History of art Books
University of Toronto Press Seeing Through Closed Eyelids
Book SynopsisCan a work of art help us know our world differently? In this first scholarly study of Giuseppe Penone, art historian Elizabeth Mangini argues that the Italian artist’s engagement of the body’s multiple senses constitutes a new theory of sculpture as a means to connect with and know the phenomenal world. Through close readings of signal works across Penone’s five-decade career – from his emergence in the context of 1960s Arte povera to his position as a pre-eminent contemporary artist today – Mangini demonstrates how Penone refuses modernist opticality, recasts artistic labour, and emphasizes a non-anthropocentric concept of time. Penone’s approach challenges viewers to broaden their sensory and temporal perceptions, creating structurally significant new ways to understand human experience.Giuseppe Penone is best known for his engagement with trees, which he employs as raw material, imagery, and an active force in the creative process
£20.69
University of Toronto Press Royal Canadian Academy of ArtsAcadémie royale des
Book SynopsisThis detailed reference work lists, by artists, all works exhibited by the Royal Canadian Academy in its first 100 years. These include works in all media shown in the annual exhibitions, special exhibits organized by the Academy, fairs and world expositions to which the Academy officially contributed, and travelling exhibitions organized by the National Gallery of Canada. The more than 22,000 entries embrace work in the fields of painting, sculptue, architecture, design, photography, and film, executed by approximately 3,000 artists. Evelyn McMann's compilation includes concise biographical data on each artist, the artist's residence at the time the work was exhibited, the title and nature of each piece, and its sale price if known. A total of 134 exhibitions are listed with date, place, and number of works exhibited. This book draws on many previously unpublished sources, presents an historic view of Canadian art, and greatly enhances a precise knowledge of canadian artis
£35.10
University of Toronto Press Beyond the Word
Book SynopsisBeyond the Word challenges the reader to reconsider the role of artistic expression as cultural production within today’s society, and questions many key aspects of contemporary critical thought. Donald Theall centres his discussion around the theoretical implication of the work of James Joyce, who he posits as ‘poetical engineer’ whose works show how poetry and art have always provided society with a means of communication about societal and technological change. Today’s artist, as exemplified by Joyce, explores a myriad of possibilities for communication in a new world of technology, electrification, and mechanization, by developing a multimedia language that is simultaneously oral, graphic, and polysemic. This causes an ‘unbinding of textuality,’ freeing the concept of text from its original connections with manuscripts and books, and leading so the total involvement of multimedia virtual reality.Beyond the Word p
£29.70
University of Toronto Press Biographical Index of Artists in Canada
Book SynopsisThis index has been compiled as a quick reference guide to biographies of almost 8,800 professional and amateur artists active in Canada from the seventeenth century to the present. The artists represent 42 professional categories, from animation to topography. In addition to Canadian artists, the index has entires on more than 800 British, American, and European artists, all of whom spent part of their careers in Canada. Each entry provides the artist's name, date and place of birth and death (or years the artist flourished, if birth and death dates are unavailable), nationality (if not Canadian), type of artist (major medium/media used), and sources in which biographical information may be found. Several hundred cross-references link the various names used by some artists during the course of their careers.
£24.29
University of Toronto Press A Short History of the Renaissance in Europe
Book SynopsisWriting about the Renaissance can be a daunting task. Not only do scholars disagree on what the Renaissance is, but they also disagree on whether or not it even took place. Margaret L. King's richly illustrated social history of the Renaissance succeeds as a trusted resource, introducing readers to Europe between 1300–1700, as well as to the problems of cultural renewal. A Short History of the Renaissance in Europe includes a detailed discussion of Burckhardt as well as new content on European contact with the Islamic world. This new edition also provides improved coverage of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. "Focus" features provide fascinating insights into the Renaissance era, and "Voices" sections introduce a wealth of primary sources.King's engaging narrative is enhanced by over 100 images, statistical tables, timelines, a glossary, and suggested readings.Table of ContentsList of Maps List of Illustrations List of Figures, Graphs, and Tables Acknowledgments Introduction: The Idea of the Renaissance Chapter One: Italy and Rome: From Roman Republic to Secondo Popolo (c. 500 BCE-1300 CE) The Romanization of Italy Invasion and Destruction Early Migrations Focus: Monte Cassino Germanic Incursions Cathedral and Monastery The Authority of the Bishops The Origins of Monastic Life Emperor and Pope The Development of the Holy Roman Empire Gregory VII and the Drive for Papal Supremacy Commerce and Reurbanization Decline of the Roman Economy Voices: How to Succeed in Business The Flourishing of Maritime Trade The Expansion of Trading Networks The Communal Revolution Alliance of the Magnates Triumph of the Lombard League The Coming of the Popolo Merchant Guilds Focus: The Battle of Legnano, 1176 Conflict between Pope and Emperor The Rebellion of the Popolo Conclusion Suggested Readings Chapter Two: An Age of Republics (c. 1250-c. 1350) Florence: Banking and Wool Banking Focus: Florence Wool and the Wool Guilds The Guilds and Civic Life Revolt of the Ciompi Focus: Venice Venice: Shipbuilding and Trade The Growth of Venice Shipbuilding and the State The Venetian Nobility Urban Renewal: Walls, Buildings, and Spaces Walls Buildings Vita Civile: Urban Culture in a Republican Age The Jurists The Secretaries Voices: Yearning to Be Free Dante and Giotto: Innovators before the Dawn of the Renaissance Dante Alighieri Giotto di Bondone Voices: Petrarch's Letter "To Posterity" Boccaccio and Petrarch: Inaugurators of Renaissance Thought Boccaccio Petrarch Republics and Principalities The Black Death Conclusion Suggested Readings Chapter Three: Human Dignity and Humanist Studies: The Career of Humanism (c. 1350-c. 1530) The Recovery of Classical Antiquity Focus: Personal Space Roman Works Greek Works The "Studies of Humanity" The Idea of Humanist Education Humanist Educational Treatises The Dignity of Man Giannozzo Manetti Pico della Mirandola Civic Humanism Voices: Barbaro and Pico Proposing New Values: Poggio and Valla Praising the City: Bruni Voices: Valla's Logic Women and Humanism Early Female Humanists Later Female Humanists: Nogarola, Cereta, Fedele Voices: Women and Humanism in Renaissance Italy Humanism, Philosophy, and Scholarship Philosophy: Aristotle and Plato Other Schools Printing Textual Scholarship The Sociology of Humanism Focus: Aldine Editions Conclusion Suggested Readings Chapter Four: New Visions (c. 1350-c. 1530) Breakthroughs in Style Perspective: The Artful Construction of Reality Patronage and Patrons Types of Patronage Focus: New Visions Florence and Milan Ferrara, Mantua, and Urbino Music Architecture and Urbanism The Rediscovery of Classical Architecture Churches Secular Buildings Focus: Brunelleschi's Dome Voices: Artists and Patrons in Urbino and Venice City Planning Portraits and Personality Portraits and Self-Portraits Voices: Isabella d'Este Equestrian Portraits and Tombs Art and the Everyday City and Country Settings Interiors From Artisan to Genius: The Evolution of the Artist Vasari Alberti Leonardo Women Artists The High Renaissance (c. 1500-1530) Rome Venice Conclusion Suggested Readings Chapter Five: At Home and in the Piazza (c. 1350-c. 1530) Public Life Social Structure Focus: Prostitutes and Courtesans Associations Social Control Voices: Riot, Plague, and Punishment Focus: The Jewish Community in the Italian Renaissance Private Life The Household Voices: Death and Consolation Patriarchy, Property, and Marriage Voices: The Duties of a Wife Women and Children Focus: Childbirth and Childrearing in Renaissance Italy Conclusion Suggested Readings Chapter Six: The Church and the People (c. 1350-c. 1530) Papacy and the Papal State The Rise of the Papacy Focus: Popes and Cardinals Challenges to the Papacy Popular Religion Paganism and Heresy The Mendicant Movements Confraternities Voices: Brothers (Sisters) in Christ Holy Women Saints and Martyrs Focus: Holy Women and Unwilling Nuns Catherine of Siena Francesca of Rome Catherine of Bologna Catherine of Genoa Angela Merici Pastors of the Flock Archbishops and Bishops Preachers and Visionaries Bernardino of Siena Girolamo Savonarola Conclusion Suggested Readings Chapter Seven: Statecraft and Warcraft (c. 1350-c. 1530) The Tide of Despotism The Organization of Violence Focus: Warriors for Hire Padua and Verona The Visconti in Milan Ferrara, Mantua, and Urbino The Papal States and the Two Sicilies Voices: A Despot's Advice and a Republican's Lament Freedom versus Tyranny Balance of Power Councils and Commissions Focus: The Machinery of Government in Venice The Trend toward Oligarchy Administering Justice Raising Revenues Focus: The Medici Diplomacy Venice and Florence Expand Military Organization War and Peace Invasion and Conquest The French Invasion to the Battle of Fornovo The Great Captain and the Conquest of Naples Julius II and the Battle of Agnadello The Holy League and the Battle of Marignano Habsburg versus Valois to the Battle of Pavia * 247 The Sack of Rome The Return of the Medici Voices: The Republican Spirit in Florence Conclusion Suggested Readings Chapter Eight: The Crisis and Beyond (c. 1500-c. 1650) The Machiavellian Moment Machiavelli's Career Machiavelli's Thought Machiavelli's Political Vision Courts and Princes: Castiglione's The Courtier Book One Book Two Book Three Book Four Influence The States of Italy after c. 1530 Ideas and the Arts in Late Renaissance Italy The Visual Arts Focus: Womanly Perspective The Performing Arts Literature and Literary Trends Focus: The Origins of Opera Voices: Pietro Aretino, "Scourge of Princes" Science, Medicine, and Philosophy Voices: Women and Love Conclusion Suggested Readings Chapter Nine: The Renaissance and the Two Reformations (c. 1500-c. 1650) Visitors and Emissaries Printing, Humanism, and Reform The Manuscript Book The Printed Book: Early Years The Printed Book: Later Developments Focus: The English Century Erasmus, More, and Vives Erasmus Focus: The Enchantments of Nowhere More and Utopia Vives and the Erasmian Mission The Reformations and the Humanist Tradition Protestants Voices: Luther and Calvin on Liberty and Free Will The Catholic Response Voices: The Catholic Response: The Council of Trent, Ignatius of Loyola, and Teresa of vila Intersections Conclusion Suggested Readings Chapter Ten: The Renaissance beyond the Alps: Cities, Courts, and Kings (c. 1500-c. 1700) Contexts: Kingdoms, Courts, and Cities Kingdoms Courts Cities Focus: Early Modern Cities Centers of the Renaissance beyond the Alps Spain and Portugal Voices: Spanish Sketches The Low Countries Focus: The Low Countries: Interiors and Exteriors France The British Isles Voices: In Search of Authenticity The German Lands Northern and Eastern Europe Conclusion Suggested Readings Chapter Eleven: The Renaissance and New Worlds (c. 1500-c. 1700) The New World in the Ocean Sea The Mediterranean Focus: The Renaissance and Globalization Portuguese Ventures Spanish Exploration and Conquest Indigenous Peoples, Africans, and the Slave Trade North America and the Triangle Trade The Impact on European Consciousness New Heavens, New Earth Cosmographical Revisions Voices: Scientific Observers Other Scientific Advances Voices: Discerning Truth New Ways to Reason Focus: Educating the Few-and the Many Toward Enlightenment Readers and Learners Women and the World of Learning Focus: The Worth of Women Conclusion Suggested Readings Glossary Credits Index
£45.90
University of Nebraska Press Women Made Visible
Book Synopsis2020Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CALACS) Book Prize In post-1968 Mexico a group of artistsand feminist activists began to question how feminine bodies were visually constructed and politicized across media. Participation of women was increasing in the public sphere, and the exclusive emphasis on written culture was giving way to audio-visual communications. Motivated by a desire for self-representation both visually and in politics, female artists and activiststransformedexisting regimes of media and visuality.Women Made Visible by Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda uses a transnational and interdisciplinary lens to analyzethe fundamental and overlooked role played by artists and feminist activists in changing the ways female bodies were viewed and appropriated. Through their concern for self-representation (both visually and in formal politics), these women played a crucial role in transforming existing regimes of medTrade Review"Women Made Visible is meticulously and creatively researched thanks to the access that the author gained to personal and institutional archives, and to the detailed interviews she conducted with art practitioners and feminist activists. . . . This book will be of interest to scholars of visual and art history and feminist studies, as well as to urban historians, particularly those concerned with the ways in which metropolises like Mexico City become places where countercultural movements flourish."—Tania Islas Weinstein, Latin Americanist"Timely and necessary, Women Made Visible advances the field of Latin American, Chicanx, and Latinx art history."—Teresa Eckmann, Woman's Art Journal"Women Made Visible may be of interest to students and scholars who study art, feminism, Mexico, politics, and history."—Margarita H.Tapia, Communication Booknotes Quarterly“Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda brilliantly contrasts two primary sources that are not normally read together: private artist archives (and interviews with the artist-archivists) and state security archives. The author’s deeply researched—and theoretically and methodologically sophisticated—study will be an extraordinary resource for this subfield of video art and experimental film in Mexico.”—George Flaherty, author of Hotel Mexico: Dwelling on the ’68 Movement“An impressive foundation. Women Made Visible adds important women artists to the canon of Mexican art history. Written in a brisk, accessible, but still sophisticated prose style, this book will serve novice and specialist alike.”—Mary K. Coffey, author of How a Revolutionary Art Became Official Culture: Murals, Museums, and the Mexican StateTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: Women Made Visible Part 1. Feminizing the City 1. The Official City 2. The Media City 3. The Embodied City Part 2. The Archival Practices of a Visual Letrada 4. The Archival and Political Awakenings of Ana Victoria Jiménez 5. Secret Documents and Feminist Practices 6. Performing Feminist Art Part 3. Protesting the Archive 7. Interrupting Photographic Traditions 8. Feminist Collaborations in 1970s Mexico 9. POLArizing the Archive Conclusion: New and Emergent Visual Letradas Notes Bibliography Index
£48.60
University of Nebraska Press Knowing Native Arts
Book SynopsisKnowing Native Arts brings Nancy Marie Mithlo's Native perspective to understanding the significance of Indigenous arts in national and global settings.Trade Review"Knowing Native Arts offers a necessary perspective not only for undergraduate and graduate courses on Indigenous art, art history across the Americas, and so on, but also for introduction to ethics, advanced classes on the philosophy of art and on value theory, and graduate seminars on aesthetics."—Benjamin P. Davis, American Indian Quarterly"Mithlo proves her own argument for the need for supporting new generations of Native arts scholars as vital to the understanding, promotion and preservation of Native arts and cultures."—Gerald Clarke, American Indian Culture and Research Journal"Knowing Native Arts is necessary reading for those in the fields of museum studies and the arts as well as Indigenous studies and anthropology. Understanding the Native arts world through a Native worldview is crucial, and this book is a highly recommended addition to all art library collections."—Shoshana Vegh-Gaynor, Art Libraries Society of North America“This is a deeply personal book that blends Mithlo’s personal, family, and tribal experiences with significant scholarship and meditation on the field of Native American art.”—Ryan Wheeler, coeditor of Glory, Trouble, and Renaissance at the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology“Mithlo provides a rare opportunity to expose the truth and lay bare the great challenges and divides in contemporary Native arts. Her essays uncover, articulate, and open the discussion to illuminate the disenfranchisement of Native arts today.”—Patsy Phillips (Cherokee), director of the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native ArtsTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Dangerous for the Heart 1. “The Manner in Which Knowledge Grows” 2. Native Arts’ Visual Remix 3. Indigenous Arts Movements at Home and Abroad 4. On the Other Side of the Ocean 5. Postidentity Claims, Realism, and Radical Restructuring 6. The Encyclopedic Gaze 7. Decentering Durham 8. American Indians and Museums: The Love/Hate Relationship Conclusion: The Good Fight Notes
