Leo Steinberg was one of the most original and daring art historians of the twentieth century, known for taking interpretative risks that challenged the profession by overturning reigning orthodoxies. In essays and lectures that ranged from old masters to contemporary art, he combined scholarly erudition with an eloquent prose that illuminated his subject and a credo that privileged the visual evidence of the image over the literature written about it. His works, sometimes provocative and controversial, remain vital and influential reading. For half a century, Steinberg delved into Michelangelo's work, revealing the symbolic structures underlying the artist's highly charged idiom. This volume of essays and unpublished lectures explicates many of Michelangelo's most celebrated sculptures, applying principles gleaned from long, hard looking. Almost everything Steinberg wrote included passages of old-fashioned formal analysis, but here put to the service of interpretation. He understood that Michelangelo's rendering of figures as well as their gestures and interrelations conveys an emblematic significance masquerading under the guise of naturalism. Michelangelo pushed Renaissance naturalism into the furthest reaches of metaphor, using the language of the body and its actions to express fundamental Christian tenets once expressible only by poets and preachers--or, as Steinberg put it, in Michelangelo's art, "anatomy becomes theology." Michelangelo's Sculpture is the first in a series of volumes of Steinberg's selected writings and unpublished lectures, edited by his longtime associate Sheila Schwartz. The volume also includes a book review debunking psychoanalytic interpretation of the master's work, a lighthearted look at Michelangelo and the medical profession and, finally, the shortest piece Steinberg ever published.

What to do with the fragments of a love affair? A postcard from a childhood sweetheart. A wedding dress in a jar. Barbed wire. Silicone breast implants. Red stilettos, never worn. These objects and many others make up the inspiring, whimsical, sometimes bizarre, and always unforgettable population of the real-life Museum of Broken Relationships. A decade ago, two lovers were struggling through their own painful breakup, desperate to heal their heartbreak without destroying the memory of the love they had shared. Then, an idea struck: they would create a communal space, a kind of refuge for - and cathartic celebration of - the everyday objects that had outlasted love. These items, along with the anonymous, intimate stories each piece represented, quickly captured hearts and imaginations across the globe. As word spread, the tiny museum became a worldwide sensation. Collected here are 203 of the best, funniest, most heartwarming and thought-provoking pieces that offer an irresistible experience of human connection. The Museum of Broken Relationships is a poignant celebration of modern love - and a must-read for anyone who has ever loved and lost.

A deep look at a contemporary artist whose work highlights how the rise of technology and corporate capitalism have disrupted our lives and polarized society One of the most thought-provoking artists of his generation, Josh Kline (b. 1979) creates installations, sculptures, videos, and photographs that address the ways new technologies affect how people live and work. Engaging with a range of concerns that impact the entire labor force, from essential workers to the creative class, Kline demonstrates how climate change, automation, disease, and politics have shaped our identities. At a time when so many aspects of life are under threat, Kline takes an unflinching look at how we got here and boldly imagines a more equitable and empathetic future. Kline's art demonstrates the ways technology has widened and reinforced the gap of inequity in America, while also carrying the potential to make a fairer world. "As an artist who's thinking about the consequences of technological innovation," Kline has said, "I think there's an obligation to raise questions about who benefits." His ongoing cycle of installations (Freedom, 2014-16; Unemployment, 2015-16, Civil War, 2016-19; Climate Change, 2019- ) that imagine the next hundred years of society are featured in this book, along with his earlier bodies of work, Creative Labor (2009- ) and Blue Collars (2014- ) and production images and concept sketches for his newest works that are published here for the first time. Distributed for the Whitney Museum of American Art Exhibition Schedule: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (April 19-August 13, 2023)

A visually inspiring guide to making gorgeous spoons, using a variety of readily available woods, minimal tools and entry-level woodworking skills (think carving, whittling, sanding). Written by Josh Vogel, the upstate New York wood artisan whose exquisite and highly coveted one-of-a-kind spoons, bowls, and boards are showing up in gift guides everywhere. Over 100 of Vogel's unique spoons - all created and photographed for this book - wow and inspire. Readers learn the basics of simple spoon-making in straightforward, no-experience-required instructions and via one beginning, one intermediate, and one advanced project, each of which provides the basis for an infinite number of designs. Notecards and a notebook collection featuring the beautiful photography from the book will be published simultaneously.

Mark Dion (b.1961) is an American artist who, in making his art, metamorphoses into explorer, biochemist, detective and archaeologist. In his gallery installations around Europe and America since the 1980s, Dion has constructed the laboratories, experiments and museum caches of the great historical naturalists - following in their footsteps in his own adventurous, eco-inspired journeys to the tropics. His research and magical collections are presented in installational still lifes that combine taxidermic animals with lab equipment artefacts, like walk-through Wunderkammers and life-sized cabinets of curiosity. Lias Graziose Corrin, Director of the Williams College Museum of Art, surveys Dion's most significant works and his ongoing investigations into natural history's obsession with categorizing nature. Critic and theorist Miwon Kwon talks to the artist about the interface between ecology and culture and the phenomenon of site-specific art. Norman Bryson, Professor of Art History at the University of California, San Diego, makes an iconographical analysis of The Library for the Birds of Antwerp, an indoor sculpture Dion constructed for 18 live African finches in 1993. The artist has selected a text by novelist Jon Berger, one of the first post-war thinkers to analyze the position of animals in a capitalist society. The book also features Dion's own provocative, witty and often lyrical writing on nature and his role as an artist engaged in environmental issues.

