In this study, Luba Freedman examines the revival of the twelve Olympian deities in the visual arts of sixteenth-century Italy. Renaissance representations of the Olympians as autonomous figures in paintings, sculpture and drawing were not easily integrated into a Christian society. While many patrons and artists venerated the ancient artworks for their artistic qualities, others, nourished by religious beliefs, felt compelled to adapt ancient representations to Christian subjects. These conflicting attitudes influenced the representation of deities intentionally made all'antica, often resulting in an interweaving of classical and non-classical elements that is alien to the original, ancient sources. This study, the first devoted to this problem, highlights how problematic it was during the Cinquecento to display and receive images of pagan gods, whether shaped by ancient or contemporary artists. It offers new insights into the uneven absorption of the classical heritage during the early modern era.

Examines the intersection of Samuel Beckett's thirty-second playlet Breath with the visual arts Samuel Beckett, one of the most prominent playwrights of the twentieth century, wrote a thirty-second playlet for the stage that does not include actors, text, characters or drama but only stage directions. Breath (1969) is the focus and the only theatrical text examined in this study, which demonstrates how the piece became emblematic of the interdisciplinary exchanges that occur in Beckett's later writings, and of the cross-fertilisation of the theatre with the visual arts. The book attends to fifty breath-related artworks (including sculpture, painting, new media, sound art, performance art) and contextualises Beckett's Breath within the intermedial and high-modernist discourse thereby contributing to the expanding field of intermedial Beckett criticism. Key Features Examines Beckett's ultimate venture to define the borders between a theatrical performance and purely visual representation Juxtaposes Beckett's Breath with breath-related artworks by prominent visual artists who investigate the far-reaching potential of the representation of respiration by challenging modernist essentialism The focus on this primary human physiological function and its relation to arts and culture is highly pertinent to studies of human performance, the nature of embodiment and its relation to cultural expression Facilitates new intermedial discourses around the nature and aesthetic possibilities of breath, the minimum condition of existence, at the interface between the visual arts and performance practices and their relation to questions of spectacle, objecthood and materiality

This study of the Victorian fascination with fairies reveals their significance in Victorian art and literature. Nicola Bown explores what the fairy meant to the Victorians, and why they were so captivated by a figure which nowadays seems trivial and childish. She argues that fairies were a fantasy that allowed the Victorians to escape from their worries about science, technology and the effects of progress. The fairyland they dreamed about was a reconfiguration of their own world, and the fairies who inhabited it were like themselves.

The coming of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century witnessed unprecedented changes in society: rapid economic progress went hand-in-hand with appalling working conditions, displacement, squalor and destitution for those at the bottom of the social scale. These new circumstances presented a challenge to contemporary image-makers, who wished to capture the effects of hunger, poverty and alienation in Britain, Ireland and France in the era before documentary photography. In this groundbreaking book, the eminent art historian Linda Nochlin examines the styles and expressive strategies that were used by artists and illustrators to capture this misere, roughly characterized as poverty that afflicts both body and soul. She investigates images of the Irish Famine in the period 1846-51; the gendered representation of misery, particularly of poor women and prostitutes; and the work of three very different artists: Theodore Gericault, Gustave Courbet and the less wellknown Fernand Pelez. The artists' desire to depict the poor and the outcast accurately and convincingly is still a pertinent issue, though now, as Nochlin observes, the question has a moral and ethical dimension - does the documentary style belittle its subjects and degrade their condition?

The writings which comprise my memoirs were-started over twenty years .ago when I was still painting. Verse can express, emotions of love, joy and sadness in a manner divorced from most painters' subject matter. This, I find, is especially so nowadays in the prevalence of the abstract -- with most practitioners' work having many human verities absent -- not only in Europe but world-wide. This change in thinking has been enormous and is -one that is seen most clearly in the visual arts. Now that circumstances make painting impossible for me, writing has moved into first place. Even so, as with painting, progress has been slow. But writing is so very different from painting -- so many thoughts and imaginative images, often distantly or subtly related, can imbue a poem with a lasting mystery, or a glimpse into a lovely insubstantial world. This volume completes my Trilogy My Life, My Painting and finally My Writing. Although they have emerged as separate books, the writing of Part III was essential to complete the narrative as I conceived it -- there has been a great deal to think about, much to ponder over.

Syria is undergoing a stage of transformation, including political and social changes. This unique book focuses on the transformations in creative industries and presents a collection of research papers describing and analyzing this pivotal period, in which their role evolved from producing tangible cultural products to becoming an active player in the maintenance of knowledge and a source of support and revenue.

Through the lens of seven scholars, this book examines fine art and commercial design as they both reflected and helped create the vibrant culture of public spectacle in late nineteenth-century Paris. Posters and prints circulated across the city, as the new art form of cinema flourished, all part of a diverse urban climate of leisure that was particularly French. These rich visual materials served to promote the careers and talents of such celebrities as Jane Avril, Loie Fuller, and Sarah Bernhardt. Alphonse Mucha and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec developed the potential of color lithography to meet the demands of these stars, while fine artists ranging from Edgar Degas andedouard Manet to Pablo Picasso andedouard Vuillard focused on such spectacles as the racetrack, ballet, cafe-concert, theater, and opera, asserting them as defining elements of Parisian modernity in this image-saturated milieu.