£25.19
University of Nebraska Press Caught between the Lines
Book SynopsisExamines how the figure of the captive and the notion of borders have been used in Argentine literature and painting to reflect competing notions of national identity from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries.Trade Review“An outstanding book. The subject of the captive is deeply embedded in the Argentine imagination, and Carlos Riobó reveals its every nuance, from nineteenth-century myths of national racial purity to the re-identification of all its components during the Perón era. A book like this can only be the product of a great teacher who has labored to make his subject attractive to undergraduates. With this book Riobó has established a niche for himself: it sets a professional standard.”—Alfred Mac Adam, professor of Spanish at Barnard College, Columbia UniversityTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1. A National Trope: Captivity within Argentine History 2. Crossing Borders: Mestizaje and Frontiers 3. Ambivalent Histories: An Early Legend and a First-Person Account 4. Captives in Argentine Literature: A Mimetic Historical Record 5. Virtue-al Representations: Captives in Argentine Art Notes Bibliography Index
£31.50
University of Nebraska Press Mapping Beyond Measure
Book SynopsisMapping Beyond Measure analyzes diverse map-based works of painting, collage, film, walking performance, and digital drawing, made in Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, Ukraine, the United States, and the former Soviet Union, arguing that together they challenge the dominant modern view of the world as a measurable and malleable geometrical space. Trade Review"Mapping Beyond Measure participates in a broader scholarly discussion about the cultural formation of geographic knowledge and the ways that we think about and experience our place in the world through maps and other cultural representations of the earth. The book also provides a valuable resource for a growing number of historians who use digital mapping as a method of inquiry."—Kristan M. Hanson, H-Maps“In this thoughtful analysis of ‘map art’ Simon Ferdinand offers an innovative interpretation of contemporary artworks that tests and reconfigures the challenges and opportunities posed by the transformation in global modernity of our lived world into lines and grids. ‘I map, therefore I am modern’ is the resounding implication that emerges from Ferdinand’s perceptive exploration of how visual artists in our times have used the map form to relate to the world, to the globe, indeed to earth itself.”—Sumathi Ramaswamy, author of Terrestrial Lessons: The Conquest of the World as Globe“This is an important book on a theoretical level. By looking at recent technologies as a continuation of existing ontologies, Ferdinand goes beyond the hype around digital mapping. The chapters touch deftly on many themes that will also be of interest to academic readers who don’t deal explicitly with maps in their work, including utopia, modernity, quantification, and futurism, among many others.”—Jess Bier, author of Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine: How Occupied Landscapes Shape Scientific KnowledgeTable of ContentsList of FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: I Map Therefore I Am Modern1. The Shock of the Whole: Phenomenologies of Global Mapping in Solomon Nikritin’s The Old and the New2. Combined and Uneven Cartography: Maps and Time in Alison Hildreth’s Forthrights and Meanders3. Drawing Like a State: Maps, Modernity, and Warfare in Gert Jan Kocken’s Depictions4. Insular Imaginations: Statehood, Islands, and Globalization in Satomi Matoba’s Utopia5. Cartography at Ground Level: Spectrality and Streets in Jeremy Wood’s My Ghost and Meridians6. Another Chorein: Alternative Ontologies in Peter Greenaway’s A Walk Through HEnvoi: Artists Astride Shifting Mapping ParadigmsNotesBibliographyIndex
£52.70
University of Nebraska Press Northern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort Robinson
Book SynopsisNorthern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort Robinson Breakout Survivors presents Dodge City ledger-art images and biographies that document a Native perspective at the cusp of reservation life in 1879.Trade Review"[Northern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort Robinson Breakout Survivors] is a great contribution that honors Cheyenne artists, past and present, as well as the Cheyenne culture."—Leo Killsback, Western Historical Quarterly"This beautiful book is important reading for anyone interested in ledger art, Cheyenne, or Great Plains history."—Leila Monaghan, Montana: The Magazine of Western History"Low and Powers and the ledger artists take readers on a journey of self-revelation because of the art and because of the narrative."—Richard Littlebear, Tribal College Journal"This book is highly recommended for persons interested in Indian pictographs, as well as anyone interested in the final days of this era of the Cheyenne Nation."—Jeff Broome, Denver Posse of Westerners"This is a fascinating glimpse of Northern Cheyenne culture researched and written by two well-qualified authors."—Elby Adamson, Clay Center Dispatcher“This book resonates with Indigenous survivance and Northern Cheyenne nationhood, revealing a cultural vitality not erased by settler colonialism in the reservation era. It is an exciting contribution to the field of ledger-art studies. The unique content of the Dodge City drawings constitutes an unusual record of a transitional historical period.”—Brad D. Lookingbill, author of The American Military: A Narrative History“This is an impeccably researched, beautifully written work, worthy of a prominent place in the literature relating to Northern Cheyenne history and art. This volume is a worthy tribute to Wild Hog, Porcupine, and the others with them who, in the misery of prison, created drawings portraying and reflecting the beauty and supernatural power of the life of the people, the Morning Star People.”—Father Peter J. Powell, editor of In Sun’s Likeness and Power: Cheyenne Accounts of Shield and Tipi Heraldry“The seven incarcerated Cheyenne men found freedom through their ledger art. These ledger drawings are true expressions of love for their land and home. This is a fascinating book of Cheyenne history and extraordinary ledger art. Each ledger drawing has hidden interpretations as the Cheyenne ledger artists intended.”—Gordon Yellowman, Southern Cheyenne contemporary ledger artistTable of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Tables Preface Introduction 1. Historical Context 2. Provenance 3. Ledgers Content Overview 4. Ledger Artists’ Style and Art 5. Artists’ Biographies 6. Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index
£48.60
University of Nebraska Press Clackamas Chinook Performance Art
Book Synopsis Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Victoria Howard was born around 1865, a little more than ten years after the founding of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in western Oregon. Howard's maternal grandmother, Wagayuhlen Quiaquaty, was a successful and valued Clackamas shaman at Grand Ronde, and her maternal grandfather, Quiaquaty, was an elite Molalla chief. In the summer of 1929 the linguist Melville Jacobs, student of Franz Boas, requested to record Clackamas Chinook oral traditions with Howard, which she enthusiastically agreed to do. The result is an intricate and lively corpus of linguistic and ethnographic material, as well as rich performances of Clackamas literary heritage, as dictated by Howard and meticulously transcribed by Jacobs in his field notebooks. Ethnographical descriptions attest to the traditional lifestyle and environment in which Howard grew up, while fTrade Review“An important and delightful contribution to the study of Native American ethnopoetics and verbal art. In Mason’s careful ethnopoetic renderings of the narratives of raconteur Victoria Howard we hear her voice, as never before, as she tells the personal and cultural stories that compose this wonderful corpus of the Molalla-Clackamas narratives that emerged from her collaboration with Jacobs.”—Paul V. Kroskrity, coeditor of The Legacy of Dell Hymes: Ethnopoetics, Narrative Inequality, and Voice“The Clackamas Chinook narratives by Victoria Howard (1865-1930) evoke tribal traditions, values, and human experiences of the tribes of the Western Oregon Grande Ronde. More than sixty years following the publication of Melville Jacob’s original publication, Catharine Mason’s selection from Howard’s Clackamas corpus, presents for republication a remarkable selection of well-crafted texts taken from an almost forgotten vocal performance artist accessible to both scholars and Chinookan descendants and members of the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde. This new and updated collection will provide a source of reading enjoyment as well as a significant contribution to American Northwest Coast oral traditions and literatures.”—Gus Palmer Jr., editor of When Dream Bear Sings: Native Literatures of the Southern Plains“Drawing on developments in ethnolinguistics, ethnopoetics, and narratology, Catharine Mason offers a beautifully presented, and fully annotated edition and verse translation of a selection of the works of Victoria Howard, one of the great North American storytellers. Mason’s respectful handling of these performances gives full recognition to the necessity for reading/hearing them in consultation with the communities whose ancestors were their creators.”—John Leavitt, author of Linguistic Relativities: Language Diversity and Modern ThoughtTable of ContentsList of Tables Preface Introduction: Interpreting, Editing, and Valorizing Traditional Works from Ethnographical RecordingsPersonal Landscapes The Wagʷə́t Náyma ganúłayt wagəškix (I Lived with My Mother’s Mother) Summer in the Mountains My Grandmother Never Explained Childbirth to Me Weeping about a Dead Child A Molale Hunter Who Was Never Frightened A Shaman Doctored Me for My Eyes Ičə́čġmam ganẋátẋ aġa Dušdaq ningidə́layt (I Was Ill, Dúšdaq Doctored Me) Náyka kʷalíwi wágəlxt (I and My Sister-Cousin) A Tualatin Woman Shaman and Transvestite A Shaman at My Mother’s Last IllnessHistorical Landscapes Spearfishing at Grand Ronde Slaughtering of Chinook Women Captives Escape Snake Indians Wálxayu ičámxix gałẋílayt (Seal and Her Younger Brother Lived There) Wišə́liq išq’íxanapx gašdašgúqam (Two Maidens, Two Stars Came to Them) Wásusgani and Wačínu Inventions and New Customs as Sources of AmusementCultural Landscapes Išknúłmapx (Two Grass Widows) Restrictions on Women Laughing at Missionaries The Honorable Milt Išk’áškaš škáwxaw gašdəẋuẋ (Two Children, Two Owls, They Became) Joshing during a Spirit-Power Dance Fun-Dances Performed by Visitors Notes References Index
£45.00
University of Nebraska Press Race Experts
Book SynopsisCharles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art from the Smithsonian American Art Museum In Race ExpertsLinda Kim examines the complicated and ambivalent role played by sculptor Malvina Hoffman in the Races of Mankind series created for the Chicago Field Museum in 1930. Although Hoffman had training in fine arts and was a protégé of Auguste Rodin and Ivan Meštrovic, she had no background in anthropology or museum exhibits. Nonetheless, the Field Museum commissioned her to make a series of life-size sculptures for the museum’s new racial exhibition, which became the largest exhibit on race ever installed in a museum and one of the largest sculptural commissions ever undertaken by a single artist. Hoffman’s Races of Mankind exhibit was realized as a series of 104 bronzes of racial types from around the world, a unique visual mediation between anthropological expertise and lay ideaTrade Review"Kim's book, well researched and eloquently presented, is a necessary corrective and intervention on the interwar period, when scientists and cultural anthropologists were theorizing race in new, more complex ways."—K. P. Buick, Choice"Throughout her book, Kim’s analysis of the intersection of 1930s “race experts”—scientists, artists, and lay persons—is rich and insightful and it has relevance for understanding the processes through which race is constructed today. It is worth a close reading."—Dr. Mary Jo Arnoldi, New England Quarterly“Race Experts performs a great service to students of American race and racism, revealing in detail the way that twentieth-century race ideology was produced at the nexus of formal systems of thought, aesthetics, and entertainment culture. . . . Meticulously researched and brilliantly narrated, the story Kim tells of the history of race stubbornly asserts itself as contemporary critique. Along the way, Kim makes plain the significant role that world’s fairs and international expositions have played in the staging of race and making of modernity.”—Tracey Jean Boisseau, associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Purdue University and author of White Queen: The Imperial Origins of American Feminist Identity “Innovative and well-documented. . . . Kim deftly explores such important questions as the agency of the artist and her models, scientific ideas of race, and the viewing public’s racialism. It is an ambitious argument in the best sense.”—Alice L. Conklin, Distinguished University Scholar and professor of history at Ohio State University “The question of how and why scientific expertise fails to dislodge popular, antithetical views is very important. Linda Kim’s argument that art served as a mediator is an interesting and original approach to the issue of how scientific knowledge is represented to the public and the vexed relationship between the two. This interdisciplinary work will likely attract readers in many fields, including art history, anthropology, history, and museum studies.”—Julia E. Liss, professor of history at Scripps CollegeTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Series Editors’ Introduction Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter One. Racial Know-How: Expertise versus Common Sense Chapter Two. Mediations: Art in the Natural History Museum Chapter Three. Racial Portraiture: Between Typologies and Common Sense Chapter Four. Racial Homelands: Popular Geography and Local Races Chapter Five. Micro-Expertise: Passing for Indian, Passing for White Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
£28.80
University of Nebraska Press Clackamas Chinook Performance Art
Book Synopsis Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Victoria Howard was born around 1865, a little more than ten years after the founding of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in western Oregon. Howard's maternal grandmother, Wagayuhlen Quiaquaty, was a successful and valued Clackamas shaman at Grand Ronde, and her maternal grandfather, Quiaquaty, was an elite Molalla chief. In the summer of 1929 the linguist Melville Jacobs, student of Franz Boas, requested to record Clackamas Chinook oral traditions with Howard, which she enthusiastically agreed to do. The result is an intricate and lively corpus of linguistic and ethnographic material, as well as rich performances of Clackamas literary heritage, as dictated by Howard and meticulously transcribed by Jacobs in his field notebooks. Ethnographical descriptions attest to the traditional lifestyle and environment in which Howard grew up, while fTrade Review“An important and delightful contribution to the study of Native American ethnopoetics and verbal art. In Mason’s careful ethnopoetic renderings of the narratives of raconteur Victoria Howard we hear her voice, as never before, as she tells the personal and cultural stories that compose this wonderful corpus of the Molalla-Clackamas narratives that emerged from her collaboration with Jacobs.”—Paul V. Kroskrity, coeditor of The Legacy of Dell Hymes: Ethnopoetics, Narrative Inequality, and Voice“The Clackamas Chinook narratives by Victoria Howard (1865-1930) evoke tribal traditions, values, and human experiences of the tribes of the Western Oregon Grande Ronde. More than sixty years following the publication of Melville Jacob’s original publication, Catharine Mason’s selection from Howard’s Clackamas corpus, presents for republication a remarkable selection of well-crafted texts taken from an almost forgotten vocal performance artist accessible to both scholars and Chinookan descendants and members of the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde. This new and updated collection will provide a source of reading enjoyment as well as a significant contribution to American Northwest Coast oral traditions and literatures.”—Gus Palmer Jr., editor of When Dream Bear Sings: Native Literatures of the Southern Plains“Drawing on developments in ethnolinguistics, ethnopoetics, and narratology, Catharine Mason offers a beautifully presented, and fully annotated edition and verse translation of a selection of the works of Victoria Howard, one of the great North American storytellers. Mason’s respectful handling of these performances gives full recognition to the necessity for reading/hearing them in consultation with the communities whose ancestors were their creators.”—John Leavitt, author of Linguistic Relativities: Language Diversity and Modern ThoughtTable of ContentsList of Tables Preface Introduction: Interpreting, Editing, and Valorizing Traditional Works from Ethnographical RecordingsPersonal Landscapes The Wagʷə́t Náyma ganúłayt wagəškix (I Lived with My Mother’s Mother) Summer in the Mountains My Grandmother Never Explained Childbirth to Me Weeping about a Dead Child A Molale Hunter Who Was Never Frightened A Shaman Doctored Me for My Eyes Ičə́čġmam ganẋátẋ aġa Dušdaq ningidə́layt (I Was Ill, Dúšdaq Doctored Me) Náyka kʷalíwi wágəlxt (I and My Sister-Cousin) A Tualatin Woman Shaman and Transvestite A Shaman at My Mother’s Last IllnessHistorical Landscapes Spearfishing at Grand Ronde Slaughtering of Chinook Women Captives Escape Snake Indians Wálxayu ičámxix gałẋílayt (Seal and Her Younger Brother Lived There) Wišə́liq išq’íxanapx gašdašgúqam (Two Maidens, Two Stars Came to Them) Wásusgani and Wačínu Inventions and New Customs as Sources of AmusementCultural Landscapes Išknúłmapx (Two Grass Widows) Restrictions on Women Laughing at Missionaries The Honorable Milt Išk’áškaš škáwxaw gašdəẋuẋ (Two Children, Two Owls, They Became) Joshing during a Spirit-Power Dance Fun-Dances Performed by Visitors Notes References Index
