The arts: general topics Books

Book SynopsisThis book weaves together Reiner Schürmann’s work on art and politics, drawing on a range of the most important thinkers and poets of the twentieth century and beyond.The Place of the Symbolic gathers Reiner Schürmann’s essays on the nexus of art and politics. In keeping with his translation of the destruction of metaphysics into an an-archic philosophy of practice, Schürmann develops a radical theory of the place of symbols, irreducible either to idealist theories of symbols or structuralist accounts of the symbolic. Symbols, Schürmann argues, may provide a bridge between ontological difference and politics. They resist being grasped metaphysically, in terms of representation. Instead, their understanding requires a specific way of existence: attending to the coming-to-presence of phenomena. As such, the understanding of symbols discloses a form of praxis that abandons ultimate grounds and opens onto the manifold. Alongside Schürmann’s theory of symbols, the collection includes essays on the relation between metaphysics, tragedy, and technology; on the “there is” in poetry; as well as on judgment. Throughout these characteristically lucid interventions, Schürmann’s most urgent concern remains a consideration of singular and finite practices that enact a release from universal principles. Art and politics appear here as the unworking of ultimate grounds; that is, as practices attuned to a truly groundless form of life.

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Book SynopsisFarah Nayeri addresses the difficult questions plaguing the art world, from the bad habits of Old Masters, to the current grappling with identity politics. For centuries, art censorship has been a top-down phenomenon--kings, popes, and one-party states decided what was considered obscene, blasphemous, or politically deviant in art. Today, censorship can also happen from the bottom-up, thanks to calls to action from organizers and social media campaigns. Artists and artworks are routinely taken to task for their insensitivity. In this new world order, artists, critics, philanthropists, galleries and museums alike are recalibrating their efforts to increase the visibility of marginalized voices and respond to the people’s demands for better ethics in art. But what should we, the people, do with this newfound power? With exclusive interviews with Nan Goldin, Sam Durant, Faith Ringgold, and others, Nayeri tackles wide-ranging issues including sex, religion, gender, ethics, animal rights, and race. By asking and answering questions such as: Who gets to make art and who owns it? How do we correct the inequities of the past? What does authenticity, exploitation, and appropriation mean in art? Takedown provides the necessary tools to navigate the art world. Trade Review"Beautifully written, thoughtful and thought provoking, relevant to our times." —Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran "An eye-opening look at how contemporary political issues find their ways into the hushed halls of museums and galleries."— Kirkus Reviews"Marvelously lucid."—Hyperallergic "Farah Nayeri’s Takedown, about art and power in the digital age, is a timely book that is uniquely brilliant. The author, backed up by facts, maps out the crazy madness of our current art world which to a great degree reflects today’s extreme capitalism. In a clear and succinct manner, she unravels the giant game of power, money, and competition ingrained in cultural institutions, where issues of individual freedom, gender and religion are at play. The book is easy to read, interesting, and observant. In its conclusion, the author quotes Alice Procter’s answer to the question of how soon a changing of the guard in the art world will happen, 'I think some people have to die' – a fittingly controversial language." — Ai Weiwei"Farah Nayeri’s book is the most complete discussion to date of the impact of Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and 'cancel culture' on the visual arts – in the US, Britain, and France. It includes fascinating and illustrative examples, and concludes with a convincing argument as to why museums should show not only great historical art, but also new, untested art – from all communities. A must-read for every museum director." — Don Thompson, author of The $12 Million Stuffed Shark and The Orange Balloon Dog. Table of ContentsContentsPrologue1. The Clash of Art and Politics2. Just Not Good Enough3. Morally Reprehensible Trash4. Still No Seat at the Big Table5. A Despicable Display of Vulgarity6. All Money Is Dirty7. Take Them All Down8. A Load of RubbishEpilogueImage CreditsBibliographyAcknowledgmentsAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"An excellent study . . . Tsai works chronologically through case studies that variously illuminate the changing terms of Moholy’s utopian humanism and its abiding relationship to technology and pedagogical technique." * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments / vii Plates / xi Introduction / 1 1. New Vision / 12 2. Painting Productivity / 52 3. Sorcerer’s Apprentice / 85 4. Painting after Photography / 113 Conclusion: Homecoming / 142 Postscript / 163 Archive Abbreviations / 168 Notes / 169 List of Illustrations / 197 Index / 201

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Book SynopsisThose born since the digital revolution, seem to have the hardest time re-imagining the role of photography in the world today. Thinking of photography as a visual language is the approach this book adopts to addresses this challenge.Considering photography in this way develops the metaphor of ''learning a language'' when attempting to explain what photography can be, and what it can give a student in transferable creative and life skills. This begins with challenging the pre-conception that successful photography is defined by the successful single image or ''the good photograph''.The book emphasises the central role of narrative and visual storytelling through a technique of ''photosketching'' to develop the building blocks of visual creativity and ultimately to craft successful bodies of photographic work.New Ways of Seeing explains how to both learn and teach photography as a visual language, appropriate for both professionals and students working today.Table of ContentsIntroduction The Narrative Eye1. How Did We Get Here2. Speaking in a Digital Environment3. The Basic Vocabulary of a Visual Language4. #Photosketching5. Building the Narrative6. Developing Fluency7. Speaking OutIndex

