Theory of art Books

Book SynopsisAn impressive list of authors examine how abjection can be discussed in relation to a host of different subjects, including marginality and gender.Trade Review'The exploration of the implications of abjection: being abject, positioning as abject, for the visual and performing arts defines for this collection a double relevance. It adds to the study of abjection; it adds also to the analysis of a range of artistic practices.... most of the chapters will themselves become significant in their areas while the whole performs an enlivening re-engagement and expansion of abjection as a term in contemporary cultural analysis.'Griselda Pollock -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction: Approaching abjection - Rina Arya and Nicholas Chare1. Art, abjection and bare life - John Lechte2. A lesbian, feminist and Canadian perspective: queering abjection - Jayne Wark3. Manet's Abject Surrealism - Nicholas Chare4. Juan Davila's abject after-image - Rex Butler and A. D. S. Donaldson5. Animals, art, abjection - Barbara Creed and Jeanette Hoorn 6. The fragmented body as an index of abjection - Rina Arya7. Skin, body, self: the question of the abject in the work of Francis Bacon - Ernst van Alphen 8. Abjection, melancholia and ambiguity in the works of Catherine Bell - Estelle Barrett9. Corpus Delicti - Kerstin Mey10. Art is on the way: from the abject opening of underworld to the shitty ending of oblivion - Calvin Thomas11. Base materials: performing the abject object - Daniel WattIndex

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Book SynopsisHere is a rare opportunity to view painting through the discerning eyes of one of the world’s foremost abstract painters. Stella uses the crisis of representational art in sixteenth-century Italy to illuminate the crisis of abstraction in our time.Trade ReviewMr. Stella’s way of dealing with single paintings, 36 of which are reproduced in color, makes for one tour-de-force after another… Paintings familiar and unfamiliar, from the ‘Mona Lisa’ to Wassily Kandinsky’s ‘Composition IX,’ gain a just-washed sparkle. -- Peter Schjeldahl * New York Times Book Review *Working Space comes as something of a bombshell. For this is a book that explodes a great many received ideas about abstraction… [It] is certainly one of the most remarkable books ever written on the subject. What makes it so remarkable, of course, is that Stella is unquestionably the most celebrated abstract painter of his generation. -- Hilton Kramer * The Atlantic *It is seldom that a major artist is prepared to commit himself publicly to a considered, large-scale survey of the art of his time, and to relate it moreover to substantial cross-sections of the art of the past. Frank Stella has done this in his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard, with considerable erudition, great verve and genuine originality. -- John Golding * Times Literary Supplement *This is a marvelously insightful and thought-provoking book… Stella’s perception of the problem is correct—abstraction has reached a watershed. His analysis of that problem is erudite and plausible, and at times even passionate. If he does not solve it within these pages, he at least has made us consider its ramifications, and he has enabled us to look at art from a valuable and rarely available perspective. -- Edward J. Sozanski * Philadelphia Inquirer *Working Space develops its thesis with such gusto, elegance, and conviction… The text is rich with insight, integrity, and unexpected rethinkings of erstwhile familiar images. -- David Anfam * Art International *This is art history and art criticism of a high order, detailed and refreshingly idiosyncratic. Both scholarly and hip, Stella has written a book that reveals the painter’s mind and studio, allowing us to see the play of history and vision that goes on within. Highly recommended. -- Calvin Reid * Library Journal *Table of ContentsCaravaggio The Madonna of the Rosary Annibale Carracci Picasso A Common Complaint The Dutch Savannah Illustration Credits Index

