Theory of art Books

Book SynopsisThis edited collection explores a subject of great potential for both art historians and museologists – that of the nature of the specimen and how it might be reinterpreted. Through its cross-disciplinary contributions, written by a team of art historians, artists, poets, anthropologists, critics and curators, this book looks at how artistic encounters in museums, ranging from anatomy museums to contemporary cabinets of curiosity, can provoke new modes of thinking about art, science and curating. Museological literature in the past focused on artefacts or objects; this is an original contribution to the field and offers new readings of old issues, inspiring new understandings of the relationships between art, science and curating. Brings together international expertise from art practitioners, historians, creative writers and theorists in France, the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand. Contributions from creative practitioners draw upon their own experience of producing artworks in response to specific scientific collections while historians, anthropologists, critics and writers examine how museums stimulate, incite and otherwise inspire artistic awareness of science and its specimens. One of the most important contributions this book will make is drawing together several threads of research and practice to encourage interdisciplinary discussion. It provides new ways of thinking about the relationships between art, science, museums and their objects. It concentrates on the ways in which scientific collections kindle novel aesthetic strategies and inspire new scholarly interpretations of art, science, curating and epistemology. In so doing it will make a considerable contribution to the fields of art writing, creative practice, art theory, the history of science and curating. This book will appeal to academics, researchers, undergraduates and postgraduates studying fine art, curating, museology, art history, the history of science, creative writing; visual artists, curators, and other creative practitioners. Also of interest to museum audiences. Reading list potential.Table of ContentsIntroduction Edward Juler and Alistair Robinson 1: Narratives of the ‘Fetish’ John Mack 2: Curating Interobjectively in Museums Alistair Robinson 3: ‘A Readiness to Find What Surrounds Us Strange and Odd’: Objects in the Relational Curiosity Museum Marion Endt-Jones 4: Art, Science and the Mutant Object Rahma Khazam 5: Models of Subjectivity: Surrealism, Physics and Psychoanalysis Gavin Parkinson 6: Glimpsed Phantoms of Sensation: Or, a Psychogeographical Investigation of Various Anatomical Specimens with Reference to Christine Borland’s Cet être-là, c’est à toi de le créer! Edward Juler 7 … as far back as I will remember Nadia Lichtig 8: Poetry and the Pathology Museum: A Model of Difference Christy Ducker 9: The Scientist and the Magician Irene Brown 10: Choosing, Unpicking and Connecting: On Drawing Museum Objects Richard Talbot 11: Post-Specimens and Present Ancestors: Passing Fables and Comparative Readings at the Wildgoose Memorial Library Jane Wildgoose 12: Moving beyond the Specimen (From Drawing Objects to Drawing Processes) Gemma Anderson 13: Desiccation, Suspension, Extraction: The Inhuman Art of Christine Borland Andrew Patrizio Afterword: What’s at Stake? Ludmilla Jordanova

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Book SynopsisShiny Things combines an interest in visual art with a broad attention to popular culture – the wideness of its range is striking. It is more than just an expansion of subject matter, which many of today’s innovative books also have – it considers how a specific physical property manifests itself in both art and culture at large, and contributes to an analysis of and polemics about the world. It is accessibly written but with a careful application of contemporary theory. Interesting, informative, and entertaining, this will appeal to progressive thinkers looking for new ways of presenting ideas. This is scholarship that challenges stale thought and interacts with philosophical ideas in real time, with a versatility that can often be lacking in traditional academic scholarship. Using art, especially contemporary art, as its recurrent point of reference, the authors argue that shininess has moved from a time when rarity gave shiny things a direct meaning of power and transcendence. Shininess today is pervasive; its attraction is a foundation of consumer culture with its attendant effects on our architecture, our conceptions of the body, and our production of spectacle. Power and the sacred as readings of the shiny have given way to readings of superficiality, irony and anxiety, while somehow shininess has maintained its qualities of fascination, newness and cleanliness. Examines the meanings and functions of shininess in art and in culture more generally: its contradictions of both preciousness and superficiality, and its complexities of representation; the way shininess itself is physically and metaphorically present in the construction of major conceptual categories such as hygiene, utopias, the sublime and camp; and the way the affects of shininess, rooted in its inherent disorienting excess, produce irony, anxiety, pleasure, kitsch, and fetishism. All of these large ideas are embodied in the instantly noticeable, sometimes precious and sometimes cheap physical presence of shiny things, those things that catch our eye and divert our attention. Shininess, then, is a compelling subject that instantly attracts and fascinates people. The book engages primarily with visual art, although it makes frequent use of material culture, as well as advertising, film, literature, and other areas of popular and political culture. The art world, however, is a place where many of the affects of shininess come into clearest focus, where the polemical semiotics of shine are most evident and consciously explored. Artists as diverse as Anish Kapoor (whose popular Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago is a repeating example in the book), Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Koons, Carolee Schneemann, Audrey Flack, Fra Angelico and Gerard ter Borch centre the book in an art discourse that opens up to automobiles, Richard Nixon and Liberace. Will be relevant to academics, scholars and students with an interest in contemporary theory and material and popular cultures. Potential interest across the humanities: philosophy, gender studies, perhaps public relations, advertising and marketing. It will also appeal to more general readers with an interest in popular and material cultures, art and aesthetics. It is written in a genuinely accessible style, and its ideas and theory are embodied through examples and narratives. Will be of interest to readers of Oliver Sacks, James Gleick, George Lakoff, James Elkins or Rebecca Solnit. Trade Review"Shiny Things is a smart, accessible, and often humorous, examination of the various meanings of shininess across multiple facets of culture, with a particular emphasis on the visual arts. It stands as an exemplary investigation of the meaning of an overlooked, but pervasive facet of material culture.” -- David Klamen, Dean of the School of the Arts at Indiana University Northwest

