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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles
A fully illustrated examination of the relationship between money,
power, resistance, and dissent. Money's ubiquity makes it a
powerful vehicle for disseminating the messages of the state to the
public, but the symbolic and nationalistic iconography of currency
can also be subverted in powerful acts of defiance, rebellion, and
propaganda. Accompanying major exhibitions at The Fitzwilliam
Museum in Cambridge and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, this
volume explores the political and social tensions communicated
through the production or defacement of money over the past two
hundred years. Beginning in Britain in the wake of the American and
French Revolutions, it contrasts the use of money by the radicals
of the nineteenth and early twentieth century with the money
produced by European empires as they scrambled for world
domination. The currency histories of the two world wars highlight
the role of money as a tool of occupation, imprisonment,
resistance, and remembrance. The coins countermarked during the
Troubles in Northern Ireland hint at the polarized nature of
political discourse and sectarian violence. The work culminates
with the work of contemporary artists and activists who use money
to highlight the challenges of the modern world, both locally and
globally--as a canvas, a raw material, or a powerful means of
communication. From a unique coin commemorating the Peterloo
Massacre of 1819 to a Syrian banknote refashioned to raise
awareness of the refugee crisis, each object constitutes a witness
statement to its time and its conflict, and each section has its
own story to tell.
Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World explores the
representation of political, economic, military, religious, and
juridical power in texts and artifacts from early modern Spain and
her American viceroyalties. In addition to analyzing the dynamics
of power in written texts, chapters also examine pieces of material
culture including coats of arms, coins, paintings and engravings.
As the essays demonstrate, many of these objects work to transform
the amorphous concept of power into a material reality with
considerable symbolic dimensions subject to, and dependent on,
interpretation. With its broad approach to the discourses of power,
Signs of Power brings together studies of both canonical literary
works as well as more obscure texts and objects. The position of
the works studied with respect to the official center of power also
varies. Whereas certain essays focus on the ways in which
portrayals of power champion the aspirations of the Spanish Crown,
other essays attend to voices of dissent that effectively call into
question that authority.
How to Read Houses is an insider's guide to recognising and
appreciating the diversity of domestic architecture that reflects
the location, the fashion, and the technological savoir-faire of
the age - from Tudor timber-frames to the truly unconventional.
Compact enough to travel with you yet comprehensive enough to
provide real answers, with real examples, this handy reference
guide: - Provides an understanding of the architectural vocabulary
along with the visual clues that identify any house style and its
historical context. - Enhances the appreciation of visits to
landmark houses and lays the foundations for an architectural
exploration of your own home or area. - Explores the main
architectural styles, as well as the materials and components of a
house, through beautifully rendered illustrations, photographs of
classic examples and the words of a friendly expert.
Stephanie J. Smith brings Mexican politics and art together,
chronicling the turbulent relations between radical artists and the
postrevolutionary Mexican state. The revolution opened space for
new political ideas, but by the late 1920s many government
officials argued that consolidating the nation required coercive
measures toward dissenters. While artists and intellectuals, some
of them professed Communists, sought free expression in matters
both artistic and political, Smith reveals how they simultaneously
learned the fine art of negotiation with the increasingly
authoritarian government in order to secure clout and financial
patronage. But the government, Smith shows, also had reason to
accommodate artists, and a surprising and volatile interdependence
grew between the artists and the politicians. Involving well-known
artists such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro
Siqueiros, as well as some less well known, including Tina Modotti,
Leopoldo Mendez, and Aurora Reyes, politicians began to appropriate
the artists' nationalistic visual images as weapons in a national
propaganda war. High-stakes negotiating and co-opting took place
between the two camps as they sparred over the production of
generally accepted notions and representations of the revolution's
legacy-and what it meant to be authentically Mexican.
Memoir of a provocative Parisian art dealer at the heart of the
20th-century art world, available in English for the first time.
Berthe Weill, a formidable Parisian dealer, was born into a Jewish
family of very modest means. One of the first female gallerists in
the business, she first opened the Galerie B. Weill in the heart of
Paris's art gallery district in 1901, holding innumerable
exhibitions over nearly forty years. Written out of art history for
decades, Weill has only recently regained the recognition she
deserves. Under five feet tall and bespectacled, Weill was beloved
by the artists she supported, and she rejected the exploitative
business practices common among art dealers. Despite being a
self-proclaimed "terrible businesswoman," Weill kept her gallery
open for four decades, defying the rising tide of antisemitism
before Germany's occupation of France. By the time of her death in
1951, Weill had promoted more than three hundred artists-including
Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Diego Rivera, and
Suzanne Valadon-many of whom were women and nearly all young and
unknown when she first exhibited them. Pow! Right in the Eye! makes
Weill's provocative 1933 memoir finally available to English
readers, offering rare insights into the Parisian avant-garde and a
lively inside account of the development of the modern art market.
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