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Book SynopsisArt in Theory (1648-1815) provides a wide-ranging and comprehensive collection of documents on the theory of art from the founding of the French Academy until the end of the Napoleonic Wars.Trade Review"All three of these books are essential additions to any public or private library concerned with Art. For the reader who comes a novice to this discipline they provide a superb first entry point to an otherwise bewildering array of publications concerned with the theory of art. Rather like a jigsaw puzzle they encourage the reader to make the connections that will complete the picture. But more importantly, what each of these anthologies does brilliantly is to tempt the relative novice to go further with their research. By presenting an overview of the evolution of a set of ideas within defined parameters and over a specified period of time through the erudite selection of sensitively edited primary texts, the reader is subtly invited to seek out the originals and flesh out their understanding. For those who are more experienced in the field they cleverly provide a means of prompting new ideas within the reader's field of enquiry." --Journal of Art & DesignTable of ContentsAcknowledgements. A Note on the Presentation and Editing of Texts. General Introduction. Part I: Establishing the Place of Art:. Introduction. 1. Ancients and Moderns:. 1. From The Painting of the Ancients 1637: Franciscus Junius. 2. Letter to Junius 1637: Peter Paul Rubens. 3. From The Art of Painting, its Antiquity and Greatness 1649: Francisco Pacheco. 4. Dedication to Constantijn Huygens from Icones I 1660: Jan de Bisschop. 5. From Painting Illustrated in Three Dialogues 1685: William Aglionby. 6. 'A Digression on the Ancients and the Moderns' 1688: Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle. 7. Preface and 'Second Dialogue' from Parallel of the Ancients and Moderns 1688: Charles Perrault. 8. From Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning 1694: William Wotton. 2. The Academy: Systems and Principles:. 9. Letters to Chantelou and to Chambray 1647/1665: Nicholas Poussin. 10. Observations on Painting c. 1660-5: Nicholas Poussin. 11. Recollections of Poussin 1662-1685: Various Authors. 12. Petition to the King and to the Lords of his Council 1648: Martin de Charmois. 13. Statutes and Regulations of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture 1648. 14. From An Idea of the Perfection of Painting 1662: Roland Fréart de Chambray. 15. Letter to Poussin c. 1665: Jean Baptiste Colbert. 16. 'The Idea of the Painter, Sculptor and Architect' 1664: Giovanni Pietro Bellori. 17. From Conversations on the Lives and Works of the Most Excellent Ancient and Modern Painters 1666: André Félibien. 18. Preface to Seven Conferences 1667: André Félibien. 19. 'First Conference' 1667: Charles LeBrun. 20. 'Second Conference' 1667: Philippe de Champaigne. 21. 'Sixth Conference' 1667: Charles LeBrun. 22. 'Conference on Expression' 1668: Charles LeBrun. 23. Table of Precepts: Expression 1680: Henri Testelin. 3. Form and Colour:. 24. 'De Imitatione Statuorum', before 1640: Peter Paul Rubens. 25. From The Microcosm of Painting 1657: Francesco Scannelli. 26. From 'Diary of the Cavaliere Bernini's Visit to France' 1665: Paul Fréart de Chantelou. 27. From De Arte Graphica 1667: Charles-Alphonse Du Fresnoy. 28. 'Remarks on De Arte Graphica' 1668: Roger de Piles. 29. From The Rich Mines of Venetian Painting 1676: Marco Boschini. 30. 'Conference on Titian's Virgin and Child with St John' 1671: Phillipe de Champaigne. 31. 'Conference on the Merits of Colour' 1671: Louis Gabriel Blanchard. 32. 'Thoughts on M. Blanchard's Discourse on the Merits of Colour' 1672: Charles LeBrun. 33. From Dialogue upon Colouring 1673: Roger de Piles. 34. From Practical Discourse on the Most Noble Art of Painting c. 1675: Jusepe Martinez. 35. From The Antiquity of the Art of Painting c. 1690: Felix da Costa. 4. The 'je ne sais quoi':. 36. From The Hero 1637: Baltasar Gracián. 37. From The Art of Worldly Wisdom 1647: Baltasar Gracián. 38. 'Answer to Davenant's Preface to Gondibert' 1650: Thomas Hobbes. 39. From Fire in the Bush and The Law of Freedom in a Platform 1650/2: Gerrard Winstanley. 40. From Pensées c.1654-1662: Blaise Pascal. 41. On Grace and Beauty from Conversations on the Lives and Works of the Most Excellent Ancient and Modern Painters 1666: André Félibien. 42. From The Conversations of Aristo and Eugene 1671: Dominique Bouhours. 43. From A Compleat Body of Divinity 1689/1701: Samuel Willard. 44. On Art and Beauty, Before 1716: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. 5. Practical Resources:. 45. From Miniatura; or The Art of Limning, Revised 1648: Edward Norgate. 46. On Rembrandt and Jan Lievens c.1630: Constantijn Huygens. 47. Letters to Constantijn Huygens 1636-9: Rembrandt van Rijn. 48. From In Praise of Painting 1642: Philips Angel. 49. From The Art of Painting, its Antiquity and Greatness 1649: Francisco Pacheco. 50. Preface to Perspective Practical 1651: Jean Dubreuil. 51. From Introduction to the Academy of Painting; or, The Visible World 1678: Samuel van Hoogstraten. 52. 'The Excellency of Painting' from A Treatise of Perspective 1684: R. P. Bernard Lamy. 53. From Principles for Studying the Sovereign and Most Noble Art of Painting 1693: José Garcia Hidalgo. Part II: The Profession of Art:. Introduction. 6. Painting as a Liberal Art:. 54. From The Great Book on Painting 1707: Gerard de Lairesse. 55. From The Principles of Painting 1708: Roger de Piles. 56. On Feminine Studies, After 1700: Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757). 57. 'To the Reader' 1710: Mary Chudleigh. 58. From The Pictorial Museum and Optical Scale 1715-24: Antonio Palomino y Velasco. 59. From Essay on the Theory of Painting 1715: Jonathan Richardson. 60. From The Science of a Connoisseur 1719: Jonathan Richardson. 61. On the Grand Manner, from 'On the Aesthetic of the Painter' 1721: Antoine Coypel. 62. From 'On the Excellence of Painting' 1721: Antoine Coypel. 63. From Cyclopaedia 1728: Ephraim Chambers. 64. 'On Drawings' 1732: Comte de Caylus. 65. 'The Life of Antoine Watteau' 1748: Comte de Caylus. 7. Imagination and Understanding:. 66. 'Of the Association of Ideas' from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1700: John Locke. 67. From 'The Moralists, A Philosophical Rhapsody' 1709: Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. 68. From 'A Notion of the Historical Draught of the Tablature of the Judgement of Hercules' 1712: Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. 69. 'On the Pleasures of the Imagination' 1712: Joseph Addison. 70. From Treatise on Beauty 1714: Jean-Pierre de Crousaz. 71. From Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting 1719: Abbé Jean-Baptiste du Bos. 72. Preface to An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue 1725: Francis Hutcheson. 73. 'Third Dialogue' from Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher 1732: George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. 74. 'Of the Sublime' 1725: Jonathan Richardson. 75. 'The Beau Ideal' 1732: Lambert Hermanson ten Kate. 76. From The Philosopher's Cabinet 1734: Pierre de Marivaux. 77. 'The Beauty of the World' c.1750: Jonathan Edwards. Part III: Judgement and the Public Sphere:. Introduction. 8. Classical and Contemporary:. 78. From A Treatise on Ancient Painting 1740: George Turnbull. 79. From 'Discourse on the Arts and Sciences' 1750: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 80. From 'Discourse on the Origins of Inequality' 1755: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 81. From Observations upon the Antiquities of the Town of Herculaneum 1753: Jérôme-Charles Bellicard and Charles Nicolas Cochin fils. 82. From Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture 1755: Johann Joachim Winckelmann. 83. From An Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting 1761: Daniel Webb. 84. From The Antiquities of Athens 1762: James Stewart and Nicholas Revett. 85. From A History of Ancient Art 1764: Johann Joachim Winckelmann. 86. 'Of the Camera Obscura' from Essay on Painting 1764: Francesco Algarotti. 87. From Laocoön: on the Limitations of Painting and Poetry 1766: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. 9. Aesthetics and the Sublime:. 88. From Reflections on Poetry 1735: Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. 89. 'Prolegomena' to Aesthetica 1750: Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. 90. From The Analysis of Beauty 1753: William Hogarth. 91. 'Dialogue on Taste' 1755: Allan Ramsay. 92. 'Of the Standard of Taste' 1757: David Hume. 93. From A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful 1757: Edmund Burke. 94. 'An Essay on Taste' 1757: Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu. 95. 'Essay on Taste' 1757: Voltaire. 96. Letters to 'The Idler' 1759: Joshua Reynolds. 97. From Conjectures on Original Composition 1759: Edward Young. 98. From Giphantia 1760: Charles François Tiphaigne de la Roche. 99. From Aesthetica in Nuce 1762: Johann Georg Hamann. 100. From Reflections on Beauty and Taste in Painting 1762: Anton Raphael Mengs. 101. 'Beautiful, Beauty' from Philosophical Dictionary 1764: Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet). 102. 'Of Taste' from Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man 1785: Thomas Reid. 10. The Practice of Criticism:. 103. Reflections on Some Causes of the Present State of Painting in France 1747: Etienne La Font de Saint-Yenne. 104. From 'Letter on the Exhibition of Works of Painting, Sculpture, etc.' 1747: Jean-Bernard, Abbé le Blanc. 105. From 'Letter on Painting, Sculpture and Architecture' 1748: Louis-Guillaume Baillet de Saint-Julien. 106. 'On Composition' 1750: Comte de Caylus. 107. From Essay on Architecture 1753: Marc-Antoine, Abbé Laugier. 108. 'Letter to M. de Bachaumont on Taste in the Arts and Letters' 1751: Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye. 109. 'Art' from the Encyclopédie 1751: Denis Diderot. 110. 'Genius' from the Encyclopédie 1757: Jean-Francois, Marquis de Saint-Lambert. 111. 'Observation' from the Encyclopédie 1765: Anonymous. 112. From the Correspondence Littéraire 1756: Friedrich Melchior, Baron Grimm. 