History of art Books

Book SynopsisGives an ethnographic account of the complexities of the use of photography in Africa, both historically and in contemporary practice. This collection of studies in African photography examines, through a series of empirically rich historical and ethnographic cases, the variety of ways in which photographs are produced, circulated, and engaged across a range of social contexts. In so doing, it elucidates the distinctive characteristics of African photographic practices and cultures, vis-à-vis those of other forms of 'vernacular photography' worldwide. In addition, these studies develop areflexive turn, examining the history of academic engagement with these African photographic cultures, and reflecting on the distinctive qualities of the ethnographic method as a means for studying such phenomena. The volumecritically engages current debates in African photography and visual anthropology. First, it extends our understanding of the variety of ways in which both colonial and post-colonial states in Africa have used photography as a means for establishing, and projecting, their authority. Second, it moves discussion of African photography away from an exclusive focus on the role of the 'the studio' and looks at the circulations through which the studios' products - the photographs themselves - later pass as artefacts of material culture. Last, it makes an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between photography and ethnographic research methods, as these have been employed in Africa. RICHARD VOKES is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and author of Ghosts of KanunguTrade ReviewThe collection is an important and nuanced contribution that will be of wide interest to Africanists, and scholars concerned with photography, imperialism and postcolonialism. * ANTHROPOLOGICAL FORUM *A fascinating and important read because of its deep roots in the tangled, injurious and troubled history of African and European colonial history. * AFRICA *These essays and Richard Vokes's presentation offer fascinating examples of photography's intersection with ethnography. * AFRICAN AFFAIRS *Richard Vokes's edited work, Photography in Africa: Ethnographic Perspectives, includes essays that dissect the role of photography (as image and practice) within anthropologists' ethnographic work, and it is this historically and ethnographically informed attention to the construction of the photographic archive on Africa that presents a new lens to consider the overlap, and even lack of distinction, between genres like 'vernacular' and official, or 'state,' photography. * AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Part I Photography & the Ethnographic Encounter - Richard Vokes Double Alienation: Evans-Pritchard's Zande & Nuer Photographs in Comparative Perspective - Christopher Morton Photographing 'the Bridge': Product & Process in the Analysis of a Social Situation in Non-modern Zululand - Chris Wingfield Frontier Photographs: Northern Kenya & the Paul Baxter Collection - Neil Carrier and Kimo Quaintance Memories of a Blue Nile Home: Still Picture, Moving Contexts & Multimedia Linkage - Wendy James Memories of a Blue Nile Home: Still Picture, Moving Contexts & Multimedia Linkage - Part II Picturing the Nation: Photography, Memory & Resistance - Judith Aston Emptying the Gallery: The Archive's Fuller Circle - Erin Haney 'Ca Bouscoulait!': Democratization & Photography in Senegal - Jennifer Bajorek 'A Once & Future Eden': Gorongosa National Park & the Making of Mozambique - Katie McKeown Reflections on Urban Space, the Visual & Political Affect in Kabila's Kinshasa - Part III The Social Life of Photographs - Katrien Pype On 'the Ultimate Patronage Machine': Photography & Substantial Relations in Rural South-western Uganda - Richard Vokes 'The Terror of the Feast': Photography, Textiles & Memory in Weddings along the East African Coast - Heike Behrend Ceremonies, Sitting Rooms & Albums: How Okiek Displayed Photographs in the 1990s - Corinne Kratz

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Book SynopsisDuring the Renaissance, artists and illustrators developed the representation of truthful three-dimensional forms into a highly skilled art. As reliable illustrations of three-dimensional subjects became more prevalent, they also influenced the way in which disciplines developed: architecture could be communicated much more clearly, mathematical concepts and astronomical observations could be quickly relayed, observations of the natural world moved towards a more realistic method of depiction. Through essays on some of the world’s greatest artists and thinkers (Leonardo da Vinci, Euclid, Andreas Vesalius, William Hunter, Johannes Kepler, Andrea Palladio, Galileo Galilei, among many others), this book tells the story of the development of the techniques used to communicate three-dimensional forms on the two-dimensional page and contemporary media. It features Leonardo da Vinci’s groundbreaking drawings in his notebooks and other manuscripts, extraordinary anatomical illustrations, early paper engineering including volvelles and tabs, beautiful architectural plans and even views of the moon. With in-depth analysis of over forty manuscripts and books, 'Thinking 3D' also reveals the impact that developing techniques had on artists and draughtsmen throughout time and across space.