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Book SynopsisStories shape us and give us meaning - but is it coincidence that the same seven basic plots repeat over time and across the world? What if stories not only reveal something about human psychology, but also give us clues to the meaning of the reality we live in? Discover how these archetypal stories - Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy and Rebirth - are not only universal, but also found in the story of Christ. What if Jesus' story is where myth becomes history and can give true meaning to all our lives? Explore for yourself the explosive claim that the life of Jesus isn't just another story, but the true story that satisfies our deepest longings.Trade ReviewThis is an imaginative, thought-provoking exploration of the power of story in our lives - and how the tales that we tell might point to a greater Story that encompasses us all. There is challenge here: some of it stirring, some of it prompting me to challenge the authors right back! But there’s also deep grace and wisdom: I was moved to tears by the chapter on Rebirth, with its beautiful depiction of the love and reconciliation that God offers us. It’s a book that reminds me just why I adore stories so much - and it’s a book that inspires me to pursue the Story that Peter and Matt suggest is the key to life, the universe and everything. -- Vicki Sparks, Commentator of the Year 2021, Sports Journalism AwardsReading Reality And Other Stories is like discovering the entrance to a cave. Once you’re inside you’ll find the tunnels through which all the great stories of the past are brought up to the earth. The greater discovery is that these many tunnels meet together in a single great hall of treasure. Without erasing the distinctions between the different stories we love - or embracing Christopher Brooker’s 7 plots theory too readily - Matt and Pete show how our thirst for great mythos is quenched by what C.S. Lewis called "the Myth become Fact", the gospel of Jesus. This book not only gathers together some of the best material on story and storytelling, but arranges it to show us that the best story is the truth. Matt and Pete have made this storehouse of storytelling riches so accessible that I will be putting Reality And Other Stories into the hands of every person we teach in the Speak Life Foundry. -- Nate Morgan Locke, Creative Director, Speak LifeI could almost hear this book as the banter of storytellers lingering around a dinner table as Pete & Matt regale us with their shared delight in the power of story. I have long been encouraging filmmakers to make adaptations of the stories and themes of scripture and found this approach of looking through Christopher Bookers "seven stories" genuinely inspiring. -- Luke Walton, Producer, Reel Issues Films.This is a book that's been needed for a long time. Its relevance comes from familiarity with literature and films over a wide range of illustrations of Booker's Seven Categories. It's also easily accessible, well written and not too long. Best of all, however, Peter and Matt do what Real-Reality demands of the stories of mankind: they relate them to His Story, the One who alone tells stories straight and true. And they accomplish that so that the Gospel itself—and our attendant responsibility not to waste time but be reconciled to God—is both clear but not unnaturally imposed. It flows naturally from the subject matter of the book as a whole. * Ranald Macaulay, Christian Heritage, Cambridge *