113. 'Reflexions on Sculpture' 1761: Etienne Falconet. 114. From the 'Salon of 1763', 1763: Denis Diderot. 115. From the 'Salon of 1765' and 'Notes on Painting' 1765: Denis Diderot. 116. From the 'Salon of 1767', 1768: Denis Diderot. Part IV: A Public Discourse:. Introduction. 11. Consolidation and Instruction:. 117. Letter to Richard Graves 1760: William Shenstone. 118. 'Of Academies' c.1760-1: William Hogarth. 119. From 'Letter on Sculpture' 1765: Frans Hemsterhuis. 120. 'A Discourse upon the Academy of Fine Art at Madrid' 1766: Anton Raphael Mengs. 121. Correspondence 1766-7: Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley. 122. On the Death of General Wolfe c.1771: Benjamin West. 123. From Discourses on Art, III, VI and XI 1770-82: Joshua Reynolds. 124. Discourse IX 1780: Joshua Reynolds. 125. On Exhibtions by Angelica Kauffman 1775-86: Various Reviewers. 126. From An Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England 1774: James Barry. 127. From 'Disconnected Thoughts on Painting, Sculpture and Poetry' 1781: Denis Diderot. 128. From Treatise on the Principles and Rules of Painting 1781: Jean-Etienne Liotard. 129. From A Review of the Polite Arts in France 1782: Valentine Green. 130. 'Address to the Royal Academy of San Fernando regarding the Method of Teaching the Visual Arts' 1792: Francisco Goya. 131. From the Dictionnaire des Arts de Peinture, Sculpture et Gravure 1792: Claude-Henri Watelet and Pierre-Charles Lévesque. 132. A Letter to the Dilettanti Society 1798: James Barry. 12. Revolution:. 133. From Mémoires Secrets 1783-5: Anonymous. 134. Letter to Joseph-Marie Vien 1789: Charles-Étienne-Gabriel Cuvillier. 135. Review of the Salon of 1789: Comte de Mende Maupas. 136. 'Artists' Demand' 1789: Students of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. 137. Letter to Thomas Jefferson 1789: John Trumbull. 138. Response to Edmund Burke 1790: Mary Wollstonecraft. 139. 'On the System of Teaching' from Considerations on the Arts of Design in France 1791: Antoine Quatremère de Quincy. 140. On his Picture of Le Peletier 1793: Jacques-Louis David. 141. Preliminary Statement to the Official Catalogue of the Salon 1793: Gazat, Minister of the Interior/Anonymous. 142. 'The Jury of Art' 1793: Jacques-Louis David. 143. Proposal for a Monument to the French People 1793: Jacques-Louis David. 144. Project for the Apotheoses of Barra and Viala 1794: Jacques-Louis David. 145. 'Foreword' to the Historical and Chronological Description of the Monuments of Sculpture 1795/7: Alexandre Lenoir. Part V: Nature and Human Nature:. Introduction. 13. The Human as Subject:. 146. Letters 1758-73: Thomas Gainsborough. 147. On Thomas Gainsborough 1788: Joshua Reynolds. 148. 'Of the Effects of Genius' 1770: William Duff. 149. 'On German Architecture' 1772: Johann Wolfgang Goethe. 150. On London, from Letter to Baldinger 1775: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. 151. From Essays on Physiognomy 1775-8: Johann Kaspar Lavater. 152. From Sculpture: Some Observations on Form and Shape from Pygmalion's Creative Dream 1778: Johann Gottfried Herder. 153. 'What is Enlightenment?' 1784: Immanuel Kant. 154. From 'On the Creative Imitation of Beauty' 1788: Karl Phillip Moritz. 155. From Critique of Judgment 1790: Immanuel Kant. 156. From Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste 1790: Archibald Alison. 157. From Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man 1795-6: Friedrich Schiller. 158. From 'On Naive and Sentimental Poetry' 1795-6: Friedrich Schiller. 159. Letter to Karl Friedrich von Heinitz 1796: Asmus Jakob Carstens. 160. The 'Earliest System-Programme of German Idealism' c.1796: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. 14. Landscape and the Picturesque:. 161. 'Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening' 1764: William Shenstone. 162. 'The Principles of Painting' from Essays on Prints 1768: William Gilpin. 163. 'Letter on Landscape Painting' 1770: Salomon Gessner. 164. Exchange of Letters on Landscape Painting 1784: Salomon Gessner and Konrad Gessner. 165. From Observations on the River Wye 1782: William Gilpin. 166. 'Landscape (Arts of Design)' from General Theory of the Fine Arts 1771-4: Johann Georg Sulzer. 167. Review of The Fine Arts in their Origin, their True Nature and Best Application, by J.G. Sulzer 1772: Johann Wolfgang Goethe. 168. 'Nature' 1782-3: Georg Christof Tobler. 169. 'A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape' 1785: Alexander Cozens. 170. 'On Landscape Painting' 1790: Johann Kaspar Lavater. 171. From 'On Picturesque Beauty' and 'On Picturesque Travel' 1792: William Gilpin. 172. 'On Landscapes and Seapieces' from Charis, or on Beauty and the Beautiful in the Imitative Arts 1793: Friedrich Ramdohr. 173. From 'An Essay on the Picturesque' 1794: Sir Uvedale Price. 174. From The Landscape: A Dramatic Poem 1795: Richard Payne Knight. 175. From 'A Dialogue on the Distinct Characters of the Picturesque and the Beautiful' 1801: Sir Uvedale Price. 176. Notebook and Diary Entires, c.1790 to 1797: Katherine Plymley. 177. 'Letter on Landscape Painting' 1795: Francois René, Comte de Chateaubriand. 178. 'On Poetry and Our Relish for the Beauties of Nature' 1797: Mary Wollstonecraft. 179. From Northanger Abbey c.1799-1803: Jane Austen. Part VI: Romanticism:. Introduction. 15. Romantic Aesthetics:. 180. From 'Critical Fragments' 1797: Friedrich Schlegel. 181. From 'Athenaeum Fragments' 1798: Friedrich Schlegel. 182. 'Fugitive Thoughts' 1798-1801: Novalis. 183. From Aphorisms on Art 1802: Joseph Görres. 184. 'Advertisement' from Lyrical Ballads 1798: William Wordsworth. 185. From Preface to Lyrical Ballads 1800: William Wordsworth. 186. From Description of Paintings in Paris and the Netherlands in the Years 1802-04 1805: Friedrich Schlegel. 187. From 'Concerning the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature' 1807: Friedrich Schelling. 188. 'The Spirit of True Criticism' from A Course of Lectures Dramatic Art and Literature 1808: August Wilhelm Schlegel. 189. From 'Aphorisms on Art' 1788-1818: Henry Fuseli. 190. 'On the Principles of Genial Criticism' 1814: Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 191. From A Philosophical View of Reform 1819-20: Percy Bysshe Shelley. 16. Painting and Fiction:. 192. From Confessions from the Heart of an Art-Loving Friar 1796: Wilhelm Wackenroder. 193. From Franz Sternbald's Wanderings 1798: Ludwig Tieck. 194. On the Caprichos 1799: Francisco de Goya. 195. The Blue Flower from Henry of Ofterdingen 1799-1801: Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). 196. Letters 1802: Philipp Otto Runge. 197. From Corinne 1807: Madame de Staël. 198. Letters 1799-1805: William Blake. 199. Marginal Notes to Reynolds' Discourses 1801-9: William Blake. 200. From Descriptive Catalogue 1809: William Blake. 201. Introduction to The Grave 1808: Henry Fuseli. 202. From Views on the Dark Side of Natural Science 1808: Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert. 203. 'Remarks Upon a Landscape Painting Intended as an Altar Piece by Herr Friedrich' 1809: Friedrich Ramdohr. 204. On The Cross in the Mountains, Letter to Schulz 1809: Caspar David Friedrich. 205. 'Various Emotions before a Seascape by Friedrich' 1810: Clemens Brentano. 206. 'Emotions before Friedrich's Seascape' 1810: Heinrich Kleist. 207. 'Letter from a Young Poet to a Young Painter' 1810: Heinrich Kleist. 208. 'Beethoven's Instrumental Music' 1813: E.T.A. Hoffmann. 209. Letter to Arndt 1814: Caspar David Friedrich. Part VII: Observation and Tradition:. Introduction. 17. Objects of Study:. 210. Introduction to the Propyläen 1798: Johann Wolfgang Goethe. 211. From Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex 1798: Priscilla Wakefield. 212. From 'Advice to a Student on Painting, and Particularly on Landscape' 1800: Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. 213. Letters to Dunthorne 1799-1814: John Constable. 214. 'An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings Upon Glass, and of Making Profiles' 1802: Thomas Wedgwood and Humphry Davy. 215. 'On Landscape Painting' 1803: Karl Ludwig Fernow. 216. From Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting 1806: Charles Bell. 217. Letter to Goethe 1806: Philipp Otto Runge. 218. From Theory of Colours 1810: Johann Wolfgang Goethe. 219. 'Backgrounds, Introduction of Architecture and Landscape' 1811: Joseph Mallord William Turner. 220. From A Treatise on Landscape Painting and Effect in Water Colours 1813-14: David Cox. 221. Preface to Etchings of Rustic Figures 1815: William Henry Pyne. 222. From Daylight: A Recent Discovery in the Art of Painting 1817: Henry Richter. 223. Advice on the Painting of Portraits c.1820-30: Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun. 18. The Continuity of Symbols:. 224. 'Discourse to the Students of the Royal Academy' 1792: Benjamin West. 225. 'The Painting of the Sabines' 1799: Jacques-Louis David. 226. 'Discourse Addressed to Vien' 1800: Pupils of David. 227. 'Of the Subjects of Pictures' from The Genius of Christianity 1802: François-René, Comte de Chateaubriand. 228. Letter to Passavant 1808: Franz Pforr. 229. 'The Three Ways of Art' 1810: Friedrich Overbeck. 230. Letter to Joseph Görres 1814: Peter Cornelius. 231. From The Description of Egypt 1809-20: Edmé François Jomard (ed., et al). 232. 'Style' after 1810: John Flaxman. 233. From Symbolism and Mythology of the Ancient Peoples, Particularly the Greeks 1810: Georg Friedrich Creuzer. 234. The Debate on the Elgin Marbles 1808-1816:. Letter to the Monthly Magazine 1808: George Cumberland. Letter to the Earl of Elgin 1809: Benjamin West. Letters to de Quincy and the Earl of Elgin 1815: Antonio Canova. From Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Earl of Elgin's Collection of Marbles 1816. From The Judgement of Connoisseurs upon Works of Art 1816: Benjamin Robert Haydon. 'The Fine Arts' from Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1816: William Hazlitt. 235. From Notebooks and Letters c.1813-21: Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. 236. From An Inquiry into the Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology 1818: Richard Payne Knight. Bibliography. Copyright Acknowledgements. Index.

