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Book SynopsisIn 1881, a writer in the Saturday Review called tattooing an art without a history'. No-one', it went on, has made it the business of his life to study the development of tattooing.' Until now.Painted People is a beguiling and intimate look at an untold history of humanity.The earliest tattoos yet identified belonged to Ötzi, the iceman', whose mummy allows us a brief glimpse into the prehistory of the practice. We know that over the more than five thousand years since he was tattooed, countless cultures have performed this ancient practice, and people in every corner of the world have been tattooed. For the most part, these fascinating histories remain stubbornly untold, and the secrets of Siberian princesses, Chinese generals and Victorian socialites have been hidden on the skin, under layers of clothing and under layers of history. Now with access to a wealth of new and unreported material, this book will roll up its sleeves and reveal the artwork hidden beneath them.In Painted People, Dr Matt Lodder, one of the world's foremost experts on tattooing, tells the stories of people like Arnaq, who was tattooed in keeping with her cultural and religious traditions in sixteenth-century Canada, and Horace Ridler, who was tattooed as a means to make money in 1930s London. And in between these two extremes, he describes tattoos inked for love, for loyalty, for sedition and espionage and for self-expression, as well as tattoos inflicted on the unwilling, to ostracise. Taken together, these twenty-one tattoos paint a portrait of humanity as both artist and canvas.Trade Review‘Intriguing and thoughtful’ Shahidaha Bari, Literary Review ‘Fascinating’ Stories & Ink

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A dazzling achievement." — Steve Forbes, Editor in Chief, Forbes Media “Woodrow Wilson, the liberal idealist, and Vladimir Lenin, the illiberal totalitarian, hand-in-glove unwound the old nineteenth-century order and redefined war as an existential and global struggle over ideas—with disastrous twentieth-century results. In yet another well-written and fascinating dual biography, the prolific and insightful historian Arthur Herman shows how Wilson’s naive good intentions and Lenin’s deliberate ruthlessness nonetheless had the same pernicious effect of using the state to defy human nature. A fascinating and entirely original explanation of the American and Russian origins of the modern world.” — Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow, the Hoover Institution, Stanford University “The pairing of these two diametrically opposed figures into one biography makes this illuminating read for anybody interested in World War I, the new political order it spawned, and the failures that led to the rise of Nazism and the horrors of World War II.” — Library Journal "Deeply researched and engagingly written, this is a gripping account of great battles won and lost, of a triumphant war followed by a failed peace, and of clashing ideologies that shaped a century." — Robert Kagan, author of The World America Made