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Book SynopsisThe conceptual artist Liam Gillick writes a genealogy of contemporary art, arguing that we need to appreciate its engagement with history. He takes a broad view of artistic creation from 1820 to today, underscoring the industry and intelligence of artists as they have responded to incremental developments in science, politics, and technology.Trade ReviewIn prose at once forthright and oblique, Liam Gillick attempts to extricate himself-and us, his readers-from the enveloping protoplasm known as 'contemporary art.' At the core of this book is a compelling alternative genealogy for our current condition, traced across four soft revolutions from 1820 to 1974. What that genealogy cumulatively reveals is a provocative diagnosis of the present as interminable: an entropic horizon against which artists and curators deploy their 'evasive markers.' With Industry and Intelligence, Gillick proves himself the most lucid inheritor of conceptualism's artist-writers, truly a latter-day Robert Smithson or Dan Graham. -- Tom McDonough, Binghamton University, author of The Situationists and the City: A Reader Read Gillick's book to find the packed sediment of conceptual art discourse undergoing metamorphic transformation-with the marketized artworld's slow heat, dull pressure, and surface torque leaving inevitable traces on an intelligent maker's mind. -- Caroline A. Jones Critical Inquiry Forceful, persuasive and provocative, while Industry and Intelligence will no doubt find purchase as a set text in universities for those studying art history or curatorial studies, it would seem its most urgent readership should be artists themselves, whose struggle has been, and continues to be, one of finding a way to avoid being subsumed completely by the logic of the market: to escape the trap, as Gillick has it, of the 'capitalisation of the mind'. -- Adam Pugh Art MonthlyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Creative Disruption in the Age of Soft Revolutions 1. Contemporary Art Does Not Account for That Which Is Taking Place 2. Projection and Parallelism 3. Art as a Pile: Split and Fragmented Simultaneously 4. 1820: Erasmus and Upheaval 5. ASAP Futures, Not Infinite Future 6. 1948: B. F. Skinner and Counter-Revolution 7. Abstract 8. 1963: Herman Kahn and Projection 9. The Complete Curator 10. Maybe It Would Be Better If We Worked in Groups of Three? 11. The Return of the Border 12. 1974: Volvo and the Mise-en-Scene 13. The Experimental Factory 14. Nostalgia for the Group 15. Why Work? Notes Index

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Book Synopsis"My work is largely concerned with relations between seeing and knowing, seeing and saying, seeing and believing."-Jasper Johns, 1965

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Book SynopsisMaximizing the power of your camera's flash is difficult enough in a studio set-up, but outdoors literally presents a whole new world of challenges. John Gerlach and Barbara Eddy have taken the most asked about subject from their renowned photography workshops and turned it into this guidebook that is sure to inspire your next outdoor shoot, while also saving you time and frustration. Outdoor Flash Photography covers a range of practices from portrait to landscape, including unique strategies that the authors have pioneered through 40 years in the field. Mastering the use of multiple flashes to freeze action is shown through one of most challenging subjects in nature, hummingbirds in flight. This book will benefit photographers of all experience levels who are eager to evolve their outdoor photography and get the most out of their equipment. Trade Review"I think John is one of the best workshop teachers with a great approach to photography. (...) This book is a great way to start developing a skill that most nature photographers don’t use enough." - Tyson Smith for Smoky Mountain Journal of Photography, Winter IssueTable of Contents1. Flash Basics and Choices, 2. Why not use it all of the time?, 3. Third-party options, 4. Diffused light, 5. Main Flash, 6. Balanced Flash, 7. Multiple Flash, 8. Macro Photography Setups, 9. Hummingbird Photography, 10. Packing Flash Equipment and Maintenance,11. Resources

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Finalist for the Marfield Prize (The National Award for Arts Writing), Arts Club of Washington""[An] immaculately researched book. . . . A riveting experience for lovers of any art form. . . . [Wallace] reveals here his masterly skills as a biographer."---Peter Marks, Washington Post"To this aged Michelangelo, with his frailties, his frustrations, and his insoluble contradictions, William Wallace has devoted the latest and most poignant of his books on the artist. . . . When Michelangelo turned seventy, as he does at the beginning of Michelangelo, God’s Architect, he had nineteen more years to live, every one of them spent at work. As dear friends died and his body weakened, he took on a remarkable series of huge, daunting projects, fully aware, as Wallace emphasizes, that he would never live to see them completed. In his deeply spiritual vision of the world, his own limits hardly mattered; God had called him, and he had answered. . . . Wallace, in turn, relies on his own experience to take bold risks as a writer, pushing the haphazard evidence that survives from sixteenth-century Rome to bring the city and its people to life."---Ingrid D. Rowland, New York Review of Books"Wallace brilliantly evokes the day-to-day life of the project as Michelangelo struggled to resolve its many difficulties, which included dealing with the mechanics of the building operation, the calculations of the amount of travertine required, the quarrymen at Tivoli and the practicalities of transport."---Catherine Fletcher, Literary Review"In Michelangelo, God’s Architect Wallace presents the artist’s last two decades as the creative climax of a long career whose earlier phases Wallace has explored in previous books. . . . Wallace demonstrates in sympathetic, intimate detail what being an old, famous, phenomenally active artist entailed on a day-to-day basis in Renaissance Rome. . . . Wallace’s Michelangelo is marvellously human. In some ways he remains the same artist I learned about at school. . . . But there’s a more restless, modern consciousness breaking through – like an unfinished figure from the marble – in the way Wallace shows him confronting the fact that even the longest life is too short for completing all that you want to get done."---Michael Bird, The Telegraph"The strength of Wallace’s work has been to place Michelangelo firmly within his milieu, not as some isolated genius living alone in squalor, but as a human being with strong feelings about friendships and family. . . . He brings the man alive."---James Stevens Curl, Times Higher Education"[Michelangelo, God’s Architect] offers a rich, lively, fascinating, biographical examination of the last two decades of Michelangelo’s life. A period when he became the architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and other buildings even as he continued to sculpt and draw . . . [A] superb book!"---Tyler Green, Modern Art Notes"Including ample illustrations of Michelangelo’s many works of art, this book reveals the active and inimitably creative life of the artist during his final years." * Choice *"In this well-written, informative book, William Wallace casts light on this often-overlooked period of Michelangelo’s life, revealing his mindset as a man and an artist."---Adriano Marinazzo, Architectural Histories