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Book SynopsisFrom the Golden Age to Goya. This is the first study wholly devoted to reception of Spanish art in Britain and Ireland. Examining the extent and sources of knowledge of Spanish art in the British Isles during an age of increasing contact, particularly in theaftermath of the Peninsular War, it contains contributions by leading scholars, including reprints of three essays by Enriqueta Harris Frankfort, to whose memory this book is dedicated. Focusing on Spanish art from the Golden Age to Goya, these studies chart the growth in understanding and appreciation of the Spanish School, and its punctuation by controversies and continuing distrust of religious images in Protestant Britain, as well as by the successive `discoveries' of individual artists - Murillo, Velázquez, Ribera, Zurbarán, El Greco and Goya. The book publishes important new research on art importation, collecting and dealing, and discusses the increase in access to andscholarship on works of art, including their reproduction through both traditional prints and copies and the newly invented photographic methods. It also considers for the first time the role of women in reflecting taste for thearts of Spain. It is richly illustrated with 17 colour and 54 black and white illustrations. NIGEL GLENDINNING is Emeritus Professor of Spanish and Fellow of Queen Mary University of London. HILARY MACARTNEY isHonorary Research Fellow of the Institute for Art History, University of Glasgow. Contributors: NIGEL GLENDINNING, HILARY MACARTNEY, JEREMY ROE, SARAH SYMMONS, MARJORIE TRUSTED, ENRIQUETA HARRIS FRANKFORTTrade ReviewIt brings an impressive body of information, combining existing knowledge with new and original insights derived from the scrupulous reading of primary and secondary source material. The rigorous scholarship is outstanding and makes a major contribution to the study of the reception of Spanish art and culture in Britain and Ireland. It will be essential reading in the field. * ART HISTORY *[H]andsomely produced and carefully prepared volume. * BULLETIN OF SPANISH STUDIES *[W]ill be indispensible to all specialists in the history of British picture-collecting. * JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF COLLECTIONS *This user-friendly, research-efficient design is most helpful for its target audience of students and specialists, allowing the reader to dip in easily to the individual chapters, in any order, without losing sight of the wider picture or main reference points. [...] Overall, the book does more than pay tribute to its dedicatee. Its greatest strength lies in overturning and complicating the stereotype of a `savage Spain', and it provides a model of rigorous scholarship and fruitful collaboration. The end result is a handsomely designed volume which Enriqueta Harris would certainly have been proud to see. * JOURNAL OF ART HISTORIOGRAPHY *The editors [...] succeed admirably in their aim for the volume as a whole to present an overview and provide 'some record of current knowledge and research' in the field. Indeed, the achievement of the volume goes far beyond that modestly expressed aim and it is an extremely valuable addition to the literature of reception studies and the history of taste and collections. It balances fascinating new details and hardwon research discoveries with valuable syntheses of existing knowledge. It will long be a useful introduction while stimulating continuing research; there can be no more fitting memorial to its dedicatee than that. * THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE *Each of the essays in this column could stand alone, but together they contribute significant new research to the study of collecting and appreciation of Spanish art in Britain... this book is an excellent volume, with well presented, new research and short, readable, scholarly essays. * THE ART NEWSPAPER *Table of ContentsBritish and Irish Interest in Hispanic Culture - Nigel Glendinning Cross-Cultural Contacts with Spain: A Broad Perspective - Nigel Glendinning Mantillas, Majas, Murillo and Moors: A Feminine Perspective on Spanish Art from Ann Fanshawe to Gwen John - Sarah Symmons Customs Books and Sales Catalogues: A Study of the Importation of Spanish Paintings into Britain - Jeremy Roe Collectors of Spanish Paintings - Nigel Glendinning Sellers and Dealers - Nigel Glendinning Access to Collections of Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries - Marjorie Trusted Writing the History of Spanish Art in Ninetenth-Century Britain and Ireland - Hilary Macartney The Reproduction of Spanish Art - Hilary Macartney Aesthetics and Prejudice: Changing Attitudes to Spanish Art - Nigel Glendinning The Catholic Question: Attitudes to Roman Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland and their Impact on the Reception of Spanish Art - Hilary Macartney The Murillo/Velázquez Debate: Aspects of the Critical Fortunes of Murillo and Velázquez in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Writing on Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland - Hilary Macartney The 'Terrible Sublime': Ribera in Britain and Ireland - Nigel Glendinning Reception of Zurbarán in Britain and Ireland - Nigel Glendinning The Fortunes of Goya: His Reception in Britain and Ireland - Nigel Glendinning Sir William Stirling Maxwell and the History of Spanish Art - Enriqueta Harris Murillo in Britain - Enriqueta Harris El Greco's 'Fortuna Critica' in Britain - Enriqueta Harris

