History of art Books

Book SynopsisFor decades, contemporary artworks with reflective properties have stimulated public forms of spectatorship. According to Cristina Albu, these artworks, which can include elements such as mirrors, live video feedback, or sensors, draw attention to affective interdependence and mechanisms of social control. In Mirror Affect, Albu provides a historical account of mirroring processes in contemporary art and offers insight into the phenomenological and sociopolitical concerns that have inspired artists to stage processes of affective, perceptual, and behavioral mirroring between art viewers. Beginning with the 1960s, Albu charts the rise of interpersonal modes of art spectatorship. She reveals contemporary artists’ strategic use of reflective and responsive interfaces to instill doubt in visual representation and appeal to active scrutiny of the changing social dynamics. She suggests that the mirroring processes envisioned by contemporary artists such as Joan Jonas, Dan Graham, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Olafur Eliasson, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer trigger visual disjunctions to upset narcissistic inclinations. They invite viewers to see themselves in relation to others and to ponder their role within complex social systems.From sculpture and performance to art and technology projects, video art, and installation art, Mirror Affect analyzes forms of interpersonal spectatorship, revising and expanding current historiographies of participatory art.Trade Review"Teeming with insights, Mirror Affect is a long-overdue reevaluation of artworks with mirroring and reflective properties. Cristina Albu argues that the tension between the private and the public, self and other, opens up a conflicted space, but one that is necessary to construct a new, revitalized sense of the social."—Colin Gardner, University of California, Santa Barbara"Mirror Affect is a detailed and timely analysis of the materiality of contemporary installation art, disclosing how the artworks' mirror structures build intersubjectivity as the spectators experience them."—Christine Ross, author of The Past is the Present; It’s the Future Too: The Temporal Turn in Contemporary Art"Mirror Effect is an interesting reading to researchers in the joined field of art, science, and technology."—Leonardo ReviewsTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Seeing Ourselves Seeing1. Mirror Frames: Spectators in the Spotlight2. Mirror Screens: Wary Observers under the Radar3. Mirror Intervals: Prolonged Encounters with Others4. Mirror Portals: Unpredictable Connectivity in Responsive EnvironmentsConclusion: Networked SpectatorshipAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisA poster first printed in Germany in 1926 depicts the human body as a factory populated by tiny workers doing industrial tasks. Devised by Fritz Kahn (1888–1968), a German-Jewish physician and popular science writer, “Der Mensch als Industriepalast” (or “Man as Industrial Palace”) achieved international fame and was reprinted, in various languages and versions, all over the world. It was a new kind of image—an illustration that was conceptual and scientific, a visual explanation of how things work—and Kahn built a career of this new genre. In collaboration with a stable of artists (only some of whom were credited), Kahn created thousands of images that were metaphorical, allusive, and self-consciously modern, using an eclectic grab-bag of schools and styles: Dada, Art Deco, photomontage, Art Nouveau, Bauhaus functionalism, and commercial illustration. In Body Modern, Michael Sappol offers the first in-depth critical study of Fritz Kahn and his visual rhetoric. Kahn was an impresario of the modern who catered to readers who were hungry for products and concepts that could help them acquire and perform an overdetermined “modern” identity. He and his artists created playful new visual tropes and genres that used striking metaphors to scientifically explain the “life of Man.” This rich and largely obscure corpus of images was a technology of the self that naturalized the modern and its technologies by situating them inside the human body.The scope of Kahn’s project was vast—entirely new kinds of visual explanation—and so was his influence. Today, his legacy can be seen in textbooks, magazines, posters, public health pamphlets, educational websites, and Hollywood movies. But, Sappol concludes, Kahn’s illustrations also pose profound and unsettling epistemological questions about the construction and performance of the self. Lavishly illustrated with more than 100 images, Body Modern imaginatively explores the relationship between conceptual image, image production, and embodied experience.Trade Review"The chance meeting of Popular Mechanics and Gray’s Anatomy on a dissecting table, Fritz Kahn’s cutaway views of our inner workings expose far more than blood, guts, and bones. Taking Kahn’s delirious illustrations as his jumping-off point, Michael Sappol uses his vast historical erudition, just enough theory, and a prose style that cuts like a knife to lay bare the visual unconscious of the Machine Age. Delving deeper, he discovers the self, a cognitive widget turned out by Modernism’s philosophical assembly line. Witty, incisive, and impeccably researched, Body Modern is an X-ray of our image world in its early years, before the deluge."—Mark Dery, author of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams"The book is nicely illustrated and the history of our relationship between biology and mythology is brilliantly addressed."—The Daily Heller"Densely academic, yet provocative enough for a lay person to extract some meaning."—Santa Fe New Mexican"The merits of Michael Sappol’s study are numerous. Sappol gives a first-rate overview of the key themes and forms of Kahn’s editorial achievements as well as the manifold ways it was appropriated in other countries and cultures."—Leonardo Reviews "The author’s lucid commentaries provide excellent guidance through the forest of Kahn’s topics, ranging from anatomy to architecture, and from physiology to thermodynamics." —Bulletin of the History of Medicine "An intellectually important book that is delightfully well written." —ISISTable of ContentsContentsPrefaceIntroduction: Fritz Kahn, Modernity, and the Invention of Conceptual Scientific Illustration1. Reading Kahn and the Homunculus2. “Much Better than Words”: Pictured Knowledge and the Rhetoric of Visuality3. Ocularcentric! Conceptual Illustration at Work in the “Great Loop”4. Variety Show: The Studio of Kahn and Its Visual Devices5. Kahn’s Way-Out: Conceptual Illustration’s Iconophilic Diaspora6. “To Picture the Body”: Kahn’s Images in the Postmodern AfterlifeEpilogue: Towards a Theory of the HomunculusAcknowledgmentsFritz Kahn: A ChronologyNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisChanging how we look at and think about the color grey Why did many of the twentieth century’s best-known abstract painters often choose grey, frequently considered a noncolor and devoid of meaning? Frances Guerin argues that painters (including Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Agnes Martin, Brice Marden, Mark Rothko, and Gerhard Richter) select grey to respond to a key question of modernist art: What is painting? By analyzing an array of modernist paintings, Guerin demonstrates that grey has a unique history and a legitimate identity as a color. She traces its use by painters as far back as medieval and Renaissance art, through Romanticism, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernism to show how grey is the perfect color to address the questions asked by painting within art history and to articulate the relationship between painting and the historical world of industrial modernity. A work of exceptional erudition, breadth, and clarity, presenting an impressive range of canonical paintings across centuries as examples, The Truth Is Always Grey is a treatise on color that allows us to see something entirely new in familiar paintings and encourages our appreciation for the innovation and dynamism of the color grey.Trade Review"The Truth Is Always Grey is a work of exceptional erudition, breadth, and clarity. The range and force of Frances Guerin's examples are truly impressive, showing how attention to one color alone allows us to see relations between bodies of work across period and nation in unexpected ways."—Brian Price, author of Neither God nor Master: Robert Bresson and Radical Politics"Frances Guerin's discussion of grey in modern European and American abstract painting is extensive, original, and grafted on alternative critical opinions. She has done a magisterial job in selecting and combining a variety of points of views on grey as a color of major significance, in its own right, throughout the history of art."—Angela Dalle Vacche, Georgia Institute of Technology"In this timely book Frances Guerin addresses the central but neglected subject of grey in painting. Both material and philosophical in her analysis, she gives us a well researched, vibrant, and thoroughly engaging reconsideration of that widely underestimated color."—Anthea Callen, author of The Work of Art"This engaging book advances study of color and contemporary painting."—CHOICE "This is a history of the colour grey that incorporates numerous in-depth analyses and arguments: a history that was much overdue, and certainly worth reading." —Visual StudiesTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: The Color Grey 1. What Is Grey Painting? Tracing a Historical Trajectory2. Visualizing Modern Life: Photography’s Influence on Nineteenth-Century Grey Painting3. Grey Abstraction: Form and Function in American Postwar Painting4. Beyond Modernist Abstraction: The Social Significance of Grey Painting 5. Reinvention and Perpetuation: The Possibility of Grey for Gerhard RichterEpilogue: The Irresolution of GreyAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisA new and challenging perspective on Nazi exhibition design In one of the most comprehensive analyses ever written on the subject, Michael Tymkiw reassesses the relationship between Nazi exhibition design and modernism. While National Socialist exhibitions are widely understood as platforms for attacking modern art, they also served as sites of surprising formal experimentation among artists, architects, and others, who often drew upon and reconfigured the practices and principles of modernism when designing exhibition spaces and the objects within. In this book, Tymkiw reveals that a central motivation behind such experimentation was the interest in provoking what he calls "engaged spectatorship"—attempts to elicit experiences among exhibition-goers that would pique their desire to become involved in wider processes of social and political change. For historians of art, architecture, performance, and other forms of visual culture, Nazi Exhibition Design and Modernism unravels long-held assumptions, particularly concerning the ideological stakes of participation.Trade Review"Michael Tymkiw’s book Nazi Exhibition Design and Modernism makes an important contribution to the rapidly growing body of literature on exhibition design in which narratives of modern art are turned to the spaces where audiences encountered what was often cutting-edge material. The contents of the displays in this study, however, complicate our expectations of modernism and of the National-Socialist-era visual culture that art and architectural historians long preferred to overlook. This disregard allowed scholars to peer past uncomfortable linkages between the heroic modernist period that preceded these years and the postwar return to legitimacy that followed. By looking closely at this difficult subject, Tymkiw finds moments of formal invention, as well as bold, even shocking, exhibition spaces that expressed a deeply reactionary cultural climate that we often associate with banal canvases and repetitive, monolithic structures."—Andrés Mario Zervigón, Rutgers University"In his nuanced examination of Nazi exhibition design, Michael Tymkiw persuasively challenges the myth that modernism was inherently anti-fascist. Through a rigorous examination of often forgotten displays, he demonstrates that multiple strands of Weimar modernism provided effective propaganda strategies that were in turn adopted by both postwar German states."—Kathleen James-Chakraborty, University College Dublin"This book is an excellent example of contemporary study not only of German culture under National Socialism but of European totalitarianism of the interwar era."—H-Net Reviews"Nazi Exhibition Design and Modernism is well written, richly illustrated and readable. Tymkiw's focus on engaged spectatorship nicely complicates notions of passivity and activity while simultaneously blurring the boundaries between producers and consumers of visual culture."—European History Quarterly"Nazi Exhibition Design and Modernism breaks with standard ways of writing about art and politics in the Third Reich (such the art-as-propaganda approach, the fascist aesthetic approach, the modernist subversion approach). It puts an end to the lazy kind of thinking that, whether in the name of ideology critique or theories of totalitarianism, pays little attention to the actual forms and techniques buttressing Nazi visual culture."—Modernism/Modernity"Tymkiw demonstrates that exhibitions are optimal vehicles for expanding our understanding of modernism because of their overt connection between form and ideology and, in turn, provides a model for extending the discussion to other visual disciplines and time periods."—German Studies Review"The overall argument therefore not only represents a significant intervention into ideologically tinged Cold War historiographies, but is also a masterclass in disentangling form from ideology. "—Monatshefte"Nazi Exhibition Design and Modernism proves the disturbing entanglements between far-right ideology and innovative exhibition design, thus making the book a key contribution not only to the field of fascism, but also to curatorial and museum studies."—Journal of Curatorial Studies"His text is clear, efficient, elegant, effectively documenting an underexamined realm. And therefore chilling."—Leonardo Reviews"Tymkiw displays his expertise with perceptive analysis of exhibition design practices: his attention extends to the way a visitor’s physical and perceptual movement is structured from one exhibit to the next, to the effect of viewing angles and size proportion on physical bodies, and to the myriad relationships among disparate artifacts and visual materials within an individual exhibition. "—Monatshefte"Tymkiw reveals the diversity of forms assumed by exhibition strategies under National Socialism, which were by no means limited to the return to monumentality and to traditional media but deployed through highly diverse spaces, actors, publics and conceptions of the spectator." —Transbordeur"His sweeping exploration of innovative Nazi exhibition design offers a raft of new evidence of the centrality of exhibition design as a propagandistic medium. In its deep dive into the past, the book should also give us pause as we look to our own present and the sophistication with which right-wing groups and totalitarian regimes now arm themselves with today’s enthralling visual media." —Journal of Design HistoryTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Experimental Exhibition Design under National SocialismPart I. Entangled in Debates on Modern Art and Architecture1. Falling into Line: Three Early Experiments in Visualizing Collectivity Formation2. Reconfiguring Expressionism: Otto Andreas Schreiber and the Mass Production of Factory ExhibitionsPart II. The Persistence of Formal Dialectics3. Photomurals after Pressa4. Fragmentation and the “Jewish-Bolshevist Enemy”Epilogue: German Exhibition Design after National SocialismAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisHow would artistic practice contribute to political change in post–World War II Japan? How could artists negotiate the imbalanced global dynamics of the art world and also maintain a sense of aesthetic and political authenticity? While the contemporary art world has recently come to embrace some of Japan’s most daring postwar artists, the interplay of art and politics remains poorly understood in the Americas and Europe. The Stakes of Exposure fills this gap and explores art, visual culture, and politics in postwar Japan from the 1950s to the 1970s, paying special attention to how anxiety and confusion surrounding Japan’s new democracy manifested in representations of gender and nationhood in modern art. Through such pivotal postwar episodes as the Minamata Disaster, the Lucky Dragon Incident, the budding antinuclear movement, and the ANPO protests of the 1960s, The Stakes of Exposure examines a wide range of issues addressed by the period’s prominent artists, including Tanaka Atsuko and Shiraga Kazuo (key members of the Gutai Art Association), Katsura Yuki, and Nakamura Hiroshi. Through a close study of their paintings, illustrations, and assemblage and performance art, Namiko Kunimoto reveals that, despite dissimilar aesthetic approaches and divergent political interests, Japanese postwar artists were invested in the entangled issues of gender and nationhood that were redefining Japan and its role in the world. Offering many full-color illustrations of previously unpublished art and photographs, as well as period manga, The Stakes of Exposure shows how contention over Japan’s new democracy was expressed, disavowed, and reimagined through representations of the gendered body.Trade Review"Kunimoto’s manuscript is exactly what the field of Japanese postwar art needs at this time."—Alicia Volk "Eschewing group-centric approaches, The Stakes of Exposure focuses on four artists whose aesthetic politics figure postwar bodies in struggle, vulnerability, desire, and connection. Namiko Kunimoto's analysis navigates between history, historical art literature, and theoretical touchstones through her lucid readings."—William Marotti, UCLA"A significant contribution to Japanese art and scholarship published in English."—CHOICE"Kunimoto’s attention to how the gendered body resonated with gendered narratives about society and the nation is an important contribution. Kunimoto offers close readings of the works of Hiroshi Nakamura, Yuki Katsura, Atsuko Tanaka and Kazuo Shiraga to illuminate the responses to shifting ideas about political subjectivity in postwar Japan."—The Japan Times"Kunimoto strategically situates her study between the disciplines of history and art history, opening new lines of inquiry into postwar Japan and, at the same time, challenging many of the underlying assumptions that have informed political and art histories of this period."—Pacific Historical Review"The Stakes of Exposure: Anxious Bodies in Postwar Japanese Art, by art historian Namiko Kunimoto, provides monographic essays on four artists active from the 1930s to the 1970s—Yuki Katsura, Hiroshi Nakamura, Atsuko Tanaka and Kazuo Shiraga—and describes a postwar period of national anxiety that produced new conceptions of ‘gender and nationhood.’"—Art Asia PacificTable of ContentsContentsList of IllustrationsIntroduction: Gendered Bodies and the Minamata Disaster1. Katsura Yuki’s Bodies of Resistance2. Nakamura Hiroshi and the Politics of Embodiment3. Tanaka Atsuko and the Circuits of Subjectivity4. Heroic Violence in the Art of Shiraga KazuoConclusion: Thresholds of ExposureAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA cultural history of modern lifestyle viewed through film and multimedia experiments of midcentury designers Charles and Ray Eames For the designers Charles and Ray Eames, happiness was both a technical and ideological problem central to the future of liberal democracy. Being happy demanded new things but also a vanguard life in media that the Eameses modeled as they brought film into their design practice. Midcentury modernism is often considered institutionalized, but Happiness by Design casts Eames-era designers as innovative media artists, technophilic humanists, change managers, and neglected film theorists.Happiness by Design offers a fresh cultural history of midcentury modernism through the film and multimedia experiments of Charles and Ray Eames and their peers—Will Burtin, László Moholy-Nagy, and György Kepes, among others—at a moment when designers enjoyed a new cultural prestige. Justus Nieland traces how, as representatives of the American Century’s exuberant material culture, Cold War designers engaged in creative activities that spanned disciplines and blended art and technoscience while reckoning with the environmental reach of media at the dawn of the information age.Eames-era modernism, Nieland shows, fueled novel techniques of culture administration, spawning new partnerships between cultural and educational institutions, corporations, and the state. From the studio, showroom floor, or classroom to the stages of world fairs and international conferences, the midcentury multimedia experiments of Charles and Ray Eames and their circle became key to a liberal democratic lifestyle—and also anticipated the look and feel of our networked present.Trade Review"Happiness by Design is a fascinating contribution to the fate of modernisms at midcentury. Justus Nieland unpacks the cheery products of Eames-era modern design as they manifest in material objects, in experimental films and multi-screen media, and in new forms of knowledge-making at conferences and lectures. He weaves all of this together in a rich and often surprising intellectual history of the midcentury ‘good life’ that questions how designers’ attempts to fashion human happiness quickly devolved into sad stories and risky futures."—Lynn Spigel, author of TV by Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Television"Happiness by Design is an astonishingly rich and inventive book. It immerses us in a world of midcentury modernism that feels connected to our present but is shaped by ideas and hopes we have perhaps forgotten. Justus Nieland has written a fantastic cultural history of the artists, filmmakers, and intellectuals who not only created some of the most iconic works of the period, but also whole environments filled with media and technologies actually designed to make life better."—Mark Goble, author of Beautiful Circuits: Modernism and the Mediated Life"Who doesn’t want to be happy? Justus Nieland’s brilliant book exposes the political and aesthetic stakes of this seemingly innocent desire voiced by so many of us in the present. Breaking new ground in film studies, Happiness by Design builds an account of how happiness became a technology, medium, and measure of human well-being and security. Happiness, in this book, is not just an emotion—it is a technique that has become central to how we imagine not only who we are but how we will survive in a rapidly changing world."—Orit Halpern, author of Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945 "The book’s design reinforces its subjects’ focus on knowledge organization and delivery."—ARLIS/NA Reviews"A dazzling array of theorizing on the plight of the world and the roles of designers and theoreticians in it."—CHOICE"Happiness by Design is an astonishingly rich portrait of an era whose reinvention of happiness out of global disaster might help chart out our own life among the ruins."—American Literary History"Lusciously illustrated . . . this book invites historians of design to consider the interdisciplinary practices and media techniques that shaped twentieth-century modernist design in the US and offers an invaluable resource for media scholars interested in the ways that design culture shaped period media practices. A wonderful read."—Design and Culture "Adventurous readers as well as film enthusiasts wishing to understand the medium in a much-wider context will find a veritable treasure trove of information."—Film International "Extensively researched and richly illustrated, Happiness by Design is a fascinating and inventive approach to the transformations of modernism at midcentury."—Synoptique"Throughout this probe into designers’ media experiments and their involvement in the organization of culture, Nieland employs his own organizational techniques, engaging midcentury discourses and reckonings with technology and information."—CAA Reviews"A dazzling intellectual history of a period marked by creative ferment and interdisciplinary collaboration... the result should change the way we think about our own disciplinary history."—Journal of Cinema and Media Studies

