Despite the prevalence of video games set in or inspired by classical antiquity, the medium has to date remained markedly understudied in the disciplines of classics and ancient history, with the role of women in these video games especially neglected. Women in Classical Video Games seeks to address this imbalance as the first book-length work of scholarship to examine the depiction of women in video games set in classical antiquity. The volume surveys the history of women in these games and the range of figures presented from the 1980s to the modern day, alongside discussion of issues such as historical accuracy, authenticity, gender, sexuality, monstrosity, hegemony, race and ethnicity, and the use of tropes. A wide range of games of different types and modes are discussed, with particular attention paid to the Assassin's Creed franchise's 21st-century ventures into classical antiquity (first in Origins (2017), set in Hellenistic Egypt, and then in Odyssey (2018), set in classical Greece), which have caught the imagination not only of gamers, but also of academics, especially in relation to their accompanying educational Discovery Modes. The detailed case studies presented here form a compelling case for the indispensability of the medium to both reception studies and gender studies, and offer nuanced answers to such questions as how and why women are portrayed in the ways that they are.

"[...] this is a book to pick up and dream about having a dragon curled up on your lap by the fire in these winter nights." - SFcrowsnest Anne Stokes is a phenomenally popular artist in the field of gothic and magical fantasy, with fans all over the world. Her roots in design and illustration have led to supremely well-crafted paintings that have been licensed for use on all manner of merchandise and her followers eagerly await each new piece. This long-overdue book showcases Anne's oeuvre in all its glory, accompanied by illuminating text about Anne and her inspirations, techniques and processes. The book is divided into thematic sections covering the full range of subjects that she has portrayed: her early work (like that for Dungeons & Dragons), the dark and the gothic, dragons, unicorns, fairies, mermaids and all that is mystical and magical. From the dark allure of Summon the Reaper to the opalescent beauty of Stargazer, this is a real treat for all fans and anyone who loves fantasy and stunning art in general.

Performance Art: Education and Practice is an introduction to performance art through activities and practice prompts that are framed by seminal moments in the history of the medium as well as the current theoretical discussions surrounding performance. The book begins by introducing the terminology related to performance art and its early history. The basic elements of performance, including the body, objects, space, the public, and the public sphere are approached through thematic and conceptual correlations such as objects as autobiography, body as an expression of gendered identity, performance and the everyday, the augmented body, the archive of performance, and public space as space for intervention. Case studies analysed in each chapter are accompanied by reflexive questions and discussion topics. The book proposes a wide range of exercises and comprehensive practice prompts that aim to enhance performance skills, promote experimentation, and encourage an experiential understanding of the theory, history, and concepts relating to performance art. Performance Art: Education and Practice is addressed to students of Fine Arts and Performance Studies from beginner to intermediate level, performance and visual artists who are interested in expanding their knowledge base and creative range, and artist-teachers who are interested in developing their own curriculum and workshop content.

J.R.R. Tolkien's complete artwork for "The Hobbit," presented for the first time in celebration of the 75th anniversary
When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote "The Hobbit," he was already an accomplished amateur artist, and drew illustrations for his book while it was still in manuscript. "The Hobbit" as first printed had ten black-and-white pictures, two maps, and binding and dust jacket designs by its author. Later, Tolkien also painted five scenes for color plates, which comprise some of his best work. His illustrations for "The Hobbit" add an extra dimension to that remarkable book, and have long influenced how readers imagine Bilbo Baggins and his world.
Written and edited by leading Tolkien experts Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, "The Art of The Hobbit""by J.R.R. Tolkien" showcases the complete artwork created by the author for his story--including related pictures, more than one hundred sketches, drawings, paintings, maps, and plans. Some of these images are published here for the first time, others for the first time in color, allowing Tolkien's "Hobbit" pictures to be seen completely and more vividly than ever before.