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Book SynopsisDid Spain fall into decline or flourish in the seventeenth century? This edited collection looks at perceptions and representations of Philip IV, Spain's 'Planet King', and his government against the backdrop of the seventeenth-century General Crisis in Europe, wars, revolutions and a sovereign debt crisis. Scholars often associate Philip's reign (1621-1665) with decline, decadence, crisis, stagnation and adversity (as did many contemporaries); yet the glittering cultural and artistic achievements (enhanced by his patronage) of the period led it to be dubbed 'the' Golden Age. The book analyses these contradictions, examining Philip's own understanding of kingship and how he and his courtiers used art and ceremony to project an image of strength, tradition, culture and prestige, while, at the same time, the empire grappled with revolts in Europe and falling trade with its New World colonies.Table of ContentsAn Historiographical Introduction to the World of Philip IV - Alexander Samson PART I: BEHIND THE SCENES 'Perceptions of Kingship: Governing with and without a valido' - Alistair Malcolm 'Spain's Seventeenth-Century Crisis Seen from the Perspective of the New World' - Guillermo Mira Delli-Zotti 'Naples versus the Neapolitans: The Political Role of the Viceroy during the Crisis of the Viceregal System (1637-1647)' - Marina Perruca Gracia 'St Rose of Lima as Exemplar of the Political Health of Philip IV's Kingdoms (1630s-1660s)' - Stephen M. Hart Two 'Prophets' and One Confessor: Philip IV's Spiritual Stage in 1643-1644 - Gianfranco Armando and Alberto Pérez Camarma 'Smugglers, Thieves and Fraudsters: Francisco de León and the Seville Revolt of 1652' - Fred Carnegy-Arbuthnott PART II: ON THE WORLD STAGE 'Staging the Planet King: Apotheosis and Glory' - Julio Vélez Sainz 'Do You Paint, or Give Life? The Power of Diego Velázquez's Lifelike Portraits of Philip IV' - R.T.C. Goodwin 'Heroic Virtue: The Cardinal Infante Don Ferdinand of Austria, in Hunting Dress, Prince of the Celestial Habsburg Army' - Isabel-María Lloret-Sos 'The Portrayal of Mariana of Austria as Archduchess and Spanish Queen' - Mercedes Llorente 'The King, the Palace and the Cabinet: Knowledge on Display' - Virginia Ghelarducci 'Between the Picaresque and the Picturesque: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) Visualising Spain in an Age of Decline?' - Alexander Samson

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Book SynopsisThe impressive collection of 18th-century French paintings at the National Gallery, London, includes important works by Boucher, Chardin, David, Fragonard, Watteau, and many others. This volume presents over seventy detailed and extensively illustrated entries that expand our understanding of these paintings. Comprehensive research uncovers new information on provenance and on the lives of identified portrait sitters. Humphrey Wine explains the social and political contexts of many of the paintings, and an introductory essay looks at the attitude of 18th-century Britons to the French, as well as the market for 18th-century French paintings then in London salerooms.Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University PressTrade Review“The monolithic addition to the ‘new series’ of National Gallery Catalogues concentrates entirely on the comparatively meagre accumulation of French paintings of this period” —Ian Robertson, The British Art Journal“An impressive body of fully up-to-date research”— Guillaume Faroult, Burlington Magazine

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Book SynopsisThis new volume in the series of National Gallery collection catalogues focuses on 16th-century Bologna and Ferrara. The Gallery holds the most important collection of these paintings outside Italy, including works by Garofalo representing his entire range as an artist; exquisite and grotesque miniature narratives by Mazzolino; a large masterpiece by the short-lived genius known as Ortolano; and some of the most dazzling paintings by the eccentric Dosso Dossi. There are two altarpieces by Lorenzo Costa along with his highly original Concert, and Francesco Francia's Buonvisi altarpiece. The book defines the special quality of works from the region, but also traces the influence of Perugino, Raphael, and Titian. New archival and technical research and provenance information reveal the fortunes of artists’ reputations across a long arc in the history of taste.Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

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Book SynopsisPainters in the past and commercial artists in our own day have relied on allegory to create "message pictures." Once thought to rival literary works or political oratory in influence and prestige, such paintings, with their references to ancient myth, the Bible, or medieval astrology, all too often puzzle modern viewers. This Closer Look guide illustrates and explains the main types of visual allegory in Western art and the contexts in which they were originally created and viewed.Published by the National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

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Book SynopsisHow do experts spot masterpieces? Paintings are not always signed or noted in historical records, so how can we tell an obscure gem from an altered image? Scientists, conservators and art historians use a range of methods to examine the physical nature of pictures and unravel their hidden histories. Through a series of intriguing examples and clearly explained processes, this new addition to the National Gallery’s popular Closer Look series will draw the reader into the complex issues—not all of them fully resolved—confronted by gallery professionals.Published by the National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

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Book SynopsisPainting “without color” has long held a fascination for artists. In this striking and original book, the authors explore how and why artists from the 15th century to the present have chosen to paint in black, white, and shades of gray. Sometimes artists used trompe l’oeil monochromatic effects to represent other media, such as sculpture, prints, or photography; others have consciously limited their palette as a means of re-focusing the viewer’s attention, while contemporary artists such as Gerhard Richter and Bridget Riley have often found inspiration in pushing black and white to its limits, and in new directions. The authors trace the history of this art form, from the symbolism of sacred images in medieval church ritual – epitomized in Netherlandish painting from the 15th century onwards by Hans Memling and Jan van Eyck – to the modern era and the work of artists such as Josef Albers and Ellsworth Kelly. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition Schedule:National Gallery, London (10/30/17–02/18/18)Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (03/21/18–07/15/18)

