There is no soundtrack is a study of how sound and image produce meaning in contemporary experimental media art by artists ranging from Chantal Akerman to Nam June Paik to Tanya Tagaq. It contextualises these works and artists through key ideas in sound studies: voice, noise, listening, the soundscape and more. The book argues that experimental media art produces radical and new audio-visual relationships challenging the visually dominated discourses in art, media and the human sciences. In addition to directly addressing what Jonathan Sterne calls 'visual hegemony', it also explores the lack of diversity within sound studies by focusing on practitioners from transnational and diverse backgrounds. As such, it contributes to a growing interdisciplinary scholarship, building new, more complex and reverberating frameworks to collectively sonify the study of culture. -- .

Given that the Surrealists were initially met with widespread incomprehension, mercilessly ridiculed, and treated as madmen, it is remarkable that more than one hundred years on we still feel the vitality and continued popularity of the movement today. As Willard Bohn demonstrates, Surrealism was not just a French phenomenon but one that eventually encompassed much of the world. Concentrating on the movement's theory and practice, this extraordinarily broad-ranging book documents the spread of Surrealism throughout the western hemisphere and examines keys texts, critical responses, and significant writers. The latter include three extraordinarily talented individuals who were eventually awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (Andre Breton, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz). Like their Surrealist colleagues, they strove to free human beings from their unconscious chains so that they could realize their true potential. One Hundred Years of Surrealist Poetry explores not only the birth but also the ongoing life of a major literary movement.

Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850-1950 portrays the history of romantic love between men in hundreds of moving and tender vernacular photographs taken between the years 1850 and 1950. This visual narrative of astonishing sensitivity brings to light an until-now-unpublished collection of hundreds of snapshots, portraits, and group photos taken in the most varied of contexts, both private and public. Taken when male partnerships were often illegal, the photos here were found at flea markets, in shoe boxes, family archives, old suitcases, and later online and at auctions. The collection now includes photos from all over the world: Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Japan, Greece, Latvia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Serbia. The subjects were identified as couples by that unmistakable look in the eyes of two people in love - impossible to manufacture or hide. They were also recognised by body language - evidence as subtle as one hand barely grazing another - and by inscriptions, often coded. Included here are ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, glass negatives, tin types, cabinet cards, photo postcards, photo strips, photomatics, and snapshots - over 100 years of social history and the development of photography. Loving will be produced to the highest standards in illustrated book publishing, The photographs - many fragile from age or handling - have been digitised using a technology derived from that used on surveillance satellites and available in only five places around the world. Paper and other materials are among the best available. And Loving will be manufactured at one of the world's elite printers. Loving, the book, will be up to the measure of its message in every way. In these delight-filled pages, couples in love tell their own story for the first time at a time when joy and hope - indeed human connectivity - are crucial lifelines to our better selves. Universal in reach and overwhelming in impact, Loving speaks to our spirit and resilience, our capacity for bliss, and our longing for the shared truths of love.

Best International Debut in 2017 (awarded by Romanian General and Comparative Literature Association) Most Prestigious Publication in the Humanities (awarded by the Senate of the University of Bucharest) Surrealism began as a movement in poetry and visual art, but it turned out to have its widest impact worldwide in fiction-including in major world writers who denied any connection to surrealism at all. At the heart of this book are discoveries Delia Ungureanu has made in the archives of Harvard's Widener and Houghton libraries, where she has found that Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov were greatly indebted to surrealism for the creation of the pivotal characters who brought them world fame: Pierre Menard and Lolita. In From Paris to Tloen: Surrealism as World Literature, Ungureanu explores the networks of transmission and transformation that turned an avant-garde Parisian movement into a global literary phenomenon. From Paris to Tloen gives a fresh account of surrealism's surprising success, exploring the process of artistic transfer by which the surrealist object rapidly evolved from a purely poetic conception to a mainstay of surrealist visual art and then a key element in late modernist and postmodern fiction, from Borges and Nabokov to such disparate writers as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Haruki Murakami, and Orhan Pamuk in the 21st century.

