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 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.

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?

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.

This book traces the history of 'girls' aesthetics,' where adult Japanese women create art works about 'girls' that resist motherhood, from the modern to the contemporary period and their manifestation in Japanese women's theatrical and dance performance and visual arts including manga, film, and installation arts.

This reference provides biographical, historical, and critical information on Neo-Impressionist painting and its most significant painters. Neo-Impressionism, also called Divisionism and Pointillism, was one of the most innovative and startling late 19th-century French avant-garde styles. Over 2,000 books, articles, manuscripts, and audiovisual materials as well as chronologies, biographical sketches, and exhibition lists are cited. Also provided are both primary and secondary bibliographies for each artist. Secondary bibliographies capture details about each artist's life and career, relationships with other artists, work in various media, iconography, critical reception and interpretation, archival sources and more.

Art scholars will appreciate the comprehensive bibliographic research contained in this one volume. Entries on Neo-Impressionism in general, on exhibitions, and the primary and secondary bibliographies of artists follow an introduction about Neo-Impressionism and a Neo-Impressionism chronology that spans the years 1881 to 1905. An index of art works and an index of personal names complete the volume.

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.

Although contemporary American crafts are widely exhibited and appreciated, very little information is available about the artists themselves, their training, careers, inspirations, and feelings about their work, and place in society. As part of a large oral history and survey project of the Research Center for Arts and Culture of Columbia University, ten personal narrative interviews with craftspeople were edited and collected for The Craftsperson Speaks. The selected artists represent a variety of disciplines and media, including ceramics, glass, jewelry, metalwork, and fiber, and also exhibit a balance of age, ethnicity, regionalism, and stage of career development. Each interview is prefaced by brief life and career data and followed by information on exhibit sources and professional affiliations and honors and a photographic illustration of a representative piece of work. The volume's introduction, written by the project coordinator, Mary Greeley, offers an overview of the history of the craftsperson in the United States, and a final bibliography provides sources for further reference. This combination of information and insights will be of interest and value to artists, teachers, students, art professionals, and the general public. Greenwood Press is pleased to publish it in time to help inaugurate 1993 and the Year of the American Craft.

Stephen Kern has discovered in Pre-Raphaelite and impressionist art a recurring pattern for arranging the sexes: a profiled man gazing at a woman who looks away from him and toward the viewer, while she ponders an apparent offer. Kern draws on such images to challenge the claim of some feminist critics and historians that gazing men monopolize subjectivity and turn women into sex objects. So intent are these writers on viewing women as victims, who in fact reveal a commanding subjectivity. Compared with the eyes of men, women's eyes are more visible, consider more varied thoughts, and convey more profound, if not more intense, emotions.

An authoritative and highly original survey of European art and literature, Eyes of Love also challenges another widely held belief - that a double standard has clearly governed how society judged the sexes. Kern supports these startling interpretations of Renoir, Manet, Degas, Rossetti, Gauguin, Millais, Hunt, Burne-Jones, and Tissot with every evidence from novels by Hugo, Flaubert, Zola, Dickens, C. Bronte, Gaskell, Eliot, Hardy, and H. James.

Futurism Studies in its canonical form has followed in the steps of Marinetti's concept of Futurisme mondial, according to which Futurism had its centre in Italy and a large number of satellites around Europe and the rest of the globe. Consequently, authors of textbook histories of Futurism focus their attention on Italy, add a chapter or two on Russia and dedicate next to no attention to developments in other parts of the world. Futurism Studies tends to sees in Marinetti's movement the font and mother of all subsequent avant-gardes and deprecates the non-European variants as mere 'derivatives'. Vol. 7 of the International Yearbook of Futurism Studies will focus on one of these regions outside Europe and demonstrate that the heuristic model of centre - periphery is faulty and misleading, as it ignores the originality and inventiveness of art and literature in Latin America. Futurist tendencies in both Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries may have been, in part, 'influenced' by Italian Futurism, but they certainly did no 'derive' from it. The shift towards modernity took place in Latin America more or less in parallel to the economic progress made in the underdeveloped countries of Europe. Italy and Russia have often been described as having originated Futurism because of their backwardness compared to the industrial powerhouses England, Germany and France. According to this narrative, Spain and Portugal occupied a position of semi-periphery. They had channelled dominant cultural discourses from the centre nations into the colonies. However, with the rise of modernity and the emergence of independence movements, cultural discourses in the colonies undertook a major shift. The revolt of the European avant-garde against academic art found much sympathy amongst Latin American artists, as they were engaged in a similar battle against the canonical discourses of colonial rule. One can therefore detect many parallels between the European and Latin American avant-garde movements. This includes the varieties of Futurism, to which Yearbook 2017 will be dedicated. In Europe, the avant-garde had a complex relationship to tradition, especially its 'primitivist' varieties. In Latin America, the avant-garde also sought to uncover and incorporate alternative, i.e. indigenous traditions. The result was a hybrid form of art and literature that showed many parallels to the European avant-garde, but also had other sources of inspiration. Given the large variety of indigenous cultures on the American continent, it was only natural that many heterogeneous mixtures of Futurism emerged there. Yearbook 2017 explores this plurality of Futurisms and the cultural traditions that influenced them. Contributions focus on the intertextual character of Latin American Futurisms, interpret works of literature and fine arts within their local setting, consider modes of production and consumption within each culture as well as the forms of interaction with other Latin American and European centres. 14 essays locate Futurism within the complex network of cultural exchange, unravel the Futurist contribution to the complex interrelations between local and the global cultures in Latin America and reveal the dynamic dialogue as well as the multiple forms of cross-fertilization that existed amongst them.