£21.59
University of Nebraska Press Henry James Framed
Book SynopsisHenry James Framed is a cultural history of Henry James as a work of art, having sat for his portrait twenty-four times.Trade Review"Henry James Framed is a beautifully produced book."—Daniel A. Burr, Gay & Lesbian Review“Who knew there were so many portraits of Henry James? Henry James Framed is both an engaging catalogue of these images and a collective biography that invites us to see the artist through the eyes of some of his most visually gifted contemporaries.”—Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Sterling Professor of English at Yale University“In his sparkling Henry James Framed Michael Anesko takes us on a characteristically witty and civilized journey through James’s life and career—through the surprising number of likenesses (and unlikenesses) that were made of him between 1862 and 1914. Through brilliant detective work, we get a delightful, stimulating picture of the social and artistic world of this great novelist who was also an inveterate critic of art—and, as we learn, frequently its subject.”—Philip Horne, founding general editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James series“Michael Anesko freshly and incisively illuminates Henry James’s relationships with artists, the circumstances of his sitting for portraits, the critical (and personal) reception of the finished works, and the provenance of the pieces during and after James’s life. Henry James Framed is a delight to read.”—Linda Simon, author of The Critical Reception of Henry James: Creating a Master“This useful volume provides fascinating tales of how the portraits were received privately and in public exhibitions, as well as when and how they changed hands, were sold or bequeathed. Anesko provides well-researched tracings of the histories of these works and the stories each portrait has to tell, deploying his extensive knowledge of James’s life and writings with an incisive touch.”—Tamara Follini, general editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James seriesTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Partial to Portraits 1. Uncanny Possession: The Queer Provenance of John La Farge’s Henry James 2. “I, Too, Am Someone Here”: The Birth of the Lion 3. “Yielding to the Bard’s Behest”: Paying Court in George Du Maurier’s Two Thrones 4. “Civilized to His Fingertips”: James’s Sargent, Sargent’s “James” 5. “Nicer than Most of Them”: John White Alexander’s Forgotten Illustration 6. In a “Cosmo de’ Medici Mood”: Larkin Goldsmith Mead’s Henry James 7. “Making Quite a Reputation”: The “Theatrical Manner” of Paul Tilton’s Henry James 8. “Dear” Henry James: Anna Lea Merritt’s Lost Portrait 9. “A Student of Taste”: Rudolf Lehmann’s “Henry James” 10. “Commendably Droll”: Philip Burne Jones Paints Henry James 11. “My Own Head on the Block”: William Rothenstein’s Portraits of Henry James 12. “The Smooth & Anxious Clerical Gentleman”: Ellen Emmet’s Henry James 13. “Won’t It Be Fun?”: Jane Erin Emmet von Glehn’s Weekend Sketch 14. “Not Positively or Richly Rejoiceful”: Hendrik Christian Andersen’s Henry James 15. “The Profile of an Eagle”: Jacques-Émile Blanche’s Henry James 16. “Too Little of the Promise”: The Favorite Nephew’s Henry James 17. An “Astonishing” Economy of Means: Cecilia Beaux’s “Henry James” 18. “A Rather ‘Important’ Piece”: Annie Louisa Swynnerton’s Henry James 19. “Difficult, Perverse, Obscure”: John Singer Sargent’s Charcoal Portrait 20. “A Very Fine Thing Indeed”: John Singer Sargent’s Henry James 21. “My Aged and Battered Mug”: Derwent Wood’s Portrait Bust 22. “Not with the Happiest Result”: Lewis Charles Powles’s Henry James Epilogue: A Case of Mistaken Identity Notes Bibliography Index
£45.00
University Press of Mississippi Race and Racism in NineteenthCentury Art
Book SynopsisPainters Robert Duncanson (ca. 1821-1872) and Edward Bannister (1828-1901) and sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis (ca. 1844-1907) each became accomplished African American artists. But as emerging art makers of color during the antebellum period, they experienced numerous incidents of racism that severely hampered their pursuits of a profession that many in the mainstream considered the highest form of social cultivation. Despite barriers imposed upon them due to their racial inheritance, these artists shared a common cause in demanding acceptance alongside their white contemporaries as capable painters and sculptors on local, regional, and international levels. Author Naurice Frank Woods Jr. provides an in-depth examination of the strategies deployed by Duncanson, Bannister, and Lewis that enabled them not only to overcome prevailing race and gender inequality, but also to achieve a measure of success that eventually placed them in the top rank of nineteenth-century American art. Unf
£999.99
University Press of Mississippi Race and Racism in NineteenthCentury Art
Book SynopsisPainters Robert Duncanson (ca. 1821-1872) and Edward Bannister (1828-1901) and sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis (ca. 1844-1907) each became accomplished African American artists. But as emerging art makers of color during the antebellum period, they experienced numerous incidents of racism that severely hampered their pursuits of a profession that many in the mainstream considered the highest form of social cultivation. Despite barriers imposed upon them due to their racial inheritance, these artists shared a common cause in demanding acceptance alongside their white contemporaries as capable painters and sculptors on local, regional, and international levels. Author Naurice Frank Woods Jr. provides an in-depth examination of the strategies deployed by Duncanson, Bannister, and Lewis that enabled them not only to overcome prevailing race and gender inequality, but also to achieve a measure of success that eventually placed them in the top rank of nineteenth-century American art. Unf
£26.06
University Press of Mississippi Insurgent Beauty
£79.20
Cornell University Press What Galileo Saw
Book SynopsisThe Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century has often been called a decisive turning point in human history. It represents, for good or ill, the birth of modern science and modern ways of viewing the world. In What Galileo Saw, Lawrence Lipking offers a new perspective on how to understand what happened then, arguing that artistic imagination and creativity as much as rational thought played a critical role in creating new visions of science and in shaping stories about eye-opening discoveries in cosmology, natural history, engineering, and the life sciences.When Galileo saw the face of the Moon and the moons of Jupiter, Lipking writes, he had to picture a cosmos that could account for them. Kepler thought his geometry could open a window into the mind of God. Francis Bacon''s natural history envisioned an order of things that would replace the illusions of language with solid evidence and transform notions of life and death. Descartes designed a hypothetical Book ofTrade ReviewThe ten amusing and witty essays in What Galileo Saw, which are loosely connected and can be read independently, stem from the premise that if Christian time 'began with the Nativity of Christ, then another age, the dawn of modern times, began when Galileo looked through his spyglass' (p. 3). Lawrence Lipking deals with the cultural impact of the Scientific Revolution and does not claim to explain its genesis beyond recognizing three basic versions of the story. -- William R. Shea * Isis *While tensions between religion and science and arguments about the loss of meaning in the world were obvious as early as the 1600s and continue today (witness modern scientists such as Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot and Richard Dawkins in Unweaving the Rainbow attempting to dispel this perception), Lipking supports his thesis admirably by blending literary analysis of period texts with the philosophers' own writings. He demonstrates that there was no clean line of progress and that the world was never turned fully mechanistic by any of these great scientists. VERDICT Substantial and erudite, this title will appeal to scholarly readers studying the philosophy and history of science. -- Evan M. Anderson * Library Journal *Eighteenth-century literary studies have always been interdisciplinary; understanding Pope and Swift entails understanding garden history and developments in astronomy. Distinguished historian of literary and art theory and of the novel, Lipking (emer.Northwestern) has done enough homework to write a book about the scientific revolution that passes muster with such discerning of historians of science as Peter Dear. The book is not, as it first seems, a connected account of the role of visual imaging in science; rather, Lipking offers a series of meditations on individual figures from Galileo and Kepler to Hooke and Newton.... Lipking's audience is not historians of science but students of literature and even, given his admirable clarity, general readers, for whom he has provided a thoroughly accessible intellectual feast. -- D.L. Patey * Choice *Table of Contents1. Introducing a Revolution2. What Galileo Saw: Two Fables of Sound and Seeing3. Kepler's Progress: Imagining the Future4. The Poetry of the World: A Natural History of Poetics5. "Look There, Look There!" Imagining Life in King Lear6. The Dream of Descartes: The Book of Nature and the Infinite I AM7. A History of Error: Robert Fludd, Thomas Browne, and the Harrow of Truth8. The Century of Genius (1): Measuring Up9. The Century of Genius (2): Hooke, Newton, and the System of the World10. Revolution and Its Discontents: The Skeptical ChallengeAppendix 1. Galileo: The Fable of SoundAppendix 2. Descartes's Three DreamsNotes Bibliography Index
£25.64
Cornell University Press Fifty Early Medieval Things
Book SynopsisThis important book [...] is a helpful guide to thinking with things and teaching with things. Each entry challenges the reader to approach objects as historical actors that can speak to the changes and continuities of life in the late antique and early medieval world.? Early Medieval EuropeLavishly illustrated and engagingly written, Fifty Early Medieval Things demonstrates how to read objects in ways that make the distant past understandable and approachable.Fifty Early Medieval Things introduces readers to the material culture of late antique and early medieval Europe, north Africa, and western Asia. Ranging from Iran to Ireland and from Sweden to Tunisia, Deborah Deliyannis, Hendrik Dey, and Paolo Squatriti present fifty objects—artifacts, structures, and archaeological features—created between the fourth and eleventh centuries, an ostensibly Dark Age whose cTrade ReviewThe authors of Fifty Early Medieval Things have gathered an energizing set of artifacts and sites to champion a close and active interrelationship between people and things in our understanding and teaching of early medieval history... The diverse group of examples characterized in brief essays is, largely, very well considered as the basis for a contemporary introduction to the early Middle Ages. The set is constructed to create flow and counterpoint among examples of widely varying media, functions, production contexts, and techniques. * SPECULUM *This important book [...] is a helpful guide to thinking with things and teaching with things. Each entry challenges the reader to approach objects as historical actors that can speak to the changes and continuities of life in the late antique and early medieval world. * EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE *
£97.20
Cornell University Press Mass Violence and the Self
Book SynopsisMass Violence and the Self explores the earliest visual and textual depictions of personal suffering caused by the French Wars of Religion of 156298, the Fronde of 164852, the French Revolutionary Terror of 179394, and the Paris Commune of 1871. The development of novel media from pamphlets and woodblock printing to colored lithographs, illustrated newspapers, and collodion photography helped to determine cultural, emotional, and psychological responses to these four episodes of mass violence.Howard G. Brown's richly illustrated and conceptually innovative book shows how the increasingly effective communication of the suffering of others combined with interpretive bias to produce what may be understood as collective traumas. Seeing these responses as collective traumas reveals their significance in shaping new social identities that extended beyond the village or neighborhood. Moreover, acquiring a sense of shared identity, whether as Huguenots, Parisian bourgeois, FreTrade ReviewThis is a wonderful book to think with.... A significant contribution to the recent analyses of emotions and, more generally, to the historiography about how proto-romantic cultural themes of the late eighteenth century reemerged with force during the early nineteenth. * H-War *[Brown] underlines the psychology behind how people interpret and reinterpret suffering, specifically the dualistic lenses of collective trauma and the self in modern society. Recommended [for] Graduate students and researchers. * Choice *In Mass Violence and the Self, Howard Brown has written a splendidly ambitious book that seeks to unravel the links binding together modernity and the experience of violence in France... there is no doubt that Brown has written a brave and thought-provoking book that should be widely read and discussed. * Journal of Modern History *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: A Discourse on Method 1. Massacres in the French Wars of Religion 2. The Fronde and the Crisis of 1652 3. The Thermidorians' Terror 4. The Paris Commune and the "Bloody Week" of 1871 Conclusion Notes Index
£42.30
Cornell University Press Metropolitan Fetish
Book SynopsisFrom the 1880s to 1940, French colonial officials, businessmen and soldiers, returning from overseas postings, brought home wooden masks and figures from Africa. This imperial and cultural power-play is the jumping-off point for a story that travels from sub-Saharan Africa to Parisian art galleries; from the pages of fashion magazines, through the doors of the Louvre, to world fairs and international auction rooms; into the apartments of avant-garde critics and poets; to the streets of Harlem, and then full-circle back to colonial museums and schools in Dakar, Bamako, and Abidjan. John Warne Monroe guides us on this journey, one that goes far beyond the world of Picasso, Matisse, and Braque, to show how the Modernist avant-garde and the European colonial project influenced each other in profound and unexpected ways. Metropolitan Fetish reveals the complex trajectory of African material culture in the West and provides a map of that passage, tracing the interaction of cTrade ReviewThis well-written study will be valuable for art scholars at all levels. -- M. Miller, Louisiana State University * Choice *John Warne Monroe's book on the reception of African art in France (1910s-1930s) comes out at a critical moment when French President Emmanuel Macron's decision to return African heritage has transformed into a polemic opposing those in favor to those against. * Journal of Modern History *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction: The French Paradox of Primitive Art 1. The Making of a Metropolitcan Fetish: A Fang Mask Transformed 2. Inventing Antiquity: Henri Clouzot, André Level, and the Universal History of Primitive Art 3. The Wings of Snobbery: Paul Guillaume and the Launch of Art Nègre, 1911–29 4. From Art Négre to Art Primitif: Black Deco, Ethnology, and Surrealism in the Late 1920s 5. Selling the "Arts of the Ancestors": Charles Ratton, the Art Market, and the Transatlantic Black Diaspora 6. Authenticity Wars: Primitive Art between Metropole and Colony Conclusion: With an Archival Prophecy Acknowledgments List of Archival Abbreviations Notes Index
£33.25
Cornell University Press Dynamic Form
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewOne of the delights of this monograph is its omnivorous intermediality. Those interested in the interweaving of literary, artistic, and cultural disciplines through modernism will find this study interesting not only for its scope, but for the questions it throws up about a future of modernist studies which attends equally to the different strains of criticism that have shaped the field. * The Modernist Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Reformulating Modernism 1. Plastic Form: Henry James's Sculptural Aesthetics and Reading in the Round 2. Mortal Form: Still Life and Virginia Woolf 's Other Elegiac Shapes 3. Protean Form: Erotic Abstraction and Ardent Futurity in the Poetry of Mina Loy 4. Bad Formalism: Evelyn Waugh's Film Fictions and the Work of Art in the Age of Cinemechanics 5. Surface Forms: Photography and Gertrude Stein's Contact History of Modernism Epilogue: The Consolations of Form
£44.10
Cornell University Press Imperial Romance
