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.

Hungarian-born French artist Nicolas Schoeffer (1912-1992), though relatively unknown today, was during his lifetime a significant presence in the art world. His 1956 piece CYSP 1 is considered the first cybernetic sculpture, making use of motors, microphones, and photo-electric cells to create a work based on feedback loops and responsiveness to its environment. For Schoeffer, cybernetics enabled a crucial artistic exploration of the boundary between the living and the technological. This important reevaluation of Schoeffer's work features sculptures, paintings, and drawings, including unpublished pieces from the artist's studio and archive, as well as documentation of his interdisciplinary and experimental collaborations with architects, musicians, choreographers, scientists, and industrialists. Particular attention is paid to the innovative work he created between 1945 and 1975, which takes on particular resonance in our current, digitally saturated world. Distributed for Mercatorfonds Exhibition Schedule: Lille Metropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art (02/23/18-05/20/18)

Tony Franz (*1985) challenges the perceptual habits of his viewers. His technically sophisticated drawings - done unfailingly with pencil on paper - open up diverse associative spaces. Franz always approaches his pictorial themes anew, deceiving the eye on a high illusionistic level and examining the close relationship between text and drawing. Drawing as a medium therefore allows him to reflect on the in part subconscious, in part superficial way in which images and words are perceived. The language of the world of advertising and consumption, how it is received, its raptures and contradictions, play a central role for Tony Franz. Text in English and German.

This volume focuses on Bridget Riley's energetic 'curvilinear' works from a 2006 exhibition by Bridget Riley. The paintings incorporate complex layers of flowing forms that interlock and move with one another, reflecting the artist's exploration of curves to create paintings of great energy and movement. Using a patch of colour that is similar to a brush mark, Riley's forms interrupt and threaten to break out from the picture plane, overhanging the frame to jostle and animate the visual field. Refining and developing this form in recent paintings, the artist's work offers an incredible melding of form and colour. Featuring over 20 full-colour illustrations, this publication includes an in-depth essay by Paul Moorhouse examining the changes within Riley's work throughout her multi-decade career.

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.

Energy Overlays provides a glimpse into our post - carbon future where energy infrastructure is seamlessly woven into the fabric of our cities as works of public art. Fifty designs use a variety of renewable energy technologies to arrive at innovative site - specific solutions. Power plants of the future will be the perfect place to have a picnic! On the foreshore of St Kilda with the skyline of Melbourne as a backdrop rises a new kind of power plant - one that merges renewable energy production with leisure , recreation, and education. Energy Overlays provides a roadmap to our sustainable future with essays about the energy transition and beautiful renderings and diagrams of more than fifty designs. The result is a city where the infrastructures that power our world are designed to be reflections of culture, where public parks provide clean electricity to the city grid, and where the art that makes our lives more vibrant and interesting is also part of the solution to climate change.

A timely reassessment of the artist's early performances and feminist sculptures, affirming their radical engagements and art historical significance This volume is a focused look at two bodies of work, the Tirs ("shooting paintings") and Nanas ("dames"), in the experimental 1960s practice of the French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002). Alongside a poetic response to the work, four essays treat Saint Phalle's oeuvre as works of radical performance and feminist art, as well as highlighting her transatlantic projects and collaborations. A chronology with photo-documentation and known participants details for the first time all Tirs shooting events in Europe and the United States, and another timeline recaps Saint Phalle's life in the 1960s. Tirs were made by firing a .22 caliber rifle at the surfaces of paintings. The bullets pierced bags of pigment, aerosol paint cans, or even food embedded in dense assemblages covered in painted plaster. Saint Phalle's increasingly liberated female figures with outstretched arms, curvaceous forms, and powerful poses developed into her well-known Nanas, an evolution contemporaneous with the rise of a Euro-American feminist movement. Distributed for the Menil Collection and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego Exhibition Schedule: Menil Collection, Houston (September 10, 2021-January 23, 2022) Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (April 9-July 17, 2022)