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.

Teaching Modernist Anglophone Literature features fresh classroom approaches to teaching modernism, with an emphasis on pedagogy grounded in educational theory and contemporary digital media tools. It offers techniques for improving students' close reading, critical thinking/writing, and engagement with issues of gender, race, class, and social justice. Discussions are raised of subjectivity, perception, the nature of language, and the function of art. Innovative project ideas, assignments, and examples of student work are offered in a special annex. This volume fills a gap in higher education pedagogy uniquely suited to the experimental nature of modernism. Madden and McKenzie's inspiring volume can steer the teaching of modernist literature in creative, new directions that benefit both teachers and students. Contributors are: Susan Hays Bussey, William A. Johnsen, Benjamin Johnson, Mary C. Madden, Laci Mattison, Precious McKenzie, Susan Rowland, and Kelsey Squire.

Critical essays on 20th-century female artists of color focus on how these distinguished artists achieved success, what makes their work important both to the art world and to their specific communities, and what influences their work is likely to have in the future. The artists are representative of four ethnic groups: African American, Asian Pacific American, Latin American, and Native American. Parallels drawn explore the similarities and differences among the artists. The early feminist art movement of the 1970's concentrated on gender with less consideration given to race or class, yet to many artists of color, ethnicity factors significantly into the shaping of their identities and to the content of their art. Women artists of color have expanded the scope of protest art, fusing the past and current history with gender and race and deconstructing stereotypical mainstream representations of their gender and ethnic identities. This presentation of artists balances older and deceased artists with the younger, emerging artists. The artistic mediums span the gamut from traditional painting and sculpture to newer forms such as video, conceptual, and performance art.

These essays will appeal to a wide audience of scholars and artists interested in women's studies, art history, cultural studies, multicultural art, and art criticism. Grouped by ethnicity, artists are presented in alphabetical order. Entries include biographical information and a listing of each artist's exhibitions. Numerous photographs enhance the text.

Film World brings together key interviews with cinema's leading directors. The directors chosen represent many of the most influential film-makers of the last 50 years. All have been selected because of their cinematic vision, because they have a particular way of seeing the world and of filming it. All have created a body of work which is both hugely popular and critically acclaimed. This truly global range of directors hails from Australia, Britain, China and Hong Kong, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, North America, Poland, and Russia. Together, these illuminating interviews reveal how these visionary directors create images which speak to audiences the world over. The interviews are with: Bernardo Bertolucci, John Boorman, Robert Bresson, Jane Campion, John Cassavetes, David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Greenaway, Werner Herzog, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wong Kar-wei, Aki Kaurismaki, Abbas Kiarostami, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Takeshi Kitano, Im Kwon-taek, Mike Leigh, Manoel de Oliveira, Satyajit Ray, Martin Scorsese, Andrei Tarkovsky, Lars von Trier, Zhang Yimou

This text provides coverage of the history of the Japanese philosophy of art, from its inception in the 1870s to modern day. In addition to the historical information and discussion of aesthetic issues that appear in the introductions to each of the chapters, the book presents English translations of otherwise inaccessible major works on Japanese aesthetics, beginning with a complete and annotated translation of the first work in the field, Nishi Amane's ""Bimyogaku Setsu"" (""The Theory of Aesthetics""). The text is divided into four sections: the subject of aesthetics; aesthetic categories; poetic expression; postmodernism; and aesthetics. It examines the momentous efforts made by Japanese thinkers to master, assimilate and originally transform Western philosophical systems to discuss their own literary and artistic heritage.

This book reads messianic expectation as the defining characteristic of German culture in the first decades of the twentieth century. It has long been accepted that the Expressionist movement in Germany was infused with a thoroughly messianic strain. Here, with unprecedented detail and focus, that strain is traced through the work of four important Expressionist playwrights: Ernst Barlach, Georg Kaiser, Ernst Toller and Franz Werfel. Moreover, these dramatists are brought into new and sustained dialogues with the theorists and philosophers of messianism who were their contemporaries: Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen, Gershom Scholem. In arguing, for example, that concepts like Bloch's utopian self-encounter ("Selbstbegegnung") and Benjamin's messianic now-time ("Jetztzeit") reappear as the framework for Expressionism's staging of collective redemption in a new age, Anderson forges a previously underappreciated link in the study of Central European thought in the early twentieth century.

