The art of Hinduism constitutes one of the world's great traditions, as alive today as when the first images of Hindu gods were fashioned out of stone more than two thousand years ago. George Michell's invaluable survey looks at the entire period, covering shrines consecrated to Hindu cults as well as works of art that portray Hindu divinities, semidivine personalities, and mythological narratives.

Michell outlines the development of Hinduism and the principal iconic forms of its pantheon (the symbolic basis for Hindu religious architecture), and explains the system of royal patronage that led to the construction of so many temples and the commissioning of their attendant works of art. Then, in a broad chronological sweep, he demonstrates artistic continuities down to the present day in the different regions of the country, confirming the vibrancy of the visual world of Hinduism. The illustrations include Mamallapuram and other great temples, profound and beautiful works of sculpture such as Shiva dancing the eternal dance of creation and destruction, and exquisite paintings of the loves of Krishna.

Sheela-na-Gigs are carvings of female images depicted as naked and posing in a manner which accentuates the most powerfully evocative symbol of the vulva. They were erected on many churches of the medieval period and invariably in a prominent position such as over the main entrance door or a window. In Ireland where the practice continued into the later middle ages, they are found on castles and some other important structures. The sheela-na-gigs are primarily sacred religious symbols but some historians have been reluctant to treat them seriously. This book has been produced in the hope that we may once again be able to look at, accept and fully appreciate sheela-na-gigs and thereby begin to feel respect for these once esteemed aspects of our heritage. The text is written from a non-academic perspective and so aims to be accessible to the general reader. The catalogue section of the book is a very comprehensive aplphabetical listed reference to all known sheela-na-gigs in Ireland and Britain. There are over 144 figures, over a hundred in Ireland and 40 in Britain and each entry includes a description, details of the location, and a drawing.

From the dawn of mankind's artistic achievement in the cave paintings of Altamira, to Picasso's groundbreaking Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and beyond, the arts in Spain tangibly illustrate the unique course of Spanish history. In this wide-ranging critical overview, John F. Moffitt concentrates on paradigms of painting, sculpture, the decorative arts, and architecture, situating them within their historical context.

Professor Moffitt first traces Iberian and Roman beginnings and examines the Islamic and Christian foundations of Cordoba and the Escorial. He discusses the masterworks of El Greco, Zurbaran, Velazquez, and Goya, the innovations of Picasso, Dali, and Miro, and the advent of postmodernism in Spain. Authoritative and ambitious, the book encompasses the enormous breadth of the Spanish artistic panorama, revealing how many of its most characteristic modern traits were present in earliest times.

After years of neglect, the variety, technical quality and imaginative content of Gilbert Bayes's work is receiving the appreciation it deserves. This is the first full study and catalogue raisonne of this 2Oth-century figurativist.

The career of Bayes spanned the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Modernism. While figures were his specialty, Bayes also designed presentation cups, caskets, mirrors, stained glass and more. His best known works are the large scale low relief panels designed for architectural settings, some of which include the Saville Theatre and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The painter and architect Giorgio Vasari was a pupil of Michelangelo's who worked mainly in Florence and Rome, but he is more famous for his Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects. This is the boxed-set edition of both volumes of his work, translated by Gaston de Vere.

The creation, use, and meaning of the masks created by the native Americans of the Northwest Coast are brought to life by an author who knows and loves the art, craft, and lore behind the masks. It is the first book devoted to a thorough explication of the techniques of mask-making and the role of the artist and his masks in the society. The reader will see the masks not in the cold light of a glass museum case, but as their people did - in the moving dramas and firelight of the long houses. Illustrated with line drawings by the author as well as with photographs, A World of Faces explores the riches of this ancient tradition, showing outstanding old masks that survive to our day. This art, almost lost, is being renewed by modern carvers of the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, and Nootka tribes.