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Book SynopsisThe Hunter, the Stag, and the Mother of Animals offers an in-depth exploration of the changing traditions of belief in pre-Bronze and Bronze Age North Asia. Esther Jacobson-Tepfer centers her argument on a female deity and her evolution up until the early Iron Age, across a 2,000 year period. Through the art historical and archaeological evidence of the symbolic systems left behind, she traces the progression of the deity from an originating animal mother through her incarnation as the mother of animals, her late embodiment as the guardian of the road to the land of the dead, the transformation of her essential liminality into the structures of predation and, in the form of a predated stag, her subsequent destruction. In detailed commentaries on rock art structures and monuments, Jacobson-Tepfer reconstructs and explores how the deity''s power was embedded in the Janus-faced concept of life/death: how, in all her forms, the deity occupied the threshold between the worlds of humans and Trade ReviewProfessor Jacobson-Tepfer offers to readers her outstanding first-hand knowledge and deep understanding of unique Eurasian civilizations: the societies of ancient hunters, nomadic mounted pastoralists, and their animal symbolism. Archaeology, art history, and the history of religions, including shamanism, are synthesized by using careful scientific theoretical approaches. * Henri-Paul Francfort, Director of the French Archaeological Mission in Central Asia. *The Hunter, the Stag, and the Mother of Animals is an important book not only in terms of its value as a scientific treatise nonpareil but also as an elegant exploration of the prehistoric human mind with implications far beyond the geographical and temporal focus of Jacobson-Tepfer's study. Her lucid, informative and entertaining writing is complemented by superb illustrations, including world-class photographs contributed by her husband, world-renowned photographer, Gary Tepfer. * John W. Olsen, University of Arizona *this assessment of long-muted societies is an inspired triumph of dedicated scholarship and an inspirational work of art in its own right. It may well remain the most revealing interpretation of ancient rock art in South Siberia until the stones themselves begin to speak with human voices. * E. J. Vajda, CHOICE *This lavishly illustrated book is highly recommended to anyone interested in rock art, standing stones, the material manifestation of myth, the archaeology of North Asia, sacred landscapes and the archaeology of belief. * Paul Taçon, Time & Mind *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations: Maps, Figures ; Preface ; Chapter One: The Transformation of Image, Object and Belief in Prehistoric North Asia ; Chapter Two: The Appearance of the Animal Mother ; Chapter Three: The Persistence of Liminal Beings ; Chapter Four: The Mother of Animals ; Chapter Five: The Emergence of Pictorial Narrative ; Chapter Six: Intimations of Death and Transformation ; Chapter Seven: The End of Naturalism in Nomadic Art ; Chapter Eight: The Pivot Between Life and Death ; Chapter Nine: Traces of Ancient Beliefs ; Chapter Ten: The Archaeology of Belief ; Appendix: The Dating of Rock Art ; List of Abbreviations ; Bibliography ; Index

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Book SynopsisModernism''s Other Work challenges deeply held critical beliefs about the meaning-in particular the political meaning-of modernism''s commitment to the work of art as an object detached from the world. Ranging over works of poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, and film, it argues that modernism''s core aesthetic problem-the artwork''s status as an object, and a subject''s relation to it-poses fundamental questions of agency, freedom, and politics. With fresh accounts of works by canonical figures such as William Carlos Williams and Marcel Duchamp, and transformative readings of less-studied writers such as William Gaddis and Amiri Baraka, Siraganian reinterprets the relationship between aesthetic autonomy and politics. Through attentive readings, the study reveals how political questions have always been modernism''s critical work, even when writers such as Gertrude Stein and Wyndham Lewis boldly assert the art object''s immunity from the world''s interpretations. Reorienting our undeTrade ReviewIn moving nimbly between modernism and postmodernism, accounting for a politics of aesthetics, and negotiating multiple media, this is modernist criticism at its athletic best. Siraganian's stringent argument for meaning's autonomy not only makes for provocative groupings but can change the way we understand autonomy and what it bequeaths. Moreover, Siraganian writes like the best prosecuting attorney you could hope for-or fear. * Jessica Burstein, University of Washington *Modernism's Other Work represents a real advance in how we read some major writers, and in how we understand their own views of their art. Lisa Siraganian argues that important modernists pursued a vision of art at odds with our assumptions about what they believed. She is a fine guide to artists like Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein, Wyndham Lewis, Elizabeth Bishop, Charles Olson, William Carlos Williams, and others. Anyone interested in what modernists did, in what modernists thought, in what their successors can do, about writing and bodies and visual art, will surely learn much from Siraganian's good book." * Stephen Burt, author of Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Theorizing Art and Punctuation: Gertrude Stein's Breathless Poetry ; Satirizing Frameless Art: Wyndham Lewis's Defense of Representation ; Breaking Glass to Save the Frame: William Carlos Williams and Company ; Challenging Kitsch Equality: William Gaddis's and Elizabeth Bishop's "Neo" Rear-Garde Art ; Administering Poetic Breath for the People: Charles Olson and Amiri Baraka ; Coda: Universal Breath

