History of art Books
Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) Curating Modern Life
Book SynopsisMatthew James Holman is Lecturer in English and Fine Arts at The University of Hertfordshire, UK. He has held research fellowships at The Courtauld, UK, Yale University, USA, the Smithsonian, USA, and the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies in Berlin, Germany.
£21.02
Arcturus Publishing Art Masters Gustav Klimt
Book SynopsisA N Hodge is an art historian and practising artist. A graduate of Central St Martin's in London, she also holds a post-graduate diploma from Goldsmiths College. She has curated numerous exhibitions and is the author of The History of Art: Painting from Giotto to the Present Day.
£13.49
Arcturus Publishing Art Masters PierreAuguste Renoir
Book SynopsisThomas Stevens is the author of numerous books covering a wide variety of subjects such as popular history and practical art. He has a passion for art history, especially that of the late 19th century and 20th century.
£13.49
Scholastic Can You Keep a Secret PB
Book SynopsisIf you met a dragon, could you keep it secret?One day, in the forest, Winnie discovers the last dragon in the wholeworld. His fabulous friends, the gryphon, the winged lion andthe tree-man are the last of their kind, too. They'll be in dangerif grown-ups discover them. But can Winnie really keep them secret?
£6.99
University of Texas Press Indigenous Visual Culture in Latin America
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£41.40
Duke University Press Nervous Systems
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Nervous Systems reassess contemporary artists' and critics' engagement with social, political, biological, and other systems as a set of complex and relational parts: an approach commonly known as systems thinking.Trade Review“A vital and much-needed contribution to the literature on art and systems discourse. If the history of art has largely treated systems theory in terms of its technocratic implications in the 1960s, Nervous Systems expands the field to postwar and contemporary art, addressing race, gender, ecology, and global networks as among its most urgent questions.” -- Pamela M. Lee, author of * Think Tank Aesthetics: Midcentury Modernism, the Cold War, and the Neoliberal Present *“Nervous Systems is one of the most impressive and conceptually nuanced collections of art historical essays that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. A model of what contemporary arts scholarship can look like, this volume is eminently readable and, most of all, teachable.” -- Jonathan Eburne, author of * Outsider Theory: Intellectual Histories of Unorthodox Ideas *Table of ContentsForeword / Judith Rodenbeck vii Acknowledgments ix After the Breakdown: Sixty Years of Systems Art / Johanna Gosse and Timothy Stott 1 Section I: Systems Aesthetics to Systems Politics 1. Jack Burnham Redux: Reappraising System Aesthetics / Luke Skrebowski 31 2. The Artist as "Weatherman": Hans Haacke's Critical Meteorology / John Tyson 55 3. Desalineación: Open Systems as Social Transformation in Tucumán Arde / Christine Filippone 78 Section II: Nervous Interfaces 4. The Irresolutions of Charles Gaines / Kris Cohen 103 5. Light and Space as Institutional Critique / Dawna Schuld 125 6. One among Many: Experiencing Complexity in Participatory Art Systems / Cristina Albu 148 Section III: The Contemporary Art World Described as a System 7. Abstraction, Dispersion, Deflation, and Noise: Liam Gillick's Disappointing Systems / Francis Halsall 173 8. Aesthetic Action as Planetary Praxis: Mel Chin's The Arctic Is . . . / Amanda Boetzkes 192 9. Mapping, SEA STATE, and State Violence on the Shores of Singapore / Brianne Cohen 213 10. Toward Infrastructure Art: Containerization, Black Box Logistics, and New Distribution Complexes / Jaimey Hamilton Faris 235 Selected Bibliography 261 Contributors 277 Index 281
£20.69
Aperture Aperture Conversations: 1985 to the Present
Book SynopsisWhy did Henri Cartier-Bresson nearly have a posthumous exhibition while still alive? What led Stephen Shore to work with color? Why was Sophie Calle accused of stealing Vermeer’s The Concert ? And what is Susan Meiselas’s take on Instagram and the future of online storytelling? Aperture Conversations presents a selection of interviews pulled from Aperture’s publishing history, highlighting critical dialogue between photographers, esteemed critics, curators, editors, and artists from 1985 to the present day. Emerging talent along with well-established photographers discuss their work openly and examine the future of the medium. Through the history of Aperture’s booklist, online platform, and Aperture magazine, Aperture Conversations celebrates the artist’s voice, collaborations, and the photography community at large.