The exuberant realism and virtuoso technique of Hellenistic sculpture formed the basis of European art. Under Alexander and his cosmopolitan successors, sculptors enriched the classical Greek repertoire with a whole range of new subjects - hermaphrodites, putti, peasants, boxers - and new styles - baroque treatment, genre figures, individualized portraiture. Professor Smith offers a reappraisal of this entire artistic epoch as a period of innovation, demonstrating the variety, subtlety and complexity of its styles. Numerous illustrations reveal the skill and inventiveness of the Hellenistic masters, who created works of great beauty and expressive power. The result is a lively survey of a vital phase in the evolution of Western art.

This book deals with the use of archaistic stylistic elements (i.e., those which revive or imitate features of Greek Archaic art) in free standing statuary dating from the second century B.C. to the third century A.C. The main objective of the study is to determine how the archaistic style was used, what prototypes were imitated, what subjects were represented, how the replicas of statue types were distributed, how these statues were displayed, and what prompted such stylistic anachronism.
The introductory chapter deals with general problems of archaism in ancient art and the specific questions pertaining to statuary in the round. The body of material, nearly three hundred pieces in all, is organized by type on the basis of pose and garment arrangement.
In a concluding chapter, evidence from the body of the study is collected and possible answers are suggested for the questions outlined above.
This study contributes to the currently widespread scholarly interest in stylistic revivals (especially classicism and archaism) which occurred not only in Roman times, but in earlier and later periods as well.

This text presents a comprehensive study of the Hawaiian sculptural tradition. The book documents most known extant indigenous carvings of the human figure and identifies their locations in public and private collections.The illustrations illuminate the wooden sculpture of artists whose names are unknown. This revised edition includes pieces discovered since the first edition.

For many people there is no more satisfying expression of Greek art than its sculpture. It was the first, the only ancient art to break free from 'conceptual' conventions for representing men and animals, and to explore consciously how art might imitate nature or even improve upon it. The first stages of this discovery, from the semi-abstract beginnings in the eighth century BC to the more representational art of the early fifth century, are explored and copiously illustrated in this handbook.

This book analyzes the fundamental aspects of graphically depicting a wide variety of jewelry. The relationships of volume, balance between full and empty, treatment of metal surfaces, warm and cool materials and the relationship between the support and the stone are explained in depth along with ways to illuminate jewelry, treatment of light and chiaroscuro play to add depth. The book begins with simple geometric structures and moves on to explore more complex forms through a range of distortions and multiplications. The goal is not to show finished pieces of jewelry but to provide the tools that will enable readers to acquire a work method that allows them to represent their ideas effectively. From orthogonal and axonometric projections to techniques (watercolor, tempera, ink, mixed technique) and different possible supports, readers will find a source of inspiration for developing their own designs. Rings, tiaras, precious stones, bracelets and chains) are graphically represented in this book as if they were real, along with effects such as depth, gloss and transparency.

From media art archeology to contemporary interaction design - the term interface culture is based on a vivid and ongoing discourse in the fields of interactive art, interaction design, game design, tangible interfaces, auditory interfaces, fashionable technologies, wearable devices, intelligent ambiences, sensor technologies, telecommunication and new experimental forms of human-machine, human-human and machine-machine interactions and the cultural discourse surrounding them. This book's aim is to give an overview of the current state of interactive art and interface technology as well as an outlook on new forms of hybridization in art, media, scientific research and every-day media applications.

Experience the interdisciplinary performance scene of the 1980s and beyond through the eyes of one of its most compelling witnesses. Jacki Apple’s Performance / Media / Art / Culture traces performance art, multimedia theatre, audio arts and dance in the United States from 1983 to the present. Showcasing 35 years of Apple’s critical essays and reviews, the collection explores the rise and diversification of intermedia performance; how new technologies (or rehashed old technologies) influence American culture and contemporary life; the interdependence of pop and performance culture; and the politics of art and the performance of politics.   Apple writes with a journalist’s attention to the immediacy of account and a historian’s attention to structural aesthetic and personal networks, resulting in a volume brimming with big ideas but grounded in concentrated reviews of individual performances. Many of the pieces featured in this collection originally appeared in small press journals and magazines that have now gone out of print. Preserved and republished here for current and future readers, they offer a rich portrait of performance at the end of the millennium.