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Book SynopsisThe first major survey of photography's place in recent art history.Trade Review"Presented thematically, with succinct texts that are both readable and informative, the book meets both academic and general needs, without ever compromising the images in display."—Pictured "Imagine the best group show of photographers you've ever seen. Now imagine it's a book. Campany skillfully curates the leading lights of post-1960 into a thematically arranged form with tempting essays by Barthes and Baudrillard into the bargain. It's a timely survey that aspires to be the document of record for the most exciting, universal and accessible art form we've got."—i-D "Art and Photography... charts the acceptance of photography as an art form. Originally considered a mechanical process, photography is now one of the most widely practiced arts. Exploring developments from the Sixties to the present day, this beautiful book covers every major school, style and name, and includes work by the likes of Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky and Gillian Wearing. The perfect family album."—Vogue "Phaidon's Themes and Movements series seeks to provide the late 20th-century art history books of the future."—Art Monthly

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisDebra Bricker Balken offers the first ever complete biography of Harold Rosenberg's brilliant, fiercely independent life and the five decades in which he played a leading role in US cultural, intellectual, and political history.Trade Review"[This] book is a thoroughgoing, well-researched biography of Harold Rosenberg, but it’s also really an intellectual history of New York City, over six decades." * Brooklyn Rail *"Balken’s insightful and admiring biography seeks to reclaim Rosenberg for the pantheon. Through an intellectual history, Balken skillfully recounts the range and depth of this unusual man, who sustained commitments to a panoply of subjects—art, aesthetics, criticism, poetry, Marxism—without ever succumbing to any party line. . . . Balken’s book gives a panoramic view of Rosenberg’s complex arguments, and does so unimpeded by jargon." * Dissent *"This biography is a formidable attempt at offering us some insight into a figure who lived in a city that, after the Second World War, was on fire with ideas, power, ambition, and art." * Hyperallergic *“[A] perfect compendium of the convoluted social and political history of the 20th century. . . As Balken’s biography beautifully illustrates, [Rosenberg's] critical insights and writing, like the virtues of painters whose work he extolled, was crafted as romantic and heroic exploration of the mysteries of personal identity, private meaning, and public commitment in action.” * Critics at Large *"The most extensive study of the critic to date." * New York Review of Books *"An exceptional achievement, the book is both fact-filled and nuanced." * Art & Object *"The author's ability to decipher the entanglements of a cultural milieu that emerged from this intellectual hotbed is remarkable, and her historical precision alongside some 15 years of research is especially noteworthy. Ms. Balken's writing is compelling and evenhanded, illuminating some of the last century's most conspicuous intellectual scuffles, social convolutions, and cultural progress with stunning lucidity." * The East Hampton Star *"Harold Rosenberg: A Critic’s Life is a highly enjoyable read and will become a valuable reference work for any study of the New York School." * The Critic *"Debra Bricker Balken has published the first complete biography of a New York intellectual usually associated with the promotion of abstract expressionism, for decades a presence in the city’s cultural life . . . The son of a modest Jewish tailor and a law graduate who never practiced, Rosenberg reconciled his Marxist convictions with an independence that distanced him from New York’s progressive elite, finding his best conversation companions in the world of artists." * Living Architecture *"Well-researched. . . . Balken paints Rosenberg as an outsider by design, and recreates the people, places, and intellectual movements that influenced the fiercely independent thinker from his native Brooklyn to bohemian, leftist Manhattan in the 1930s." * Publishers Weekly *“This thoroughly researched biography of Harold Rosenberg, America’s greatest art critic, vividly captures the Rosenberg I knew as an intellect and a friend—I couldn’t put it down.” * Jonathan Fineberg, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign *“In her mesmerizing, tough-minded, and prodigiously researched intellectual biography of Harold Rosenberg, Balken tracks the legendary art critic’s extraordinary intellectual journey through almost every major esthetic and political development—and battle—in the US and France from 1930 through the 1960s. This welcome book challenges readers to consider what it is about Rosenberg that we still need and whether there might ever be another prominent working critic with his independence, culture, and engaged and poetic imagination.” * Michael Brenson, art critic and art historian *“A most impressive achievement, Balken’s exhaustively researched biography of Harold Rosenberg constitutes a significant contribution to our knowledge of American intellectual and artistic life during this unusually fertile period.” * Charles W. Haxthausen, Williams College *Table of ContentsPrologue 1 Never had any dreams: Borough Park 2 In the landscape of sensibility: East Houston Street 3 A capacity for action: Poetry: A Magazine of Verse and The New Act 4 We write for the working class: The American Writers’ Congress 5 You would have to be recluse to stay out of it: Art Front 6 American Stuff 7 Myth and History: Partisan Review 8 Partisans and Politics 9 A Totally Different America: Washington, DC 10 The Profession of Poetry: Trance above the Streets 11 Death in the Wilderness: The OWI and the American Ad Council 12 Notes on Identity: VVV and View 13 Possibilities 14 Les Temps modernes 15 An explanation to the French of what was cooking: “The American Action Painters” 16 Guilt to the Vanishing Point: Commentary Magazine 17 A Triangle of Allegiances: Arendt and McCarthy 18 The Tradition of the New 19 Pop Culture and Kitsch Criticism 20 Play Acting: Arshile Gorky 21 Problems in Art Criticism: Artforum 22 Location Magazine and the Long View 23 The New Yorker 24 The Professor of Social Thought Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Illustration Credits Index

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Book SynopsisDeals with the exploration and theorisation of Modern and Contemporary art of Iran through the examination of art movements and artistic practices in relation to other cultural, social and political discourses during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Trade Review"Few scholars of contemporary Islamic art, a seriously underdeveloped field, exhibit both range and staying power. Keshmirshekan, the outstanding specialist on its richest subset, Iranian art, does just that. In good, plain, jargon-free English and with clear, concise arguments and passionate commitment, he highlights the treasures of modern and contemporary art in Iran and beyond.?" -Robert Hillenbrand, University of Edinburgh