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Book SynopsisA brief study of select Western art from Italy's foremost philosopher. In Renaissance palaces, the studiolo was a small room to which the prince withdrew to meditate or read, surrounded by paintings he particularly loved. This book is a kind of studiolo for its author, Giorgio Agamben, as he turns his philosophical lens on the world of Western art. Studiolo is a fascinating take on a selection of artworks created over millennia; some are easily identifiable, others rarer. Though they were produced over an arc of time stretching from 5000 BCE to the present, only now have they achieved their true legibility. Agamben contends that we must understand that the images bequeathed by the past are really addressed to us, here and now; otherwise, our historical awareness is broken. Notwithstanding the attention to detail and the critical precautions that characterize the author's methodthey provoke us with a force, even a violence, that we cannot escape. When we understand why Dostoevsky

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Book SynopsisIn this sparkling, innovative, fully-illustrated work, world-renowned choreographer Annie-B Parson translates the components of dance-time, proximity, space, motion and tone- into text. As we follow Parson through her days-at home, reading, and on her walks down the street-and in and out of conversations on everything from Homer's Odyssey to feminist art to social protest, she helps us see how everyday movement creates the wider world. Dance, it turns out, is everything and everywhere.With the insight and verve of a soloist, Parson shows us how art-making is a part of our everyday lives and our political life as we move, together and apart, through space.Trade ReviewA gorgeous meditation on dance, visual art, and literature, as well as living, loving, and mourning. Parsons brings to the page the starling quality of her introspective, astounding, and lyrical stage work, urging us to look more closely at those small and large moments that steer us through the dance of life. -- Edwidge Danticat, author of Create Dangerously"Bodies in space". I have heard Annie-B use this phrase dozens of times. It occurs to me this phrase refers to choreography and dance, but is also a transposable life philosophy...Of all the ways to move a body in space, through space, Annie-B creates the stage to have the most beautiful and beguiling ones be seen. -- St. VincentI'm a long time fan of Annie-B's work. I see in it the quotidian made extraordinary...the familiar made foreign. -- David ByrneParson's path is one that continues to push the boundaries of dance -- Dan Meyer * Playbill *The choreographer who democratized dance. * Financial Times *In this quiet, minute and understatedly virtuosic text, Annie-B Parson walks us through the intricate dances of pedestrianism and domesticity. Gently but firmly pressing back against linear heroic narratives that have tended to efface the practices of women artists, she braids together strands of beauty, resistance and reverie, slyly pulling her readers into an exquisite, inclusive choreography of living. -- Barbara Browning, author of The GiftTraipsing from The Odyssey to Trisha Brown, Hilma af Klint to Anne Carson, Parson braids together ideas through words and illustrations as she touches on the connections between protest, ritual and spectacle, how the pandemic asked pedestrians to rechoreograph their relationship to other bodies in space, Zoom and Tik Tok as creative forms, and more. -- Courtnney Escoyne * Dance Magazine *Parson reframes banal encounters into beautiful, crystalline observations. -- Ava Wong Davies * Elephant *The Choreography of Everyday Life is many things: a pandemic diary, a discourse of Greek tragedy, and a tribute to Parson's many inspirations, from Trisha Brown to Hilma af Klint. Mostly though, it's a leisurely walk through a brilliant mind. This book weaves together personal and theoretical reflections with evocative images from famous works of art and Parson's own casual snapshots. The result will be oddly familiar to any follower of her company Big Dance Theater. It's a delightful clash of high art and low culture, sparklingly intelligent yet warmly conversational. -- Andy Boyd * The New Books Network *A thoughtful addition to a dance library collection. * Library Journal *Annie-B has choreographed for Davids (Bowie and Byrne), St. Vincent, Spike Lee, and Lorde, among others - giving movement to artists for whom movement is as essential to their work and melodies. Now, she's exploring how dance functions in everyday life, both in her own and on a societal level. In this illustrated work, Parson distills movement into text, exploring movement in feminist art to protests * Nylon *This small but perfectly formed book gathers in the sacred and the profane, the virtual and visceral, poetical and political * Morning Star *Award-winning choreographer Annie-B Parson uses this slim but potent volume to show readers how the movements of day-to-day life function as choreography in the same way dancers on a stage execute choreography as a group. Reading this book made me look at the mundane activities of my everyday life with fresh eyes. If dance is everything and everywhere, as Parson asserts, then all our small movements add to something much bigger than any one individual. It's an interesting idea for our current moment, where connection seems more necessary than ever but increasingly rare. -- David Vogel * Buzzfeed *Parson's insights are a welcome reminder of the political value of dance, which has long served as a powerful aid to protest, its expressive beauty lending eloquence to public demonstrations of outrage or sorrow. -- Charlie Tyson * The Atlantic *Parson's prose made me nostalgic...voraciously pinballing between art forms, always in search of the perfect verb. * The Washington Post *To Annie-B Parson, choreography isn't confined to the studio and the stage; rather, practically everything around us abounds with movement that's worth paying attention to. In her new, aptly titled book, The Choreography of Everyday Life, an inventive, observant, and witty ode to her relationship with dance and movement over the course of her lifetime, she delves into exactly that belief. -- Andrew Zuckerman * Time Sensitive *This small and precious book can tell us the oldest and most profound story of how the body experiences space, inhabits it and is inhabited by it...the title to read this season. -- Sara Marzullo * Harper's Bazaar *'If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so,' Alan Watts wrote as he contemplated our search for meaning. 'The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.' The metaphor comes alive with uncommon vitality in The Choreography of Everyday Life by choreographer Annie-B Parson, who has shaped living artworks by cultural icons ranging from David Bowie and David Byrne to Mikhail Baryshnikov and the Martha Graham Dance Company. -- Maria Popova * The Marginalian *A small glimpse into the creative mind of an acclaimed contemporary artist of our time. * Dance Teacher *The book itself is a careful choreography. The spacing, brackets, punctuation, and images denote pauses, pairings, emphases, and visual cues. Verbs grow muscles, and metaphors become great choreographic tools. And though Parson appears to be an avid fan of Trisha Brown's rejection of fanfare, there remains a healthy dose of drama throughout. -- Wendy Perron * Notable Dance Books of 2022 *The Choreography of the Everyday is an extraordinary project. There's a scrap-book quality, visually and thematically. The pages are sprinkled with her photographs, her drawings, her post-its, or diagrams, or images of an ancient stele with dancing figures on it. -- Maggie LangeThere is an aliveness to the book, threads pulling together and apart, weaving back to front, front to back, moving from thousands of years ago to the present. It connects me to the book, the author, and into a larger world - where we see choreography all around us. * thINKingDANCE *Table of ContentsNo chapters -- one continual text