We are in the dawn of the drone age, a turning point in history when the United States and other countries are increasingly using unmanned aerial vehicles to monitor behavior, collect data, conduct surveillance, and wage wars. As the ubiquitous vision and remote engagement of drones redefine contemporary policing and warfare, their impact is filtering into art and visual culture, generating new investigations into issues of visibility, technology, and fear. Considering an international array of video, sculpture, installation, photography, and web-based projects, this volume, the catalog for a recent exhibition at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, reveals the unique potential of art to further our understanding of, and give visual form to, modern drone warfare and digital surveillance. These essays illuminate how the drone embodies a far-reaching discussion about the rapidly shifting conditions of perception of seeing, and of being seen made possible by advanced technology. What is the relation of machine vision to human vision? And how do visual technologies affect our understanding of the agency of images, and of ourselves? Featuring scholarly essays along with texts by contributing artists Trevor Paglen and Hito Steyerl, To See Without Being Seen is a perceptive contribution to the emerging literature on contemporary artistic practice, war, surveillance, and technology.

The Goddess Devi, the primordial Shakti, is a revelation of the eternal Brahman in a maternal aspect. She is worshipped during the autumnal festival of Durga Pujo in Bengal every year. In this volume, Peter Bjorn Franceschi presents a photographic exploration of the mother goddess in the making, a visual diary of the clay idols of the goddess Durga, from conception to finished form. The book takes us through the winding lanes of Kumartuli, home to the master artists who craft the clay idols of the Devi for the Durga Pujo. Accompanying these photographs are verses from Sankaracharya's poetic work, Saundaryalahari (Waves of Beauty), translated by the scholar Minati Kar. The work is a paean to the goddess Durga, entwining Advaita Vedanta and Tantra philosophy to paint a splendid picture of Devi, starting from the crown of her head and ending at her feet. These poetic descriptions serve as a deeper layer to the visuals, and as an alternate way of interpreting the process of image making. Delving deep into the philosophical and artistic aspects of the divinity of goddess Durga, this volume is a visual celebration of her many forms, and also of the artisans who have occupied a centuries-old caesura between devotion and art.

Deliciously illustrated with masterpieces of western art, this latest volume in the highly acclaimed "Guide to Imagery" series explores the rituals, customs, and symbolism of food and dining in art.It features a dedicated mailing and e-mail campaign to targeted art and food media.This sumptuous new guide describes the importance of food and feasts in art throughout history: as told in the Scriptures and in the lives of the saints; food and dining in Greek and Roman mythology; food in later literature and history; how artists through the ages have created allegories of gluttony and odes to the sense of taste; also discussed is the role of table settings in relation to ceremonies such as formal dinners and royal banquets; and, lastly, a close-up look at the symbolic meaning of individual foods and drinks - from the artichoke to champagne and from chilli peppers to absinthe.

Stefan Jonsson uses three monumental works of art to build a provocative history of popular revolt: Jacques-Louis David's "The Tennis Court Oath" (1791), James Ensor's "Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889" (1888), and Alfredo Jaar's "They Loved It So Much, the Revolution" (1989). Addressing, respectively, the French Revolution of 1789, Belgium's proletarian messianism in the 1880s, and the worldwide rebellions and revolutions of 1968, these canonical images not only depict an alternative view of history but offer a new understanding of the relationship between art and politics and the revolutionary nature of true democracy.

Drawing on examples from literature, politics, philosophy, and other works of art, Jonsson carefully constructs his portrait, revealing surprising parallels between the political representation of "the people" in government and their aesthetic representation in painting. Both essentially "frame" the people, Jonsson argues, defining them as elites or masses, responsible citizens or angry mobs. Yet in the aesthetic fantasies of David, Ensor, and Jaar, Jonsson finds a different understanding of democracy-one in which human collectives break the frame and enter the picture.

Connecting the achievements and failures of past revolutions to current political issues, Jonsson then situates our present moment in a long historical drama of popular unrest, making his book both a cultural history and a contemporary discussion about the fate of democracy in our globalized world.

Nonfiction. Art. Politics. PAPER POLITICS is a major collection of contemporary politically and socially engaged printmaking. This full color book showcases print art that uses themes of social justice and global equity to engage community members in political conversation. Based on an art exhibition which has traveled to a dozen cities in North America, the book features artwork by over 200 international artists; an eclectic collection of work by both activist and non-activist printmakers who have felt the need to respond to the monumental trends and events of our times. Artists range from the well established (Sue Coe, Swoon, Carlos Cortez) to the up-and-coming (Favianna Rodriguez, Chris Stain, Nicole Schulman), from street artists (BORF, You Are Beautiful) to rock poster makers (EMEK, Bughouse).