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Book SynopsisIn a long career that spanned the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon, and the Bourbon Restoration, Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761–1845) created innovative and daring paintings in the midst of the most turbulent times. Bringing together two dozen of Boilly’s works—the majority of which have never before been published—this handsome volume includes portraiture, scenes of seduction, and groundbreaking representations of raucous Parisian street life. A master technician with acute powers of observation and a wry sense of humor, Boilly invented the term trompe l’oeil and popularized the genre through his stunningly realistic compositions. In this first English-language publication on Boilly in more than 20 years, Francesca Whitlum-Cooper vividly brings the artist and the period he lived in to life, shedding new light on Boilly’s work and expanding our understanding of how art functioned within France’s rapidly changing political environment.Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition Schedule:National Gallery, London (02/27/19–05/19/19)

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Book SynopsisThis substantial and beautifully illustrated volume documents the National Gallery’s unrivaled collection of Venetian paintings created between 1540 and 1600, including some of the greatest works commissioned by the city from Veronese, Titian, Tintoretto, and the Bassano family. The collection is so rich and varied that the book serves as an introduction to all the major types of painting produced in Venice during this period––the altarpiece, portrait, confraternity chapel decoration, ceiling and furniture painting, and paintings for the portego (long central hall) of a palace. Among the many important works included are Titian's Vendramin Family Venerating a Relic of the True Cross, Veronese's Family of Darius and four Allegories, and Tintoretto's Origin of the Milky Way. Nicholas Penny provides comprehensive and detailed information reflecting the most up-to-date scholarship on the paintings––many of which have passed through some of the greatest collections in Europe––along with a thorough discussion of their provenance.Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive presentation of the important collection of Barbizon School painting at the National Gallery, London The significant collection of 19th-century French paintings at the National Gallery, London, includes many important works by artists associated with the Barbizon School. In addition to paintings by Courbet, Millet, and Rousseau, there are over twenty works by Corot, including the monumental Italian Woman, or Woman with Yellow Sleeve (L’Italienne) recently acquired from the estate of Lucian Freud. Works by Corot range from an early oil study made in Italy to late studio landscapes. This meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated volume contains entries that examine all aspects of the paintings, from subject and stylistic significance to physical condition and conservation history. Setting the individual works within a broader context, essays explore the impact of plein-air practice; examine the relationship of the Barbizon School to the academic landscape painters and the Impressionists; and trace the history of the passionate collecting of these pictures in Britain well into the 20th century.Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

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Book SynopsisSingapore's arts and culture scene has grown tremendously in the last couple of decades. Its latest impressive addition, National Gallery Singapore, will help position Singapore as an international hub for Southeast Asian visual arts, and contribute to Singapore's ambition of becoming a global city for the arts. In 2015, the Gallery is set to open its doors in an incredible space blending a rich past with exciting modernity. Right in the heart of the Civic District, the Gallery occupies the neo-classical City Hall and former Supreme Court, two buildings that have been focal points for many important events in the history of Singapore. Architects for the new Gallery were challenged to create a distinct identity for the art space while simultaneously celebrating the architectural, cultural and historical significance of the sites. The winning design, by French architects Studio Milou Singapore, will establish the Gallery's standing amongst the leading museums and galleries in Asia. With a distinctive metal-and-glass canopy roof linking the two monuments, the Gallery's setting will also make it the largest visual arts institution in Singapore.

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Book SynopsisA work which sets out to open up the debate on the reproduction and authenticity of sculpture, from the ancient world to contemporary art.

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Book SynopsisIn all his films, Peter Greenaway shows obsessive attention to detail, exaggerating the archaic and fabricating his plots out of an artificial realm of caricature and pastiche. This book examines his vision from a number of perspectives and traces a shift of sensibility in his work. A painter by training, Greenaway has made his reputation as a controversial film-maker with a strong visual style. The book focuses on his work as an artist, curator and writer, as well as a film-maker, and is illustrated with stills from his films.Trade ReviewPascoe tirelessly explicates the numerology and mytho-mania that are the film-maker's organising principles Guardian A supremely intelligent, utterly tuned-in, definitive exploration of the ultimate British auteur's back catalogue, helpfully illustrated at every opportunity... illuminating Empire