This volume addresses the question of the relation between sculpture and coins--or large statuary and miniature art--in the private and public domain. It originates in the Harvard Art Museums 2011 Ilse and Leo Mildenberg interdisciplinary symposium celebrating the acquisition of Margarete Bieber's coin collection. The papers examine the function of Greek and Roman portraiture and the importance of coins for its identification and interpretation. The authors are scholars from different backgrounds and present case studies from their individual fields of expertise: sculpture, public monuments, coins, and literary sources. Sculpture and Coins also pays homage to the art historian Margarete Bieber (1879-1978) whose work on ancient theater and Hellenistic sculpture remains seminal. She was the first woman to receive the prestigious travel fellowship from the German Archaeological Institute and the first female professor at the University of Giessen. Dismissed by the Nazis, she came to the United States and taught at Columbia. This publication cannot answer all the questions: its merit is to reopen and broaden a conversation on a topic seldom tackled by numismatists and archaeologists together since the time of Bernard Ashmole, Phyllis Lehmann and Leon Lacroix.

Tracing the evolution of the Italian avant-garde’s pioneering experiments with art and technology and their subversion of freedom and control In postwar Italy, a group of visionary artists used emergent computer technologies as both tools of artistic production and a means to reconceptualize the dynamic interrelation between individual freedom and collectivity. Working contrary to assumptions that the rigid, structural nature of programming limits subjectivity, this book traces the multifaceted practices of these groundbreaking artists and their conviction that technology could provide the conditions for a liberated social life. Situating their developments within the context of the Cold War and the ensuing crisis among the Italian left, Arte Programmata describes how Italy’s distinctive political climate fueled the group’s engagement with computers, cybernetics, and information theory. Creating a broad range of immersive environments, kinetic sculptures, domestic home goods, and other multimedia art and design works, artists such as Bruno Munari, Enzo Mari, and others looked to the conceptual frameworks provided by this new technology to envision a way out of the ideological impasses of the age. Showcasing the ingenuity of Italy’s earliest computer-based art, this study highlights its distinguishing characteristics while also exploring concurrent developments across the globe. Centered on the relationships between art, technology, and politics, Arte Programmata considers an important antecedent to the digital age. 

In Renaissance Florence, certain paintings and sculptures of the Virgin Mary and Christ were believed to have extraordinary efficacy in activating potent sacred intercession. Cults sprung up around these "miraculous images" in the city and surrounding countryside beginning in the late 13th century. In The Miraculous Image in Renaissance Florence, Megan Holmes questions what distinguished these paintings and sculptures from other similar sacred images, looking closely at their material and formal properties, the process of enshrinement, and the foundation legends and miracles associated with specific images. Whereas some of the images presented in this fascinating book are well known, such as Bernardo Daddi's Madonna of Orsanmichele, many others have been little studied until now. Holmes's efforts center on the recovery and contextualization of these revered images, reintegrating them and their related cults into an art-historical account of the period. By challenging prevailing views and offering a reassessment of the Renaissance, this generously illustrated and comprehensive survey makes a significant contribution to the field.

Rini Tandon's work is characterized by a poetic cross-media approach: her oeuvre comprises works on paper, paintings, and sculptures, as well as photographs and videos. This monograph provides, for the first time, an overview of the oeuvre of the artist, who was born in India and lives in Austria, and who studied under Nasreen Mohamedi at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Baroda. The book takes the reader on a fascinating journey - from Rini Tandon's early work, which already showed an affinity for sculptural expression, through to her post-minimalist geometric sculptures and her interventions in architectural and landscape space. As a result of her engagement with digital modernism she finally produced experimental setups and videos with a scientific slant.

In diesem Buch prasentieren elf Autoren die Geschehnisse auf dem Gebiet der bildenden Kunst in den letzten siebzig Jahren in den skandinavischen Landern Schweden, Norwegen, Danemark, Finnland und Island mittels UEberblicksdarstellungen und unter verschiedenen Aspekten. Dabei zeigen sich viele Gemeinsamkeiten, aber auch immer wieder Abweichungen der Lander untereinander. Ebenso werden die unumstrittene Verbundenheit und der Austausch mit der Kunst einiger Lander Kontinentaleuropas und den USA erlautert.

Bogdan Rața is a sculptor. His sculptures are simple, hand-made, and most of all they are flat. A fact, not only defying the traditional perception of sculpture as something three-dimensional, voluminous, and figurative but also leading to radically new ways of aesthetic experience. Rața‘s forms are abstract and evanescent. They articulate a departure from the kind of sculpture one used to be accustomed to or familiar with. Rața urges us to reconsider today’s need for independent and critical thinking. The book accompanies his solo exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest. Text in English and Romanian.