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Book SynopsisIn closely-read case studies, we encounter artworks by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Ana Mendieta, Louise Bourgeois, Alina Szapocznikow, Anna Maria Maiolino, Vera Frenkel, Sarah Kofman and Chantal Akerman to explore trauma and bereavement, fatal illness, Holocaust experience, migration, exile and the encounter with political horror and atrocity.Trade ReviewIn Griselda Pollock’s brilliantly-staged encounters between contemporary art and psychoanalysis, the aesthetic emerges as the space in which we can be responsive to the traces of trauma and live with its after-effects. Through incisive and carefully-articulated theoretical insights and reparative acts of close reading, Pollock offers us new ways of thinking about painful aftermaths as well as a new vocabulary for feminist visual studies.Marianne Hirsch, William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality at Columbia UniversityIn this powerful latest book, Griselda Pollock brings her writing on her key concept of `the virtual feminist museum’ to a new phase. What are the legacies of trauma in visual space? How might they be gendered? And is there a psychic realm to which women are closer that allows for a generative creativity equal to the horrors of our times? Once again, the meticulous, detailed respect she shows towards her chosen women artists is matched by a sustained theoretical scrutiny, both of which have become the hallmark of her unique feminist intervention into our understanding of images.Jacqueline Rose, Professor of English at Queen Mary, University of London -- .Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction: Trauma and artworkingI Sounds of subjectivity1. Gasping at violence: Daphne’s open mouth and the trauma of gender2. Seduction, mourning and invocation: The geometry of absence in work by Louise Bourgeois3. Being and language: Anna Maria Maiolino’s gestures of exile and connectionII Memorial bodies4. Traumatic encryption: The sculptural dissolutions of Alina Szapocznikow5. Fictions of fact: Memory in transit in Vera Frenkel’s video installation worksIII Passage through the object6. Deadly objects and dangerous confessions: The tale of Sarah Kofman’s father’s pen7. ‘… that, again!’: Pathosformula as transport station of trauma in the cinematic journey of Chantal AkermanBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisAddresses questions such as: Why do we find ourselves returning to certain pictures time and again? What is it we are looking for? And how does our understanding of an image change over time?Trade Review". . . as compelling as a thriller...Clark shows that this [book] really is the merest doorway to what is ultimately a truly sublime mystery."—John McEwan, The Tablet". . . an eloquent plea for a new way of experiencing and talking about art."—BBC Radio 3 Nightwaves website"What’s important about this book is simply that it takes ‘inexhaustibility’ seriously. … The Sight of Death is a characteristically mobile text – lucid, dogged, swankily sophisticated, intractably self-conscious, humorous, agonised, driven. … And the whole argument of this book, naturally, is that the thought isn’t simply there to be grasped. It unfolds through steady and repeated acts of looking. That is how pictures operate, when they do well. They ask you back."—Tom Lubbock, The Independent". . . intended as an antidote to a culture in which images thrive but are instantly consumed and forgotten. It’s almost a detective story as Clark pieces together the evidence derived from repeated looking… Clark’s account is proof that some works really do deserve this kind of scrutiny, and that close attention to things is an adventure."—Andrew Mead, Architects Journal"[An] absorbing book . . . Part (muted) autobiography, part critique of his profession as an art historian – and more than anything else a rapt account of what it is to look attentively and inattentively and still be able to think politically – Clark has written a book about loss of attention and the possibilities of its recovery. . . . There is a strange meditative suspense about what is going to be revealed by Clark’s unfussy scrutiny of the pictures. The plain subtlety of the writing and the beautiful reproductions throughout…make the experience of reading the book akin to the process Clark is describing. . . . It is not incidental that at a time when there is more visual art than ever before, most writing about the visual arts is either mind-numbingly pretentious and cliquey or boringly descriptive and without vision. Clark’s book could not be more timely."—Adam Phillips, The Observer"Part of this is a revolt against the present-day dominance of the moving image, and partly a rebuke to the so-called elitism of pure contemplation. The result is wonderfully dynamic, and . . . relevant in ways that could not have been foreseen. . . . [Clark] is as far removed from comfortable connoisseurship, with its usual signifiers, as it is possible to be, yet what is internalised and noted is rigorously true to what the painter intended the viewer to apprehend. . . . What it proves – and this is entirely acceptable – is that the best antidote to reading is looking. . . . Forget blockbuster exhibitions: this is the way to see pictures."—Anita Brookner, The Spectator"An original and outstanding book. You might think [Clark] would not have enough to say. Or that if he had, it would be about himself or his reading. But he has more than enough, and none of it is indulgently subjective or interpretively pat. . . . Without jargon, Clark records what he notices, what questions remain hanging, what stirs his sympathy and imagination. … It does not give the end away to say he reaches few conclusions. His is an open-ended back-and-forth, almost an imaginary conversation with the painter. Tidy formulas would betray the spirit of his experiment. He writes as someone who finds it urgent to bring out and show off reticent objects of love, rather than as a connoisseur or teacher. . . . The Sight of Death [is] a powerful vindication of close looking on its own terms."—Edmund Fawcett, RA Magazine"Clark's book is either the most pretentious nonsense ever written or a work of genius. But which?...he surely is right to want to debunk the old myth that images reveal themselves in a single, highly charged moment. The Sight of Death is a sustained attack on what Clark calls the 'visual flow'. The more images that come at us - be they ads, or magazine covers, or reproductions of famous paintings - the more necessary it becomes 'to suggest what is involved in truly getting to know something by making a picture of it: to state the grounds for believing that some depictions are worth retuning to."—Rachel Cooke, The Observer"A revelatory exercise in art criticism."—Matthew Sweet, The Independent on Sunday

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Book Synopsis"A curator, a paintings conservator, a photographer, and a conservation scientist walk into a bar." What happens next? In lively and accessible prose, color science expert Roy S. Berns helps the reader understand complex color-technology concepts and offers solutions to problems that occur when art is displayed, conserved, imaged, or reproduced. Berns writes for two types of audiences: museum professionals seeking explanations for common color-related issues and students in conservation, museum studies, and art history programs. The seven chapters in the book fall naturally into two sections: fundamentals, covering topics such as spectral measurements, metamerism, or color inconstancy; and applications, where artwork display, painting materials, and color reproduction are discussed. A unique feature of this book is the use of more than 200 images as its main medium of communication, employing color physics, color vision, and imaging science to produce visualizations throughout the pages. An annotated bibliography complements the main text with suggestions for further reading and more in-depth study of particular topics. Engaging, incisive, and absolutely critical for any scholar or student interested in color science, Color Science and the Visual Arts is sure to become a key reference for the entire field.Trade Review"Berns delivers . . . by providing novel and clear explanations of how colour is perceived in and around an artwork. [This book] provides an excellent introduction for students of conservation or any field dealing with the presentation of art objects. It is also a valuable source for anyone wishing to review or update their understanding of (mostly) painted surfaces, their display and reproduction. The text is intended to be an accessible, go-to source and succeeds." --Art Libraries Journal "Bridging the gap between chemistry, mathematics, psychology, art conservation, art history, and the fine arts, Color Science and the Visual Arts provides an unparalleled look at the way these discipline intersect and how the science of color relates to the display, creation, and reproduction of works of art."--Art Libraries Society, North America

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Book SynopsisTraces the lineage of moving-image installation through architecture, painting, sculpture, performance, expanded cinema, film history, and countercultural film and videoTrade Review[A] wild ride of a book... Elwes has made an admirable assault on the field and I am sure this book will influence generations of students. Art Monthly Fascinating. Cinema TechnologyTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1. Architecture 2. Painting 3. Sculpture 4. Performance 5. Film History 6. Film as Film 7. Structural Film: Detractions and Revisions 8. The Dialectics of Spectatorship 9. Expanded Cinema 10. Sound 11. Video Installation 12. Closing Thoughts Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAn expert in art therapy offers this “wonderful” guide “for anyone, artistic or not, who is interested in using art to know more about himself or herself” (Library Journal) Making art—giving form to the images that arise in our mind''s eye, our dreams, and our everyday lives—is a form of spiritual practice through which knowledge of ourselves can ripen into wisdom. This book offers encouragement for everyone to explore art-making in this spirit of self-discovery—plus practical instructions on material, methods, and activities, such as ways to:   •  Discover a personal myth or story   •  Recognize patterns and themes in one''s life   •  Identify and release painful memories   •  Combine journaling and image making   •  Practice the ancient skill of active imagination   •  Connect with others through sharing one''s art worksInterwoven with this guidance is the intimate story of the author''s own journey as a student, art therapist, teacher, wife, mother, and artist—and, most of all, as a woman who discovered a profound and healing connection with her soul through making art.

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Book SynopsisA comparative study of early Eastern and Western philosophy. It seeks to prove that the seemingly separate metaphysical schemes of Greek and Indian cultures have mutually influenced one another over a long period of time, to the point that today's Western world is the product of both.