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Book SynopsisShows how the intersection of biotech, art, and architecture are transforming the world we live in As living matter becomes more and more the domain of art and architecture, the life sciences are enabling a major cultural and aesthetic transformation. Vital Forms explores how the intersection of biology, art, and architecture has transformed these disciplines, offering heretofore unimagined possibilities.Using numerous case studies, Jennifer Johung explores how art and architecture are reimagining life on cellular and subcellular levels. In the process, she maps the constantly evolving dependencies that exist between objects, bodies, and environments. From Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr’s Tissue Culture and Art Project, which developed “semi-living worry dolls,” to Patricia Piccinini’s imagined Still Life with Stem Cells, each chapter pairs a branch of contemporary biological inquiry with the artists who are revolutionizing it.Examining cutting-edge developments in biotechnological research—including tissue-engineering, stem cell science, regenerative medicine, and more—Vital Forms brings biological art and architecture into critical dialogue. Distinguished by its broad range and Johung’s synthesizing talents, Vital Forms makes powerful observations about how the unfolding dependencies between all kinds of matter are becoming vital to life in our age of biotechnological manipulations.

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Book SynopsisA forensic examination of the mutual relationship between art and real estate in a transforming Los Angeles Underlying every great city is a rich and vibrant culture that shapes the texture of life within. In The Speculative City, Susanna Phillips Newbury teases out how art and Los Angeles shaped one another’s evolution. She compellingly articulates how together they transformed the Southland, establishing the foundation for its contemporary art infrastructure, and explains how artists came to influence Los Angeles’s burgeoning definition as the global city of the twenty-first century.Pairing particular works of art with specific innovations in real estate development, The Speculative City reveals the connections between real estate and contemporary art as they constructed Los Angeles’s present-day cityscape. From banal parking lots to Frank Gehry’s designs for artists’ studios and museums, Newbury examines pivotal interventions by artists and architects, city officials and cultural philanthropists, concluding with an examination of how, in the wake of the 2008 global credit crisis, contemporary art emerged as a financial asset to fuel private wealth and urban gentrification. Both a history of the transformation of the Southland and a forensic examination of works of art, The Speculative City is a rich complement to the California chronicles by such writers as Rebecca Solnit and Mike Davis.Trade Review "The Speculative City is an accomplished piece of work, incredibly nuanced in its research, synthetic in its claims, and novel in its arguments. Susanna Phillips Newbury achieves a compelling picture of the transformation of the Southland through a network of developers, and she convincingly shows how certain real estate moguls-cum-builder-philanthropists literally laid the foundation for the rise of contemporary art in Los Angeles."—Suzanne Hudson, author of Contemporary Painting "In twentieth-century Los Angeles, there is the art of the haves and the art of the have-nots. In this fascinating study, Susanna Phillips Newbury shows how those two worlds have been structured—separately and unequally—through the nexus of art, real estate, and urban development. Essential reading for students of art and political economy, The Speculative City explores the aesthetic foundations of the neoliberal city."—Eric Avila, author of The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City "From a unique approach to cultural history, economics and planning, Newbury’s book, with its extensive notes and comprehensive bibliography, has much to offer libraries and will serve the needs of many academic programs. "—ARLIS/NA Reviews Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Art on FIRE1. Thirtyfour Parking Lots in the Fragmented Metropolis2. Art in the Suburbs: Master Plans and Industrial Images3. Performing Lifestyle in Townhome California 4. The Artist’s Studio Exposed5. Risk Architecture: Museums in CrisisEpilogue: Asset ArtAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA forensic examination of the mutual relationship between art and real estate in a transforming Los Angeles Underlying every great city is a rich and vibrant culture that shapes the texture of life within. In The Speculative City, Susanna Phillips Newbury teases out how art and Los Angeles shaped one another’s evolution. She compellingly articulates how together they transformed the Southland, establishing the foundation for its contemporary art infrastructure, and explains how artists came to influence Los Angeles’s burgeoning definition as the global city of the twenty-first century.Pairing particular works of art with specific innovations in real estate development, The Speculative City reveals the connections between real estate and contemporary art as they constructed Los Angeles’s present-day cityscape. From banal parking lots to Frank Gehry’s designs for artists’ studios and museums, Newbury examines pivotal interventions by artists and architects, city officials and cultural philanthropists, concluding with an examination of how, in the wake of the 2008 global credit crisis, contemporary art emerged as a financial asset to fuel private wealth and urban gentrification. Both a history of the transformation of the Southland and a forensic examination of works of art, The Speculative City is a rich complement to the California chronicles by such writers as Rebecca Solnit and Mike Davis.Trade Review "The Speculative City is an accomplished piece of work, incredibly nuanced in its research, synthetic in its claims, and novel in its arguments. Susanna Phillips Newbury achieves a compelling picture of the transformation of the Southland through a network of developers, and she convincingly shows how certain real estate moguls-cum-builder-philanthropists literally laid the foundation for the rise of contemporary art in Los Angeles."—Suzanne Hudson, author of Contemporary Painting "In twentieth-century Los Angeles, there is the art of the haves and the art of the have-nots. In this fascinating study, Susanna Phillips Newbury shows how those two worlds have been structured—separately and unequally—through the nexus of art, real estate, and urban development. Essential reading for students of art and political economy, The Speculative City explores the aesthetic foundations of the neoliberal city."—Eric Avila, author of The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City "From a unique approach to cultural history, economics and planning, Newbury’s book, with its extensive notes and comprehensive bibliography, has much to offer libraries and will serve the needs of many academic programs. "—ARLIS/NA Reviews Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Art on FIRE1. Thirtyfour Parking Lots in the Fragmented Metropolis2. Art in the Suburbs: Master Plans and Industrial Images3. Performing Lifestyle in Townhome California 4. The Artist’s Studio Exposed5. Risk Architecture: Museums in CrisisEpilogue: Asset ArtAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisExploring the significance of metaphor in modern art “Where do the roots of art lie?” asked Der Sturm founder Herwarth Walden. “In the people? Behind the mountains? Behind the planets. He who has eyes to hear, feels.” Walden’s Der Sturm—the journal, gallery, performance venue, press, theater, bookstore, and art school in Berlin (1910–1932)—has never before been the subject of a book-length study in English. Four Metaphors of Modernism positions Der Sturm at the center of the avant-garde and as an integral part of Euro-American modern art, theory, and practice.Jenny Anger traces Walden’s aesthetic and intellectual roots to Franz Liszt and Friedrich Nietzsche—forebears who led him to embrace a literal and figurative mixing of the arts. She then places Der Sturm in conversation with New York’s Société Anonyme (1920–1950), an American avant-garde group modeled on Der Sturm and founded by Katherine Sophie Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray. Working against the tendency to examine artworks and artist groups in isolation, Anger underscores the significance of both organizations to the development and circulation of international modernism. Focusing on the recurring metaphors of piano, glass, water, and home, Four Metaphors of Modernism interweaves a historical analysis of these two prominent organizations with an aesthetic analysis of the metaphors that shaped their practices, reconceiving modernism itself. Presented here is a modernism that is embodied, gendered, multisensory, and deeply committed to metaphor and a restoration of abstraction’s connection with the real.Trade Review"Four Metaphors of Modernism is a tour de force demonstration of the centrality of metaphor to the modernist project both in Europe and America. Through comparative analysis, Jenny Anger charts the surprising aesthetic and philosophical continuities informing two key modernist ventures."—Mark Antliff, Duke University"The book not only brings together various strands of scholarship with brand new archival research, it is also the first major effort to systematically trace the connections between the German Der Sturm and the American Société Anonyme. Jenny Anger’s highly original and engaging instigation of connections between these two key modernist institutions is particularly noteworthy for the author’s nuanced discussion of gender, which builds on her earlier published work and will no doubt further cement her reputation as a major contributor within this area."—Anna Brzyski, University of KentuckyTable of ContentsOverture Act 1. PianoAct 2. WaterAct 3. GlassAct 4. HomeRepriseAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisExploring the significance of metaphor in modern art “Where do the roots of art lie?” asked Der Sturm founder Herwarth Walden. “In the people? Behind the mountains? Behind the planets. He who has eyes to hear, feels.” Walden’s Der Sturm—the journal, gallery, performance venue, press, theater, bookstore, and art school in Berlin (1910–1932)—has never before been the subject of a book-length study in English. Four Metaphors of Modernism positions Der Sturm at the center of the avant-garde and as an integral part of Euro-American modern art, theory, and practice.Jenny Anger traces Walden’s aesthetic and intellectual roots to Franz Liszt and Friedrich Nietzsche—forebears who led him to embrace a literal and figurative mixing of the arts. She then places Der Sturm in conversation with New York’s Société Anonyme (1920–1950), an American avant-garde group modeled on Der Sturm and founded by Katherine Sophie Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray. Working against the tendency to examine artworks and artist groups in isolation, Anger underscores the significance of both organizations to the development and circulation of international modernism. Focusing on the recurring metaphors of piano, glass, water, and home, Four Metaphors of Modernism interweaves a historical analysis of these two prominent organizations with an aesthetic analysis of the metaphors that shaped their practices, reconceiving modernism itself. Presented here is a modernism that is embodied, gendered, multisensory, and deeply committed to metaphor and a restoration of abstraction’s connection with the real.Trade Review"Four Metaphors of Modernism is a tour de force demonstration of the centrality of metaphor to the modernist project both in Europe and America. Through comparative analysis, Jenny Anger charts the surprising aesthetic and philosophical continuities informing two key modernist ventures."—Mark Antliff, Duke University"The book not only brings together various strands of scholarship with brand new archival research, it is also the first major effort to systematically trace the connections between the German Der Sturm and the American Société Anonyme. Jenny Anger’s highly original and engaging instigation of connections between these two key modernist institutions is particularly noteworthy for the author’s nuanced discussion of gender, which builds on her earlier published work and will no doubt further cement her reputation as a major contributor within this area."