A richly illustrated celebration of the paintings of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama From the moment of their unveiling at the National Portrait Gallery in early 2018, the portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama have become two of the most beloved artworks of our time. Kehinde Wiley's portrait of President Obama and Amy Sherald's portrait of the former first lady have inspired unprecedented responses from the public, and attendance at the museum has more than doubled as visitors travel from near and far to view these larger-than-life paintings. After witnessing a woman drop to her knees in prayer before the portrait of Barack Obama, one guard said, "No other painting gets the same kind of reactions. Ever." The Obama Portraits is the first book about the making, meaning, and significance of these remarkable artworks. Richly illustrated with images of the portraits, exclusive pictures of the Obamas with the artists during their sittings, and photos of the historic unveiling ceremony by former White House photographer Pete Souza, this book offers insight into what these paintings can tell us about the history of portraiture and American culture. The volume also features a transcript of the unveiling ceremony, which includes moving remarks by the Obamas and the artists. A reversible dust jacket allows readers to choose which portrait to display on the front cover. An inspiring history of the creation and impact of the Obama portraits, this fascinating book speaks to the power of art-especially portraiture-to bring people together and promote cultural change. Published in association with the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC

The collection of papers that makes up this book arises largely from the joint activities of two specialist groups of the British Computer Society, namely the Displays Group and the Computer Arts Society. Both these groups are now more than 20 years old and during the whole of this time have held regular, separate meetings. In recent years, however, the two groups have held a joint annual meeting at which presentations of mutual interest have been given and it is mainly from the last two of these that the present papers have been drawn. They fall naturally into four classes: visualisation, art, design and animation-although, as in all such cases, the boundaries between the classes are fuzzy and overlap inevitably occurs. Visualisation The graphic potential of computers has been recognised almost since computing was first used, but it is only comparatively recently that their possibilities as devices for the visualisation of complex. and largely ab stract phenomena has begun to be more fully appreciated. Some workers stress the need to be able to model photographic reality in order to assist in this task. They look to better algorithms and more resolution to achieve this end. Others-Alan Mackay for instance-suggest that it is "not just a matter of providing more and more pixels. It is a matter of providing congenial clues which employ to the greatest extent what we already know.

In post-1991 Macedonia, Barok furniture came to represent affluence and success during a period of transition to a new market economy. This furniture marked the beginning of a larger Baroque style that influenced not only interior decorations in people's homes but also architecture and public spaces. By tracing the signifier Baroque, the book examines the reconfiguration of hierarchical relations among (ethnic) groups, genders, and countries in a transnational context. Investigating how Baroque has come to signify larger social processes and transformations in the current rebranding of the country, the book reveals the close link between aesthetics and politics, and how ethno-national conflicts are reflected in visually appealing ornamentation.

Rozita Dimova is Associate Professor of South East European Languages and Culture at Ghent University (Belgium) and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Slavonic Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin (Germany). She is guest co-editor of the issue of "History and Anthropology" (Winter 2013, vol. 24), entitled "Contested Nation-building within the International 'Order of Things': Performance, Festivals and Legitimization in South-Eastern Europe." Currently, she is completing a book manuscript on borders and neoliberalism in South-Eastern Europe.

A Kenyan upbringing is the ticket to this voyage into a remarkably real created world entered via carved, integrating frames. Twice TVs pick of the show at the Royal Academies and with crowds and fan mail at a third RA Summer Exhibition, James remains a virtual unknown in his own country. A production rate averaging just one painting a year may account for this, but in an Art World where price is all, his output is sufficient to net him a viable living selling internationally. Also introducing the remarkable paintings of his artist son Alexander James. Together their art is akin to a vigorous breath of fresh air in a stuffy room.