£22.50
David Zwirner Anni Albers
Book SynopsisThe first in-depth study of a monumental wall hanging—rediscovered after many years—by renowned Bauhaus artist Anni Albers.Albers was influential in elevating textiles from craft to fine art. Her exquisite wall hanging Camino Real—seen for the first time outside of Mexico City at David Zwirner, New York, in 2019, and the subject of this book—is a superb example of this modern master’s work.In 1967, noted architects Ricardo Legorreta and Luis Barragán commissioned Albers to create a work for the newly built Hotel Camino Real in Mexico City. Completed in 1968, her striking wall hanging Camino Real is heavily influenced by Latin American art and culture. Showcasing Albers’s approach to working with textiles as a “many-sided practice,” it is accompanied in this book by works Albers made following her move to the United States in 1933, including innovative wall hangings, weavings, and a range of works on paper. Together, these works reflect Albers’s brilliant embrace of different materials and techniques and her ability to work at varied scales. The works in this publication offer additional context and motifs, demonstrating the artist’s pioneering investment in textiles as an art form and her parallel interest in mass-produced designs.Published on the occasion of the Anni Albers exhibition presented at David Zwirner, New York, in 2019, this catalogue features new scholarship from the show’s curator, Brenda Danilowitz, art historian and chief curator of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, and T’ai Smith, an expert on Bauhaus craft and weaving.
£32.00
Vernon Press Fashioning the Self: Identity and Style in
Book Synopsis
£999.99
Artmonsky Arts The Studio Ltd.
Book SynopsisThe full story of The Studio Ltd., Britain's biggest publisher of magazines and books on art and design during the first half of the 20th century.
£9.50
Little, Brown Book Group Picasso's Brain: The basis of creative genius
Book SynopsisWhere does creativity come from? Why are some people more creative than others?Eminent neuropsychologist Christine Temple navigates a wide range of factors from the hard science (visual memory, spatial ability, brain functions) to the environmental (the 'mad genius' myth, and Gladwell's 10,000 hours of practice) in her study of what contributes to creativity. Using Pablo Picasso as her model of a creative genius, she weighs up each theory as it applies to Picasso and shows how his own creativity came from a combination of many factors.In this book, she looks at Picasso's playful mindset and passionate relationships, investigates the possibility that genius is genetic and can be inherited in families, considers whether creative genii perceive the world in a different way, and determines whether single-mindedness and focus play a part. This is the first book to look at a multitude of traits in creativity, and nail down the key factors that matter (and also which ones don't) to provide an overall picture of this fascinating area, linking the science to the personal.
£15.29
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Fashion in the 1960s
Book SynopsisPerhaps more so than any other decade, the sixties had the broadest impact on the twentieth-century Western world. Across society, culture and the arts, youth voices rose to prominence and had a significant influence on new trends. Mature polished elegance was replaced by young liveliness as the fashionable ideal. Although only the most daring young followers of fashion wore the tiny miniskirts and borderline-unwearable plastic and metal outfits publicised in the press, stylish and smart fashion was increasingly available to all, with an emphasis on self-expression. New style icons such as Twiggy combined girl-next-door looks with trendy, aspirational and accessible outfits, and popular culture heavily influenced mainstream fashion. This beautifully illustrated book offers a concise guide to changing styles across the decade.Trade ReviewDaniel Milford Cottam succeeds in making the period accessible, especially to non specialists. * Journal of Dress History *Table of ContentsIntroduction Innovation Underwear Reality Popular Culture Menswear Further Reading Places to Visit Index
£999.99
Scala Publishers Ltd Eric Fischl
£28.00
Reaktion Books Gloves: An Intimate History
Book SynopsisA captivating history of gloves both real and mythical, practical and high fashion. This beautifully illustrated history of gloves draws on examples from across the world to explore their cultural significance. From hand-knitted mittens to exquisitely embroidered confections, and from the three-fingered gloves of medieval shepherds to Bluetooth-enabled examples that function like a mobile phone, gloves' extraordinary variety is a tribute to human ingenuity. So, too, is the remarkable diversity of their-often contradictory-cultural associations. They have been linked to honor, identity, and status, but also to decadence and deceit. In this book, Anne Green discusses gloves both as material objects with their own fascinating history and as fictional creations in folktales, literature, films, etiquette manuals, paintings, and advertisements. Looking to the runway, Green even explores their recent resurgence as objects of high fashion.Trade Review''Absolutely fascinating: a timely foray into the strange world of gloves in all their symbolic and functional glory.'' -- Claire Wilcox, senior curator of fashion, Victoria and Albert Museum, author of "Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes"
£22.50
Reaktion Books Rembrandts Holland
Book SynopsisA fresh perspective on the celebrated Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn.
