Focusing on the cultural and philosophic conflation between the "oriental" and the "ornamental," Ornamentalism offers an original and sustained theory about Asiatic femininity in western culture. This study pushes our vocabulary about the woman of color past the usual platitudes about objectification and past the critique of Orientalism in order to formulate a fresher and sharper understanding of the representation, circulation, and ontology of Asiatic femininity. This book alters the foundational terms of racialized femininity by allowing us to conceptualize race and gender without being solely beholden to flesh or skin. Tracing a direct link between the making of Asiatic femininity and a technological history of synthetic personhood in the West from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, Ornamentalism demonstrates how the construction of modern personhood in the multiple realms of law, culture, and art has been surprisingly indebted to this very marginal figure and places Asian femininity at the center of an entire epistemology of race. Drawing from and speaking to the multiple fields of feminism, critical race theory, visual culture, performance studies, legal studies, Modernism, Orientalism, Object Studies and New Materialism, Ornamentalism will leave reader with a greater understanding of what it is to exist as a person-thing within the contradictions of American culture.

This stunning collection of 284 rare designs is a bonanza for artists and craftspeople seeking distinctive patterns with a South American Indian flavor. The carefully adapted, authentic motifs include animal and totemic designs, geometric and rectilinear figures, abstracts, grids, and many other styles in a wide range of shapes and sizes.

Kulango Figurines is designed to introduce various miniature works created by the Kulango in northeastern Cote d'Ivoire, who were formerly vassals of the two kingdoms that inhabited the country (Bouna and Gyaman). Their extraordinarily varied art, which can be both intriguing and disconcerting, is relatively unknown. Their metal sculptures in particular display a strikingly free expressiveness, breaking as they do with the iconographic codes that govern their works in wood. Doing away with immobile remoteness, bodies seem to reinvent movement, sometimes adopting almost choreographic gestures, an airy grace, sinuous lines. Or, in trembling tension, some display unexpected twists and provocative curves, while others stretch out impossibly or offer a chance for virtuoso foreshortening and stylised bodies. Still others are even stranger, like Siamese twins, inseparable triplets, headless figures or figures with one head on two torsos, with one leg or four, webbed feet, outsize arms and hooped bodies. Who are these enigmatic beings whose bulging eyes peer at the invisible? Is the sculpture confined to just these specimens? The range of styles is simply astonishing, the forms beyond imagination. The collection includes over 100 figurines, none of which is over 10cm tall: pendants, amulets, fortune tellers' statuettes or weights for gold. Introduced into our world through the metamorphosis of photography, transfigured by lighting and framing effects, these resurrected works have been revitalised, like apparitions from another world. Text in English and French.

In A Revolutionary Artist of Tibet author David Jackson focuses on the Khyenri style, the least known among the three major painting styles of Tibet, dating from the mid-fifteenth through the seventeenth century. The painting of Khyentse Chenmo, the founder of the Khyenri style who flourished from the 1450s to the 1490s, was significant for his radical rejection of the prevailing, classic Indic (especially Nepalese-inspired) styles with formal red backgrounds, enthusiastically replacing them with the intense greens and blues of Chinese landscapes. Khyentse was famed for his fine and realistic looking work, both as a painter and sculptor. His painting style has often been overlooked or misunderstood by scholars-sometimes misidentified as an early example of the Karma Gardri style - but it is a missing link in the history of Tibetan painting. The Khyenri style is now most closely linked with a small sub-school of the Sakya tradition, the Gongkarwa. The most important in-situ murals of the Khyenri style survive at the Gongkar Monastery in southern Tibet, south of Lhasa near the Gongkar airport. There we find murals by the hand of Khyentse Chenmo himself; many of them were covered by a layer of whitewash and thus escaped destruction during the Cultural Revolution. Jackson also brings to light several of Khyentse's paintings in museums outside Tibet, including some that have been unrecognized for over a century.