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Book SynopsisPatients as Art explores the capacity of art to provide a unique perspective on the history of humankind. Fearturing over 160 full-color works of art, this book offers a pictorial review of medical history stretching from Paleolithic times to the present, reflecting the ideals and sensibilities of the times in which they were created, and communicating formal, spiritual, and scientific values. Rarely have experts considered the potential clinical implications of such works or their collective value as an archive of medical history. Many prominent works of art have depicted aspects of medicine''s long struggle against ignorance, superstition, and religious and political dogma to emerge as one of mankind''s greatest achievements. The particular works included in this book were chosen both for their esthetic appeal and for the skill with which they depict important developments in medicine over time. Dr. Mackowiak reveals what these works have to say about the status of the art of medicinTable of ContentsChapter 1. Nutrition Chapter 2. Diagnostics Chapter 3. Therapeutics Chapter 4. Surgery Chapter 5. Public Health Chapter 6. Mental Health Chapter 7. Military Medicine Chapter 8. Genetics Chapter 9. Death and Dying Chapter 10. Artists as Patients Epilogue

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Book SynopsisThe study of Roman sculpture has been an essential part of the disciplines of Art History and Classics since the eighteenth century. Famous works like the Laocoön, the Arch of Titus, and the colossal portrait of Constantine are familiar to millions. Again and again, scholars have returned to sculpture to answer questions about Roman art, society, and history. Indeed, the field of Roman sculptural studies encompasses not only the full chronological range of the Roman world but also its expansive geography, and a variety of artistic media, formats, sizes, and functions. Exciting new theories, methods, and approaches have transformed the specialized literature on the subject in recent decades. Rather than creating another chronological catalogue of representative examples from various periods, genres, and settings, The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture synthesizes current best practices for studying this central medium of Roman art, situating it within the larger fields of Art History, CTrade Review[The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture] is an essential resource for any scholar of antiquity. ... Its cutting-edge approach and content, along with its breadth of material, makes this a monograph that any scholar of Roman art should have on their shelves. * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *The handbook's editors and contributors...examine sculpture of the early Roman Republic to late antiquity (c. 500 BC to AD 500) in the capital city and throughout the empire. Chapters outline stylistic, iconographic, and technical analyses, explain how those methodologies are changing, and lay the groundwork on which students and scholars can build their own research. ... [W]ell-written.... Recommended. * CHOICE *...[T]his book is a welcome contribution to English language scholarship on Roman art. The editors have brought together an interesting mix of American and European scholars, both junior and senior, in a volume whose scope-chronologically, geographically, thematically, and methodologically-is very wide-ranging. ... [A] well produced, clearly written, and interestingly organized volume. * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction Elise A. Friedland and Melanie Grunow Sobocinski I. Collecting, Conservation, and Display 1.1 Collecting in pre-modern Europe, Elizabeth Bartman 1.2 Conservation and restoration, Jerry Podany 1.3 Collecting in early America, Hima Mallampati 1.4 Current trends in museum display, Jessica Powers 1.5 Three-dimensional scanning and modeling, Bernard Frischer II. Production and Distribution 2.1 Marble quarries: ancient imperial administration and modern scientific analyses, Patrizio Pensabene and Eleonora Gasparini 2.2 Marble carving techniques, workshops, and artisans, Amanda Claridge, 2.3 Reuse and recarving: technical evidence, Eric Varner 2.4 Bronzes, Carol Mattusch 2.5 Terracottas, Adi Erlich 2.6 Polychromy, Mark Abbe 2.7 Transport and distribution, Benjamin Russell III. Styles and Genres 3.1 Style: applications and limitations, Mark Fullerton 3.2 Etruscan connections, Nancy de Grummond 3.3 "Idealplastik" and the Relationship between Greek and Roman Sculpture, Anna Anguissola 3.4 Portraiture, Susan Wood 3.5 Monumental reliefs, Melanie Grunow Sobocinski and Elizabeth Wolfram Thill 3.6 Archaism and eclecticism, Lori-Ann Touchette 3.7 Egyptian-style monuments, Molly Swetnam-Burland 3.8 Late antique sculpture, Christian Witschel IV. Spatial and Social Contexts 4.1 Architectural settings, Brenda Longfellow 4.2 Religious dedications, Matthew McCarty 4.3 Domestic displays, Elaine Gazda 4.4 Funerary monuments, Bjoern Ewald 4.5 Epigraphy and patronage, Steven L. Tuck 4.6 Imperial messages, Barbara Kellum 4.7 Non-elite patronage, Lauren Petersen 4.8 Gender, Eve D'Ambra and Francesca Tronchin V. Regions and Provinces 5.1 Northern Gaul, Germany, and Britain, Kimberly Cassibry 5.2 Hispaniae and Narbonensis, Alicia Jiménez and Isabel Rodà 5.3 North Africa, François Baratte and Nathalie de Chaisemartin 5.4 Greece, Mary Sturgeon 5.5 Asia Minor, Diana Ng 5.6 Egypt, Christina Riggs 5.7 Near East, Thomas M. Weber-Karyotakis VI. Viewing and Reception 6.1 Aesthetics and Latin Literary Reception, Michael Squire 6.2 Reception theory, Jennifer Trimble 6.3 Ancient analogs of museums, Josephine Shaya 6.4 Images of statues in other media, Eric Moormann 6.5 Human interactions with statues, Ellen Perry 6.6 Iconoclasm, Troels Myrup Kristensen Art Credits Index