—Anna Brzyski, University of KentuckyTable of ContentsOverture Act 1. PianoAct 2. WaterAct 3. GlassAct 4. HomeRepriseAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisAnalyzing how 1980s visual culture provided a vital space for women artists to theorize and visualize their own bodies and sexualities In 1982, the protests of antiporn feminists sparked the censorship of the Diary of a Conference on Sexuality, a radical and sexually evocative image-text volume whose silencing became a symbol for the irresolvable feminist sex wars. In Visible Archives documents the community networks that produced this resonant artifact and others, analyzing how visual culture provided a vital space for women artists to theorize and visualize their own bodies and sexualities. Margaret Galvan explores a number of feminist and cultural touchstones—the feminist sex wars, the HIV/AIDS crisis, the women in print movement, and countercultural grassroots periodical networks—and examines how visual culture interacts with these pivotal moments. She goes deep into the records to bring together a decade’s worth of research in grassroots and university archives that include comics, collages, photographs, drawings, and other image-text media produced by women, including Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker, Marybeth Nelson, Roberta Gregory, Lee Marrs, Alison Bechdel, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Nan Goldin. The art highlighted in In Visible Archives demonstrates how women represented their bodies and sexualities on their own terms and created visibility for new, diverse identities, thus serving as blueprints for future activism and advocacy—work that is urgent now more than ever as LGBTQ+ and women’s rights face challenges and restrictions across the nation. Trade Review "Margaret Galvan asks all the right questions about queer and feminist visual storytelling from the 1980s: Where were these works situated? How did communities use them? How have they been archived? Both commentary upon as well as an integral part of the activist project begun by the creators themselves, In Visible Archives helps keep these remarkable works visible for us all."—Justin Hall, California College of the Arts, editor of No Straight Lines "This wonderful book demonstrates the critical importance of community-based archives. Utilizing primary source materials, Margaret Galvan has produced an original and consequential contribution to the history of the feminist sex wars, and her attention to the visual aspects of those documents provides long overdue recognition to the period’s artists, designers, and activists."—Gayle Rubin, University of Michigan Table of Contents Contents Introduction: Making Visible Archives 1. The Collage Activists: Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker, and Marybeth Nelson Frame the Feminist Sex Wars 2. The Comics Visionaries: Lee Marrs’s and Roberta Gregory’s Underground Feminism 3. The Newspaper Cartoonist: Alison Bechdel’s Queer Grassroots Networks 4. The Editor and Pedagogue: Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s Public Drawing 5. The Photographer and Curator: Nan Goldin’s Witness to HIV/AIDS Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA deep analysis of an enigmatic artist whose oeuvre opens new spaces for understanding feminism, the body, and identity Popular and pioneering as a conceptual artist, Rosemarie Trockel has never before been examined at length in a dedicated book. This volume fills that gap while articulating a new interpretation of feminist theory and bodily identity based around the idea of schizogenesis central to Trockel’s work.Schizogenesis is a fission-like form of asexual reproduction in which new organisms are created but no original is left behind. Author Katherine Guinness applies it in surprising and insightful ways to the career of an artist who has continually reimagined herself and her artistic vision. Drawing on the philosophies of feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone, and Monique Wittig, Guinness argues that Trockel’s varied output of painting, fabric, sculpture, film, and performance is best seen as opening a space that is peculiarly feminist yet not contained by dominant articulations of feminism. Utilizing a wide range of historical and popular knowledge—from Baader Meinhof to Pinocchio, poodles, NASA, and Brecht—Katherine Guinness gives us the associative and ever-branching readings that Trockel’s art requires. With a spirit for pursuing the surprising and the obscure, Guinness delves deep into a creator who is largely seen as an enigma, revealing Trockel as a thinker who challenges and transforms the possibilities of bodily representation and identity.Trade Review"Rather than merely offering a dry recounting of Rosemarie Trockel's career, sprinkled occasionally with analyses of key artworks, Schizogenesis uses the occasion of scholars' and critics' perplexity as an invitation to perform—imaginatively and enthrallingly—the associative and ever-branching readings which Trockel's art beckons."—Jane Blocker, author of Becoming Past: History in Contemporary Art"Katherine Guinness’s guiding concept of schizogenesis ingeniously frames Rosemarie Trockel’s multilayered practice in terms of split production and rapid regeneration, metaphors of procreation that simultaneously evoke destruction and violence. Written in lively, witty prose, this book does justice to Trockel’s complex works by thinking of them as ‘theoretical objects’ that demand Guinness’s extended, probing analyses."—Gregory H. Williams, author of Permission to Laugh: Humor and Politics in Contemporary German Art

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Book SynopsisThe life and work of the outstanding Catalan-Majorcan philosopher, logician, and mystic Ramon Llull continues to fascinate thinkers, artists, and scholars worldwideIn this book, international experts from Europe and the United States address Lullism as a remarkable and distinctive method of thinking and experimenting. The origins and impact of Ramon Llull’s oeuvre as a modern thinker are presented, and their interdisciplinary and intercultural implications, which continue to this day, are explored. Ars combinatoria, generative and permutative generation of texts, the epistemic and poetic power of algorithmic systems, plus the principle of unconditional dialogue between cultural groups and their individual members, are the most important coordinates of this combinatorial–dialogical media and communication theory, which appeared very early in the history of science, technology, and art. It was developed in the work of Ramon Llull during the transition from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century when Arab-Islamic, Jewish, and Christian cultures intersected. The legacy of Lullism lives on in poetry and in the visual and electronic-based arts, as well as in research on the history of informatics, formal logic, and media archaeology. The primary idea of Llull’s teachings—to enable rational and therefore trustworthy dialogue between cultures and religions through a universally valid system of symbols—is today still topical and of great relevance, especially in the tensions prevailing in globalized spaces of possibility.Contributors: Miquel Bassols, Florian Cramer, Salvador Dalí, Fernando Domínguez Reboiras, Diane Doucet-Rosenstein, Jordi Gayà, Jonathan Gray, Daniel Irrgang, David Link, Sebastián Moro Tornese, Josep E. Rubio, Henning Schmidgen, Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Gianni Vattimo, Janet Zweig.

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Book SynopsisA second edition of the classic introduction to arts in social movements, fully updated and now including Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and new digital and social media forms of cultural resistanceThe Art of Protest, first published in 2006, was hailed as an “essential” introduction to progressive social movements in the United States and praised for its “fluid writing style” and “well-informed and insightful” contribution (Choice Magazine). Now thoroughly revised and updated, this new edition of T. V. Reed’s acclaimed work offers engaging accounts of ten key progressive movements in postwar America, from the African American struggle for civil rights beginning in the 1950s to Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter in the twenty-first century. Reed focuses on the artistic activities of these movements as a lively way to frame progressive social change and its cultural legacies: civil rights freedom songs, the street drama of the Black Panthers, revolutionary murals of the Chicano movement, poetry in women’s movements, the American Indian Movement’s use of film and video, anti-apartheid rock music, ACT UP’s visual art, digital arts in #Occupy, Black Lives Matter rap videos, and more. Through the kaleidoscopic lens of artistic expression, Reed reveals how activism profoundly shapes popular cultural forms. For students and scholars of social change and those seeking to counter reactionary efforts to turn back the clock on social equality and justice, the new edition of The Art of Protest will be both informative and inspiring.Trade Review"This impressive study demonstrates that culture matters to social movements and that social movements affect cultural and aesthetic practices. From the transmission of southern spirituals into freedom songs during the civil rights era to political theater in antiracist struggles, from poetry as a site of feminist consciousness-raising to mural painting within the Chicano movement, from rock music and the 1980s anti-apartheid student movement to performance art in ACT UP, T. V. Reed vividly demonstrates that cultural work has been a vital medium for imagining and acting for social change."—Lisa Lowe, author of Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics"The Art of Protest is a great introduction to the history of social movements, but it is also an important book about art and culture, about the infinitely lively, complex, and contradictory roles assigned to performances and cultural expressions by social movements."—George Lipsitz, author of American Studies in a Moment of Danger"As a veteran teacher and practitioner of artistic activism, there are a few resources I have found to be invaluable: T. V. Reed's The Art of Protest is one of them. Knowledgeable, lucid, comprehensive, and creative, it is simply the best book out there for understanding how activists in the United States have used cultural strategies and artistic tactics to effectively—and affectively—challenge existing power and envision radical alternatives. I have taught the first edition of this book every year since it was first published, and the release of this new edition means I'll be teaching it for years to come."—Stephen Duncombe, co-director, Center for Artistic Activism"T. V. Reed’s fully renovated version of this landmark study is even more relevant than the original publication. In the past fifteen years, the energy and creativity of artists and cultural workers has become increasingly central to the political work of movements. An indispensable overview!"—Andrew Ross, New York UniversityTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction1. Singing Civil Rights: The Freedom Song Tradition2. Dramatic Resistance: Theatrical Politics from the Black Panthers to Black Lives Matter3. The Poetical Is the Political: Feminist Poetry and the Poetics of Women’s Rights4. Revolutionary Walls: Chicano/a Murals, Chicano/a Movements5. Old Cowboys, New Indians: Hollywood Frames the American Indian Movement6. “We Are [Not] the World”: Famine, Apartheid, and the Politics of Rock Music7. ACTing UP against AIDS: The (Very) Graphic Arts in a Moment of Crisis8. Novels of Environmental Justice: Toxic Colonialism and the Nature of Culture9. Puppetry against Puppet Regimes: The “Battle of Seattle” and the Global Justice Movement10. #Occupy All the Arts: Challenging Wall Street and Economic Inequality WorldwideConclusion: The Cultural Study of Social MovementsAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisHow new conceptions of human–environment interaction became central to design theories and practices in the 1970s At the end of the 1960s, new models of responsiveness between humans and their environments had a profound impact on theories and practices in architecture, design, art, technology, media, and the sciences. The resulting initiatives—design philosophies, art installations, architectural projects, exhibitions, publications, and symposia—sought to bring together insights from biology, systems theory, psychology, and anthropology with modernist legacies of total design.In The Responsive Environment, Larry D. Busbea takes up this concept of environment as an object and method of design at the height of its aesthetic, technical, and discursive elaboration. Exploring emerging paradigms of environmental perception, patterning, and control as developed by Gregory Bateson, Edward T. Hall, Wolf Hilbertz, György Kepes, Marshall McLuhan, Nicholas Negroponte, Paolo Soleri, and others, he shows how living space itself was reimagined as a domain capable of modification through input from its newly sensitized inhabitants.The Responsive Environment intercuts the development of new ideas about environmental awareness with case studies of specific architecture and design projects for responsive environments. Throughout, Busbea connects these theories and practices to the contemporary obsession with “smart” things: responsive technologies, intelligent environments, biomimetic materials, and digital atmospherics.Trade Review"The Responsive Environment contributes vital research on the emergence of responsive environments within design experiments and projects undertaken in the 1970s. Abounding with remarkable archival materials, this detailed study of designers and practices offers a valuable historical account of the rise of the smart surrounds that now characterize contemporary computerized worlds."—Jennifer Gabrys, author of Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet"The Responsive Environment is a necessary book, one that helps us understand how concepts of environment, subjectivity, and aesthetics underpin historical and conceptual developments in art and architecture. It is a carefully crafted journey through essential thinkers in this field, and it opens new pathways for exploring how we relate to objects, environments, and ourselves."—Daniel A. Barber, author of A House in the Sun: Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War