Shafik Gabr started his collection of Orientalist art in 1993 by acquiring a painting by Ludwig Deutsch entitled Egyptian Priest Entering a Temple. His collection is today amongst the very few in the world to count such a large number of works by the famed Austrian artist as well as some of the finest examples of the greatest masters of Orientalism such as Jean-Leon Gerome, Frederick Arthur Bridgman, Gustav Bauernfeind and many others. Important for both scholars and art lovers, the Shafik Gabr Collection impresses us with its richness and variety. It includes masterpieces by some of the major nineteenth and twentieth century Orientalists found in private hands today and demonstrates the owner's appreciation of differences as well as similarities in European visions of the versatile and diverse Orient. The selection of paintings in this collection illustrates the owner's evolving taste, his relationship with the world of Orientalism and his interest in its European expression. This Orientalist collection is a harmonious "kaleidoscope" of genres, presenting the Orient through a variety of forms, styles and techniques, and revealing to the European viewer the mysterious East with its bright colours, its exotic and leisurely lifestyle. Over the years, it has become one of the most complete and magnificent tributes dedicated to the world of Orientalism and as such some of the most renowned experts in this field have contributed to this book in order to mark its importance in the art world. Lavishly illustrated, 'Masterpieces of Orientalist Art: The Shafik Gabr' Collection also includes essays by distinguished Orientalist scholars.

One of the largely untold stories of Orientalism is the degree to which the Middle East has been associated with "deviant" male homosexuality by scores of Western travelers, historians, writers, and artists for well over four hundred years. And this story stands to shatter our preconceptions of Orientalism. To illuminate why and how the Islamicate world became the locus for such fantasies and desires, Boone deploys a supple mode of analysis that reveals how the cultural exchanges between Middle East and West have always been reciprocal and often mutual, amatory as well as bellicose. Whether examining European accounts of Istanbul and Egypt as hotbeds of forbidden desire, juxtaposing Ottoman homoerotic genres and their European imitators, or unlocking the homoerotic encoding in Persian miniatures and Orientalist paintings, this remarkable study models an ethics of crosscultural reading that exposes, with nuance and economy, the crucial role played by the homoerotics of Orientalism in shaping the world as we know it today. A contribution to studies in visual culture as well as literary and social history, The Homoerotics of Orientalism draws on primary sources ranging from untranslated Middle Eastern manuscripts and European belles-lettres to miniature paintings and photographic erotica that are presented here for the first time.

Terracotta Warriors provides an intriguing, original and up-to-date account of one of the wonders of the ancient world. Illustrated with a wealth of original photographs, this is the first book available for the general reader. In one of the most astounding archaeological discoveries of all time, the Terracotta Warriors were discovered by chance by farmers in 1974. We now understand that the excavated pits containing nearly eight thousand warriors and hundreds of horses are only part of a much grander mausoleum complex. There is a great deal still to be discovered and understood about the entire area whichis now thought to cover around 100 square kilometres. And there is the tantalising possibility of the opening of the imperial tomb.

A fresh exploration of Native American art that positions the work within the broader context of North American art history This landmark publication presents Native American art within the broader context of American art history, through an examination of notable works from a major private collection. The insightful texts provide a new evaluation of the art, culture, and daily life of numerous North American tribes, including Acoma, Apache, Cheyenne, Creek, Crow, Hopi-Twea, Kiowa, Lakota, Pomo, Seneca, Seminole, Tlingit, and Zuni, among others. The works featured in this lavish volume span centuries, from the period prior to contact with European settlers through the early 20th century, and represent the extensive artistic achievements of culturally distinct indigenous peoples. Both known and unrecorded makers' innovative visions are manifest in a wide variety of aesthetic forms and media-from painting, sculpture, and drawing to costume, ceramics, and baskets. Challenging traditional presentations of American Indian art, this publication situates and analyzes them alongside other North American artistic practices.

Hokusai Great Wave Wire-O Journal from Galison is the perfect companion notebook. The cover features The Great Wave, the famous woodblock print by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai, lined pages, and a large functional spiral binding.

With Smiling Sushi Roll, lunch can resemble great works of art, like Munch's The Scream and Rodin's The Thinker. In this unique, humorous little book, popular maki (sushi roll) artist and instructor Tama-chan, otherwise known as Takayo Kiyota, shows how basic ingredients like rice, seaweed, pickles, and cucumber can be used like paint and ink to create maki that is so fun to look at, you almost won't want to eat it. Mostly humorous art book, part sushi cookbook, Smiling Sushi Roll includes a few of the basics of using condiments, herbs and spices to colourize rice as well as preparing a sushi roll for some artistic strokes. Tama-chan's rolls feature original whimsical cartoons of Japanese culture and social commentary, as well as interpretations of famous works. Some of the cartoons even change with each slice of the roll to form a running narrative. Some of the sushi art projects in this book include: Famous paintings, like The Kiss by Gustav Klimt Objects, like a gun or a guitar People, like a Hula dancer or a Ninja Animals, like a dinosaur or a fish Symbols, like a Japanese character or a radiation warning sign. The result is a funny, joyous celebration of food preparation and presentation, and a whole new definition of culinary art.