Book SynopsisIn Imperial Romance, Su Yun Kim argues that the idea of colonial intimacy within the Japanese empire of the early twentieth century had a far broader and more popular influence on discourse makers, social leaders, and intellectuals than previously understood. Kim investigates representations of Korean-Japanese intimate and familial relationshipsincluding romance, marriage, and kinshipin literature, media, and cinema, alongside documents that discuss colonial policies during the Japanese protectorate period and colonial rule in Korea (190545). Focusing on Korean perspectives, Kim uncovers political meaning in the representation of intimacy and emotion between Koreans and Japanese portrayed in print media and films. Imperial Romance disrupts the conventional reading of colonial-period texts as the result of either coercion or the disavowal of colonialism, thereby expanding our understanding of colonial writing practices. The theme of intermarriage gave elite Korean writeTrade ReviewKim provides fresh interpretations of such writers as Yŏm Sangsŏp and Yi Kwangsu by offering new readings of the domestic settings in their works, which explore how they redefined and re-created a new kind of social order among their characters. * Choice *Imperial Romance contains a concise analysis of selected Korean literary and media texts that include the themes of intermarriage and romance. Su Yun Kim's Imperial Romance presents the beginnings of an exciting conversation and prepares us to ask further questions regarding race, love, and romance, whilst evaluating not only the past, but the contemporary moment of globalization. * International Journal of Asian Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Imperial Romance 1. Civilization and Enlightenment: The Role of the Japanese Home in the Early Colonial Period, 1905–1919 2. Under the Same Roof: A Royal Wedding and a Mixed Family for the Ruling Class 3. Wartime Ideology and the Integration of Korean-Japanese Mixed Families, 1930s 4. Romance and Colonial Universalism 5. Visualizing "International" and Korean-Japanese Marriage in Print Media Epilogue: Postcolonial Interracial Intimacy
£39.60
Cornell University Press Snapshots of the Soul
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThe book includes a bountiful selection of photographs closely related to the text. Highly recommended. * Choice *Blasing's work demonstrates an amazing knowledge of an array of archival evidence, from photographs to literary manuscripts, spread across the United States, Europe, and the Russian Federation. * The Russian Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Poetry and Photography: Encounters, Connections, and Change 1. Illuminating Consciousness: Pasternak's Poetics of Photography 2. Through the Lens of Loss: Tsvetaeva's Elegiac Photo-Poetics 3. Framing Memory: Brodskyand Photographic Time 4. Poetic Mothers in the Photo Frame: Akhmadulina's Lyric Dialogue with Silver Age Snapshots 5. Darkroom of Dreams: Poetry, Photography, and the Optical Unconscious Coda. Digital Denied: Poetry and Photography after 1999
£43.20
Cornell University Press Developing Mission
Book SynopsisIn Developing Mission, Joseph W. Ho offers a transnational cultural history of US and Chinese communities framed by missionary lenses through time and spacetracing the lives and afterlives of images, cameras, and visual imaginations from before the Second Sino-Japanese War through the first years of the People''s Republic of China. When American Protestant and Catholic missionaries entered interwar China, they did so with cameras in hand. Missions principally aimed at the conversion of souls and the modernization of East Asia, became, by virtue of the still and moving images recorded, quasi-anthropological ventures that shaped popular understandings of and formal foreign policy toward China. Portable photographic technologies changed the very nature of missionary experience, while images that missionaries circulated between China and the United States affected cross-cultural encounters in times of peace and war. Ho illuminates the centralityTrade ReviewThis book is an accomplishment deserving scholarly attention. It is well researched with a plethora of sources in both English and Chinese and does a marvelous job in helping us understand the centrality of image-making in missionary experiences. * Church History *Joseph W. Ho provides a cross-cultural history of American missionary visual practices. Focusing on the American missionaries' images and image making in China from the 1920s to the early 1950s, the book explores how missionaries employed the camera as an agent that facilitated the translations of missionary experiences and the shaping of cross-cultural identities. * Journal of Asian Studies *Ho's examinations of missionary photographs offer a compelling perspective on noncombatant photography during times of war. [He] succeeds in making missionaries and their photographs visible once more and showing how they continue to connect some of their members across the communities they imaged. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Developing Mission is a nuanced study of a deserving topic. Ho's prose is well crafted and his analysis reflects depth and engagement with a number of fields. The book should attract interest from scholars of modern Chinese history, global Christianity and missions, and historians of technology. * Fides et Historia *Developing Mission is a groundbreaking contribution to the historiography of Chinese Christianity. Joseph Ho not only offers us a new and exciting methodology to incorporate photographic evidence into the study of mission history but also preserves the ever-receding memory of China's missionary era. * International Bulletin of Mission Research *Developing Mission is an extremely well-written, lyrical book that speaks to multiple disciplines. Ho draws upon film theory in meaningful and clear terms and without recourse to much jargon. He frames his story within a historical context that is accessible, and he has a penchant for including anecdotes that are moving and meaningful. This book should be extremely popular among a wide range of audiences inside and outside the academy. * Review of Religion and Chinese Society *The book's distinguishing characteristics include its ingenious, informative title[.] It is of great value to graduate students and historians of Chinese Christianity, Sino-US cultural interactions, and photography and film. * Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture *Ho's multi-faceted analysis effectively underscores the seminal historic relationship of missionaries as photographers. This is accomplished with rich prose alongside well-researched biographical narratives that enliven the many Protestant, Catholic, and Chinese actors; pertinent references that combine Chinese and American religious and secular history; and finally, precise—yet inviting—technical writing about cameras. All aspects engage the reader to be both positively surprised and challenged as to unpack the interdisciplinary components, stories and theoretical content, in each chapter. * American Catholic Studies *Ho offers a rich, layered, and inspiring history of missionary visual practices. With a diverse range of subjects and a wealth of detail, the vernacular photographs and films offer a provocative alternative to modern visualizations of China. * Journal of Asian Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction: All Things Visible and Invisible 1. New Lives, New Optics: Missionary Modernity and Visual Practices in Interwar Republican China 2. Converting Visions: Photographic Mediations of Catholic Identity in West Hunan, 1921–1929 3. The Movie Camera and the Mission: Vernacular Filmmaking as China-US Bridge, 1931–1936 4. Chaos in Three Frames: Fragmented Imaging and the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945 5. Memento Mori: Loss, Nostalgia, and the Future in Postwar Missionary Visuality Epilogue: Latent Images
£97.20
Cornell University Press Developing Mission
Book SynopsisIn Developing Mission, Joseph W. Ho offers a transnational cultural history of US and Chinese communities framed by missionary lenses through time and spacetracing the lives and afterlives of images, cameras, and visual imaginations from before the Second Sino-Japanese War through the first years of the People''s Republic of China. When American Protestant and Catholic missionaries entered interwar China, they did so with cameras in hand. Missions principally aimed at the conversion of souls and the modernization of East Asia, became, by virtue of the still and moving images recorded, quasi-anthropological ventures that shaped popular understandings of and formal foreign policy toward China. Portable photographic technologies changed the very nature of missionary experience, while images that missionaries circulated between China and the United States affected cross-cultural encounters in times of peace and war. Ho illuminates the centralityTrade ReviewThis book is an accomplishment deserving scholarly attention. It is well researched with a plethora of sources in both English and Chinese and does a marvelous job in helping us understand the centrality of image-making in missionary experiences. * Church History *Joseph W. Ho provides a cross-cultural history of American missionary visual practices. Focusing on the American missionaries' images and image making in China from the 1920s to the early 1950s, the book explores how missionaries employed the camera as an agent that facilitated the translations of missionary experiences and the shaping of cross-cultural identities. * Journal of Asian Studies *Ho's examinations of missionary photographs offer a compelling perspective on noncombatant photography during times of war. [He] succeeds in making missionaries and their photographs visible once more and showing how they continue to connect some of their members across the communities they imaged. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Developing Mission is a nuanced study of a deserving topic. Ho's prose is well crafted and his analysis reflects depth and engagement with a number of fields. The book should attract interest from scholars of modern Chinese history, global Christianity and missions, and historians of technology. * Fides et Historia *Developing Mission is a groundbreaking contribution to the historiography of Chinese Christianity. Joseph Ho not only offers us a new and exciting methodology to incorporate photographic evidence into the study of mission history but also preserves the ever-receding memory of China's missionary era. * International Bulletin of Mission Research *Developing Mission is an extremely well-written, lyrical book that speaks to multiple disciplines. Ho draws upon film theory in meaningful and clear terms and without recourse to much jargon. He frames his story within a historical context that is accessible, and he has a penchant for including anecdotes that are moving and meaningful. This book should be extremely popular among a wide range of audiences inside and outside the academy. * Review of Religion and Chinese Society *The book's distinguishing characteristics include its ingenious, informative title[.] It is of great value to graduate students and historians of Chinese Christianity, Sino-US cultural interactions, and photography and film. * Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture *Ho's multi-faceted analysis effectively underscores the seminal historic relationship of missionaries as photographers. This is accomplished with rich prose alongside well-researched biographical narratives that enliven the many Protestant, Catholic, and Chinese actors; pertinent references that combine Chinese and American religious and secular history; and finally, precise—yet inviting—technical writing about cameras. All aspects engage the reader to be both positively surprised and challenged as to unpack the interdisciplinary components, stories and theoretical content, in each chapter. * American Catholic Studies *Ho offers a rich, layered, and inspiring history of missionary visual practices. With a diverse range of subjects and a wealth of detail, the vernacular photographs and films offer a provocative alternative to modern visualizations of China. * Journal of Asian Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction: All Things Visible and Invisible 1. New Lives, New Optics: Missionary Modernity and Visual Practices in Interwar Republican China 2. Converting Visions: Photographic Mediations of Catholic Identity in West Hunan, 1921–1929 3. The Movie Camera and the Mission: Vernacular Filmmaking as China-US Bridge, 1931–1936 4. Chaos in Three Frames: Fragmented Imaging and the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945 5. Memento Mori: Loss, Nostalgia, and the Future in Postwar Missionary Visuality Epilogue: Latent Images
£24.69
Cornell University Press To the Collector Belong the Spoils
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsIntroduction: Dangerous Passions Part One: Possessing the Old World: Henry James and the Spoils of Europe 1. James's Human Bibelots 2. Sardanapalus's Hoard Part Two: Between Salvation and Revolution: Walter Benjamin's Conflicted Collector 3. The Collector in a Collectivist State 4. Trash-Talking in The Arcades Project Part Three: Collecting Africa: Carl Einstein's Ethnographic Surrealism 5. The Collector and His Circle 6. Einstein's "Critical Dictionary" Afterword: Hoarding in a Digital Age
£50.40
Cornell University Press The Minjian AvantGarde
Book SynopsisThe Minjian Avant-Garde studies how experimental artists in China mixed with, brought changes to, and let themselves be transformed by minjian, the volatile and diverse public of the post-Mao era. Departing from the usual emphasis on art institutions, global markets, or artists'' communities, Chang Tan proposes a new analytical framework in the theories of socially engaged art that stresses the critical agency of participants, the affective functions of objects, and the versatility of the artists in diverse sociopolitical spheres.Drawing from hitherto untapped archival materials and interviews with the artists, Tan challenges the views of Chinese artists as either dissidents or conformists to the regime and sees them as navigators and negotiators among diverse political discourses and interests. She questions the fetishization of marginalized communities among practitioners of progressive art and politics, arguing that the members of minjian are often mor
£35.15
Cornell University Press Byzantine Media Subjects
Book SynopsisByzantine Media Subjects invites readers into a world replete with imagesicons, frescoes, and mosaics filling places of worship, politics, and community. Glenn Peers asks readers to think themselves into a world where representation reigned and humans followed, and indeed were formed. Interrogating the fundamental role of representation in the making of the Byzantine human, Peers argues that Byzantine culture was (already) posthuman. The Byzantine experience reveals the extent to which media like icons, manuscripts, music, animals, and mirrors fundamentally determine humans. In the Byzantine world, representation as such was deeply persuasive, even coercive; it had the power to affect human relationships, produce conflict, and form self-perception. Media studies has made its subject the modern world, but this book argues for media having made historical subjects. Here, it is shown that media long ago also made Byzantine humans, defining them, molding them
£97.20
Stanford University Press Feast of Ashes: The Life and Art of David
