It has recently become apparent that criticism has fallen on hard times. Either commodification is deemed to have killed it off, or it has become institutionally routine. This book explores contemporary approaches which have sought to renew criticism's energies in the wake of a 'theatrical turn' in recent visual arts practice, and the emergence of a 'performative' arts writing over the past decade or so.

Issues addressed include the 'performing' of art's histories; the consequences for criticism of embracing boredom, distraction and other 'queer' forms of (in)attention; and the importance of exploring writerly process in responding to aesthetic experience. Bringing together newly commissioned work from the fields of art history, performance studies, and visual culture with the writings of contemporary artists, "After Criticism" provides a set of experimental essays which demonstrate how 'the critical' might live on as a vital and efficacious force within contemporary culture.

The Peacock Revolution in menswear of the 1960s came as a profound shock to much of America. Men's long hair and vividly colored, sexualized clothes challenged long established traditions of masculine identity. Peacock Revolution is an in-depth study of how radical changes in men's clothing reflected, and contributed to, the changing ideas of American manhood initiated by a 'youthquake' of rebellious baby boomers coming of age in an era of social revolutions. Featuring a detailed examination of the diverse socio-cultural and socio-political movements of the era, the book examines how those dissents and advocacies influenced the youthquake generation's choices in dress and ideas of masculinity. Daniel Delis Hill provides a thorough chronicle of the peacock fashions of the time, beginning with the mod looks of the British Invasion in the early 1960s, through the counterculture street styles and the mass-market trends they inspired, and concluding with the dress-for-success menswear revivals of the 1970s Me-Decade.

Focusing on the impact of the Cultural Revolution on the development of contemporary art in China, this anthology of essays and images present fresh and critical perspectives on how one of the most disturbing periods of modern Chinese history has affected the creativity of contemporary Chinese artists.

Indonesia, visual arts, women artists, feminisms

This book provides an informal biography of the wunderkind who became one of America's greatest living artists and most well-known architects. Many are familiar with the art and architectural design work of Maya Lin, but the compelling details of her personal background are less well known. This book not only focuses upon Lin's substantial achievements throughout her life, but also presents Maya Lin's "prehistory," describing family events in China that led to her parents' flight to the United States. Author Donald Langmead guides readers through Lin's ancestry and family connections in precommunist China; her childhood and youth in Athens, Ohio; the story behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC; her career after 1982 (by decades); and emphasis on environmental conservation. Written for a young adult and general readership, Maya Lin: A Biography provides an up-to-date description of how she became one of the most famous and respected artists in America. Provides a timeline of Maya Lin's significant life events, artworks, and exhibitions Includes various photographs to accompany the text Contains a bibliography organized by types of sources, including writings by Maya Lin, books, monographs and catalogues, transcripts of interviews, and videos Includes an index of important people and artworks

Rana Begum RA (b.1977) is an artist known for her wide ranging works, from the intimate to the monumental. Using a variety of materials and exploring the use of light, she blurs the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, design and painting to create works that are both playful and ambiguous. This comprehensive monograph expands on previous writings to investigate the ideas behind the artist's varied use of materials, including wood, metal, ready-made industrial components and MDF. With a focus on her processes, the ways in which Begum's work intersects with architecture and design are drawn out, while key sources of inspiration - from the environments in which the artist works, to Islamic art and minimalism - are discussed. Combining contextual essays and an extensive interview with the artist, the development of Begum's work - from painting and furniture design to installations and light sculptures - is traced to present an in-depth overview of the multifaceted, complex work of this fascinating artist.

This jewel-like book evokes unmistakable Italian landscapes and cityscapes. Anne Desmet's pen commits every detail to paper, and the small-scale format emphasises her distinctive flair for capturing the relationship between extreme foreground and distance. This is an opportunity to explore Italy, from Apennines to Veneto, through the eyes of a very particular artist.

New York-based Todd James (born 1969) pioneered a distinct cartoon-based graffiti style in New York in the 1980s, working under the name REAS and gaining the respect of both a street-culture audience and the art and design market. He has since produced work for the Beastie Boys, Eminem and Iggy Pop, among others. This unique artist's book is the first publication by James in half a decade, and collects 60 of his drawings, all created exclusively for this volume. Bearing close resemblance to his best-known graffiti work, each drawing is complete unto itself yet also represents a potential painting for the future. "Yield to Temptation" is of a piece with James' broader concerns: American excess as represented by the forms and fictions of sexuality and the ravages of war. James invites his audience to glamorize these issues, even as he undercuts any assumptions about them. His drawings have the expressive, minimal intensity of a cartoon Franz Kline and evoke the Day-Glo era of 1970s print culture, where "Schoolhouse Rock" crosses over into "Playboy" cartoons. "Yield to Temptation" is being published on the occasion of James' solo exhibition in Tokyo.