The offering of gifts is a practice nearly as ancient and widespread as human culture itself. At courts throughout the Islamic world, the exchange of lavish gifts and endowments intimately linked art with diplomacy and royal ambitions, religion, and personal relationships. This beautifully illustrated book explores the complex interplay between artistic production and gift-based patronage by discussing works of great aesthetic refinement that were either commissioned or repurposed as gifts. By tracing the unique histories of certain artworks, the author reveals how the exchange of luxury objects was central to the circulation, emulation, and assimilation of artistic forms both within and beyond the Islamic world. The catalogue features seventy illustrations of artworks from the 8th to the 20th century. These include some of the most beautiful and least-known objects from the Islamic world, such as jewelry, armor and weaponry, enormous and ornate carpets, and illustrated copies of the Qur'an.

Written in the spirit of Ovid (43 B.C-A.D. 17/18), this lively and erudite book traces the art derived from Ovid's "Metamorphoses "from the Renaissance up to the present day. The "Metamorphoses "has been more widely illustrated than any other book except the Bible; for centuries, great artists have drawn, painted, and sculpted its stories, the artists often responding not only to Ovid's work but to one another's in their depictions. Paul Barolsky, a specialist in Italian Renaissance art and literature, explores Ovid's unparalleled influence on the visual arts, discussing works by many of the most famous artists of the past six centuries. Broadly interdisciplinary, the new understanding of the themes of the "Metamorphoses" revealed here will appeal to those in the fields of Renaissance art, humanism, literature, history, and classics, among others. At once witty, entertaining, and profound, "Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Botticelli to Picasso" is a meditation on what words can achieve that images cannot, and conversely what images can show that words cannot tell.

Going beyond the 'blackness' of black art to examine the integrative and interdisciplinary practices of Kara Walker, Fred Wilson, Isaac Julien, Glenn Ligon, and William Pope.L-five contemporary black artists in whose work race plays anything but a defining role. Work by black artists today is almost uniformly understood in terms of its "blackness," with audiences often expecting or requiring it to "represent" the race. In How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness, Darby English shows how severely such expectations limit the scope of our knowledge about this work and how different it looks when approached on its own terms. Refusing to grant racial blackness-his metaphorical "total darkness"-primacy over his subjects' other concerns and contexts, he brings to light problems and possibilities that arise when questions of artistic priority and freedom come into contact, or even conflict, with those of cultural obligation. English examines the integrative and interdisciplinary strategies of five contemporary artists-Kara Walker, Fred Wilson, Isaac Julien, Glenn Ligon, and William Pope.L-stressing the ways in which this work at once reflects and alters our view of its informing context: the advent of postmodernity in late twentieth-century American art and culture. The necessity for "black art" comes both from antiblack racism and resistances to it, from both segregation and efforts to imagine an autonomous domain of black culture. Yet to judge by the work of many contemporary practitioners, English writes, black art is increasingly less able-and black artists less willing-to maintain its standing as a realm apart. Through close examinations of Walker's controversial silhouettes' insubordinate reply to pictorial tradition, Wilson's and Julien's distinct approaches to institutional critique, Ligon's text paintings' struggle with modernisms, and Pope.L's vexing performance interventions, English grounds his contention that to understand this work is to displace race from its central location in our interpretation and to grant right of way to the work's historical, cultural, and aesthetic specificity.

John Heskett wants to transform the way we think about design by showing how integral it is to our daily lives, from the spoon we use to eat our breakfast cereal, and the car we drive to work in, to the medical equipment used to save lives. Design combines 'need' and 'desire' in the form of a practical object that can also reflect the user's identity and aspirations through its form and decoration. This concise guide to contemporary design goes beyond style and taste to look at how different cultures and individuals personalize objects. Heskett also reveals how simple objects, such as a toothpick, can have their design modified to suit the specific cultural behaviour in different countries. There are also fascinating insights into how major companies such as Nokia, Ford, and Sony approach design. Finally, the author gives us an exciting vision of what design can offer us in the future, showing in particular how it can humanize new technology. 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.

