The arts: general topics Books

Book SynopsisDestroyed yet paradoxically preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in a.d. 79, Pompeii and other nearby sites are usually considered places where we can most directly experience the daily lives of ancient Romans. This book explores Pompeii as a modern obsession, in which the Vesuvian sites function as mirrors of the present.

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Book SynopsisA visual celebration of one of photography's most enduring and evocative subjects. It surveys the subject of nudity from the earliest surviving images of Greek and Roman sculpture through studies of living nude models to the burgeoning practice of exploring the human body as pure form.

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Book SynopsisEdgar Degas (1834 1917) was one of the outstanding draftsmen of the nineteenth century, and drawing was not only a central tenet of his art but also essential to his existence. Through an examination of his drawings and pastels, this book reveals the development of Degas s style as well the story of his life, including his complicated relationship with the Impressionists. Following a broadly chronological approach, the author discusses the artist s various subject areas, from the images of dancerswhich form over half of Degas s total oeuvreto nudes, laundresses, milliners, and the less well-known racehorse and landscape drawings. He covers the whole career, from when Degas was copying the Old Masters to learn his craft to when he ceased work in 1912 because of failing eyesight, and sets him within the artistic context of the period. Extensive research, including a careful study of the artist s detailed notebooks, has resulted in a comprehensive exposition with, at its heart, over 200 pencil, black-chalk, pen-and-ink, and charcoal drawings and pastels of timeless appeal."Trade Review"Edgar Degas: Drawings and Pastels" is a thoroughly readable narrative history of an artist and his most essential technique as it developed within the contingencies of modern French society. "H-France Review"

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Book SynopsisIn the Odes, Horace writes of his own work, "I have built a monument more enduring than bronze,"-a striking metaphor that hints at how the poetry and built environment of ancient Rome are inextricably linked. This fascinating work of original scholarship makes the precise and detailed argument that painted illustrations of the Trojan War, both public and private, were a collective visual resource for selected works of Virgil, Horace, and Propertius. Carefully researched and skillfully reasoned, the author's claims are bold and innovative, offering a strong interpretation of the relationship between Roman visual culture and literature that will deepen modern readings of Augustan poets. The Museum of Augustus first provides a comprehensive reconstruction of paintings from the remaining fragments of the cycle of Trojan frescoes that once decorated the Temple of Apollo in Pompeii. It then finds the echoes of these paintings in the Augustan-dated Portico of Philippus, now destroyed, which was itself a renovation of Rome's de facto temple of the Muses-in other words, a museum, both in displaying art and offering a meeting place for poets. It next examines the responses of the Augustan poets to the decorative program of this monument that was intimately connected with their own literary aspirations. The book concludes by looking at the way Horace in the Odes and Virgil in the Georgics both conceptualized their poetic projects as temples to rival the museum of Augustus.Trade Review"Highly recommended."--Choice

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Book SynopsisThis elegantly produced book brings the luxury arts of antiquity back into brilliant life. In contrast to other histories of ancient art that typically privilege well-preserved works of ceramics or stone, Luxus offers an integrated contextual analysis of artifacts fashioned from a wide variety of luxury materials, which survive in far greater number than is typically supposed. These include gold and silver, semiprecious hard stones, and organic materials, such as ivory, fine woods, amber, pearl, coral, and textiles. Examining some of the finest surviving examples of ancient craftsmanship, renowned expert Kenneth Lapatin approaches objects in these diverse media from a variety of viewpoints, providing a valuable model for a more pluralistic approach to visual culture with the greater goal of reinvigorating the study of ancient art and society. As its title implies, Luxus is richly illustrated, containing over 200 images of superb works located in collections throughout the world. Each plate is accompanied by extensive documentation and discursive commentary. An introductory chapter explores the ideologies and uses of the luxury arts in ancient Greece and Rome, considers ancient debates about their value, and traces their decline in modern historiography. The book then goes on to address a broad range of luxury goods, such as intaglios, cameos, vessels, and statuettes, providing a full and multifaceted account of luxury in the ancient world.

