Henri Michaux is widely recognized as a major twentieth-century French poet and painter. Although his fascination with universal languages has attracted the attention of several of his critics, it has up until now been treated as a marginal concern. Henri Michaux: Poetry, Painting, and the Universal Sign argues that his ideas on what might constitute a universal language are central to an understanding of his works. It suggests that both his ambivalent articulation of his relationship to the languages and literary traditions of his native Belgium and adoptive France, and his efforts simultaneously to exacerbate and subvert the differences between words and images, are rooted in Enlightenment theories of the relationship of the self to nature and its language
Rigaud-Drayton's study makes a substantial and original contribution to the study of this complex artist, exploring the intricate relationships between word and image in his poetry and paintings, and his quest for a single, unifying language or sign.

Mikhail Lifshitz is a major forgotten figure in the tradition of Marxist philosophy and art history. A significant influence on Lukacs, and the dedicatee of his The Young Hegel, as well as an unsurpassed scholar of Marx and Engels's writings on art and a lifelong controversialist, Lifshitz's work dealt with topics as various as the philosophy of Marx and the pop aesthetics of Andy Warhol. The Crisis of Ugliness (originally published in Russian by Iskusstvo, 1968), published here in English for the first time, and with a detailed introduction by its translator David Riff, is a compact broadside against modernism in the visual arts that nevertheless resists the dogmatic complacencies of Stalinist aesthetics. Its reentry into English debates on the history of Soviet aesthetics promises to re-orient our sense of the basic coordinates of a Marxist art theory.

This book is the first biography of Nikolay Punin (1888-1953). One of the most prominent art-critics of the avant-garde, in 1919 Punin was the Commissar of the Hermitage and Russian Museums, he was lecturing at the Academy of Arts and at the State University in Petrograd (and subsequently Leningrad). He was the right hand of Lunacharsky and the head of the Petrograd branch of the Visual Arts Department of Narkompross. From 1913 till 1938, Punin worked at the Russian Museum and organized several major exhibitions of Russian art. Yet his name is not widely known in the West, primarily because his file languished in the KGB archives since he died in 1953, partly because his grave in the Gulag where he died is marked only by a number, and partly because his own reputation became submerged under that of his lover, poet and writer Anna Akhmatova. Through the life and inheritance of Nikolay Punin, this book will examine the very phenomenon of the Russian avant-garde and its fate after the October Revolution, as well as the artistic trends and cultural policies which dominated Soviet art in the 1930-1950s. For an interview with the author on The Voice of Russia (July 19th, 2012): click here.

Notions of crisis have long charged the study of the European avant-garde and modernism, reflecting the often turbulent nature of their development. Throughout their history, the avant-garde and modernists have both confronted and instigated crises, be they economic or political, aesthetic or philosophical, collective or individual, local or global, short or perennial. The seventh volume in the series European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies addresses the myriad ways in which the avant-garde and modernism have responded and related to crisis from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century. How have Europe's avant-garde and modernist movements given aesthetic shape to their crisis-laden trajectory? Given the many different watershed moments the avant-garde and modernism have faced over the centuries, what common threads link the critical points of their development? Alternatively, what kinds of crises have their experimental practices and critical modes yielded? The volume assembles case studies reflecting upon these questions and more from across all areas of avant-garde and modernist activity, including visual art, literature, music, architecture, photography, theatre, performance, curatorial practice, fashion and design.

Presentations of offerings to the emperor-king on anniversaries of his accession became an important imperial ritual in the court of Franz Joseph I. This book explores for the first time the identity constructions of Orthodox Jewish communities in Jerusalem as expressed in their gifts to the Austro-Hungarian Kaisers at the time of dramatic events. It reveals how the beautiful gifts, their dedications, and their narratives, were perceived by gift-givers and recipients as instruments capable of acting upon various social, cultural and political processes. Lily Arad describes in a captivating manner the historical narratives of the creation and presentation of these gifts. She analyzes the iconography of these gifts as having transformative effect on the self-identification of the Jewish communities and examines their reception by the Kaisers and in the Austrian and the Palestinian Jewish press. This groundbreaking book unveils Jewish cultural and political strategies aimed to create local Eretz-Israel identities, demonstrating distinct positive communal identification which at times expressed national sentiments and at the same time preserved European identification.