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Book SynopsisHow new conceptions of human–environment interaction became central to design theories and practices in the 1970s At the end of the 1960s, new models of responsiveness between humans and their environments had a profound impact on theories and practices in architecture, design, art, technology, media, and the sciences. The resulting initiatives—design philosophies, art installations, architectural projects, exhibitions, publications, and symposia—sought to bring together insights from biology, systems theory, psychology, and anthropology with modernist legacies of total design.In The Responsive Environment, Larry D. Busbea takes up this concept of environment as an object and method of design at the height of its aesthetic, technical, and discursive elaboration. Exploring emerging paradigms of environmental perception, patterning, and control as developed by Gregory Bateson, Edward T. Hall, Wolf Hilbertz, György Kepes, Marshall McLuhan, Nicholas Negroponte, Paolo Soleri, and others, he shows how living space itself was reimagined as a domain capable of modification through input from its newly sensitized inhabitants.The Responsive Environment intercuts the development of new ideas about environmental awareness with case studies of specific architecture and design projects for responsive environments. Throughout, Busbea connects these theories and practices to the contemporary obsession with “smart” things: responsive technologies, intelligent environments, biomimetic materials, and digital atmospherics.Trade Review"The Responsive Environment contributes vital research on the emergence of responsive environments within design experiments and projects undertaken in the 1970s. Abounding with remarkable archival materials, this detailed study of designers and practices offers a valuable historical account of the rise of the smart surrounds that now characterize contemporary computerized worlds."—Jennifer Gabrys, author of Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet"The Responsive Environment is a necessary book, one that helps us understand how concepts of environment, subjectivity, and aesthetics underpin historical and conceptual developments in art and architecture. It is a carefully crafted journey through essential thinkers in this field, and it opens new pathways for exploring how we relate to objects, environments, and ourselves."—Daniel A. Barber, author of A House in the Sun: Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War

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Book SynopsisA playful picture-book tour of the Swedish alphabet, in which curious characters explore the American Swedish Institute A is for “Akta dig! Look out!” And when you do, you’ll see the nyckelharpa, or keyed fiddle, that Axel’s father made—which followed Axel from Sweden to America. You’ll also find Axel, a snappy dresser, with his umbrella and bowler hat. He’s one of the inquisitive characters who will accompany you on these pages, guiding you through the twenty-nine letters of the Swedish alphabet. Each letter does something exciting. C is “Cirkulera! Go round and round!” And for D, “Dansa! Dance!”This fun introduction to the Swedish alphabet, a romp from A to Z (and then Å to Ä to Ö), is also a delightful tour of the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, a cultural center alive with stories past and present. Artifacts from the museum’s collection are charmingly rendered in watercolor and animated by whimsical pen-and-ink characters that draw readers from page to page. Tara Sweeney and Nate Christopherson, a mother and son collaborative team, create magical realism in A to Zåäö, their first picture book. Their irreverent curiosity delights and begs a timeless question—how can exploration and discovery help us grow?

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Book SynopsisAn ambitious study of what it means to be a museum in the twenty-first century In Museums Inside Out, Mark W. Rectanus investigates how museums are blurring the boundaries between their gallery walls and public spaces. He examines how artists are challenging and changing museums, taking readers deep into new experiments in exhibition making. Along the way, Rectanus offers insights about how museums currently exemplify the fusion of the creative and digital economies. Exploring contemporary museum practices, initiatives, and collaborations, Rectanus analyzes projects like the Collective Museum, which foster land-based museum ecologies by co-curating with local communities. The Schirn Kunsthalle, Petach Tikva Museum of Art, and Tate Modern reflect museums as cultural zones for performance, inside and outside the museum. In addition, he studies a joint project between the Van Gogh Museum and the investment firm Deloitte Luxembourg, extracting insights on the transfer of expertise from museums to the financial sector. Wide-ranging in its case studies, and boldly putting museum studies and art into conversation, Museums Inside Out delivers vital insights into the ideas and places that museums are creating in contemporary culture.Trade Review"Museums Inside Out introduces a new vocabulary to understand the place of artists in redefining and contesting the museum in the context of globalization and the creative economy. This groundbreaking book is necessary reading for anyone seeking to understand the directions of travel of museums and of contemporary art in an age of accelerated mobility."—Michelle Henning, author of Museums, Media and Cultural TheoryTable of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Moving Out1. Rethinking Museums2. Museums Inside Out: Mapping Cultural Memory3. Cartographies of Urban Space and Performance4. Datascapes and Landscapes5. Museums and the Creative Economy: Soft Power, Financialization, and Activism6. Coda: Museum Futures and SpeculationsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisAn intricate and provocative journey through nineteenth-century depictions of food and the often uncomfortable feelings they evokeAt a time when chefs are celebrities and beautifully illustrated cookbooks, blogs, and Instagram posts make our mouths water, scholar Marni Reva Kessler trains her inquisitive eye on the depictions of food in nineteenth-century French art. Arguing that disjointed senses of anxiety, nostalgia, and melancholy underlie the superficial abundance in works by Manet, Degas, and others, Kessler shows how, in their images, food presented a spectrum of pleasure and unease associated with modern life.Utilizing close analysis and deep archival research, Kessler discovers the complex narratives behind such beloved works as Manet’s Fish (Still Life) and Antoine Vollon’s Internet-famous Mound of Butter. Kessler brings to these works an expansive historical review, creating interpretations rich in nuance and theoretical implications. She also transforms the traditional paradigm for study of images of edible subjects, showing that simple categorization as still life is not sufficient.Discomfort Food marks an important contribution to conversations about a fundamental theme that unites us as humans: food. Suggestive and accessible, it reveals the very personal, often uncomfortable feelings hiding within the relationship between ourselves and the representations of what we eat. Trade Review"Intensely personal and beautifully written, Discomfort Food takes up the uncanny undertow of the apparently anodyne genre of still life in nineteenth-century France. Marni Reva Kessler brings to bear all the memories and associations attendant upon things like a fish stew in the making or an outsized mound of butter and eggs, weaving her readings of these works together with fascinating visual comparisons and a vast array of historical knowledge about the pressures informing the making, consumption, and representation of food."—Carol Armstrong, Yale Univesrity"Marni Reva Kessler invites us on a compelling personal journey in food and art that begins with Manet’s still life, Poisson, etc. Fishy dead bodies abound in this gruesome whodunit. The detective, a sinister wet eel, sniffs and snakes through the evidence: a wide-eyed gurnard, a gasping mullet, a lemon flashing a yellow warning, and oysters cowering in the background. All of this in exquisite prose, as sharp as a knife."—Thomas Parker, author of Tasting French Terroir: The History of an Idea"Discomfort Food reads like a novel. I turned the pages with bated breath, waiting for ‘what would happen’ in the unfolding of a series of dazzling arguments. This is fine stuff, each word wrapped in a dappled tone and lush register conveying, like the glowing fruits in Caillebotte's painting or the nacred fish scales and oyster shells in Manet’s fish painting, a gorgeousness of effect."—Janet Beizer, Harvard University"Discomfort Food is a fresh and imaginative approach to food in French art. "—CAA Reviews "In Discomfort Food Kessler deploys an admirably mature critical sensibility, unabashedly interdisciplinary in its approach, unapologetic in its choices, and unafraid of wrangling with the ‘messier aspects’ of food, art, and life."—L’Esprit Createur"Marni Reva Kessler draws on an extraordinary depth of historical, sociopolitical, literary, culinary—and, of course, art-historical—expertise, spanning and exceeding nineteenth-century France."—French Studies"Kessler’s Discomfort Food is a powerful addition to the field. It is a particular book, that should be part of the conversation about what it means to write art history."—Nineteenth-Century ContextsTable of ContentsContentsList of IllustrationsBeginnings1. Édouard Manet’s Fish (Still Life) and the Melancholy of the Mullet2. Clarifying and Compounding Antoine Vollon’s Mound of Butter3. Gustave Caillebotte’s Fruit Displayed on a Stand and the Ghost of the Lost City4. Edgar Degas’s Beef and the Double Life of Édouard Manet’s Ham“Ending with the Beginning” AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisAn intricate and provocative journey through nineteenth-century depictions of food and the often uncomfortable feelings they evokeAt a time when chefs are celebrities and beautifully illustrated cookbooks, blogs, and Instagram posts make our mouths water, scholar Marni Reva Kessler trains her inquisitive eye on the depictions of food in nineteenth-century French art. Arguing that disjointed senses of anxiety, nostalgia, and melancholy underlie the superficial abundance in works by Manet, Degas, and others, Kessler shows how, in their images, food presented a spectrum of pleasure and unease associated with modern life.Utilizing close analysis and deep archival research, Kessler discovers the complex narratives behind such beloved works as Manet’s Fish (Still Life) and Antoine Vollon’s Internet-famous Mound of Butter. Kessler brings to these works an expansive historical review, creating interpretations rich in nuance and theoretical implications. She also transforms the traditional paradigm for study of images of edible subjects, showing that simple categorization as still life is not sufficient.Discomfort Food marks an important contribution to conversations about a fundamental theme that unites us as humans: food. Suggestive and accessible, it reveals the very personal, often uncomfortable feelings hiding within the relationship between ourselves and the representations of what we eat. Trade Review"Intensely personal and beautifully written, Discomfort Food takes up the uncanny undertow of the apparently anodyne genre of still life in nineteenth-century France. Marni Reva Kessler brings to bear all the memories and associations attendant upon things like a fish stew in the making or an outsized mound of butter and eggs, weaving her readings of these works together with fascinating visual comparisons and a vast array of historical knowledge about the pressures informing the making, consumption, and representation of food."—Carol Armstrong, Yale Univesrity"Marni Reva Kessler invites us on a compelling personal journey in food and art that begins with Manet’s still life, Poisson, etc. Fishy dead bodies abound in this gruesome whodunit. The detective, a sinister wet eel, sniffs and snakes through the evidence: a wide-eyed gurnard, a gasping mullet, a lemon flashing a yellow warning, and oysters cowering in the background. All of this in exquisite prose, as sharp as a knife."—Thomas Parker, author of Tasting French Terroir: The History of an Idea"Discomfort Food reads like a novel. I turned the pages with bated breath, waiting for ‘what would happen’ in the unfolding of a series of dazzling arguments. This is fine stuff, each word wrapped in a dappled tone and lush register conveying, like the glowing fruits in Caillebotte's painting or the nacred fish scales and oyster shells in Manet’s fish painting, a gorgeousness of effect."—Janet Beizer, Harvard University"Discomfort Food is a fresh and imaginative approach to food in French art. "—CAA Reviews "In Discomfort Food Kessler deploys an admirably mature critical sensibility, unabashedly interdisciplinary in its approach, unapologetic in its choices, and unafraid of wrangling with the ‘messier aspects’ of food, art, and life."—L’Esprit Createur"Marni Reva Kessler draws on an extraordinary depth of historical, sociopolitical, literary, culinary—and, of course, art-historical—expertise, spanning and exceeding nineteenth-century France."—French Studies"Kessler’s Discomfort Food is a powerful addition to the field. It is a particular book, that should be part of the conversation about what it means to write art history."—Nineteenth-Century ContextsTable of ContentsContentsList of IllustrationsBeginnings1. Édouard Manet’s Fish (Still Life) and the Melancholy of the Mullet2. Clarifying and Compounding Antoine Vollon’s Mound of Butter3. Gustave Caillebotte’s Fruit Displayed on a Stand and the Ghost of the Lost City4. Edgar Degas’s Beef and the Double Life of Édouard Manet’s Ham“Ending with the Beginning” AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA revelatory reclaiming of five iconic Chinese artists and their place in art history During the 1980s and 1990s, a group of Chinese artists (Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi, Sui Jianguo, Zhang Peili, and Lin Tianmiao) ascended to new heights of international renown. Even as their fame increased, they came to be circumscribed by simplistic Western interpretations of their artworks as social and political critiques, a perspective that privileged stories of dissidence over deep engagement with the art itself. Through in-depth case studies of these five artists, Peggy Wang offers a corrective to previous appraisals, demonstrating how their works address fundamental questions about the forms, meanings, and possibilities of art. By the end of the 1980s, Chinese artists were scrutinizing earlier waves of Western influence and turning instead to their own heritage and culture to forge their own future histories. As the national trauma of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre converged with the mounting expansion of the global art world, these artists turned to art as a profoundly generative site for grappling with their place in the world. Wang demonstrates how they consciously and energetically sought to make their own ideas about art and art history visible in contemporary art. Wang’s argument is informed by extensive primary research, including close examination of the artworks, analysis of Chinese language documents and archives, and deeply personal interviews with the artists. Their words uncover layers of meaning previously obscured by the popular and often recycled assessments that many of these works have received until now. Beyond Wang’s reinterpretation of these individual artists, she contributes to an urgent conversation on the future direction of art history: how do we map engagements between art from different parts of the world that are embedded within different art histories? What does it mean for histories of contemporary art—and art history more generally—to be inclusive? The new understandings offered in this book can and should be engaged when considering current hierarchies in histories of Chinese art, the global art world, and the intersections between them. Trade Review"Deftly slicing through both cliché and convention, Peggy Wang refreshes our sense of the ‘world’ by showing how Chinese art since the 1980s has as much to say about the very nature of art history as it does about art's role in the creation and critique of a new Chinese ‘century.’"—Joan Kee, University of Michigan"With a synthetic and focused point of view, Peggy Wang ardently advocates for listening to artists and looking at their artwork on its own terms, rather than through general preconceptions about China. She sensitively explores the most deeply personal struggles with the meaning of art-making that lie behind the distinctive individual resolutions these men and women achieve. The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art is a significant and much needed contribution to the history of Chinese and global contemporary art."—Kuiyi Shen, University of California, San Diego