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Book SynopsisThis volume showcases dynamic developments in the field of manuscript research that go beyond traditional textual, iconographic, or codicological studies. Using state-of-the-art conservation technologies, scholars investigate how four manuscripts--the Galvin Mur a, the Getty Mur a, the Florentine Codex, and the Relaci n de Michoac n--were created and demonstrate why these objects must be studied in a comparative context. The forensic study of manuscripts provides art historians, anthropologists, curators, and conservators with effective methods for determining authorship, identifying technical innovations, and contextualizing illustrated histories. This information, in turn, allows for more nuanced arguments that transcend the information that the written texts and painted images themselves provide. The book encourages scholars to think broadly about the manuscripts of colonial Mexico and Peru in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and employ new techniques and methods of research.

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Book SynopsisThis incisive book offers a revealing glimpse into the life and thought of a seminal art critic. Lawrence Alloway (1926-1990) was a key figure in the development of modern art in Europe and America from the 1950s to the 1980s. He is credited with coining the term pop art and with championing conceptual art and feminist artists in America. His interests as a critic and as a curator at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York were wide-ranging, however, and included architecture, design, earthworks, film, neo-realism, science fiction, and public sculpture. Early in his career he was associated with the Independent Group in London and although he was largely self-taught, he was a noted educator and lecturer. A prolific writer, Alloway sought to escape the conventions of art-historical discourse. This volume illuminates how he often shaped the field and anticipated approaches such as social art history and visual and cultural studies. Lawrence Alloway: Critic and Curator provides the first critical analysis of the multiple facets of Alloway's life and career, exploring his formative influence on the disciplines of art history, art criticism, and museum studies.The nine essays in this volume depend on primary archival research, much of it conducted in the Lawrence Alloway Papers held by the Getty Research Institute. Each author addresses a distinct aspect of Alloway's eclectic professional interests and endeavors.

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Book SynopsisThis book is a revised and fully updated guide to major objects in the collections at the Getty. This gorgeous new edition of The J Paul Getty Museum Handbook of the Collection features over 350 of the museum's most beloved objects. Updated to include numerous exciting new acquisitions-from the Gillion manuscript to Gauguin's Arii Matamoe (The Royal End), from J M W Turner's Modern Rome to Robert Mapplethorpe's famous Self Portrait-the handbook presents an overview of the Getty's world-renowned collections and provides a history of the museum and its famous founder. From treasures of the ancient world and medieval manuscripts to Renaissance drawings, French furniture, Impressionist paintings, iconic American photographs, and much more, the handbook offers an indispensable look at both the magnificently reimagined Getty Villa in Malibu and the dazzling Getty Center on a hilltop in Brentwood. Whether a regular visitor to the two sites or someone who hasn't yet made the trip, this richly illustrated and beautifully redesigned volume is a must-have for any art lover.

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Book SynopsisThis book includes a rich and fascinating consideration of the golden age of French printmaking. Once considered the golden age of French printmaking, Louis XIV's reign saw Paris become a powerhouse of print production. During this time, the king aimed to make fine and decorative arts into signs of French taste and skill and, by extension, into markers of his imperialist glory. Prints were ideal for achieving these goals; reproducible and transportable, they fueled the sophisticated propaganda machine circulating images of Louis as both a man of war and a man of culture. This richly illustrated catalogue features more than one hundred prints from the Getty Research Institute and the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris, whose print collection Louis XIV established in 1667. An esteemed international group of contributors investigates the ways that cultural policies affected printmaking; explains what constitutes a print; describes how one became a printmaker; studies how prints were collected; and considers their reception in the ensuing centuries.A Kingdom of Images is published to coincide with an exhibition on view at the Getty Research Institute from June 18 through September 6, 2015, and at the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris from November 2, 2015, through January 31, 2016.

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Book SynopsisThis is an eye-opening tour through the exuberant works of two pioneering postwar architects. From 1946 to 1973, Whitney Rowland Smith and his partner, Wayne Williams, designed more than 800 projects, from residential, commercial, and public buildings to housing tracts, multi-use complexes, and parks and master plans for cities. Working in the wake of the first generation of avant-garde architects in Southern California and riding the postwar building boom, their firm, Smith and Williams, developed a pragmatic modernism that, through remarkable planning and design, integrated landscapes with buildings and decisively shaped the modern vocabulary of architecture in Los Angeles. Through a breathtaking array of images, Outside In unveils the core of Smith and Williams' architectural practice. Their most influential designs, the authors show, are compositions of balanced opposites: shelter and openness, private and public, restraint and exuberance, light and shadow. Smith and Williams created spaciousness in their buildings by layering spaces and manipulating the relationship between structure and landscape. This spaciousness expressed modern ideas about the relationship of architecture to environment, of building to site, and, ultimately, of outside to in.