Signs of Change: Transformations of Christian Traditions and their Representation in the Arts, 1000-2000 focuses on the changing relationships between what gradually emerged as the Arts and Christianity, the latter term covering both a stream of ideas and its institutions. The book as a whole is addressed to a general academic audience concerned with issues of cultural history, while the individual essays are also intended as scholarly contributions within their own fields. A collaborative effort by twenty-five European and American scholars representing disciplines ranging from aesthetics to the history of art and architecture, from literature, music and the theatre to classics, church history, and theology, the volume is an interdisciplinary study of intermedial phenomena, generally in larger cultural and intellectual contexts. The focus of topics extends from single concrete objects to sets of abstract concepts and values, and from a single moment in time to an entire millennium. While Signs of Change acknowledges the importance of synthesizing efforts essential to hermeneutically informed scholarship, in order to counterbalance generalized historical narratives with detailed investigations, broad accounts are juxtaposed with specialized research projects. The deliberately unchronological grouping of contributions underlines the effort to further discussion about methodologies for writing cultural history.

Mere decades after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the promise of European democracy seems to be out of joint. What has become of the once-shared memory of victory over fascism? Historical revisionism and nationalist propaganda in the post-Yugoslav context have tried to eradicate the legacy of partisan and socialist struggles, while Yugonostalgia commodifies the partisan/socialist past. It is against these dominant 'archives' that this book launches the partisan counter-archive, highlighting the symbolic power of artistic works that echo and envision partisan legacy and rupture. It comprises a body of works that emerged either during the people's liberation struggle or in later socialist periods, tracing a counter-archival surplus and revolutionary remainder that invents alternative protocols of remembrance and commemoration. The book covers rich (counter-)archival material - from partisan poems, graphic works and photography, to monuments and films - and ends by describing the recent revisionist un-doing of the partisan past. It contributes to the Yugoslav politico-aesthetical "history of the oppressed" as an alternative journey to the partisan past that retrieves revolutionary resources from the past for the present.

ANDY GOLDSWORTHY: TOUCHING NATURE DESCRIPTION

A new and revised edition of our best-selling book on Andy Goldsworthy. A completely rewritten exploration of the sculptor, updated to include recent works such as Night Path (2002) and Chalk Stones (2003) in Sussex, Three Cairns (2002) on the American East and West coasts, Stone Houses (2004) and Garden of Stones (2003) in Gotham, Passage (2005) in London, and Slate Domes (2005) in Washington, DC.

Known as a land, earth, nature or environmental artist, Andy Goldsworthy works with(in) nature. He uses natural materials in natural shapes and forms often set in natural contexts (but also in cities, towns, parks, sculpture parks, and many spaces created or adapted by people). FROM THE INTRODUCTION

In the 1990s, Andy Goldsworthy s art began to rise in popularity: the glossy coffee table book Stone became a bestseller (bear in mind it was then priced at $55). In 1994 Goldsworthy took over some West End galleries with a large one-man show. In 1995 he was part of an intriguing group show at the British Museum (Time Machine), creating sculptures, along with Richard Deacon, Peter Randall-Page and others, in amongst the monumental statuary of the famous Egyptian Hall. Also in 1995, Goldsworthy designed a set of Royal Mail stamps (and again in 2003). Digne in France became an increasingly important Goldsworthy location, with shows in 1995, 1997 and 2000). Prestigious commissions occurred in the US from the mid-1990s onwards. For instance: the giant Wall at Storm King Art Center in 1998; the Three Cairns on the East and West Coasts and Iowa in 2001-02; the stone houses at the Metropolitan Museum in Gotham in 2004; the monument to the Holocaust (also in New York) in 2003; and the slate domes in Washington, DC in 2005. Goldsworthy continues to work in countries such as Japan, Australia, Holland, Canada, North America and France (with France and the US becoming primary centres of Goldsworthy activity), but his home ground of Dumfriesshire in Scotland remains (at) the heart of his work.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

William Malpas has written books on Richard Long and land art, as well as three books on Andy Goldsworthy, including the forthcoming Andy Goldsworthy In America. Malpas s books on Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy are the only full-length studies of these artists available.

This book contains an extraordinary collection of paintings and drawings of Pretoria since its founding. It is a fascinating record of Pretoria from a little hamlet on the banks of the Apies River to its development into one of the capitals of the world. The stories behind the paintings and the painters are a laudable contribution to the recording of the history of art in Pretoria. With this work, Eric Bolsmann has made a valuable contribution to Pretoriana and to Africana in general.