Book SynopsisThe compelling life story of Armenian ceramicist David Ohannessian, whose work changed the face of Jerusalem—and a granddaughter's search for his legacy. Along the cobbled streets and golden walls of Jerusalem, brilliantly glazed tiles catch the light and beckon the eye. These colorful wares—known as Armenian ceramics—are iconic features of the Holy City. Silently, these works of ceramic art—art that also graces homes and museums around the world—represent a riveting story of resilience and survival: In the final years of the Ottoman Empire, as hundreds of thousands of Armenians were forcibly marched to their deaths, one man carried the secrets of this age-old art with him into exile toward the Syrian desert. Feast of Ashes tells the story of David Ohannessian, the renowned ceramicist who in 1919 founded the art of Armenian pottery in Jerusalem, where his work and that of his followers is now celebrated as a local treasure. Ohannessian's life encompassed some of the most tumultuous upheavals of the modern Middle East. Born in an isolated Anatolian mountain village, he witnessed the rise of violent nationalism in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire, endured arrest and deportation in the Armenian Genocide, founded a new ceramics tradition in Jerusalem under the British Mandate, and spent his final years, uprooted, in Cairo and Beirut. Ohannessian's life story is revealed by his granddaughter Sato Moughalian, weaving together family narratives with newly unearthed archival findings. Witnessing her personal quest for the man she never met, we come to understand a universal story of migration, survival, and hope.Trade Review"Feast of Ashes is a passionate journey of discovery, an exemplary work of craft and design history, and a powerful narrative of the meaning of family identity. An extraordinary book—I loved it." -- Edmund de Waal * author of The Hare with Amber Eyes and The White Road *"Feast of Ashes is a lovingly crafted account of family, loss, and home. Chronicling the last century's unresolved tragedies and injustices on a most personal level, Sato Moughalian forces us to acknowledge what these events have truly cost us all—a necessary insistence, if we ever hope to be free of the grievous mistakes we too oft repeat." -- Alia Malek * author of The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria *"Feast of Ashes is an exceptional story of Armenian artisanship and one of its luminaries, David Ohannessian. As told by his granddaughter, Sato Moughalian, the tumultuous events at the end of the Ottoman Empire and the lasting legacy of Armenian ceramics unfold through her family history." -- Dickran Kouymjian * author of The Arts of Armenia *"A hundred years after David Ohannessian brought the art of Armenian ceramics to Jerusalem, his creations still glint from the walls of buildings and in cabinets there—and still testify to his singular talents, his mastery of a time-honored tradition, and his admirably stubborn belief in the possibility that beauty might emerge even out of terrible suffering. With love, care, and an attention to detail as exacting as his own, Sato Moughalian offers a moving tribute to her grandfather and his radiant handiwork." -- Adina Hoffman * author of Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City *"Sato Moughalian embarks on a sweeping journey from the Armenian Genocide to the present day to tell the story of how her grandfather became a master ceramist. Feast of Ashes is a compelling, brilliant work, revealing how one survivor of that infamous crime honored Armenian culture and created glorious art." -- David Scheffer * former U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues, author of All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals *"Sato Moughalian is a born storyteller. Her account of the remarkable life of her grandfather, the Armenian ceramicist and tile-maker David Ohannessian, should be read by artists, by historians of the Middle East and, above all, by anyone sensitive to the power of the human spirit to make great art in the face of persecution, migration, and exile." -- Tanya Harrod * coeditor of The Journal of Modern Craft *"More than merely a tribute to the talents of her grandfather, Moughalian's book is a work of alchemy—combining the personal, tragic history writ large, and the somehow uplifting power of enduring art." -- Elizabeth Taylor * National Book Review *"Feast of Ashes bridges the fields of Ottoman history and Armenian art to recount the many stories that objects, alone, cannot." -- Norah Lessersohn * and Erin Piñon, Journal for the Society of Armenian Studies *"Moughalian has crafted a narrative that is as lyrical as it is compelling. She relates the tragedy and triumph of Ohannessian's personal adventures with a compassion and intimacy matched by impressive research into the broader historical context." -- Matthew Kalman * The Times of Israel *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsPrelude: The Search chapter abstractPrelude: The author, an immigrant growing up in the United States, discovers a passion to discover more about the life and art of her grandfather, David Ohannessian, who founded the art of Armenian ceramics in Jerusalem in 1919. To learn about her heritage, she must confront her family's traumatic experience during the Armenian Genocide and search for the art and other traces her grandfather left behind. 1Mouradchai: The Armenian Village chapter abstractThis chapter explores the ethnically Armenian mountain village in western Anatolia in which David Ohannessian was born in 1884 and where his ancestors lived for four centuries. The narrative describes daily life, wedding customs, the agriculture, and commerce of the village, and the encroachment of economic and social factors from the larger world on the inhabitants of this isolated hamlet at the end of the nineteenth century. 2Eskishehir: The Engagement chapter abstractThe Ohannessian family resettles in Eskishehir, where David Ohannessian attends a French Catholic school, and discovers a variety of possible professions in a larger and more European-influenced city. The chapter briefly reviews the presence and distribution of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and the challenges faced by this minority. David Ohannessian falls in love with Victoria Shahbazian and asks for her hand in marriage. 3Constantinople and the Art of Kutahya chapter abstractIn 1902, David Ohannessian spends several months in Constantinople and discovers his vocation: ceramic-making. He moves to Kutahya to apprentice in the craft and learns that the region is rich in the clays and other minerals that gave rise to the art of glazed painted ceramics around the fifteenth century. The chapter follows the tradition of ceramic making in Kutahya in the ensuing eras. By 1907, Ohannessian masters the art and following year, he married and deepened his connection to the city's longstanding Armenian community. 4Kutahya: Princes, Sheikhs, and a Baronet chapter abstractOhannessian establishes an independent ceramics studio in Kütahya, the Société Ottomane de Faïence, and enters partnerships with Mehmet Emin and Garabed and Harutyun Minassian to tile the growing number of buildings in the new Ottoman revivalist style and to produce glazed pottery for domestic sales and export. The 1908 Revolution brought a surge of interest in nationalist architecture along with many orders for new works as well as tiles to restore important mosques through Ottoman and Arab territories—Bursa, Konya, Mecca, Damascus, and Cairo. Ohannessian meets Mark Sykes, who commissions several substantial orders for his baronial estate in Yorkshire, Sledmere House. As Ohannessian and his partners work with architect Ahmet Kemalettin on new buildings and restorations, they become intimately acquainted with ceramic traditions from the thirteenth through the eighteenth centuries and amass a technical knowledge and a wide-ranging decorative repertoire. The Great War begins. 5Exile chapter abstractHuge numbers of Balkan Muslim refugees enter western Anatolia, posing new threats to Greek and Armenian communities. As the Ottoman Empire embarks on battles along its borders, the government places blame for early defeats on Armenians, painting them as traitorous and disarming Ottoman Armenian soldiers. On April 24, in the capital, Ottoman police and irregular forces round up more than two hundred of the most influential Armenian intellectuals, merchants, priests, and artists, and deport them into the interior, where many of them are murdered. The entire village of Mouradchai is deported on twenty-four hours' notice. In Kutahya, Ohannessian is arrested and then deported with his family. 6In the Mountains, Aleppo, and Meskene chapter abstractThe Ohannessian family follows the path of deportation taken by Armenians living in the western provinces of Anatolia—traveling by train to Bozanti, and traversing the Taurus Mountains, the province of Adana, and the Amanus Mountains. The family enters the community of Armenian refugees in Aleppo, but is deported again, this time to Meskene, the site of a desert death camp near the Euphrates. The Ohannessians return to Aleppo. After the British take the city, Mark Sykes finds Ohannessian subsisting as a refugee and recommends him to Ronald Storrs, the new Military Governor of Jerusalem, to produce new tiles for the planned British restoration of the Dome of the Rock. 7Jerusalem I: The Haven chapter abstractThe Ohannessians arrive in Jerusalem and join other Armenian survivors in the Convent of St. James. Ohannessian meets with Ernest T. Richmond, the consulting architect brought by the British to evaluate the Dome of the Rock. Ohannessian experiments with tile making using the unsatisfactory local materials. He returns to Kütahya to recruit workers and obtain clays and other minerals. Ohannessian trains Armenian orphans in the art of ceramic making. Outbreaks of violence between Jerusalem's Arab and Jewish communities in 1920 and 1921 lead to the establishment of the Supreme Muslim Council as a vehicle for greater Arab self-governance. The SMC appoints Ahmet Kemalettin to oversee the restoration of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque. Ohannessian and his artisans are dismissed from the project, but continue to produce ceramics, perfect their technique given the lack of materials in Palestine's parched environment, and forge relations with distributors. 8Jerusalem II: The Feast chapter abstractOhannessian's studio adds workers, begins to exhibit at international expositions, and receives many commissions for tiled works in Jerusalem, transferring the Ottoman tradition of glazed, painted tile ornaments for domestic architecture to Jerusalem and creating elaborate tiled installations in new government and private structures. He establishes distribution outlets in Europe, the United States, Africa and through the Middle East. Arab-Jewish tensions lessen with the outbreak of World War II, but intensify upon its conclusion. 9The Scattering chapter abstractOne by one, members of the Ohannessian family leave Jerusalem, terrified by the intensifying violence. Thousands of Palestinian Armenians flock to St. James Armenian Convent seeking refuge. The Ohannessians leave for Damascus and then Egypt. Fimi Ohannessian finds a job in the British Council Library in Cairo and survives Black Saturday, the arson and violent destruction of 400 British and European-related businesses in the downtown district. The family flees Cairo's violence for Beirut and scatter after Ohannessian's death in 1953. Postlude: The Return chapter abstractThe author decides to write a biography of her grandfather and travels to the places in Turkey where he lived and worked. She locates the remnants of Ohannessian's birth village and travels there. She searches for his surviving works in the world today.
£23.39
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
£86.40
Stanford University Press Ink Worlds: Contemporary Chinese Painting from
Book SynopsisInk arts have flourished in China for more than two millennia. Once primarily associated with elite culture, ink painting is now undergoing a popular resurgence. Ink Worlds explores the modern evolution of this art form, from scrolls and panel paintings to photographic and video forms, and documents how Chinese ink arts speak to present-day concerns while simultaneously referencing deeply historical materials, themes, and techniques. Presenting the work of some two dozen artists from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States in more than 100 full-color reproductions, the book spans pioneering abstract work from the late 1960s through twenty-first century technological innovations. Nine illustrated essays build a compelling case for understanding the modern form as a distinct genre, fusing art and science, history and technology, painting and film into an accessible theory of contemporary ink painting. The Yamazaki/Yang collection is widely recognized as one of the most important private collections of contemporary Chinese ink art. Ink Worlds is the first book to represent the collection from the perspective of contemporary art history. From its atmospheric mountainscapes to precise calligraphy, this book is a revelation, bringing together the past, present, and future of an enduring and adaptable art form.
£45.90
Stanford University Press Provisional Avant-Gardes: Little Magazine
Book SynopsisWhat would it mean to be avant-garde today? Arguing against the notion that the avant-garde is dead or confined to historically "failed" movements, this book offers a more dynamic and inclusive theory of avant-gardes that accounts for how they work in our present. Innovative in approach, Provisional Avant-Gardes focuses on the medium of the little magazine—from early Dada experiments to feminist, queer, and digital publishing networks—to understand avant-gardes as provisional and heterogeneous communities. Paying particular attention to neglected women writers, artists, and editors alongside more canonical figures, it shows how the study of little magazines can change our views of literary and art history while shedding new light on individual careers. By focusing on the avant-garde's publishing history and group dynamics, Sophie Seita also demonstrates a new methodology for writing about avant-garde practice across time, one that is applicable to other artistic and non-artistic communities and that speaks to contemporary practitioners as much as scholars. In the process, she addresses fundamental questions about the intersections of aesthetic form and politics and about what we consider to be literature and art.Trade Review"Investigating modernist and contemporary American little magazine communities, Seita persuasively challenges conventional notions of the avant-garde as oppositional, militant, and closed. Her deeply informed readings of these periodicals and her astute theorizing complicate those narratives through a richly textured assessment of the form's importance to avant-garde poetics." -- Linda A. Kinnahan * Duquesne University *"Sophie Seita's marvelously detailed examination of avant-garde and contemporary little magazines lays bare the infrastructures of innovative poetry. Her case studies are as exemplary as they are illuminating." -- Charles Bernstein * author of Pitch of Poetry *"In this extraordinary book, Sophie Seita has mapped the postwar poetry avant-garde with all its complexities and contradictions. It's extraordinarily well laid out and true to the experiences of those of us who found a space there. As she recounts it, genres blend and schools contend as needed, and the result is a world of poets and artists arguing with the inherited past and drawing from a newly awakened past and present. I remain in awe at what she has accomplished: it's closer to the truth of our times than I would ever have expected." -- Jerome Rothenberg * author of Eye of Witness *"Seita challenges the notion that there exists a formula for what can be called avant-garde. Instead, she presents the category as fluid, broad-minded, and sometimes contradictory. Provisional Avant-Gardes is important as a study of the impact of little magazines on art, literature, and politics, on their changing aesthetics, and on how print communities are created, then and now."––Deepa Bhasthi, Hyperallergic"A much-needed study of US-based little magazines between the 1910s and 2010s.[Provisional Avant-Gardes is] an aspirational appeal for a practice of generous and capacious criticism, offering up the book as a model, and I am swayed to work in its orbit." -- Stephanie Anderson * Critical Inquiry *"A brilliant interpreter of experimental forms, Seita makes you want to get your hands on the magazines in order to imaginatively join the avant-garde communities they represent....Seita has a knack for selecting and illuminating avant-garde texts, exposing the serious implications of linguistic play, and transforming a baffling experiment into an intelligible, engaging commentary on contemporary culture." -- Suzanne W. Churchill * Journal of Modern Periodical Studies *
£100.00
Stanford University Press Provisional Avant-Gardes: Little Magazine
Book SynopsisWhat would it mean to be avant-garde today? Arguing against the notion that the avant-garde is dead or confined to historically "failed" movements, this book offers a more dynamic and inclusive theory of avant-gardes that accounts for how they work in our present. Innovative in approach, Provisional Avant-Gardes focuses on the medium of the little magazine—from early Dada experiments to feminist, queer, and digital publishing networks—to understand avant-gardes as provisional and heterogeneous communities. Paying particular attention to neglected women writers, artists, and editors alongside more canonical figures, it shows how the study of little magazines can change our views of literary and art history while shedding new light on individual careers. By focusing on the avant-garde's publishing history and group dynamics, Sophie Seita also demonstrates a new methodology for writing about avant-garde practice across time, one that is applicable to other artistic and non-artistic communities and that speaks to contemporary practitioners as much as scholars. In the process, she addresses fundamental questions about the intersections of aesthetic form and politics and about what we consider to be literature and art.Trade Review"Investigating modernist and contemporary American little magazine communities, Seita persuasively challenges conventional notions of the avant-garde as oppositional, militant, and closed. Her deeply informed readings of these periodicals and her astute theorizing complicate those narratives through a richly textured assessment of the form's importance to avant-garde poetics." -- Linda A. Kinnahan * Duquesne University *"Sophie Seita's marvelously detailed examination of avant-garde and contemporary little magazines lays bare the infrastructures of innovative poetry. Her case studies are as exemplary as they are illuminating." -- Charles Bernstein * author of Pitch of Poetry *"In this extraordinary book, Sophie Seita has mapped the postwar poetry avant-garde with all its complexities and contradictions. It's extraordinarily well laid out and true to the experiences of those of us who found a space there. As she recounts it, genres blend and schools contend as needed, and the result is a world of poets and artists arguing with the inherited past and drawing from a newly awakened past and present. I remain in awe at what she has accomplished: it's closer to the truth of our times than I would ever have expected." -- Jerome Rothenberg * author of Eye of Witness *"Seita challenges the notion that there exists a formula for what can be called avant-garde. Instead, she presents the category as fluid, broad-minded, and sometimes contradictory. Provisional Avant-Gardes is important as a study of the impact of little magazines on art, literature, and politics, on their changing aesthetics, and on how print communities are created, then and now."––Deepa Bhasthi, Hyperallergic"A much-needed study of US-based little magazines between the 1910s and 2010s.[Provisional Avant-Gardes is] an aspirational appeal for a practice of generous and capacious criticism, offering up the book as a model, and I am swayed to work in its orbit." -- Stephanie Anderson * Critical Inquiry *"A brilliant interpreter of experimental forms, Seita makes you want to get your hands on the magazines in order to imaginatively join the avant-garde communities they represent....Seita has a knack for selecting and illuminating avant-garde texts, exposing the serious implications of linguistic play, and transforming a baffling experiment into an intelligible, engaging commentary on contemporary culture." -- Suzanne W. Churchill * Journal of Modern Periodical Studies *