Petro-modernity is a local phenomenon essential to the history of Kuwait, while also a global experience and one of the prime sources of climate change. The book investigates petroleum's role in the visual culture of Kuwait to understand the intersecting ideologies of modernization, political representation, and oil. The notion of iridescence, the ambiguous yet mesmerizing effect of a rainbowlike color play, serves as analytical-aesthetic concept to discuss petroleum's ambiguous contribution to modernity: both promise of prosperity and destructive force of socio-cultural and ecological environments. Covering a broad spectrum of historical material from aerial and color photography, visual arts, postage stamps, and master plans to architecture and also contemporary art from the Gulf, it dismantles petro- modernity's visual legacy.

Canaletto, Bernardo Bellotto, Luca Caravarijs, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Francesco Guardi, Hubert Robert-these renowned view painters are perhaps best known for their expansive canvases depicting the ruins of Rome or the canals of Venice. Many of their most splendid paintings, however, feature important contemporary events. Little explored by scholars, they stand out by virtue of their extraordinary artistic quality, vibrant atmosphere, and historical interest. Imbued with a sense of occasion, even drama, and often commissioned by or for rulers, princes, and ambassadors as records of significant events in which they participated, these occasions motivated some of the greatest artists of the era to produce their most exceptional work. Lavishly illustrated and exhaustively researched, this volume provides the first-ever comprehensive study-in any language-of this type of view painting. In examining these paintings alongside the historical events depicted in them, Peter Bjorn Kerber carefully reconstructs the meaning and context these paintings possessed for the artists who produced them and the patrons who commissioned them, as well as for their contemporary viewers. This vital book represents a major contribution to the field of view painting studies and will be an essential resource to scholars and enthusiasts.

Flags and Faces, based on David Lubin's 2008 Franklin D. Murphy Lectures at the University of Kansas, shows how American artists, photographers, and graphic designers helped shape public perceptions about World War I. In the book's first section, Art for War's Sake," Lubin considers how flag-based patriotic imagery prompted Americans to intervene in Europe in 1917. Trading on current anxieties about class, gender, and nationhood, American visual culture made war with Germany seem inevitable. The second section, Fixing Faces," contemplates the corrosive effects of the war on soldiers who literally lost their faces on the battlefield, and on their families back home. Unable to endure distasteful reminders of war's brutality, postwar Americans grew obsessed with physical beauty, as seen in the simultaneous rise of cosmetic surgery, the makeup industry, beauty pageants, and the cult of screen goddesses such as Greta Garbo, who was worshipped for the masklike perfection of her face. Engaging, provocative, and filled with arresting and at times disturbing illustrations, Flags and Faces offers striking new insights into American art and visual culture from 1915 to 1930.

Taking a new approach to medieval art, "Meaning in Motion" reveals the profound importance of movement in the physical, emotional, and intellectual experience of art and architecture in the Middle Ages. Focusing on the physical movement of objects and viewers, as well as movements of the mind, this richly illustrated collection of interdisciplinary essays explores a wide range of rituals, performances, works of art, and texts in which movement is crucial to meaning. These include liturgical and devotional practices, but also pilgrimage, reading techniques, and the use of art and allegory in late medieval courtly society. The contributors consider movement not only as a physical action but also as an active intellectual process involving the reception of images, one that creates layers of meaning through the multidimensional experience of objects and spaces, both real and imaginary. This novel approach to medieval art, building on the concept of agency and the understanding of ritual as a performative act, is influenced by two anthropological perspectives: Victor Turner's "processual" analysis of rites of passage and Alfred Gell's conception of the interactive relationship between art and the viewer as a process. The essays in this volume engage in an interdisciplinary discussion of the significance of movement for the making and perception of medieval art.

How do artists and writers engage with environmental knowledge in the face of overwhelming information about catastrophe? What kinds of knowledge do the arts produce when addressing climate change, extinction, and other environmental emergencies? What happens to scientific data when it becomes art? In Infowhelm, Heather Houser explores the ways contemporary art manages environmental knowledge in an age of climate crisis and information overload. Houser argues that the infowhelm-a state of abundant yet contested scientific information-is an unexpectedly resonant resource for environmental artists seeking to go beyond communicating stories about crises. Infowhelm analyzes how artists transform the techniques of the sciences into aesthetic material, repurposing data on everything from butterfly migration to oil spills and experimenting with data collection, classification, and remote sensing. Houser traces how artists ranging from novelist Barbara Kingsolver to digital memorialist Maya Lin rework knowledge traditions native to the sciences, entangling data with embodiment, quantification with speculation, precision with ambiguity, and observation with feeling. Their works provide new ways of understanding environmental change while also questioning traditional distinctions between types of knowledge. Bridging the environmental humanities, digital media studies, and science and technology studies, this timely book reveals the importance of artistic medium and form to understanding environmental issues and challenges our assumptions about how people arrive at and respond to environmental knowledge.