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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles
Lost Futures looks in detail at the wide range of buildings
constructed in Britain between 1945 and 1979. Although their bold
architectural aspirations reflected the forward-looking social
ethos of the postwar era, many have since been either demolished or
altered beyond recognition.Photographs taken at the time of their
completion are accompanied by expertly researched captions that
examine the buildings' design, creation, the ideals they embodied
and the reasons for their eventual destruction. Lost Futures covers
many building types, from housing to factories, commercial spaces
and power stations, and presents the work of both iconic and
lesser-known architects. The author charts the complex reasons that
led to the loss of these projects' ambitious futures, and assesses
whether some might one day be recaptured.
Life of Newlyn/St Ives artist famed for his paintings of animals
and birds.
From Paris to Stalingrad, the Nazis systematically plundered all
manner of art and antiquities. But the first and most valuable
treasures they looted were the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman
Empire. In "Hitler's Holy Relics, "bestselling author Sidney
Kirkpatrick tells the riveting and never-before-told true story of
how an American college professor turned Army sleuth recovered
these cherished symbols of Hitler's Thousand-Year Reich before they
could become a rallying point in the creation of a Fourth and
equally unholy Reich.
Anticipating the Allied invasion of Nazi Germany, Reichsfuhrer
Heinrich Himmler had ordered a top-secret bunker carved deep into
the bedrock beneath Nurnberg castle. Inside the well-guarded
chamber was a specially constructed vault that held the plundered
treasures Hitler valued the most: the Spear of Destiny (reputed to
have been used to pierce Christ's side while he was on the cross)
and the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, ancient artifacts
steeped in medieval mysticism and coveted by world rulers from
Charlemagne to Napoleon. But as Allied bombers rained devastation
upon Nurnberg and the U.S. Seventh Army prepared to invade the city
Hitler called "the soul of the Nazi Party," five of the most
precious relics, all central to the coronation ceremony of a
would-be Holy Roman Emperor, vanished from the vault. Who took
them? And why? The mystery remained unsolved for months after the
war's end, until the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D.
Eisenhower, ordered Lieutenant Walter Horn, a German-born art
historian on leave from U.C. Berkeley, to hunt down the missing
treasures.
To accomplish his mission, Horn must revisit the now-rubble-strewn
landscape of his youth and delve into the ancient legends and
arcane mysticism surrounding the antiquities that Hitler had looted
in his quest for world domination. Horn searches for clues in the
burnt remains of Himmler's private castle and follows the trail of
neo-Nazi "Teutonic Knights" charged with protecting a vast hidden
fortune in plundered gold and other treasure. Along the way, Horn
has to confront his own demons: how members of his family and
former academic colleagues subverted scholarly research to help
legitimize Hitler's theories of Aryan supremacy and the Master
Race. What Horn discovers on his investigative odyssey is so
explosive that his final report will remain secret for decades.
Drawing on unpublished interrogation and intelligence reports, as
well as on diaries, letters, journals, and interviews in the United
States and Germany, Kirkpatrick tells this riveting and disturbing
story with cinematic detail and reveals-- for the first time--how a
failed Vienna art student, obsessed with the occult and dreams of
his own grandeur, nearly succeeded in creating a Holy Reich rooted
in a twisted reinvention of medieval and Church history.
Intermediality, figurability, iconotext, visual exegesis: these are
some of the many new ways in which the relationship between text
and image has been explored in recent decades. Scholars have
benefited from theoretical work in the fields of anthropology,
psychoanalysis, and semiotics, alongside more traditional fields
such as literature, art history and cultural history. Focusing on
religious texts and images between 1400 and 1700, the essays
gathered in this volume contribute to these developments by
grounding their case studies in methodology. In considering various
relations between the visual and the verbal, the editors have
adopted the broadest position possible, emphasizing the
phenomenological point of view from which the objects under
discussion are examined. Contributors to this volume: Ralph
Dekoninck, Anna Dlabacova, Gregory Ems, Ingrid Falque, Agnes
Guiderdoni, Walter S. Melion, Kees Schepers, Paul J. Smith, and
Elliott D. Wise.
The professional career and success of Wilhelm Bode (1845-1929)
relied on the business of connoisseurship. Like other contemporary
art historians involved in the commerce of art, he was entangled in
the reciprocal dynamics and interdependencies of the nascent
discipline of art history, connoisseurship and the art trade. The
volume introduces new material and a fresh perspective on Bode's
strategic participation in the Western art market, exposing the
particular consequences of these entanglements on the birth of the
art historical canon and showcasing his complex agency within the
art marketplace of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth
centuries.
This book discusses what differentiates 'architecture' from
'building', focusing on a whole range of architectural works. It
explores the role of the Roman concepts of 'durability', 'utility',
and 'beauty', the heart of what architecture strives for. In this
engaging, original work, Max Jacobson and Shelley Brock present a
compelling case for the importance of architecture in our
day-to-day lives. The book explores what differentiates
'architecture' from 'building', focusing not only on the 'great'
buildings of the world but also on the whole range of architectural
works from indigenous structures to contemporary buildings. The
core of the book is an exploration of the role of 'durability',
'utility', and 'beauty' in architecture. These three concepts
(originally coined by Vitruvius during the Roman empire as
Firmitas, Utilitas, and Venustas) remain at the heart of what
architecture strives for.