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Book SynopsisKrampf's exclusive collection of Goerges Braque's post-Cubist paintings reveals both Braque's pioneering individuality and craftsmanship in the history of Modern Art. Oras the artist once said himself, I do not do as I want, I do as I can.Progress in art does not consist in expanding one's limitations, but in knowing them better.'Focusing on the artist's transformative period between 1920 and 1960, which arguably produced his best work, this illustrative book explores Braque's most overlooked post-Cubism artwhere he transcends both his own limitations and that of his surroundings, showing readers and collectors alike the timeless and enduring impact of Braque's work.

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Book SynopsisIn this innovative anthology, Angela Lord presents a unique series of commentaries on art, aesthetics and colour by three of western culture’s greatest intellects. Her comparative study of the works of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Rudolf Steiner illustrates how each of these towering thinkers employed an individual and groundbreaking approach. Yet, remarkably, there are common threads that weave through their collective works that have previously been overlooked. By selecting and extracting specific quotations and arranging them in particular sequences, Lord throws light on texts that have often been restricted to theological and academic study. Through this exposure, she reveals their relevance to the Arts today, showing how their content can stimulate an enhanced awareness of truth, beauty and knowledge in our lives. Art Aesthetics and Colour also offers us the opportunity to reinterpret the works of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas in the light of Rudolf Steiner’s contemporary spiritual-scientific insights. In addition to the extensive quotations from the three historical figures, Lord provides brief biographies, an introduction, notes and a bibliography. The book is well-illustrated throughout and includes colour plates.Table of ContentsIntroduction – Chapter One, Biographies – Chapter Two, Art – Chapter Three, Aesthetics – Chapter Four, Colour – Bibliography