£13.46
Chronicle Books Never Beautiful Enough
£28.58
Black Gas Publishing The Secret Life Vol. 2
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£12.56
The Gresham Publishing Co. Ltd Glasgow Boys in Your Pocket
Book SynopsisThe Glasgow Boys revolutionized Scottish painting from 1880 until around 1895, although their influence lasted until just before World War 1. Painters such as Sir John Lavery, Sir James Guthrie, George Henry, Edward Atkinson Hornel, Joseph Crawhall, Edward Arthur Walton, and William Kennedy formed the main group of painters, although there were 18 in total. They were a loose group, with various friendships and painting groups among them. Influenced by the Impressionists and post-Impressionists, they were also inspired by Japanese and Dutch art. Their style went against Victorian sentimentality and they brought the look of some forms of Impressionism and post-Impressionism to Scotland, with fresh views of the Scottish countryside and typical scenes from Scottish life. They painted outdoors, and captured a way of life that changed Scottish painting. Many settled after their early rebellious phase into quieter styles, or moved away as the art scene evolved into the Scottish Colourists' phase. As Glasgow became the fourth largest city in Europe, with a massive explosion in its population, money from wealthy industrialists, publishers and merchants became available to support the art commissioned from The Glasgow Boys. New walls needed art, as Glasgow celebrated its prosperity in a new phase of building - the city centre saw a new Art School, and City Chambers, and industrialists built homes in the country. The author's understanding of the art world and the importance of financial support and also painting techniques makes this book a unique contribution to books written on The Glasgow Boys. The Glasgow Boys are the subject of an exhibition at Kelvingrove Art Gallery in spring/summer 2010, and then at the Royal Academy, London until January 2011.
£9.49
Tate Publishing Gerhard Richter: Panorama - revised
Book SynopsisGerhard Richter is widely regarded as one of the most important painters at work today. He is as well known for his figurative works as he is for his abstract paintings, often combining elements of both in ground-breaking ways. Gerhard Richter: Panorama is the first and most complete overview of Richter's whole career. Where previous monographs have focused on a single aspect of his work, this stunningly illustrated survey encompasses his entire oeuvre, now stretching across more than a half-century of activity. It includes his photo-paintings, abstracts, landscapes and seascapes, portraits, colour charts, glass and mirror works, sculptures, drawings and photographs, providing the definitive account of Richter's colossal artistic achievements. Alongside his celebrated abstractions, early black-and-white paintings and the photorealist depictions of candles, skulls and clouds that have become indisputable icons of modern painting, this new edition of Panorama includes over forty paintings made between 2000 and 2015, studio photographs and archival images, alongside texts by an array of international critics and curators.With more than 300 illustrations, and an interview with the artist by Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate, this landmark publication remains the most comprehensive survey of one of the world's most pre-eminent contemporary artists
£28.00
Tate Publishing Tate Introductions: Robert Rauschenberg
Book SynopsisA lively and accessible introduction to the life and work of Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), one of the most inventive and influential artists of the post-war period. An important influence on Pop artists in the 1960s, Rauschenberg worked across a variety of media - painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, silkscreen, lithography, and performance - and actively collaborated with musicians, choreographers and dancers, and with engineers and scientists to pursue the potentials offered by new technologies. Part of the Tate Introduction series, this book offers a concise and engaging account of Rauschenberg's life, his art, and the ongoing debates concerning his significance.