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Book SynopsisA contemporary synthesis of the philosophical, theoretical and practical methodologies of illustration and its future development Illustration is contextualized visual communication; its purpose is to serve society by influencing the many aspects of its cultural infrastructure; it dispenses knowledge and education, it commentates and delivers journalistic opinion, it persuades, advertises and promotes, it entertains and provides for all forms of narrative fiction. A Companion to Illustration explores the definition of illustration through cognition and research and its impact on culture. It explores illustration's boundaries and its archetypal distinction, the inflected forms of its parameters, its professional, contextual, educational and creative applications. This unique reference volume offers insights into the expanding global intellectual conversation on illustration through a compendium of readings by an international roster of scholars, academics and practitioners of illustratiTable of ContentsList of Illustrations viii About the Editor xiv Notes on Contributors xv Series Editor’s Preface xx Preface xxi Introduction: The Paradigm of Illustration 1Alan Male Part I The Theory, Character, and Making of Imagery 19 1 Making Visible: Illustration Through Identification, Categorization, and Metaphor 21Stuart Medley 2 Conceptual Illustration: Framework and Methodologies 47Rebecca Heavner 3 Learning from the Past, from Giotto to Transport for London: Travels in Space and Time 59Laurence North 4 Reportage: Drawing the Stories 85Melanie Reim 5 Animated Illustrations – Animated Illustrators: Influences From Traditional Illustration in Outstanding Animated Films 102María Lorenzo Hernández 6 Illustration in Motion: Sequential Momentum in Children’s Illustrated Books 140Sarah McConnell Part II Education and Research 161 7 Illustrators: Collaborative Problem Solvers in Three Environments 163Susan Hagan 8 What is the Nature of Illustration Expertise? 185David Blaiklock 9 The Illustrator as Visual Problem Solver: A Deconstruction of Conceptual Strategies for the Contemporary Illustrator 199Sue Clarke 10 Design for Life: Research Methods, Design Thinking, and Authorial Illustration Practice 229Stephanie Black 11 Putting Theory into Practice 250Mario Minichiello Part III Context 275 12 How Illustration Works: Exploring a Model of Editorial Illustration in Print and Online Media 277Nanette Hoogslag 13 Shifting Authorship: The Illustrator’s Role in Contemporary Book Illustration: Decision‐Making with Depictive, Augmenting, and Appropriational Strategies: Illustration: Concept of Diffusion vs. Innovation 305Franziska Walther 14 Illustration: On the Epistemic Potential of Active Imagination in Science 330Kathrin Mira Amelung 15 The Symbiotic Dilemma of the Children’s Picture Book Maker in a Polymathic World 354Karenanne Knight 16 Framing Questions and Modes of Inquiry in Illustration Process and Critique 378Robert Brinkerhoff 17 The Inquiring Eye: Illustration and the Production of Knowledge 400Patricia Likos Ricci 18 The Meaning of Illustration in Early Nineteenth-Century America 422Christopher J. Lukasik 19 Historical and Philosophical Relations Between the Uncanny and Illustration 444Carolyn Shapiro 20 The Fabrica of Vesalius: A Semiotic Analysis 467Alan Young Part IV Contemporary and Post-Contemporary Practice 493 21 Future Dialogs for Illustration 495Roderick Mills 22 Developing Creativity in a Polymathic Environment 515Andrew Hall 23 The Polymath Principle in the Twenty-First Century 554Alice A. Carter 24 Race, Perception, and Responsibility in Illustration 570Robyn Phillips-Pendleton 25 Understanding Illustration – Process, Perception, and Profession: The Legitimacy 600Jo Davies Index 623