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Book SynopsisWhat is a family? And how is family experienced? These questions, explored through artists’ eyes, are at the heart of the exhibition, Real Families: Stories of Change, a collaboration between the Fitzwilliam Museum and the University of Cambridge Centre for Family Research. The book provides a catalogue of the exhibition in four sections, containing twelve illuminating essays that discuss the concept of the family.Real Families: Stories of Change focuses on art produced in the past 50 years, a period of significant change in how families are created and structured, with historical works woven into the exhibition to examine what is genuinely new, and what has remained the same, about the family. The catalogue includes reproductions of paintings, photography and sculpture.In the first section, ‘What is a Family?’, artists portray new forms of family, including families formed by assisted reproduction and families with LGBTQ+ parents, as well as families affected by divorce, adoption and infertility. The works prompt viewers to consider stereotyped beliefs about what makes a family and society’s prejudice against childlessness.Second, ‘Family Transitions’ starts with artists’ representations of motherhood, followed by an examination of the positive role that fathers play. Works on siblings speak to the dynamic and intense relationships that exist between siblings, and those on grandparents and grandchildren highlight the benefit of having each other in their lives. Artists also convey their complex feelings about their ageing parents.‘Family Dynamics’ explores positive and negative relationships between couples, parents and children, and extended family, with works that foreground affection and rejection, comfort and conflict, enmeshment, estrangement and not fitting in. The works also examine the wider social, cultural and political influences on family relationships. Finally, ‘Family Legacies’ highlights the importance to many people of a sense of connection and belonging. This section explores the transmission of family from one generation to the next through genetic inheritance, social and cultural practices, language and objects, which can forge emotional connections and give rise to family memories.

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Book SynopsisThis provocative book is a tractate-a treatise-on beauty in Japanese art, written in the manner of a zuihitsu, a free-ranging assortment of ideas that "follow the brush" wherever it leads. Donald Richie looks at how perceptual values in Japan were drawn from raw nature and then modified by elegant expressions of class and taste. He explains aesthetic concepts like wabi, sabi, aware, and yugen, and ponders their relevance in art and cinema today. Donald Richie is the foremost explorer of Japanese culture in English, and this work is the culmination of sixty years of observing and writing from his home in Tokyo.

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Book SynopsisAn Associative Art History searches for the place of Czech, Slovak and Eastern European postwar art in global history. Resisting the mere repetition of Western canonization, the publication aims not to fruitlessly compare East and West, but rather to decipher the circumstances under which artworks are created, theorized and compared to each other. How do Knížák, Kolar, Koller and Kovanda relate to Situationism, Minimalism and Fluxus? What does Jindrich Chalupecký have to do with Clement Greenberg? Czech art historian and curator Tomáš Pospiszyl recounts a history of contemporary Eastern European art by highlighting emblematic stories of the art scene's protagonists, mixing personal anecdotes with artistic agendas. This collection of nine essays, on topics spanning from 1939 to 2013, proposes a new reading of the visual arts during the Iron Curtain era and after.

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Book SynopsisMinor Cinema is the first study of experimental cinema in Switzerland, addressing the relationships between contemporary art and underground movies, formal and amateur films, expanded cinema and performances and focusing on the role of the art schools and the festivals. The publication includes essays on Robert Beavers and Gregory Markopoulos, Peter Liechti, cinema at the Kunsthalle Bern during Harald Szeemann's curatorship, Annette Michelson, Tony Morgan and Kurt Blum.

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Book SynopsisTheo van Doesburg was a jack of all trades: painter, writer, architect, typographer, and art theorist. In this volume of the Bauhausbücher, he attempts to make elementary concepts in the visual arts generally comprehensible. He was addressing the “modern artist” of his day, who had to deal with both shifting social paradigms and a changing understanding of art and art theory. Van Doesburg describes theory as a necessary consequence of creative practice. Artists, he says, “do not write about art but from within art.”

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Book SynopsisAby Warburg is regarded as one of the great pioneers of modern cultural studies. This book brings together texts by many of the most renowned researchers in the field who have been influenced by his work. They address his extraordinary impact on the understanding of cultural transmission and the influence of images and texts across time and space. What emerges is the continuing significance of Warburg for our own times. No one concerned with the many forms of the survival of the past in the present and the infinitely complex relationships between images and society will want to miss this book. Published in cooperation with the Warburg Institute, London and with the assistance of a grant from the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, New York. Look inside

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Book SynopsisPacific Century – E Ho'amau no Moananiakea is a substantial publication and catalogue published on the occasion of the Hawai'i Triennial 2022 (HT22), providing key art historical backgrounds and contemporary discussions on art, expanding the frame of reference for the Asia-Pacific region. Curatorial essays by the HT22 co-curators lay out the critical approaches that shaped the framework of the Triennial with the fluid concept of a Pacific Century, while a selection of previously published seminal texts by artists and scholars reflect on the expanded field of art history in the region. Also included is a newly commissioned conversation with Homi K. Bhabha, illuminating his theoretical criticism that continues to carve out a new discursive space where the marginalized find their agency. Each participating Triennial artist is included in a dedicated section with an original introductory text, work information, and images. Pacific Century – E Ho'amau no Moananiakea/i> will be an essential resource for critical exploration of contemporary art in Asia-Pacific at large.

