At the turn of the twenty-first century, many felt sceptical or confused about painting's on-going cultural relevance. In this context, Julian Bell's What is Painting? provided an accessible and inspired account of artistic thinking and practice, and of the complexities then facing artists and their audiences. Eighteen years on, the situation is partly reversed. Painting has proved too resilient a practice to be marginalized any longer. Yet is there any sense of forward momentum for the art? Interrogating the factors that have changed our ideas of painting over the past two centuries, Bell addresses relations between figuration and abstraction and between narrative and non-narrative painting, as well as the waning of conceptual art's dominance and the proliferation of experiments with the physical limits of painting. He also clarifies general concepts such as `expression' and `representation'. Fully revised to provide a fresh look at the situation of painting, this new edition maintains the objective of lucid, historically informative explanation that earned the original edition its status as a text of lasting value. The book provides a general reader's introduction to theories of painting that is not only reliable, but also stimulating and amusing to read.

Video art emerged as an art form that from the 1960s and onwards challenged the concept of art - hence, art historical practices. From the perspective of artists, critics, and scholars engaged with this new medium, art was seen as too limiting a notion. Important issues were to re-think art as a means for critical investigations and a demand for visual reconsiderations. Likewise, art history was argued to be in crisis and in need of adapting its theories and methods in order to produce interpretations and thereby establish historical sense for moving images as fine art. Yet, as this book argues, video art history has evolved into a discourse clinging to traditional concepts, ideologies, and narrative structures - manifested in an increasing body of texts. Video Art Historicized provides a novel, insightful and also challenging re-interpretation of this field by examining the discourse and its own premises. It takes a firm conceptual approach to the material, examining the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological implications that are simultaneously contested by both artists and authors, yet intertwined in both the legitimizing and the historicizing processes of video as art. By engaging art history's most debated concepts (canon, art, and history) this study provides an in-depth investigation of the mechanisms of the historiography of video art. Scrutinizing various narratives on video art, the book emphasizes the profound and widespread hesitations towards, but also the efforts to negotiate, traditional concepts and practices. By focusing on the politics of this discourse, theoretical issues of gender, nationality, and particular themes in video art, Malin Hedlin Hayden contests the presumptions that inform video art and its history.

**Selected in the top eight short-list for the Thought and Criticism category of the FAD Awards 2019** Le Corbusier is well-known for his architectural accomplishments, which have been extensively discussed in literature. Towards a Public Space instead offers a unique analysis of Le Corbusier's contributions to urban planning. The public spaces in Le Corbusier's plans are usually considered to break with the past and to have nothing whatsoever in common with the public spaces created before modernism. This view is fostered by both the innovative character of his proposals and by the proliferation in his manifestos of watchwords that mask any evocation of the past, like l'esprit nouveau ("new spirit") and l'architecture de demain ("architecture of tomorrow"). However, if we manage to rid ourselves of certain preconceived ideas, which underpin a somewhat less-than-objective idea of modernity, we find that Le Corbusier's public spaces not only didn't break with the historical past in any abrupt way but actually testified to the continuity of human creation over time. Aimed at academics and students in architecture, architectural history and urban planning, this book fills a gap in the systematic analysis of Le Corbusier's city scale plans and, specifically, Corbusian public spaces following the Second World War.

Philip Hook takes the lid off the world of art dealing to reveal the brilliance, cunning, greed and daring of its practitioners. In a richly anecdotal narrative he describes the rise and occasional fall of the extraordinary men and women who over the centuries have made it their business to sell art to kings, merchants, nobles, entrepreneurs and museums.

From its beginnings in Antwerp, where paintings were sometimes sold by weight, to the rich hauteur of the contemporary gallery in London, Paris and New York, art dealing has been about identifying what is intangible but infinitely desirable, and then finding clients for whom it is irresistible. Those who have purveyed art for a living range from tailors, spies and the occasional anarchist to scholars, aristocrats, merchants and connoisseurs, each variously motivated by greed, belief in their own vision of art and its history, or simply the will to win.

The cast of characters includes Paul Durand-Ruel, the Impressionists' champion; Herwath Walden, who first brought Modernism into the limelight; Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, high priest of Cubism; Leo Castelli, dealer-midwife to Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art; and Peter Wilson, the charismatic Sotheby's chairman who made the auction room theatre.

Philip Hook's history is one of human folly, greed and duplicity, interspersed with ingenuity, inspiration and acts of heroism. Rogues' Gallery is learned, witty and irresistibly readable.