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Book SynopsisA revelatory reclaiming of five iconic Chinese artists and their place in art history During the 1980s and 1990s, a group of Chinese artists (Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi, Sui Jianguo, Zhang Peili, and Lin Tianmiao) ascended to new heights of international renown. Even as their fame increased, they came to be circumscribed by simplistic Western interpretations of their artworks as social and political critiques, a perspective that privileged stories of dissidence over deep engagement with the art itself. Through in-depth case studies of these five artists, Peggy Wang offers a corrective to previous appraisals, demonstrating how their works address fundamental questions about the forms, meanings, and possibilities of art. By the end of the 1980s, Chinese artists were scrutinizing earlier waves of Western influence and turning instead to their own heritage and culture to forge their own future histories. As the national trauma of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre converged with the mounting expansion of the global art world, these artists turned to art as a profoundly generative site for grappling with their place in the world. Wang demonstrates how they consciously and energetically sought to make their own ideas about art and art history visible in contemporary art. Wang’s argument is informed by extensive primary research, including close examination of the artworks, analysis of Chinese language documents and archives, and deeply personal interviews with the artists. Their words uncover layers of meaning previously obscured by the popular and often recycled assessments that many of these works have received until now. Beyond Wang’s reinterpretation of these individual artists, she contributes to an urgent conversation on the future direction of art history: how do we map engagements between art from different parts of the world that are embedded within different art histories? What does it mean for histories of contemporary art—and art history more generally—to be inclusive? The new understandings offered in this book can and should be engaged when considering current hierarchies in histories of Chinese art, the global art world, and the intersections between them. Trade Review"Deftly slicing through both cliché and convention, Peggy Wang refreshes our sense of the ‘world’ by showing how Chinese art since the 1980s has as much to say about the very nature of art history as it does about art's role in the creation and critique of a new Chinese ‘century.’"—Joan Kee, University of Michigan"With a synthetic and focused point of view, Peggy Wang ardently advocates for listening to artists and looking at their artwork on its own terms, rather than through general preconceptions about China. She sensitively explores the most deeply personal struggles with the meaning of art-making that lie behind the distinctive individual resolutions these men and women achieve. The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art is a significant and much needed contribution to the history of Chinese and global contemporary art."—Kuiyi Shen, University of California, San Diego

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Book SynopsisA groundbreaking study of Blackness in Morocco through the lens of visual representation For more than thirteen centuries, caravans transported millions of enslaved people from Africa south of the Sahara into what is now the Kingdom of Morocco. Today there are no museums, plaques, or monuments that recognize this history of enslavement, but enslaved people and their descendants created the Gnawa identity that preserves this largely suppressed heritage. This pioneering book describes how Gnawa emerged as a practice associated with Blackness and enslavement by reviewing visual representation and musical traditions from the late nineteenth century to the present. Cynthia J. Becker addresses the historical consciousness of subaltern groups and how they give Blackness material form through modes of dress, visual art, religious ceremonies, and musical instruments in performance. She examines what it means to self-identify as Black in Morocco (a country typically associated with the Middle East and the Arab world), especially during this time of increased contemporary African migration, which has made Blackness even more visible. Her case studies draw on archival material and on her extended research in the city of Essaouira, site of the wildly popular Gnawa World Music Festival. Becker shows that Gnawa spirit possession ceremonies express the marginalization associated with enslavement and allow these unique communities to move toward healing, even as the mass-marketing of Gnawa music has resulted in some Gnawa practitioners engaging Blackness to claim legitimacy and spiritual power. This book challenges the framing of Africa’s cultural history into “sub-Saharan” versus “North African” or Islamic versus non-Islamic categories. Blackness in Morocco complicates how we think about the institution of slavery and its impact on North African religious and social institutions, and readers will better understand and appreciate the role of Africans in shaping global forces, including religious institutions such as Islam.Trade Review"Absolutely groundbreaking, Blackness in Morocco is the work of a trailblazing intellect. Showing that 'blackness' is constructed in Africa as elsewhere in the world, Cynthia J. Becker demonstrates a deep commitment to Gnawa lived experience, forever changing how we understand the religions and aesthetics of Africa."—Prita Meier, author of Swahili Port Cities: The Architecture of Elsewhere"Cynthia Becker's anthropological and artistic approaches fill many gaps in the history of Gnawa music and culture in Moroccan society. She explains lucidly how Gnawa music has been appropriated by mainstream culture and how it fits the global logic of race-making and the historical anti-blackness ideology. The most important part of this book is the epistemic agency of the Gnawa people through the narrative of songs, dance, and trance. In this regard it contributes to the epistemology of resistance."—Chouki El Hamel, author of Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam"A critical reading."— Ethnic and Racial Studies Table of ContentsContentsPreface and AcknowledgmentsNote on Transcription and TransliterationIntroduction: Becoming Gnawa1. From Enslavement to Gnawa: Historical Postcards and the Construction of Gnawa Identity2. Black Women, Photographic Representation, and Female Agency3. Fraja Performances: Geo-Locating Gnawa Ceremonies in the Sudan4. Spirits in the Night: Blackness, Authenticity, and Potency in a Gnawa Lila5. Marketing Gnawa Authenticity: The Shrine of Bilal and Hats of the Bambara6. The Gnawa Guinbri: From Concealment to ExhibitionConclusion: Utopian Visions and Trans-Saharan RealitiesAppendix: Gnawa Spiritual RepertoireNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA groundbreaking study of Blackness in Morocco through the lens of visual representation For more than thirteen centuries, caravans transported millions of enslaved people from Africa south of the Sahara into what is now the Kingdom of Morocco. Today there are no museums, plaques, or monuments that recognize this history of enslavement, but enslaved people and their descendants created the Gnawa identity that preserves this largely suppressed heritage. This pioneering book describes how Gnawa emerged as a practice associated with Blackness and enslavement by reviewing visual representation and musical traditions from the late nineteenth century to the present. Cynthia J. Becker addresses the historical consciousness of subaltern groups and how they give Blackness material form through modes of dress, visual art, religious ceremonies, and musical instruments in performance. She examines what it means to self-identify as Black in Morocco (a country typically associated with the Middle East and the Arab world), especially during this time of increased contemporary African migration, which has made Blackness even more visible. Her case studies draw on archival material and on her extended research in the city of Essaouira, site of the wildly popular Gnawa World Music Festival. Becker shows that Gnawa spirit possession ceremonies express the marginalization associated with enslavement and allow these unique communities to move toward healing, even as the mass-marketing of Gnawa music has resulted in some Gnawa practitioners engaging Blackness to claim legitimacy and spiritual power. This book challenges the framing of Africa’s cultural history into “sub-Saharan” versus “North African” or Islamic versus non-Islamic categories. Blackness in Morocco complicates how we think about the institution of slavery and its impact on North African religious and social institutions, and readers will better understand and appreciate the role of Africans in shaping global forces, including religious institutions such as Islam.Trade Review"Absolutely groundbreaking, Blackness in Morocco is the work of a trailblazing intellect. Showing that 'blackness' is constructed in Africa as elsewhere in the world, Cynthia J. Becker demonstrates a deep commitment to Gnawa lived experience, forever changing how we understand the religions and aesthetics of Africa."—Prita Meier, author of Swahili Port Cities: The Architecture of Elsewhere"Cynthia Becker's anthropological and artistic approaches fill many gaps in the history of Gnawa music and culture in Moroccan society. She explains lucidly how Gnawa music has been appropriated by mainstream culture and how it fits the global logic of race-making and the historical anti-blackness ideology. The most important part of this book is the epistemic agency of the Gnawa people through the narrative of songs, dance, and trance. In this regard it contributes to the epistemology of resistance."—Chouki El Hamel, author of Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam"A critical reading."— Ethnic and Racial Studies Table of ContentsContentsPreface and AcknowledgmentsNote on Transcription and TransliterationIntroduction: Becoming Gnawa1. From Enslavement to Gnawa: Historical Postcards and the Construction of Gnawa Identity2. Black Women, Photographic Representation, and Female Agency3. Fraja Performances: Geo-Locating Gnawa Ceremonies in the Sudan4. Spirits in the Night: Blackness, Authenticity, and Potency in a Gnawa Lila5. Marketing Gnawa Authenticity: The Shrine of Bilal and Hats of the Bambara6. The Gnawa Guinbri: From Concealment to ExhibitionConclusion: Utopian Visions and Trans-Saharan RealitiesAppendix: Gnawa Spiritual RepertoireNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA philosophical consideration of Soviet Socialism that reveals the hidden desire for capitalism in contemporary anticapitalist discourse and theory This book, a philosophical consideration of Soviet socialism, is not meant simply to revisit the communist past; its aim, rather, is to witness certain zones where capitalism’s domination is resisted—the zones of countercapitalist critique, civil society agencies, and theoretical provisions of emancipation or progress—and to inquire to what extent those zones are in fact permeated by unconscious capitalism and thus unwittingly affirm the capitalist condition. By means of the philosophical and politico-economical consideration of Soviet socialism of the 1960 and 1970s, this book manages to reveal the hidden desire for capitalism in contemporaneous anticapitalist discourse and theory. The research is marked by a broad cross-disciplinary approach based on political economy, philosophy, art theory, and cultural theory that redefines old Cold War and Slavic studies’ views of the post-Stalinist years, as well as challenges the interpretations of this period of historical socialism in Western Marxist thought.Trade Review"This ambitious work proposes to reveal how anti-capitalist critique and institutions of civil society ‘are in fact permeated by an unconscious form of capitalism and thus unwittingly affirm the capitalist condition.’"—The Russian Review "A stimulating introduction into Soviet Marxism and a persuasive critique of contemporary anti-capitalism’s thirst for acceleration, atomization, and alienation... Practicing the Good is an invaluable read for anyone interested in how Soviet Marxism of the 1960-70s can re-evaluate our view on contemporary capitalism."—Marx & Philosophy"It is to be counted as one of the most important publications for leftist self-criticism in recent years. "—Radical Philosophy