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Book SynopsisFully illustrated, this volume provides a provocative analysis of the unprecedented eruption of misogyny at the turn of the 20th century in the works of the key artists of the age.Trade Review'a fascinating and alarming study ... A staggering number of pictures are reproduced, many of them completely unfamiliar to scholars of the period. The overall thesis of Idols of Perversity is deadly serious, and its relevance for the world we live in is enormous' Review of English Studies'Dijkstra is exhilarating when he gets down to description and denunciation' Los Angeles Times Book Review'This is a superb and rewarding book.' Sunday Times'An astonishing and profusely illustrated encyclopaedia of misogyny, proving once more that men always love the thing they kill.' Observer'Dijkstra writes with verve and humour ... This is a deeply unsettling book, which no-one interested in the birthright of 20th-century social values should ignore.' Patricia Morison, Sunday Telegraph'Profusely illustrated' Books'provocative treasure-house of research' Oxford Times'An astonishing and profusely illustrated encyclopaedia of misogyny, proving once more that men always love the thing they kill.' Observer'Extensive scholarly and pictorial research makes this study of the causes and effects of virulent misogyny in fin-de-siecle art an important contribution to our understanding of modern sexuality and culture. This is a superb and rewarding book.' Sunday Times'A book of value not just to feminists but to sociologists and those interested in painting ... It is a fount of insight into humanity and art.' Day by Day''A provocative treasure-house of research' Oxford Times'a scholarly volume' The Times