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Book SynopsisFrom acclaimed photographer Elinor Carucci, a vivid chronicle of one woman's passage through aging, family, illness, and intimacy. It is a period in life that is universal, at some point, to everyone, yet in our day-to-day and cultural dialogue, nearly invisible. Midlife is a moving and empathetic portrait of an artist at the point in her life when inexorable change is more apparent than ever. Elinor Carucci, whose work has been collected in the previous acclaimed volumes Closer (2002, 2009) and Mother (2013), continues her immersive and close-up examination of her own life in this volume, portraying this moment in vibrant detail. As one of the most autobiographically rigorous photographers of her generation, Carucci recruits and revisits the same members of her family that we have seen since her work gained prominence two decades ago. Even as we observe telling details--graying hair, the pressures and joys of marriage, episodes of pronounced illness, the evolution of her aging parents' roles as grandparents, her children's increasing independence--we are invited to reflect on the experiences that we all share contending with the challenges of life, love, and change.Trade ReviewWith her first book, 2002's Closer, Elinor Carucci brought us into her life and took us into her confidence, trusting viewers to understand that a certain amount of nakedness, both physical and emotional, was no big deal in her extended family. . . . She continues that invigorating, illuminating push and pull in her new book, Midlife (Monacelli), combining it with what she describes in the book's afterword as "a particular, very up-close—almost scientific—way of seeing." . . . In one of several images that hark back to Closer, the couple lay naked and side-by-side in bed, Elinor in the foreground, Eran peering at us from behind the crook of her neck. But instead of looking away, contented and abstracted, as she did in 1998, Elinor has turned her head to look out at us, too, with an expression that's older, wiser, and slightly ironic. Life goes on. And on. —Vince Aletti Photograph In Midlife, a deeply personal project spanning a 7-year time scale, Carucci presents her journey through motherhood, marriage, illness, love and ageing. Tracking the day-to-day dynamics of family life and the highs and lows of relationships, the book mixes candid snapshots with surreal and staged scenes. Interspersed with abstract paintings created in blood, Carucci creates a visceral, emotionally charged and startlingly honest document of her experience as a woman living through everyday change. —Celia Graham-Dixon, LensCulture The idea that women will become invisible when they reach middle age isn’t so much a universal truth but a veiled threat—"a kind of campfire story," as the writer Kristen Roupenian puts it in the foreword of Midlife, a new book by Elinor Carucci, who took the discomfiting photo that accompanied Roupenian's viral short story Cat Person. But there is truth, she continues, to the fact “signs of aging in women are treated as though they ought to be invisible.” Suffice to say, in Midlife, that isn't the case: Carucci captures the inevitable unapologetically—and so effectively that one wonders why she ever would apologize in the first place. —Stephanie Eckardt, W Magazine Photography no longer comforted [Carucci]; it confronted her with her own mortality. But she didn't avoid it, as some women begin to do, deftly stepping out of the shots at family gatherings. Instead, she fit her camera with a macro lens and turned on powerful strobe lights to illuminate aging skin, facial hair, and even blood. The images pair the precision of a scientist with all the drama of Caravaggio, an artist who embraced what his own era deemed vulgar and profane, insisting art "be made and painted from life." —Laura Mallonee, WIRED Carucci expertly weaves photographs of her family, photographs of herself, close-ups of objects like pills or a dead baby bird, and what we later find out to be paintings made with the artist’s own blood. . . . The element of drama Carucci invites into photos like Kiss Trace, 2015 and You Know More of the Parenting Falls To Me, 2017 aestheticizes familiar familial tropes to tell a story of the triumphs and challenges of life and love. I could relate and also not relate just enough so that the artist showed us something recognizable but at the same time, entirely her own. To me, the photos monumentalize something that, if we’re lucky enough to have, we usually take for granted. That is, family, intimacy, the process of aging, even those seemingly mundane routines like putting away the groceries which Carucci manages to make tender and beautiful. —Isabella Kazanecki, Musée Magazine Now [Carucci] has released a continuation of her self-portrait in the form of a new photo book, Midlife, which is a document of life in her forties. Here, she once again turns the gaze that she used in the previous decade—harsh and forgiving at the same time—onto herself. the lighting she chooses doesn’t flatter flaws, and gives her images an almost theatrical look, a chiaroscuro effect, throwing into stark relief the parts we might usually try to tone down or avoid looking at for too long or too close. —Charlotte Jansen, Elephant Magazine

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Book SynopsisFrom around 1250 to the close of the fifteenth century, the most important and original work being done in secular illumination was unquestionably in French vernacular history manuscripts. This volume celebrates the vivid historical imagery produced during these years by bringing together some of the finest masterpieces of illumination created in the Middle Ages. It is the first major publication to focus on exploring the ways in which text and illumination worked together to help show medieval readers the role and purpose of history. The images enabled the past to come alive before the eyes of medieval readers by relating the adventures of epic figures such as Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, and even the Virgin Mary. Presented here are approximately fifty-five manuscripts from over twenty-five libraries and museums across the United States and Europe, supplemented by medieval objects ranging from tapestries to ivory boxes. Together they show how historical narratives came to play a decisive role at the French court and in the process inspired some of the most original and splendid artworks of the time. Additional contributors to this volume include Élisabeth Antoine, R. Howard Bloch, Keith Busby, Joyce Coleman, Erin K. Donovan, and Gabrielle M. Spiegel.