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Book SynopsisTaking the Dalai Lama's flight from Tibet in 1959 as its starting point, this book offers a unique interpretation of the ways in which the idea of Tibet has been imagined by Tibetan artists in exile in India and in the Tibetan Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Based on the results of six years of fieldwork, during which Clare Harris interviewed and photographed Tibetan artists at work, this book shows how Tibet real, remembered and imagined came to be envisioned anew.Trade ReviewIn the Image of Tibet is the first major study of the fate of Tibetan art since the Chinese occupation and colonization of Tibet. In a richly detailed analysis, Clare Harris provides a fascinating portrait of Tibetan art produced in two parallel, but connected, worlds: the world of Tibetan refugee painters living in exile and the world of Tibetan painters who remain in Tibet, and she explores the problems encountered in crossing from one world into another. Harris has written an important book that will be of great interest to students of Asian art, history and religion -- Donald S. Lopez

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Book SynopsisIn "The Postmodern Animal", Steve Baker explores how animal imagery has been used in modern and contemporary art and performance, and in postmodern philosophy and literature, to suggest and shape ideas about identity and creativity. Baker cogently analyses the work of such European and American artists as Olly and Suzi, Mark Dion, Paula Rego and Sue Coe, at the same time looking critically at the constructions, performances and installations of Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Beuys and other significant late twentieth-century artists. Baker's book draws parallels between the animal's place in postmodern art and poststructuralist theory, drawing on works as diverse as Jacques Derrida's recent analysis of the role of animals in philosophical thought and Julian Barnes' best-selling Flaubert's Parrot.Trade Review'This is a wonderful book ... Steve Baker provides the most cogent explanation so far of how the questioning of human identity ineluctably raises issues about animals ... He has given us a great gift, an understanding of a process unfolding during our own time.' -- Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat

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Book SynopsisOffers an account of art made in Hong Kong in the years leading up to the handover of British sovereignty to China. The author considers a range of media, including painting, sculpture and photography, as well as other kinds of visual production such as architecture, fashion and graphic design.

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Book SynopsisThis is a subtle, yet uncompromising analysis of the iconic photographs of torture from the prison at Abu Ghraib.Trade ReviewIlluminating and timely ... Eisenman's concepts and questions constitute a challenging discourse on politics and art. Art in America Stephen Eisenman's provocative discussion of the omnipresence of the imagery of aggression, domination, and subjugation in Western art is as disturbing as it is timely. Coming as it does in the wake of the exposure of American torture of detainees, it reminds us that what we call "culture" is as marked by the evidence of cruelty and brutality as is the history of warfare itself. His book is an exemplary demonstration of the inseparability of the aesthetic and the political. -- Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Professor of Art History, University of California Santa Barbara a potent book ... This brilliantly argued volume should be read by all art historians. The Art Book Illuminating and timely ... Eisenman's concepts and questions constitute a challenging discourse on politics and art. Art in America Presented in a slim, stylish volume of 142-pages with sixty-six black and white images, The Abu Ghraib Effect ... traverses revolutionary terrain in its unravelling of the function of artistic metaphor in the justification of imperialist power. Media-Culture Review Writing about events that never, ever should have happened is no small challenge, even for the citizens of a US culture that now flirts with "representing the unrepresentable" and disputes any evidential role for photography. Nonetheless, Stephen Eisenman has taken up this daunting challenge with an unflinching analysis that will long endure - as will our stark memories of the horrors unleashed by the administration of George W. Bush. -- Professor David Craven, author of Art & Revolution in Latin America, 1910-1990Table of ContentsPreface 7 1 Resemblance 11 2 Freudian Slip 18 3 Documents of Barbarism 42 4 Pathos Formula 60 5 Stages of Cruelty 73 6 Muscle and Bone 92 7 Theatre of Cruelty 101 8 Orientalism 108 Afterword: What is Western Art? 111 References 123 Acknowledgements 139 Photographic Acknowledgements 141

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Book SynopsisRestless, protean, fluid, evanescent - despite being hugely challenging to represent visually, water has gained a peculiar significance in the art of the twentieth century. This book probes the ways in which water has gained an unprecedented prominence in modern Western art.

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Book SynopsisThe sixteenth century in China was a period of rapid and unprecedented economic expansion. The period also saw a parallel growth in the sphere of cultural production,as a growing class of consumers benefited from the formation of one of the classic early modern consumer societies. Pictures were a major source of consumable luxury at this time; pictures not only in the form of images classifiable as 'art', but also in the form of wall decoration, in books, maps, images on ceramics, and even on the dress of the prosperous. Artefacts that had previously been decorated with formal patterns now bore landscape scenes, representations of historical characters and incidents, and scenes from literature, often closely related to the world of the illustrated book. This is the first survey of this vast array of images in all its aspects, providing a stimulating and innovative point of entry to Chinese history. Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China will be of interest to students of China's history and culture and to anyone exploring theories of visuality.Trade Review'He argues his interpretations of Chinese art with a great sense of adventure, and it reads tremendously well. Clunas is a master of argument. He presents his texts around carefully considered selections of material culture, which are not simply mustered to illustrate one art-historical point after another, but skilfully used for their value in making several claims throughout a larger discourse.' - Times Higher Educational Supplement 'Reveals the tantalizing array of images to be considered in pursuit of a full understanding of Chinese pictorial culture. It is hoped that this study will stimulate similar studies for other periods, creating a wider and fuller understanding of the ways in which images were deployed and understood in China. We still have a long way to go to escape the limitations of the traditional accounts that are the focus of Professor Clunas's criticism.' - Apollo

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Book SynopsisIn Since '45, Katy Siegel explores how American social and artistic history has shaped what we know as contemporary art, and how American art has responded to the unique cultural conditions of the time.