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Book SynopsisIn the late fifteenth century the newly built Sistine Chapel was home to a vigorous culture of musical composition and performance. Josquin des Prez stood at its center, singing and composing for the pope''s private choir. Josquin''s Rome offers a new reading of the composer''s work in light of the repertory he and his fellow papal singers performed from the chapel''s singers'' box. Comprising the single largest surviving corpus of late fifteenth-century sacred music, these pieces served as a backdrop for elaborately choreographed liturgical ceremonies--a sonic analogue to the frescoes by Botticelli, Perugino, and their contemporaries that adorn the chapel''s walls. Author Jesse Rodin uses a comparative approach to uncover this aesthetically and intellectually rich musical tradition. He confronts longstanding problems concerning the authenticity and chronology of Josquin''s music while offering nuanced readings of scandalously understudied works by the composer''s contemporaries. The bTrade Review[Rodin] sets out to demonstrate via analytical means the inventiveness, versatility and ultimately the genius of Josquin's compositional activity during his Roman years. Regardless of whether one shares Rodin's aesthetic judgements, this is where the importance and indeed greatness of this book lies. The analysis of music around 1500 is not a terribly well-tilled field, and the depth as well as breadth of the author's insights into how this music works melodically, contrapuntally, mensurally and structurally is nothing short of breath-taking. * Early Music *A masterful and musically insightful exposition of the music of Josquin's early maturity and that of a generation of composers that changed the course of European music. Rodin's writing invites comparison with that of the best music writers of the last century, Cone, Pirrotta, or Tovey. * Alejandro Enrique Planchart, Emeritus Professor of Music, University of California, Santa Barbara *Josquin's Rome vividly recreates the artistic world of a great composer at a key point in his career, shedding new light on both the title figure and some notable colleagues. No one interested in Renaissance music should miss this book."-Joshua Rifkin, Director, The Bach Ensemble; Professor of Music and Fellow of the University Professors, Boston UniversityA book that lovers of Josquin should not miss. Given the momentousness of Josquin's work and ways in which it changed the direction of Western music, it'll be useful and welcome for music lovers more generally. For a comparative approach which successfully encapsulates one crucial essence of the Renaissance, it has wider appeal still. * Classical.net *Rodin's approach has considerable merit and allows us to see, and to hear, Josquin in a refreshingly new light. He does so with a readable writing style, a generous helping of tables...and almost 90 musical examples. A feature that adds immeasurably to the value and usefulness of the book is that companion recordings of many of the works discussed in the text can be accessed on a dedicated companion website (username and password provided in the book). * Early Music America *

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Book SynopsisOxford Scholarly Classics is a new series that makes available again great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in uniform series design, the reissues will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

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Book SynopsisThe distinctive concept of the symbol, articulated by such writers as Goethe, Schelling, and Coleridge, is of the utmost significance in the literary, philosophical, and even scientific thought of the Romantic period. This interdisciplinary historical study examines the development of the concept in a jargon-free style that will appeal to a broad range of readers.Trade ReviewThe Genealogy of the Romantic Symbol is a really fine book, and one that anyone interested in Romantic literary theory will find absorbing. Halmi draws on an impressively wide range of authorities; he gathers a complex argument into pages of pleasurable lucidity; and he pursues his quarry with grace. * Seamus Perry, The Wordsworth Circle *innovative... a brilliant and original study that is essential reading for scholars of the Romantic period. * Orianne Smith, Year's Work in English Studies *an important contribution to Romantic scholarship. * Carol Tully, The Modern Language Review *This book offers one of the most profound reflections on symbol since Paul de Man: subtle, original and provocative. It is a brief book, but extremely rich, and often brilliant. This is history of ideas as it ought to be written. * Michael John Kooy, THES *Halmi's book will take its place before long among the indespensable contributions to Romantic studies * Uttara Natarajan, Notes and Queries *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements ; Abbreviations ; 1. Defining the Romantic Symbol ; 2. Burdens of Enlightenment ; 3. Uses of Philosophy ; 4. Uses of Theology ; 5. Uses of Mythology ; Appendix: The So-called 'Oldest Programme for a System of German Idealism' ; Bibliography

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Trade Review...this is a book which deserves close reading. * David Rundle, The English Historical Review *an impressively learned book... Wakelin shows an intimate knowledge not only of the texts themselves but the specific copies in which they circulated. * James P. Carley, Times Literary Supplement *an urbane and assiduous guide through a narrative that remains courageously true to the faltering beginnings, repeated dead ends, and often unclear aims that it recounts * Medium Aevum *A comprehensive study...complemented by a long and reader-friendly bibliography...one of the many merits of this book is the range and richness of information it offers on a literary production spanning well over a century and including many forgotten or obscure works. * Alessandra Petrina, The Review of English Studies *a wide-ranging, scholarly and thoroughly engaging book * Tamara Atkin, Notes and Queries *Table of Contents1. Introduction: humanism as reading ; 2. Duke Humfrey and other imaginary readers ; 3. Allusion, translation and mistranslation ; 4. William Worcester and the commonweal of readers ; 5. Print and the reproduction of humanist readers ; 6. Eloquence, reason and debate ; 7. Some Tudor readers and their freedom