Bioart, art that uses either living materials (such as bacteria or transgenic organisms) or more traditional materials to comment on, or even transform, biotechnological practice, now receives enormous media attention. Yet despite this attention, bioart is frequently misunderstood. Bioart and the Vitality of Media is the first comprehensive theoretical account of the art form, situating it in the contexts of art history, laboratory practice, and media theory.--Mitchell begins by sketching a brief history of bioart in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, describing the artistic, scientific, and social preconditions that made it conceptually and technologically possible. He illustrates how bioartists employ technologies and practices from the medical and life sciences in an effort to transform relationships among science, medicine, corporate interests, and the public. By illustrating the ways in which bioart links a biological understanding of media-that is, "media" understood as the elements of an environment that facilitate the growth and development of living entities-with communicational media, Bioart and the Vitality of Media demonstrates how art and biotechnology together change our conceptions and practices of mediation. Reading bioart through a range of resources-from Immanuel Kant's discussion of disgust to Gilles Deleuze's theory of affect to Gilbert Simondon's concept of "individuation"-provides readers with a new theoretical approach for understanding bioart and its relationships to both new media and scientific institutions.--Bioart and the Vitality of Media is a precise and rigorous exploration of the conceptual underpinnings of an art form that has at times been both troubling and controversial. It will appeal to art historians, artists, media theorists, and readers interested in new media, the cultural study of biology, and the philosophy of technology.--Robert Mitchell is associate professor English at Duke University. He is the author, with Catherine Waldby, of Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism and, with Phillip Thurtle, Data Made Flesh: Embodying Information and Semiotic Flesh: Information and the Human Body.--"A sustained meditation on bioart as an art practice that stitches together concepts of life and concepts of affect, concepts of vitalism, and concepts of mediation." -Eugene Thacker, author of After Life--"Well-written, lucid, unpretentious, and admirably concise in format and presentation, this book is an original and innovative contribution to the fields of comparative media studies and science and culture studies." -Cary Wolfe, Rice University-

This volume collects over 350 works created by Francesco Jodice - artist, photographer and filmmaker - over 25 years of his career. His entire production is accompanied by texts by 65 critics, curators and artists. Photographs, films, maps and installations bring about a kaleidoscopic fresco of our time. Texts by: Cecilia Andersson, Gabriele Basilico, Marcella Beccaria, Stefano Boeri, Ilaria Bonacossa, Annelie Bortolotti, Silvia Camporesi, Raul Cardenas Osuna, Luca Cerizza, Laura Cherubini, Antonella Crippa, Denis Curti, Catherine David, Anna Dethridge, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Sergio Edelsztein, Emiliano Gandolfi, Walter Guadagnini, Anna Maria Guash, Rafael Doctor Roncero, Patrick Henry, Horacio Hernandez, Mimmo Jodice, Filippo Maggia, Rem Koolhaas, Bruno Latour, Amparo Lozano, Gianfranco Maraniello, Thomas Mayr, Massimo Melotti, Marco Meneguzzo, Francesca Alfano Miglietti, Juan Jose Millas, Luca Molinari, Roberto Murgia, Nobuo Nakamura, Franziska Nori, Rosa Olivares, Costanza Paissan, Cristiana Perrella, Saverio Pesapane, Sandro Petraglia, Christopher Phillips, Rafael Pinilla, Andrea Pinkets, Carlo Artuto Quintavalle, Letizia Ragaglia, Cathy Remy, Eleonora Roaro, Carlo Sala, Francesco Sala, Gabriele Sassone, Gabi Scardi, Thomas Seelig, Marta Sese, Angela tecce, The Cool Couple, Roberta Valtorta, Lea vergine, Eugenio Viola, Paul Virilio, Arianna Visani, Francesco Zanot, and Miguel Zugaza.

Sketches of poetic and absolute power that are as extraordinary as their creators. This is t he first ‐ ever publication of the entirety of EVA & ADELE’s floral sketchbook. The drawings of flowers, which are uncompromising and executed in a small number of unfalteringly precise graphite lines, surprise the viewer with the radical aesthetics of their abstraction. Accompanied by a Gertrude Stein text, the unique sketches of flowers by EVA & ADELE are reproduced in this book ‐ lover’s treasure trove in close adherence to the original artists’ book. Based on photographs of the flowers in the artists’ studi o, they in turn are the basis of the highest level of the monumental palimpsest compositions of the group of works entitled ADSILA. The lifelong performance of the always smiling, internationally successful artist ‐ duo is one of the most radical pieces of c ontemporary art. Their work has already been exhibited in numerous solo shows from New York to Helsinki, and it has been acquired by the most important collections in the world, including the Tate Gallery in London and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville d e Paris