What is sculpture's primordial nature, its essence, and how should it be redefined? Should sculpture serve society? Why not objects, rather than the human figure, as sculpture's subject? How and what do we see? Why the pedestal? What determines proportion? How can sculpture be meaningfully united with the real world of objects? These were only a few of the questions being asked after 1905questions that led to the revolutionary premises of modern sculpture. In this work, Elsen explores the radical changes that transformed sculpture between roughly 1890 and 1918, signaling the emergence of modern sculpture. He demonstrates how Rodin and his younger venturesome contemporaries changed the look and focus of sculpture, thereby initiating its continual process of redefinition. The result is a fascinating and thought-provoking book. 168 black-and-white illustrations.

This text explores three of Bernini's baroque chapels to show how Bernini achieved his effects. Careri examines the ways in which the artist integrated the disparate forms of architecture, painting and sculpture into a coherant space for devotion, and then shows how this accomplishment was understood by religious practitioners. In the Fonseca Chapel, the Albertoni Chapel and the church of Saint Andrea al Quirinale, all in Rome, Careri identifies three types of ensemble and links each to a particular spiritual journey. Using contemporary theories in anthropology, film and reception aesthetics, he shows how Bernini's formal mechanisms established an emotional dynamic between the beholder and a specific arrangement of forms.

<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>

Published in conjunction with the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to Henri Matisse's paper cut-outs, made from the early 1940s until the artist's death in 1954, this publication presents approximately 150 works in a groundbreaking reassessment of Matisse's colorful and innovative final chapter. The result of research conducted on two fronts--conservation and curatorial--the catalogue offers a reconsideration of the cut-outs by exploring a host of technical and conceptual issues: the artist's methods and materials and the role and function of the works in his practice; their economy of means and exploitation of decorative strategies; their environmental aspects; and their double lives, first as contingent and mutable in the studio and ultimately made permanent, a transformation accomplished via mounting and framing. Richly illustrated to present the cut-outs in all of their vibrancy and luminosity, the book includes an introduction and a conservation essay that consider the cut-outs from new theoretical and technical perspectives, and five thematic essays, each focusing on a different moment in the development of the cut-out practice, that provide a chronicle of this radical medium's unfolding, and period photographs that show the works in process in Matisse's studio.
One of modern art's towering figures, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was a painter, draftsman, sculptor and printmaker before turning to paper cut-outs in the 1940s. From the clashing hues of his Fauvist works made in the South of France in 1904-05, to the harmonies of his Nice interiors from the 1920s, to this brilliant final chapter, Matisse followed a career-long path that he described as "construction by means of color."

The power of the image of the nude--the expressivity of the flesh--has inspired artists from the beginning. An understanding of human form is essential for artists to be able to express themselves with the figure. Anatomy makes the figure. Human Anatomy for Artists: The Elements of Form is the definitive analytical work on the anatomy of the human figure.
No longer will working artists have to search high and low to find the information they need. In this, the most up-to-date and fully illustrated guide available, Eliot Goldfinger--sculptor, illustrator, scientific model-maker, and lecturer on anatomy--presents a single, all-inclusive reference to human form, capturing everything artists need in one convenient volume. Five years in the making, and featuring hundreds of photos and illustrations, this guide offers more views of each bone and muscle than any other book ever published: every structure that creates or influences surface form is individually illustrated in clear, carefully lit photographs and meticulous drawings. Informed by the detailed study of both live models and cadavers, it includes numerous unique presentations of surface structures--such as fat pads, veins, and genitalia--and of some muscles never before photographed. In addition, numerous cross sections, made with reference to CT scans, magnetic resonance imaging, and cut cadavers, trace the forms of all body regions and individual muscles. Information on each structure is placed on facing pages for ease of reference, and the attractive two-color format uses red ink to direct readers rapidly to important points and areas. Finally, an invaluable chapter on the artistic development of basic forms shows in a series of sculptures the evolution of the figure, head, and hands from basic axes and volumes to more complex organic shapes. This feature helps place the details of anatomy within the overall context of the figure.
Certain to become the standard reference in the field, Human Anatomy for Artists will be indispensable to artists and art students, as well as art historians. It will also be a useful aid for physical and dance therapists, athletes and their trainers, bodybuilders, and anyone concerned with the external form of the human body. With the renewed interest in figurative art today, this will be an especially welcome volume.

