Representing a new generation of theorists reaffirming the radical dimensions of art, Gail Day launches a bold critique of late twentieth-century art theory and its often reductive analysis of cultural objects. Exploring core debates in discourses on art, from the New Left to theories of "critical postmodernism" and beyond, Day counters the belief that recent tendencies in art fail to be adequately critical. She also challenges the political inertia that results from these conclusions.

Day organizes her defense around critics who have engaged substantively with emancipatory thought and social process: T. J. Clark, Manfredo Tafuri, Fredric Jameson, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, and Hal Foster, among others. She maps the tension between radical dialectics and left nihilism and assesses the interpretation and internalization of negation in art theory.

Chapters confront the claim that exchange and equivalence have subsumed the use value of cultural objects--and with it critical distance-- and interrogate the proposition of completed nihilism and the metropolis put forward in the politics of Italian operaismo. Day covers the debates on symbol and allegory waged within the context of 1980s art and their relation to the writings of Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man. She also examines common conceptions of mediation, totality, negation, and the politics of anticipation. A necessary unsettling of received wisdoms, "Dialectical Passions" recasts emancipatory reflection in aesthetics, art, and architecture.

German artist Martin Bruno Schmid (b. 1970) works at the intersection of art and architecture; his tools are drills, saws, and sandpaper, his process includes hammering, shredding, and cutting. Material is extracted, and rarely applied. Schmid addresses the very subject of construction itself with his minimalistic and exceptionally radical interventions in public spaces. In doing so he pushes the frontiers of what is feasible and makes visible what we take for granted. His interventions are a celebration of all the technologies of civilisation that enable us to spend our lives protected and safe, but they are also a test of our certitude. This latest monograph on his work provides a comprehensive insight into Schmid's widely varied oeuvre and opens a gateway to the Stuttgart artist's creative world. Text in English and German.

Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns each made a tremendous impact on modern art in the 20th century. As pioneers of revolutionary movements such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop art, they are key figures in the postwar transitions that brought American art to the forefront of the international scene. These latest volumes in the "MoMA Artist Series", which explores important artists and favorite works in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, guide readers through a dozen of each artists most memorable achievements. A short and lively essay by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum, accompanies each work, illuminating its significance and placing it in its historical moment in the development of modern art and the artists own life. These books provide a unique overview of the individuals who shaped the development of American art since mid-century and are excellent resources for readers interested in the stories behind the masterpieces of the modern canon.

This second collection of gorgeously illustrated artworks highlights events from volumes 10 through 15 of the main story. The definitive edition also includes illustrations from volumes 1 through 3 of Sword Art Online: Progressive, as well as art from animated productions, games, and conventions. A must-have for SAO fans and abec fans alike!

Approximately 80 previously unpublished writings by Louise Bourgeois appear here in print for the first time, which, combined with eight extensive scholarly essays turns our critical understanding of Bourgeois' work on its head, offering a new and unprecedented insight into the work of one of the 20th century's greatest artists. Famed for such works as The Destruction of the Father (1974), Arch of Hysteria (1993) and her huge and emblematic piece Maman (1999) - an enormous spider as an icon of maternal protection and withdrawal - Bourgeois investigated the realm of psychoanalytical territory through her sculptures, paintings and writings. Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed shows the enduring presence of psychoanalysis as a motivational force and a site of exploration in her life and work. Selected and edited by Philip Larratt-Smith, her literary archivist, these texts provide a comprehensive overview and re-reading covering 60 years of artistic production. The second volume in this gorgeous set also serves as an impressive and up-to-date monograph, detailing works up until the artist's death in 2010.

An essential reference that provides new understanding of the thought processes of one of the most radical artists of the late twentieth century. Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) has never been an easy artist to categorize or to explain. Although trained as an architect, he has been described as a sculptor, a photographer, an organizer of performances, and a writer of manifestos, but he is best known for un-building abandoned structures. In the brief span of his career, from 1968 to his early death in 1978, he created an oeuvre that has made him an enduring cult figure. In 2002, when Gordon Matta-Clark's widow, Jane Crawford, put his archive on deposit at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, it revealed a new voice in the ongoing discussion of artist/architect Matta-Clark's work: his own. Gwendolyn Owens and Philip Ursprung's careful selection and ordering of letters, interviews, statements, and the now-famous art cards from the CCA as well as other sources deepens our understanding of one of the most original thinkers of his generation. Gordon Matta-Clark: An Archival Sourcebook creates a multidimensional portrait that provides an opportunity for readers to explore and enjoy the complexity and contradiction that was Gordon Matta-Clark.