In recent decades sculpture has arguably become the dominant art form in the world. In this ground-breaking account of the development of post-War sculpture Andrew Causey examines innovative and avant-garde works in relation to contemporary events, festivals, commissions, the marketplace, and the changing functions of museums. He explores the use of everyday objects and the importance of sculptural context, discussing figurative and non-figurative works, Anti-form, Minimalism, experimental form, Earth Art, landscape sculpture, installation, and Performance Art. The holistic picture of post-War sculpture which emerges establishes for the first time the key events and themes round which future debate will centre.

`Andrew Causey weaves his way adroitly through the labyrinth of post-War sculpture ... No one else has charted the territory so comprehensively.' Professor Stephen Bann, University of Kent at Canterbury

`a clear guide to the various directions of sculpture and the work of sculptors in the years when modern sculpture has begun to stand in its own right as a major art form' Sir Anthony Caro, Sculptor

In this wide-ranging exploration of the creation and use of Buddhist art in Andhra Pradesh, India, Catherine Becker examines how material remains and visual experiences shape and reveal essential human concerns. Shifting Stones, Shaping the Past addresses the fundamental Buddhist question of how humanity progresses centuries after the passing of its teacher, the Buddha Sakyamuni. How might the Buddhas distant teachings be made immediate and accessible? Beginning with an analysis of the spectacular relief sculptures that once adorned the stupas of the region during the early centuries of the Common Era, Becker analyzes the creation of scenes of devotion and the representation of narratives. These reliefs reveal the ancient devotees faith, or optimism, in the role of visual imagery to continue the work of the Buddha by advancing the spiritual progress of visitors to Andhras stupas. Over a period of almost two millennia, many of these stupas have fallen into disrepair. While it is tempting to view these monuments as ruins, they are by no means dead. Turning to the 20th and 21st centuries, Becker analyzes examples of new Buddhist imagery, recent state-sponsored tourism campaigns, and new devotional activities at the sites in order to demonstrate that the stupas of Andhra Pradesh and their sculptural adornments continue to engage the human imagination and are even ascribed innate power and agency. Shifting Stones, Shaping the Past reveals intriguing parallels between ancient uses of imagery and the new social, political, and religious functions of these objects and spaces.

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was a radical sculptor whose unorthodox approach to sculpture-making provided a definitive break in the history of Western sculpture. Although much of his commercial success was based on the bronze and marble versions of his work, Rodin's greatest talent was as a modeller who captured movement, emotion, light and volume in clay and plaster, to challenge traditional conceptions of beauty and perfection. In line with new thinking on Rodin, this book explores the artist's use of plaster, a material which demonstrates his interest in creating sculptures that are never completed, always becoming. United by their materiality, fragile and experimental pieces are explored alongside new readings of some of Rodin's iconic works, and a selection of his watercolour drawings. Including an exclusive contribution from sculptor Phyllida Barlow, The Making of Rodin sheds light on the artist's use of materials, his unique way of working, and his imaginative use of photography, revealing how Rodin reinvented sculpture for the modern age - and why his work continues to enthral and provoke to this day.

Master carver, Ian Norbury, provides a detailed guide for all craftsmen to discover the art of creating facial expressions in woodcarving.

Innovative and pioneering, French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) created an extensive and complex body of work over her five decade long career. Her work received international recognition as early as 1961 when her work was included in the important exhibition 'The Art and Assemblage' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since then Saint Phalle has been the subject of numerous exhibitions worldwide. Her bright and joyful Nana sculptures have become known as her signature artwork. The artist and her oeuvre however, cannot be solely understood through this one body of work. This catalogue, accompanying the artist's first comprehensive retrospective in Belgium at Beaux-Arts Mons (BAM), explores Saint Phalle's multi-faceted practice, examining how the artist worked across a wide-range of media - painting, assemblage, sculpture, performance, public sculpture and architectural projects, film and theatre. Providing an overview of Saint Phalle's entire career, it seeks to demonstrate how the artist used her boundless imagination and unique vision of the world to transcend the space typically reserved for women to become one of the twentieth century's most important artists. The title - "Here Everything is Possible" - is a statement made by Saint Phalle about her monumental sculpture park: The Tarot Garden in Tuscany, Italy. It should however, be read as a testimony to the artist's attitude to her entire artistic process - one of limitless possibility. This extensive, fully illustrated, catalogue includes new scholarly texts by Catherine Francblin, Alison Gingeras, Denis Laoureux, Camille Morineau, Kyla McDonald and Xavier Roland. The essays are accompanied by interviews with Daniel Abadie and Marcelo Zitelli, who both worked closely with the artist during her lifetime, and an illustrated biography.

The dedicated art dealer Rudolf Zwirner and the artist Jakob Mattner meet to look back at his over 40-year-long career. They discuss the fascination with perspective, the poetic means of light, the change of position, and procedure of reversal through which the essence of art can be achieved without withholding information from the viewer: the secret of transcendence, its cause and effect. Text in English and German.