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Book SynopsisAn Encounter Between Art and the Technosphere Proprietary algorithms, secret data troves, and inscrutable systems rule the day. How is this registered in art? In Poetics of Encryption Nadim Samman explores works that highlight the hidden dimensions of our technological landscape. Running counter to erroneous claims regarding a new culture of transparency and openness, such artworks address black sites, black boxes, and black holes—all the while, toggling between enlightened concern and occult dreaming.

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Book SynopsisThe incessant trend to throw away rather than to repair, demolish rather than refurbish has been a topic of discussion and criticism for years—at the same time, resource consumption and the waste continue to increase. To counteract this trend, students at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich and ETH Zurich have been developing sustainable and imaginative concepts for repairing a wide variety of objects, applying them both manually and by using digital techniques such as 3D printing. Beyond restoration, many projects aim to further develop and improve the repaired objects constructively, materially, or even in terms of design, lending them new value. This publication presents a wide variety of approaches and projects, complemented by essays by notable personalities from the fields of architecture, preservation, materials science, design, manufacturing, and craftsmanship.

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Book SynopsisCompetition is one of the driving forces of our time - everything can suddenly turn into a challenge or a contest. Art, on the other hand - that is outside the art market—can be seen as a free space in which something genuinely unique emerges. That this construct is a historical exception is revealed by a fresh look at the early modern period: Here, the principle of competition was thought to be decisive for artistic work. What is more, the competitive habitus of imitation, competition and surpassing - imitatio, aemulatio and superatio - was supposed to bring about cultural progress as such. Even Leonardo knew that “good envy” spurs high performance. Hence, some of the most famous works of the Renaissance and Baroque periods emerged from the competitive battles that artists in early modern Europe fought among themselves, as well as with long-dead models from antiquity. This splendid catalogue reveals mutual inspiration and cooperation, but also sheds light on the dark side of competition for prestigious commissions - envy, intrigue, and slander.

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Book SynopsisSeven years in twenty-first century contemporary art, as seen in a series of columns by curator and writer Maria Lind.Seven Years offers a subjective chronicle of contemporary art during the second decade of the twenty-first century, seen through a series of columns by curator, writer, and educator Maria Lind. Writing for the print edition of ArtReview, Lind considers individual artworks and exhibitions and contributes to conversations and debates developing in the art world and beyond. She explores work by Haegue Yang, Hassan Khan, Uglycute, Tania Perez-Cordova, and Walid Raad, among others, and discusses such exhibitions as dOCUMENTA (13), the Sharjah Biennial 12, the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial, and several editions of the Venice Biennale.Lind's writings are accompanied by other texts: artists Goldin+Senneby discuss Lind's materialist approach through the use of the word “hand” in the introduction to the volume; Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy reflects on how writing can affect curatorial work, and vice versa; artist Ahmet Öğüt conducts an imagined interview with Lind; and Philippe Parreno weaves a summary of the years between 2010 and 2018, highlighting the notion of potentiality. A postscript by Lind's fellow curator Joanna Warsza compiles a glossary of the book's key ideas and terms.ContributorsGoldin+Senneby, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Ahmet Öğüt, Philippe Parreno, Joanna Warsza

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Book SynopsisAn analyses of the relations created by the curatorial—relations that also constitute it.In spite of the heightened interest in the curatorial since the late twentieth century, the structural conditions and potentials underpinning its special sociocultural status have yet to be defined. Taking this as a starting point, in this book, Beatrice von Bismarck outlines the curatorial—that field of cultural activity and knowledge which relates to the becoming-public of art and culture—as a domain of practice and meaning with its own structures, conditions, rules, and procedures. Von Bismarck focuses on the relations created by the curatorial—relations that also constitute it. By concentrating on the dynamic fabric of relations between human and nonhuman participants, she carries out a shift within the discourse on the curatorial: rather than foregrounding partial definitions of the activity of curating, the subjectivization of the curator, and the presentation format of the exhibition, she emphasizes the interplay of all these factors. She proposes a conceptual framework geared toward highlighting the activity, the subject position, and the resulting product as always already dynamically interrelated in its genesis, articulation, and function. Not least, this situates the curatorial condition in the context of key parameters of societal developments over the last half century.