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Trade Reviewa meticulously researched, well written and accessible study that will attract the interest of both general and specialist readers, offering to each several suggestive lines of inquiry relating to both Hopkins and the larger field of Victorian visual cultures. * Daniel Brown, Review English Studies *Probably the world's foremost Hopkins text-scholar, Catherine Phillips here shows herself an astute art critic with a good eye, a touch of wit, and a gift for clear summary. In turn, Gerard Manley Hopkins glistens even more brightly than before. * Joseph J. Feeney, S.J. *[Phillips'] interweaving of literary and visual evidence makes an important contribution to the study of Hopkins' poetry and aesthetics, as well as to our understanding of Victorian art, its dissemination and reception. * Grace Brockington, Archiv *Table of ContentsPreface ; 1. Early Influences ; 2. Hopkins's Drawings ; 3. 'Dapple': Hopkins and Architecture ; 4. Art Criticism ; 5. Gerard, Arthur, and the Illustrated Press ; 6. Hopkins, the Countryman and the New Sculpture ; 7. Theories of Vision

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Book SynopsisThe first biography of Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) traces her rise from self-taught painter to art-world fame in New York, her plunge into obscurity after moving to Baltimore, her constant efforts at artistic reinvention, and her tumultuous personal life, including four troubled marriages and a chilly relationship with her only child.Trade ReviewCurtis's biography capture the mute stubbornness involved in persisting with life, despite its many disappointments. * Jenni Quilter, London Review of Books *This spirited biography is the first to chart the career of Abstract Expressionist Hartigan (1922-2008), a painter with as much swagger as any of her male peers...an accessible portrait of a gutsy AbEx figure. * Publishers Weekly *A fascinating look at the life of Grace Hartigan, a tough Abstract Expressionist woman artist who drank with the best of the men and had a sexual appetite that equaled the alcohol. Ambitious, driven and wrestling inner demons she abandons her only child for what she believed to be necessary for her life as an artist. Cathy Curtis deals with it all in her inclusive and well documented book. * Audrey Flack *Cathy Curtis brings us a driven, determined, and dedicated Grace Hartigan who, as a rebellious young artist, attained a rare degree of success in the 1950s among the male abstract expressionist painters of the New York School. This expertly researched biography gives us a vivid, insightful, and fascinating glimpse into the world of the well-known artists and writers-including Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Frank O'Hara-whom Hartigan knew so well. * Laurie Lisle , author of Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe, and Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life *At last, a life of the incomparable Grace! Cathy Curtis's biography is as colorful, tough-minded, and incisive as Hartigan's work at its best. * Patricia Albers, author of Joan Mitchell, Lady Painter: A Life *Table of ContentsContents ; How I Came to Write This Book ; Prologue: The Weekend That Changed Her Life ; PART ONE: Escape Artist (1922-1944) ; Chapter One: Dreaming ; Chapter Two: Searching ; Chapter Three: Learning ; PART TWO: New York Adventure (1945-1949) ; Chapter Four: Risking ; Chapter Five: Connecting ; Chapter Six: Coping ; PART THREE: Rising Star (1950-1955) ; Chapter Seven: Struggling ; Chapter Eight: Launching ; Chapter Nine: Succeeding ; Chapter Ten: Asserting ; color plates ; PART FOUR: Fame (1956-1960) ; Chapter Eleven: Celebrating ; Chapter Twelve: Swerving ; color plates ; PART FIVE: Beginning Again in Baltimore (1961-2008) ; Chapter Thirteen: Drifting ; Chapter Fourteen: Teaching ; Chapter Fifteen: Unraveling ; Chapter Sixteen: Renewing ; Chapter Seventeen: Prevailing ; Acknowledgements ; Notes ; Selected Bibliography ; Index