For decades Stalinist literature, film, and art was almost exclusively deemed political propaganda imposed from on high, devoid of any aesthetic significance. In this book, Evgeny Dobrenko suggests an entirely new view: socialism did not produce Socialist Realism to "prettify reality"; rather, Socialist Realism itself produced socialism by elevating socialism to reality status, giving it material form. Without art, socialism could not have materialized. Bringing together the Soviet historical experience and Stalin-era art-novels, films, poems, songs, painting, photography, architecture, and advertising-Dobrenko examines Stalinism's representational strategies and demonstrates how real socialism was begotten of Socialist Realism. Socialist Realism, he concludes, was Stalinism's most effective sociopolitical institution.

The ninth volume of the International Yearbook of Futurism Studies is dedicated to Russian Futurism and gathers ten studies that investigate the impact of F.T. Marinetti's visit to Russia in 1914; the neglected region of the Russian Far East; the artist and writers Velimir Khlebnikov, Vasily Kamensky, Maria Siniakova and Vladimir Mayakovsky; the artistic media of advertising, graphic arts, cinema and artists' books.

CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI

Constantin Brancusi is one of the greatest of all sculptors, and a key sculptor of the modern era, with Auguste Rodin and Pablo Picasso. Brancusi's influence can be seen in a wide range of Western sculptors, including Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Henry Moore, Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, Minimalists and land artists.

This new book studies the religious and mythical dimensions of Constantin Brancusi's distinctive scultpural forms, the 'eggs', 'fishes', 'heads' and 'columns'. His central quest was for the 'essence of things', which resulted in purifying a form until only the essence was left.

It was Constantin Brancusi's project to strip away the detritus that had accumulated around sculpture, Henry Moore said, and to offer the pure, simple shape. What Brancusi did was 'to concentrate on very simple shapes, to keep his sculpture, as it were, one-cylindered, to refine and polish a single shape to a degree almost too precious.'

As well as being a sculptor, Constantin Brancusi was also an accomplished photographer. Quite a few artists (not all of them sculptors) have expressed for Brancusi's photographs, and the way he would set up his sculptures inhis studio and photograph them at particular times of the day, when the lightingwas just right. They are early examples of installation art (and some of the best, too). Andy Goldsworthy said he admired how Brancusi created the right conditions in his studio so that his work 'comes alive at a particular time of the day as the light momentarily touches it'. For Goldsworthy, Brancusi's works were at their best when they were arranged by the sculptor in his studio and photographed. Somehow, it wasn't quite the same when they were displayed in modern art museums (such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris or the Museum of Modern Art in Gotham, which have important Brancusi pieces).

Fully illustrated, including many photos of Brancusi's studio in Paris, and the art of his contemporaries.

Providing a detailed annotated bibliography and research guide to the Stieglitz Circle and four of its leading members--Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Max Weber--this new sourcebook offers a chapter on each of the four artists. Complete with biographical essay and guides to writings, statements, correspondence, books, articles, reviews, reference sources, and archival sources, each artist's chapter gives the researcher an exhaustive catalogue of relevant material.

The only such annotated sourcebook currently available on the Stieglitz Circle, R. Scott Harnsberger's work offers lists of annotated reproductions of each artist's works, keyed to over 600 source volumes not mentioned elsewhere in the volume, including catalogues of museums, galleries, private collections, thematic exhibitions, and auction firms.

The Nature of Revolution provides the first account of art and politics under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. James A. Tyner repositions Khmer Rouge artworks within their proper political and economic context: the materialization of a political organization in an era of anticolonial and decolonization movements. Consequently, both the organization's policies and practices?including the production of poetry, music, and photography?were incontrovertibly shaped by and created to further the Khmer Rouge's agenda.Theoretically informed and empirically grounded, Tyner's work examines the social dimensions of the Khmer Rouge, while contributing broadly to a growing literature on the intersection of art and politics. Building on the foundational works of theorists such as Jacques Ranciere, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin, Tyner explores the insights of Leon Trotsky and his descriptions of the politics of aesthetics specific to socialist revolutions. Ultimately, Tyner reveals a fundamental tension between individuality and bureaucratic control and its impact on artistic creativity and freedom.

