History of art Books
MIT Press Situation Aesthetics The Work of Michael Asher The MIT Press
Book SynopsisThe first book-length study of this influential artist's work, focusing on the participatory role of the human subject rather than the art object.Michael Asher doesn't make typical installations. Instead, he extracts his art from the institutions in which it is shown, culling it from collections, histories, or museums' own walls. Since the late 1960s, Asher has been creating situations that have not only taught us about the conditions and contexts of contemporary art, but have worked to define it.In Situation Aesthetics, Kirsi Peltomäki examines Asher's practice by analyzing the social situations that the artist constructs in his work for viewers, participants, and institutional representatives (including gallery directors, curators, and other museum staff members). Drawing on art criticism, the reports of viewers and participants in Asher's projects, and the artist's own archives, Peltomäki offers a comprehensive account of Asher's work over the past
£26.60
MIT Press When Marina Abramovic Dies A Biography The MIT Press
Book SynopsisThe extraordinary life and death-defying work of one of the most important and pioneering performance artists in contemporary art.When Marina Abramović Dies examines the extraordinary life and death-defying work of one of the most pioneering artists of her generation—and one who is still at the forefront of contemporary art today. This intimate, critical biography chronicles Abramović's formative and until now undocumented years in Yugoslavia, and tells the story of her partnership with the German artist Ulay—one of the twentieth century's great examples of the fusion of artistic and private life. In one of many long-durational performances in the renewed solo career that followed, Abramović famously lived in a New York gallery for twelve days without eating or speaking, nourished only by prolonged eye contact with audience members. It was here, in 2002, that author James Westcott first encountered her, beginning an exceptionally close
£27.00
MIT Press Ltd Realism After Modernism The Rehumanization of Art and Literature October Books A New Approach to Evaluation and Comparison
£38.78
MIT Press Artists Magazines An Alternative Space for Art The MIT Press
Book SynopsisHow artists' magazines, in all their ephemerality, materiality, and temporary intensity, challenged mainstream art criticism and the gallery system.During the 1960s and 1970s, magazines became an important new site of artistic practice, functioning as an alternative exhibition space for the dematerialized practices of conceptual art. Artists created works expressly for these mass-produced, hand-editioned pages, using the ephemerality and the materiality of the magazine to challenge the conventions of both artistic medium and gallery. In Artists' Magazines, Gwen Allen looks at the most important of these magazines in their heyday (the 1960s to the 1980s) and compiles a comprehensive, illustrated directory of hundreds of others.Among the magazines Allen examines are Aspen (1965-1971), a multimedia magazine in a box—issues included Super-8 films, flexi-disc records, critical writings, artists' postage stamps, and collectible chapbooks; Avalanche
£45.00
MIT Press Walking and Mapping Artists as Cartographers Leonardo
Book SynopsisAn exploration of walking and mapping as both form and content in art projects using old and new technologies, shoe leather and GPS.From Guy Debord in the early 1950s to Richard Long, Janet Cardiff, and Esther Polak more recently, contemporary artists have returned again and again to the walking motif. Today, the convergence of global networks, online databases, and new tools for mobile mapping coincides with a resurgence of interest in walking as an art form. In Walking and Mapping, Karen O'Rourke explores a series of walking/mapping projects by contemporary artists. She offers close readings of these projects—many of which she was able to experience firsthand—and situates them in relation to landmark works from the past half-century. Together, they form a new entity, a dynamic whole greater than the sum of its parts. By alternating close study of selected projects with a broader view of their place in a bigger picture, Walking and Mapping itself maps a co
£31.35
MIT Press Ltd Mary Kelly Volume 20 October Files 20
Book SynopsisEssays and interviews that span Mary Kelly's career highlight the artist's sustained engagement with feminism and feminist history.When Mary Kelly's best-known work, Post-Partum Document (1973-1979), was shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1976, it caused a sensation—an unexpected response to an intellectually demanding and aesthetically restrained installation of conceptual art. The reception signaled resistance to the work's interrogation of feminine identity and the cultural mythologizing of motherhood. This volume of essays and interviews begins with this foundational work, offering an early statement by the artist, a subsequent interview, and an essay situating the work within a broader broader discourse of art and social purpose in the early 1970s. Throughout, the collection addresses such themes as labor, war, trauma, and the politics of care, while emphasizing the artist's sustained engagement with histories of feminism and generations