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Book SynopsisEmmanuel Levinas’s interview with Françoise Armengaud in 1988 is one of the only statements we have from the philosopher, who became influential in various disciplines through his ethics that focuses on the fine arts specifically. Presented in English for the first time here, this interview brings us Levinas’s understanding of “obliteration” as an uncanny, disruptive, and even “unavailable” concept. Discussing the work of the French sculptor Sacha Sosno, Levinas parses the complex relationship between ethics and aesthetics, examining how they play out in artistic operations and practices. In doing so, he turns away from the “ease and lighthearted casualness of the beautiful” to shed light instead on the processes of material wear and tear and the traces of repair that go into the creation and maintenance of works of art, and which ultimately give them a profound uniqueness of presence. This evocative interview uncovers a hidden thread of aesthetic thinking in Levinas’s work and introduces a new way of looking at artistic practices in general.

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Book SynopsisIf you are striving to find your own style, one of the most powerful exercises you can practice is to find influence and inspiration in the work of those around you, and then emulate that work in an effort to define, shape, and grow your own photographic voice. In Photograph Like a Thief, photographer, author, and retoucher Glyn Dewis embraces the idea of "stealing" and recreating others' work in order to improve as an artist.

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Book SynopsisIn a globalised world, megacorp publishing is all about numbers, about sameness, about following a formula based on the latest megasuccess. Each book is expected to pay for itself and all the externalities of publishing such as offices and CEO salaries. It means that books which take off slowly but have long lives, the books that change social norms, are less likely to be published. Independent publishers are seeking another way. A way of engagement with society and methods that reflect something important about the locale or the niche they inhabit. Independent and small publishers are like rare plants that pop up among the larger growth but add something different, perhaps they feed the soil, bring colour or scent into the world.Trade ReviewSusan Hawthorne’s ideas are brilliant. Independent publishing feeds the cultural identity of our society as well as providing a source of income and satisfaction for writers, editors, and designers. This book must be read and distributed far and wide so that everyone understands the challenges but supports the joy! —Lisa Hanrahan, Convenor, Independent Publishers Committee, Australian Publishers AssociationTable of ContentsIntroduction; Bibliodiversity: What is it? Who invented the term? Biodiversity analogy. Counter to globalisation. Feminist publishing. Multiversity of culture & language. Add: Copyright ?; One size fits all: How oppression is used to create homogenised subordinated groups. Racism. Misogyny. Language oppression. Marketing; The soil: The personal is political; Multiversity: What is it? The politics of knowledge. Appropriation; Production: Creation & production boundaries. Ecological boost; Feminism: Theoretical marginalisation. Impact of womens poverty; Pornography: Homogenisation of women as a class. Who profits? Text in chapter says: Who benefits? Institutionalised hatred; Free trade & free speech: Choice. Who are the defenders of free speech?; Fair trade & fair speech: What is fair speech? How is it different from free speech? Power & equality of outcomes instead of equality of opportunities. Pornography. The Forest Council? paper agreement; Recolonisation: eBooks, digital publishing & the recolonisation of old colonial territories. Pricing compared to farmers selling in supermarkets below cost; Digital bibliodiversity: Networks. Publishing concentration. Fresh Booki.sh; Organic publishing: The ecology of publishing. Making culture sustainable. Languages. Countering one size fits all, globalisation & clear-felled culture; Principles of bibliodiversity: Patterns & processes. Networks. Nested systems. Cycles. Flows. Development. Dynamic balance; Bibliodiversity in the twenty-first century.

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Book SynopsisThe past is what happened. History is what we remember and write about that past, the narratives we craft to make sense out of our memories and their sources. But what does it mean to look at the past and to remember that "nothing happened"? Why might we feel as if "nothing is the way it was"? This book transforms these utterly ordinary observations and redefines "Nothing" as something we have known and can remember. "Nothing" has been a catch-all term for everything that is supposedly uninteresting or is just not there. It will take some—possibly considerable—mental adjustment before we can see Nothing as Susan A. Crane does here, with a capital "n." But Nothing has actually been happening all along. As Crane shows in her witty and provocative discussion, Nothing is nothing less than fascinating. When Nothing has changed but we think that it should have, we might call that injustice; when Nothing has happened over a long, slow period of time, we might call that boring. Justice and boredom have histories. So too does being relieved or disappointed when Nothing happens—for instance, when a forecasted end of the world does not occur, and millennial movements have to regroup. By paying attention to how we understand Nothing to be happening in the present, what it means to "know Nothing" or to "do Nothing," we can begin to ask how those experiences will be remembered. Susan A. Crane moves effortlessly between different modes of seeing Nothing, drawing on visual analysis and cultural studies to suggest a new way of thinking about history. By remembering how Nothing happened, or how Nothing is the way it was, or how Nothing has changed, we can recover histories that were there all along.Trade Review"A startlingly original book: incisive, layered, punny and funny, politically sensitive and passionate, feisty, and thoroughly unimpressed with authority even when impressed with authority's insights."—Peter Fritzsche, author of Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich"Nothing Happened is a delightful romp through what is really meant when nothing is invoked to describe something. This is a remarkably original book that transforms how we see history. It is clever and funny and serious and illuminating. You won't want to put it down."—Marita Sturken, author of Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero"Nothing's left? What does it mean to say that—of a page, of a photo, of a street, of a city, of a loved one? Susan A. Crane, in her invigorating and often funny study of Nothing, tells us vividly why saying Nothing reveals so much about its speaker and so little about history."—Peter Toohey, author of Hold On: The Life, Science, and Art of Waiting"Written with both wide-ranging intelligence and intellectual courage, Nothing Happened is a book of striking interest and originality. Susan A. Crane mobilizes a remarkable range of material and knowledge, creating her very idiosyncratic, and serially insightful discussion on a single unfathomable paradox."—Geoff Eley, author of A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society"[Crane] does not crowd her book or overwhelm the reader. Her patience remains consistent throughout, ensuring the reader's arrival in the end regardless of their scholarly starting point. Nothing Happened takes time to digest and can be enjoyed a second time around....Crane teaches the reader a way to view history. What we do with it is up to us."—Vesper North, Los Angeles Review of Books"Crane's book deserves attention because it deliberately changes the common point of view: Historians are usually aware of evolutionary processes, movements, acts of differentiation and thus of change in time. The author invites her readers to challenge such an 'action-based' approach to history by considering time as a continuum and by focusing not on events but on the 'gap' between them, when things seemingly remain the same."—Anna Karla, International Network for the Theory of History"Crane develops her imaginative argument in a conversational prose style that is filled with puns and references to her own life experiences. She is always present in her text, even when the complexity of Nothing becomes most mind-bending and when her stories move most deeply into the lives of others. This challenging book may push most historians beyond their usual epistemological assumptions, but its provocative themes and remarkable 'episodic' examples will also help them think about the possible significance in the sites of Nothingness they encounter in their own research. More generally, Nothing Happened should broaden the historical conversation among all those who believe that the past is never really dead and that everything has a history."—Lloyd Kramer, Journal of Modern HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction. Episodes in a History of Nothing 1. Studying How Nothing Happens 2. Nothing Is the Way It Was 3. Nothing Happened Conclusion. There Is Nothing Left to Say