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Book SynopsisQing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges between China and the West examines how the encounters between China and Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries transformed the arts on both sides of the East-West divide. The essays in the volume reveal the extent to which images, artifacts, and natural specimens were traded and copied, and how these materials inflected both cultures' visions of novelty and pleasure, battle and power, and ways of seeing and representing. Artists and craftspeople on both continents borrowed and adapted forms, techniques, and modes of representation, producing deliberate, meaningful, and complex hybrid creations. By considering this reciprocity from both Eastern and Western perspectives, Qing Encounters offers a new and nuanced understanding of this critical period.Trade Review"If modernity can be considered in terms of intensified transcultural exchanges, the volume helps to reset its origins for China and the West to at least one hundred years before the accustomed chronology. . . . Overcoming the traditional bias towards the "fine arts" in art-historical writing, volume moves easily between painting, print, architecture, textiles, interior decoration and technical instruments." --Burlington Magazine "Beautifully illustrated. . . . [This volume] offers a serious treatment of . . . a complex problem through the diversity of the methodologies and perspectives adopted by its contributors."--New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century

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Book SynopsisA rigorous account of the European origins of American art museums American art museums share a mission and format that differ from those of their European counterparts, which often have origins in aristocratic collections. This groundbreaking work recounts the fascinating story of the invention of the modern American art museum, starting with its roots in the 1870s in the craft museum type, which was based on London's South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert) Museum. At the turn of the twentieth century, American planners grew enthusiastic about a new type of museum and presentation that was developed in Northern Europe, particularly in Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. Called Kulturgeschichte (cultural history) museums, they were evocative displays of regional history. American trustees, museum directors, and curators found that the Kulturgeschichte approach offered a variety of transformational options in planning museums, classifying and displaying objects, and broadening collecting categories, including American art and the decorative arts. Leading institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, adopted and developed crucial aspects of the Kulturgeschichte model. By the 1930s, such museum plans and exhibition techniques had become standard practice at museums across the country.Trade Review"When you wander a little off the beaten track at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you may find yourself in an 18th-century French bed- room, or In the Frank Lloyd Wright room, or the poignant Damascus Room, with its Arabic Inscriptions and splashing fountain. Al the Wadsworth Atheneum ln Hartford, recent reinstallations include a Dutch wonder cabinet on a grand scale. At the Art Institute of Chicago, the perfectly miniaturized Thorne period rooms are ever-popular. One doesn't have these diorama experiences at the Louvre or London's National Gallery, or in the Prado. Is it a particularly American practice to shape a fine arts museum as a procession through periods of history understood through decorative and in architectural installations. The museum-goer who has wondered about this will find much to consider inn Kathleen Curran's book, The Invention of the American Art Museum."--Apollo

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Book SynopsisFor centuries Italy has fascinated travelers and artists. From the crumbling ruins of ancient Rome to the crystal- clear light of Venice, artists have found inspiration not only in the cities but also in the countryside and in the deep history and culture. From as early as the 1500s, artists visiting from France, England, the Netherlands, and Germany drew sketches to preserve vivid memories, often creating work of extraordinary atmosphere and beauty in the process. A growing number of tourists in the subsequent centuries fueled a further demand for souvenir views, spurring local artists to craft their own masterpieces. This little book is a narrated assemblage of some of these beautiful views, which transport the reader effortlessly to Italy, rekindling memories, setting intentions, or provoking curiosity. A central essay provides new insights into the topographical renditions of Italian scenes over the centuries, while compelling illustrations of works from the Getty collection by artists such as R. P. Bonington, J. M. W. Turner, Claude Lorrain, Giovanni Battista Lusieri, Canaletto, and many more capture the essence and spirit of Italy.

