Robin Walz's updated Modernism, now part of the Seminar Studies series, has been updated to include significant primary source material and features to make it more accessible for students returning to, or studying the topic for the first time. The twentieth century was a period of seismic change on a global scale, witnessing two world wars, the rise and fall of communism, the establishment of a global economy, the beginnings of global warming and a complete reversal in the status of women in large parts of the world. The modernist movements of the early twentieth century launched a cultural revolution without which the multi-media-driven world in which we live today would not have been possible. Today modernism is enshrined in art galleries and university courses. Its techniques of abstraction and montage, and its creative impulse to innovate and shock, are the stock-in-trade of commercial advertising, feature films, television and computer-generated graphics. In this concise cultural history, Robin Walz vividly recaptures what was revolutionary about modernism. He shows how an aesthetic concept, arising from a diversity of cultural movements, from Cubism and Bauhaus to Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, and operating in different ways across the fields of art, literature, music, design and architecture, came to turn intellectual and cultural life and assumptions upside down, first in Europe and then around the world. From the nineteenth century origins of modernism to its postmodern legacies, this book will give the reader access to the big picture of modernism as a dynamic historical process and an unfinished project which still speaks to our times.

The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion. In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture.

The notion of a person--or even an object--having a "double" has been explored in the visual arts for ages, and in myriad ways: portraying the body and its soul, a woman gazing at her reflection in a pool, or a man overwhelmed by his own shadow. In this edited collection focusing on nineteenth- and twentieth-century western art, scholars analyze doppelgangers, alter egos, mirror images, double portraits and other pairings, human and otherwise, appearing in a large variety of artistic media. Artists whose works are discussed at length include Richard Dadd, Salvador Dali, Egon Schiele, Frida Kahlo, the creators of Superman, and Nicola Costantino, among many others.

In 1797 Friedrich Schlegel wrote that "philosophy of art usually lacks one of two things: either the philosophy, or the art." This collection of essays contains both the philosophy and the art. It brings together an international team of leading philosophers to address diverse philosophical issues raised by recent works of art. Each essay engages with a specific artwork and explores the connection between the image and the philosophical content. Thirteen contemporary philosophers demonstrate how philosophy can aid interpretation of the work of ten contemporary artists, including: Jesse Prinz on John Currin Barry C. Smith and Edward Winters on Dexter Dalwood Lydia Goehr and Sam Rose on Tom de Freston Raymond Geuss on Adrian Ghenie and Chantal Joffe Hallvard Lillehammer on Paul Noble M. M. McCabe and Alexis Papazoglou on Ged Quinn Noel Carroll on Paula Rego Simon Blackburn and Jerrold Levinson on George Shaw Sondra Bacharach on Yue Minjun. The discussion ranges over ethical, political, psychological and religious concepts, such as irony, disgust, apathy, inequality, physiognomy and wonder, to historical experiences of war, Marx-inspired political movements and Thatcherism, and standard problems in the philosophy of art, such as expression, style, depiction and ontology of art, as well as major topics in art history, such as vanitas painting, photography, pornography, and Dadaism. Many of the contributors are distinguished in areas of philosophy other than aesthetics and are writing about art for the first time. All show how productive the engagement can be between philosophy, more generally, and art.

A reassessment of self-taught artist William Edmondson, exploring the enduring relevance of his work This richly illustrated volume reintroduces readers to American sculptor William Edmondson (1874–1951) more than 80 years after his historic solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Edmondson began carving at the onset of the Depression in Tennessee. Initially creating tombstones for his community, over time he expanded his practice to include biblical subjects, the natural world, and recognizable figures including nurses and preachers. This book features new essays that explore Edmondson’s life in the South and his reception on the East Coast in the 1930s. Reading the artist through lenses of African American experience, the authors draw parallels between then and now, highlighting the complex relationship between Black cultural production and the American museum. Countering existing narratives that have viewed Edmondson as a passive actor in an unfolding drama—a self-taught sculptor “discovered� by White patrons and institutions—this book considers how the artist’s identity and position within history influenced his life and work. Distributed for the Barnes Foundation  Exhibition Schedule: The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (June 25–September 10, 2023)  