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Book SynopsisAn award-winning art critic at New York magazine and Vulture offers rules, prompts, tips and insights for emerging artists to use to get through creative blocks, get the most from materials, manage career challenges and find joy in their work. Illustrations.

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Book SynopsisIf farce follows tragedy, what follows farce? Where does the double predicament of a post-truth and post-shame politics leave artists and critics on the left? How to demystify a hegemonic order that dismisses its own contradictions? How to belittle a political elite that cannot be embarrassed, or to mock party leaders who thrive on the absurd? How to out-dada President Ubu? And, in any event, why add outrage to a media economy that thrives on the same? What Comes After Farce? comments on shifts in art, criticism, and fiction in the face of the current regime of war, surveillance, extreme inequality, and media disruption. A first section focuses on the cultural politics of emergency since 9/11, including the use and abuse of trauma, paranoia, and kitsch. A second reviews the neoliberal makeover of art institutions during the same period. Finally, a third section surveys transformations in media as reflected in recent art, film, and fiction. Among the phenomena explored here are "machine vision" (images produced by machines for other machines without a human interface),"operational images" (images that do not represent the world so much as intervene in it), and the algorithmic scripting of information so pervasive in our everyday lives.Trade ReviewEvery word cuts to the quick in this extraordinary book. Foster shows that true criticism must be swift and surgical, but it must also hurt. He casts his relentless and unflinching gaze on the crises of our time, from new fundamentalisms to alternative facts, from cultural imperialism to perpetual war. And yet these essays do not pose the twenty-first century as a cycle of tragedy and farce, doomed to repeat itself, but as a threshold-through which art can, and perhaps must, take us * Michelle Kuo *What Comes After Farce confirms what many have known for a long time: Hal Foster is indisputably the most important cultural critic writing in English today. No one else consistently offers such nuanced and cogent analyses of the tangled trajectories of the arts and media in this era of globalized financial capitalism. At the same time, few come close to Foster's discerning familiarity with the work of the most venturesome artists, novelists, filmmakers, and architects or to his critical understanding of the difficulties and challenges now facing them in our current state of emergency. -- Jonathan Crary, author of 24/7These essays, mostly on art (and culture and politics and violence and technology), read as one seamless and disturbing account of a catastrophic historical epoch: our own. Hal Foster offers no solace but instead his deft and trenchant wisdom on how we got here. -- Rachel KushnerIlluminating, theoretically informed criticism of contemporary art. -- Kevin Brazil * art-agenda *The rapid pace of Foster's prose captures the frenzied historical moment he is exploring, and his reluctance to offer simple answers acknowledges that multiple possibilities for reshaping our culture are currently ranged against each other. ... [this] lively and eloquent book convinces us that provocative artistic interventions remain possible. -- Oliver Eagleton * Guardian *Foster traces how artists have responded to the political situation, while also asking how art criticism should respond to artworks and, through them, the broader moment ... The title [What Comes After Farce?] is apt, not only because it invokes a great problem facing the left-how to imagine a future amid this mess-but also because it reflects the interrogative quality of the book's texts. -- Erika Balsom * Art in America *The clarity of his prose is satisfying in itself ... While I was reading What Comes After Farce? I felt that I was in the hands of one of the most skillful critics at work today. -- Barry Schwabsky * The Nation *Foster's various texts move smartly and broadly across spheres ranging from sculpture and painting to cinema and literature, but most consistently he choreographs a dance between art and the larger culture that is its cradle. The articulation of one always imprints the other. Time and again in this respect, Foster is a pleasure to read for his sweeping statements that are still earned in their matter-of-factness, as when he makes short work of the contemporary art world's spiraling expansion in tandem with shifting economic structures. -- Tim Griffin * Artforum *Magisterial ... [Foster possesses] a breathtaking erudition that he wears lightly. -- PopMatters * Vince Carducci *