In 1917, Marcel Duchamp sent out a 'telegram' in the guise of a urinal signed R. Mutt. When it arrived at its destination a good forty years later it was both celebrated and vilified as proclaiming that anything could be art; from that point on, the whole Western art world reconfigured itself as 'post-Duchamp'. This book offers a reading of Duchamp's telegram that sheds new light onto its first reception, corrects some historical mistakes and reveals that Duchamp's urinal in fact heralds the demise of the fine arts system and the advent of what Thierry de Duve calls the 'Art-in-General' system. Further, the author shows that this new system does not date from the 1960s but rather from the 1880s. Duchamp was neither its author nor its agent, but rather its brilliant messenger.

Newly published in paperback to coincide with the Barbara Hepworth retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain in 2015, this fascinating book combines a fully illustrated catalogue of the sculptor's surviving prototypes in plaster (and a number also in aluminium and wood), generously gifted to The Hepworth Wakefield by the Hepworth Estate, with a detailed analysis of her working methods and a comprehensive history of her work in bronze. The Hepworth's collection of over forty unique, unknown sculptures are the surviving working models from which editions of bronzes were cast. They range in size from works that can be held in the hand to monumental sculptures, including the Winged Figure for John Lewis's Oxford Street headquarters. The majority are original plasters on which the artist worked with her own hands and to scale. It was in plaster that Hepworth experimented most as she made the transition from stone and wood to bronze, testing the potential of her new material as she went. Sophie Bowness's illuminating text describes the different means by which this increasingly important artist made her plaster works, and why. Drawing extensively on archival records and photographs, this publication is an important source of information about a significant collection of work, the gallery which houses it and Hepworth in general. The catalogue illuminates the histories of Hepworth's sculptures through fascinating archival photographs, which demonstrate everything from the varied tools used by Hepworth to the logistical problems of transporting her monumental pieces through the narrow streets of St Ives. The book provides a much-needed account of Hepworth's studio practice, her relations with foundries, and the evolution of her public commissions.

Taking performance as a key word, this book explores important Japanese artists and art works in the 1960s in relation to the formation of postwar Japan. In response to the social upheavals of the 1960s, Eckersall shows how art interacted with society in unique and transformational ways. He includes case studies of rarely discussed artists and performances by Zero Jigen, Ichiyanagi Toshi, Iimura Takahiko and the contemporary group Port B, as well as dynamic cultural events such as the 1964 Olympic Games, mass protests and the 1970 Osaka Expo.A unique aspect of Eckersall's study is his interdisciplinary approach, which draws on Japanese writing on the 1960s in tandem with performance theory. By interweaving arguments about the critical role of performance as an artistic medium and as a social dramaturgy, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary Japanese society and culture, cultural historians and people interested in theatre and performance studies.

Performance in the digital age has undergone a radical shift in which a once ephemeral art form can now be relived, replayed and repeated. Until now, much scholarship has been devoted to the nature of live performance in the digital age; Documenting Performance is the first book to provide a collection of key writings about the process of documenting performance, focused not on questions of liveness or the artistic qualities of documents, but rather on the professional approaches to recovering, preserving and disseminating knowledge of live performance. Through its four-part structure, the volume introduces readers to important writings by international practitioners and scholars on: * the contemporary context for documenting performance * processes of documenting performance * documenting bodies in motion * documenting to create In each, chapters examine the ways performance is documented and the issues arising out of the process of documenting performance. While theorists have argued that performance becomes something else whenever it is documented, the writings reveal how the documents themselves cannot be regarded simply as incomplete remains from live events. The methods for preserving and managing them over time, ensuring easy access of such materials in systematic archives and collections, requires professional attention in its own right. Through the process of documenting performance, artists acquire a different perspective on their own work, audiences can recall specific images and sounds for works they have witnessed in person, and others who did not see the original work can trace the memories of particular events, or use them to gain an understanding of something that would otherwise remain unknown to them and their peers.