In Art as Information Ecology, Jason A. Hoelscher offers not only an information theory of art but an aesthetic theory of information. Applying close readings of the information theories of Claude Shannon and Gilbert Simondon to 1960s American art, Hoelscher proposes that art is information in its aesthetic or indeterminate mode-information oriented less toward answers and resolvability than toward questions, irresolvability, and sustained difference. These irresolvable differences, Hoelscher demonstrates, fuel the richness of aesthetic experience by which viewers glean new information and insight from each encounter with an artwork. In this way, art constitutes information that remains in formation---a difference that makes a difference that keeps on differencing. Considering the works of Frank Stella, Robert Morris, Adrian Piper, the Drop City commune, Eva Hesse, and others, Hoelscher finds that art exists within an information ecology of complex feedback between artwork and artworld that is driven by the unfolding of difference. By charting how information in its aesthetic mode can exist beyond today's strictly quantifiable and monetizable forms, Hoelscher reconceives our understanding of how artworks work and how information operates.

Born in Warsaw in 1926, Joseph Rykwert is one of the best-known critics and historians of architecture. One of very few writers to be awarded the RIBA's highest honour, the Royal Gold Medal, in 2014, and author of countless books and essays, his influence over the past 60 years cannot be underestimated. In this memoir he tells for the first time of how his life's experiences shaped his working life. He addresses the dualities between which he had to navigate: Jewish/Polish, Polish/British and later, Practice/Scholarship. He spent most of his working life between the US and UK and worked both as a designer and a writer; as such his ground-breaking ideas and work have had a major impact on the thinking of architects and designers since the 1960s and continue to do so to this day.

Bringing together case studies ranging across the globe, including the US-Mexico borderlands, the Calais encampment in France, refugee camps in Kenya, Uganda and Bangladesh and contested 'informal' enclaves and communities in the cities of India, China, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa, this book challenges current ways of thinking about the governance of human settling, mobility, and placemaking. Together, the 15 essays question the validity of the conventional hegemonic divisions of Global North vs. Global South and 'formal' vs. 'informal', in terms of geographic presence, transborder performances, and the ideological inter-dependence of Northern and Southern spaces, spatial practices and the uniformity of authoritative enforcements. The book, whose authors themselves come from all over the world, uses 'Global South' as a methodological apparatus to ask the 'Southern' question of settling and unsettling across the globe. Crucially, the studies reveal the sentiments, resourcefulness and the agency of those positioned by the powerful within the dichotomies of formal/informal, legitimate/ illegal, privileged/marginalized; etc., who are traditionally identified within the dominant development discourse as mere numbers or designated by intervening institutions as helpless recipients. By focusing on hitherto invisible events and untold stories of adaptation, negotiation and contestation by people and their communities, this volume of essays takes the ongoing North-South debate in new directions and opens up to the reader's fresh areas of inquiry. It will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture, planning, politics and sociology, as well as built environment professionals.

Though numbering just 35 known works, the oeuvre of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is hailed as one of the most important and inspiring portfolios in art history. His paintings have prompted a New York Times best seller, a film starring Scarlett Johansson, and record visitor numbers at art institutions from Amsterdam to Washington. Vermeer's subjects focus on daily domestic activities, from letter writing to music playing to preparations in the kitchen. The scenes astound with their meticulous detail, majestic planes of light, and with Vermeer's extraordinary ability to draw out narrative intrigues. In such beloved paintings as Lady Standing at a Virginal, A Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid and, most famously, the enigmatic, wide-eyed, and enchanting Girl with a Pearl Earring, Vermeer evokes not only the effects of substance and texture, but also the many stories and secrets that reside beneath the surface. Featuring all Vermeer's known works and succinct, accessible texts, this essential introduction explores Vermeer's leading place in art history and his unique ability to transform oil paint into a living, breathing scene of human life. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Exquisite cloth-bound edition of the classic art-history text - the perfect gift for every art connoisseur and student For more than 60 years Ernst Gombrich's The Story of Art has been a global bestseller - with more than 8 million copies sold - the perfect introduction to art history, from the earliest cave paintings to art of the twentieth century, a masterpiece of clarity and personal insight. This classic book is currently in its 16th edition and has been translated into more than 30 languages, and published in numerous formats and editions. Now, for the first time, this Luxury Edition is the ultimate gift purchase for all art lovers - a perfect keepsake to treasure, and to inspire future generations.

Originally published in 2019, this book provides a comprehensive account of a formative historical period, uniquely describing Renaissance architecture as the physical manifestation of political and economic change. The book illustrates how shifts in architectural style and design were paralleled with Northern and Central Italy's external and internal conflicts, the evolution of urban and regional government, and economic and demographic growth. Covering the full extent of the Renaissance period, Balchin charts the era's medieval roots and its transformation into Mannerist and Baroque tendencies. He demonstrates how developments in architecture and planning were inextricably linked to political and economic power, and how these relationships shifted from city to city over time.