£7.59
Royal Collection Trust Pasta For Nightingales: A 17th-century handbook
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£999.99
Blue Crow Media Modernist Skopje Map: Guide to Modernist and
Book Synopsis
£9.37
GINGKO The Arab Hall
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£32.00
JRP Ringier Peter Halley: The Complete 1980s Paintings
Book SynopsisNew Yorkbased Peter Halley (born 1953) is a prominent figure in contemporary art. A protagonist of the dynamic New York art scene of the 1980s, and founder of the seminal Index magazine, he gained recognition as one of the main champions of the neo-geo movement with his geometric paintings rendered in intense fluorescent Day-Glo acrylic paint and Roll-a-Tex texture additive. Since the mid-1990s his site-specific installations and permanent public works have extended his practice to a larger scale.A landmark publication for all those interested in contemporary painting, this catalogue raisonné of Peter Halley's paintings from the 1980s gathers together the complete body of 186 works realized between 1980 and 1989 and fully documents them for the first time. Showing the evolution of his work, it makes clear how Halley built his own geometric and chromatic vocabulary to challenge the then prevailing ideas about the nature and history of abstract painting, and how motifs such as the cell, the prison, the conduit and the brick wall came into existence, in parallel with his own thinkinginspired in part by French Structuralist theoryabout modern life (urban design, media, new mass digital technologies) and the increasing geometrization of social space.Introduced by art historian Cara Jordan, editor of this extensive research-based publication, the book also includes an illustrated biography and an anthology of key texts written by the artist in the 1980s.
£999.99
Hirmer Verlag Here Now: Indigenous Arts of North America at the
Book SynopsisHere Now: Indigenous Arts of North America at the Denver Art Museum features 200 of the museum’s most notable Indigenous artworks. It reinterprets the collection and reveals new insights into the historic and contemporary work of Indigenous artists. Contributions by Indigenous authors reflect on the collection and current issues. The expansive volume is for both new and established audiences. The artworks – from ancient Puebloan and Ississippian ceramics to nineteenth-century beaded garments and carved masks to cutting-edge contemporary paintings, sculpture, photography and variable media art – are organized geographically, inviting readers to make connections to the peoples who historically inhabited a place. The collection illustrates the multi-faceted nature of Native experiences and represents the Indigenous arts of North America as a vibrant continuum.
£33.60
Hirmer Verlag GmbH Berninis Architectural Drawings
£180.00
Hirmer Verlag Acts of Art in Greenwich Village
Book SynopsisA first-ever look at a network of Black visual artists in Harlem in the 1960s and 1970s This comprehensive account of the six-year history of Acts of Art, a gallery founded by and for Black artists in Greenwich Village in 1969, includes a complete exhibition record, biographies of the gallery's key artists, and entries on important group exhibitions and events. This first in-depth look at Acts of Art, and its role within communities of Black artists in New York City, highlights the artists most closely tied to the gallery and its co-founder Nigel Jackson, from the early shows of Benny Andrews and James Denmark to the surveys of Loïs Mailou Jones and Hale Woodruff. In addition to an introductory essay and complete exhibition history, the volume includes artists' biographies and entries on important group exhibitions and events. The publication accompanies the exhibition Acts of Art in Greenwich Village, on view at Hunter College's Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Galleries between Fall 2024 and Spring 2025.
£23.96
Taschen GmbH Dürer
Book SynopsisA polymath of the German Renaissance, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was a prolific artist, theorist, and writer whose works explored everything from religion to art theory to philosophy. His vast body of work includes altarpieces, portraits, self-portraits, watercolors, and books, but is most celebrated for its astonishing collection of woodcut prints, which transformed printmaking from an artisan practice into a whole new art form. Dürer’s woodcuts astonish in scale as much as detail. Through works such as Apocalypse and the Triumphal Arch for Emperor Maximilian I, he created dense, meticulous compositions that were much larger, much more finely cut, and far more complex than any earlier woodcut efforts. With an ambitious tonal and dynamic range, he introduced a new level of conceptual, emotional, and spiritual intensity. His two major woodcut series on Christ’s Passion, named The Large Passion and The Small Passion after their size, are particularly remarkable for their vivid human treatment of the Christian narrative. In his copper engraving, Melancholia I, meanwhile, Dürer created a startling vision of emotional ennui, often cited as a defining early image of a depressive or melancholic state. Ever inquisitive, Dürer absorbed ideas not only from masters and fellow artists in Germany but also from Italy, while his own influence extended across Europe for generations to come. In this essential TASCHEN introduction, we explore this pioneering figure’s complex practice, his omnivorous intellect, and the key works which shaped his enduring legacy.