This volume explores connections between architecture and theatre, and encourages imagination in the design of buildings and social spaces. Imagination is arguably the architect's most crucial capacity, underpinning memory, invention and compassion. No simple power of the mind, architectural imagination is deeply embodied, social and situational. Its performative potential and holistic scope may be best understood through the model of theatre. Theatres of Architectural Imagination examines the fertile relationship between theatre and architecture with essays, interviews and entr'actes arranged in three sections: Bodies, Settings and (Inter)Actions. Contributions explore a global spectrum of examples and contexts, from ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy to modern Europe, North America, India and Japan. Topics include: the central role of the human body in design; the city as a place of political drama, protest and phenomenal play; and world-making through language, gesture and myth. Chapters also consider sacred and magical functions of theatre in Balinese and Persian settings; eccentric experiments at the Bauhaus and 1970 Osaka World Expo; and ecological action and collective healing amid contemporary climate chaos. Inspired by architect and educator Marco Frascari, the book performs as a Janus-like memory theatre, recalling and projecting the architect's perennial task of reimagining a more meaningful world. This collection will delight and provoke thinkers and makers in theatrical arts and built environment disciplines, especially Architecture, Landscape and Urban Design.

The New Cinematic Weird argues that weird fiction is rising also in audiovisual culture. Presenting several detailed analyses of weird cinematic works, the book shows how the new cinematic weird is best understood as atmospheric worldings - affective intensities that suffuse the experience of the cinematic weird. The weird exists as an experiential field, an inflation of the world. These worldings disclose a variety of experiences. The book engagingly shows how creepy, unsettling, ominous, uneasy, and eerie atmospheres provide a way into the weird experience. This book is important to anyone interested in the audiovisual weird, cinematic atmospheres, how audiovisual media produce worlds, and how weird fiction challenges our conception of the way the world is.

This is the first volume to focus on the diverse permutations of international surrealist cinema after the canonical interwar period. The collection features eleven original contributions by prominent scholars such as Tom Gunning, Michael Loewy, Gavin Parkinson and Michael Richardson, alongside other leading and emerging researchers. An introductory chapter offers a historical overview as well as a theoretical framework for specific methodological approaches. The collection demonstrates that renowned figures such as Leonora Carrington, Maya Deren, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Jan Svankmajer took part in shaping a vibrant and distinctive surrealist film culture following the Second World War. Addressing highly influential films and directors related to international surrealism during the second half of the twentieth century, it expands the purview of both surrealism and film studies by situating surrealism as a major force in postwar cinema. -- .

For someone who shuns the limelight so completely that he conceals his name, never shows his face and gives interviews only by email, Banksy is remarkably famous. From his beginnings as a Bristol graffiti artist, his artwork is now sold at auction for six-figure sums and hangs on celebrities' walls. The appearance of a new Banksy is national news, his documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop was Oscar-nominated and people queue for hours to see his latest exhibition. Now more National Treasure than edgy outsider, who is Banksy and how did he become what he is today? In the first attempt to tell the full story of Banksy's life and career, Will Ellsworth-Jones pieces together a picture of his world and unpicks its contradictions. Whether art or vandalism, anti-establishment or sell-out, Banksy and his work have become a cultural phenomenon and the question 'Who is Banksy?' is as much about his career as it is 'the man behind the wall'. 'Britain's unlikeliest national treasure' Independent 'A fascinating portrait that elicits admiration for a man who, despite his increasingly unconvincing efforts to retain some shred of his vandal status, has had an undeniable impact on art' The Times

This issue of AD posits that this re-examination and redeployment of postmodernist approaches is the architectural attempt to reflect, grapple with and make sense of the current political and economic situation. The term 'ad hoc' is used to describe a resistance to stylistic conformity and predictability that embraces individuality, and which conceives architecture in a broader cultural space. As a mode of practice marked by stylistic divergence, the links, shared interest and continuities that exist among a range of architects are often overlooked. It will explore and provide a critical analysis of the design tactics and the strategies that inform them, and will investigate some key questions: What is it that has led architects to adopt tactics that have long been vilified within architectural culture? What connections exist between our present moment and the postmodern one, architecturally and in terms of the broader political shifts, in particular our present moment's return of the grand narrative - whether of populist nationalism, identity or climate change? What do these tactics represent, how do they reflect this situation, and what do they offer in articulating a position for architects and the public role of their profession? This issue brings together a range of architects and critical voices to reflect on these questions and offer some answers. Essays by historians and critics situate practice in relation to postmodernism and its legacies. Following these will be essays by architects situating their work in relation to the ideas posited by the thematic introduction, and the broader contexts in which it operates and proceeds. The issue will be completed by interviews with early career architects, reflecting on their work thus far, its influences, pressures and future directions.

