This book concentrates on a few crucial years of Caravaggio’s development, in order to cast light on what made the artist such a revolutionary figure. It argues that this revolution was one of technique rather than style, and involved the sophisticated use of a camera obscura and so-called 'burning' or parabolic mirrors, exploiting new advances in glassmaking and optics. Because the results Caravaggio obtained by his new methods were so different he created a sensation, although these innovations were rapidly assimilated and the artistic establishment worked successfully to restore their way of doing things, so that the true novelty of his art in the 1590s has been obscured. Clovis Whitfield uses a lifetime of study of the period to discuss not only Caravaggio's technology but also his patronage and cultural context, the Rome of Clement VIII, concentrating particularly on Caravaggio's homosexual patron Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte and analysing the taste and role of his other early supporters as well. Whitfield's Caravaggio was the son of a bricklayer, untrained in traditional artistic disciplines, who instead took the dramatic step of painting exactly what he saw with his reproductive aids. Galileo’s hypothesis drawn from observation and Caravaggio’s novel description of what he saw were, according to Whitfield, parallel attempts to explain features of the many-layered reality that surrounds us. The book features remarkable new photographs and especially details of Caravaggio's paintings and those of his followers and rivals that will dramatically refresh hackneyed perceptions of this crucial figure and his world. "This revolutionary book will transform studies of the renegade 'people's artist'."Art Quarterly, Spring 2012

The dominant form of Ottoman pictorial art until the eighteenth century, miniatures have traditionally been studied as reflecting the socio-historical contexts, aesthetic concerns and artistic tastes of the era within which they were produced. Begum Ozden Fyrat proposes instead a radical re-reading of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century miniatures in the light of contemporary critical theory, highlighting the viewer's encounter with the image. Encounters with the Ottoman Miniature employs contemporary concepts such as the gaze, frame/framing, reading and re-reading, drawing on thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and Gilles Deleuze to establish the vibrant cultural agency of miniature paintings. With analysis that illuminates both the social and political situations in which these miniatures were painted as well as emphasising the miniature's contemporary relevance, Firat presents an important new re-imagining of this art form.

Hierdie publikasie gee ’n volledige beeld van die kunstenaar Frans David Oerder (1867–1944) se oeuvre – sy Anglo-Boereoorlogtekeninge, landskappe, genrestukke, portrette, blomstudies en stillewes, interieurs, dierestudies en grafiese werk. Geen moeite is ontsien om hierdie boek so volledig en betroubaar moontlik te maak nie. Argivale bronne in die Kunsargief van die Universiteit van Pretoria, die Argief van die Johannesburg Kunsmuseum en die Nasionale Argief van Suid-Afrika in Pretoria het grootliks bygedra tot die toevoeging van inligting oor hierdie kunstenaar wat nie voorheen bekend was nie. Dieplakboek van Gerda Oerder en ’n lang lesing met detailinligting oor Oerder se vroee lewe deur mev. Lorimer in die Kunsargief van die Universiteit van Pretoria het bygedra tot ’n nuwe vertolking van die lewe en werk van hierdie belangrike Suid-Afrikaanse kunstenaar. Tydens die Anglo-Boereoorlog was Oerder die enigste amptelike kunstenaar aan Boerekant, maar tot dusver is nog geen volledige geskiedenis van sy deelname aan die oorlog geskryf nie. In hierdie boek word Oerder se Anglo-Boereoorlogtekeninge nou vir die eerste keer so volledig moontlik afgedruk en beskryf.

Readers discover new insights into the methods of top contemporary watercolor artists with each edition of Splash, now an annual competition with an accompanying book after more than 20 years as a series. Splash 17 will be loaded with more than 125 paintings by more than 100 artists selected from thousands of watercolor and water-media painters across the world invited to submit work for consideration. Each painting will be accompanied by a caption that will show readers something about each artist's processes pertaining to the theme of texture. Entry fee of $30 for the first image and $25 per subsequent image helps defer cost of production; we expect to collect about $40,000 in fees. Call for entries will be promoted in The Artist's Magazine, Watercolor Artist, www.artistsnetwork.com, http://wetcanvas.com and eblasts. Deadline will be December 1, 2014 (earlybird deadline) and December 31, 2014 (final deadline).