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Book SynopsisBetween 1970 and 1971, Italian artists Paolo Scheggi and Vincenzo Agnetti worked together on a project they called The Temple. Birth of Eidos. Due to Scheggi’s untimely death in 1971 at the age of 31, the project remained unfinished. These previously unpublished preparatory sketches, drawings, and notes, which were shown at the Museo Novecento in Florence, are examined in essays by Ilaria Bignotti and Bruno Corà and texts by Germana Agnetti and Cosima Scheggi, daughters of the two artists and directors of their respective archives. The concept of the project was to create a sacred place, a temple, to contain linguistic objects representing primary forms of community, subjectivity and power, linking these with the artistic and theoretical research the two artists were conducting at the time. Agnetti died 10 years after his friend and colleague. His research followed a new route but remained closely linked with that idea born in 1968, that “any work, any artistic object, any gesture is a critical reminder of reality and our existence”. (Germana Agnetti).

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisSAVE THE DATE BOOK LAUNCH, NOVEMBER 9 at 20h00, PASSA PORTA BOOKSHOP, BRUSSELSThe first introduction of the seminal writings of a key Belgian writer and critic to an English-speaking audience.Radically subjective. Radically unapologetic. Radically demanding. These are the hallmarks of Dirk Lauwaert’s skill, attitude, and sensitivity, which are the result of radical attention.Belgian writer and critic Dirk Lauwaert (1944–2013) wrote about images, be they moving or still, historical or contemporary, overfamiliar or unseen. He experienced them intensely, studied them attentively, and connected them to ethical, philosophical, or social issues in texts that invited readers to do the same, whether they were leaving the movie theater, browsing a photo book, or visiting an exhibition.This selection presents the depth and scope of Lauwaert’s immense output through 15 key texts in which the Belgian author unfolds his central ideas and motifs, displaying his kaleidoscopic thinking and essayistic ability. The texts span 25 years – from 1983 to 2008 – and were originally published in various contexts over the course of three decades.Table of ContentsNote Acknowledgements A Culture of Showing. Firm Elegance in the Writing of Dirk Lauwaert by Herman Asselberghs NotesI Contemporary Sophistry and the Poor Experience Reports from a Classroom Critique of Enthusiasm. Culture, or the Event; The Accompanying Word: PassionII Barthes, the Perfect Bourgeois Portrait of a Role: the Intellectual The Sovereign Dandy The Rhythm of ThinkingIII Mise-en-Scène: The Most Beautiful Word about Film The Classic Film Body Seam and Pattern: Thinking Forms Dreaming of an ExpeditionIV Public/Publication/Publishing/Publicity The Blurred Photograph: An Old Debate The Image That Yields Up Everything (Because It Has Seen Nothing)V Moving HouseNotes