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Book SynopsisThis biography of Joseph Severn (1793-1879), the best known but most controversial of Keats''s friends, is based on a mass of newly discovered information, much of it still in private hands. Severn accompanied the dying Keats to Italy, nursed him in Rome and reported on his last weeks there in a famous series of moving letters. After Keats''s death in relative obscurity, Severn pressed hard for an early biography and a more fitting memorial in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.In the nineteenth century Severn''s friendship with Keats was seen as a model of devoted masculine companionship and he was reburied by popular acclaim next to Keats in 1882. In the twentieth century, by contrast, he was denigrated as an unreliable, self-promoting witness. Sue Brown''s book fills a major gap in studies of Keats and his circle. It reassesses Severn''s character, friendship with Keats, and influence on the posthumous development of the poet''s fame and provides new information on Keats''s death.The sTrade Reviewambitiously researched and richly detailed... [a] fine study * Robert Ryan, Keats Shelley Review *Sue Brown's lively new biography of Severn will be an invaluable contribution to Romantic scholarship * Keats-Shelley Journal *Crisply written and clear-sighted biography...in Sue Brown's hands he [Joseph Severn] becomes a cockney chancer, a charming maverick, a spinner of yarns whose name will never be writ in water. * Frances Wilson, Times Literary Supplement *Sue Brown's is as full, fine and sensitive an account of his life as could be wished for * Ann Wroe, The Tablet *a full-length, extremely readable, exquisitely documented biography * Jack Stillinger, Studies in Romanticism *Careful, thorough, authoritative and scholarly, Brown's book can justly claim to be the first full - cradle to grave - biography * Bill St Clair, The Literary Review *full of new material and insight... [Severn's] exchanges with an exasperated Foreign Office are worthy of a comic novel... Sue Brown's judicious biography, while giving Severn back his own Life, also sheds new light on Keats's 'Posthumous Life' * Pamela Neville-Sington, Romanticism *This is an enjoyable biography which probes a fascinating character and provides a sound historical and cultural background * Leonee Ormond, The Burlington Magazine *A balance portrait of Severn... This accessible book will interest Keats fans and scholars, and it will also attract readers interested in 19th-century British communities in Italy or in the sometimes-nasty British artistic community... Recommended. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. A Hazardous Childhood ; 2. The Royal Academy Student ; 3. Painter and Poet ; 4. The Warm South ; 5. Piazza di Spagna ; 6. 'Thanks Joe' ; 7. 'The Most Striking Year of My Life' ; 8. The RA Pensioner ; 9. 'Searching for Fame and Fortune' ; 10. Love, Marriage, and Persecution ; 11. 'Everybody's Man and a Very Obliging Creature': Severn in his Roman Prime ; 12. Going Home ; 13. The Passion for Fresco ; 14. The Friend of Keats ; 15. An Interlude in Pimlico ; 16. British Consul ; 17. The New Rome ; 18. Keeper of the Flame ; 19. A Fitting Place

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Book SynopsisMedusa's Gaze provides the first dedicated account of the origins and extraordinary survival of an exquisite agate bowl from ancient Alexandria to the modern day as it passed through the hands of some of history's most influentional, and colorful, characters.Trade ReviewThe Tazza Farnese's story is remarkable, and Belozerskaya tells it well. * Literary Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt ; 2. Carved Gems and Romans ; 3. Constantinople: the Past Acquired, Revived, and Ransacked ; 4. Frederick II: the Quest for a New Roman Empire ; 5. Timur, the Conqueror of Asia ; 6. The Great Collectors of the Renaissance ; 7. In a Woman's Hands ; 8. Gems and Ruins in Bourbon Naples ; 9. Beauty Broken, Beauty Restored ; Acknowledgments ; Cast of Characters ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index