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Book SynopsisIn today''s art world many strange, even shocking, things qualify as art. In this Very Short Introduction Cynthia Freeland explains why innovation and controversy are valued in the arts, weaving together philosophy and art theory with many fascinating examples. She discusses blood, beauty, culture, money, museums, sex, and politics, clarifying contemporary and historical accounts of the nature, function, and interpretation of the arts. Freeland also propels us into the future by surveying cutting-edge web sites, alongside the latest research on the brain''s role in perceiving art. This clear, provocative book engages with the big debates surrounding our responses to art and is an invaluable introduction to anyone interested in thinking about art. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade ReviewMouthwatering design-compact, colorful, sturdy. Can travel in one's pocket. * Walks of Art, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju *Admirable for its compactness, reader-friendliness, this 'very short introduction' is nevertheless notable for its wide-ranging discussion of matters germane to the field of contemporary art. Should be a treat for the art-lovers amongst the academics. * U.S.I. Journal *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ; 1. Blood and Beauty ; 2. Paradigms and Purposes ; 3. Cultural Crossings ; 4. Money, Markets, Museums ; 5. Gender, Genius, and Guerrilla Girls ; 6. Cognition, Creation, Comprehension ; 7. Digitizing and Disseminating ; Conclusion ; References ; Further Reading ; Index

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Book SynopsisThis popular collection of the best of Art Monthly''s interviews since the magazine''s inception in the early 1970s provides a supplementary history of twentieth-century art, from over 150 perspectives, through discussions between artists and critics.The interviews provide the most immediate access to an artist''s thought processes and offer compelling narratives of changing creative activities. Many leading practitioners from Naum Gabo to Douglas Gordon have been interviewed, often at highly significant moments in their careers.The artist interview has occupied an important position in Art Monthly since its first issue, and the book was first published as part of the magazine''s 30th anniversary celebrations in 2007.

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Book SynopsisProvides lesson after valuable lesson to anyone wishing to know what it means and what it takes to be an artist today. In this book the author gives practical advice and insights gained from his own professional highs and lows. It is a mix of reminiscence, personal philosophy.

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Book SynopsisUsing many examples, this title considers the factors that determine the overall organization of visual form in works of painting, sculpture, and architecture.Trade Review"Arnheim was a distinguished psychologist, philosopher and critic whose work explored the cognitive basis of art—how we interpret it and, by extension, the world." * Cabinet *"It is the balance between the precision of [Arnheim's] specific analyses and their participation in a larger order of principles that makes Power of the Center such a satisfying book." * ARTnews *Table of ContentsIntroduction I. TWO SPATIAL SYSTEMS A master key to composition. Centricity and eccentricity. Vectors and their targets. Interaction of the systems. II. CENTERS AND THEIR RIVALS Geometric and dynamic. The pull of gravity. The visual center underneath. Varieties of weight. Sculpture and the ground. Matisse under pressure. III. THE VIEWER AS A CENTER Self-centered vision. Various positions in space. A slab in suspense. Seeing the world sideways. The viewer as an influence. Looking into depth. IV. LIMITS AND FRAMES Enclosures spread energy. Tampering with the range. The functions of frames. Framed space not quite closed. Rectangular formats. Challenges to the middle. Perspective creates a center. V. TONDO AND SQUARE Floating shapes. Tondi stress the middle. The role of eccentricity. Disks inside. The oval. Squares balance the coordinates. Albers's nests of squares. Mondrian overrides centricity. A square by Munch. VI. CENTERS AS HUBS Providing stability. Tension through deviation. Dynamics of the human figure. Saltimbanques and Guernica. VII. CENTERS AS DIVIDERS Bipolar composition. The necessary latch. Diagonals. Noli me tangere. VIII. VOLUMES AND NODES Volumes and vectors interacting. Kinds of nodes. Nodes of the body. Faces and hands. Singing man. IX. SPACE IN DEPTH Perceiving the third dimension. Objects behaving in space. Enclosures replacing frames. The added view of projection. Continuity of space. What perspective contributes. Time in space. The symbolism of the frontal plane. X. CENTERS AND GRIDS IN BUILDINGS Grids prevail. Design in elevation. Design on the ground. Coping with full space. XI. FURTHERMORE Composition in time. Are there exceptions? A physical foundation. Composition carries meaning. Glossary Bibliography Acknowledgments Index

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Book SynopsisWith an introduction by Hubertus von Amelunxen Media philosopher Vilem Flusser proposed a revolutionary new way of thinking about photography. An analysis of the medium in terms of aesthetics, science and politics provided him with new ways of understanding both the cultural crises of the past and the new social forms nascent within them. Flusser showed how the transformation of textual into visual culture (from the linearity of history into the two-dimensionality of magic) and of industrial into post-industrial society (from work into leisure) went hand in hand, and how photography allows us to read and interpret these changes with particular clarity.Trade ReviewA relatively little-known but significant text. -- Lindsay Smith, The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural StudiesTable of ContentsWith an introduction by Hubertus von Amelunxen

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Book SynopsisLearning to Look at Paintings is an accessible guide to the study and appraisal of paintings, drawings and prints. Mary Acton shows how you can develop visual, analytical and historical skills in learning to look at and understand an image by analysing how it works, what its pictorial elements are and how they relate to each other. This fully revised and updated new edition is illustrated with over 100 images by a wide range of Western European and American artists, ranging from Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Botticelli to Picasso, Matisse and Rothko, and now includes modern and contemporary artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Anselm Kiefer, Tacita Dean and Marlene Dumas. In addition, Mary Acton presents new examples highlighting the survival and revival of painting in recent years.A new introduction situates the book in the wider context of recent changes in the approach to Art History. A glossary of critical and technical terms used in the language of Art History is also included, with an updated but still selective reading list. Trade Review'Each of the six chapters has a succint introduction and a short but useful summary... Recommended.' - CHOICE'Each of the six chapters has a succint introduction and a short but useful summary... Recommended.' – CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction to the Second Edition List of Figures List of Plates Preface Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Composition 2. Space 3. Form 4. Tone 5. Colour 6. Subject Matter 7. Drawing and its Purposes 8. Looking at Prints. Conclusion: The Use of Comparison as an Aid to Looking. Appendix 1: Some Questions to Ask Yourself When Standing in Front of a Painting Appendix 2: Glossary of Art Terms. References and Further Reading. Index

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Book SynopsisThe sequel to the 2014 bestseller (Curating) From A to Z, this book extends the investigation of curatorial practice that the writer, exhibition maker and educator Jens Hoffmann (born 1974) began in the first volume.(Curating) From Z to A offers a summary of the development of curatorial practice over the last two decades as seen through the eyes of one of its leading practitioners. Organized in reverse alphabetical order, each letter of the alphabet evokes a particular word related to the world of exhibition making: from D (Durational) and S (Scenography) to R (Relational) and F (Feminism). Other entries include those dedicated to the Venice Bienniale, Tate, Kunsthalle, Lucy Lippard, Xenophobia, Black Box and Gentrification.

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Book Synopsis"First published in Germany under the title Faces: Eine Geschichte des Gesichts."Trade Review"A compelling study."--ApolloTable of ContentsIntroduction: Defining the Subject 1 I Face and Mask: Changing Views 1 Facial Expression, Masks of the Self, and Roles of the Face 17 2 The Cult Origin of the Mask 32 3 Masks in Colonial Museums 42 4 Face and Mask in the Theater 48 5 From the Study of the Face to Brain Research 63 6 Nostalgia for the Face and the Death Mask in Modernity 77 7 Eulogy for the Face: Rilke and Artaud 84 II Portrait and Mask: The Face as Representation 8 The European Portrait as Mask 91 9 Face and Skull: Two Opposing Views 106 10 The "Real Face" of the Icon and the "Similar Face" 118 11 The Record of Memory and the Speech Act of the Face 126 12 Rembrandt's Self-Portraiture: Revolt against the Mask 135 13 Silent Screams in the Glass Case: The Face Set Free 150 14 Photography and Mask: Jorge Molder's Own Alien Face 157 III Media and Masks: The Production of Faces 15 The Consumption of Media Faces 175 16 Archives: Controlling the Faces of the Crowd 192 17 Video and Live Image: The Flight from the Mask 205 18 Ingmar Bergman and the Face in Film 211 19 Overpainting and Replicating the Face: Signs of Crisis 221 20 Mao's Face: State Icon and Pop Idol 229 21 Cyberfaces: Masks without Faces 239 Acknowledgments 247 Notes 249 Literature Cited 263 Index of Names 267