£26.99
Stanford University Press Partisan Aesthetics: Modern Art and India’s Long
Book SynopsisPartisan Aesthetics explores art's entanglements with histories of war, famine, mass politics and displacements that marked late-colonial and postcolonial India. Introducing "partisan aesthetics" as a conceptual grid, the book identifies ways in which art became political through interactions with left-wing activism during the 1940s, and the afterlives of such interactions in post-independence India. Using an archive of artists and artist collectives working in Calcutta from these decades, Sanjukta Sunderason argues that artists became political not only as reporters, organizers and cadre of India's Communist Party, or socialist fellow travelers, but through shifting modes of political participations and dissociations. Unmooring questions of Indian modernism from its hitherto dominant harnesses to national or global affiliations, Sunderason activates, instead, distinctly locational histories that refract transnational currents. She analyzes largely unknown and dispersed archives—drawings, diaries, posters, periodicals, and pamphlets, alongside paintings and prints—and insists that art as archive is foundational to understanding modern art's socialist affiliations during India's long decolonization. By bringing together expanding fields of South Asian art, global modernisms, and Third World cultures, Partisan Aesthetics generates a new narrative that combines political history of Indian modernism, social history of postcolonial cultural criticism, and intellectual history of decolonization.Trade Review"Sunderason's timely tracing of the production of the political in and through visual art contributes to our global understanding of the aesthetic forms of decolonization. The result is a rigorous argument regarding the many modalities of the mutual entanglement of art and progressive politics during a transformative period of modern India's history." -- Sumathi Ramaswamy * Duke University *"An original and timely book, Partisan Aesthetics is essential reading for scholars of modern South Asia and its visual culture, global urbanisms, and art in socialist and postsocialist societies." -- Sonal Khullar * author of Worldly Affiliations *"Archivally grounded and methodologically sophisticated, this work is a defining study of modern art in South Asia. A most significant contribution to our understanding of the relation between aesthetics and politics in a global context." -- Iftikhar Dadi * Cornell University *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsPostscript: Toward an Aesthetics of DecolonizationIntroduction: Partisan Aesthetics: Configurations chapter abstractThe introductory chapter configures the book's foundational concept of "partisan aesthetics." Entering through historical conjuncture of the Bengal famine of 1943 and the longue durée shadows of the climactic 1940s, it explores how art became political, not through deterministic political content but through mediations of experiences, displacements, and memory via art's aesthetic dimensions. It shows how early twentieth-century aesthetic conflict between "Indian-style" and "western-style" art generated new values and vocabularies of realism, the modern, the social, the popular, and the progressive, and how these artistic dynamics converged with a growing left-wing cultural movement beginning in the late 1930s. Partisan aesthetics developed both through dialogues and dissonances between art and the left in the 1940s, and the sociopolitical and ideological displacements of this moment in post-partition India. Chapter 1: "Political Potentiality": Jamini Roy and the Formations of Progressive Art Criticism chapter abstractThe first chapter studies a series of essays on the art of Jamini Roy written between 1937 and 1944, not by art critics but by modernist poets, writers, academics, and socialist fellow-travelers, who gathered around the Bengali critical review journal Parichoy. The essays interpreted Roy's folk-modern idiom of pat or scroll paintings from modernist, sociological, and, increasingly, quasi-socialist vocabularies. In the process, they generated a hitherto unknown discursive space for "progressive" art and art criticism that captured an early socialist assimilation of modernist art, and values of formalism with socialism. They reveal, in otherwise dispersed ways, a "passive participation" of art in a growing left-wing culture, where critics were keen on identifying the political "potentiality" of artistic form rather than its active political commitment as the underground Communist Party of India (CPI) allowed for more informal and ambiguous forms of political affiliations. Chapter 2: "As Agitator and Organizer": Socialist Realism and Artist-cadres of the Communist Party of India chapter abstractThe second chapter studies the artists committed to the Communist Party of India during war, famine, and popular resistance in the 1940s, and the "active authorship" of socialist visual reportage that they pioneered. In their works, a peculiarly late-colonial formation of socialist realism can be traced, one that combined expressionistic images of hunger with revolutionary potentialities of labor. As artist-cadres of the party like Chittaprosad and Somnath Hore visually documented the Bengal famine, peasant movements, party conferences, and peasant congresses, the party developed a complex and contradictory cultural policy: it deployed its artist-cadres as collectors of "raw material," while seeking to assimilate via art critical writings, artists outside the party fold within an expanding scope of socialist realist art. Chapter 3: "Concrete Contextuality": Realism and Its Discontents in the Art of the Calcutta Group chapter abstractThe third chapter focuses on an artist collective outside the fold of the Communist Party of India that the party sought to draw into its fledging cultural movement in the 1940s. The Calcutta Group of artists came into being during the year of the Bengal famine, 1943, with a self-proclaimed mission of developing a modern idiom of art rooted in social reality. In their decade-long tenure, they both aligned with and deviated from the left's rhetoric of socialist art, while carving out a new dialogical field of modernism and realism. These "vacillating affiliations" of the group to ideas of the social and the socialist, along with the shifting art discourse around them, particularly after Indian independence in 1947, reveals both the left's anxious trysts with modern art and ideological subtexts of the de-radicalization of vocabularies of progressive art at the arrival of Nehruvian political modernity. Chapter 4: "All the More Real for Not Being Preached": Forms and Futures of Socialist Art in Nehruvian India chapter abstractThe fourth chapter follows the afterlives of left-wing cultural movement of the 1940s in Nehruvian India. What happened to the visual rhetorics of this radical aesthetics once the anti-imperial struggle was transformed? What forms did socialist art take once the high noon of the cultural movement had passed? In the late 1940s, as the left's cultural movement dissipated under a change of guard within the Communist Party, art discourse in Nehruvian India reformulated the radical vocabulary of socialist art into new, de-radicalized values of democratic art and the citizen-artist. Studying new forms of socialist art and art discourse as well as conflicted reception of the values of humanism, democratic art, and socialist realism during the 1950s and early 1960s, this chapter makes critical connections between the communist aesthetic, the Nehruvian national-popular aesthetic, and Cold War cultural values in the post-colony. Chapter 5: "Revolution in the Tropics, Love in the Tropics": Arts of Displacement in the Post-colony chapter abstractThe postscript returns to the key propitiations of the book that constitute the parameters of the concept of partisan aesthetics. It reiterates the methodological significance of locational analysis to nuance the historicities and possibilities of the political in the artistic modernity of the post/colony. It proposes that from the "irregular" histories of art and the left during India's long decolonization, two potential directions in historiography can be pursued: first, trans-border histories of artistic modernities in post-1947 South Asia via questions of history, memory, and the locational trails of decolonization; and second, a transnational connected history of art and decolonization across the Global South via the artistic negotiations of displacements that a retreating empire produced. The book closes with an open-ended question: What histories emerge if twentieth-century Indian art is examined through its contradictions and out-of-sync moments?
£100.00
Stanford University Press Partisan Aesthetics: Modern Art and India’s Long
Book SynopsisPartisan Aesthetics explores art's entanglements with histories of war, famine, mass politics and displacements that marked late-colonial and postcolonial India. Introducing "partisan aesthetics" as a conceptual grid, the book identifies ways in which art became political through interactions with left-wing activism during the 1940s, and the afterlives of such interactions in post-independence India. Using an archive of artists and artist collectives working in Calcutta from these decades, Sanjukta Sunderason argues that artists became political not only as reporters, organizers and cadre of India's Communist Party, or socialist fellow travelers, but through shifting modes of political participations and dissociations. Unmooring questions of Indian modernism from its hitherto dominant harnesses to national or global affiliations, Sunderason activates, instead, distinctly locational histories that refract transnational currents. She analyzes largely unknown and dispersed archives—drawings, diaries, posters, periodicals, and pamphlets, alongside paintings and prints—and insists that art as archive is foundational to understanding modern art's socialist affiliations during India's long decolonization. By bringing together expanding fields of South Asian art, global modernisms, and Third World cultures, Partisan Aesthetics generates a new narrative that combines political history of Indian modernism, social history of postcolonial cultural criticism, and intellectual history of decolonization.Trade Review"Sunderason's timely tracing of the production of the political in and through visual art contributes to our global understanding of the aesthetic forms of decolonization. The result is a rigorous argument regarding the many modalities of the mutual entanglement of art and progressive politics during a transformative period of modern India's history." -- Sumathi Ramaswamy * Duke University *"An original and timely book, Partisan Aesthetics is essential reading for scholars of modern South Asia and its visual culture, global urbanisms, and art in socialist and postsocialist societies." -- Sonal Khullar * author of Worldly Affiliations *"Archivally grounded and methodologically sophisticated, this work is a defining study of modern art in South Asia. A most significant contribution to our understanding of the relation between aesthetics and politics in a global context." -- Iftikhar Dadi * Cornell University *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsPostscript: Toward an Aesthetics of DecolonizationIntroduction: Partisan Aesthetics: Configurations chapter abstractThe introductory chapter configures the book's foundational concept of "partisan aesthetics." Entering through historical conjuncture of the Bengal famine of 1943 and the longue durée shadows of the climactic 1940s, it explores how art became political, not through deterministic political content but through mediations of experiences, displacements, and memory via art's aesthetic dimensions. It shows how early twentieth-century aesthetic conflict between "Indian-style" and "western-style" art generated new values and vocabularies of realism, the modern, the social, the popular, and the progressive, and how these artistic dynamics converged with a growing left-wing cultural movement beginning in the late 1930s. Partisan aesthetics developed both through dialogues and dissonances between art and the left in the 1940s, and the sociopolitical and ideological displacements of this moment in post-partition India. Chapter 1: "Political Potentiality": Jamini Roy and the Formations of Progressive Art Criticism chapter abstractThe first chapter studies a series of essays on the art of Jamini Roy written between 1937 and 1944, not by art critics but by modernist poets, writers, academics, and socialist fellow-travelers, who gathered around the Bengali critical review journal Parichoy. The essays interpreted Roy's folk-modern idiom of pat or scroll paintings from modernist, sociological, and, increasingly, quasi-socialist vocabularies. In the process, they generated a hitherto unknown discursive space for "progressive" art and art criticism that captured an early socialist assimilation of modernist art, and values of formalism with socialism. They reveal, in otherwise dispersed ways, a "passive participation" of art in a growing left-wing culture, where critics were keen on identifying the political "potentiality" of artistic form rather than its active political commitment as the underground Communist Party of India (CPI) allowed for more informal and ambiguous forms of political affiliations. Chapter 2: "As Agitator and Organizer": Socialist Realism and Artist-cadres of the Communist Party of India chapter abstractThe second chapter studies the artists committed to the Communist Party of India during war, famine, and popular resistance in the 1940s, and the "active authorship" of socialist visual reportage that they pioneered. In their works, a peculiarly late-colonial formation of socialist realism can be traced, one that combined expressionistic images of hunger with revolutionary potentialities of labor. As artist-cadres of the party like Chittaprosad and Somnath Hore visually documented the Bengal famine, peasant movements, party conferences, and peasant congresses, the party developed a complex and contradictory cultural policy: it deployed its artist-cadres as collectors of "raw material," while seeking to assimilate via art critical writings, artists outside the party fold within an expanding scope of socialist realist art. Chapter 3: "Concrete Contextuality": Realism and Its Discontents in the Art of the Calcutta Group chapter abstractThe third chapter focuses on an artist collective outside the fold of the Communist Party of India that the party sought to draw into its fledging cultural movement in the 1940s. The Calcutta Group of artists came into being during the year of the Bengal famine, 1943, with a self-proclaimed mission of developing a modern idiom of art rooted in social reality. In their decade-long tenure, they both aligned with and deviated from the left's rhetoric of socialist art, while carving out a new dialogical field of modernism and realism. These "vacillating affiliations" of the group to ideas of the social and the socialist, along with the shifting art discourse around them, particularly after Indian independence in 1947, reveals both the left's anxious trysts with modern art and ideological subtexts of the de-radicalization of vocabularies of progressive art at the arrival of Nehruvian political modernity. Chapter 4: "All the More Real for Not Being Preached": Forms and Futures of Socialist Art in Nehruvian India chapter abstractThe fourth chapter follows the afterlives of left-wing cultural movement of the 1940s in Nehruvian India. What happened to the visual rhetorics of this radical aesthetics once the anti-imperial struggle was transformed? What forms did socialist art take once the high noon of the cultural movement had passed? In the late 1940s, as the left's cultural movement dissipated under a change of guard within the Communist Party, art discourse in Nehruvian India reformulated the radical vocabulary of socialist art into new, de-radicalized values of democratic art and the citizen-artist. Studying new forms of socialist art and art discourse as well as conflicted reception of the values of humanism, democratic art, and socialist realism during the 1950s and early 1960s, this chapter makes critical connections between the communist aesthetic, the Nehruvian national-popular aesthetic, and Cold War cultural values in the post-colony. Chapter 5: "Revolution in the Tropics, Love in the Tropics": Arts of Displacement in the Post-colony chapter abstractThe postscript returns to the key propitiations of the book that constitute the parameters of the concept of partisan aesthetics. It reiterates the methodological significance of locational analysis to nuance the historicities and possibilities of the political in the artistic modernity of the post/colony. It proposes that from the "irregular" histories of art and the left during India's long decolonization, two potential directions in historiography can be pursued: first, trans-border histories of artistic modernities in post-1947 South Asia via questions of history, memory, and the locational trails of decolonization; and second, a transnational connected history of art and decolonization across the Global South via the artistic negotiations of displacements that a retreating empire produced. The book closes with an open-ended question: What histories emerge if twentieth-century Indian art is examined through its contradictions and out-of-sync moments?