Since 1945, the globalization of education and the professionalization of architects and engineers, as well as the conceptualization and production of space, can be seen as a product of battles of legitimacy that were played out in the context of the Cold War and what came after. In this book James Steele provides an informative and compelling analysis of one of Egypt's foremost contemporary architects, Abdelhalim Ibrahim Abdelhalim, and his work during a period of Egypt's attempts at constructing an identity and cultural legitimacy within the post-Second World War world order. Born in 1941 in the small town of Sornaga just south of Cairo, Abdelhalim received his architectural training in Egypt and the United States, and is the designer of over one hundred cultural, institutional, and rehabilitation projects, including the Cultural Park for Children in Cairo, the American University in Cairo campus in New Cairo, the Egyptian Embassy in Amman, and the Uthman Ibn Affan Mosque in Qatar. The first comprehensive study of the work and career of Abdelhalim and his office, the Community Design Collaborative (CDC), which he established in Cairo in 1978, Abdelhalim Ibrahim Abdelhalim: An Architecture of Collective Memory is inspired by Abdelhalim's deep belief in the power of rituals as a guiding force behind various human behaviors and the spaces in which they are enacted and designed to play out. Each chapter is consequently dedicated to one of these rituals and the ways in which some of Abdelhalim's primary commissions have, at all levels of scale, revealed and expressed that ritual. In the sequence presented these are: the rituals of possession, reverence, order, the transmission of knowledge, procession, human institutions, geometry, light, the sense of place, materiality, and finally, the ritual of color.

This guide not only introduces the reader to popular tourist attractions in Minsk, it offers a comprehensive picture of all layers and aspects of the city. The architectural works presented range from 17th century churches to arenas and hotels built for the 2014 Ice Hockey World Championships; from iconic symbols of the Belarusian capital to the distant but intriguing outskirts. The author tells the story of Minsk by presenting the "seven faces" of the city: 200 buildings, 10 squares, 5 war monuments, 7 parks, all metro stations, as well as 10 residential estates and 20 mass series that together contributed to what became known as the "Minsk Phenomenon".

Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) was one of the greatest British artists of the twentieth century, first coming to international prominence with his famous 'white reliefs' of the 1930s. A pioneer of abstract art in Britain, he played a significant role in the European avantgarde, forming close links with Picasso, Braque, Arp, Mondrian and others. At the same time he had a strong sense of tradition, maintaining a life-long attachment to landscape and still-life forms. Central to the establishment of a modernist art community in St Ives, Nicholson's importance as a disseminator of international avant-garde ideas in Britain cannot be overstated. His career spanned more than 60 years and embraced carved reliefs, paintings, drawings and prints. Virginia Button's engaging, fully illustrated survey provides a detailed examination of Nicholson's life and work in St Ives, giving a thorough introduction as well as new insights into the evolving practice of this major artist over a period of six decades.

Berlin was shaped by the events of the twentieth century in a process of "automatic urbanism." More than any other metropolis, the city absorbed the forces of that epoch - modernity, fascism, two world wars, Stalinism, socialism, the Cold War, revolt, capitalism - and gave them form. This book shows how even today, opposed ideological, political, economic, and military forces continue to produce unplanned structures and activities and urban phenomena beyond the categories of urban design and architecture that conceal rich potential. Berlin reveals particularly clearly phenomena that have shaped urban development in the twentieth century in other places as well: conglomeration, collision of borders, destruction, void, mass, metabolism, and simulation. The present book, which caused a sensation when first published in German twenty years ago, is now being published in English for the first time. Its surprising and informative analysis of Berlin as a prototype of the modern city destroys the ideologies of heroic modernity as well as the new nationalisms and shows how the modern city "as found" can become the point of departure for new forms of context-specific architecture and urban planning. Taking Berlin as a prototype, Philipp Oswalt's lucid analysis describes how much the built environment of cities is influenced by the unintended side-effects of political, economic, and technological processes. This "automatic urbanism" reveals modernist master-planning and national building traditions as being a myth. Instead, the book offers a both socially and ecologically more sensitive, more responsible approach to develop cities "as found." Saskia Sassen, Columbia University New York This English edition of Philipp Oswalt's now-classic study could not be more timely. Every effort to understand the modern city must contend with Berlin, the twentieth century's anti-capital. Its lessons, presented here with singular insight and authority, remain necessary to anyone thinking about what that word - "city" - might still mean today. Reinhold Martin, Columbia University New York Berlin has never only been a theatre in the battle between ideas and ideologies. Rather, it has always been the material means by which these ideas clash against each other. If the struggle for our futures must take place in Berlin, as our historical moment seems to demand, there is no better guide than Philipp Oswalt's now classic Berlin: City Without Form. His scholarly ingenuity and perceptive architect's eye are only matched by a commitment to the future of his city. Eyal Weizman, Goldsmiths/University of London

The allusive paintings of Verne Dawson (b.1961) suggest an artist fascinated with storytelling. Seeking to contextualise Dawson's imagery, John Hutchinson's survey of the artist's work to date provides fascinating insight into a complex body of work. Dawson's idiosyncratic paintings defy contemporary art-world trends and eschew categorisation, revealing an artist attuned to ideas and values that stimulate an original artistic vision. Informed by a range of interests and influences, from fairy tales to 19th-century American landscape painting, Dawson's eerie and diverse canvases are intriguing and thought-provoking. Highly individual, Verne Dawson's visionary body of work will make an important addition to the Contemporary Painters Series and to contemporary-art libraries in general.