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Book SynopsisExploring art made in Latin America during the 1930s and 1940s, Hemispheric Integration argues that Latin America's position within a global economic order was crucial to how art from that region was produced, collected, and understood. Niko Vicario analyzes art's relation to shifting trade patterns, geopolitical realignments, and industrialization to suggest that it was in this specific era that the category of Latin American art developed its current definition. Focusing on artworks by iconic Latin American modernists such as David Alfaro Siqueiros, Joaquín Torres-García, Cândido Portinari, and Mario Carreño, Vicario emphasizes the materiality and mobility of art and their connection to commerce, namely the exchange of raw materials for manufactured goods from Europe and the United States. An exceptional examination of transnational culture, this book provides a new model for the study of Latin American art. Trade Review"Joining a growing body of transnational studies (i.e., books by Lori Cole, María Amalia García, Michele Greet, Olga Herrera, Anna Indych-López, and Harper Montgomery), Vicario intervenes with an original and rigorous approach that puts into practice a social history of art embedded in the matter of art and in the dynamics of industry and trade." * CAA Reviews *"An excellent study of the complex sociocultural, economic, and political background from which Latin American art emerged as a field of study. Vicario makes a lucid and compelling argument." * Hispania *"Hemispheric Integration will appeal to scholars of all disciplines of this period in Latin America as it advances our understanding of Latin American abstract art as a piece in a larger history of economic and cultural exchanges." * Latin American Research Review *"Hemispheric Integration shows a world in motion. . . .The strength and major contribution of Vicario’s book is attention to materiality…and mobility." * Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture *"A swift and synthetic exploration of art from Latin America. . . .while his case studies focus on canonical figures, Vicario brings fresh insights to their work and offers counterintuitive arguments about their impact during a period of profound geopolitical reconfiguration." * Revista Hispánica Moderna *Table of ContentsACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction 1. “The Revolutionary Medium”: Siqueiros’s Duco Muralism 2. Morphological Constructivism: Torres-García’s “New Art of America” 3. OIAA/MoMA: The Rockefeller Nexus of Latin American Art 4. Local Color: Carreño’s Art of “Interpenetration” Conclusion NOTES SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS INDEX