Architectural Type and Character provides an alternative perspective to the current role given to history in architecture, reunifying architectural history and architectural design to reform architectural discourse and practice. Historians provide important material for appreciating buildings and guiding those who produce them. In current histories, a building is the product of a time, its form follows its function, irresistible influences produce it, and style, preferably novel, is its most important attribute. This book argues for an alternative. Through a two-part structure, the book first develops the theoretical foundations for this alternative history of architecture. The second part then provides drawings and interpretations of over one hundred sites from different times and places. Architectural Type and Character: A Practical Guide to a History of Architecture is an excellent desk reference and studio guide for students and architectures alike to understand, analyze, and create buildings.

Emerging from the challenge to reconstruct sonic and spatial experiences of the deep past, this multidisciplinary collection of ten essays explores the intersection of liturgy, acoustics, and art in the churches of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Rome and Armenia, and reflects on the role digital technology can play in re-creating aspects of the sensually rich performance of the divine word. Engaging the material fabric of the buildings in relationship to the liturgical ritual, the book studies the structure of the rite, revealing the important role chant plays in it, and confronts both the acoustics of the physical spaces and the hermeneutic system of reception of the religious services. By then drawing on audio software modelling tools in order to reproduce some of the visual and aural aspects of these multi-sensory public rituals, it inaugurates a synthetic approach to the study of the premodern sacred space, which bridges humanities with exact sciences. The result is a rich contribution to the growing discipline of sound studies and an innovative convergence of the medieval and the digital.

Nation-states have long used representational architecture to create symbolic identities for public consumption both at home and abroad. Government buildings, major ensembles and urban plans have a visibility that lends them authority, while their repeated portrayals in the media cement their image as icons of a shared national character. Existing in tandem with this official self, however, is a second, often divergent identity, represented by the vast realm of domestic space defined largely by those who occupy it as well as those with a vested interest in its cultural meaning. Using both historical inquiry and visual, spatial and film analysis, this book explores the interaction of these two identities, and its effect on political control, class status, and gender roles. Conflicted Identities examines the politicization of both public and domestic space, especially in societies undergoing rapid cultural transformation through political, social or economic expansion or restructuring, when cultural identity is being rapidly "modernized", shifted, or realigned to conform to new demands. Using specific examples from a variety of national contexts, the book examines how vernacular housing, legislation, marketing, and media influence a large, but often underexposed domestic culture that runs parallel to a more publicly represented one. As a case in point, the book examines West Germany from the end of World War II to the early 1970s to probe more deeply into the mechanisms of such cultural dichotomy. On a national level, post-war West Germany demonstratively rejected Nazi-era values by rebuilding cities based on interwar modernist tenets, while choosing a decidedly modern and transparent architecture for high-visibility national projects. In the domestic realm, government, media and everyday citizens countered this turn to state-sponsored modernism by embracing traditional architectural aesthetics and housing that encouraged patriarchal family structures. Written for readers interested in cultural theory, history, and the politics of space as well as those engaged with architecture and the built environment, Conflicted Identities provides an engaging new perspective on power and identity as they relate to architectural settings.

The presentation of bodies in pain has been a major concern in Western art since the time of the Greeks. The Christian tradition is closely entwined with such themes, from the central images of the Passion to the representations of bloody martyrdoms. The remnants of this tradition are evident in contemporary images from Abu Ghraib. In the last forty years, the body in pain has also emerged as a recurring theme in performance art. Recently, authors such as Elaine Scarry, Susan Sontag, and Giorgio Agamben have written about these themes. The scholars in this volume add to the discussion, analyzing representations of pain in art and the media. Their essays are firmly anchored on consideration of the images, not on whatever actual pain the subjects suffered. At issue is representation, before and often apart from events in the world. Part One concerns practices in which the appearance of pain is understood as expressive. Topics discussed include the strange dynamics of faked pain and real pain, contemporary performance art, international photojournalism, surrealism, and Renaissance and Baroque art. Part Two concerns representations that cannot be readily assigned to that genealogy: the Chinese form of execution known as lingchi (popularly the "death of a thousand cuts"), whippings in the Belgian Congo, American lynching photographs, Boer War concentration camp photographs, and recent American capital punishment. These examples do not comprise a single alternate genealogy, but are united by the absence of an intention to represent pain. The book concludes with a roundtable discussion, where the authors discuss the ethical implications of viewing such images.