£14.25
Taschen GmbH Freud
Book SynopsisLucian Freud (1922–2011) was interested in the telling of truths. Always operating outside the main currents of 20th-century art, the esteemed portrait painter observed his subjects with the regimen and precision of a laboratory scientist. He recorded not only the blotches, bruises, and swellings of the living body, but also, beneath the flaws and folds of flesh, the microscopic details of what lies within: the sensation, the emotion, the intelligence, the bloom, and the inevitable, unstoppable decay. Despite rejecting parallels between him and his renowned grandfather, the correlation between Lucian Freud’s sitting process for portraiture and Sigmund Freud’s psychotherapy sessions is a fascinating element to this figurative oeuvre. Despite the thickness of the impasto surfaces, Freud’s portraits of subjects as varied as the Queen, Kate Moss, and an obese job center supervisor penetrate the physicality of the body with a direct and often disarming insight. The result is as much a psychological interrogation as it is an uneasy examination of the relationship between artist and model. This book brings together some of Freud’s most outstanding and unapologetic portraits, to introduce an artist widely considered one of the finest masters of the human form.
£999.99
Amsterdam University Press Willem de Rooij Dirk Valkenburg
Book SynopsisAmsterdam painter Dirk Valkenburg (1675â1721) produced some of the earliest depictions of Indigenous and enslaved people on Surinamese sugar plantations â idealized images that conceal the violence of colonialism. He also painted ornate hunting still lifes and portraits of patrons whose wealth derived from colonial trade and slavery. Through this very variety of genres, Valkenburgâs paintings demonstrate the workings of the âwhite gazeâ. Edited by Willem de Rooij and Karwan Fatah-Black, this volume joins the first catalogue raisonnà of Valkenburgâs work â developed in collaboration with the RKD â Netherlands Institute for Art History in The Hague â and a critical reader of newly commissioned essays by leading international scholars. Uniting voices from art history, anthropology, postcolonial and queer studies across Europe and the Americas, it contextualizes Valkenburgâs oeuvre through interdisciplinary and transcultural dialogue. Conceived as a pendant to De Rooijâs installation Valkenburg at the Centraal Museum Utrecht (2025), the book and exhibition together invite reflection on how eighteenth-century Dutch elites used visual culture to normalize colonial ideology.
£75.99
Hong Kong University Press Sustaining Landscapes
£41.80
Greenpoint Books, LLC Bamboo: Its Cult and Culture
Book Synopsis
£999.99
Galison Miffy and Friends 500 Piece Puzzle
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£17.99
NIAS Press Contemporary Indonesian Art: Artists, Art Spaces,
Book SynopsisIndonesian art entered the global contemporary art world of independent curators, art fairs and biennales in the 1990s. By the mid-2000s, Indonesian works were well-established on the Asian secondary art market, achieving record-breaking prices at auction houses in Singapore and Hong Kong.This comprehensive overview introduces Indonesian contemporary art in a fresh and stimulating manner, demonstrating how contemporary art breaks from colonial and post-colonial power structures, and grapples with issues of identity and nation-building in Indonesia. Across different media, in performance and installation, it amalgamates ethnic, cultural and religious references in its visuals, and confidently brings together the traditional (batik, woodcut, dance, Javanese shadow puppet theatre) with the contemporary (comics and manga, graffiti, advertising, pop culture).Spielmann's Contemporary Indonesian Art surveys the key artists, curators, institutions and collectors in the local art scene, and looks at the significance of Indonesian art in the Asian context. Through this book, originally published in German, Spielmann stakes a claim for global relevance of Indonesian art.