This unprecedented volume celebrates the survival of the wall-paintings at Bundi by presenting a stunning photographic survey of these long-hidden treasures, most published for the first time, and including both abundant details and many scenes that cannot be seen by the naked eye. The royal fort at Bundi, an isolated town in the Indian state of Rajasthan, is home to elaborately decorated palaces that are among India's most beautiful buildings. That several of the palaces have been completely closed to visitors until very recently has kept their painted walls hidden from public view, but it has also helped their preservation. The paintings depict daily life at the Bundi court from the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries, as well as scenes from traditional literary and religious texts. The illustrations together reveal the rich cultural interrelationships that gave these paintings their unique power and importance.

In spring of 1960, Japan's government passed Anpo, a revision of the postwar treaty that allows the United States to maintain a military presence in Japan. This move triggered the largest popular backlash in the nation's modern history. These protests, Nick Kapur argues in Japan at the Crossroads, changed the evolution of Japan's politics and culture, along with its global role. The yearlong protests of 1960 reached a climax in June, when thousands of activists stormed Japan's National Legislature, precipitating a battle with police and yakuza thugs. Hundreds were injured and a young woman was killed. With the nation's cohesion at stake, the Japanese government acted quickly to quell tensions and limit the recurrence of violent demonstrations. A visit by President Eisenhower was canceled and the Japanese prime minister resigned. But the rupture had long-lasting consequences that went far beyond politics and diplomacy. Kapur traces the currents of reaction and revolution that propelled Japanese democracy, labor relations, social movements, the arts, and literature in complex, often contradictory directions. His analysis helps resolve Japan's essential paradox as a nation that is both innovative and regressive, flexible and resistant, wildly imaginative yet simultaneously wedded to tradition. As Kapur makes clear, the rest of the world cannot understand contemporary Japan and the distinct impression it has made on global politics, economics, and culture without appreciating the critical role of the "revolutionless" revolution of 1960-turbulent events that released long-buried liberal tensions while bolstering Japan's conservative status quo.

This book establishes a fresh and expansive view of the grotesque in Western art and culture, from 1500 to the present day. Following the non-linear evolution of the grotesque, Frances S. Connelly analyzes key works, situating them within their immediate social and cultural contexts, as well as their place in the historical tradition. By taking a long historical view, the book reveals the grotesque to be a complex and continuous tradition comprised of several distinct strands: the ornamental, the carnivalesque and caricatural, the traumatic, and the profound. The book articulates a model for understanding the grotesque as a rupture of cultural boundaries that compromises and contradicts accepted realities. Connelly demonstrates that the grotesque is more than a style, genre, or subject; it is a cultural phenomenon engaging the central concerns of the humanistic debate today. Hybrid, ambivalent, and changeful, the grotesque is a shaping force in the modern era.

The uniqueness of Japanese culture rests on the fact that, throughout its history, Japan has continually taken, adapted, and transformed diverse influences whether from Korea, China, and the South Seas, or Europe and America into distinct traditions of its own. This book, an authoritative and provocative survey of the arts of Japan from the prehistoric period to the present, brings together the results of the most recent research on the subject. In this expanded and updated edition, a new chapter explores Japanese art from the 1980s to the new millennium. Profusely illustrated with examples from a range of arts as well as an extensive bibliography, Japanese Art is a concise, thought-provoking overview of a fascinating culture."

This book offers the first-ever survey of artistic depictions of the legend of Saint George defeating the dragon. The earliest existing references to this episode in the hagiography of Saint George date from the 11th century, and the mythical conflict has entertained the imaginations of artists ever since. Copiously illustrated, this book includes varied representations in painting, sculpture, engraving, and more by artists from Raphael and Peter Paul Rubens to Odilon Redon and Andy Warhol. In addition, the artists David Claerbout, Giuseppe Penone, Luc Tuymans, and Angel Vergara Santiago have been invited to contribute their own interpretations of the story, and these new works are also featured. The contemporary perspective is further explored in the book through essays that trace the shifting resonance of the allegory, positing that it has evolved to become symbolic of man's internal struggle as he attempts to fulfill his destiny.

"Coast Salish Totem Poles," the media companion to "A Totem Pole History," includes:
- Two CDs that feature Pauline Hillaire telling traditional stories associated with the totem poles and Joe Hillaire singing Lummi songs.
- A DVD that features Pauline showing viewers how to interpret the stories and history expressed in Joe's totem poles.