Until recently the impact of the Lutheran Reformation has been largely regarded in political and socio-economic terms, yet for most people it was not the abstract theological debates that had the greatest impact upon their lives, but what they saw in their parish churches every Sunday. This collection of essays provides a coherent and interdisciplinary investigation of the impact that the Lutheran Reformation had on the appearance, architecture and arrangement of early modern churches. Drawing upon recent research being undertaken by leading art historians and historians on Lutheran places of worship, the volume emphasises often surprising levels of continuity, reflecting the survival of Catholic fixtures, fittings and altarpieces, and exploring how these could be remodelled in order to conform with the tenets of Lutheran belief. The volume not only addresses Lutheran art but also the way in which the architecture of their churches reflected the importance of preaching and the administration of the sacraments. Furthermore the collection is committed to extending these discussions beyond a purely German context, and to look at churches not only within the Holy Roman Empire, but also in Scandinavia, the Baltic States as well as towns dominated by Saxon communities in areas such as in Hungary and Transylvania. By focusing on ecclesiastical 'material culture' the collection helps to place the art and architecture of Lutheran places of worship into the historical, political and theological context of early modern Europe.

In The Rise and Fall of American Art, 1940s-1980s, Catherine Dossin challenges the now-mythic perception of New York as the undisputed center of the art world between the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall, a position of power that brought the city prestige, money, and historical recognition. Dossin reconstructs the concrete factors that led to the shift of international attention from Paris to New York in the 1950s, and documents how 'peripheries' such as Italy, Belgium, and West Germany exerted a decisive influence on this displacement of power. As the US economy sank into recession in the 1970s, however, American artists and dealers became increasingly dependent on the support of Western Europeans, and cities like Cologne and Turin emerged as major commercial and artistic hubs - a development that enabled European artists to return to the forefront of the international art scene in the 1980s. Dossin analyses in detail these changing distributions of geopolitical and symbolic power in the Western art worlds - a story that spans two continents, forty years, and hundreds of actors. Her transnational and interdisciplinary study provides an original and welcome supplement to more traditional formal and national readings of the period.

The book presents a broad panoramic overview of church architecture in the Russian North between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. While it is inevitably overshadowed by the imperial splendour of the country's capital cities, this unique phenomenon is regarded as the most distinctive national expression of traditional Russian artistic culture and at the same time as a significant part of humanity's worldwide architectural heritage. The chief intention of the book is to present the regionally specific features of the wooden churches of the Russian North, which vary from area to area for local natural or historical reasons. This approach touches upon the very important questions of the typology and classification of the multiplicity of architectural forms. The "regional view" entails giving clear definitions of the ambiguous terms "architectural school" and "tradition", explaining the origins and shaping impulses for the different regional clusters of objects. Structurally the book presents a history of the development of wooden church architecture in the Russian North and then follows the key points of the mediaeval Russian expansion along the waterways from Novgorod into the North - he Svir' River, Lake Onego, the town of Kargopol' and the River Onega, the White Sea, the Rivers Dvina, Pinega and Mezen' - those areas that still retain the most splendid pieces of Russian regional wooden church architecture. The study is based on field research and provides an up-to-date, multi-faceted view of Russian wooden architecture.

Architecture is conventionally seen as being synonymous with building. In contrast, this book introduces and defines a new category - the unbuildable. The unbuildable involves projects that are not just unbuilt, but cannot be built. This distinct form of architectural project has an important and often surprising role in architectural discourse, working not in opposition to the buildable, but frequently complementing it. Using well-known examples of early Soviet architecture - Tatlin's Tower in particular - Nerma Cridge demonstrates the relevance of the unbuildable, how it relates to current notions of seriality, copying and reproduction, and its implications for contemporary practice and discourse in the computational age. At the same time it offers a fresh view of our preconceptions and expectations of early Soviet architecture and the Constructivist Movement.

In mid-eighteenth-century Paris, the encyclopedists launched a campaign to radically redefine the public dimension of all 'imaginative' arts, starting with music - with the querelle des bouffons - then theatre, the novel and finally the visual arts. Diderot, Rousseau and the Politics of the Arts in the Enlightenment exposes the correlation between the prejudices and hierarchies of the political and social system of the time and what d'Alembert calls 'literary superstitions'. The book reconstructs the role of Diderot and Rousseau, freres ennemis, as they engaged in a dispute that was above all else political, despite revolving entirely around forms of artistic expression. Throwing a light on this important cultural event is all the more necessary because the essentially political dimension of Diderot's Salons has since the nineteenth-century been completely obscured from view. Indeed, at first misunderstood and then totally neglected, for over two centuries their true significance has been systematically ignored by the aesthetic-idealist school of criticism.