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Book SynopsisThough largely benign, volcanoes erupt continuously across the world. The eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980 and Eyjafjallajokull in 2010 exemplify the dramatic physical violence of volcanoes, and their potential for local destruction and global disruption. In Volcano James Hamilton explores the cultural history generated by the power, beauty and threat of the volcano. Hamilton describes the reverberations of early eruptions of Vesuvius and Etna in Greek and Roman myth, as well as depictions of volcanoes, from the earliest-known wall painting of an erupting volcano in 6200 BC, to the distinctive colours of Andy Warhol, to Michael Sandle's exploding mountains of the 1980s. He also discusses twenty-first century works that demonstrate the volcano's enduring influence on the artistic imagination today. Volcano is a richly illustrated account that combines established figures such as Joseph Wright and J.M.W. Turner with previously unseen perspectives. Making fresh links and discoveries, this book will appeal to the general reader, as having much to say to scholars and specialists in the field.Trade Review'At last, a series of books on the earth for lay people that combine authoritative, succinct and entertaining narrative with magnificent illustrations. The Earth series will make us marvel anew at the diversity and astounding beauty of the world around us. Each book will take popular understanding of the earth to a new level. No one seriously interested in the future of our planet should be without them.' - Brian M. Fagan, author of The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations 'An arresting collage of mythology, philosophy, literature and spectacular works of visual art inspired by nature's most exuberant phenomenon. Hamilton's unique and imaginative miscellany and cultural geography of volcanoes and volcanology is a veritable treasure trove.' - Clive Oppenheimer

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Book SynopsisMany universities in South Africa have acquired new works of art for key spaces on their campuses. These works convey messages about the advantages of cultural diversity, but recently acquired sculptures, paintings and tapestries also critically engage with histories of racial intolerance and conflict. A current concern among tertiary South African institutions is the influence of British imperialism or Afrikaner nationalism on aspects of their inherited visual culture. Discussions from within the art world around the curatorship of art, memorials, insignia and regalia has shed light on these outmoded colonial value systems which universities now wish to distance themselves from. In Picturing Change, Brenda Schmahmann explores the implications of deploying the visual domain in the service of transformative agendas. In other words, how do universities reflect, through the visual objects on their campuses, on their revisionist aims and endorsements of cultural diversity? While most new commissions are innovative, there have been instances in which universities in South Africa have acquired works of art with potentially traditionalist – even backward-looking – implications. And while imperatives to remove inherited imagery may be underpinned by a wish to unsettle white privilege, there have in fact been occasions in which such actions have served to maintain the status quo. Further, while many expected that a post-apartheid era would have freed artists from censorship, some images produced or shown under the auspices of universities have in fact been susceptible to proscription for supposedly articulating hate speech. Schmahmann identifies and analyses a range of approaches taken by universities and commissioned artists towards these ‘troublesome’ visual objects .This study is the first to consider imagery at a range of tertiary institutions in the country, and it is unique in its exploration of a transformative ethos in the visual domain at universities. It will be invaluable to readers interested in public art and the politics of curating and collecting, and also to those concerned with the challenges involved in transforming contemporary universities into spaces welcoming of diversity in South Africa.Table of ContentsNegotiating sculptures and memorials from the early twentieth century; Rethinking university insignia; New art acquisitions; Portraits of university officers; Controversies.

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Book SynopsisDorothea Bleek (1873 to 1948) devoted her life to completing the ‘bushman researches’ that her father and aunt had begun in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. this research was partly a labour of familial loyalty to Wilhelm, the acclaimed linguist and language scholar of nineteenthcentury Germany and later of the Cape Colony, and to Lucy Lloyd, a self-taught linguist and scholar of bushman languages and folklore; but it was also an expression of Dorothea’s commitment to a particular kind of scholarship and an intellectual milieu that saw her spending her entire adult life in the study of the people she called ‘bushmen’. How has history treated Dorothea Bleek? Has she been recognised as a scholar in her own right, or as someone who merely followed in the footsteps of her famous father and aunt? Was she an adventurer, a woman who travelled across southern Africa driven by intellectual curiosity? Or was she conservative, a researcher who belittled the people she studied? These are some of the questions with which Weintroub starts her thoughtful biography of Dorothea Bleek. The book examines Dorothea’s life story and family legacy, her rock art research and her fi eldwork in southern Africa, and, in light of these, evaluates her scholarship and contribution to the history of ideas in south Africa. The compelling and surprising narrative reveals an intellectual inheritance intertwined with the story of a woman’s life, and argues that Dorothea’s life work – her study of the bushmen – was also a sometimes surprising emotional quest.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Re-visiting the life and scholarship of Dorothea Bleek; Colonial childhood, European learning; Tracing rock art in the field with Helen Tongue, 1905 to 1907; Return to the Kalahari, July to August 1913; Ambiguities of interaction: Sandfontein, Angola and Tanganyika, 1920 to 1930; Testimony of the rocks: A "cave journey", 1928 to 1932; Intimacy and marginality in rock art recording 1932-1940; Making the Bushman dictionary, 1934 to 1956.