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Book Synopsis“If this book of shocking intelligence and moral hope is read widely and above all well, word for word, it will help the world.” —Peter Schjeldahl An expanded edition of Hickey’s controversial and exquisitely written apologia for beauty—championed by artists, reviled by art critics, and as powerful as ever 30 years on The 30th anniversary cloth edition brings back into print Dragon’s four essays on beauty and commingles them with newly discovered essays by the MacArthur Foundation “genius.” Art by Caravaggio, Bellini, Velázquez, Raphael, Warhol and Mapplethorpe is complemented by Hickey’s tributes to Dolly Parton and Richard Pryor, outing of John Rechy’s gay novel Numbers, essays on the art of writing and witty analysis of paintings by Ed Ruscha. An afterword by Hickey’s friend and Dragon’s editor queers the brash, heterosexual gambler as it situates the creation of Dragon squarely within the AIDS plague. At the time, the book made beauty visible under the looming presence of death and bodily decay. Today, Hickey’s prescient diagnosis of the “therapeutic institution” resonates even louder and artists respond by harnessing beauty as a source of meaning and of joy. Dave Hickey (1938–2021) was one of the preeminent arts and cultural writers of the turn of the 21st century. A MacArthur "Genius" Fellow known as the "beauty guy" in the popular press, Hickey opened A Clean, Well-Lighted Place gallery in Austin, Texas, in the 1960s, before becoming executive editor at Art in America magazine. In the 1970s, he was a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, where he coined and helped create the "Outlaw country" music movement. By the 1990s, Hickey had made a home in Las Vegas, from where he regularly traveled to speak with audiences worldwide.Trade ReviewDave Hickey was a genius. Not because of what he did for me but because of the way he was, the way he felt and the wonderful way he worded things, he was beyond compare. I liked him, I loved him and yes, I had a crush on him too. Long live the memory and the words of Dave Hickey. -- Dolly PartonWhen Dave Hickey died last fall at the age of eighty-two, he left behind a singular contribution to the history of art writing, along with a badly bruised reputation, both routinely called 'iconoclastic' for lack of anything more precise. The magazines he’d published in since the 1960s hardly took notice. The perfunctory obituaries that did appear treated him as a kind of Hunter S. Thompson of the contemporary art world, ensconced as he was in Las Vegas at the height of his fame. But alongside the bluster of 'the bad boy of art criticism' was a neon Walter Pater of the Southwest who almost single-handedly remade the practice of art writing with his first two collections, The Invisible Dragon and Air Guitar. -- Jarrett Earnest * New York Review of Books *If the book of shocking intelligence and moral hope is read widely and above all well, word for word, it will help the world. -- Peter Schjeldahl * "Author of Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018" *Dave Hickey's prose transports are like an eye attached to a butterfly attached to a rocketship—which is to say, lucidity uncannily yoked to both a deft lightness of touch and sheer gangbusters propulsion: the down-to-earth, time and again, taking off and taking flight. The generosity of the man's verve—the suppleness of its profusions—can get to be downright ravishing. On top of which, the guy's really funny. -- Lawrence Weschler * Author of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees *

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Book SynopsisCurie Scott is an independent education consultant specializing in arts and health, based in the UK. After working as a medical doctor, she transitioned into Higher Education. Previously, she worked at Arts University Bournemouth, UK and Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. She is an award-winning educator for creative learning practices and holds a PhD in thinking through drawing. She is also the author of Drawing: Arts for Health (2021).Philippa Lyon leads drawing, health and wellbeing research at the University of Brighton, UK, where she teaches on the MA Craft and MA Textiles and supervises PhD students. She has publications on the history of art education, design education approaches, and on applications of drawing within educational, health and wellbeing contexts. She has published work in The Sage Handbook of Visual Research Methods (2019) and journals such as the International Journal of Art and Design Education and Visual Methodologies. She also completed her PhD on British Second World War poetry in 2005.

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Book SynopsisBy closely following Goethe''s explanations of the color phenomena, the reader may become so divorced from the wavelength theory—Goethe never even mentions it—that he may begin to think about color theory relatively unhampered by prejudice, ancient or modern.By the time Goethe''s Theory of Colours appeared in 1810, the wavelength theory of light and color had been firmly established. To Goethe, the theory was the result of mistaking an incidental result for an elemental principle. Far from pretending to a knowledge of physics, he insisted that such knowledge was an actual hindrance to understanding. He based his conclusions exclusively upon exhaustive personal observation of the phenomena of color.Of his own theory, Goethe was supremely confident: “From the philosopher, we believe we merit thanks for having traced the phenomena of colours to their first sources, to the circumstances under which they appear and are, and beyond which no further explanation respecting them is possible.”Goethe''s scientific conclusions have, of course, long since been thoroughly demolished, but the intelligent reader of today may enjoy this work on quite different grounds: for the beauty and sweep of his conjectures regarding the connection between color and philosophical ideas; for an insight into early nineteenth-century beliefs and modes of thought; and for the flavor of life in Europe just after the American and French Revolutions.The book does not have to be studied to be appreciated. Goethe''s subjective theory of colors permits him to speak most persuasively of color harmony and aesthetics. In some readers these notions will evoke a positive response on their merits. Others may regard them as pure fantasy, but savor the grace and style of their exposition.The work may also be read as an accurate guide to the study of color phenomena. Goethe''s conclusions have been repudiated, but no one quarrels with his reporting of the facts to be observed. With simple objects—vessels, prisms, lenses, and the like—the reader will be led through a demonstration course not only in subjectively produced colors, but also in the observable physical phenomena of color. By closely following Goethe''s explanations of the color phenomena, the reader may become so divorced from the wavelength theory—Goethe never even mentions it—that he may begin to think about color theory relatively unhampered by prejudice, ancient or modern.

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