The War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC) were responsible for the production of some of the most iconic images of the Second World War. Despite its rich historical value, this collection has been poorly utilised by historians and hasn't been subjected to the levels of analysis afforded to other forms of wartime culture. This innovative study addresses this gap by bringing official war art into dialogue with the social, economic and military histories of the Second World War. Rebecca Searle explores the tensions between the documentarist and propagandistic roles of the WAAC in their representation of aerial warfare in the battle for production, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz and the bombing of Germany. Her analyses demonstrate that whilst there was a strong correlation between war art and propaganda, the WAAC depicted many aspects of experience that were absent from wartime propaganda, such as class divisions within the services, gendered hierarchies within industries, civilian death and the true nature of the bombing of Germany. In addition, she shows that propagandistic constructions were not entirely separate from lived experience, but reflected experience and shaped the way that individuals made sense of the war. Accessibly written, highly illustrated and packed with valuable examples of the use of war art as historical source, this book will enhance our understanding of the social and cultural history of Britain during the Second World War.

Margareta Ingrid Christian unpacks the ways in which, around 1900, art scholars, critics, and choreographers wrote about the artwork as an actual object in real time and space, surrounded and fluently connected to the viewer through the very air we breathe. Theorists such as Aby Warburg, Alois Riegl, Rainer Maria Rilke, and the choreographer Rudolf Laban drew on the science of their time to examine air as the material space surrounding an artwork, establishing its "milieu," "atmosphere," or "environment." Christian explores how the artwork's external space was seen to work as an aesthetic category in its own right, beginning with Rainer Maria Rilke's observation that Rodin's sculpture "exhales an atmosphere" and that Cezanne's colors create "a calm, silken air" that pervades the empty rooms where the paintings are exhibited. Writers created an early theory of unbounded form that described what Christian calls an artwork's ecstasis or its ability to stray outside its limits and engender its own space. Objects viewed in this perspective complicate the now-fashionable discourse of empathy aesthetics, the attention to self-projecting subjects, and the idea of the modernist self-contained artwork. For example, Christian invites us to historicize the immersive spatial installations and "environments" that have arisen since the 1960s and to consider their origins in turn-of-the-twentieth-century aesthetics. Throughout this beautifully written work, Christian offers ways for us to rethink entrenched narratives of aesthetics and modernism and to revisit alternatives.

All cultures make, and break, images. Striking Images, Iconoclasms Past and Present explores how and why people have made and modified images and other cultural material from pre-history into the 21st century. With its impressive chronological sweep and disciplinary breadth, this is the first book about iconoclasm (the breaking of images) and the transformation of broader sets of signs that includes contributions from archaeologists, curators, and museum conservators as well as historians of art, literature and religious studies. The chapters examine themes critical to the study of iconoclasm: violence, punishment, memory, intentionality, ruins and relics and their survival. The conclusion shows how cross-disciplinary debate amongst the contributors informed Tate Britain's 'Art under Attack' exhibition (2013) and addresses the challenges iconoclasm presents to the modern museum. By juxtaposing objects and places usually considered in isolation, Striking Images raises provocative questions about our understandings of cross-cultural differences and the value of representational objects from the broken swords of pre-historical bog graves to the Bamiyan Buddhas and contemporary art. Are any such objects ever 'finished', or are they simply subject to constant transformation? In dialogue with each other, the essays consider this question and expand the field of iconoclasm - and cultural - studies.

In 1954, following her death, Frida Kahlo's possessions were locked away in the Casa Azul in Mexico City, her lifelong home. Half a century later, her collection of clothing, jewellery, cosmetics and other personal items was rediscovered. Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up offers a fresh perspective on the life story of this extraordinary artist, whose charisma and entirely individual way of dressing made her one of the most photographed women of her time. Specially-commissioned photographs show her distinctive Mexican outfits alongside her self-portraits, an unprecedented pairing that is enriched by iconic images taken in her lifetime.