THE ART OF RICHARD LONG The central fact and act of Richard Long's art is walking. His work is founded on the art of walking, the act of walking, the actuality of walking, and on walking as art, as act, as experience. His walks become 'artwalks', artwalks which become artworks. Richard Long is a British land artist and sculptor who works with and in the natural world, but also with and within the highly sophisticated, artificial and humanmade world of art and culture. 'I too wanted to make nature the subject of my work, ' Long explained of his early work, 'but in new ways. I started working outside using natural materials like grass and water, and this evolved into the idea of making a sculpture by walking'. Richard Long is sometimes termed a 'Romantic' sculptor, and part of this book relates his art to British Romanticism, as found in the literature of William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats and others, and the British landscape tradition, as in J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, Thomas Girtin and other landscape painters. Aspects of British Romantic culture in 20th century and 21st century art also considered (such as the 'New Ruralists', 'New Romantics', 'New Arcadians' and 'Neo-Romantics'). Malpas also explore some of the aspects of Romantic culture in Europe as well as Britain. In the course of this book William Malpas references many of Richard Long's contemporary British sculptors (Tony Cragg, Bill Woodrow, David Nash, Barry Flanagan, Alison Wilding, Shirazeh Houshiary, Hamish Fulton, Anthony Caro, Anish Kapoor and Anthony Gormley). Further chapters include: one on women, feminist, body art and performance sculptors, as a comparison with Richard Long's art, which has a strong component of performance (even if it's nearly always private). In the chapter on Minimal, Conceptual, Process and other 1960s and post-1960s art and artists, I'm interested in the artists (primarily European and American) who have most in common with Long's art: the great Minimal and land artists, such as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Dennis Oppenheim and James Turrell, and the important Conceptual artists, such as Bruce Nauman, Yves Klein and Lawrence Weiner. Fully illustrated, with a newly revised text. Bibliography and notes. www.crmoon.com AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a revised edition of a book first published back in 1994. It includes information of the more recent exhibitions and artworks of Richard Long. The book has involved a good deal of research into Long's art over the years, which has been updated in further editions. I hope that readers will gain some new insights into the artist's work and that of his contemporaries. REVIEW ON AMAZON: Very satisfied with this book. It includes not only detailed information about Long's work, but also discusses other related artists, such as Barnett Newman, and other related topics, including sculpture, installation and text in art. All in all a very interesting book.

Falling After 9/11 investigates the connections between violence, trauma, and aesthetics by exploring post 9/11 figures of falling in art and literature. From the perspective of trauma theory, Aimee Pozorski provides close readings of figures of falling in such exemplary American texts as Don DeLillo's novel, Falling Man, Diane Seuss's poem, "Falling Man," Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Frederic Briegbeder's Windows on the World, and Richard Drew's famous photograph of the man falling from the World Trade Center. Falling After 9/11 argues that the apparent failure of these texts to register fully the trauma of the day in fact points to a larger problem in the national tradition: the problem of reference-of how to refer to falling-in the 21st century and beyond.

The Birmingham Art Book is a tribute to a unique city whose visionary scientists and inventors made it famous as a manufacturing powerhouse. From heavy metal industry - here is where the first steam trains were built- to heavy metal music - Black Sabbath made their mark here, this is a place with a proud heritage. Its handsome university is the original of the 'Redbrick' universities, founded by a farsighted mayor in 1900 as a civic place of learning, open to all, now with many world famous alumni and staff, 10 of whom have won Nobel prizes. Local artists convey the architectural glory of Victoria Square and the city centre Museum and Art Gallery (which holds a sumptuous collection of Pre-Raphaelite art). In their drawings, they echo the modern vibrancy of buildings such as the iconic Selfridges department store and the REP theatre. Collages and sketches depict a city buzzing with vitality -from the world-renowned Hippodrome theatre, to the shopping centres and legendary nightlife that are national attractions. Quirky nooks like the Jewellery Quarter, the Electric Cinema or the tranquil Botanic gardens hidden so close to the centre are reflected in this lovely book. The green city with 8000 acres of public parks and many miles of canal paths dating from its heyday in the Industrial Revolution is lovingly drawn and painted by its artists. The Birmingham Art Book is where local artists shine a light on the grand and the humdrum with equal affection. Their love for the modern city is evident and their pride in its heritage comes to the fore in this lovely book.

Modernist debates about waste - both aesthetic and economic - often express biases against gender and sexual errancy. The Poetics of Waste looks at writers and artists who resist this ideology and respond by developing an excessive poetics.

Ellen Gallagher (b.1965) is one of the most celebrated painters of her generation, coming to prominence in the mid-1990s in the wake of the so-called 'culture wars' and the art world's controversial embrace of identity-politics and multiculturalism. In this in-depth look at her oeuvre, Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith unpacks the complexities of her richly layered paintings, examining themes such as identity, race, displacement and the ecological environment, which Gallagher has explored throughout her work. The author takes the reader from Gallagher's early years - looking at her formative influences - through her engagement, from the late 1990s on, with the inherited modernist forms of the monochrome and the grid and with the violence and division at the root of modernism itself. Also explored are her phantasmagoric explorations of oceanic life, which draw on the discoveries of natural science, the traumatic history of the Atlantic slave trade and the speculative fictions of Afrofuturism. For anyone interested in contemporary art and the ways particular artists are expanding its borders, in form and content, this is essential reading.

At the beginning of 2020, just as global Covid-19 restrictions were coming into force, the artist David Hockney was at his house, studio and garden in Normandy. From there, he witnessed the arrival of spring, and recorded the blossoming of the surrounding landscape on his iPad, a medium he has been using for over a decade. Working outdoors was an antidote to the anxiety of the moment for Hockney – 'We need art, and I do think it can relieve stress,' he says. This uplifting publication – produced to accompany a major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts – includes 116 of his new iPad paintings and shows to full effect Hockney's singular skill in capturing the exuberance of nature.

This first definitive retrospective of the Easy-Bake(r) Oven celebrates its journey from children's toy to pop culture icon. The book explores the innovation, history, economics, commerce, advertising, and marketing behind the toy's 50 year histor