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Book SynopsisThis “painter’s painter” constantly explored the variety of American modernist art, inspired by many locations and artistic styles B. J. O. Nordfeldt was described by a Minneapolis art critic in 1935 as a “painter’s painter,” and his prolific career evinced constant experimentation with subjects, genres, and media of modernist art. The Swedish emigrant lived throughout the world—from his early training and teaching in Chicago to the dynamic art scenes of Paris and New York to popular American art colonies in Provincetown, Santa Fe, and Lambertville, New Jersey. These various locales encouraged him to engage with new styles and techniques in oil paintings, watercolors, prints, woodcuts, and etchings. His landscapes, portraits, and still lifes showed similarities with the work of Matisse and Cézanne, as well as elements of cubism, and his wood carvings and prints revealed influences from Paul Gauguin and Japanese traditions.In the 1930s Nordfeldt taught at the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design). In 2021 the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota will host a major exhibition of Nordfeldt’s diverse art. A comprehensive review of this “independent regionalist” and intensely innovative artist, B. J. O. Nordfeldt: American Internationalist also presents the impressive breadth and creative exploration of twentieth-century American modernist art.Contributors: Annika Johnson, Paul Kruty, and Janet Whitmore.Trade Review"Let the seascapes, portraits, and still lifes of B. J. O. Nordfeldt decorate your walls and your coffee table. This 160-page catalogue explores the Swedish-born American printmaker and painter’s modernist works—from oil paintings and watercolors to woodcuts, etchings, and more."—Midwest Home Table of ContentsContentsForewordLyndel KingAcknowledgmentsGabriel P. Weisberg, PhD B. J. O. Nordfeldt: American InternationalistGabriel P. Weisberg, PhDBror Julius Olsson Nordfelt and Modernist ChicagoJanet WhitmoreNordfeldt as PrintmakerAnnika JohnsonEmily and Nord: An Enduring PartnershipPaul KrutyCatalogue of WorksContributors to the CatalogueIndex

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Book SynopsisTracing the evolution of the Italian avant-garde’s pioneering experiments with art and technology and their subversion of freedom and control In postwar Italy, a group of visionary artists used emergent computer technologies as both tools of artistic production and a means to reconceptualize the dynamic interrelation between individual freedom and collectivity. Working contrary to assumptions that the rigid, structural nature of programming limits subjectivity, this book traces the multifaceted practices of these groundbreaking artists and their conviction that technology could provide the conditions for a liberated social life.Situating their developments within the context of the Cold War and the ensuing crisis among the Italian left, Arte Programmata describes how Italy’s distinctive political climate fueled the group’s engagement with computers, cybernetics, and information theory. Creating a broad range of immersive environments, kinetic sculptures, domestic home goods, and other multimedia art and design works, artists such as Bruno Munari, Enzo Mari, and others looked to the conceptual frameworks provided by this new technology to envision a way out of the ideological impasses of the age.Showcasing the ingenuity of Italy’s earliest computer-based art, this study highlights its distinguishing characteristics while also exploring concurrent developments across the globe. Centered on the relationships between art, technology, and politics, Arte Programmata considers an important antecedent to the digital age. Trade Review "Lindsay Caplan’s Arte Programmata offers a compelling account of a group of lesser-known artists affiliated with the Italian Arte Programmata movement, whose experimental art and design practices, emerging in the nascent years of computerization, pointedly (and presciently) engaged with political questions around freedom and control, individuality and collectivity. Beautifully written, sharply analytic, and free of jargon, Caplan’s incisive study should find a place on the bookshelves of anyone interested in the roots and impacts of technological change."—Janet Kraynak, author of Contemporary Art and the Digitization of Everyday Life "Arte Programmata forces us to reconsider ossified ideas about the relationship between politics and aesthetics by asking us to think seriously about what we mean when we reflexively invoke concepts such as resistance, subversion, and negation to understand radical art and design practices. In doing so, Lindsay Caplan disrupts the categories and boundaries circumscribing art history’s presumed objects and methods. Here, art, design, theory, and politics comingle in new ways that allow us to see the continuing relevance of a particular strand of Italian art and design while also inspiring readers to reconsider their own assumptions about the many forms freedom might take in both our intellectual work and our lives."—Larry D. Busbea, author of The Responsive Environment: Design, Aesthetics, and the Human in the 1970s "Arte Programmata is simultaneously revolutionary and pragmatic."—Jan Baetens, Leonardo Reviews "This book is a rich and sophisticated narrative of the unfolding of Arte Programmata during the decade of the 1960s."—Ian Verstegen, Leonardo Reviews "Arte Programmata provides a nuanced, incisive window into the ways in which artists grappled with arrival of computing technology in postwar Italy. "—Critical Inquiry "Well-written and relatively jargon-free, Arte Programmata is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the intersection of art and technology (and artists and engineers)."—Technology and Culture "A carefully reconstructed history, focusing on the political dimension and context in which the left, Eco’s ‘open work,’ and early computer art flourished in the same spaces."—Neural

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Book SynopsisThe definitive study of this powerful series of drawings by the influential artist Internationally renowned as a printmaker, Mauricio Lasansky (1914–2012) unleashed his brilliant draftsmanship in his self-titled series The Nazi Drawings. The Argentina-born artist created the body of work largely in the 1960s, as the televised trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann awakened the world to the depths of Nazi atrocities. Lasansky’s haunting interpretations reflect his response to the unfolding details. “I was full of hate, poison, and I wanted to spit it out,” he said. The thirty-three monumental drawings, made from charcoal, wash, and collage, examine the horrors of the Holocaust, especially the suffering of women and children. The series became Lasansky’s most famous and notable work and was included among the opening exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1967.Envisioning Evil accompanies the exhibition of The Nazi Drawings at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2021. Curator Rachel McGarry provides comprehensive biographical, cultural, and historical context for the artist and the creation of this series in three essays and an illustrated timeline. McGarry also traces Holocaust awareness before and after the 1961 Eichmann trial and examines the role of art, literature, and popular media in bringing the genocide into public discourse. Rabbi Barry D. Cytron, former chaplain and professor of religious studies at Macalester College, contributes an essay on the international religious response to revelations about Nazi crimes and their relation to Lasansky’s art.Created as a reaction to the crimes committed against the Jews during the Holocaust, The Nazi Drawings endure as a condemnation against all persecution and extermination of humanity.Table of ContentsTable of ContentsDirector’s Foreword --Katie Crawford LuberPreface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction to the Nazi Drawings --Rachel McGarryArtist StatementNote to ReaderThe Holocaust in Press, Culture, and Art: Before and After Eichmann --Rachel McGarryMauricio Lasansky: A Life and Art of Compassion --Rachel McGarryArt and Faith: Crafting a Renewed RelationshipAfter Auschwitz --Rabbi Barry D. CytronEnvisioning Evil: “The Nazi Drawings” by Mauricio Lasansky --Rachel McGarryPlates: “The Nazi Drawings”Illustrated TimelineIndexReproduction Credits

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Book SynopsisHow making models allows us to recall what was and to discover what still might be Whether looking inward to the intricacies of human anatomy or outward to the furthest recesses of the universe, expanding the boundaries of human inquiry depends to a surprisingly large degree on the making of models. In this wide-ranging volume, scholars from diverse fields examine the interrelationships between a model’s material foundations and the otherwise invisible things it gestures toward, underscoring the pivotal role of models in understanding and shaping the world around us. Whether in the form of reproductions, interpretive processes, or constitutive tools, models may bridge the gap between the tangible and the abstract.By focusing on the material aspects of models, including the digital ones that would seem to displace their analogue forebears, these insightful essays ground modeling as a tactile and emphatically humanistic endeavor. With contributions from scholars in the history of science and technology, visual studies, musicology, literary studies, and material culture, this book demonstrates that models serve as invaluable tools across every field of cultural development, both historically and in the present day.Modelwork is unique in calling attention to modeling’s duality, a dynamic exchange between imagination and matter. This singular publication shows us how models shape our ability to ascertain the surrounding world and to find new ways to transform it. Contributors: Hilary Bryon, Virginia Tech; Johanna Drucker, UCLA; Seher Erdoğan Ford, Temple U; Peter Galison, Harvard U; Lisa Gitelman, New York U; Reed Gochberg, Harvard U; Catherine Newman Howe, Williams College; Christopher J. Lukasik, Purdue U; Martin Scherzinger, New York U; Juliet S. Sperling, U of Washington; Annabel Jane Wharton, Duke U.Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: ModelworkMartin Brückner and Sandy IsenstadtPart I. Knowing1. Defining ModelsAnnabel Jane Wharton2. Material Models of Immaterial ThingsPeter GalisonPart II. Sensing3. William Farish’s Devices and Drawings: Models for Envisioning Immaterial and Material RealmsHilary Bryon4. “The Instructed Eye”: What Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Drawing Books Tell Us about Vision and How We SeeChristopher J. Lukasik5. Algorithmic Audition: Modeling Musical PerceptionMartin ScherzingerPart III. Making6. The Useful Arts of Nineteenth-Century Patent ModelsReed Gochberg7. Bodies Made of Numbers, Numbers Made of BodiesCatherine Newman Howe8. Hypermodels: Architectural Production in Virtual SpacesSeher Erdoğan FordPart IV. Doing9. Modeling Maneuvers: Anatomical Illustration and the Practice of TouchJuliet S. Sperling10. Models and Manufactures: The Shoe as CommodityLisa Gitelman11. Modeling InterpretationJohanna DruckerAfterword: On the Humility of ModelsSarah WassermanAcknowledgmentsContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisA necessary reexamination of Indigenous mounds, demonstrating their sustained vitality and vibrant futurity by centering Native voices Typically represented as unsolved mysteries or ruins of a tragic past, Indigenous mounds have long been marginalized and misunderstood. In Earthworks Rising, Chadwick Allen issues a compelling corrective, revealing a countertradition based in Indigenous worldviews. Alongside twentieth- and twenty-first-century Native writers, artists, and intellectuals, Allen rebuts colonial discourses and examines the multiple ways these remarkable structures continue to hold ancient knowledge and make new meaning—in the present and for the future.Earthworks Rising is organized to align with key functional categories for mounds (effigies, platforms, and burials) and with key concepts within mound-building cultures. From the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio to the mound metropolis Cahokia in Illinois to the generative Mother Mound in Mississippi, Allen takes readers deep into some of the most renowned earthworks. He draws on the insights of poets Allison Hedge Coke and Margaret Noodin, novelists LeAnne Howe and Phillip Carroll Morgan, and artists Monique Mojica and Alyssa Hinton, weaving in a personal history of earthwork encounters and productive conversation with fellow researchers.Spanning literature, art, performance, and built environments, Earthworks Rising engages Indigenous mounds as forms of “land-writing” and as conduits for connections across worlds and generations. Clear and compelling, it provokes greater understanding of the remarkable accomplishments of North America’s diverse mound-building cultures over thousands of years and brings attention to new earthworks rising in the twenty-first century.Trade Review"This eye-opening book calls attention to earthworks as monumental achievements in science and aesthetics, bringing together geometrical and mathematical knowledge, precise observations of natural phenomena, and feats of engineering. Bearing witness to thousands of years of Indigenous habitation, they continue to flourish in contemporary performances across multiple genres and media. A must-read for all students of American culture."—Wai Chee Dimock, author of Weak Planet: Literature and Assisted Survival"While addressing the long line of academic and popular texts that ‘capture Indigenous earthworks within the white imaginary,’ Chadwick Allen moves far beyond them to center Indigenous writers, artists, and a process of collaborative experiential and embodied engagement to show how earthworks are dynamic participants in creating Indigenous futures."—Lisa Brooks, author of Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War "With engaging prose and calculated analysis, Allen’s Earthworks Rising entices readers away from the static diorama and the black-and-white textbook page and toward earthworks themselves."—H-Net ReviewsTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Indigenous Earthworks within (and without) the White ImaginaryPart I. Effigies // Crossing Worlds // Above and Below1. Serpent Sublime, Serpent Subliminal2. River RevereCoda 1: Earth Bodies in MotionPart II. Platforms // Networking Systems // Cardinal Directions3. Walking the MoundsCoda 2: Walking the Mounds at AztalanPart III. Burials // Gathering Generations // Center4. Wombed Hollows, Sacred Trees5. Secured VaultsCoda 3: Trans-worlds PerformanceConclusion: Earthworks UprisingNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA necessary reexamination of Indigenous mounds, demonstrating their sustained vitality and vibrant futurity by centering Native voices Typically represented as unsolved mysteries or ruins of a tragic past, Indigenous mounds have long been marginalized and misunderstood. In Earthworks Rising, Chadwick Allen issues a compelling corrective, revealing a countertradition based in Indigenous worldviews. Alongside twentieth- and twenty-first-century Native writers, artists, and intellectuals, Allen rebuts colonial discourses and examines the multiple ways these remarkable structures continue to hold ancient knowledge and make new meaning—in the present and for the future.Earthworks Rising is organized to align with key functional categories for mounds (effigies, platforms, and burials) and with key concepts within mound-building cultures. From the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio to the mound metropolis Cahokia in Illinois to the generative Mother Mound in Mississippi, Allen takes readers deep into some of the most renowned earthworks. He draws on the insights of poets Allison Hedge Coke and Margaret Noodin, novelists LeAnne Howe and Phillip Carroll Morgan, and artists Monique Mojica and Alyssa Hinton, weaving in a personal history of earthwork encounters and productive conversation with fellow researchers.Spanning literature, art, performance, and built environments, Earthworks Rising engages Indigenous mounds as forms of “land-writing” and as conduits for connections across worlds and generations. Clear and compelling, it provokes greater understanding of the remarkable accomplishments of North America’s diverse mound-building cultures over thousands of years and brings attention to new earthworks rising in the twenty-first century.Trade Review"This eye-opening book calls attention to earthworks as monumental achievements in science and aesthetics, bringing together geometrical and mathematical knowledge, precise observations of natural phenomena, and feats of engineering. Bearing witness to thousands of years of Indigenous habitation, they continue to flourish in contemporary performances across multiple genres and media. A must-read for all students of American culture."—Wai Chee Dimock, author of Weak Planet: Literature and Assisted Survival"While addressing the long line of academic and popular texts that ‘capture Indigenous earthworks within the white imaginary,’ Chadwick Allen moves far beyond them to center Indigenous writers, artists, and a process of collaborative experiential and embodied engagement to show how earthworks are dynamic participants in creating Indigenous futures."—Lisa Brooks, author of Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War "With engaging prose and calculated analysis, Allen’s Earthworks Rising entices readers away from the static diorama and the black-and-white textbook page and toward earthworks themselves."—H-Net ReviewsTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Indigenous Earthworks within (and without) the White ImaginaryPart I. Effigies // Crossing Worlds // Above and Below1. Serpent Sublime, Serpent Subliminal2. River RevereCoda 1: Earth Bodies in MotionPart II. Platforms // Networking Systems // Cardinal Directions3. Walking the MoundsCoda 2: Walking the Mounds at AztalanPart III. Burials // Gathering Generations // Center4. Wombed Hollows, Sacred Trees5. Secured VaultsCoda 3: Trans-worlds PerformanceConclusion: Earthworks UprisingNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA sustained engagement between contemporary art and philosophy relating to our place in, and responsibility to, the nonhuman world How do contemporary art and theory contemplate the problem of the “bio” of biopolitics and bioart? How do they understand the question of “life” that binds human and nonhuman worlds in their shared travail? In Art and Posthumanism, Cary Wolfe argues for the reconceptualization of nature in art and theory to turn the idea of the relationship between the human and the planet upside down.Wolfe explores a wide range of contemporary artworks—from Sue Coe’s illustrations of animals in factory farms and Eduardo Kac’s bioart to the famous performance pieces of Joseph Bueys and the video installations of Eija-Liisa Ahtila, among others—examining how posthumanist theory can illuminate, and be illuminated by, artists’ engagement with the more-than-human world. Looking at biological and social systems, the question of the animal, and biopolitics, Art and Posthumanism explores how contemporary art rivets our attention on the empirically thick, emotionally charged questions of “life” and the “living” amid ecological catastrophe.One of the foremost theorists of posthumanism, Wolfe pushes that philosophy out of the realm of the purely theoretical to show how a posthumanist engagement with particular works and their conceptual underpinnings help to develop more potent ethical and political commitments. Trade Review "Conversational in style yet highly ambitious in its ideas, this inspiring collection explores different ways of being in the world for humans and nonhumans alike. Cary Wolfe provides a unique approach to thinking both about art and with art—but also a new possibility for seeing and sensing the world through art."—Joanna Zylinska, King’s College London "Cary Wolfe is one of the few animal studies scholars thoroughly fluent in the complex language of contemporary visual arts culture, and he brings his talents for exquisite prose to Art and Posthumanism. I can think of no more valuable volume for makers engaged in the culture of interspecific ecological entanglements."—Mark Dion, visual artist "This important book provides readers with fascinating, crisscrossing paths into Wolfe’s entanglement of contemporary art world and posthumanist theory."—Ecozon@Table of ContentsContentsPreface1. In Lieu of an Introduction: A Conversation with Giovanni AloiPart I. Systems: Social, Biological, Ecological2. Lose the Building: Meaning and Form in Diller and Scofidio’s Blur3. Time as Architectural Medium: Koolhaas and Mau’s Tree City4. The Installation That Almost Ate MePart II. “The Animal”5. From Dead Meat to Glow-in-the-Dark Bunnies: Seeing “The Animal Question” in Contemporary Art6. Apes Like Us7. Condors at the End of the World: Rethinking Environmental Art8. Each Time Unique: The Poetics of ExtinctionPart III. The Biopolitical9. What Is the Bio- of Biopolitics and Bioart?10. No Immunity: The Biopolitical Worlds of Eija-Liisa Ahtila11. The Miracle of the Familiar: A Conversation with Eija-Liisa Ahtila12. The Biopolitical Drama of Joseph Beuys NotesIndex