An edited collection of essays exploring the work and legacy of the academic and theatre-maker Clive Barker. Together, the essays trace the development of his work from his early years as an actor with Joan Littlewood's company, Theatre Workshop, via his career as an academic and teacher, through the publication of his seminal book, Theatre Games (Methuen Drama). The book looks beyond Barker's death in 2005 at the enduring influence of his work upon contemporary theatre training and theatre-making. Each writer featured in the collection responds to a specific aspect of Barker's work, focusing primarily on his early and formative career experiences with Theatre Workshop and his hugely influential development of Theatre Games. The collection as a whole thereby seeks to situate Clive Barker's work and influence in an international and multi-disciplinary context, by examining not only his origins as an actor, director, teacher and academic, but also the broad influence he has had on generations of theatre-makers.

Tracing the evolution of the Italian avant-garde’s pioneering experiments with art and technology and their subversion of freedom and control In postwar Italy, a group of visionary artists used emergent computer technologies as both tools of artistic production and a means to reconceptualize the dynamic interrelation between individual freedom and collectivity. Working contrary to assumptions that the rigid, structural nature of programming limits subjectivity, this book traces the multifaceted practices of these groundbreaking artists and their conviction that technology could provide the conditions for a liberated social life. Situating their developments within the context of the Cold War and the ensuing crisis among the Italian left, Arte Programmata describes how Italy’s distinctive political climate fueled the group’s engagement with computers, cybernetics, and information theory. Creating a broad range of immersive environments, kinetic sculptures, domestic home goods, and other multimedia art and design works, artists such as Bruno Munari, Enzo Mari, and others looked to the conceptual frameworks provided by this new technology to envision a way out of the ideological impasses of the age. Showcasing the ingenuity of Italy’s earliest computer-based art, this study highlights its distinguishing characteristics while also exploring concurrent developments across the globe. Centered on the relationships between art, technology, and politics, Arte Programmata considers an important antecedent to the digital age. 

Objects of adornment have been a subject of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic study for well over a century. Within archaeology, personal ornaments have traditionally been viewed as decorative embellishments associated with status and wealth, materializations of power relations and social strategies, or markers of underlying social categories such as those related to gender, class, and ethnic affiliation. Personal Adornment and the Construction of Identity seeks to understand these artefacts not as signals of steady, pre-existing cultural units and relations, but as important components in the active and contingent constitution of identities. Drawing on contemporary scholarship on materiality and relationality in archaeological and social theory, this book uses one genre of material culture - items of bodily adornment - to illustrate how humans and objects construct one another. Providing case studies spanning 10 countries, three continents, and more than 9,000 years of human history, the authors demonstrate the myriad and dynamic ways personal ornaments were intertwined with embodied practice and identity performativity, the creation and remaking of social memories, and relational collections of persons, materials, and practices in the past. The authors’ careful analyses of production methods and composition, curation/heirlooming and reworking, decorative attributes and iconography, position within assemblages, and depositional context illuminate the varied material and relational axes along which objects of adornment contained social value and meaning. When paired with the broad temporal and geographic scope collectively represented by these studies, we gain a deeper appreciation for the subtle but vital roles these items played in human lives.