£26.99
Stanford University Press Jewish Primitivism
Book SynopsisAround the beginning of the twentieth century, Jewish writers and artists across Europe began depicting fellow Jews as savages or "primitive" tribesmen. Primitivism—the European appreciation of and fascination with so-called "primitive," non-Western peoples who were also subjugated and denigrated—was a powerful artistic critique of the modern world and was adopted by Jewish writers and artists to explore the urgent questions surrounding their own identity and status in Europe as insiders and outsiders. Jewish primitivism found expression in a variety of forms in Yiddish, Hebrew, and German literature, photography, and graphic art, including in the work of figures such as Franz Kafka, Y.L. Peretz, S. An-sky, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Moï Ver. In Jewish Primitivism, Samuel J. Spinner argues that these and other Jewish modernists developed a distinct primitivist aesthetic that, by locating the savage present within Europe, challenged the idea of the threatening savage other from outside Europe on which much primitivism relied: in Jewish primitivism, the savage is already there. This book offers a new assessment of modern Jewish art and literature and shows how Jewish primitivism troubles the boundary between observer and observed, cultured and "primitive," colonizer and colonized.Trade Review"In this revelatory book, Samuel J. Spinner uncovers the paradoxical primitivist yearnings motivating a generation of Jewish visual artists and writers in Yiddish, German, and Hebrew. What happens when Jewish artists and writers see other Jews as the 'savage' other, as though Picasso's African masks had been carved by his own cousins?" —Gabriella Safran, Stanford University"Jewish Primitivism demonstrates that we cannot understand modern Jewish literature without looking at visual culture. In Samuel J. Spinner's engaging account, looking becomes both a methodological intervention and a narrative focal point. Rejecting parochial analysis, he shows that Jewish primitivism encompasses myriad versions of Jewish modernism and enables a rich analysis of its significance." —Na'ama Rokem, University of Chicago"Jewish Primitivism makes a compelling and truly fresh argument for placing the phenomenon of modernist primitivism practiced by Jewish writers and artists at the center of our attempts to understand the paradoxical position of Jews and Jewish art in 20th-century Europe, and consequently the crises of nation and nationalism—for Jews and non-Jews—that underwrite the upheavals and cataclysms of the period."—Madeleine Cohen, Los Angeles Review of Books"One of the many strengths of Jewish Primitivism is that it raises a diverse set of considerations. Spinner's illuminating study is essential reading for those interested in modernist primitivism, in Yiddish and German Jewish literatures, in the encounter of German Jews with east European Jews, and in Jewish modernism in general."—Ido Ben Harush, H-Judaic"This work is provocative in a good way.... [Jewish Primitivism] includes important discussions of sexism in the Jewish primitivism movement and of how the artists—both Jews and non-Jews—engaged with Orientalism. Recommended."—R. Shapiro, CHOICE"Spinner offers a very compelling—and often moving—account of this aesthetic mode, a study whose value the extensiveness of this review is meant to convey."—Jeffrey A. Grossman, In Geveb"Samuel Spinner's lucidly written new book,Jewish Primitivism, is an exciting new addition to a growing body of scholarship that has aimed to deprovincialize Eastern European Jewish literature through the lens of European literary modernism."—Allison Schacther, Hebrew Studies"Boldly taking on a loaded and fraught category of cultural and literary analysis, Samuel J. Spinner's Jewish Primitivism offers an entirely new model of conducting multilingual comparative analysis.Spinner opens multiple meanings of primitivism: it formed and informed elitist and classist distinctions of the civilized and the uncivilized and found extension in institutions, practices, ideologies of orientalism, and conceptual correlates of exoticism. Spinner also reinvigorates critical scrutiny of primitivism as a concept to tell a hitherto untold story of Jewish modernism, within and beyond the fault lines and permutations of the trilingualism of Hebrew, Yiddish, and German. He undoes and reassembles the central underpinnings of Jewish identities through language, literature, and lived culture. Jewish Primitivism is a model of print cultural studies that acknowledges the coexistence of the written and spoken, of print and oral, of classic and folk."—selection committee for the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in the Germanic Languages and LiteraturesTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Beginnings of Jewish Primitivism: Folklorism and Peretz 2. The Plausibility of Jewish Primitivism 3. The Possibility of Jewish Primitivism: Kafka 4. The Politics of Jewish Primitivism: Else Lasker-Schüler and Uri Zvi Grinberg 5. The Aesthetics of Jewish Primitivism I: Der Nister's Literary Abstraction 6. The Aesthetics of Jewish Primitivism II: Avant-Garde Photography and the Shtetl Conclusion
£56.95
Stanford University Press Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical
Book SynopsisAlternative Iran offers a unique contribution to the field of contemporary art, investigating how Iranian artists engage with space and site amid the pressures of the art market and the state's regulatory regimes. Since the 1980s, political, economic, and intellectual forces have driven Iran's creative class toward increasingly original forms of artmaking not meant for official venues. Instead, these art forms appear in private homes with "trusted" audiences, derelict buildings, leftover urban zones, and remote natural sites. While many of these venues operate independently, others are fully sanctioned by the state. Drawing on interviews with over a hundred artists, gallerists, theater experts, musicians, and designers, Pamela Karimi throws into sharp relief the extraordinary art and performance activities that have received little attention outside Iran. Attending to nonconforming curatorial projects, independent guerrilla installations, escapist practices, and tacitly subversive performances, Karimi discloses the push-and-pull between the art community and the authorities, and discusses myriad instances of tentative coalition as opposed to outright partnership or uncompromising resistance. Illustrated with more than 120 full-color images, this book provides entry into unique artistic experiences without catering to voyeuristic curiosity around Iran's often-perceived "underground" culture.Trade Review"When politics becomes soul-craft, as it has in Islamic Iran over the last four decades, every aspect of life, each form of aesthetics, and every discursive practice becomes a potential locus of resistance, even rebellion. Alternative Iran is an informed and illuminating kaleidoscope of this dynamic culture pulsating beneath the dour Procrustean proclivities of the regime."—Abbas Milani, Stanford University"Only Pamela Karimi could have written this book, a sophisticated scholar able to stay both outside and inside Iran and the Western-dominated art world. She offers a richly illustrated book that archives temporary artworks in private homes, deserted basements, construction-sites, excessive landscapes, unimagined urban spaces, and reveals them as practices of hope for a more democratic Iran, a cosmopolitan art market, and a peaceful world."—Esra Akcan, Cornell University"Pamela Karimi's timely and important book highlights the charged agencies of contemporary Iranian artists in shaping their realities. Alternative Iran offers unexpected, impactful, and sophisticated insights into the contemporary art scene in Iran that necessarily subvert the dominant narrative imposed by and from both inside officials and outside hegemonic perceptions."—Nada Shabout, University of North Texas"Pamela Karimi brings together different spheres of artistic endeavor to show that, censorship and official puritanism notwithstanding, Iranian artists continue to be creative and find ways to express this creativity. Alternative Iran affords us a fascinating analysis of the continuing cultural effervescence observable in Iranian society."—Houchang Chehabi, University of St. Andrews"One can always read artistic production against the background of a particular place, time, or culture. But rarely do those elements take on such an important role as they do in this analysis of alternative art in contemporary Iran. Space, venue (sometimes literally hidden underground), and context all figure crucially in the analysis of recent forms of artistic expression that evade, co-opt, or obliquely challenge both the structure of state censorship and the Iranian regime. Karimi treats a broad range of artistic expression in supporting her contention that religious, cultural, and political constraints help shape the uniqueness of contemporary Iranian art.... Highly recommended."—J. L. Miller, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction: The Different Senses of the Alternative 1. Invisibility: Art in Concealed and Loosely Covert Spaces 2. Escapism: Critical Engagements with Remote Natural Sites 3. Ephemerality: Temporal Interjections in the City 4. Improvisation: Artful Curation and Spatial Reconfiguration in and out of Conventional Sites Epilogue: Alternative Iran: Allures and Aversions
£75.20
Stanford University Press Projecting Spirits: Speculation, Providence, and
Book SynopsisThe history of projected images at the turn of the seventeenth century reveals a changing perception of chance and order, contingency and form. In Projecting Spirits, Pasi Väliaho maps how the leading optical media of the period—the camera obscura and the magic lantern—developed in response to, and framed, the era's key intellectual dilemma of whether the world fell under God's providential care, or was subject to chance and open to speculating. As Väliaho shows, camera obscuras and magic lanterns were variously employed to give the world an intelligible and manageable design. Jesuit scholars embraced devices of projection as part of their pursuit of divine government, whilst the Royal Society fellows enlisted them in their quest for empirical knowledge as well as colonial expansion. Projections of light and shadow grew into critical metaphors in early responses to the turbulences of finance. In such instances, Väliaho argues, "projection" became an indispensable cognitive form to both assert providence, and to make sense of an economic reality that was gradually escaping from divine guidance. Drawing on a range of materials—philosophical, scientific and religious literature, visual arts, correspondence, poems, pamphlets, and illustrations—this provocative and inventive work expands our concept of the early media of projection, revealing how they spoke to early modern thinkers, and shaped a new, speculative concept of the world.Trade Review"This commanding, erudite history of the 'magic' that goes with optical technologies makes a major and enduring contribution to visual studies, to the history of science, and to the political economy of images."—Tom Conley, Harvard University"Moving seamlessly from early modern sources to current media studies theories, this book adds subtlety and nuance to our understanding of the ways optical instruments and visual metaphors shaped cultural sensitivities, modes of thought, and economic practices."—Raz Chen-Morris, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem"Pasi Väliaho provides a captivating take on projection. Projecting Spirits includes a historically rich and deep understanding of the connection between images and economies of both money and souls. As it maps how the virtual and the imaginary become effective anchors of the real world, this wonderful book amounts to nothing less than a project about time: an invention of such a future that becomes a speculative project."—Jussi Parikka, Aarhus University and FAMU, Prague"Projecting Spirits provides a thought-provoking window into a rarely explored aspect of early modern visual culture."—Paul E. Sampson, H-Sci-Med-TechTable of Contents1. The Form of Projection 2. Projection and Providence 3. Government of Souls 4. Projecting Property 5. Shadows of Expectation Epilogue
£92.80
Stanford University Press Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical
Book SynopsisAlternative Iran offers a unique contribution to the field of contemporary art, investigating how Iranian artists engage with space and site amid the pressures of the art market and the state's regulatory regimes. Since the 1980s, political, economic, and intellectual forces have driven Iran's creative class toward increasingly original forms of artmaking not meant for official venues. Instead, these art forms appear in private homes with "trusted" audiences, derelict buildings, leftover urban zones, and remote natural sites. While many of these venues operate independently, others are fully sanctioned by the state. Drawing on interviews with over a hundred artists, gallerists, theater experts, musicians, and designers, Pamela Karimi throws into sharp relief the extraordinary art and performance activities that have received little attention outside Iran. Attending to nonconforming curatorial projects, independent guerrilla installations, escapist practices, and tacitly subversive performances, Karimi discloses the push-and-pull between the art community and the authorities, and discusses myriad instances of tentative coalition as opposed to outright partnership or uncompromising resistance. Illustrated with more than 120 full-color images, this book provides entry into unique artistic experiences without catering to voyeuristic curiosity around Iran's often-perceived "underground" culture.Trade Review"When politics becomes soul-craft, as it has in Islamic Iran over the last four decades, every aspect of life, each form of aesthetics, and every discursive practice becomes a potential locus of resistance, even rebellion. Alternative Iran is an informed and illuminating kaleidoscope of this dynamic culture pulsating beneath the dour Procrustean proclivities of the regime."—Abbas Milani, Stanford University"Only Pamela Karimi could have written this book, a sophisticated scholar able to stay both outside and inside Iran and the Western-dominated art world. She offers a richly illustrated book that archives temporary artworks in private homes, deserted basements, construction-sites, excessive landscapes, unimagined urban spaces, and reveals them as practices of hope for a more democratic Iran, a cosmopolitan art market, and a peaceful world."—Esra Akcan, Cornell University"Pamela Karimi's timely and important book highlights the charged agencies of contemporary Iranian artists in shaping their realities. Alternative Iran offers unexpected, impactful, and sophisticated insights into the contemporary art scene in Iran that necessarily subvert the dominant narrative imposed by and from both inside officials and outside hegemonic perceptions."—Nada Shabout, University of North Texas"Pamela Karimi brings together different spheres of artistic endeavor to show that, censorship and official puritanism notwithstanding, Iranian artists continue to be creative and find ways to express this creativity. Alternative Iran affords us a fascinating analysis of the continuing cultural effervescence observable in Iranian society."—Houchang Chehabi, University of St. Andrews"One can always read artistic production against the background of a particular place, time, or culture. But rarely do those elements take on such an important role as they do in this analysis of alternative art in contemporary Iran. Space, venue (sometimes literally hidden underground), and context all figure crucially in the analysis of recent forms of artistic expression that evade, co-opt, or obliquely challenge both the structure of state censorship and the Iranian regime. Karimi treats a broad range of artistic expression in supporting her contention that religious, cultural, and political constraints help shape the uniqueness of contemporary Iranian art.... Highly recommended."—J. L. Miller, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction: The Different Senses of the Alternative 1. Invisibility: Art in Concealed and Loosely Covert Spaces 2. Escapism: Critical Engagements with Remote Natural Sites 3. Ephemerality: Temporal Interjections in the City 4. Improvisation: Artful Curation and Spatial Reconfiguration in and out of Conventional Sites Epilogue: Alternative Iran: Allures and Aversions
£26.99
Stanford University Press Projecting Spirits: Speculation, Providence, and
Book SynopsisThe history of projected images at the turn of the seventeenth century reveals a changing perception of chance and order, contingency and form. In Projecting Spirits, Pasi Väliaho maps how the leading optical media of the period—the camera obscura and the magic lantern—developed in response to, and framed, the era's key intellectual dilemma of whether the world fell under God's providential care, or was subject to chance and open to speculating. As Väliaho shows, camera obscuras and magic lanterns were variously employed to give the world an intelligible and manageable design. Jesuit scholars embraced devices of projection as part of their pursuit of divine government, whilst the Royal Society fellows enlisted them in their quest for empirical knowledge as well as colonial expansion. Projections of light and shadow grew into critical metaphors in early responses to the turbulences of finance. In such instances, Väliaho argues, "projection" became an indispensable cognitive form to both assert providence, and to make sense of an economic reality that was gradually escaping from divine guidance. Drawing on a range of materials—philosophical, scientific and religious literature, visual arts, correspondence, poems, pamphlets, and illustrations—this provocative and inventive work expands our concept of the early media of projection, revealing how they spoke to early modern thinkers, and shaped a new, speculative concept of the world.Trade Review"This commanding, erudite history of the 'magic' that goes with optical technologies makes a major and enduring contribution to visual studies, to the history of science, and to the political economy of images."—Tom Conley, Harvard University"Moving seamlessly from early modern sources to current media studies theories, this book adds subtlety and nuance to our understanding of the ways optical instruments and visual metaphors shaped cultural sensitivities, modes of thought, and economic practices."—Raz Chen-Morris, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem"Pasi Väliaho provides a captivating take on projection. Projecting Spirits includes a historically rich and deep understanding of the connection between images and economies of both money and souls. As it maps how the virtual and the imaginary become effective anchors of the real world, this wonderful book amounts to nothing less than a project about time: an invention of such a future that becomes a speculative project."—Jussi Parikka, Aarhus University and FAMU, Prague"Projecting Spirits provides a thought-provoking window into a rarely explored aspect of early modern visual culture."—Paul E. Sampson, H-Sci-Med-TechTable of Contents1. The Form of Projection 2. Projection and Providence 3. Government of Souls 4. Projecting Property 5. Shadows of Expectation Epilogue
£23.79
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Leonardo: A Restless Genius
