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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > From 1900 > Art styles, 1960 -
In this ground-breaking collection of critical essays, 15 writers
explore the experimental, interdisciplinary and radically
transgressive field of contemporary live art in South Africa.
Set
against a contemporary South African society that is
chronologically `post' apartheid, but one that continues to grapple
with material redress, land redistribution and systemic racism,
Acts of Transgression finds a representation of the complexity of
this moment within the rich potential of a performative art form
that transcends disciplinary boundaries and aesthetic conventions.
The collection probes live art's intersection with crisis and
socio-political turbulence, shifting notions of identity and
belonging, embodied trauma and loss, questions of archive, memory
and the troubling of colonial systems of knowing,
an interrogation
of narratives of the past and visions for the future.These diverse
essays, analysing the work of more than 25 contemporary South
African artists and accompanied by a striking visual record of more
than 50 photographs, represent the first major critical study of
contemporary live art in South Africa; a study that is as timeous
as it is imperative.
At the start of the March 2020 lockdown, Ian Beck would walk his
greyhound Gracie through the early morning streets of Isleworth in
west London, revelling in the light and the silence that the
restrictions had brought. The familiar became charged with new
meaning, inspiring Ian to paint the scenes around him for their own
sake, something that he hadn't done since his student days in the
sixties. Suburban streets, trees, fences, shrubs and overgrown
alleyways - all are transformed in the quiet intensity of Ian's
lockdown paintings. He painted interiors too: the moon shining
through a bedroom window, objects on mantelpieces, the eeriness of
back gardens at dusk. As the year progressed, the crisp light of
spring gave way to the haze of summer and the gloom of autumn fogs.
The Light in Suburbia collects sixty of Ian's paintings from this
period: a remarkable record of his year spent trying to capture the
beauty of the unprepossessing everyday.
Sandra Blow (1925-2006) is among the most important British artists
of the later twentieth century. During a time of rapid change in
the art world, her commitment to abstract painting resulted in a
large and diverse body of work of distinctive power and subtlety.
Michael Bird's fascinating survey of Sandra Blow's life and art is
now available for the first time in a handsome paperback edition.
Compiled in collaboration with the artist during the last years of
her life, it provides a definitive overview of her career. The book
is lavishly illustrated throughout with a fully representative
selection of Blow's work. In this highly readable account, Michael
Bird looks in depth at Blow's evolving studio practice and the
personal nature of her abstract vision. He places Blow's
achievement firmly within the wider context of British and
international art movements of the post-war period and late
twentieth century. He also casts new light on the role played in
her life by Alberto Burri and Roger Hilton, two influences she
acknowledged to be crucial to her art. Through close attention to
Blow's working methods, this book provides a unique insight into
her creative process. It reveals the intensity of emotional
engagement and technical experimentation that lie behind the
apparent spontaneity of her vivid handling of materials, colour and
form.
This almanac of overlooked vintage subject matter has an emphasis
on art, design, photography and culture. With an extensive array of
rare images, Outr Journal presents a curated compendium of the
unusual that takes its cues from cabinets of curiosities and
journals of miscellany such as The Saturday Book of old. The focus
on underground topics and pop culture extends across time and
continents to include highlights such as: religious architecture in
the Space Age, found photos and images of masked people, Satan, pop
culture and many more.
Beginning as a low-budget, oversized fanzine in 1996, index
magazine quickly became one of the most influential small
publications in the United States. index had a smart and irreverent
voice that epitomized the late '90s indie ethos. Featuring
conversations between architects, artists, celebrities, designers,
filmmakers, musicians and writers, the magazine brought together
some of the most relevant cultural figures who were at that time
young and often unknown, yet have since become cultural icons or
celebrities. Some of these names include Bjork, Scarlett Johansson,
Alexander McQueen, Rem Koolhaas, and David Sedaris, and photographs
by cutting-edge photographers such as Leeta Harding, Terry
Richardson, Juergen Teller, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Ryan McGinley.
Paying homage to Generation X's it glossy, index A to Z features
the best interviews and photographs by the most celebrated artists
and celebrities that were featured in the iconic index magazine.