Kolkata, urbanism, architecture, urban planning, history

In the 1930s, the exciting urban environment of Montreal provided the perfect venue for a varied group of people who came together to form a kind of “salon” in the turmoil of the Great Depression. For ten years, these friends and acquaintances met each week at the home of the artist John Lyman. They saw themselves as “modern,” a part of the avant-garde that was then busily changing the world. These Canadian modernists supported left-wing causes, advocated a more stable social order, and heralded a more inclusive culture. More than anything, they searched for a way in which their lives wouldhave meaning. In The Last Ulysseans, Molly Pulver Ungar describes this dynamic group’s private and public activities of the group from the beginning of the Great Depression through the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War to the final years of the 1930s. In face of the ominous certainty of another war in Europe, these individuals reached a new understanding of what it meant to live a modern, meaningful life. Their conscious pursuit of new directions in outlook, attitude, and lifestyle influenced many of the changes in post-war North American society.

The effort to go beyond given knowledge in different domains - artistic, scientific, political, metaphysical - is a characteristic driving force in modernism and the avant-gardes. Since the late 19th century, artists and writers have frequently investigated their medium and its limits, pursued political and religious aims, and explored hitherto unknown physical, social and conceptual spaces, often in ways that combine these forms of critical inquiry into one and provoke further theoretical and methodological innovations. The fifth volume of the EAM series casts light on the history and actuality of investigations, quests and explorations in the European avant-garde and modernism from the late 19th century to the present day. The authors seek to answer questions such as: How have modernism and the avant-garde appropriated scientific knowledge, religious dogmas and social conventions, pursuing their investigation beyond the limits of given knowledge and conceptions? How have modernism and avant-garde created new conceptual models or representations where other discourses have allegedly failed? In what ways do practises of investigation, quest or exploration shape artistic work or the formal and thematic structures of artworks?

CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI

Constantin Brancusi is one of the greatest of all sculptors, and a key sculptor of the modern era, along with Auguste Rodin and Pablo Picasso. Brancusi's influence can be seen in a wide range of Western sculptors, including Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Henry Moore, Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, Minimalists and land artists.

This new book studies the religious and mythical dimensions of Constantin Brancusi's distinctive scultpural forms, the 'eggs', 'fishes', 'heads' and 'columns'. His central quest was for the 'essence of things', which resulted in purifying a form until only the essence was left.

It was Constantin Brancusi's project to strip away the detritus that had accumulated around sculpture, Henry Moore said, and to offer the pure, simple shape. What Brancusi did was 'to concentrate on very simple shapes, to keep his sculpture, as it were, one-cylindered, to refine and polish a single shape to a degree almost too precious.'

As well as being a sculptor, Constantin Brancusi was also an accomplished photographer. Quite a few artists (not all of them sculptors) have expressed for Brancusi's photographs, and the way he would set up his sculptures inhis studio and photograph them at particular times of the day, when the lightingwas just right. They are early examples of installation art (and some of the best, too). Andy Goldsworthy said he admired how Brancusi created the right conditions in his studio so that his work 'comes alive at a particular time of the day as the light momentarily touches it'. For Goldsworthy, Brancusi's works were at their best when they were arranged by the sculptor in his studio and photographed. Somehow, it wasn't quite the same when they were displayed in modern art museums (such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris or the Museum of Modern Art in Gotham, which have important Brancusi pieces).

Fully illustrated, including many photos of Constantin Brancusi's studio in Paris, Brancusi's works in museums in New York, Washington and L.A., and the art of his contemporaries.

With bibliography and notes. ISBN 9781861713599. 180 pages.

This new (5th) edition has been revised.

www.crmoon.com

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The art of Constantin Brancusi never ceases to fascinate and inspire, and it always seems fresh, as if it had been created fives minutes ago, no matter how many times you look at it. When you encounter a Brancusi sculpture in a museum, it pops out, clear and direct; there is simply nothing else like Brancusi's art in history. I have tried to explore the key elements of Brancusi's art, and the important events in his development as a sculptor. I have also included comparisons with other artists of the period, and also how Brancusi's art has influenced many subsequent artists.

This text summarizes and contextualizes the ideas that have formed visual arts practices in the 20th century. Art, design and architecture are located in their social and political contexts, and the ideas of modernism are traced from the development of industrialized Europe at the turn of the century to the post-industrial, post-colonial present. The complex relationship between modernism and postmodernism in the visual arts is examined and the book concludes with a review of the global impact of the new technologies on art and design production.