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Book SynopsisHow do objects that have lost their value become valuable once again?Trade Review'Original, insightful, and entertaining' -- Ian Stewart, author of Seventeen Equations that Changed the World (Profile Books, 2012)'Witty and wide-ranging scholarly scholarly study ... a fascinating contribution to cultural theory' -- The Guardian'A remarkably original and creative book, far ahead of its time. Thompson's analysis is not only a major contribution to the anthropological theorising of waste and value, but it is also highly relevant for the contemporary dilemmas of growth and environmental destruction' -- Thomas Hylland Eriksen, author of Overheating (Pluto, 2016)'Highly recommended' -- CHOICETable of ContentsForeword by Joshua O. Reno Preface Introduction to the New Edition 1. The Filth in the Way 2. Stevengraphs - Yesterday’s Kitsch 3. Rat-infested Slum or Glorious Heritage? 4. From Things to Ideas 5. A Dynamic Theory of Rubbish 6. Art and the Ends of Economic Activity 7. Monster Conservation 8. The Geometry of Credibility 9. The Geometry of Confidence 10. The Needle’s Eye Afterword (co-authored by M. Bruce Beck) Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThis beautiful book offers a striking and unusual view of a wide array of Indian art. It highlights close up and in colour outstanding examples of design, workmanship and craft in dramatic sculptures of metal, stone and wood as well as sumptuous paintings and textiles.Table of ContentsWhat is Indian art? • Gods • Heroes • Devotion • Courtly and village life • Further reading • Glossary • Index

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Book SynopsisSince its publication in 1936, Walter Benjamin's Artwork essay has become a canonical text about the status and place of the fine arts in modern mass culture. Benjamin was especially concerned with the ability of new technologiesnotably film, sound recording, and photographyto reproduce works of art in great number. Benjamin could not have foreseen the explosion of imagery and media that has occurred during the past fifty years. Does Benjamin's famous essay still speak to this new situation? That is the question posed by the editors of this book to a wide range of leading scholars and thinkers across a spectrum of disciplines in the humanities. The essays gathered here do not hazard a univocal reply to that question; rather they offer a rich, wide-ranging critique of Benjamin's position that refracts and reflects contemporary thinking about the ethical, political, and aesthetic implications of life in the digital age.Trade Review"Mapping Benjamin not only distinguishes itself in format, scope, and tone from the mass of Benjamin books published each year, it provides an up-to-date snapshot of the humanities. This lucidly written book uses Benjamin to chart the parameters of a force field of contemporary intellectual efforts, across disciplines and other divides." -Eva Geulen,New York UniversityTable of ContentsContents BAECKER DIRK BOLZ NORBERT SIEGERT BERNHARD BARCK KARLHEINZ GILGEN PETER SHIFF RICHARD MOSER WALTER SCHMIDT SIEGFRIED J. HENNION ANTOINE LATOUR BRUNO LINK JURGEN CHARTIER ROGER LINK-HEER URSULA WATERS LINDSAY ZUMTHOR PAUL ASSMANN ALEIDA ASSMANN JAN HULLOT-KENTOR ROBERT BEHNKE KERSTIN WEIMAR KLAUS RITTER HENNING WENZEL HORST LEWIS PERICLES WERBER NIELS DE CASTRO ROCHA JOAO CEZAR NICHOLS STEPHEN G. NEVILLE BRIAN READINGS BILL FEINSTEIN JOSHUA MENOCAL MARIA ROSA SARLO BEATRIZ HARRISON ROBERT P. BANN STEPHEN

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Book SynopsisIgor Zabel (19582005) was one of Slovenia's foremost curators and writers. Published as a part of JRP Ringier's Documents critical writings series (published with Les presses du reel), this important collection of Zabel's writings--his first in English--serves as a methodology model for research into Eastern European art techniques and practices. The selected texts are divided into four chapters: EastWest and Between, which explores perceptions of otherness following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; Strategies and Spaces of Art, which examines strategies of representation and theories of display and the role of the curator; Ad Personam, which includes individual artists and art from Socialist Realism and conceptualism to postmodernism and contextual art, particularly in Slovenia and South Eastern Europe; and Extras, a selection of Zabel's columns on arts and culture.

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Book SynopsisA concise introduction to paintings in the Western European tradition, through the stories of 50 powerful artworks by artists from Van Gogh to da Vinci. How to Read Paintings is a valuable visual guide to Western European painting. Through a gallery of artworks accompanied by informative commentary, it enables you to swiftly develop your understanding of the grammar and vocabulary of painting, and to discover how to look at diverse paintings in detail, closely reading their meanings and methods. In the first part of the book, the author shows you how to read paintings by considering five key areas: shape and support, medium and materials, composition, style and technique, and signs and symbols, as well as the role of the artist. In the second part, you can explore fifty paintings through extracted details, accompanied by insightful commentary, training you to understand context and meaning within art. As a collection, the pictures featured in How to Read Paintings have a strong relationship with one another, and underpin the story of painting. This book is a valuable tool whether you are viewing the real artwork on a gallery wall, or simply reading around the subject to learn more about Western art.Table of ContentsIntroduction Part 1: Grammar of Paintings Shape and Support Medium and Materials Composition Style and Technique Signs and Symbols The Artist Part 2: Paintings in Detail Portrait Landscape Narrative Still Life Abstraction Appendices Glossary Directory of Paintings Directory of Galleries Index Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisFree Play is about the inner sources of spontaneous creation. It is about why we create and what we learn when we do. It is about the flow of unhindered creative energy: the joy of making art in all its varied forms.             An international bestseller and beloved classic, Free Play is an inspiring and provocative book, directed toward people in any field who want to contact, honor, and strengthen their own creative powers. It reveals how inspiration arises within us, how that inspiration may be blocked, derailed or obscured, and how finally it can be liberated—how we can be liberated—to speak or sing, write or paint, dance or play, with our own authentic voice. Stephen Nachmanovitch, a pioneer in free improvisation, integrates material from a wide variety of sources among the arts, sciences, and spiritual traditions of humanity, drawing on unusual quotes, amusing and illuminating anecd

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Book SynopsisDick Higgins and his Something Else Press epitomized the riotous art of the ‘60s There are few art-world figures as influential—and as little known—as Dick Higgins (1938–98), cofounder of Fluxus, "polyartist," poet, scholar, theorist, composer, performer and, not least, the publisher of the legendary Something Else Press. In 1965 he restored the term "intermedia" to the English language, giving it new dimension to recognize the dissolution of boundaries between traditional modes of art-making and the open field for new forms that cannot be compartmentalized. His own contributions to intermedia are many—as a participant and instigator of happenings, as writer and composer straddling traditional and vanguard forms, among others—but it was Something Else Press (1963–74) that redefined how "the book" could inhabit that energized, in-between space. Something Else Press was as much a critical statement and radical experiment as it was a collection of books by some of the most luminary artists and writers of the 20th century: Gertrude Stein, John Cage, Ray Johnson, Dieter Roth, Bern Porter, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Emmett Williams, Robert Filliou, and George Brecht, among many others. Along with his Great Bear Pamphlet series and the Something Else newsletter, Higgins exploited and subverted conventional book production and marketing strategies to get unconventional and avant-garde works into the hands of new and often unsuspecting readers. Edited by Granary Books publisher Steve Clay and Fluxus artist Ken Friedman, this judiciously curated and indispensable compendium of essays, theoretical writings and narrative prose dives deep into the ever-influential ideas that Higgins explored in theory and practice. Clay and Friedman have chosen works that illuminate Higgins' voracious intellectual appetite, encyclopedic body of knowledge and playful yet rigorous experimentation in a selection that includes many writings long out of print or difficult to find.Trade ReviewIt's an unruly guide to publishing and preserving one's cultural present. -- Brian Dillon * Bookforum *Apart from its value in making several had-to-find essays available, this volume imparts a nuanced sense of a man who not only styled himself an avant-garde philosophe (not unlike his teacher John Cage) but also made a sustained and messy effort to create a worldly space for a certain kind of art, performance, and writing—and life. -- James Gibbons * Hyperallergic *An intoxicating, multifaceted bouquet of various genres of Higgins’s writing, the anthology highlights the artist’s role as participant-historian in numerous early postmodern currents across the visual arts, literature, music, theater, and dance. -- Natilee Harren * Artforum *Essential reading for any young artist who is ready to strike out into something new, something else. -- Michael Galbreth * Glasstire *A provocative firsthand account delving into the importance of artist collectives, the making of hybrid art forms, and the trials of independent publishing. * Kirkus *This volume contains a wealth of primary source texts which attest to Higgins’s ability to put words to the swirling cacophony of postwar art. -- Jennie Waldow * The Brooklyn Rail *