£32.36
Oxford University Press Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West
Book SynopsisJerusalem was the object of intense study and devotion throughout the Middle Ages. This collection of essays illuminates ways in which the city was represented by Christians in Western Europe, c. 700-1500. Focusing on maps in manuscripts and early printed books, it also considers views and architectural replicas, and treats depictions of the Temple and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre alongside those of Jerusalem as a whole. Authors draw on new research and a range of disciplinary perspectives to show how such depictions responded to developments in the West, as well as to the shifting political circumstances of Jerusalem and its wider region.One central theme is the relationship between text, image, and manuscript context, including discussion of images as scriptural exegesis and the place of schematic diagrams and plans in the presentation of knowledge. Another is the impact of trends in learning, such as the reception of Jewish scholarship, the move from monastic to university educaTrade Reviewoffers a stimulating technical vade mecum to current research and thinking about the interaction of the visual and the written, and their relationship within the religious culture of the medieval west. It is also very well served by a weight of clear, well-judged black-and-white illustrations and a collection of outstandingly well reproduced colour plates. * C J Tyerman, English Historical Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Exhibition ; Adomnan's Plans in the Context of his Imagining 'the Most Famous City' ; The Exegetical Jerusalem: Maps and Plans for Ezekiel Chapters 40-48 ; The Imaginary Jerusalem of Nicholas of Lyra ; The 'Pictures' of Jerusalem in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 156 ; 'Ista est Jerusalem'. Intertextuality and Visual Exegesis in the Representation of Jerusalem in Peter of Poitiers' Compendium Historiae in Genealogia Christi and Werner Rolevinck's Fasciculus Temporum ; Studying with maps: Jerusalem and the Holy Land in two thirteenth century manuscripts ; Jerusalem under Siege: Marino Sanudo's Map of the Water Supply, 1320 ; An Illuminated English Guide to Pilgrimage in the Holy Land: Oxford, Queen's College, MS 357 ; Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places: the Holy Landscapes
£81.61
Oxford University Press Leonardo Da Vincis Codex Leicester A New Edition
Book SynopsisThis new edition of Leonardo Da Vinci''s Codex Leicester is the most comprehensive scholarly edition of any of Leonardo''s manuscripts. It contains a high-quality facsimile reproduction of the Codex, a new transcription and translation, accompanied by a paraphrase in modern language and a page-by-page commentary, and a series of interpretative essays.This important endeavour introduces important new research into the interpretation of the texts and images, on the setting of Leonardo''s ideas in the context of ancient and medieval theories, and above all into the notable fortunes of the Codex within the sciences of astronomy, water, and the history of the earth, opening a new field of research into the impact of Leonardo as a scientist after his death.
£132.50
Penguin Books Ltd Life and Afterlife in Ancient China
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThe story of China is written in the objects buried in its tombs over many millennia, but for most of us they are as hard to read as Chinese characters. Jessica Rawson is the master-interpreter. In a dozen tombs she tells the story of China across thousands of years, pointing out again and again the profound ways in which the Chinese are not like us. If you want to understand China today, start by visiting these twelve tombs in the enlightening company of Jessica Rawson. A dozen tombs - an underground journey to the heart of China. -- Neil MacGregorTime and time again, Jessica Rawson has demonstrated her extraordinary ability to explain the unfamiliar in terms that everyone can understand. Life and Afterlife in Ancient China is a perfect book for someone new to China. Unusually, it is also ideal for the more knowledgeable because it offers such an up-to-date portrayal of the complex relations between the ancient Chinese and their neighbors -- Valerie Hansen, author of The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization BeganNo book better attests to the most basic point of history - and not just China's - that we are profoundly shaped by our cultural heritages. Rawson's lucid and intimate account of the extraordinary contents of twelve ancient tombs stretching four millennia into the past brings readers inside Chinese culture and mentality in ways that instruct, surprise, and delight. A masterwork -- Timothy Brook, author of Vermeer's Hat and Great StateJessica Rawson understands the long history of China through a lifetime's engagement with its ancient sites and artefacts. Her book evokes both the internal dynamics and external influences of China's deep past with great clarity, allowing us to appreciate their continuing force and importance to the present -- Chris Gosden, Professor of European Archaeology, University of OxfordA distinguished art historian ... Rawson succeeds in distilling and animating a great deal of dry scholarship ... impressive and engaging. -- Robert Bickers * Literary Review *majestic history -- Andrew Robinson * nature *insightful ... Jessica Rawson has the ability to bring an unfamiliar subject to life ... rich ... an invaluable book for anyone wishing to learn more about the future of China by exploring its diversity and glorious ancient past. -- James Lin * BBC *
