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.

This revealing biography covers the life and art of painter Diego Rivera. Diego Rivera: A Biography presents a concise but substantial biography of the famous and controversial Mexican artist. Chronologically arranged, the book examines Rivera's childhood and artistic formation (1886-1906), his European period (1907-1921), and his murals of the 1920s. It looks at the work he did in the United States (1930-1933) and follows his career from his subsequent return to Mexico through his death in 1957. Drawing from primary source materials, the book reveals facts about Rivera's life that are not well known or have not been widely discussed before. It explores his tempestuous marriage to renowned painter Frida Kahlo and looks at controversial works, such as Rivera's 1933 mural for the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, which featured a portrait of Communist party leader Vladimir Lenin, and was officially destroyed the following year. Citations of many fragments of primary source material Photographs of important moments and persons in the life of Diego Rivera

In Art and Politics, Segal explores the collision of politics and art in seven enticing essays. The book explores the position of art and artists under a number of different political regimes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, traveling around the world to consider how art and politics have interacted and influenced each other in different conditions. Joes Segal takes you on a journey to the Third Reich, where Emil Nolde supported the regime while being called degenerate; shows us Diego Rivera creating Marxist murals in Mexico and the United States for anti-Marxist governments and clients; ties Jackson Pollock's drip paintings in their Cold War context to both the FBI and the CIA; and considers the countless images of Mao Zedong in China as unlikely witnesses of radical political change.

A rich exploration of the possibilities of representation after Modernism, Mark Taylor's new study charts the logic and continuity of Mark Tansey's painting by considering the philosophical ideas behind Tansey's art. Taylor examines how Tansey uses structuralist and poststructuralist thought as well as catastrophe, chaos, and complexity theory to create paintings that please the eye while provoking the mind. Taylor's clear accounts of thinkers ranging from Plato, Kant, and Hegel to Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and de Man will be an invaluable contribution to students and teachers of art.

In June 2012, Jasper Johns encountered a photograph of the painter Lucian Freud reproduced in a Christie's auction catalogue. Inspired not only by the photographic image, but also by the physical qualities of the object itself, Johns took this motif through a succession of cross-medium permutations. He also incorporated into his art the text of a rubber stamp he had made several years ago, to allow him to efficiently decline the myriad requests and invitations that come his way: 'Regrets/Jasper Johns'. But the stamp's text also calls to mind the more familiar connotations of regret, such as loss, disappointment, and remorse, invoking an enigmatic sense of melancholy. Published in conjunction with an exhibition of this recent series of paintings, drawings and prints, created over the last year and a half through an intricate combination of techniques, this publication presents each of the sixteen new works in full colour. An essay by Ann Temkin, Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, and Christophe Cherix, Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints, MoMA, examine the importance of process and experimentation, the cycle of dead ends and fresh starts, and the incessant interplay of materials, meaning, and representation so characteristic of Johns's career over the last sixty years.

The Visual is Political examines the growth of feminist photography as it unfolded in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s. This period in Britain was marked by instability following the collapse of the welfare state, massive unemployment, race riots, and workers’ strikes. However, this was also a time in which various forms of social activism emerged or solidified, including the Women’s Movement, whose members increasingly turned to photography as a tool for their political activism. Rather than focusing on the aesthetic quality of the images produced, Klorman-Eraqi looks at the application of feminist theory, photojournalism, advertising, photo montage, punk subculture and aesthetics, and politicized street activity to emphasize the statement and challenge that the photographic language of these works posed. She shows both the utilitarian uses of photography in activism, but also how these same photographers went on to be accepted (or co-opted) into the mainstream art spaces little by little, sometimes with great controversy. The Visual is Political highlights the relevance and impact of an earlier contentious, creative, and politicized moment of feminism and photography as art and activism.

The painful, exquisite art of Mexico's favourite artist was a product of immense physical pain, and an emotional tumultuous life. The new book features the range and power of her heavily autobiographical work, from the early, disturbing explorations of personal suffering to the more dulled, painkiller-drenched paintings of her later life.

This collection of essays--the first major account of surrealism in Latin America that covers both literary and visual production--explores the role the movement played in the construction and recuperation of cultural identities and the ways artists and writers contested, embraced, and adapted surrealist ideas and practices. Surrealism in Latin America provides new Latin American-centric scholarship, not only about surrealism's impact on the region but also about the region's impact on surrealism. It reconsiders the relation between art and anthropology, casts new light on the aesthetics of "primitivism," and makes a strong case for Latin American artists and writers as the inheritors of a movement that effectively went underground after World War II. In so doing, it expands our understanding of important, fascinating figures who are less well known than their counterparts active in Europe and New York. Deriving from a conference held at the Getty Research Institute, the book is rich in new materials drawn from the GRI's diverse Mexican and South American surrealist collections, which include the archives of Vicente Huidobro, Enrique Gomez-Correa, Cesar Moro, Enrique Lihn, and Emilio Westphalen. This panoramic survey goes a step beyond other recent studies to consider surrealism's ongoing legacies, proposing that the surrealist movement in Latin America, like the vivisimo muerto (the living dead)--cannot be relegated to the past.