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Book SynopsisAn Invitation to Biblical Poetry is an accessibly written introduction to biblical poetry that emphasizes the aesthetic dimensions of poems and their openness to varieties of context. It demonstrates the irreducible complexity of poetry as a verbal art and considers the intellectual work poems accomplish as they offer aesthetic experiences to people who read or hear them. Chapters walk the reader through some of the diverse ways biblical poems are organized through techniques of voicing, lineation, and form, and describe how the poems'' figures are both culturally and historically bound and always dependent on later reception. The discussions consider examples from different texts of the Bible, including poems inset in prose narratives, prophecies, psalms, and wisdom literature. Each chapter ends with a reading of a psalm that offers an acute example of the dimension under discussion. Students and general readers are invited to richer and deeper readings of ancient poems and the subjects, problems, and convictions that occupy their imagination.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Voices Emotion Ascription and Authorship Multiplicity and Dialogue Prophetic Voicing Gender Psalm 55: A Reading Chapter 2: Lines Parallelism Enjambment Psalm 19: A Reading Chapter 3: Forms Terms Hymns Laments Love Poems Parody Acrostic Psalm 119: A Reading Chapter 4: Figures Metaphor and Simile Personification and Anthropomorphism Metaphors for the Deity Symbols Psalm 65: A Reading Chapter 5: Contexts Three Worlds of the Text Worlds Behind the Text Allusion Prophetic Poetry's Refusals The Poetry of Exile Psalm 137: A Reading Conclusion Index

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Book SynopsisThe first collection in English of the writings of Russian conceptual artist Ilya Kabakov, a leading figure in the avant garde in the 1960s and ’70s and a major influence on artists today.

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Book SynopsisThe highly practical lessons in How to Get to Great Ideas are based on neuroscience, psychology and sociology. Written by former advertising creative director Dave Birss, this book offers a brilliant new system for conceiving original and valuable ideas. It looks at how to frame a problem, how to push your thinking, how to sell the idea, how to build support for it and how to inspire others to have great ideas. It proves that any organization - and any individual or department within an organization - can create a fertile environment for ideas. Combining a practical research-based system with fascinating insights and inspiring and humorous writing, the book also includes the problem-solving system RIGHT Thinking. This is a tool which enables a more effective way to generate more effective ideas, and is one that anyone can use to transform themselves or their business. Training on this system is also available in person from the author. And will be released soon as an Trade ReviewMakes you sit up and listen. * Rachel Evans, Experian Data Quality *One of the most original speakers I've ever seen. Dave is one of the most creative minds off and on the stage. * Darko Buldioski, Allweb Events *Brilliant and thought provoking. I love Dave's ability to open my mind to new concepts and ways of thinking. * Graham Ruddick, Digital Doughnut *

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Book SynopsisIn the middle of the electromagnetic spectrum between the binary extremes of black and white it’s not gray, as you might expect, but green. And within green’s bandwidth there are more tonal variations than any other colour can make. Maybe this is why - envy, naivete, and money aside - green is generally synonymous with good. Green is paradise for Islam, luck for the Irish, and a healthy planet for environmentalists. Whereas the industrial past was grey, the future is green. LA+ Green explores the green spectrum from plants to politics and from art to science, with contributions from: Noam Chomsky; Robert D. Bullard; Kassia St. Clair; Neil M. Maher; Rob Levinthal; Sonja Dümpelmann; Peder Anker; Robert Mcdonald; Parker Sutton; Tamara Toles O’Laughlin; Nicholas Pevzner; Michael Marder; Shannon Mattern; Michael Geffel; Brian Osborn; Julian Bolleter; Cristina Ramalho; Robert Freestone; Richard Weller; Michael Geffel; Brian Osborn; Julian Raxworthy.

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Book SynopsisThe texts in this volume represent Kristin Ross's attempt to think the question of the everyday across a range of discourses, practices and knowledges, from philosophy to history, from the visual arts to popular fiction, all the way to the forms taken by collective political action in the territorial struggles of today. If everyday life is, as many have come to believe, the ideal vantage point for an analysis of the social, it is also the crucial first step in its transformation.The volume opens with a return to Henri Lefebvre's powerful attempt to think the everyday as both residue and resource, as the site of profound alienation and-by the same token-the site where all emancipatory initiatives and desires begin. The second section focuses on our attempts to represent our lived reality to ourselves in cultural forms, from painting and literature and film to an analysis of the contemporary transformations of the sub-genre most embedded in the deep superficiality of everyday life: detective fiction. The final section turns to present-day ecological occupations in the wake of the zad at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, and locates the everyday as a site for rich oppositional resources and immanent social creativity.Trade ReviewIn these remarkably lucid essays, real critics, rebellious farmers, artisans, and diverse character-types are summoned to remind us of moments of conformist immobility, disavowals of colonialism, violence and class difference; but also, of how French cultural history offers paths toward public beauty, collectivity, ecological ways of living. Ross has an uncanny ability to zero in on what matters in the forms of the Paris Commune and beyond, letting participants speak without the usual virtue-signaling. -- Karen Pinkus, Professor of Romance Studies and Comparative Literature, Cornell UniversityThis volume recalls why Kristin Ross's work is a necessary point of entry into the infinite insurrection of everyday life envisaged by Karl Marx and Henri Lefebvre, Arthur Rimbaud and Jacques Ranciere, variously enacted from the Commune to May 68, and that animates the rural radicalism of today's Zad. Anyone interested in altering the questions of our day towards a new everyday life will find here an abundant reservoir to think and do anew. -- Manu Goswami, New York University

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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 SynopsisIn four decades of abstract art practice, Lynda Benglis has not merely challenged the status quo. She has tied it in knots, melted it down and poured it across the floor, cast it in glass, clay and bronze. Daring and sometimes outrageous, her intense and provocative practice has produced some of the most iconic pieces of art from the late twentieth century. Richmond gives serious critical attention to work often dismissed as trivial and rootless, recovering the themes that link the different phases of the artist''s quest to capture the ''frozen gesture''. Whether challenging popular tastes and definitions of art with her 1970s abstract knotwork or mocking puritanical aesthetics of gender with her colourful latex pourings and their allusions to corporeal topographies, Benglis never failed to provoke. Her sculptures commemorate and celebrate the processes of creation themselves, combining architectonic abstraction and feminized sensuality in a haunting, visceral theme of the strangenTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Boundless Forms and Continuous Imagery 2. Flesh and Physicality 3. Video Input and Output 4. Questioning Taste 5. Iterations and Expansions

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Book SynopsisThe latest publication by designer Kenya Hara following his acclaimed Designing Design. White is not a book about color. It is rather the author's attempt to explore the essence of “white,” which he sees as being closely related to the origin of Japanese aesthetics-symbolizing simplicity and subtlety. The central concepts discussed are emptiness and the absolute void. Kenya Hara also sees his work as a designer as a pure form of communication. Good communication has the distinction of being able to listen to each other, rather than to press one's opinion onto the opponent. Kenya Hara compares this form of communication with an “empty container.” In visual communication, there are equally signals whose signification is limited, as well as signals or symbols such as the cross or the red circle on the Japanese flag, which-like an “empty container”-permit every signification and do not limit imagination. It is not only the fact that the Japanese character for white forms a radical of the character for emptiness that has prompted him to closely associate the color white with the state of emptiness. This book offers a personal insight into the philosophy of the successful designer and author of Designing Design. 4 illustrations

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