In this latest addition to Oxford's Modernist Literature & Culture series, renowned modernist scholar Michael North poses fundamental questions about the relationship between modernity and comic form in film, animation, the visual arts, and literature. Machine-Age Comedy vividly constructs a cultural history that spans the entire twentieth century, showing how changes wrought by industrialization have forever altered the comic mode. With keen analyses, North examines the work of a wide range of artists - including Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett, and David Foster Wallace - to show the creative and unconventional ways the routinization of industrial society has been explored in a broad array of cultural forms. Throughout, North argues that modern writers and artists found something inherently comic in new experiences of repetition associated with, enforced by, and made inevitable by the machine age. Ultimately, this rich, tightly focused study offers a new lens for understanding the devlopment of comedic structures during periods of massive social, political, and cultural change to reveal how the original promise of modern life can be extracted from its practical disappointment.

"Art+ NYC" is anart-lover s guide to New York City that combines a crash course in 20th- and 21st-centuryarthistory with in-depth bios of nine celebrated New York City artists: Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Yoko Ono, Mark Rothko, Jeff Koons, Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg. Each segment is written by a leading art writer from publications such as "Art in America," "Flaunt," and the "New York Times." Filled with useful information for both locals and tourists, "Art + NYC" includes comprehensive neighborhood-by-neighborhood gallery and museum listings, along with studios and other artsy places of interest. In addition, sidebars include the hotels and restaurants that are steeped with history artist hangouts, residences, and events of infamy. Also included is an extensive index of paintings, sculptures, and public art by New York City artists; detailed maps for 13 neighborhoods; a Q&A with a curator, gallerist, or artist for each NYC neighborhood; and a museum, gallery, and studio directory."

This monograph brings together the work of artist David Medalla. Born in Manila, in the Philippines in 1942, and based since 1960 mainly in London, Medalla has distinguished himself internationally as an innovator of the avant-garde. His work has embraced a multitude of enquiries and enthusiasms, forms and formats, to express a singular yet deeply coherent vision of the world.

Life of Newlyn/St Ives artist famed for his paintings of animals and birds.

How to Read Modern Buildings is an indispensable pocket-sized guide to understanding the architecture of the modern era. It takes the reader on a guided tour of modern architecture through its most iconic and significant buildings, showing how to read the hallmarks of each architectural style and how to recognise them in the buildings all around. From Art Deco and Arts and Crafts, through the International Style and Modernism to today's environmental architecture and the rise and fall of the icon, all the major architectural movements from the 1900s to the present day are traced through their classic buildings. Examining the key architectural elements and hidden details of each style, we learn what to look out for and where to look for it. Packed with detailed drawings, plans, and photographs, this is both a fascinating architectural history and an effective I-spy guide, it is a must-read for anyone with an interest in modern design and architecture.

A Financial Times Book of the Year 2022 A landmark volume presenting the history of Indian art across the subcontinent and South Asia from the late 19th century to the present day, published in association with Art Alive. Recent decades have seen significant growth in the interest, acquisition and exhibition of modern Indian and South Asian art and artists by major international museums. This essential textbook, primarily aimed at students, presents an engaging, informative history of modern art from the subcontinent as seen through the eyes of prominent Indian academics. Illustrated throughout with strong narrative content, key experts contribute multiple perspectives on modernism, modernity and plurality, and expansive ideas about contemporary art practices. A range of subjects and topics feature including Group 1890, the Madras Art Movement, Regional Modern and Dalit art, as well as artists such as Amrita Sher-Gil and Raqs Media Collective. This book also has sections devoted to the art of Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and other parts of South Asia. Together with lively academic discussions and a selection of absorbing interviews with artists, this title meets a clear demand for a comprehensive and authoritative sourcebook on modern, postmodern and contemporary Indian art. It is the definitive reference for anyone with an interest in Indian art and non-Western art histories. Published in association with Art Alive

An award-winning study of England's unique and peculiarly insular variant of modernism. While the battles for modern art and society were being fought in France and Spain, it has seemed a betrayal that John Betjeman and John Piper were in love with a provincial world of old churches and tea-shops. In this multi-award-winning book, Alexandra Harris tells a different story. In the 1930s and 1940s, artists and writers explored what it meant to be alive in England. Eclectically, passionately, wittily, they showed that 'the modern' need not be at war with the past. Constructivists and conservatives could work together, and even the Bauhaus emigre, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, was beguiled into taking photographs for Betjeman's nostalgic Oxford University Chest. This modern English renaissance was shared by writers, painters, gardeners, architects, critics, tourists and composers. John Piper, Virginia Woolf, Florence White, Christopher Tunnard, Evelyn Waugh, E. M. Forster and the Sitwells are part of the story, along with Bill Brandt, Graham Sutherland, Eric Ravilious and Cecil Beaton.

Histories, Practices, Interventions: A Reader in Singapore Contemporary Art brings together key writings about ideas, practices, issues and art institutions that shape the understanding of contemporary art in Singapore. This reader is conceived as an essential resource for advancing critical debates on post-independence Singapore art and culture. It comprises a total of thirty-three texts by art historians, art theorists, art critics, artists and curators. In addition, there is an introduction by the co-editors, Jeffrey Say and Seng Yu Jin,as well as three section introductions contributed by Seng Yu Jin; artist, curator and writer Susie Wong; and art educator and writer Lim Kok Boon.