The livre d'artiste, or "artist's book," is among the most prized in rare book collections. Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was one of the greatest artists to work in this genre, and he created his most important during a period of intense personal and physical suffering. Brimming with powerful themes and imagery, these works are crucial to understanding Matisse's oeuvre. With deftness and sensitivity, Louise Rogers Lalaurie reintroduces us to Matisse by considering how in each volume, Matisse constructed an intriguing dialogue between word and image. Examining this page-by-page interplay, translating key sequences, and discussing the books' distinct themes and production histories, Lalaurie offers the thoughtful analysis these works deserve. Together Matisse's artist books reveal his deep engagement with questions of beauty and truth; his faith; his perspectives on aging, loss, and inspiration; and his relationship to his critics, the French art establishment, and the women in his life. In addition, Lalaurie illuminates Matisse's often misunderstood political affinities--though Matisse was vilified in his time for choosing to live in the collaborationist Vichy zone, his wartime books reveal a body of work that stands as a deeply personal statement of resistance. Lavishly illustrated, Matisse: The Books showcases a rich group of underappreciated works and brings unprecedented clarity to a controversial period in the artist's life.

"Catherine Cusset's book caught a lot of me. I recognised myself" DAVID HOCKNEY "A perfect short expose of Hockney's life as seen through the eyes of an admiring novelist" Kirkus Reviews "Hers is an affirming vision of a restless talent propelled by optimism and chance" New York Times With clear, vivid prose, this meticulously researched novel draws an intimate, moving portrait of the most famous living English painter. Born in Bradford in 1937, David Hockney had to fight to become an artist. After leaving home for the Royal College of Art in London his career flourished, but he continued to struggle with a sense of not belonging, because of his homosexuality, which had yet to be decriminalised, and because of his inclination for a figurative style of art, which was not sufficiently "contemporary" to be valued. Trips to New York and California - where he would live for many years and paint his iconic swimming pools - introduced him to new scenes and new loves, beginning a journey that would take him through the fraught years of the AIDS epidemic. A compelling hybrid of novel and biography, David Hockney: A Life offers an insightful overview of a painter whose art is as accessible as it is compelling, and whose passion to create has never been deterred by heartbreak or illness or loss. Translated from the French by Teresa Lavender Fagan

A must-have for the core contemporary art audience: Robert Storr's singular and long-awaited book is unprecedented in treating the full range of Louise Bourgeois's artistic achievement. In a career spanning nearly 75 years, Louise Bourgeois created a vast body of work that enriched the formal language of modern art while it expressed her intense inner struggles with unprecedented candor and unpredictable invention. Her solo 1982 retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art launched an extraordinarily productive late career, making her a much-honored and vivid presence on the international art scene until her death in 2010 at the age of 98. Trained as a painter and printmaker, Bourgeois embraced sculpture as her primary medium and experimented with a range of materials over the years, including marble, plaster, bronze, wood, and latex. Bourgeois contributed significantly to Surrealism, Postminimalist, and installation art, but her work always remained fiercely independent of style or movement. With more than 1000 illustrations, Intimate Geometries: The Art and Life of Louise Bourgeois comprehensively surveys her immense oeuvre in unmatched depth. Writing from a uniquely intimate perspective, as a close personal friend of Bourgeois, and drawing on decades of research, Robert Storr critically evaluates her achievements and reveals the complexity and passion of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

In this acclaimed revisionist study, Erika Doss chronicles an historic cultural change in American art from the dominance of regionalism in the 1930s to abstract expressionism in the 1940s. She centers her study on Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock, Benton's foremost student in the early thirties, charting Pollock's early imitation of Benton's style before his radical move to abstraction. By situating painting within the evolving sociopolitical and cultural context of the Depression and the Cold War, Doss explains the reasons for this change and casts light on its significance for contemporary culture.
"A welcome addition to the growing body of literature that deals with the art and culture of the depression and cold war eras. It is a pioneering work that makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of a puzzling conundrum of American art--the shift from regionalism to abstract expressionism."--M. Sue Kendall, "Winterthur Portfolio"
"An important scholarly contribution. . . . This book will stand as a step along the way to a better understanding of the most amazing transition in the art of our tumultuous century."--James G. Rogers, Jr., "Art Journal"
"A valuable and interesting book that restores continuity and political context to the decades of depression and war."--Marlene Park, "American Historical Review"

Sverre Bjertnaes was higly influenced by realistic painter Odd Nerdrum, although he now merges figurative and abstract painting. Mid-career overview of the work of one of the leading contemporary Norwegian artists today. The development of the artist is presented across 14 chapters comprising work and exhibition views. Sverre Bjertnaes is considered one of the leading contemporary Norwegian artists today. He himself often refers to his body of works as a fragmented 'stream of images' collected from art history, vernacular culture and his own life. This authoritative monograph on the artist features his oeuvre from the 1990s to the present day, with more than 200 illustrations. The book presents the full range of Bjertnaes's works, covering painting and drawing as well as sculpture and the tableaux installations he has developed in later years. Bjertnas embraces the conceptual approaches of photorealism as well as merging figurative and abstract painting, and experimenting with the use of new media.