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Book SynopsisRedefining the artistic movement that helped shape American modernism In the early decades of the twentieth century, a loose contingent of artists working in and around New York City gave rise to the aesthetic movement known as precisionism, primarily remembered for its exacting depictions of skyscrapers, factories, machine parts, and other symbols of a burgeoning modernity. Although often regarded as a singular group, these artists were remarkably varied in their subject matter and stylistic traits. Fantasies of Precision excavates the surprising ties that connected them, exploring notions of precision across philosophy, technology, medicine, and many other fields. Bookended by discussions of the landmark First Biennial Exhibition of Painting at the Whitney Museum in 1932, this study weaves together a series of interconnected chapters illuminating the careers of Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Charles Demuth. Built on a theoretical framework of the writing of modernist poets Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams, Fantasies of Precision outlines an “ethos of precision” that runs through the diverse practices of these artists, articulating how the broad range of enigmatic imagery they produced was underpinned by shared strategies of restraint, humility, and slowness. Questioning straightforward modes of art historical classification, Ashley Lazevnick redefines the concept that designated the precisionist movement. Through its cross-disciplinary approach and unique blend of historiography and fantasy, Fantasies of Precision offers a comprehensive reevaluation of one of the defining movements of artistic modernism. Trade Review "Fantasies of Precision is a book that lives up to the genius of its artworks. With unusual sophistication and ease, Ashley Lazevnick brings the historical facts of American philosophy, medicine, technology, and literature to the flat, painted surfaces of modernist precisionism. Charles Demuth, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Charles Sheeler have found their new champion."—Jennifer Jane Marshall, author of Machine Art, 1934 "Ashley Lazevnick confronts the inherent imprecision of our understanding of the precisionist movement, freshly arguing for the term’s usefulness. Her expansive study builds on fluid and layered observations, close looking, and surprising connections across cultural corridors. She makes the familiar unfamiliar, making us look again."—Wanda M. Corn, Stanford University

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Book SynopsisRedefining the artistic movement that helped shape American modernism In the early decades of the twentieth century, a loose contingent of artists working in and around New York City gave rise to the aesthetic movement known as precisionism, primarily remembered for its exacting depictions of skyscrapers, factories, machine parts, and other symbols of a burgeoning modernity. Although often regarded as a singular group, these artists were remarkably varied in their subject matter and stylistic traits. Fantasies of Precision excavates the surprising ties that connected them, exploring notions of precision across philosophy, technology, medicine, and many other fields. Bookended by discussions of the landmark First Biennial Exhibition of Painting at the Whitney Museum in 1932, this study weaves together a series of interconnected chapters illuminating the careers of Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Charles Demuth. Built on a theoretical framework of the writing of modernist poets Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams, Fantasies of Precision outlines an “ethos of precision” that runs through the diverse practices of these artists, articulating how the broad range of enigmatic imagery they produced was underpinned by shared strategies of restraint, humility, and slowness. Questioning straightforward modes of art historical classification, Ashley Lazevnick redefines the concept that designated the precisionist movement. Through its cross-disciplinary approach and unique blend of historiography and fantasy, Fantasies of Precision offers a comprehensive reevaluation of one of the defining movements of artistic modernism. Trade Review "Fantasies of Precision is a book that lives up to the genius of its artworks. With unusual sophistication and ease, Ashley Lazevnick brings the historical facts of American philosophy, medicine, technology, and literature to the flat, painted surfaces of modernist precisionism. Charles Demuth, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Charles Sheeler have found their new champion."—Jennifer Jane Marshall, author of Machine Art, 1934 "Ashley Lazevnick confronts the inherent imprecision of our understanding of the precisionist movement, freshly arguing for the term’s usefulness. Her expansive study builds on fluid and layered observations, close looking, and surprising connections across cultural corridors. She makes the familiar unfamiliar, making us look again."—Wanda M. Corn, Stanford University

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Book SynopsisToward a posthumanist art and ethologyThe Owls Are Not What They Seem is a selective history of modern and contemporary engagements with animals in the visual arts and how these explorations relate to the evolution of scientific knowledge regarding animals. Arnaud Gerspacher argues that artistic knowledge, with its experimental nature, ability to contain contradictions, and more capacious understanding of truth-claims, presents a valuable supplement to scientific knowledge when it comes to encountering and existing alongside nonhuman animals and life worlds. Though critical of art works involving animals that are unreflective and exploitative, Gerspacher’s exploration of aesthetic practices by Allora & Calzadilla, Pierre Huyghe, Agnieszka Kurant, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Martin Roth, David Weber-Krebs, and others suggests that, alongside scientific practices, art has much to offer in revealing the otherworldly qualities of animals and forging ecopolitical solidarities with fellow earthlings.

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Book SynopsisA beautifully illustrated review of the deeply connected lives and careers of this prominent Minneapolis African American artist-couple Clarence Morgan and Arlene Burke-Morgan are the epitome of an artist-couple: in love with each other and their family, in love with their art, and devoted to faith, values, and culture that encouraged their artistic development, leading to national and international acclaim and recognition. Originally from Philadelphia, the couple lived and worked side by side throughout their long careers, contributing significantly to each other and to the art communities of the Twin Cities, the University of Minnesota, and beyond.For thirty years, Clarence Morgan was a member of the art department at the university; his art, directed toward abstraction, focused on painting, drawing, and printmaking. Arlene Burke-Morgan also taught at the university, and, after early work with textiles, eventually evolved to an approach of abstraction, especially working with clay, drawing, and installations.The catalog for an exhibition at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota in 2023, A Tender Spirit, A Vital Form is prolifically illustrated with reproductions of works by the artists and features essays on their personal histories and artistic practices.Contributors: Robert Cozzolino, Minneapolis Institute of Art; Tia-Simone Gardner, Macalester College; Bill Gaskins, Maryland Institute College of Art; Nyeema Morgan, interdisciplinary artist.

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Book SynopsisA close-up history of the Yugoslav artists who broke down the boundaries between public and private In the decades leading up to the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia, a collective of young artists based in Zagreb took to using the city’s public spaces as a platform for radical individual expression. This Is Not My World presents a detailed account of the Group of Six Authors and their circle in the prolific and experimental period from 1975 to 1985, highlighting the friction between public and private that underlied their innovative practices. Looking to circumvent the rigid bureaucracy of official art institutions, this freewheeling group of conceptual artists and their peers brought artistic activities directly to an unwitting public by staging provocative performances, exhibiting artworks, and interacting with passersby on the streets. Exploring artworks such as Vlasta Delimar’s act of tying herself to a tree in a busy pedestrian area, Željko Jerman’s production of a giant banner declaring “Intimate Inscription” in the city’s central square, and Vlado Martek’s creation of an artwork on a seaside beach using women’s underwear, Adair Rounthwaite examines the work of these artists as a site of tension between the intimacy of artistic expression and the political structure of the public sphere under state socialism. Whereas many histories of modern and contemporary art in formerly socialist countries tend to be dominated by discussions of ideology and resistance, This Is Not My World focuses its attention on the affective aspects of the group’s activities, using artist interviews and extensive documentation to bring the reader closer to the felt experience of their public interventions. Situating the group’s work within the context of broader developments in conceptualism and theories of the avant-garde, Rounthwaite provides a fresh consideration and newly detailed account of this marginalized episode in global art history. Trade Review "This Is Not My World is a highly original take on the Zagreb experimental art scene of the 1970s. While studiously situating the practices of the Group of Six Authors in their cultural–political context, Adair Rounthwaite’s remarkable achievement is to simultaneously snatch them away from this context and open them up to concepts and readings that make them relevant beyond the frameworks of Yugoslav and East European art history."—Ivana Bago, independent scholar "This Is Not My World is not just a detailed account of the work of the Group of Six Authors but a response to it. As experimental in its scholarship as its subjects were in their artmaking, this book is poised to make an important critical and methodological intervention in the recent turn toward ‘global’ art histories."—Branislav Jakovljević, author of Alienation Effects: Performance and Self-Management in Yugoslavia, 1945–91

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Book SynopsisA beautiful collection of the art and life stories of regional Native painters Dreaming Our Futures features twenty-eight Native painters, primarily Dakota and Ojibwe, who live in the Midwest or have family or tribal connections here. The artists represent a range of generations, professional experience, and genres—including traditional, historical, contemporary, and conceptual themes. The volume presents full-color reproductions of art by each painter, along with bilingual artist statements, biographies, and essays on the representation of Indigenous people in historical context; storytelling and the creative process; and scholarship on several specific artists. The renowned Grand Portage Ojibwe artist George Morrison declared, “I have never tried to prove that I was Indian through my art. Yet, there may remain deeply hidden some remote suggestion of the rock whence I was hewn, the preoccupation of the textural surface, the mystery of the structural and organic element, the enigma of the horizon, or the color of the wind.” The variety of images painted by this gathering of artists demonstrates that the strong heritage and powerful traditions of Indigenous painting remain vital and dynamic today. Dreaming Our Futures accompanies an exhibition at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery in 2024, produced in association with the George Morrison Center for Indigenous Arts at the University of Minnesota. Artists: Frank Big Bear, David Bradley, Awanigiizhik Bruce, Andrea Carlson, Avis Charley, Fern Cloud, Michelle DeFoe, Jim Denomie, Patrick DesJarlait, Sam English, Carl Gawboy, Joe Geshick, Sylvia Houle, Oscar Howe, George Morrison, Steven Premo, Rabbett Before Horses Strickland, Cole Redhorse Taylor, Roy Thomas, Jonathan Thunder, Thomasina Topbear, Moira Villiard, Kathleen Wall, Star WallowingBull, Dyani White Hawk, Bobby Dues Wilson, Wanbli Mayasleca/Francis J. Yellow, Leah H. Yellowbird, Holly Young. Contributors: Patricia Marroquin Norby, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Christopher Pexa, U of Minnesota; Mona Susan Power; Diane Wilson.