Histories, Practices, Interventions: A Reader in Singapore Contemporary Art brings together key writings about ideas, practices, issues and art institutions that shape the understanding of contemporary art in Singapore. This reader is conceived as an essential resource for advancing critical debates on post-independence Singapore art and culture. It comprises a total of thirty-three texts by art historians, art theorists, art critics, artists and curators. In addition, there is an introduction by the co-editors, Jeffrey Say and Seng Yu Jin,as well as three section introductions contributed by Seng Yu Jin; artist, curator and writer Susie Wong; and art educator and writer Lim Kok Boon.

Intersections, Innovations, Institutions: A Reader in Singapore Modern Art is the second of two volumes of readers which the editors had published on Singapore art. The first volume, Histories, Practices, Interventions: A Reader in Singapore Contemporary Art, was published in 2016. Like the first volume, Intersections, Innovations, Institutions brings together historically important writings but the scope is on modern artistic practices in Singapore from the 19th century to the 1980s. The aim of this book is to make these writings accessible for research and scholarship and for new histories and narratives to be constructed about the modern in Singapore art.

Intersections, Innovations, Institutions: A Reader in Singapore Modern Art is the second of two volumes of readers which the editors had published on Singapore art. The first volume, Histories, Practices, Interventions: A Reader in Singapore Contemporary Art, was published in 2016. Like the first volume, Intersections, Innovations, Institutions brings together historically important writings but the scope is on modern artistic practices in Singapore from the 19th century to the 1980s. The aim of this book is to make these writings accessible for research and scholarship and for new histories and narratives to be constructed about the modern in Singapore art.

This intriguing book examines how material objects of the 20th century—ranging from articles of clothing to tools and weapons, communication devices, and toys and games—reflect dominant ideas and testify to the ways social change happens. Objects of everyday life tell stories about the ways everyday Americans lived. Some are private or personal things—such as Maidenform brassiere or a pair of patched blue jeans. Some are public by definition, such as the bus Rosa Parks boarded and refused to move back for a white passenger. Some material things or inventions reflect the ways public policy affected the lives of Americans, such as the Enovid birth control pill. An invention like the electric wheelchair benefited both the private and public spheres: it eased the lives of physically disabled individuals, and it played a role in assisting those with disabilities to campaign successfully for broader civil rights. Artifacts from Modern America demonstrates how dozens of the material objects, items, technologies, or inventions of the 20th century serve as a window into a period of history. After an introductory discussion of how to approach material culture—the world of things—to better understand the American past, essays describe objects from the previous century that made a wide-ranging or long-lasting impact. The chapters reflect the ways that communication devices, objects of religious life, household appliances, vehicles, and tools and weapons changed the lives of everyday Americans. Readers will learn how to use material culture in their own research through the book's detailed examples of how interpreting the historical, cultural, and social context of objects can provide a better understanding of the 20th-century experience.

Sunday Times Art Book of the Year 2018 'If you are interested in modern British art, the book is unputdownable. If you are not, read it.' - Grey Gowrie, Financial Times 'All the good stories, and more, are here ... this is a genuinely encyclopaedic work, unlike anything else I have come across on the topic, informed by a deep love and understanding of modern painting. Everybody interested in the subject should read it.' - Andrew Marr, Sunday Times A masterfully narrated account of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s, illustrated throughout with documentary photographs and works of art The development of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s is the story of interlinking friendships, shared experiences and artistic concerns among a number of acclaimed artists, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Gillian Ayres, Frank Bowling and Howard Hodgkin. Drawing on extensive first-hand interviews, many previously unpublished, with important witnesses and participants, the art critic Martin Gayford teases out the thread connecting these individual lives, and demonstrates how painting thrived in London against the backdrop of Soho bohemia in the 1940s and 1950s and 'Swinging London' in the 1960s. He shows how, influenced by such different teachers as David Bomberg and William Coldstream, and aware of the work of contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock as well as the traditions of Western art from Piero della Francesca to Picasso and Matisse, the postwar painters were allied in their confidence that this ancient medium, in opposition to photography and other media, could do fresh and marvellous things. They asked the question 'what can painting do?' and explored in their diverse ways, but with equal passion, the possibilities of paint.

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.

Goods made or designed in Italy enjoy a profile which far outstrips the country's modest manufacturing output. Italy's glorious design heritage and reputation for style and innovation has 'added value' to products made in Italy. Since 1945, Italian design has commanded an increasing amount of attention from design journalists, critics and consumers. But is Italian design a victim of its own celebrity? Made in Italy brings together leading design historians to explore this question, discussing both the history and significance of design from Italy and its international influence. Addressing a wide range of Italian design fields, including car design, graphic design, industrial and interior design and ceramics, well-known designers such as Alberto Rosselli and Ettore Sottsass, Jr. and iconic brands such as Olivetti, Vespa and Alessi, the book explores the historical, cultural and social influences that shaped Italian design, and how these iconic designs have contributed to the modern canon of Italian-inspired goods.

Stephanie J. Smith brings Mexican politics and art together, chronicling the turbulent relations between radical artists and the postrevolutionary Mexican state. The revolution opened space for new political ideas, but by the late 1920s many government officials argued that consolidating the nation required coercive measures toward dissenters. While artists and intellectuals, some of them professed Communists, sought free expression in matters both artistic and political, Smith reveals how they simultaneously learned the fine art of negotiation with the increasingly authoritarian government in order to secure clout and financial patronage. But the government, Smith shows, also had reason to accommodate artists, and a surprising and volatile interdependence grew between the artists and the politicians. Involving well-known artists such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, as well as some less well known, including Tina Modotti, Leopoldo Mendez, and Aurora Reyes, politicians began to appropriate the artists' nationalistic visual images as weapons in a national propaganda war. High-stakes negotiating and co-opting took place between the two camps as they sparred over the production of generally accepted notions and representations of the revolution's legacy-and what it meant to be authentically Mexican.