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Book SynopsisThe first collection of essays on Gerhard Richter, who has been called ?the greatest modern painter.?The contemporary painter Gerhard Richter (born in 1932) has been heralded both as modernity''s last painter and as painting''s modern savior, seen to represent both the end of painting and its resurrection. Richter works in a dizzying variety of styles, from abstraction to a German cool pop that combines painterly technique and appropriation; his work includes photo paintings, large abstract canvases, and stained glass windows. This collection features writing by prominent critics, including Hal Foster, Gertrud Koch, and Thomas Crow; an essay by Rachel Haidu on Richter''s family pictures that is published here for the first time; and an essay and two interviews with the artist by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Richter''s ?longtime sparring partner? (as the curator Robert Storr has called him). These writings examine Richter''s work as a whole, from October 18, 1977, his dreamlike series of paintings depicting the dead Baader-Meinhof gang, to his abstract trio Abstract Paintings; from his unsettling portrait of ?Uncle Rudi? in Nazi garb to his late series of portraits of his wife and young child. This addition to the October Files series will be an essential handbook to one of the most enigmatic figures in contemporary artContents Gerhard Richter and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh Interview (1986) Gertrud Koch The Richter-Scale of Blur (1992) Thomas Crow Hand-Made Photographs and Homeless Representation (1992) Birgit Pelzer The Tragic Desire (1993) Benjamin H. D. Buchloh Divided Memory and Post-Traditional Identity: Gerhard Richter''s Work of Mourning (1996) Peter Osborne Abstract Images: Sign, Image, and Aesthetic in Gerhard Richter''s Painting (1998) Hal Foster Semblance According to Gerhard Richter (2003) Johannes Meinhardt Illusionism in Painting and the Punctum of Photography (2005) Rachel Haidu Arrogant Texts: Gerhard Richter''s Family Pictures (2007) Gerhard Richter and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh Interview (2004)

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Book SynopsisA critical study of the use of language and the proliferation of text in 1960s art and experimental music, with close examinations of works by Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, John Cage, Douglas Huebler, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner, La Monte Young, and others.Language has been a primary element in visual art since the 1960s—in the form of printed texts, painted signs, words on the wall, recorded speech, and more. In Words to Be Looked At, Liz Kotz traces this practice to its beginnings, examining works of visual art, poetry, and experimental music created in and around New York City from 1958 to 1968. In many of these works, language has been reduced to an object nearly emptied of meaning. Robert Smithson described a 1967 exhibition at the Dwan Gallery as consisting of “Language to be Looked at and/or Things to be Read.” Kotz considers the paradox of artists living in a time of social upheaval who use words but chose not to make statements with them. Kotz t

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Book SynopsisA new book by Boris Groys acknowledges the problem and potential of art''s complex relationship to power.Art has its own power in the world, and is as much a force in the power play of global politics today as it once was in the arena of cold war politics. Art, argues the distinguished theoretician Boris Groys, is hardly a powerless commodity subject to the art market''s fiats of inclusion and exclusion. In Art Power, Groys examines modern and contemporary art according to its ideological function. Art, Groys writes, is produced and brought before the public in two ways?as a commodity and as a tool of political propaganda. In the contemporary art scene, very little attention is paid to the latter function.Arguing for the inclusion of politically motivated art in contemporary art discourse, Groys considers art produced under totalitarianism, Socialism, and post-Communism. He also considers today''s mainstream Western art?which he finds behaving more and more according the norms of ideological propaganda: produced and exhibited for the masses at international exhibitions, biennials, and festivals. Contemporary art, Groys argues, demonstrates its power by appropriating the iconoclastic gestures directed against itself?by positioning itself simultaneously as an image and as a critique of the image. In Art Power, Groys examines this fundamental appropriation that produces the paradoxical object of the modern artwork.

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