Quentin Blake's illustrations are instantly recognisable to millions of people around the world. A new exhibition to be held at London's House of Illustration will explore an unusual aspect of Blake's work, however, exhibiting for the first time 100 examples of his works of art. 100 Figures, will feature all of the 100 exhibited works - ranging from large-scale oil paintings to drawings and prints, created between the 1950s and today. Works included date back to his post-grad years in the 1950s when he struggled to make a living as an illustrator and took life-drawing classes at Chelsea School of Art. It was here that he first engaged with the human figure, but soon, having observed how the human body behaves, he found he was able to draw it from memory in any pose, working from his vivid imagination. 100 Figures will also offer the chance to catch a rare glimpse of early oil paintings by Blake - some painted on hardboard since he was unable to afford canvases at that time and painted using commercial house-painters' brushes.

Artist Robert Gratiot refers to his work as ""painterly photo-realism,"" and he readily reveals his complete commitment to this reference by rendering his subjects with photographic accuracy. His mastery of painterly methods and of various drawing techniques highlights his astounding eye-to-hand coordination. Gratiot precisely conveys a particular scene through meticulously produced details, each down to the smallest and expertly handled. But it is more than that-he regards each small section of a painting as an abstraction, and then assembles these tiny abstractions to build the realistic whole. His paintings are obviously the product of the considerable efforts of a very gifted and extremely meticulous painter. ""The genuine revelation is how deeply personal and individual these pieces are for Robert Gratiot. This is a surprise, particularly considering the impersonal nature of his subjects. However, each is deeply felt and carries hidden moods and veiled stories, which until he shared them, were known only to Gratiot.""-Michael Paglia

Dark Horse Books and Nintendo team up to bring you "The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia", containing an unparalleled collection of historical information on "The Legend of Zelda" franchise. This handsome hardcover contains never-before-seen concept art, the full history of Hyrule, the official chronology of the games, and much more! Starting with an insightful introduction by the legendary producer and video-game designer of Donkey Kong, Mario, and The Legend of Zelda, Shigeru Miyamoto, this book is crammed full of information about the storied history of Link's adventures from the creators themselves! As a bonus, "The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia" includes an exclusive comic by the foremost creator of "The Legend of Zelda" manga - Akira Himekawa!

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. From fashion sketches of smartly dressed Shanghai dandies in the 1920s, to multipanel drawings of refugee urbanites during the war against Japan, to panoramic pictures of anti-American propaganda rallies in the early 1950s, the polymorphic cartoon-style art known as manhua helped define China's modern experience. Manhua Modernity offers a richly illustrated, deeply contextualized analysis of these illustrations across the lively pages of popular pictorial magazines that entertained, informed, and mobilized a nation through a half century of political and cultural transformation. In this compelling media history, John Crespi argues that manhua must be understood in the context of the pictorial magazines that hosted them, and in turn these magazines must be seen as important mediators of the modern urban experience. Even as times changed-from interwar-era consumerism to war-time mobilization to Mao-style propaganda-the art form adapted to stay on the cutting edge of both politics and style.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: the man with the glasses and the woman with the red hair. Each one was born on the same day in 1935, and this unusual artist couple worked together until Jeanne-Claude's death in 2009, changing the art world in the process. In large-scale actions they enveloped buildings and entire landscapes in various materials, revealing at the same time their essence and beauty. In order to finance these enormous works of art by themselves, Christo and Jeanne-Claude began making editions early on in their career-prints, collages, and objects. This completely revised, expanded, and updated catalogue of works, Prints and Objects, is testimony to the artist's impressive scope and to their courage. Who else would have had the idea of building a 120-meter-tall truncated pyramid out of 410,000 oil barrels in the desert of the United Arab Emirates? Languages: German and English

Robert Crumb first began drawing record covers in 1968 when Janis Joplin, a fellow Haight Ashbury denizen, asked him to provide a cover for her album Cheap Thrills. It was an invitation the budding artist couldn't resist, especially since he had been fascinated with record covers-particularly for the legendary jazz, country, and old-time blues music of the 1920s and 1930s-since he was a teen. This early collaboration proved so successful that Crumb went on to draw hundreds of record covers for both new artists and largely forgotten masters. So remarkable were Crumb's artistic interpretations of these old 78 rpm singles that the art itself proved influential in their rediscovery in the 1960s and 1970s. Including such classics as Truckin' My Blues Away, Harmonica Blues, and Please Warm My Weiner, Crumb's opus also features more recent covers done for CDs. R. Crumb: The Complete Record Cover Collection is a must-have for any lover of graphics and old-time music.