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Book SynopsisGroup Analytic Art Therapy, written by an internationally renowned psychotherapist, provides readers with a practical and theoretical framework for using group art therapy in a range of settings.Based on over 20 years' experience of conducting group art therapy, this book is packed with suggestions for group art therapy practice and many explanatory diagrams. The author also explores the dynamics and psychological effects of diverse group situations, based on examples from his own clinical practice, and offers an illuminating insight in to his own theories and practical applications of group art therapy in the context of the developments in the field.Group Analytic Art Therapy is both a comprehensive reference and an inspiring text for practising and trainee art therapists, psychotherapists and group therapists.Trade ReviewGerry McNeilly's "Group Analytic Art Therapy" fills a gap in group art therapy literature on both sides of the Atlantic. The book reinforces the need for art therapy theoreticians and professionals to continue researching aspects of their profession and to write about their efforts. It encourages them to reflect on their practice and to share those reflections with the wider community of professionals working in therapeutic enterprises.... "Group Analytic Art Therapy" is an important contribution to the still relatively small body of group art therapy literature. Art therapists, group analysts, psychotherapists, and art educators will find the book useful for the insight it gives into the theory and practice of group art psychotherapy. -- Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy AssociationFor hungry readers, who know what they are looking for, there is much to chew on here - about group dynamics, the concept of "the whole group", group transferences and bringing group and individual into a healthy working balance, as well as concepts that McNeilly has developed in connection with specific features of the art therapy group. -- Association of University and College Counsellors JournalThe book explores the dynamics of diverse group situations amply illustrated from McNeilly's own clinical experience. -- Journal of Analytical PsychologyMcNeilly is a practicing art psychotherapist in the UK and an art therapy educator in Portugal. Drawing on some 20 years of experience conducting group art therapy, he discusses his theories about group processes and dynamics. Coverage includes an overview of group analytic theory, a brief history of group analytical art therapy, Foulkes concept of the "group as a whole", the concept of "the individual in the group" and transference constellations. -- Book NewsIn the community where I work, art therapy is central, deeply containing group, to which group members attribute a special role in their recovery. McNeilly's rich and stimulating book helped me to understand more clearly why this is so. I recommend it. -- Therapy TodayReading the text has been illuminating, for McNeilly has shed new light on the depths of the group analytic enterprise... I warmly commend this book to art therapists and group analysts alike. This is a rich, readable text which will stimulate thought and enable us to see more clearly the simple in the complex and the complex in the simple. -- From the Foreword by Malcolm PinesThis is a book which will be of great use to art therapists working with groups whether they wish to follow a strictly analytic approach in the work or not. Indeed, this book will be of great interest to any group therapist. It highlights and clarifies many of the profound aspects of the group analytic experience and it describes the possibilities offered by introducing art-making to the group analytic situation. The theoretical text is accompanied, all the way through, by hypothetical and real clinical examples of the concepts he explores making it easier to digest. -- JiacatTable of ContentsPart One. 1. How I Started: Brief Outline; Historical Review; S. H. Foulkes' Influence. 2. Early Formulations and Developments: Introduction to S. H. Foulkes' Theories; Movement through: Group Art Therapy - Group Art Psychotherapy - Thematic/Non Thematic Art Therapy - Directive and Non Directive Art Therapy - Group Analytic Art Therapy; Early Commentary on the Matrix and Resonance. 3. Early Theoretical and Practical Developments: The Therapeutic Community: Open Art Groups; Community Art Groups; Small Art Therapy Groups; Guiding Principles on Methodology. 4. The Group as a Whole: General Theories; Comparisons and Differences between Foulkes and Bion; Group Analytic Art Therapy Perspective; Group Illustration; Therapist's Technical Approach; Cross-Reference to Primarily Verbal Groups. 5. The Individual in the Group - Transference Constellations: Introduction; Therapist's Role - Transference Constellations: In Art Therapy, Group Illustration, The New Group, New Member Entering Existing Group. 6. Analytic Transitions: Introduction; Early Transitions; The Melting Pot in a Therapeutic Community; Technical Transitions; Individual Art Therapy and Psychotherapy; Art Groups to Analytic Art Groups. Part Two. The Portuguese Papers - New Developments. 7. Introduction; Literature Review; Developments Since 1990. 8. That Which Binds Together Can Also Pull Apart; The Deep End of Group Analytic Art Therapy; Three Dimensional Triangular Theory; Dualities, Polarities and Opposites. 9. Openings: Connections between Resonance, Intuition and Wisdom; Complexity, Subtlety and Simplicity. 10. Cross FertilizationThe Development of an Organic Matter Analogy; The Exploration of Theoretical Components of Structure, Content and Process; A New Theoretical Perspective of `The Individual in the Group as a Whole'. 11. The Matrix - Pattern - Fullness of Emptiness: A Uniting of Foulkes' `Matrix' with Cortesão's `Pattern' with McNeilly's `Fullness of Emptiness'. Final Note.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Susan Rankin has for decades reflected on the relations between the visible signs on the page and musical sound. This book boldly steps in a new direction in several fields of study: palaeography, history of the book, history of liturgy, music history, art history, and the broad history of the eighth and ninth centuries.” —Calvin M. Bower, translator of Fundamentals of MusicTable of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Music Examples List of Tables Note on Musical Examples Note on Manuscript Citations Preface Abbreviations Introduction Making Chant Books Part I. Reforming and Regulating 1. Musical Persuasion 2. Musical Eloquence 3. The Provision and Ownership of Chant Books Part II. Displaying Pronuntiatio 4. Making Instructions Visible 5. The Delivery of Festal Readings and Prayers 6. Singing the Psalms Part III. Making Chant Books 7. Books for Priests and Books for Singers 8. Purple, Gold, Silver and Ivory 9. New Directions 10. Fulfillment and Transformation Appendix. Feasts with chants included in the second sacramentary in Paris BnF lat. 9430 and Tours 184 Bibliography Index of Manuscripts General Index

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Book SynopsisThe book responds to the challenge of the global turn in the humanities from the perspective of art history. A global art history, it argues, need not follow the logic of economic globalization nor seek to bring the entire world into its fold. Instead, it draws on a theory of transculturation to explore key moments of an art history that can no longer be approached through a facile globalism. How can art historical analysis theorize relationships of connectivity that have characterized cultures and regions across distances? How can it meaningfully handle issues of commensurability or its absence among cultures? By shifting the focus of enquiry to South Asia, the five meditations that make up this book seek to translate intellectual insights of experiences beyond Euro–America into globally intelligible analyses.

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the growing field of bio-design through interdisciplinary creative practice. The volume illustrates a range of experimental working techniques while offering a foundational understanding of lab practice principles. The book highlights the myriad of opportunities presented by microorganisms that have reshaped the planet and made it habitable.The book provides an account of the creation of living materials from the point of view of an architectural design practitioner. The transition from traditional design practice to laboratory investigation is captured, highlighting strategies of creating partnerships across a range of fields. The book demonstrates laboratory methods and ways of investigating the development of living materials and celebrates the growing body of practitioners, scientists, activists and anthropologists who are reimagining new strategies for addressing contemporary environmental challenges.Designer''s Guide to Lab Practice loTable of Contents1. This is not the Beginning 2. Design in the Lab 3. Working Methods 4. Experiments in Design 5. Where to Next?

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Book SynopsisWhat do the best youth arts programs look like, and how can young people develop through them? This groundbreaking book highlights the conditions needed for youth arts work to be successful, using six international, best practice case studies.

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Book SynopsisElsy Lahner is the curator of contemporary art at the Albertina Museum in Vienna.Klaus Albrecht Schöder is an Austrian art historian and the director of the Albertina, Vienna.

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