£23.00
Penguin Random House LLC Curious Visions of Modernity Enchantment Magic and the Sacred
£30.02
MIT Press Techniques of the Observer
Book SynopsisJonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. This analysis of the historical formation of the observer is a compelling account of the prehistory of the society of the spectacle.In Techniques of the Observer Jonathan Crary provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity.Inverting conventional approaches, Crary considers the problem of visuality not through the study of art works and images, but by analyzing the historical construction of the observer. He insists that the problems of vision are inseparable from the operation of social power and examines how, beginning in the 1820s, the observer became the site of new discourses and practices that situated vision within the body as a physiological e
£36.00
Penguin Random House LLC The Big Archive Art from Bureaucracy The MIT Press
£30.02
Penguin Random House LLC Radicalism in the Wilderness International Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan The MIT Press
£38.78
MIT Press Bruce Nauman Volume 22 October Files 22
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£29.52
Penguin Random House LLC Design History
£35.73
MIT Press Ltd Robert Ryman
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£43.19
MIT Press Ltd Under Blue Cup
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£30.03
MIT Press Ltd Russian Cosmism
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£34.54
MIT Press We Are Not Users
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£34.77
MIT Press Ltd Design Things
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£48.07
MIT Press The Return of the Real Art and Theory at the End of the Century October Books
Book SynopsisIn The Return of the Real Hal Foster discusses the development of art and theory since 1960, and reorders the relation between prewar and postwar avant-gardes. Opposed to the assumption that contemporary art is somehow belated, he argues that the avant-garde returns to us from the future, repositioned by innovative practice in the present. And he poses this retroactive model of art and theory against the reactionary undoing of progressive culture that is pervasive today.After the models of art-as-text in the 1970s and art-as-simulacrum in the 1980s, Foster suggests that we are now witness to a return to the real—to art and theory grounded in the materiality of actual bodies and social sites. If The Return of the Real begins with a new narrative of the historical avant-gard, it concludes with an original reading of this contemporary situation—and what it portends for future practices of art and theory, culture and politics.
£36.00
MIT Press Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday ModernityA Cultural Biography The MIT Press
Book SynopsisThe first biography of the enigmatic dadaist known as the Baroness—Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927) is considered by many to be the first American dadaist as well as the mother of dada. An innovator in poetic form and an early creator of junk sculpture, the Baroness was best known for her sexually charged, often controversial performances. Some thought her merely crazed, others thought her a genius. The editor Margaret Anderson called her perhaps the only figure of our generation who deserves the epithet extraordinary. Yet despite her great notoriety and influence, until recently her story and work have been little known outside the circle of modernist scholars.In Baroness Elsa, Irene Gammel traces the extraordinary life and work of this daring woman, viewing her in the context of female dada and the historical battles fought by women in the early twentieth century. Striding through the streets of Berlin, Munich, New Yo
£45.00
Penguin Random House LLC Alois Riegl Art History and Theory MIT Press
£38.78
Penguin Random House LLC Infinite Regress Marcel Duchamp 19101941 October Books
£38.78
Penguin Random House LLC Chronophobia
£45.00
Penguin Random House LLC The Historiography of Modern Architecture The MIT Press
£47.53
Pennsylvania State University Press Consensus and Debate in Salazars Portugal
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£49.95
Yale University Press Legend Myth and Magic in the Image of the Artist
£25.99
Yale University Press The Critical Historians of Art
£32.67
Yale University Press The Architecture of the Roman Empire
£50.47
Yale University Press Sisters of the Brush
Book SynopsisThe union of women artists and painters was founded in Paris in 1881 to represent the interests of women artists and facilitate the exhibition of their work. This is a history of the first 15 years of the organization which places it in the context of the Paris art world in the 19th century.Table of ContentsVision and division in the sisterhood of artists; "amidst a veritable flood of painting" - establishing a context for the Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs; feminism, philanthropy and the "femme artiste"; reason and resistance - women's entry into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; the sex of art - in search of "le genie feminin"; "l'art feminin" - a Utopian vision.