Kathleen McCarthy here presents the first book-length treatment of the vital role middle- and upper-class women played in the development of American museums in the century after 1830. By promoting undervalued areas of artistic endeavor, from folk art to the avant-garde, such prominent individuals as Isabella Stewart Gardner, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller were able to launch national feminist reform movements, forge extensive nonprofit marketing systems, and "feminize" new occupations.

<div>One of the most important sculptors of this century, Richard Serra has been a spokesman on the nature and status of art in our day. Best known for site-specific works in steel, Serra has much to say about the relation of sculpture to place, whether urban, natural, or architectural, and about the nature of art itself, whether political, decorative, or personal. In interviews with writers including Douglas and Davis Sylvester, he discusses specific installations and offers insights into his approach to the problem each presents. Interviews by Peter Eisenman and Alan Colquhoun elicit Serra's thoughts on the relation of architecture to contemporary sculpture, a primary component in his own work. From essays like "Extended Notes from Sight Point Road" to Serra's extended commentary on the <i>Tilted Arc</i> fiasco, the pieces in this volume comprise a document of one artist's engagement with the practical, philosophical, and political problems of art.</div>

In So Much Longing in So Little Space, Karl Ove Knausgaard explores the life and work of Edvard Munch. Setting out to understand the enduring power of Munch's painting, Knausgaard reflects on the essence of creativity, on choosing to be an artist, experiencing the world through art and its influence on his own writing. As co-curator of a major new exhibition of Munch's work in Oslo, Knausgaard visits the landscapes that inspired him, and speaks with contemporary artists, including Vanessa Baird and Anselm Kiefer. Bringing together art history, biography and memoir, and drawing on ideas of truth, originality and memory, So Much Longing in So Little Space is a brilliant and personal examination of the legacy of one of the world's most iconic painters, and a meditation on art itself.

Informed by the analytical practices of the interdisciplinary 'material turn' and social historical studies of childhood, Childhood By Design: Toys and the Material Culture of Childhood offers new approaches to the material world of childhood and design culture for children. This volume situates toys and design culture for children within broader narratives on history, art, design and the decorative arts, where toy design has traditionally been viewed as an aberration from more serious pursuits. The essays included treat toys not merely as unproblematic reflections of socio-cultural constructions of childhood but consider how design culture actively shaped, commodified and materialized shifting discursive constellations surrounding childhood and children. Focusing on the new array of material objects designed in response to the modern 'invention' of childhood-what we might refer to as objects for a childhood by design-Childhood by Design explores dynamic tensions between theory and practice, discursive constructions and lived experience as embodied in the material culture of childhood. Contributions from and between a variety of disciplinary perspectives (including history, art history, material cultural studies, decorative arts, design history, and childhood studies) are represented - critically linking historical discourses of childhood with close study of material objects and design culture. Chronologically, the volume spans the 18th century, which witnessed the invention of the toy as an educational plaything and a proliferation of new material artifacts designed expressly for children's use; through the 19th-century expansion of factory-based methods of toy production facilitating accuracy in miniaturization and a new vocabulary of design objects coinciding with the recognition of childhood innocence and physical separation within the household; towards the intersection of early 20th-century child-centered pedagogy and modernist approaches to nursery and furniture design; through the changing consumption and sales practices of the postwar period marketing directly to children through television, film and other digital media; and into the present, where the line between the material culture of childhood and adulthood is increasingly blurred.

Mathew's standard biography of Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) is based on extensive research in archives in this country and family records in France. An important artist in the salons of Paris, Tanner was born and studied in Philadelphia but left America for Europe, where his race would not stand in the way of his ambition.

How do the arts give us pleasure? Covering a very wide range of artistic works, from Auden to David Lynch, Rembrandt to Edward Weston, and Richard Strauss to Keith Jarrett, Pleasure and the Arts offers us an explanation of our enjoyable emotional engagements with literature, music, and painting. The arts direct us to intimate and particularized relationships - with the people represented in the works, or with those we imagine produced them. When we listen to music or look at a purely abstract painting, or when we drink a glass of wine, can we enjoy the experience without verbalizing our response? Do our interpretative assumptions, our awareness of technique, and our attitudes to fantasy, get in the way of our appreciation of art, or enhance it? As the book examines these questions and more, we discover how curiosity drives us to enjoy narratives, ordinary jokes, metaphors, and modernist epiphanies, and how narrative in all the arts can order and provoke intense enjoyment. Pleasurable in its own right, Pleasure and the Arts presents a sparkling explanation of the enduring interest of artistic expression.

As beautiful and rigorous as an Escher work itself, this book is the classic study of a great maverick who so memorably linked the world of imagemaking with geometry and paradox. Escher's works, from the great master prints to numerous drawings, are brilliantly arranged to form a cinematic journey of discovery that reveals the magical world of the artist's mind, an uncharted realm lush with exotic conceptions and inventions.