Belfast-born British artist Cathy Wilkes will be representing Great Britain at the 58th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2019. Wilkes will present a major new solo exhibition at the British Pavilion between 11 May and 24 November. Renowned for her distinctive and highly personal sculptural installations featuring humanoid figures that highlight the tender intimacy of everyday life, Wilkes' exhibition will feature new paintings and sculptures that will provoke a strong emotional response in viewers, set against the backdrop of the grand architecture of the British Pavilion. Narratives and histories which often evoke interiors and places of loss or solitude are suggested through her evocative objects but never explicitly expressed, and indeed Wilkes resists written descriptions and explanations of her work, intentionally not naming her installations, assemblages and exhibitions in a bid to keep open the viewer's perceptions. This publication, one of the only books

The book structure is intrinsically related to ideas underpinning the attitude of Francis of Assisi that are still highly topical: human dignity in poverty, the revaluation of sensible knowledge as opposed to the hegemony of purely instrumental reason, the preservation of nature - entropy, walking as a means to knowledge (appreciating the nomadic condition in a world that is anchored in the sedentary), the condition of the landscape as the human condition (appreciation of reality, like a vast, complex and unstable loop to which nothing can be external). Of course, the list of contemporary artist (35) that sent its works and writings is invaluable: from Francis Alys, Lothar Baumgarten, Cardiff&Miller and Roni Horn to Annika Kars, Amar Kanwar, Anthony McCall, and Lawrence Weiner. The book includes especial commissioned works by Francis Alys, Tacita Dean, Jimmie Durham, Richard Long, Anthony McCall, Perejaume, and Lawrence Weiner. Beautifully designed and produced, the book includes some inserts especially done by the artists

This catalogue for an exhibition at MAXXI Museum in Rome brings together 50 contemporary artists from ex-Yugoslavia whose work explores the history of the region through the action of contemporary heroes, and reflects on issues of acceptance and peaceful coexistence. In thematic sections (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Hope, Risk, the Individual, Otherness, Metamorphosis), the show asks if the legacy of Socialism can help to recover the concept of "common good" in a complex region which has recently endured the tragedy of a civil war and the rise of Nationalism. Text in English and Italian.

Biennials: The Exhibitions we Love to Hate examines one of the most significant recent transitions in the contemporary art world: the proliferation of large-scale international recurrent survey shows of contemporary art, commonly referred to as contemporary biennials. Since the mid-1980s biennials have been instrumental in shaping curating as an autonomous practice. These exhibitions are also said to have provided increased visibility for certain types of new art practices, notably those that are socially and politically committed, research-based and site-specific, and to have undermined some of the more traditional art media, such as painting, drawing or sculpture. They have been responsible for substantially reshaping the contemporary art world and disrupting the existing value chain of the art market, which now relies on biennials as much as it does on major museums' acquisitions and exhibitions. Rafal Niemojewski, Director of the Biennial Foundation, deftly unpicks the critical discussion and controversy surrounding contemporary biennials. Branded by some critics as showcases of neo-liberalism run amok, in which culture has become synonymous with the dollar-generating leisure industry, biennials have also been associated with the production of monumental artworks which are both highly consumable and photogenic (Instagrammable). The exhibitions we love to hate? This engaging publication makes an essential contribution to a fascinating cultural debate.

Bogdan Rața is a sculptor. His sculptures are simple, hand-made, and most of all they are flat. A fact, not only defying the traditional perception of sculpture as something three-dimensional, voluminous, and figurative but also leading to radically new ways of aesthetic experience. Rața‘s forms are abstract and evanescent. They articulate a departure from the kind of sculpture one used to be accustomed to or familiar with. Rața urges us to reconsider today’s need for independent and critical thinking. The book accompanies his solo exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest. Text in English and Romanian.

Anish Kapoor is one of a highly inventive generation of sculptors who emerged in London in the early 1980s. Since then he has created a remarkable body of work that blends a modernist sense of pure materiality with a fascination for the manipulation of form and the perception of space. This book--the first major American publication on Kapoor's work--surveys his work since 1979, with a focus on sculptures and installations made since the early 1990s. With more than ninety color images of these ambitious and complex works, three original essays, an extended interview with Kapoor, and selections from his sketchbooks, this book confirms Anish Kapoor's place as one of the most remarkable sculptors working today. Kapoor's work has evolved into an abstract and perceptually complex elaboration of the sculptural object as at once monumental and evanescent, physical and ethereal--as in his famous "Cloud Gate" (2004) in Chicago's Millennium Park. The works in "Anish Kapoor" include such striking works as "Past, Present, Future" (2006), "1000 Names" (1979-1980) and "When I Am Pregnant" (1992). This book, which accompanies an exhibition at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art, offers American readers a long-overdue opportunity to consider the extraordinary clarity, subtlety, and power of Kapoor's art. Includes an interview with the artist by Nicholas Baume. Exhibition: Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston May 30-September 7, 2008 "Copublished with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston"