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Book SynopsisThomas Annan (1829-1887) was the preeminent photographer of Glasgow in the mid-nineteenth century, a period when the rise in industry and population dramatically altered the landscape of the "second city" of the British Empire. Often working in conjunction with civic projects, Annan produced numerous series that underscore the transformation of the city and its environs, though he remains best known for one series in particular: a group of enigmatic photographs of central Glasgow alleys, or "closes," on the verge of demolition. These haunting images, made between 1868 and 1871, and sometimes regarded as precursors of the documentary tradition in photography, represent the notion of progress that underpins much of Annan's oeuvre. Annan's publication history serves as the organizing principle for this book, which considers both the breadth of his body of work as well as the multiple formats in which his photographs appeared and circulated. Featured here are seven examplesincluding private albums and commercial booksthat focus on subjects as varied as the city's streets and closes, the Loch Katrine aqueduct, Glasgow College, the cathedral, and the country estates of the landed gentry, and highlight Annan's extensive engagement with the city of Glasgow. Plates from each of these works are faithfully reproduced in full color, and an introductory essay by the leading authority on Annan surveys the life and career of this little-known but influential photographer.

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Book SynopsisCanaletto, Bernardo Bellotto, Luca Caravarijs, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Francesco Guardi, Hubert Robert-these renowned view painters are perhaps best known for their expansive canvases depicting the ruins of Rome or the canals of Venice. Many of their most splendid paintings, however, feature important contemporary events. Little explored by scholars, they stand out by virtue of their extraordinary artistic quality, vibrant atmosphere, and historical interest. Imbued with a sense of occasion, even drama, and often commissioned by or for rulers, princes, and ambassadors as records of significant events in which they participated, these occasions motivated some of the greatest artists of the era to produce their most exceptional work. Lavishly illustrated and exhaustively researched, this volume provides the first-ever comprehensive study-in any language-of this type of view painting. In examining these paintings alongside the historical events depicted in them, Peter Bjorn Kerber carefully reconstructs the meaning and context these paintings possessed for the artists who produced them and the patrons who commissioned them, as well as for their contemporary viewers. This vital book represents a major contribution to the field of view painting studies and will be an essential resource to scholars and enthusiasts.Trade Review"[The] scholarly catalog, by Getty curator Peter Bjorn Kerber, restores much of the meaning that was lost as these works passed from generation to generation. . . . While anyone can appreciate these paintings aesthetically, viewers . . . require the catalog to understand their layered meanings and slant." --Wall Street Journal

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Book SynopsisThe Academie Royale assembled nearly all of the important French artists working at the time, maintained a virtual monopoly on teaching and exhibitions, enjoyed a priority in obtaining royal commissions, and deeply influenced the artistic landscape in France. Yet the institution remains little understood today: all commentary on it, during its existence and since its abolition, is based on prejudices, both favourable and critical, that have shaped the way the institution has been appraised. This book takes a different approach. Rather than judging the Academie Royale, Michel unravels existing critical discourse to consider the nuances and complexities of the academy's history, re-examining its goals, the shifting power dynamics both within the institution and in the larger political landscape, and its relationship with other French academies and guilds.

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Book SynopsisIn the fall of 1956, Hungarians led a successful rebellion against Soviet control. How-ever, after only ten days of freedom, the uprising was brutally crushed, and the Soviet-aligned minister Janos Kadar assumed power. Focusing on the Kadar era (1956-89), this publication explores the political reforms and artistic experimentations under the regime's authoritarian cultural policy: promote, tolerate, ban. Artists who complied with ideological mandates were financed by the state; those who didn't could exhibit, but they received no monetary support; other artists were forced into exile. Paintings, sculptures, photographs, posters, advertisements, mail art, and underground samizdat literature illustrate the diverse modern art forms and radical aesthetics created during this time. The book provides context for the vibrant debates behind the production of Cold War art and culture in Socialist Hungary and closes with the personal account of one of its main protagonists, the exiled Hungarian artist and critic Geza Perneczky. Promote, Tolerate, Ban showcases art and cultural artifacts from the Getty Research Institute, the Wende Museum of the Cold War, and public and private archives in Budapest.Trade Review"For readers unfamiliar with the complexities of Communist politics, which is to say those who think operating dictatorships is a fairly simple process, this elegant book offers a reasonable rebuttal." --The Art Newspaper

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Book SynopsisRobert Irwin began his career in the 1950s as an abstract painter. As a pioneer of the Light and Space movement in Los Angeles in the 1970s and early '80s, Irwin focused on exploring aesthetic perception as the fundamental feature of art, culminating in what he terms "conditional art" or "site-conditioned work." In addition to being a prolific artist, Irwin has been an active writer throughout his career. This book-now in paperback-includes previously published pieces along with a significant selection of writings published for the first time. The book makes clear that writing as a reflection on aesthetic questions is an integral element of Irwin's multifaceted art practice.