This catalogue accompanies an exhibition at the Barber Institute of
Fine Arts that will shine a spotlight on Pieter Brueghel the
Younger (1564 - 1637/38), an artist who was hugely successful in
his lifetime but whose later reputation has been overshadowed by
that of his famous father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525 -
1569). Peasants and Proverbs: Pieter Brueghel the Younger as
Moralist and Entrepreneur shares recent research into the Barber's
comical yet enigmatic little painting, Two Peasants Binding
Firewood, setting out fresh insights and offering a new
appreciation of a figure whose prodigious output and business
skills firmly established and popularised the distinctive
'Brueghelian' look of Netherlandish peasant life. Born in Brussels,
Pieter Brueghel the Younger was just five years old when his
renowned father died prematurely. Clearly talented, by the time he
was around 20 years old, Brueghel the Younger was already
registered as a master in Antwerp's Guild of Saint Luke. Between
1588, the year of his marriage, and 1626, he took on nine
apprentices, demonstrating that he had established a successful
studio. His workshop produced an abundance of paintings, ranging
from exact copies of famous compositions by his father, to
pastiches and more inventive compositions that further promoted the
distinctive Bruegelian 'family style', usually focused on scenes of
peasant life. He was, as a consequence, later deemed a second-rate
painter, capable of only producing derivative works. This
exhibition and book highlight how a more sophisticated
understanding is now emerging of a creative and capable artist, and
a savvy entrepreneur, who exploited favourable market conditions
from his base in cosmopolitan Antwerp. From this deeper
understanding of his practice, his favoured subjects and the market
for them, we gain a more profound and compelling insight into the
society in which he operated and its preoccupations and passions. A
dozen other versions of Two Peasants Binding Firewood exist and, by
examining some of them alongside the Barber painting, and using the
insights gleaned from recent conservation work and technical
analysis, the exhibition and book will explore how Brueghel the
Younger operated his studio to produce and reproduce paintings, and
the extent to which the entire enterprise was motivated by trends
in the contemporary art market.
This volume focuses on the migration and acculturation of images in
Jewish culture and how that reflects intercultural exchange. Gender
aspects of Jewish art are also highlighted, as is the role of
images in interreligious encounters. Other topics covered include
the history, codicology, and iconography of a Haggadah produced in
the late fifteenth century.
Alejandro Jodorowsky is a theatre director, writer of graphic
novels and comics, novelist, poet, and an expert in the Tarot. He
is also an auteur filmmaker who garnered attention with his
breakthrough film El Topo in 1970. He has been called a "cult"
filmmaker, whose films are surreal, hallucinatory, and provocative.
The Transformative Cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky explores the ways
in which Jodorowsky's films are transformative in a psychologically
therapeutic way. It also examines his signature style, which
includes the symbolic meaning of various colors in which he clothes
his actors, the use of his own family members in the films, and his
casting of himself in leading roles. This total involvement of
himself and his family in his auteur films led to his
psycho-therapeutic theories and practices: metagenealogy and
psychomagic. This book is the only the second book in the English
language in print that deals with all of Jodorowsky's films,
beginning with his earliest mime film in 1957 and ending with his
2019 film on psychomagic. It also connects his work as a writer and
therapist to his films, which themselves attempt to obliterate the
line between fantasy and reality.
A former New York Times Paris bureau chief explores the Louvre, offering an intimate journey of discovery and revelation.
The Louvre is the most famous museum in the world, attracting millions of visitors every year with its masterpieces. In Adventures in the Louvre, Elaine Sciolino immerses herself in this magical space and helps us fall in love with what was once a forbidding fortress.
Exploring galleries, basements, rooftops, and gardens, Sciolino demystifies the Louvre, introducing us to her favorite artworks, both legendary and overlooked, and to the people who are the museum’s lifeblood: the curators, the artisans producing frames and engravings, the builders overseeing restorations, the firefighters protecting the aging structure.
Blending investigative journalism, travelogue, history, and memoir, Sciolino walks her readers through the museum’s front gates and immerses them in its irresistible, engrossing world of beauty and culture. Adventures in the Louvre reveals the secrets of this grand monument of Paris and basks in its timeless, seductive power.
Alongside artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, Richard Pousette-Dart (1916–1992) was one of the most important pioneers of Abstract Expressionism. Sixty outstanding works from all creative phases allow us to immerse ourselves in the colourful and multifaceted oeuvre of this remarkable artist. The American avant-garde movement of Abstract Expressionism radically changed the course of modern painting. Like many of his fellow artists, Pousette-Dart was intensely preoccupied with themes such as myth, spirituality, and the archaic. His light-flooded works often evoke ideas of transcendental force through motifs reminiscent of the firmament or the charged energy of celestial bodies. This opulent volume impressively presents Pousette-Dart’s art as a poetry of light.
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