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Book SynopsisBeginning with a Bang! features the shift between the explosive and experimental moment in the Argentine art scene of the 1960s, and the current scene emerging after the extreme crises in Argentina during the last 40 years. In the 1960s, artists explored destruction and dematerialization to propose original contributions to the fields of conceptual and action-based art. Today, artists explore fiction and intimacy as critical strategies to review and rebuild the artistic system. The exhibition catalogue brings together a historical section as well as information of performance-based actions and sound and video works by Argentine contemporary artists: Marina De Caro, Ana Gallardo, Graciela Hasper, Roberto Jacoby and Syd Krochmalny, Fabio Kacero, Fernanda Laguna, Patricio Larrambebere, Eduardo Navarro, Leandro Tartaglia, and Judi Werthein. Included are essays by Ana Longoni, Victoria Noorthoorn, Daniel Quiles, and Gabriela Rangel; manifestos by Alberto Greco, Aldo Pellegrini, Manuel Peralta Ramos and Eduardo Costa, Raul Escari, and Roberto Jacobi, as well as a historical timeline of Argentine art.

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Book SynopsisThe art of Samuel Bak depicts a world destroyed and yet provisionally pieced back together. Across nearly seven decades of artistic production Samuel Bak has explored and reworked a set of metaphors, a visual grammar and vocabulary, that ultimately privileges questions. Bak's pictorial readings invite reconsideration of the Post-Reformation privileging of word over image, and of the Post-Enlightenment privileging of reason over experience. Bak preserves memory of the twentieth century ruination of Jewish life and culture by way of an artistic passion and precision that stubbornly announces the creativity of the human spirit.

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Book SynopsisUntil recently little attention was paid to the role of art in constructing the “story” of the Irish nation. This wide-ranging study of Irish pictures and sculpture opens up the subject by providing a fresh interdisciplinary approach. Each work is analyzed beyond its strictly art historical relevance. A deeper investigation into the context in which a work was produced reveals much about the aspirations and ideological ambitions of artists, those commissioning works, and the viewing public. The study of such diverse topics as the representation of the Irish peasant, the behind-the-scenes tensions in setting up a national gallery for Ireland, the erecting of political monuments, Church art, West of Ireland landscape painting, and the difference in nationalistic fervor among artists as diverse as Albert G. Power and Jack B. Yeats unveil fascinating testimony about Ireland’s collective national “needs” and its constructs of identity.Trade Review"Relates the story of Ireland and the Irish people from the mid-1800s on by placing their art in historical and cultural context". * —Bookweek *

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Book SynopsisModernist design, that radical and iconoclastic break with the past, is now itself a thing of the past. Perhaps sufficiently so that over the last few years, artists have been treating modernist designs as icons themselves, and incorporating them—sometimes literally and often conceptually—into their own work. These recombinations and modifications result in an entirely unique mix: a meta-modernism in which the original source is changed, self-referential, abstracted. Using classic elements in new configurations, artists from across the world are making original works of art that comment on the claims of the past in light of the complexities of the present. The artists included in MetaModern, most of whom were born in the 1960s, question the reverence accorded to classic modernism. Too young to have grown up eating their breakfast cereal from a Russel Wright spoon while seated in an Eames molded chair, these artists appropriate the language of the modernist movement critically, using it to interrogate the meaning of style and its relationship to history. The artists include Conrad Bakker, Constantin Boym, Kendell Carter, Jordi Colomer, William Cordova, Elmgreen & Dragset, Fernanda Fragateiro, Terence Gower, Brian Jungen, Olga Koumoundouros, Jill Magid, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Dorit Margreiter, Josiah McElheny, Edgar Orlaineta, Gabriel Sierra, Simon Starling, Clarissa Tossin, Barbara Visser, and James Welling.