£34.00
MIT Press Ltd Anish Kapoor Past Present Future The MIT Press
Book SynopsisThe first major American publication on this important contemporary sculptor.Anish Kapoor is one of a highly inventive generation of sculptors who emerged in London in the early 1980s. Since then he has created a remarkable body of work that blends a modernist sense of pure materiality with a fascination for the manipulation of form and the perception of space. This book—the first major American publication on Kapoor's work—surveys his work since 1979, with a focus on sculptures and installations made since the early 1990s. With more than ninety color images of these ambitious and complex works, three original essays, an extended interview with Kapoor, and selections from his sketchbooks, this book confirms Anish Kapoor's place as one of the most remarkable sculptors working today. Kapoor's work has evolved into an abstract and perceptually complex elaboration of the sculptural object as at once monumental and evanescent, physical and ethereal—as in his famo
£10.74
MIT Press Ltd Sifting the Trash A History of Design Criticism
Book SynopsisHow product design criticism has rescued some products from the trash and consigned others to the landfill.Product design criticism operates at the very brink of the landfill site, salvaging some products with praise but consigning others to its depths through condemnation or indifference. When a designed product's usefulness is past, the public happily discards it to make room for the next new thing. Criticism rarely deals with how a product might be used, or not used, over time; it is more likely to play the enabler, encouraging our addiction to consumption. With Sifting the Trash, Alice Twemlow offers an especially timely reexamination of the history of product design criticism through the metaphors and actualities of the product as imminent junk and the consumer as junkie. Twemlow explores five key moments over the past sixty years of product design criticism. From the mid-1950s through the 1960s, for example, critics including Reyner Banham, Deborah Allen,
£24.30
MIT Press Ltd The Jean Freeman Gallery Does Not Exist
Book SynopsisAn examination of a 1970s Conceptual art project—advertisements for fictional shows by fictional artists in a fictional gallery—that hoodwinked the New York art world.From the summer of 1970 to March 1971, advertisements appeared in four leading art magazines—Artforum, Art in America, Arts Magazine, and ARTnews—for a group show and six solo exhibitions at the Jean Freeman Gallery at 26 West Fifty-Seventh Street, in the heart of Manhattan's gallery district. As gallery goers soon discovered, this address did not exist—the street numbers went from 16 to 20 to 24 to 28—and neither did the art supposedly exhibited there. The ads were promoting fictional shows by fictional artists in a fictional gallery. The scheme, eventually exposed by a New York Times reporter, was concocted by the artist Terry Fugate-Wilcox as both work of art and critique of the art world. In this book, Christopher Howard brings thi
£24.70
MIT Press Ltd Energies in the Arts The MIT Press
Book SynopsisInvestigating the concepts and material realities of energy coursing through the arts: a foundational text.This book investigates energies—in the plural, the energies embedded and embodied in everything under the sun— as they are expressed in the arts. With contributions from scholars and critics from the visual arts, art history, anthropology, music, literature, and the history of science, it offers the first multidisciplinary investigation of the concepts and material realities of energy coursing through the arts. Just as Douglas Kahn's earlier books helped introduce sound as a category for study in the arts, this new volume will be a foundational volume for future explorers in a largely uncharted domain. The modern concept of energy is only two hundred years old—an abstraction grounded in extraction—but this book takes a more expansive view. It opens with a clap: the sonic energies in a ceremony of the indigenous Goolarabooloo people of Austr
£42.75
MIT Press Ltd Art School Propositions for the 21st Century The
Book SynopsisLeading international artists and art educators consider the challenges of art education in today's dramatically changed art world.The last explosive change in art education came nearly a century ago, when the German Bauhaus was formed. Today, dramatic changes in the art world—its increasing professionalization, the pervasive power of the art market, and fundamental shifts in art-making itself in our post-Duchampian era—combined with a revolution in information technology, raise fundamental questions about the education of today's artists. Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century) brings together more than thirty leading international artists and art educators to reconsider the practices of art education in academic, practical, ethical, and philosophical terms. The essays in the book range over continents, histories, traditions, experiments, and fantasies of education. Accompanying the essays are conversations with such prominent artist/educator
£38.95
MIT Press Ltd Art Demonstration Group Material and the 1980s