As the lead singer of the Grammy Award-winning rock band Quetzal and a scholar of Chicana/o and Latina/o studies, Martha Gonzalez is uniquely positioned to articulate the ways in which creative expression can serve the dual roles of political commentary and community building. Drawing on postcolonial, Chicana, black feminist, and performance theories, Chican@ Artivistas explores the visual, musical, and performance art produced in East Los Angeles since the inception of NAFTA and the subsequent anti-immigration rhetoric of the 1990s. Showcasing the social impact made by key artist-activists on their communities and on the mainstream art world and music industry, Gonzalez charts the evolution of a now-canonical body of work that took its inspiration from the Zapatista movement, particularly its masked indigenous participants, and that responded to efforts to impose systems of labor exploitation and social subjugation. Incorporating Gonzalez's memories of the Mexican nationalist music of her childhood and her band's journey to Chiapas, the book captures the mobilizing music, poetry, dance, and art that emerged in pre-gentrification corners of downtown Los Angeles and that went on to inspire flourishing networks of bold, innovative artivistas.

Through intricate patterns, rich color, and startling juxtapositions. Douglas Johnson entices the viewer into a world in which dream, myth, and ritual have a power transcending everyday reality. He is a true original, whose magically evocative works defy classification. The artist's inspiration draws its richness from the ancient cultures of North America, Mexico, Peru, Egypt, and Asia. His gem-like miniatures, often depicting pre-Columbian ruins, scenes of early Indian life, and exquisite birds and flowers, have gained wide critical acclaim over the past 30 years, and are represented in numerous private, corporate, and museum collections. Robert Ewing's biography of Johnson discusses the experiences and influences that shaped him as an artist. Viewing 80 full-color reproductions of his paintings, readers will understand why collectors and critics continue to be astonished and captivated by Douglas Johnson's mysterious images.

In this lavishly illustrated study, the scholar and critic Yi Ying brings a distinctly Chinese perspective to the development of art and artists in China since 1949. These have been years of dramatic change for China, and the art of this period is therefore of historical, political and cultural interest, being first used to promote the revolutionary cause, later to question and criticise and, more recently, charting the changes in cultural and economic policy that have taken place since 1978. In the twenty-first century, Chinese art is diverse, distinctive, and highly prized in the global art market. Presented here in English translation for the first time, Yi's narrative opens up fresh questions about both the nature of contemporary art and the China of today.

"This fine memoir is more insightful than gossipy, and as a subject Bacon is just about unbeatable." -- The New York Times In June of 1963, when Michael Peppiatt first met Francis Bacon, the former was a college boy at Cambridge, the latter already a famous painter, more than thirty years his senior. And yet, Peppiatt was welcomed into the volatile artist's world; Bacon, considered by many to be "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," proved himself a devoted friend and father figure, even amidst the drinking and gambling. Though Peppiatt would later write perhaps the definitive biography of Bacon, his sharply drawn memoir has a different vigor, revealing the artist at his most intimate and indiscreet, and his London and Paris milieus in all their seediness and splendor. Bacon is felt with immediacy, as Peppiatt draws from contemporary diaries and records of their time together, giving us the story of a friendship, and a new perspective on an artist of enduring fascination.

A bold reassessment of the major architectural monuments and urban forms of the world's first industrial city: Manchester From the mid-eighteenth century to the nineteen-twenties, from the birth of the Industrial Revolution to the height of Manchester's global significance and the beginning of its decline, Shock City challenges the idea that Paris was the "capital of the nineteenth century." Mark Crinson reorients this issue around the development of industrial production, particularly cotton and its manufacture by means of steam power, offering a fascinating and accessibly written account of how new relations in the industrial economy were manifested through the spaces and representations of the first industrial city. Focusing on Manchester's mills and warehouses, its main trading institution (the Royal Exchange), its magnificent Gothic Revival Town Hall, and its late Gothic Revival Rylands Library, this book explores these iconic buildings alongside paintings, prints, maps, and photographs of the city throughout the period. Crinson interweaves analysis of buildings and images, urban spaces and new institutions, technology and industrial pollution to show how these were all the products of Manchester's newly emergent industrial middle classes, who remade the city in their image. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

A 2008 cover of The New Yorker featured a much-discussed Black Power parody of Michelle and Barack Obama. The image put a spotlight on how easy it is to flatten the Black Power movement as we imagine new types of blackness. Margo Natalie Crawford argues that we have misread the Black Arts Movement's call for blackness. We have failed to see the movement's anticipation of the "new black" and "post-black." Black Post-Blackness compares the black avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement with the most innovative spins of twenty-first century black aesthetics. Crawford zooms in on the 1970s second wave of the Black Arts Movement and shows the connections between this final wave of the Black Arts movement and the early years of twenty-first century black aesthetics. She uncovers the circle of black post-blackness that pivots on the power of anticipation, abstraction, mixed media, the global South, satire, public interiority, and the fantastic.