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Book SynopsisArtists in late 19th-century France produced some of Europe's most celebrated and revolutionary works of art. Among those innovators are Edgar Degas, Jean-Louis Forain, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who captured the renowned dancers of Paris in paintings, pastels, drawings, prints, and sculptures, creating potent icons of a unique time, place, and culture. Each sought to portray rapidly changing urban life, concentrating on the human figure in its social context. The dancer proved to be a fruitful subject for their investigations of modernity. Degas focused on the artifice of the performance and the harsh daily life of the dancer. Drawing on his background as a newspaper illustrator, Forain's vignettes focus on backstage flirtations between social unequals, especially their exploitative aspects. By contrast, Lautrec's paintings, prints, and posters of celebrity dancers reveal his uncritical acceptance of the sexual commerce that was part of the popular entertainment scene of Montmartre.Trade Review"Particularly well illustrated with a range of paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and objects (many previously unpublished), this catalogue will be an important addition to museum and art-focused collections. Highly recommended." * Choice *"A visual treat. The intelligent essays, time line, bibliography, and full exhibition checklist will appeal to researchers, but the subject matters has broader appeal. Recommended." * Library Journal *"No academic, art department, or community library art history reference collection should be considered complete without the inclusion of The Dancer." * Bookwatch *Table of ContentsDirector's Acknowledgments / Brian J. Ferriso Curator's Acknowledgements / Annette Dixon Investigations of Modernity: The Dancer in the Work of Degas, Forain, and Toulouse-Lautrec / Annette Dixon In the Wings: Space and Narrative in Degas, Forain, and Toulouse-Lautrec / Richard Kendall Forain at the Opera: Fascinated Observer / Florence Valdes-Forain The Dancers of Toulouse-Lautrec: Public Lives and Private Performances / Mary Weaver Chapin Re-Presenting the Dance: Degas's Inheritance and Legacy / Jill DeVonyar Time Line / Marnie P. Stark Checklist of the Exhibition Selected Bibliography Notes on the Contributors Lenders to the Exhibition

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Book SynopsisThe Artist's Touch, the Craftsman's Hand presents a selection of the most historically important and visually compelling Japanese prints from a collection of more than 2,500 works spanning the late 17th century to the present day. Many are extremely rare and almost all appear here in an English-language publication for the first time. Noteworthy areas of interest include early actor prints, dating back to the first decade of the 18th century; works by Suzuki Harunobu, the master associated with the origins of full-color printing in 1765; the deluxe, privately printed surimono of the early 19th century; painterly landscapes of the early 20th century, including a series that documents the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923; and contemporary prints, ranging from Op Art and Abstract Expressionism to lyrical evocations of an imagined past. Essays include an overview of the illustrated works and articles on Harunobu, prints of kabuki actors and their fans, and the cultural meanings in still-life surimono.Trade Review"Three centuries of prints in 300 pages makes for an exquisite compilation." -- Marilyn Dahl * Shelf Awareness *"This catalog offers a significant amount of new material. The catalog proper has full curatorial data plus intriguing comments on individual prints from the late 17th century to the early 21st. . . . Illustrations are excellent. Highly recommended." * Choice *

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Book SynopsisDuring the first two decades of the twentieth century, the St. Louis Street Department generated one of the most extensive troves of photographs ever taken of the city. Ostensibly created to document municipal challenges and improvements, the images inadvertently captured richly detailed scenes of everyday life. Largely led by Charles Clement Holt (1866–1925), St. Louis’s photography operation expanded until it produced about six thousand images per year in 1914. Many of these photographs were lost, but a city historian salvaged a collection of three hundred glass plate negatives in the 1950s, which are now in the Missouri Historical Society collections. This small, but superb, group of photographs provides a wealth of information on the visual culture of St. Louis during a period of rapid transformation. Capturing the City is the first book to examine these photographs, placing the people and landscapes depicted within the broader context of a swiftly urbanizing and industrializing metropolis. Collected and analyzed here by Joseph Heathcott and Angela Dietz, the compelling images in Capturing the City reveal the national trend among cities to use the camera as a documentary tool. Reformers Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine imagined the camera as a truth-telling instrument and used their photographs to mobilize public consciousness. Across the nation, cities used photographers to document slums, workhouses, and crime scenes, as well as municipal improvements like street lighting, pavement, and model housing. In this vein, Holt and his staff showcased both the challenges and the successes of government action in St. Louis. Consistent with their Progressive-era peers, their efforts contributed to the record of ongoing public works while shaping the narrative of urban progress itself.

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Book SynopsisThe Kathmandu Valley is the most populated region of Nepal, and the Newar, probable descendants of the Kirati who settled in the Valley in the first millennium BCE, have for centuries created the art featured in Celestial Realms. In additin to Hindu and Buddhist sculpture and paintings, tribal works from the middle hill region are also included, providing a contrast with Newar production.Trade Review". . . unusually well-written catalog by guest curator Nancy Tingley and Nutandar Sharma figures as an indispensable component of the project and the experience it offers." -- Kenneth Baker * San Francisco Chronicle *

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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