This book is a theoretical examination of the relationship between the face, identity, photography, and temporality, focusing on the temporal episteme of selfie practice. Claire Raymond investigates how the selfie's involvement with time and self emerges from capitalist ideologies of identity and time. The book leverages theories from Katharina Pistor, Jacques Lacan, Roegnvaldur Ingthorsson, and Hans Belting to explore the ways in which the selfie imposes a dominant ideology on subjectivity by manipulating the affect of time. The selfie is understood in contrast to the self-portrait. Artists discussed include James Tylor, Shelley Niro, Ellen Carey, Graham MacIndoe, and LaToya Ruby Frazier. The book will be of interest to scholars working in visual culture, history of photography, and critical theory. It will also appeal to scholars of philosophy and, in particular, of the intersection of aesthetic theory and theories of ontology, epistemology, and temporality.

A radically new interpretation of Picasso's life and work by an important Jungian scholar, The Psychological Roots of Modernism is an exciting contribution to the fields of both Jungian psychology and cultural criticism.All of Picasso's major works, from the Blue period masterpieces to the abstractions of mature Cubism, are examined as part of a single narrative which directly challenges our assumptions, and the views of a number of prominent art historians, and provides an entirely new perspective on the signature achievements of the modernist movement. Beginning with Picasso's first months in Paris, the author shows how Picasso's art evolved as a hero's journey, involving encounter with the unconscious, the emergence of a strengthened ego, and the eventual balance of the ego and the unconscious which attained visible expression in the forms of Cubism. Through the Jungian framework, the reader is able to understand how not only Picasso's art, but his relations to his mistress and colleagues, his changing lifestyle and work habits, and his attraction to major Modernist figures like Rousseau and Cezanne were expressions of this psychological transformation. While using Jung to illuminate Picasso, The Psychological Roots of Modernism also employs Picasso to illuminate Jung, providing the clearest and most compelling support for the bedrock principles of analytical psychology. The book's powerful application of Jung's psychology and its radically new perspectives on Picasso's art make it essential reading for students in the fields of art history and Freudian and Jungian psychology.

Painting the Bible is the first book to investigate the transformations that religious painting underwent in mid-Victorian England. It charts the emergence of a Protestant realist painting in a period of increasing doubt, scientific discovery and biblical criticism. The book analyzes the position of religious painting in academic discourse and assesses the important role Pre-Raphaelite work played in redefining painting for mid-Victorian audiences. This original study brings together a wide range of material from high art and popular culture. It locates the controversy over the religious works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in debates about academicism, revivalism and caricature. It also investigates William Holman Hunt's radical, orientalist-realist approach to biblical subject matter which offered an important updating of the image of Christ that chimed with the principles of liberal Protestantism. The book will appeal to scholars and students across disciplines such as art history, literature, history and cultural studies. Its original research, rigorous analysis and accessible style will make it essential reading for anyone interested in questions of representation and belief in mid-Victorian England.

Time Frames provides a reconnaissance on the conservation rules and current protection policies of more than 100 countries, with particular attention to the emerging nations and twentieth-century architecture. The contributions illustrate the critical issues related to architectural listings, with a brief history of national approaches, a linkography and a short bibliography. The book also provides a short critical lexicography, with 12 papers written by scholars and experts including topics on identities, heritages, conservation, memories and the economy. By examining the methods used to designate building as heritage sites across the continents, this book provides a comprehensive overview of current protection policies of twentieth-century architecture as well as the role of architectural history.

This textbook introduces design students to key principles of three-dimensional form, bridging aesthetics and practical design objectives. It explores how we see and what it is that characterises visually appealing and satisfactory design. Written by an experienced designer, educator and researcher, The Aesthetics of Industrial Design equips students with the knowledge and understanding of how aesthetically superior design is distinct from lesser work. It explains the key principles and concepts they can incorporate into their own designs, encourages readers to investigate and experiment with real design problems and enables them to verbally communicate their design intentions. The book prompts readers to critically reflect on their work and surroundings. Through numerous clear examples and illustrated case studies, which are guided by cognitive science and the application of aesthetic theory, the book brings together the basic aspects of design as form-giving. It explores the balance of function, material and appearance in detail and explains the reasons for common aesthetic faults and how to avoid them. Aimed at undergraduate- and postgraduate-level students within the design fields, this book reveals the secrets to aesthetically successful products that readers can take from education into future practice.