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Book SynopsisThe first detailed study of “Neo-Antique” architecture applies an archaeological lens to the study of New York City’s structures Since the city’s inception, New Yorkers have deliberately and purposefully engaged with ancient architecture to design and erect many of its most iconic buildings and monuments, including Grand Central Terminal and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn, as well as forgotten gems such as Snug Harbor on Staten Island and the Gould Memorial Library in the Bronx. Antiquity in Gotham interprets the various ways ancient architecture was re-conceived in New York City from the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Contextualizing New York’s Neo-Antique architecture within larger American architectural trends, author Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis applies an archaeological lens to the study of the New York buildings that incorporated these various models in their design, bringing together these diverse sources of inspiration into a single continuum. Antiquity in Gotham explores how ancient architecture communicated the political ideals of the new republic through the adaptation of Greek and Roman architecture, how Egyptian temples conveyed the city’s new technological achievements, and how the ancient Near East served many artistic masters, decorating the interiors of glitzy Gilded Age restaurants and the tops of skyscrapers. Rather than classifying neo-classical (and Greek Revival), Egyptianizing, and architecture inspired by the ancient Near East into distinct categories, Macaulay-Lewis applies the Neo-Antique framework that considers the similarities and differences—intellectually, conceptually, and chronologically—among the reception of these different architectural traditions. This fundamentally interdisciplinary project draws upon all available evidence and archival materials—such as the letters and memos of architects and their patrons, and the commentary in contemporary newspapers and magazines—to provide a lively multi-dimensional analysis that examines not only the city’s ancient buildings and rooms themselves but also how New Yorkers envisaged them, lived in them, talked about them, and reacted to them. Antiquity offered New Yorkers architecture with flexible aesthetic, functional, cultural, and intellectual resonances—whether it be the democratic ideals of Periclean Athens, the technological might of Pharaonic Egypt, or the majesty of Imperial Rome. The result of these dialogues with ancient architectural forms was the creation of innovative architecture that has defined New York City’s skyline throughout its history.Table of ContentsList of Figures | vii Introduction: From the Appian Way to Broadway | 1 Why Antiquity?, 2 • Methodologies, Evidence, and Themes: Archaeology, Reception Studies, and the Neo-Antique, 3 • Organization of the Chapters, 8 1. Herculean Efforts: New York City’s Infrastructure | 13 The Grid, 14 • Rivaling Rome and the Sphinx: The Croton Aqueduct and Murray Hill Distributing Reservoir, 15 • Bridging the East River in Style: The Manhattan Bridge, 18 • Train Stations: Appropriating the Colonnades and Baths of Imperial Rome, 24 • Conclusions, 34 2. The Genius of Architecture: Ancient Muses and Modern Forms | 35 The Parthenon on Wall Street: The US Custom House, 37 • Brooklyn Borough Hall, the Manhattan Municipal Building, and Foley Square, 43 • The Tombs, 51 • Conclusions, 55 3. Treasuries of Old and Treasuries of New | 57 Banks, 58 • Warehouses and Commercial Lofts, 63 • The First and Second Merchants’ Exchanges, 68 • The New York Stock Exchange, 71 • Skyscrapers, 74 • Modernism and Its Debt to Classical Architecture: The Seagram Building, 82 • Conclusions, 82 4. Modern Museions | 85 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 87 • The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 90 • Temples to Monkeys, Birds, and Lions: The Architecture of the New York Zoological Society, 94 • The New York State Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt at the American Museum of Natural History, 96 • Pantheons and a Stadium: The Architecture of New York’s Universities, 100 • Public Libraries, 108 • Conclusions, 109 5. Togas at Home | 111 Domestic Architecture and the Greek Revival Style in New York City, 112 • The Tredwell Home, 114 • Residences in New York City after the Civil War, 115 • Pompeian Rooms in New York City, 116 • The Mansion and Greco-Pompeian Music Room of Henry G. Marquand, 119 • Aspirational Antiquity: Décor and Design for the Middle Classes, 128 • Apartment Buildings: Classical Forms in the Sky, 129 • Conclusions, 131 6. Dining Like Nero | 133 The Development of the Lobster Palaces, 133 • Murray’s Roman Gardens, 136 • The Café de l’Opéra, 150 • Conclusions, 154 7. To Be Buried Like a Pharaoh | 155 New York’s Cemeteries before 1838, 156 • Green-Wood and Woodlawn, 159 • Classical Temples to New York’s Emperors and Gods, 161 • Obelisks, Pyramids, Temples, and a Barque Kiosk, 165 • Conclusions, 172 8. Heroic New Yorkers | 174 Arches to Washington, 177 • The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch, Grand Army Plaza, 183 • The Column to Columbus, 192 • Monuments in Early Twentieth-Century New York, 196 • Conclusions, 198 9. Eclectic Antiquity | 200 Snug Harbor and Grecian Temple Churches, 200 • Bathing Culture in New York City, 204 • Fraternal Organizations: The Grand Masonic Lodge and the Pythian Temple, 209 • Theaters, 211 • Conclusions, 212 Reflections: Useable Pasts and Neo-Antique Futures | 213 Glossary | 219 Acknowledgments | 223 Notes | 227 References | 253 Index | 273

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Book SynopsisThe first book to seriously identify how artistic activism works and how to make it work betterThe past decade has seen an explosion in the hybrid practice of artistic activism, as artists have turned toward activism to make their work more socially impactful and activists have adopted techniques and perspectives from the arts to make their interventions more creative. Yet questions haunt the practice: Does artistic activism work aesthetically? Does it work politically? And what does working even mean when one combines art and activism? In Æffect, author Stephen Duncombe sets out to address these questions at the heart of the field of artistic activism. Written by the co-founder and current Research Director of the internationally recognized Center for Artistic Activism, Æffect draws on Duncombe's more than twenty-five years of experience in the field and one hundred in-depth interviews with artistic activists worldwide. More than a mere academic exercise, the theory, research, and t

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Book SynopsisThis volume is a fascinating introduction to the core themes and basic methods of aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Providing an analytic and historical treatment of the issues, and including many illustrative examples to both motivate and reinforce theoretical discussion, An Introduction to Aesthetics is the ideal course book for the philosophical novice. It includes an Appendix (containing the texts referred to in the book), a comprehensive Glossary and further reading suggestions to help the student reader develop a deeper comprehension of the field.Trade Review"This is a dependable, well-informed and accessible guide to the complexities of contemporary philosophical aesthetics. In taking a problem-oriented, rather than historically-based, approach the book directly engages with core issues in the subject. What emerges is not just an introductory survey of problems but a testament to the vitality and richness of the subject itself. I recommend the book to beginners and more advanced readers alike." Professor Peter Lamarque, British Journal of Aesthetics "A highly reader-friendly guide. It is a clearly and attractively written work which will provide a very reliable text for many university courses on the subject. At the end of each chapter there are excellent, and bang-up-to-date, suggestions for further reading and there is a useful glossary of terms used in the text at the end."Table of ContentsList of Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Language About Art and Aesthetics. Getting Started. Aesthetic Predicates. Criticism and Value Terms. The Problem of Definition. 2. Aesthetic Analysis and Its Objects. Formal Analysis. Aesthetic Objects. 3. The Artist and the Work of Art. The Artist's Intentions. Inspiration. Creativity and Originality. Breaking the Connection Between Artist and Art. 4. The Audience and the Work of Art. Attitudes of the Audience. Critics and Criticism. Institutions and the Role of the Audience. 5. The Artist and the Audience. The Aesthetics of Reception. Mythpoesis: Myth and Ritual. Institutional and Post-Institutional Aesthetics. Appendix. Glossary. Index.

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Book SynopsisAn exhibition catalog for a traveling exhibit to be debuted in January 2008, ""Landscape of Slavery"" marries art history with social history in an original study of plantation images from the eighteenth century through the present in an effort to unravel the realities and fictions inherent in this subject matter. Through eighty-nine color plates and six thematic essays, the collection examines depictions of plantations, plantation views, and related slave imagery in the context of the history of landscape painting in America, while addressing the impact of these images on U.S. race relations.A genre predominantly tied to the American South, the plantation view has traditionally received marginal attention in the study of American landscape art. Viewed primarily as a derivative of the early-eighteenth-century British estate view, the plantation image straddles the aesthetic boundary between topographical depiction and landscape painting. In recent years, plantation views have attracted the attention of several social historians who have identified the genre as a rich source for exploring issues of wealth, power, race, memory, nostalgia, and resentment. With each field of study operating independently, the various conclusions drawn suggest only a partial understanding of the issues that surround plantation images and related images of slavery in art. This exhibition and corresponding catalog, therefore, will provide an opportunity for a comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of plantation imagery in the American South.

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Book SynopsisCrosses disciplinary boundaries to explore German Romantic writing about visual experience and the interplay of text and image in Romantic epistemology. The work of the groundbreaking writers and artists of German Romanticism -- including the writers Tieck, Brentano, and Eichendorff and the artists Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge -- followed from the philosophical arguments of the German Idealists, who placed emphasis on exploring the subjective space of the imagination. The Romantic perspective was a form of engagement with Idealist discourses, especially Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Fichte's Science of Knowledge. Through an aggressive, speculative reading of Kant, the Romantics abandoned the binary distinction between the palpable outer world and the ungraspable space of the mind's eye and were therefore compelled to develop new terms for understanding the distinction between "internal" and "external." In this light, Brad Prager urges a reassessment of some of Romanticism's major oppositional tropes, contending that binaries such as "self and other," "symbol and allegory," and "light and dark," should be understood as alternatives to Lessing's distinction between interior and exterior worlds. Prager thus crosses the boundaries between philosophy,literature, and art history to explore German Romantic writing about visual experience, examining the interplay of text and image in the formulation of Romantic epistemology. Brad Prager is Associate Professor of Germanat the University of Missouri, Columbia.Trade ReviewIn this lucidly written and well-researched volume, Brad Prager investigates the thematization of visual perception in canonical works of the Romantic period (texts by Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Ludwig Tieck, Clemens Brentano, Heinrich von Kleist, and Joseph von Eichendorff) and in relation to various Romantic painters (Caspar David Friedrich, Joseph Anton Koch, and Phillip Otto Runge).... , Prager's book is a thought-provoking re-reading of Romantic narratives which demonstrates the continuing necessity of philosophically informed close readings in the study of culture. * H-GERMAN *Although the argumentation is not new, Prager does interpret an unusual and interesting set of texts. The analyses of specific paintings are especially welcome. The volume's numerous black-and-white illustrations facilitate comprehension. * CHOICE *Kant's attack on the sure foundation of the objective world, argues Prager, opened up an abyss; this situation of crisis compelled the Romantics to construct new fundamental principles that described how we perceive; they deal with the subject-object division.... Detailed readings of Wackenroder, Tieck, Brentano, Kleist and Eichendorff ... emphasise the encounters with visual art in their texts.... The author stresses the ongoing importance of romantic preoccupations. * FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES *That Prager interprets Romantic literature and painting through the lens of philosophical approaches ... makes it a model of new cultural studies.... He offers dazzling readings of various permutations of image and imagination. By organizing ... chapters around conceptual pairs that signify the 'new inner divisions' and engender opposition as well as complementarity, Prager ends up writing a Romantic text.... In short, [Prager] presents a series of readings that any further study of the subject must consider. * GERMANIC REVIEW *Prager's monograph ... can be seen as an original contribution to the discussion on current research on Romanticism. It is, however, also well suited to constitute an introduction into the themes and issues concerning Romantic aesthetics. * MONATSHEFTE *Prager has chosen outstanding examples and offers important insights into the interdisciplinary study of Romanticism, the crossings between philosophy, literature, and the arts, and the theoretical debates surrounding symbol and allegory....[A] fresh contribution to the study of Romanticism. * GERMAN QUARTERLY *Table of ContentsIntroduction Interior and Exterior: G.E. Lessing's Laocoon as a Prelude to Romanticism Image and Phantasm: Wackenroder's Herzensergießungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders, Tieck's Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen, and the Emergence of the Romantic Paradigm Wanderungen, and the Emergence of the Symbol and Allegory: Clemens Brentano's Godwi Sublimity and Beauty: Caspar David Friedrich and Joseph Anton Koch Light and Dark: The Paintings of Philipp Otto Runge Absolution and Contradiction: Confrontations with Art in Heinrich von Kleist's "Die heilige Cäcilie oder Die Gewalt der Musik" and "Der Findling" Findling" Self and Other: Joseph von Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index

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