£57.13
Yale University Press The Analysis of Beauty Paper
Book SynopsisThis edition of Hogarth's 18th-century text includes: an introduction that places the work in the tradition of aesthetic treatise and Hogarth's own "moral" works; annotation of the text and accompanying illustrations; and manuscript passages that the artist omitted from the original version.
£30.44
Yale University Press Professional Savages
Trade ReviewShortlisted in the New South Wales Premier's History Awards 2005 for the State Records NSW John & Patricia Ward Prize.Finalist for the 2004 George Freedley Memorial Award given by the Theatre Library Association
£48.24
Yale University Press The World Atlas of Tattoo
Book Synopsis
£38.25
Hachette Books My Life
Book SynopsisMy Life was written in Moscow in 1921-1922, when Chagall was thirty-five years old. Although long out-of-print, it remains one of the most extraordinarily inventive and beautifully told of all autobiographies. The text is accompanied by twenty plates which Chagall prepared especially to illustrate his life story. Together, the words and pictures paint an incomparable portrait of one of the greatest painters of this century, and of the now vanished milieu which inspired him.Table of Contents* Fire in the City * Beside My Mothers Tombstone * Father * Dining Room * Pokrowskaja Street * Old Jew * The Talmud Teacher * Mother and Son * At the Gate * Lovers on a Bench * Grandmother * Grandfather * At the Easel * Wedding * House in Pestkowatik * Self Portrait
£15.19
Hachette Book Group USA The Writings Of A Savage
Book SynopsisThe life of Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), who abandoned his wife, five children, and a successful career as a stockbroker to paint in poverty in exotic Tahiti, is one of the legendary tales of the art world. Today he is recognized as a highly influential founding father of modern art, who emphasized the use of flat planes and bright, nonnaturalistic colour in conjunction with symbolic or primitive subjects. Familiarity with Gauguin the writer is essential for a complete understanding of the artist. The Writings of a Savage collects the very best of his letters, articles, books, and journals, many of which are unavailable elsewhere. In brilliantly lucid discussions of life and art Gauguin paints a triumphant self-portrait of a volcanic artist and the tormented man within.Table of Contents* Introduction by Wayne Andersen Gauguin in France * Gauguins Beginnings * Notes on Art at the Universal Exhibition (July 4 and 11, 1889) * Who is Being Deceived Here? (September 21, 1889) * Huysmans and Redon (end of 1889) * Letter to J. F. Willumsen (late 1890) First Stay in Tahiti * Ancient Maori Religion * Notebook for Ailne Back in France * Noa Noa (end of 1893) * In Two Latitudes (May 1894) * About Svres and the Latest Kiln (April 25, 1895) * Interview with Paul Gauguin (May 13, 1895) Second Stay in Oceania * A Letter to Charles Morice (January 1897) * Miscellaneous Things (189698) * A Letter to Charles Morice (November 1897) * A Letter to Daniel de Monfreid (February 1898) * Against the Catholic Church * Two Essays * Le Sourire and Les Gupes (18991900) * Gauguin and the Art Speculators * Racantars de Rapin (1902) * Avant et Aprs (JanuaryFebruary 1903) * Last Writings (November 1902April 1903) * The Empire of Death (May 8, 1903)
£16.19
Hachette Books The Legacy of Mark Rothko
Book SynopsisAt the time of Mark Rothko''s apparent suicide in 1970, the deeply troubled, pioneering artist of Abstract Expressionism was at the height of fame and financial success yet within months of the funeral, his three trusted friends, acting as executors, relinquished his entire legacy of 800 paintings to the powerful, international Marlborough Galleries (run by Frank Lloyd) for a fraction of their real worth on terms suspiciously unfavourable to the estate. The suit that Rothko''s daughter brought against the executors and Marlborough rocked the art world with its shocking revelations of corruption in the international art trade: from the deceptions practiced on Rothko when he was alive to the scandals after his death involving conspiracies and cover-ups, double dealings and betrayals, missing paintings and manipulated markets, phony sales and laundered profits, forgery and fraud.Table of Contents* Three Days That Rocked the Art World (February 2527, 1970) * The Struggle (190345) * The Triumph (194555) * Recognitions (195563) * Dollar Signs and Question Marks (196368) * The Price (April 1968February 1969) * The Last Year (FebruaryOctober 1969) * The Last Monthsthe Final Pressures (October 1969February 24, 1970) * February 25, 1970 * Odds Out ... And to the family of the deceased... (FebruaryOctober 1970) * Dealers Choice (FebruaryJune 1970) * Much Fanfare and Some Suspicions (October 1970May 1971) * An Unveiling: The Dummy Uncovered (JuneNovember 1971) * Maneuvers (November 1971June 1972) * Misalliances (May 1972March 1973) * The Free-for-all and the Referee (January 1973February 1974) * The Trial: Phase OneSelf-Dealing? (FebruaryMay 1974) * The Trial: Phase TwoThe Master Dealer (JuneAugust 1974) * The Defense140 Different Trials (AugustOctober 1974) * Press Clips from the Gallery: Aftermyths of the Trial and the Long Wait (December 1974December 1975) * The Decision (December 18, 1975) * Kate Rothko and the Notion of the Double Whammy (December 26, 1975October 1976) * Questions of Perspective * Postscript: Echoes of Rothko
£18.04
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Master of Shadows The Secret Diplomatic Career of the Painter Peter Paul Rubens
Book SynopsisAlthough his popularity is eclipsed by Rembrandt today, Peter Paul Rubens was revered by his contemporaries as the greatest painter of his era, if not of all history. His undeniable artistic genius, bolstered by a modest disposition and a reputation as a man of tact and discretion, made him a favorite among monarchs and political leaders across Europe—and gave him the perfect cover for the clandestine activities that shaped the landscape of seventeenth-century politics. In Master of Shadows, Mark Lamster brilliantly recreates the culture, religious conflicts, and political intrigues of Rubens’s time, following the painter from Antwerp to London, Madrid, Paris, and Rome and providing an insightful exploration of Rubens’s art as well as the private passions that influenced it.
£14.24
ABC-CLIO JeanMichel Basquiat
Book SynopsisThis work examines the fascinating life and art of the African American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988).Jean-Michel Basquiat was barely out of his teens when he rocketed to the center of New York’s art scene.Trade ReviewLike his heroes musicians Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix, African American artist Basquiat (1960-1988) was considered a creative genius and died young of a drug overdose. A veteran observer of the New York art scene traces his rise from troubled NY subway graffiti tagger to friend of Andy Warhol and iconic New York Times Magazine cover image in 1985. Fretz also discusses his legacy as a major contemporary artist. The biography includes a timeline of events in Basquiat's life, sources, and a list of his works. * Reference & Research Book News *Table of ContentsSeries Foreword Preface Introduction Timeline: Events in the Life of Jean-Michel Basquiat Chapter 1 Brooklyn Childhood Chapter 2 Leaving Home Chapter 3 Getting Known Chapter 4 Becoming a Painter Chapter 5 New York/New Wave Chapter 6 Art Star or Gallery Mascot? Chapter 7 Fun Chapter 8 Reaching a Peak Chapter 9 Collaborations Chapter 10 Andy Warhol's Death Chapter 11 Final Days Chapter 12 Legacy Appendix: List of Works Selected Bibliography Index Photo essay follows page
£34.00
Not Stated The Beautiful Fall
£21.84
Hachette Book Group USA Total Package The The Secret History and Hidden Meanings of Boxes Bottles Cans and Other Persuasive Containers
Book Synopsis* 'Nothing less than a cultural history of the American character, as seen through - or in - the metal, glass and cardboard carriers that most of us take for granted.' - PHILADELPHIA INQUIRERTrade ReviewInformative... entertaining...a stimulating book for anyone interested in the way we are. * New York TIMES BOOK REVIEW *THE TOTAL PACKAGE has to be the bible of the industry: everything is there, all the nuances. The book presents a clear picture to both professional and layman. * - PRIMO ANGELI, designer 1996 Olympic Games *
£16.19
Lulu.com Dressed to Kill
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£14.11
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc Eye of the Sixties
Book SynopsisA man with a preternatural ability to find emerging artists, Richard Bellamy was one of the first advocates of pop art, minimalism, and conceptual art. The founder and director of the fabled Green Gallery on Fifty-Seventh Street, this witty, poetry-loving art aficionado became a legend of the avant-garde.