A design monograph series on the most remarkable architects, designers, brands and design movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, each book contains a historical-critical essay discussing the life and work of the subject, followed by an illustrated appreciation of groundbreaking work. With his vivid imagination, wit and flair, Philippe Starck has transformed everyday objects into icons of modern design, heralding in the democratic design movement that has influenced what we buy and how we live. Among instantly recognizable classics such as the long-legged Juicy Salif lemon squeezer and the much imitated Sissi Lamp, Starck has created some of the world's most ground-breaking furniture, interiors, hotels and architecture, all of which are celebrated in this curated selection of images, accompanied by a critical essay of his life and work.

Taking as its starting point four contemporary visual artists whose work utilizes the conventions of museum display and collecting practices, "Memory Fragments" examines how these artists have reconfigured dominant representations of Australian history and identity, including viewpoints often marginalized by gender and race. Echoing Walter Benjamin's reflections on history and time, this interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to scholars working in the arts as well as modern and postmodern cultural studies.

Subtle and wide-ranging in its account, this study explores the impact of Australian art in Britain in the two decades following the end of World War II and preceding the 'Swinging Sixties'. In a transitional period of decolonization in Britain, Australian painting was briefly seized upon as a dynamic and reinvigorating force in contemporary art, and a group of Australian artists settled in London where they held centre stage with group and solo exhibitions in the capital's most prestigious galleries. The book traces the key influences of Sir Kenneth Clark, Bernard Smith and Bryan Robertson in their various (and varying) roles as patrons, ideologues, and entrepreneurs for Australian art, as well as the self-definition and interaction of the artists themselves. Simon Pierse interweaves multiple issues of the period into a cohesive historical narrative, including the mechanics of the British art world, the limited and frustrating cultural scene of 1950s Australia, and the conservative influence of Australian government bodies. Publishing for the first time archival material, letters, and photographs previously unavailable to scholars either in Britain or Australia, this book demonstrates how the work of expatriate Australian artists living in London constructed a distinct vision of Australian identity for a foreign market.

A charming and heartfelt story about war, art, and the lengths a woman will go to find the truth about her family. 'As devourable as a thriller... Incredibly moving' Elle 'Pauline Baer de Perignon is a natural storyteller - refreshingly honest, curious and open' Menachem Kaiser 'A terrific book' Le Point It all started with a list of paintings. There, scribbled by a cousin she hadn't seen for years, were the names of the masters whose works once belonged to her great-grandfather, Jules Strauss: Renoir, Monet, Degas, Tiepolo and more. Pauline Baer de Perignon knew little to nothing about Strauss, or about his vanished, precious art collection. But the list drove her on a frenzied trail of research in the archives of the Louvre and the Dresden museums, through Gestapo records, and to consult with Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano. What happened in 1942? And what became of the collection after Nazis seized her great-grandparents' elegant Parisian apartment? The quest takes Pauline Baer de Perignon from the Occupation of France to the present day as she breaks the silence around the wrenching experiences her family never fully transmitted, and asks what art itself is capable of conveying over time.