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Book SynopsisFrom 1921 until 1948, Paul J. Sachs (1878-1965) offered a yearlong program in art museum training, "Museum Work and Museum Problems," through Harvard University's Fine Arts Department. Known simply as the Museum Course, the program was responsible for shaping a professional field-museum curatorship and management-that, in turn, defined the organisational structure and values of an institution through which the American public came to know art. Conceived at a time of great museum expansion and public interest in the United States, the Museum Course debated curatorial priorities and put theory into practice through the placement of graduates in museums big and small across the land. In this book, authors Sally Anne Duncan and Andrew McClellan examine the role that Sachs and his program played in shaping the character of art museums in the United States in the formative decades of the twentieth century. "The Art of Curating" is essential reading for museum studies scholars, curators, and historians.Trade Review"This book is a compelling read for curators, academic art historians, museum studies scholars, and anyone interested in the history of art museums, the people behind them, and the historiography of art history." --New Books network " . . . the authors have steered a judicious path between the honorific and the circumspect in their story of a course that, a century later, is all the more interesting to consider." --The New Criterion

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Book SynopsisA century ago, all art was evaluated through the lens of European classicism and its tradition. This volume explores and questions the foundations of the European canon, offers a critical rethinking of ancient and classical art and interrogates the canons of cultures and regions that have often been left at the margins of art history. It underscores the historical and geographical diversity of canons and the local values underlying them. Twelve international scholars consider how canons are constructed and contested, focusing on the relationship between canonical objects and the value systems that shape their hierarchies. Deploying an array of methodologies-including archaeological investigations, visual analysis and literary critique-the authors examine canon formation throughout the world, including Africa, India, East Asia, Mesoamerica, South America, ancient Egypt, classical Greece and Europe. Global studies of art, which are dismantling the traditionally Eurocentric canon, promise to make art history more inclusive. To this end, this volume raises new questions about the importance of canons-including those from outside Europe-for the wider discipline of art history.

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Book SynopsisThe proliferation of new metals-such as stainless steels, aluminium alloys and metallic coatings-in modern and contemporary art and architecture has made the need for professionals who can address their conservation more critical than ever. This volume seeks to bridge the gap between the vast technical literature on metals and the pressing needs of conservators, curators and other heritage professionals without a metallurgy background. It offers practical information in a simple and direct way, enabling curators, conservators and artists alike to understand and evaluate the objects under their care. This invaluable reference reframes information formerly found only in specialised technical and industrial publications for the context of cultural heritage conservation. As the first book to address the properties, testing and maintenance issues of the hundreds of metals and alloys available since the beginning of the twentieth century, it is destined to become an essential resource for conservators, artists, fabricators, curators, collectors and anyone working with modern metals.

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Book SynopsisInside the Getty takes readers on a tour from the Getty Villa to the Getty Center, from the Museum's original home in J. Paul Getty's house to the many labs, libraries, and galleries that fill the Center in Brentwood today. Readers will discover more about the history and daily operations of this institution. The second edition refreshes the illustration program with more recent photography and brings the text up to date with new information about some of the Museum's most prominent new acquisitions, the Getty Research Institute's holdings, the work done by the Getty Conservation Institute and the Getty Foundation, and changes to Getty operations site-wide.

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Book SynopsisBetween 1667 and 1792, the artists and amateurs of the Acade mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris lectured on the Acade mie's 'confe rences', foundational documents in the theory and practice of art. These texts and the principles they embody guided artistic practice and art theory in France and throughout Europe for two centuries. In the 1800s, the Acade mie's influence waned, and few of the 388 Acade mie lectures were translated into English. Eminent scholars Christian Michel and Jacqueline Lichtenstein have selected and annotated forty-two of the most representative lectures, creating the first authoritative collection of the 'confe rences' for readers of English. Essential to understanding French art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these lectures reveal what leading French artists looked for in a painting or sculpture, the problems they sought to resolve in their works, and how they viewed their own and others' artistic practice.

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Book SynopsisThis collection of essays examines experimental scores and source documents from the postwar avant-gardes, interpreted by experts on art, music, dance, and poetry.