£22.06
Random House USA Inc Heretics and Heroes
Book Synopsis
£18.00
Brill Recreating Ancient History Episodes from the Greek and Roman Past in the Arts and Literature of the Early Modern Period
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£66.23
W W Norton & Co Ltd Picasso
Book Synopsis"The best biography of Picasso."—Kenneth Clark
£24.00
W. W. Norton & Company The International Style
Book SynopsisThe most influential work of architectural criticism and history of the twentieth century, now available in a handsomely designed new edition.
£19.00
WW Norton & Co Funny Weather
Book Synopsis“One of the finest writers of the new nonfiction” (Harper’s Bazaar) explores the role of art in our tumultuous modern era.Trade Review"[Olivia Laing is] a kind of cultural sage… an accidental literary grande dame of the emotional havoc wrought by late capitalism and digital disconnect." -- Hillary Kelly - Vulture"Laing’s arts writing is sharp-minded, and her manner is generous toward both subject and reader." -- John Glassie - Washington Post"Laing writes of her creative subjects in a winning, passionate voice that proves both soothing and galvanizing, especially amid a panic.… It’s not just art we need in an emergency, but writers, like Laing, who gently guide our eyes to what’s out there." -- Alina Cohen - Observer"As exterior life shuts temporarily down, Funny Weather is an immensely useful reminder that new space can be intellectual as well as physical.… Laing animates her prose with concise, brainy descriptions of visual art.… Laing is a tremendously gifted genre-mixer, and her writing flourishes most when its topic requires her both to observe and to imagine.… Funny Weather is an invitation to Laing’s imaginary museum, where minds if not bodies meet, and where true hospitality resides." -- Lily Meyer - Hyperallergic"Laing opens each piece with a deceptive ease [and] alights upon poetic insights.… [H]er light touch throughout these essays makes room for some stunning perceptions." -- A.V. Club"A thought-provoking, inspiring collection that you can go back to whenever the weather takes a funny turn." -- Susannah Butter - Evening Standard"Funny Weather gives the reader a tangible sense of the sprawling garden of work which Laing has planted. She is to the art world what David Attenborough is to nature: a worthy guide with both a macro and micro vision, fluent in her chosen tongue and always full of empathy and awe." -- Mia Colleran - Irish Times"An incisive meditation on the value of heartfelt, messy art in our paranoid times." -- Telegraph"A fine writer’s embrace of the artists who preceded her, friendly visits with their lives, and loving acknowledgement of their foundational contributions. A work of joy in recognition." -- Sarah Schulman, author of Conflict Is Not Abuse"Like all great critics, Olivia Laing combines formidable intelligence with boundless curiosity and fabulous taste, but she also has a rare quality of intimacy; an ability to connect the reader to a work of art or literature (or for that matter a facet of life itself) with a directness that lights it up like nothing else. It’s why I read her." -- James Lasdun, author of Afternoon of a Faun
£13.29
Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale What We See in the Stars
Book Synopsis
£15.29
INGRAM PUBLISHER SERVICES US Mind in Motion
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£25.20
Mark Moodie Publications The Organisation of Life
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£25.00
