the contemporary scholar with regard to contested pasts."—Sergio La Porta, The American Historical Review"Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh has achieved the nearly impossible in this book. The volume is the fruit of extensive and profound scholarship, covering a variety of historical periods and geographical milieux... But the scholarship and historical expertise are worn lightly; and the author has succeeded in presenting the rather entangled history of a manuscript with clarity and passion. The result is accessible, highly readable, and may be enjoyed by the general reader as well as those with more specialised interests."—Haig Utidjian, Clavibus UnitisTable of Contents1. Survivor Objects. Artifacts of Genocide 2. Hromkla. The God-Protected Castle of Priests and Artists 3. Zeytun. The Lost World of Ottoman Armenians 4. Marash. The Holy Book Bears Witness 5. Aleppo. Survivors Reclaim Their Heritage 6. New York. The Zeytun Gospels Enters Art History 7. Yerevan. Toros Roslin, Artist of the Armenian Nation 8. Los Angeles. The Contest over Art
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