Brett Whiteley was one of the most dynamic and talented artists in the history of Australian art, an artist whose recognition had spread worldwide before his untimely death in 1992. Early in his career he established a name for himself in London, exhibiting at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and coming into contact with many British painters - Francis Bacon and David Hockney among others. His early paintings startled critics and fellow artists, but even at that point, two basic subjects were evident: the landscape and the nude, elements which became the mainstay of his oeuvre. At the root of all Whiteley's work was a draughtsmanship of stunning virtuosity, capable of capturing all the poetic arabesque of a river in a single sweeping line of brush and ink, or the erotic curves of the human body in a few searching strokes of charcoal. This volume presents an illuminating evaluation of Whiteley's achievement. Works dating from the 1950s to the last years of his life, illustrated in over 180 colour plates, allow Whiteley's career to be surveyed in its entirety. Barry Pearce, Head Curator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, provides a comprehensive overview of Whiteley's life and art; Bryan Robertson offers an impression of the artist's years in London; and Wendy Whiteley, the artist's wife and companion for over three decades, contributes an intimate portrait of the man behind the work. Superbly illustrated and produced, Brett Whiteley: Art & Life is a fitting tribute to one of Australia's most significant artists, a man whose outstanding work excites, amazes and impresses us no less now than it did when first created.

How science changed the way artists understand reality Exploring the Invisible shows how modern art expresses the first secular, scientific worldview in human history. Now fully revised and expanded, this richly illustrated book describes two hundred years of scientific discoveries that inspired French Impressionist painters and Art Nouveau architects, as well as Surrealists in Europe, Latin America, and Japan. Lynn Gamwell describes how the microscope and telescope expanded the artist's vision into realms unseen by the naked eye. In the nineteenth century, a strange and exciting world came into focus, one of microorganisms in a drop of water and spiral nebulas in the night sky. The world is also filled with forces that are truly unobservable, known only indirectly by their effects-radio waves, X-rays, and sound-waves. Gamwell shows how artists developed the pivotal style of modernism-abstract, non-objective art-to symbolize these unseen worlds. Starting in Germany with Romanticism and ending with international contemporary art, she traces the development of the visual arts as an expression of the scientific worldview in which humankind is part of a natural web of dynamic forces without predetermined purpose or meaning. Gamwell reveals how artists give nature meaning by portraying it as mysterious, dangerous, or beautiful. With a foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson and a wealth of stunning images, this expanded edition of Exploring the Invisible draws on the latest scholarship to provide a global perspective on the scientists and artists who explore life on Earth, human consciousness, and the space-time universe.

The life of an extraordinary artist and intellect: the composer, author and socialite Alma Mahler, whose life spanned one of the most captivating and dramatic periods in history Alma Mahler was once at the epicentre of Vienna's artistic and intellectual life. A talented composer in her own right, she was open, generous, remarkably creative, curious, challenging and zealous in her pursuit of love. Artists, architects, musicians and writers jostled to join her coterie. Gustav Klimt was her first kiss; Gustav Mahler her first husband. But her life was haunted by tragedy, and the support and inspiration that Alma gave to the men she loved came at the heavy price of her own artistic fulfilment. Drawing extensively on previously unpublished diaries and letters, Cate Haste illuminates the passionate spirit of one of history's most complex and charismatic muses, a modern woman with an elemental vitality that could scarcely be contained by her century - who will live forever in the art she created and inspired.

The first book highlighting the historical roots and contemporary implications of the silhouette as an American art form Before the advent of photography in 1839, Americans were consumed by the fashion for silhouette portraits. Economical in every sense, the small, stark profiles cost far less than oil paintings and could be made in minutes. Black Out, the first major publication to focus on the development of silhouettes, gathers leading experts to shed light on the surprisingly complex historical, political, and social underpinnings of this ostensibly simple art form. In its examination of portraits by acclaimed silhouettists, such as Auguste Edouart and William Bache, this richly illustrated volume explores likenesses of everyone from presidents and celebrities to everyday citizens and enslaved people. Ultimately, the book reveals how silhouettes registered the paradoxes of the unstable young nation, roiling with tensions over slavery and political independence. Primarily tracing the rise of the silhouette in the decades leading up to the Civil War, Black Out also considers the ubiquity of the genre today, particularly in contemporary art. Using silhouettes to address such themes as race, identity, and the notion of the digital self, the four featured living artists--Kara Walker, Kristi Malakoff, Kumi Yamashita, and Camille Utterback-all take the silhouette to unique and fascinating new heights. Presenting the distinctly American story behind silhouettes, Black Out vividly delves into the historical roots and contemporary interpretations of this evocative, ever popular form of portraiture. Published in association with the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC

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.