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Book SynopsisThis book is the first to examine the meaning encoded in the very form of caricature, a form of popular and polemical visual art that burst suddenly on the scene in late eighteenth-century England, and to explain its rise as a consequence of the emergence of modernity, especially the modern self. Caricature and the modern self developed in tandem: as the modern notion of selfhood_with its valorization of interiority, private authenticity, and consistency across time_rather suddenly replaced older, more flexible notions of identity, so caricature developed as a technology for representing this new self, making character visible on the surface of the body, unmasking the public role and revealing the authentic private self beneath. Through the detailed analysis of specific prints and a wide-ranging compilation of historical evidence, this book constructs a rich and precise cultural history of the conceptual shift that led to the explosion of caricature in late eighteenth-century England. Complemented with seventy-eight illustrations.

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Book SynopsisAn urgent defense of aesthetics and the power of art

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Book SynopsisA passionate and provocative assessment of the decline of performing arts institutions in the United States and how to save them

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Book SynopsisThe role of race and ethnicity in global humor

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Book SynopsisA beautifully curated presentation of the Thousand Character Essay, a masterpiece of Chinese calligraphy that has served as the art form''s classic manual for over 1,400 years. Sung to infants as a lullaby, used to teach reading and writing, and employed as library index codes, the Thousand Character Essay is China''s most widely used and beloved calligraphy textbook. Composed by the literary giant Zhou Xingsi and handwritten by sixth-century Buddhist monk Zhiyong, this masterful work has endured for centuries as the standard guide for brush writing both in formal and cursive scripts.Delight in One Thousand Characters brings this sublime body of art-as-text to English-speaking readers through its translation and explanation by calligraphers and artists Kazuaki Tanahashi and Susan O''Leary. Preserving the renowned beauty of monk Zhiyong''s only extant handwriting, the book visually depicts the traditional script through extensive imagery, including a full, one-hundred-strip edition of Zhiyong''s calligraphy. All images also have corresponding commentary explaining the meaning of each character.Essays and appendices by Tanahashi and O''Leary detail the fascinating history, geographic range, and aesthetic nuance of the essay and of Zhiyong''s rendering--essential material to be familiar with the history, thought, literature, and art of East Asian civilization. For calligraphers, Delight in One Thousand Characters can serve as an advanced primer for practicing both formal and cursive Chinese calligraphy.

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Book SynopsisThis eye-opening volume from longtime curator April Kingsley explores the many guises, transformations, and incarnations of Figurative Expressionism in America. An important movement in postwar American painting, Figurative Expressionism is art at a high excitement level, enjoyable for the sheer love of paint as well as for the way the figure is handled. Absorbed with finding imagery in the process of painting, artists like Grace Hartigan, Lester Johnson, Robert De Niro Sr., Philip Guston, Robert Beauchamp, and Richard Diebenkorn are just a few of the individuals recognised herein. Kingsley deftly navigates major influences, particularly Hans Hofmann, whose spatial concepts, love of pain, bravura ability to handle it, and habit of working from a model or motif had a great impact on these artists. Likewise, in the wake of Willem de Kooning’s 1953 exhibition showcasing his Women paintings, his shift between abstraction and figuration sparked controversy and led painters like Guston, Hartigan, and De Niro to reconsider the incorporation of the figure. With special attention to the emergence of a New York style of painting, Emotional Impact captures the group’s robust, energetic style and explores its origins and evolution in vivid detail.

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Book SynopsisCartoonists make us laugh - and think - by caricaturing daily events and politics. The essays, interviews, and cartoons presented in this innovative book vividly demonstrate the rich diversity of cartooning across Africa and highlight issues facing its cartoonists today, such as sociopolitical trends, censorship, and use of new technologies.Celebrated African cartoonists including Zapiro of South Africa, Gado of Kenya, and Asukwo of Nigeria join top scholars and a new generation of scholar-cartoonists from the fields of literature, comic studies and fine arts, animation studies, social sciences, and history to take the analysis of African cartooning forward.Taking African Cartoons Seriously presents critical thematic studies to chart new approaches to how African cartoonists trade in fun, irony, and satire. The book brings together the traditional press editorial cartoon with rapidly diverging subgenres of the art in the graphic novel and animation, and applications on social media. Interviews with bold and successful cartoonists provide insights into their work, their humour, and the dilemmas they face.This book will delight and inform readers from all backgrounds, providing a highly readable and visual introduction to key cartoonists and styles, as well as critical engagement with current themes to show where African political cartooning is going and why.