Innovative and pioneering, French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) created an extensive and complex body of work over her five decade long career. Her work received international recognition as early as 1961 when her work was included in the important exhibition 'The Art and Assemblage' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since then Saint Phalle has been the subject of numerous exhibitions worldwide. Her bright and joyful Nana sculptures have become known as her signature artwork. The artist and her oeuvre however, cannot be solely understood through this one body of work. This catalogue, accompanying the artist's first comprehensive retrospective in Belgium at Beaux-Arts Mons (BAM), explores Saint Phalle's multi-faceted practice, examining how the artist worked across a wide-range of media - painting, assemblage, sculpture, performance, public sculpture and architectural projects, film and theatre. Providing an overview of Saint Phalle's entire career, it seeks to demonstrate how the artist used her boundless imagination and unique vision of the world to transcend the space typically reserved for women to become one of the twentieth century's most important artists. The title - "Here Everything is Possible" - is a statement made by Saint Phalle about her monumental sculpture park: The Tarot Garden in Tuscany, Italy. It should however, be read as a testimony to the artist's attitude to her entire artistic process - one of limitless possibility. This extensive, fully illustrated, catalogue includes new scholarly texts by Catherine Francblin, Alison Gingeras, Denis Laoureux, Camille Morineau, Kyla McDonald and Xavier Roland. The essays are accompanied by interviews with Daniel Abadie and Marcelo Zitelli, who both worked closely with the artist during her lifetime, and an illustrated biography.

Showcasing the grim and chilling artwork behind the fan-favorite Dark Souls game in a gorgeous hardcover collection, Dark Souls: Design Works features key visuals, concept art, character & monster designs, rough sketches, and an exclusive interview with the game's creators.

The hidden soul of a group of creative individuals which, since the beginning, has always expressed itself in images. As I told you before, Ideas not Airships is a 500-page table book celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Hangar Design Group, one of the first independent and multidisciplinary creative design groups in Italy. The book is a narrative in pictures representing an attempt to discover an underlying theme in the intricate creative process of a group that is unique from the point of view both of its degree of expertise and its creative practices. Through works and experiences the book illustrates the life of the studio, tracing a decidedly unconventional figurative path made up of suggestions, inspirations, memories, faces and places - not only those of the Hangar Design Group itself but of anyone who undertakes to give form to an idea. The book illustrates the network's modus operandi. It begins from the birth of the first embryonic concepts and follows through to the finished product. As I told you before, Ideas not Airships is the enthusiastic narration of a gripping story, and is dedicated to all those who believe that with creativity we can (even) change the world.

Art + Science Now is a groundbreaking overview of the art being made at the cutting edge of scientific research. The first illustrated book in its field, it shows how some of the world's most dynamic art is being produced not in museums, galleries and studios but in the laboratory, where artists probe cultural, philosophical and social questions connected with scientific and technological advances. Featuring the work of around 250 artists from the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the USA, Japan and elsewhere, it presents a broad range of projects, from body art to bioengineering of plants and insects, from music, dance and computer-controlled video performances to large-scale visual and sound installations. This comprehensive guide to contemporary art inspired or driven by scientific innovation points to intriguing new directions for the visual arts and traces a key strand in 21st-century aesthetics.

Art is big business, with some artists able to command huge sums of money for their works, while the vast majority are ignored or dismissed by critics. This book shows that these marginalized artists, the
"dark matter" of the art world, are essential to the survival of the mainstream and that they frequently organize in opposition to it.
Gregory Sholette, a politically engaged artist, argues that imagination and creativity in the art world originate thrive in the non-commercial sector shut off from prestigious galleries and champagne receptions. This broader creative culture feeds the mainstream with new forms and styles that can be commodified and used to sustain the few artists admitted into the elite.
This dependency, and the advent of inexpensive communication, audio and video technology, has allowed this "dark matter" of the alternative art world to increasingly subvert the mainstream and intervene politically as both new and old forms of non-capitalist, public art. This book is essential for anyone interested in interventionist art, collectivism, and the political economy of the art world.