Book SynopsisA visionary scientist, a supreme painter, a man of eccentricity and ambition: Leonardo da Vinci had many lives. Born from a fleeting affair between a country girl and a young notary, Leonardo was never legitimized by his father and received no formal education. While this freedom from the routine of rigid and codified learning may have served to stimulate his natural creativity, it also caused many years of suffering and an insatiable need to prove his own worth. It was a striving for glory and an obsessive thirst for knowledge that prompted Leonardo to seek the protection and favour of the most powerful figures of his day, from Lorenzo de’ Medici to Ludovico Sforza, from the French governors of Milan to the pope in Rome, where he could vie for renown with Michelangelo and Raphael. In this revelatory account, Antonio Forcellino draws on his expertise – both as historian and as restorer of some of the world’s greatest works of art – to give us a more detailed view of Leonardo than ever before. Through careful analyses of his paintings and compositional technique, down to the very materials used, Forcellino offers fresh insights into Leonardo’s artistic and intellectual development. He spans the great breadth of Leonardo’s genius, discussing his contributions to mechanics, optics, anatomy, geology and metallurgy, as well as providing acute psychological observations about the political dynamics and social contexts in which Leonardo worked. Forcellino sheds new light on a life all too often overshadowed and obscured by myth, providing us with a fresh perspective on the personality and motivations of one of the greatest geniuses of Western culture.Trade Review‘A captivating account of one of the most enigmatic figures in history. This beautifully written and well-documented biography is creative non-fiction at its very best. Based on the facts as we know them, it reads like an enthralling novel.’Patricia Fortini Brown, Professor Emerita of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University‘As one might expect from Forcellino, this book is written with verve, it brings major and minor individuals back to life, and it presents an original perspective on Leonardo’s art and on his relationships to other artists. While Forcellino's greatest strength is his close analysis of particular paintings, he deals with the whole range of Leonardo's work, from his mechanics, optics and anatomy to his most famous paintings and frescoes. This concise but comprehensive book on a many-sided man deserves to be widely read.’ Peter Burke, Professor Emeritus of Cultural History, University of Cambridge"Forcellino’s book is outstanding not merely because of the extent to which he incorporates a wealth of new insights on and research pertaining to Leonardo’s life at all stages, and to the constantly roiling social and political climate in which lived and worked, but also because of the profundity of detail he so ably provides to lure readers deep beneath the surfaces of Leonardo’s works — paintings, unfinished paintings, and drawings alike. Where he does so thematically or allegorically as an art historian might not always shed novel light on matters of interpretation, but his prose and pacing are by and large so casually gripping that those details are no less irresistible than the true gifts he provides his readers — punctilious, scrutinizing descriptions of process and materials. This is where Forcellino’s book truly shines, and where his work as a restorer of artworks informs his analysis in penetrating ways, allowing readers to feel that they’re learning key aspects of the secrets of the trade."Paul D'Agostino, HyperallergicTable of Contents Prologue Part One. ILLEGITIMATE SON 1. The Summer Child 2. In Florence 3. Verrocchio’s Workshop 4. Drawing 5. Early Experiments in the Workshop 6. Epiphany 7. Rebel Without a Cause 8. The Accusation 9. The Kite and the Vulture 10. Other Distractions 11. The New Humanity 12. Leonardo’s Technique Part Two. IN MILAN 1. Virgins and Lovers 2. At Ludovico’s Court 3. The Virgin of the Rocks 4. Portrait of a Legend 5. Anonymous Portraits 6. Theatre and Science 7. The New Science 8. Salai 9. The Phantom Horse 10. The Last Supper 11. Addio Milan Part Three. BACK TO FLORENCE 1. A Fatherless Family 2. The Madonnas of the Yarnwinder 3. The Human Beast 4. Real Wars and Mock Battles 5. Waiting for Glory 6. Body and Soul Part Four. IN EXILE 1. Rome. The Great Illusion 2. A Modest Apartment 3. Leonardo and Rome 4. The Three Paintings shown to Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona 5. A World of Women 6. The Mysterious Woman 7. The End 8. Inheritance Notes Plate Credits Index
£16.19
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Visual Culture
Book SynopsisThis is a book about how to read visual images: from fine art to photography, film, television and new media. It explores how meaning is communicated by the wide variety of texts that inhabit our increasingly visual world. But, rather than simply providing set meanings to individual images, Visual Culture teaches readers how to interpret visual texts with their own eyes. While the first part of the book takes readers through differing theoretical approaches to visual analysis, the second part shifts to a medium-based analysis, connected by an underlying theme about the complex relationship between visual culture and reality. Howells and Negreiros draw together seemingly diverse methodologies, while ultimately arguing for a polysemic approach to visual analysis. The third edition of this popular book contains over fifty illustrations, for the first time in colour. Included in the revised text is a new section on images of power, fear and seduction, a new segment on video games, as well as fresh material on taste and judgement. This timely edition also offers a glossary and suggestions for further reading. Written in a clear, lively and engaging style, Visual Culture continues to be an ideal introduction for students taking courses in visual culture and communications in a range of disciplines, including media and cultural studies, sociology, and art and design.Trade Review‘Updated, authoritative, and ranging from traditional to the newest media, Visual Culture remains the premier, portal-opening text.’John R. Stilgoe, Harvard University ‘Summoning Vasari, Arnold, Baxandall, Berger and a dozen other masters of visual culture, the authors equip the text with idioms, definitions and a code of manners with which to appraise, to judge, to put in order and to relish the vast range of what we all see.’Fred Inglis, University of WarwickTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface to the Third Edition Introduction Part I: Theory 1 Iconology 2 Form 3 Art History 4 Ideology 5 Semiotics 6 Hermeneutics Part II: Media 7 Fine Art 8 Photography 9 Film 10 Television 11 New Media Conclusion Glossary Notes Bibliography Index
£61.75
John Wiley and Sons Ltd This is Not Just a Painting
Book SynopsisIn 2008, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon acquired a painting called The Flight into Egypt which was attributed to the French artist Nicolas Poussin. Thought to have been painted in 1657, the painting had gone missing for more than three centuries. Several versions were rediscovered in the 1980s and one was passed from hand to hand, from a family who had no idea of its value to gallery owners and eventually to the museum. A painting that had been sold as a decorative object in 1986 for around 12,000 euros was acquired two decades later by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon for 17 million euros. What does this remarkable story tell us about the nature of art and the way that it is valued? How is it that what seemed to be just an ordinary canvas could be transformed into a masterpiece, that a decorative object could become a national treasure? This is a story permeated by social magic the social alchemy that transforms lead into gold, the ordinary into the extraordinary, the profane into the sacred. Focusing on this extraordinary case, Bernard Lahire lays bare the beliefs and social processes that underpin the creation of a masterpiece. Like a detective piecing together the clues in an unsolved mystery he carefully reconstructs the steps that led from the same material object being treated as a copy of insignificant value to being endowed with the status of a highly-prized painting commanding a record-breaking price. He thereby shows that a painting is never just a painting, and is always more than a piece of stretched canvass to which brush strokes of paint have been applied: this object, and the value we attach to it, is also the product of a complex array of social processes – with its distinctive institutions and experts – that lies behind it. And through the history of this painting, Lahire uncovers some of the fundamental structures of our social world. For the social magic that can transform a painting from a simple copy into a masterpiece is similar to the social magic that is present throughout our societies, in economics and politics as much as art and religion, a magic that results from the spell cast by power on those who tacitly recognize its authority. By following the trail of a single work of art, Lahire interrogates the foundations on which our perceptions of value and our belief in institutions rest and exposes the forms of domination which lie hidden behind our admiration of works of art.Trade Review"Few books can truly claim to be a tour de force. This is not Just a Painting by Bernard Lahire is truly one of those rare works. Beginning with the account of a purchase of a controversial work by Nicolas Poussin by the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, Lahire develops a creative and innovative approach to sociological theorizing, weaving together culture, politics, and social psychology as the basis for understanding how societies operate. The book is operatic in the breadth. Building on the intersection of magic, dominance, and the aesthetic, Lahire has presented a set of ideas that demands close attention and intense dialogue. Paintings are never just paintings; they are tools through which society conceptualizes itself."Gary Alan Fine, James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University; author Talking Art: The Practice of Culture and the Culture of Practice in MFA Education."Lahire’s wide-ranging and profoundly scholarly book digs deeply into the meanings sociology can find in and attribute to works of art. He puts his knowledge of art history and aesthetic theory to good use in the exploration and deepening of sociological investigations, nowhere better than in his discussion of the work of Poussin."Howard Becker, author of Art Worlds“Gloriously eccentric… thought-provoking and original” Catholic Herald "superb...exhaustive...finely detailed..." LA Review of Books Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction. Unravelling a canvas Flights into Egypt: trajectories, rivalries and controversies Breaking away from legends Categorised and classified paintings and retrospective illusions The real: between material continuity and social discontinuity The objects of research: status, values and modes of behaviour Pulling on a loose thread Coda Book 1. History, domination and social magic Chapter 1. Self-evident facts and foundations of beliefs Chapter 2. Domination and social magic The objective forms of domination A problem hidden beneath the fragmentation of points of view Capital or symbolic effects? Outline of a general theory of the magic of power Chapter 3. Linked oppositions: dominators/dominated and sacred/profane A history of the linked transformations of power and the sacred Magic and power in stateless societies Magic and power in State societies The high and the low Political fictions or how man created God in his image Struggles for the appropriation of the sacred Secularisation, sanctification and the sacred foundations of all society Book 2. Art, domination, sanctification Chapter 4. The expansion of the domain of the sacred: the emergence of art as an autonomous domain, separate from the profane. Poets and artists, sovereigns and demiurges The history of a collective sanctification From relics to works of art The separation of art and life Admire first, interpret later Beneath admiration, domination The magic of paintings Fables and hoaxes Copies and forgeries Chapter 5. Authentication and attribution Where to look for scientific truths? The expert: doing things with words Performative act I: the catalogue raisonné Performative act II: the exhibition Attributions and disattributions: controversies and changes of opinion The history and logic of attributionism Science in the service of the sacred Taking the ‘obvious’ out of the authentic Book 3. On Poussin and some Flights into Egypt Chapter 6. Sublime Poussin: master of French classicism Journey of an artist against time and tide: independence and creative freedom Painter-philosopher and artist On Poussin’s success To art, a nation’s gratitude Chapter 7. The fabulous destiny of paintings attributed to Nicolas Poussin Links, associations and changes in status Histories of paintings The painting of a great painter whose talent is declining On the trail of an admirable painting Three canvases resurface A growing controversy The comparison test The behind the scenes activity of the gallery owners The first public recognition of the ‘Pardo’ version New developments: the request for the annulment of the 1986 sale The acquisition of a national treasure In search of sponsors The magic of a masterpiece The end of a controversy The conditions of enchantment and disenchantment A version without an expert Chapter 8. Poussin, science, law and the art market Poussin in the laboratory Analyses of the ‘Piasecka-Johnson’ version Analyses of the ‘Pardo-MBA de Lyon’ version Poussin in court Erreur sur la substance A determining precedent: the case of Olympos and Marsyas or the ‘Saint-Arroman case’ The trial of the ‘other Poussin affair’ The price of a painting Chapter 9. How each person plays their game Art historians: who has the eye? Sir Anthony Blunt (1907-1983) Sir Denis Mahon (1910-2011) Jacques Thuillier (1928-2011) Pierre Rosenberg (1936-) The gallery owners: playing (and losing) the game A museum director playing (and winning) her game Conclusions Working outside the fields At the root of beliefs Exposing the invisible monster A fragile learned game Post-scriptum. The conditions for scientific creation Notes Summary of information sources consulted Bibliography Supplementary Bibliography Index
£17.99
Dartmouth College Press Thomas Hirschhorn
Book Synopsis
£84.55
University of Pennsylvania Press Substance and Symbol in Chinese Toggles: Chinese
Book SynopsisA catalogue of Chinese belt toggles in the Bieber collection.
£68.00
University of Pennsylvania Press Landscape and Authority in the Early Modern World
Book SynopsisCourts and societies across the early modern Eurasian world were fundamentally transformed by the physical, technological, and conceptual developments of their era. Evolving forms of communication, greatly expanded mobility, the spread of scientific knowledge, and the emergence of an increasingly integrated global economy all affected how states articulated and projected visions of authority into societies that, in turn, perceived and responded to these visions in often contrasting terms. Landscape both reflected and served as a vehicle for these transformations, as the relationship between the land and its imagination and consumption became a fruitful site for the negotiation of imperial identities within and beyond the precincts of the court. In Landscape and Authority in the Early Modern World, contributors explore the role of landscape in the articulation and expression of imperial identity and the mediation of relationships between the court and its many audiences in the early modern world. Nine studies focused on the geographical areas of East and South Asia, the Islamic world, and Europe illuminate how early modern courts and societies shaped, and were shaped by, the landscape, including both physical sites, such as gardens, palaces, cities, and hunting parks, and conceptual ones, such as those of frontiers, idealized polities, and the cosmos. The collected essays expand the meaning and potential of landscape as a communicative medium in this period by putting an array of forms and subjects in dialogue with one another, including not only unique expressions, such as gardens, paintings, and manuscripts, but also the products of rapidly developing commercial technologies of reproduction, especially print. The volume invites a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the complexity with which early modern states constructed and deployed different modes of landscape for different audiences and environments. Contributors: Robert Batchelor, Seyed Mohammad Ali Emrani, John Finlay, Caroline Fowler, Katrina Grant, Finola O’Kane, Anton Schweizer, Larry Silver, Stephen H. Whiteman.
£57.60
University of Pennsylvania Press John James Audubon: The Nature of the American
Book SynopsisJohn James Audubon's The Birds of America stands as an unparalleled achievement in American art, a huge book that puts nature dramatically on the page. With that work, Audubon became one of the most adulated artists of his time, and America's first celebrity scientist. In this fresh approach to Audubon's art and science, Gregory Nobles shows us that Audubon's greatest creation was himself. A self-made man incessantly striving to secure his place in American society, Audubon made himself into a skilled painter, a successful entrepreneur, and a prolific writer, whose words went well beyond birds and scientific description. He sought status with the "gentlemen of science" on both sides of the Atlantic, but he also embraced the ornithology of ordinary people. In pursuit of popular acclaim in art and science, Audubon crafted an expressive, audacious, and decidedly masculine identity as the "American Woodsman," a larger-than-life symbol of the new nation, a role he perfected in his quest for transatlantic fame. Audubon didn't just live his life; he performed it. In exploring that performance, Nobles pays special attention to Audubon's stories, some of which—the murky circumstances of his birth, a Kentucky hunting trip with Daniel Boone, an armed encounter with a runaway slave—Audubon embellished with evasions and outright lies. Nobles argues that we cannot take all of Audubon's stories literally, but we must take them seriously. By doing so, we come to terms with the central irony of Audubon's true nature: the man who took so much time and trouble to depict birds so accurately left us a bold but deceptive picture of himself.Trade ReviewGregory Nobles illuminates different sides of the indefatigable explorer’s personality, actions, and life. As Audubon joined his adopted country in some of the shameful aspects of its history, he also embodied much of its good: hope, perseverance, and democratic values—for whites, anyway. Despite Audubon’s contradictions, we can still admire him for his relentless quest to document the feathered residents of North America. * American Birding Association *Historian Gregory Nobles explicates the man in all his complexity. . . . Deftly dissecting the multifaceted life of the Frenchman who came to embody the American pioneer more than any natural-born citizen, Nobles balances fresh anecdotes with skepticism [and] delivers a captivating portrait of a self-taught, self-made man who out of passion to paint America's birds illustrated a country ripe with possibilities. * American History *Nobles’s John James Audubon, beautifully produced by the University of Pennsylvania Press . . . delivers, competently and fluently, what its subtitle promises—an investigation of Audubon’s personal brand, the ‘American Woodsman.' * American Historical Review *Nobles . . . skillfully provides a readable account of this self-proclaimed ‘American woodsman.’ The author deems Audubon ‘America’s first celebrity scientist,’ who went to great lengths to promote himself as an artist, an entrepreneur, and a ‘gentleman of science.’ * Choice *This welcome new contribution to Audubon studies moves us several steps forward. . . . Nobles’s thorough contextualization and discussion of the evidence render his argument persuasive and original in its depth and thoroughness. * Early American Literature *The ten chapters of this excellent book review the life and times of John James Audubon in a refreshingly honest manner, detailing Audubon’s development as a brilliant bird artist and scientist and, most importantly, his careful creation of an image of himself as an ‘American woodsman.’ There have ben many biographies of Audubon, but this one is unique in its in-depth discussion of Audubon’s character and his lifelong attempt to become a greater national figure and bird artist than his predecessor, Alexander Wilson…A very informative and delightful read. [Recommended] to anyone with an interest in art, nature, or American history. * Pennsylvania Heritage *More than a century and a half after his death, John James Audubon-flamboyant, intense, garrulous, insecure, and yet gifted beyond measure-remains one of the most compelling figures in American history. In this fine new biography, Gregory Nobles brings 'the American Woodsman' back to full, vivid life, capturing the artist's many facets as Audubon himself captured the essence of his beloved birds. * Scott Weidensaul, author of Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding *Compulsively readable and fascinating. Gregory Nobles's bottom-to-top assessment of the entire tableau of Audubon lore is terrific. * Daniel Lewis, author of The Feathery Tribe: Robert Ridgway and the Modern Study of Birds *An elegant book that adroitly weaves together a portrait of a man of genius and an account of the cultural and economic worlds in which he worked. * Ann Fabian, author of The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America's Unburied Dead *
£20.69