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Book SynopsisDemonstrates the power of art in the service of healing Healing from Genocide in Rwanda demonstrates the power of art in the service of healing, and is a testimony to responsive community process in a highly sensitive environment. The work immerses readers in the stories of two Rwandans who as small children experienced the 1994 Genocide. It tells of the horrific tragedy each survived, the courage necessary for surviving, and the humanity they embody. Their stories are framed by two chapters chronicling the transformation, in the Rugerero Survivors’ Village, of a concrete burial slab into a powerful Genocide Memorial with its bone chamber, designed by artist Lily Yeh and built by the villagers. The book is not limited to the literature of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, but belongs to the world as part of the collective human experience. It evokes its world through images (photographs, drawings, paintings, pattern, and color) as well as words. The text itself is visually choreographed. The work draws from Lily Yeh’s multifaceted Rwandan Healing Project under the auspices of Barefoot Artists, a project that included, among other things, drawing and storytelling workshops. Susan Viguers conceived and designed the book, incorporating drawings and paintings by Lily Yeh.Trade Review"In a new book, artist and coauthor Lily Yeh brings the transformational power of art to a very dark place." -- JoAnn Greco, The Pennsylvania Gazette"Healing from Genocide in Rwanda is a major contribution to the growing literature on genocide. Its profoundly moving account of the horror of genocide and the complexity of healing make it of considerable use to all those invested in human rights." -- Gail Daneker, human rights activist"This is a book of two children’s stories of survival. It is not a book for children. It’s a book for adults about the depravity of adults. A horrifying book. And yet an exquisitely beautiful book, a book honoring the truth of genocide and the use of story and art to heal. Governments promise never again and look the other way; Lily Yeh and Susan Viguers give us the gift of extraordinary seeing and caring – without which genocides continue." -- Robert Shetterly, artist and author of Portraits of Racial Justice: Americans Who Tell the Truth

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Book SynopsisAn autodidact explores issues of education itself through essays and personal portraits of the key minds who influenced her What does it mean to be educated? Through her evocative paintings and narrative, author Arlene Goldbard has portrayed eleven people whose work most influenced her—what she calls a camp of angels. She sees each as a brave messenger of love and freedom for a society that badly needs “uncolonized minds.” Goldbard describes how the learning from each changed the course of her life in essays that offer generative moments of a life in art and social change. She also reveals ways a dominant society tried to put a first-generation American from a socially marginal family in her place—and failed. Readers will learn about the author’s own self education, issues of formal higher education and its discontents, and the damage done by a society that prizes profits over people. Goldbard asks readers to consider the impact of credentialism on U.S. society and what we can do to set it right.Trade ReviewOrganizer, advocate, and artist Arlene Goldbard’s innovative autobiography is a dazzling chronicle of a life taking down elitism. Goldbard chartered her own autonomous course towards becoming the influential figure that she is in the world of community-based cultural advocacy; she encourages us to do the same, both in how we live and read and learn in our lives, and even in how we engage with her book. -- L.M. Bogad * The Progressive Magazine *"A deeply personal, passionate and hopeful account of Goldbard’s educational experience." -- Addison Key * The Daily Lobo *

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Book SynopsisAn autodidact explores issues of education itself through essays and personal portraits of the key minds who influenced her What does it mean to be educated? Through her evocative paintings and narrative, author Arlene Goldbard has portrayed eleven people whose work most influenced her—what she calls a camp of angels. She sees each as a brave messenger of love and freedom for a society that badly needs “uncolonized minds.” Goldbard describes how the learning from each changed the course of her life in essays that offer generative moments of a life in art and social change. She also reveals ways a dominant society tried to put a first-generation American from a socially marginal family in her place—and failed. Readers will learn about the author’s own self education, issues of formal higher education and its discontents, and the damage done by a society that prizes profits over people. Goldbard asks readers to consider the impact of credentialism on U.S. society and what we can do to set it right.Trade Review"Organizer, advocate, and artist Arlene Goldbard’s innovative autobiography is a dazzling chronicle of a life taking down elitism. Goldbard chartered her own autonomous course towards becoming the influential figure that she is in the world of community-based cultural advocacy; she encourages us to do the same, both in how we live and read and learn in our lives, and even in how we engage with her book." -- L.M. Bogad * The Progressive Magazine *""A deeply personal, passionate and hopeful account of Goldbard’s educational experience."" -- Addison Key * The Daily Lobo *

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