This A to Z index captures the spirit of an era, with F for
Fashion, featuring designers Kate Spade and Marc Jacobs, and I for
Indie with Harmony Korine and John Waters, and other sections
including Royalty,Vanished, and X-Rated, this volume is packed with
index's most memorable interviews and greatest photos of the time,
including previously unpublished outtakes and party pictures. A new
interview with Halley and Nickas, a reminisence by Bruce LaBruce,
and a historical overview by Wendy Vogel offer further looks behind
the scenes. Index A to Z celebrates the uncompromising
personalities, humor, and DIY brilliance of the indie generation.
At the beginning of 2020, just as global Covid-19 restrictions were
coming into force, the artist David Hockney was at his house,
studio and garden in Normandy. From there, he witnessed the arrival
of spring, and recorded the blossoming of the surrounding landscape
on his iPad, a medium he has been using for over a decade. Working
outdoors was an antidote to the anxiety of the moment for Hockney
– 'We need art, and I do think it can relieve stress,' he says.
This uplifting publication – produced to accompany a major
exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts – includes 116 of his new
iPad paintings and shows to full effect Hockney's singular skill in
capturing the exuberance of nature.
One of Britains foremost printmakers, Norman Ackroyd CBE RA has
spent a lifetime recording the coastal landscapes of the British
Isles. A Shetland Notebook contains forty of his vivid landscape
sketches in watercolour. Made in the open air, often aboard a
pitching and tossing fishing boat, these lively, spontaneous works
capture the unique atmosphere of these remote and beautiful
islands. The notebooks unusual format is due entirely to the
artist, who uses sheets of various types of paper torn to fit into
a loose-leaf ring binder made from two pieces of wooden
picture-backing; this he tucks into his coat pocket, ready for use
whenever the need arises. His brief but engaging commentaries place
each sketch in its context. Following the success of A Line in the
Water , Ackroyds collaboration with the award-winning poet Douglas
Dunn OBE, published by the Royal Academy in 2009, A Shetland
Notebook is an essential purchase for all admirers of this most
characterful artists work.
Over the past decade, Frank Bowling has enjoyed belated attention
and celebration, including a major Tate Britain retrospective in
2019. This comprehensive monograph, published in 2011, is now
available in an updated and expanded edition. Born in British
Guiana in 1934, Bowling arrived in England in his late teens, going
on to study at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney and
Derek Boshier. By the early 1960s he was recognised as an original
force in the vibrant London art scene, with a style that
brilliantly combined figurative, symbolic and abstract elements.
Dividing his time between New York and London since the late 1960s,
he has developed a unique and virtuosic abstract style that
combines aspects of American painterly abstraction with a treatment
of light and space that consciously recollects the great English
landscape painters Gainsborough, Turner and Constable. In a
compelling text the art writer, critic and curator Mel Gooding
hails Bowling as one of the finest British artists of his
generation.
The Quest for Gold is an edited version of writings by visionary
Andrew Fekete - a painter, architect, poet and writer, who died in
1986 from an Aids-related illness. Andrew, flaneur, walked the
city; he was a man whose writings, to adapt the words of
Baudelaire, serve as a mirror as vast as the crowd itself. This
anthology, collated by his brother Peter, comprises key works from
Andrew Fekete's opus, and deals with his development as an artist,
his visions and his experiment in Jungian alchemy - the intentional
creation of visionary experiences to manifest unconscious
archetypes to consciousness. The title is taken from an
autobiographical novella that Andrew wrote in 1982, with extracts
from his diaries also provided. The culmination of the anthology is
the poem Punishment for the Transgressors in which Andrew confronts
his impending death, thereby illustrating the connection between
art and life. The work, which is open to multiple interpretations,
is witty and entertaining, dramatic and engaging, full of deep
sentiment and self-reflection. We journey with Andrew in his Quest
for Gold that occurs against the background of his sexuality and
his membership of the gay community. We see into the mind of a man
undertaking an experiment in the exploration of what Jung calls the
contents of the collective unconscious in an attempt at
self-healing and expansion of consciousness. You can find out more
about Andrew Fekete at www.andrewfekete.net and see a
retroscpective of his work at the Victoria Gallery and Museum,
Liverpool until April 2017.
The paintings are grouped under various headings to take the reader
through specific visual experiences beginning with some of the
artist's tools, colour palettes and showing the development of
texture. Seascapes and shorelines are the first stop, going through
to the moors,hills and beyond.
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