Surrealist women's writing: A critical exploration is the first sustained critical inquiry into the writing of women associated with surrealism. Featuring original essays by leading scholars of surrealism, the volume demonstrates the extent and the historical, linguistic, and culturally contextual breadth of this writing. It also highlights how the specifically surrealist poetics and politics of these writers' work intersect with and contribute to contemporary debates on, for example, gender, sexuality, subjectivity, otherness, anthropocentrism, and the environment. Drawing on a variety of innovative theoretical approaches, the essays in the volume focus on the writing of numerous women surrealists, many of whom have hitherto mainly been known for their visual rather than their literary production. These include Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Kay Sage, Colette Peignot, Suzanne Cesaire, Unica Zurn, Ithell Colquhoun, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning, and Rikki Ducornet. -- .

This book addresses the politics of borders in the era of global art by exploring the identification of Chinese artists by location and exhibition. Focusing on performative, body-oriented video works by the post-1989 generation, it tests the premise of genealogical inscription and the ways in which cultural objects are attributed to the artist's residency, homeland or citizenship rather than cultural tradition, style or practice. Acknowledging historical definitions of Chineseness, including the orientalist assumptions of the past and the cultural-mixing of the present, the book's case studies address the paradoxes and contradictions of representation. An analysis of the historical matrix of global expositions reveals the structural connections among art, culture, capital and nation. -- .

Rejecting broad-brush definitions of post-revolutionary art, What People Do with Images provides a nuanced account of artistic practice in Iran and its diaspora during the first part of the twenty-first century. Careful attention is paid to the effects of shifts in internal Iranian politics; the influence of US elections, travel bans and sanctions; and global media sensationalism and Islamophobia. Drawing widely on critical theory from both cultural studies and anthropology, Mazyar Lotfalian details an ecosystem for artistic production, covering a range of media, from performance to installations and video art to films. Museum curators, it is suggested, have mistakenly struggled to fit these works into their traditional-modern-contemporary schema, and political commentators have mistakenly struggled to position them as resistance, opposition or counterculture to Islam or the Islamic Republic. Instead, the author argues that creative artworks neutralize such dichotomies, working around them, and playing a sophisticated game of testing and slowly shifting the boundaries of what is acceptable. They do so in part by neutralizing the boundaries of what is inside and outside the nation-state, travelling across the transnational circuits in which the domestic and diasporic arenas reshape each other. While this book offers the valuable opportunity to gain an understanding of the Iranian art scene, it also has a wider significance in asking more generally how identity politics is mediated by creative acts and images within transnational socio-political spheres.

This is the definitive account of the life and work of Edward Seago (1910-1974), the highly popular, versatile and talented British painter whose work was inspired by John Sell Cotman, John Constable and Alfred Munnings. Over 200 colour reproductions are complemented by an engaging text which highlights important periods, episodes and acquaintances from Seago's life and career. Full of anecdotes, sketches and quotations from the artist's books and correspondence, the author provides a vivid impression of Seago's character which helps inform discussion of the outstanding imagery which he created. Including important examples of works from all stages of Seago's career, this book reproduces beautiful landscapes, vibrant circus images, dramatic seascapes and paintings inspired by the artist's travels aboard. A true celebration of a powerful body of 20th-century British painting, Edward Seago will be an invaluable addition to the libraries of collectors, dealers and enthusiasts alike.

What did it mean for painter Lee Krasner to be an artist and a woman if, in the culture of 1950s New York, to be an artist was to be Jackson Pollock and to be a woman was to be Marilyn Monroe? With this question, Griselda Pollock begins a transdisciplinary journey across the gendered aesthetics and the politics of difference in New York abstract, gestural painting. Revisiting recent exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism that either marginalised the artist-women in the movement or focused solely on the excluded women, as well as exhibitions of women in abstraction, Pollock reveals how theories of embodiment, the gesture, hysteria and subjectivity can deepen our understanding of this moment in the history of painting co-created by women and men. Providing close readings of key paintings by Lee Krasner and re-thinking her own historic examination of images of Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler at work, Pollock builds a cultural bridge between the New York artist-women and their other, Marilyn Monroe, a creative actor whose physically anguished but sexually appropriated star body is presented as pathos formula of life energy. Monroe emerges as a haunting presence within this moment of New York modernism, eroding the policed boundaries between high and popular culture and explaining what we gain by re-thinking art with the richness of feminist thought. -- .