In the province of Va rmland in Sweden a group of about 50 creative people developed a unique artist's colony at the beginning of the 20th century. The oldest participant was born in 1852 and the youngest in 1925. They were primarily painters, craftsmen and musicians, working independently. These inspired people became known as the Rackstad Artist Colony because the principal members lived in and around a community called Rackstad, situated on the south end of Lake Racken, north of the small town of Arvika. The Rackstand Dance is a tribute to the artists and the unique colony that provided Sweden with some of its finest works of art. Complete with photographs of their life, times and of course the magnificant work they created, as well as historical knowledge up until this time has not been assembled before.

Provides a counter history to conventional accounts of American art. Close historical examinations of particular events in Los Angeles and New York in the 1960s are interwoven with discussion of the location of these events, normally marginalized or overlooked, in the history of cultural politics in the United States during the postwar era. Contradictions both within dissident art practices and the mainstream avant-garde are explored. So, too, are the significance of cultural institutions in relation to the production of art, the function of cultural canons within national politics, the construction of collective memories, and the ways in which culture is embedded in ideology and politics. The book is based on detailed and new research from a range of sources including the alternative press, such as the Los Angeles Free Press; public and private archives; interviews and oral histories.

Combining a range of content with self-reflexive examination by scholars and practitioners, this edited volume interrogates the contemporary significance of the avant-garde. Rather than focusing on a particular region, period, or movement, the contributors bring together case studies to examine what constitutes the avant-garde canon.

Edmund de Waal is a world-famous ceramicist. Having spent thirty years making beautiful pots―which are then sold, collected, and handed on―he has a particular sense of the secret lives of objects. When he inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, he wanted to know who had touched and held them, and how the collection had managed to survive.

And so begins The Hare with Amber Eyes, this extraordinarily moving memoir and detective story as de Waal discovers both the story of the netsuke and of his family, the Ephrussis, over five generations.

A nineteenth-century banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna, the Ephrussis were as rich and respected as the Rothchilds. Yet by the end of the World War II, when the netsuke were hidden from the Nazis in Vienna, this collection of very small carvings was all that remained of their vast empire.

Having met the elusive Maggi Hambling, This book is pure Maggi at her best.The book details the first ideas for the scallop to its placing on Aldeburgh beach .The book also tells us how Maggi became an artist. Anyone from Suffolk will relate to Maggi's work.First published in hardback 2010.

The Subject of Minimalism advocates for minimalism as an approach to daily life. Utilizing a wide range of theoretical and creative texts, Thomas Phillips offers an examination of subjectivity as considered, enacted, and embodied. Provocatively, he makes the claim that lived experience is capable of being refined according to the paradoxically rich parameters of a minimalist aesthetic. What is finally at stake for one who engages with certain texts, the book argues, is a selfhood that may become at once 'minimized' and advanced in the psychology and materiality of its everyday life.

Art, war, carnival or cult — masks have two sides: They conceal and hide, and at the same time create new personalities, strange and captivating at once. So, too, do masks reveal world views of time and place: cult masks from Africa, mediaeval knight helmets, fantasy masks of famous film heroes like Darth Vader, or gas masks and VR glasses as modern functional objects. In this new photo book, Russian photographer Olga Michi traces our millennia-old fascination with masks. Her expressive pictures place the masks centre-stage, creating a new, surrealistic aesthetic. With fascinating texts on each mask’s cultural-historical significance, this high-quality photo book delights, informs, and ignites the imagination. Text in English, French, German, and Russian.

When and why did the turntable morph from music machine to musical instrument? Why have mobile phones evolved changeable skins? How did hip-hop videos inspire an edgy new look for the Cadillac? The answers to such questions illustrate this provocative book, which examines the cultural meanings of artifacts and the role of designers in their design and production. "Designing Things" provides the reader with a map of the rapidly changing field of design studies, a subject which now draws on a diverse range of theories and methodologies -- from art and visual culture, to anthropology and material culture, to media and cultural studies. With clear explanations of key concepts -- such as form language, planned obsolescence, object fetishism, product semantics, brand positioning and user needs -- overviews of theoretical foundations and case studies of historical and contemporary objects, " Designing Things" looks behind-the-scenes and beneath-the-surface at some of our most familiar and iconic objects. See more at: http: //designingthings.org/