Book SynopsisA study of Group Material, the influential but underexamined New York–based artist collective, investigating a series of key works. Key predecessor of contemporary art’s most radical activist gestures, the 1980s collective Group Material seized upon the temporary exhibition as a prime mode of intervention. Projects sited on walls, subways, and billboards targeted some of the most sensitive political conflicts of the era, from U.S. military interventions in Latin America to the AIDS crisis. In Art Demonstration, Claire Grace examines Group Material’s New York–based collaboration across a decade that saw a wave of renewed interest in art as a domain of political mobilization. As Grace argues here, Group Material’s art was never just a means to an end; looking itself held urgency. Grace distinguishes between two types of Group Material projects: room-scale interiors featuring distinctive wall treatments, soundtracks
£36.10
MIT Press Ltd DisMiss Gender
Book SynopsisA bold mix of photographs and short essays in which artists, writers, and theorists investigate and celebrate the rapidly evolving world of gender.Discuss. Discover. Disrupt. We dis- a lot in English, particularly with regard to women and queer people. Our understanding of gender is changing, and with it, so are our questions. Dis…Miss Gender? provides thoughtfully considered contributions from an intrepid group of a hundred artists and writers who explore contemporary concepts of gender. Anchored by lavish illustrations and original essays from prominent gender theorists, including Karen Tongson, Amelia Jones, and Tiffany E. Barber, plus commentary from artists, viewers, and organizations committed to equity and justice, this provocative book is the culmination of a five-year initiative by Anne Bray. Dis… Mis Gender? offers a kaleidoscopic survey of intersectionality and queer thought, as well as fourth-wave feminism,
£32.40
MIT Press Ltd Autographic Design
Book SynopsisAn ambitious vision for design based on the premise that data is material, not abstract.Data analysis and visualization are crucial tools in today''s society, and digital representations have steadily become the default. Yet, more and more often, we find that citizen scientists, environmental activists, and forensic amateurs are using analog methods to present evidence of pollution, climate change, and the spread of disinformation. In this illuminating book, Dietmar Offenhuber presents a model for these practices, a model to make data generation accountable: autographic design.Autographic refers to the notion that every event inscribes itself in countless ways. Think of a sundial, for example?a perfectly autographic device that displays information on itself. Inspired by such post-digital practices of visualization and evidence construction, Offenhuber describes an approach to visualization based on the premise that data is a material entity rather than an abstract representation. Emerson wrote, ?Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of his fellows, and in his own manners and face.? In Autographic Design, Offenhuber introduces a model for design that emphasizes traces, imprints, and self-inscriptions, turning them into sensory displays.In an age where misinformation is harder and harder to identify, Autographic Design makes an urgent and persuasive case for a different approach that calls attention to the production of data and its connection to the material world.
£36.10
MIT Press Ltd The DriveIn the Supermarket and the
Book SynopsisLongstreth explores the early development of two kinds of retail space that have become ubiquitous in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century.Richard Longstreth is one of the few historians to focus on ordinary commercial buildings—buildings usually associated with commercial builders and real estate developers rather than architects and thus generally overlooked by historians of high architecture.Here Longstreth explores the early development of two kinds of retail space that have become ubiquitous in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. One, external, is devoted to the circulation and parking of automobiles on retail premises. Longstreth analyzes the origins of this development in the 1910s and 1920s, with the super service station and then the drive-in market. The other type of space, internal, was introduced soon thereafter with the single-story supermarket. The most innovative aspect of the supermarket was how
£28.00
Open University Press GENDERING OF ART EDUCATION
Book SynopsisThis book traces the main gendered themes of modernist art education from the nineteenth century to the present day.In the period of industrial modernization, art education emphasised the importance of productive modes of creativity in 'making and doing' and promoted rational 'design processes' productive of masculine identities.With the decline of industrial production and with the rise in leisure, services and consumption, art education has shifted its relevance to the more feminine skills of flexibility, management, responsiveness and combinatory modes of creativity. The Gendering of Art Education looks at the way art education has always been implicated in producing gendered identities for modernity's gendered divisions of labour.Table of ContentsIntroductionTheoretical perspectivesNineteenth century contextsPsychology in art educationModernist art, and design educationThe feminization of art educationBeyond genderingtactics and strategiesReferencesIndex.
£29.44
Dover Publications Inc. Egyptian Tattoos Dover Tattoos
Book SynopsisTen striking motifs to delight tattoo enthusiasts of all ages: an Egyptian queen, the Sphinx, a stylized beetle, lotus, birds, and more.
£6.50