en Lauschmann's work is informed by his interest in the earliest forms of magical entertainment and the latest technical innovations. In his largest solo exhibition to date, he explores the use of tools, techniques and systems to solve problems, with the aim of bypassing the tension between optimistic and sceptical attitudes towards technology. Startle Reaction uses Lauschmann's interest in automatons and cinema to play with the notion that we are capable of believing in things we know are false.

Alois Derso (1888-1964) and Emery Kelen (1896-1978) were remarkable cartoonists who became internationally renowned, particularly for their depictions in the 1920s of efforts to build a better world following the establishment of the League of Nations; of the rise of fascism in the thirties; and of the world cooperation through the United Nations that emerged in the forties. Their sequence of cartoons, imbued with humour, wit, gentle satire, artistry and vision, captures the Zeitgeist of a period of history that resonates today. Surprisingly, no comprehensive account of their work and lives has been published before.  The authors analyse and discuss the extraordinary political insights revealed in the cartoons, which contribute to our understanding of those years. Drawing on original research, this overdue book delves into all aspects of Derso and Kelen’s careers, including the unusual, if not unique, technical nature of their artistic collaboration and Kelen’s additional gifts as a writer. It will inform the non-expert of the history of the time and the often overlooked role of cartoons as historical evidence. So memorable and informative are the images, it will also be a useful supplement to the literature on modern history, international relations and art.

Throughout this book we discover what our idea of memory would be without the moving image. This thought provoking analysis examines how the medium has informed modern and contemporary models of memory. The book examines the ways in which cinematic optic procedures inform an understanding of memory processes. Critical to the reciprocity of mind and screen is forgetting and the problematic that it inscribes into memory and its relation to contested histories. Through a consideration of artworks (film/video and sound installation) by artists whose practice has consistently engaged with issues surrounding memory, amnesia and trauma, the book brings to bear neuro-psychological insight and its implication with the moving image (as both image and sound) to a consideration of the global landscape of memory and the politics of memory that inform them. The artists featured include Kerry Tribe, Shona Illingworth, Bill Fontana, Lutz Becker, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, Harun Faorcki, and Eyal Sivan.

H. Leslie Moody and Frances Johnson Moody never owned the company outright, but their dreams shaped North Carolina's Hyalyn Porcelain, Inc. and drove it forward to the satisfaction of an emerging, increasingly modern post-World War II America. Hyalyn's reputation for high quality led to its association with top designers like Michael and Rosemary Lax, Eva Zeisel, Georges Briard, Charles Leslie Fordyce, Herbert Cohen, Erwin Kalla, and Esta Brodey. Before moving to North Carolina in 1945, ceramic engineer and designer Less Moody prepared to organize and operate Hyalyn Porcelain, Inc. From Zanesville's Mosaic Tile Company, Ohio State University's ceramics department, Love Field Pottery, Abingdon Pottery, San Jose Potteries, and Rookwood Pottery, he gained expertise in clay formulation, glaze chemistry, product design, plant operation, project planning, advertising, and employee management. With the aid of investors, his dream came true when, in 1946, Hyalyn's first lamp bases and flower containers emerged from the shop's tunnel kiln. Thoroughly documented and illustrated with 425 images, hyalyn: America's Finest Porcelain is a complete history of Hyalyn Porcelain, Inc., and its successors, Hyalyn Cosco, Hyalyn, Ltd., and Vanguard Studios.

As part of a large oral history project of the Research Center for Arts and Culture of Columbia University aimed at compiling information on the training, career choices, and patterns of development of artists, twelve insightful narrative interviews were edited and collected for this volume. The painters were selected to provide demographic, ethnic, and gender balance and to represent three broad career stages: emerging, established, and mature. In vivid strokes, they discuss their family backgrounds, education, gatekeepers, experiences, and personal and artistic development. Each interview is prefaced by brief career data and followed by honors and exhibit sources, and a representative painting is illustrated in color. The volume introduction offers a capsule history of art in America, and a bibliography is included.