In this study, the author explores how Conrad, T.S. Eliot, Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, Hemingway, Huxley and others responded to the immediate challenges of their time, to the implications of Freudian psychology, molecular theory, relativist theory, and the general weakening of religious faith. Assuming that artists and writers, in coping with those problems, would develop techniques in many ways comparable, even where there was no direct contact, he positions modernist literature within the context of contemporary painting, architecture and sculpture, thereby providing some interesting insights into the nature of the literary works themselves.

Defining over 400 terms and phrases that have recently entered discourse on the visual arts, this is the first reference book specializing in explaining and applying theoretical terminology in contemporary art. Since the early 1970s, the vocabulary used to discuss visual art has expanded radically, leaving many teachers, students, artists, and critics without the accurate definitions necessary for fruitful discourse on contemporary culture. This glossary not only serves as a dictionary but as a guide to current theory and criticism of visual art and culture. Terms can be accessed alphabetically or thematically; the significant cross referencing makes this an easy dictionary to use.

Many contemporary art terms have been borrowed from other disciplines or are traditionally employed in the visual arts but have been adapted for use in the contemporary art world and have therefore been assigned specific or specialized applications. These loan terms have increased the likelihood for confusion between old and new definitions, so where possible the authors have applied the terms to works of art or some aspect of visual culture. Most art glossaries and dictionaries concentrate primarily on artistic production in the visual arts--movements, styles, and names. As a complement to these types of works, this glossary of theoretical terms is essential for anyone studying contemporary visual arts and visual culture in general.

Soon after 1900 in both North America and Europe the evolution from the tradition of Mediterranean and Gallic architectural styles to modernism began. This phenomenon was due, in part, to American industrial architecture and the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright's building and architectural treatises of 1898-1908, with the additional help of Dutch propaganda on his behalf, significantly influenced European practitioners and theorists. European architecture within and outside of Holland reflects an adaptation of Wright's theories along with the structural determinism of American industrial buildings. With new evidence and fresh analysis culled from Dutch and American archives, personal correspondence, and professional material, this study examines the weight of Wright's works and words and those of the Dutchmen H.P. Berlage, Theo van Doesburg, Jan Wils, J.J.P. Oud, William Dudok, and Hendrik Theodor Wijdeveld.

This new insight on the effects of Wright's architectural theories and designs, coupled with an extensive guide for further research, will attract art and architecture scholars and historians on both sides of the Atlantic and will also be of interest to social historians, artists, and architects. Events and new theories, including the assertion that Hendrik Theodor Wijdeveld was the catalytic source behind Wright's Taliesin Fellowship established in 1932, are presented in clear accessible language. Tied to the text are numerous visual presentations of significant designs and buildings.

The Avant-Garde in Interwar England addresses modernism's ties to tradition, commerce, nationalism, and spirituality through an analysis of the assimilation of visual modernism in England between 1910 and 1939. During this period, a debate raged across the nation concerning the purpose of art in society. On one side were the aesthetic formalists, led by members of London's Bloomsbury Group, who thought art was autonomous from everyday life. On the other were England's so-called medieval modernists, many of them from the provincial North, who maintained that art had direct social functions and moral consequences. As Michael T. Saler demonstrates in this fascinating volume, the heated exchange between these two camps would ultimately set the terms for how modern art was perceived by the British public.
Histories of English modernism have usually emphasized the seminal role played by the Bloomsbury Group in introducing, celebrating, and defining modernism, but Saler's study instead argues that, during the watershed years between the World Wars, modern art was most often understood in the terms laid out by the medieval modernists. As the name implies, these artists and intellectuals closely associated modernism with the art of the Middle Ages, building on the ideas of John Ruskin, William Morris, and other nineteenth-century romantic medievalists. In their view, modernism was a spiritual, national, and economic movement, a new and different artistic sensibility that was destined to revitalize England's culture as well as its commercial exports when applied to advertising and industrial design.
This book, then, concerns the busy intersection of art, trade, and national identity in the early decades of twentieth-century England. Specifically, it explores the life and work of Frank Pick, managing director of the London Underground, whose famous patronage of modern artists, architects, and designers was guided by a desire to unite nineteenth-century arts and crafts with twentieth-century industry and mass culture. As one of the foremost adherents of medieval modernism, Pick converted London's primary public transportation system into the culminating project of the arts and crafts movement. But how should today's readers regard Pick's achievement? What can we say of the legacy of this visionary patron who sought to transform the whole of sprawling London into a post-impressionist work of art? And was medieval modernism itself a movement of pioneers or dreamers? In its bold engagement with such questions, The Avant-Garde in Interwar England will surely appeal to students of modernism, twentieth-century art, the cultural history of England, and urban history.