The meaning of the term micromegalic is excavated within the realm of Rococo ornamentation. Rococo ornamentation is examined geometrically, mathematically, and historically. Inthis study, engraved prints constitute the main sources of research and analysis. The historicalinvestigation is followed by an expose of the influence of Rococo principles on a numberof contemporary digital creations.The book reports on, and discusses, the author's contemporary artworks inspired by Rococoprints and their particular techniques of fabrication and representation. These experimentssit within the realm of Generative Art. As such, their purpose is to develop MicromegalicInscriptions, which are dynamic simulations of both abstract details and fifictional landscapes

This book showcases and puts into historical context a host of sculpted works created in the 1920s and 1930s in the decorative vernacular defined loosely today as `Art Deco'. Whether designed as free-standing statuary for the domestic market or commissioned for some form of architectural placement, as a frieze on a building's facade or as a public monument or pool fountain, the works shown demonstrate a sometimes bewilderingly broad range of styles and stylistic influences: from the chevrons, sunbursts, maidens, fountains, floral abstractions and ubiquitous biche (doe) of the Parisian geometric style to the crisp, angular patterns of the zig-zag, jazz-age, streamlined aesthetic of the 1930s. Alastair Duncan organizes his subject into three main categories: the first features work by avant-garde sculptors (Csaky, Janniot, Pompon, etc), often as pieces uniques or small editions; the second shows commercial sculpture, comprising mainly large-edition statuary, commissioned as decorative works for the burgeoning 1920s domestic market; while a final, third category covers architectural and monumental sculpture from West and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, North America, Brazil and beyond. With artists' biographies and details of manufacturers, a full glossary and a thematic index, this volume is the essential and authoritative guide for all those interested in the Art Deco style, from the amateur collector of animalier sculpture to professional historians of the period.

A fresh and engaging look at the controversial work of Jeff Koons, with insightful analyses and illustrations of all of his iconic pieces alongside preparatory works and historical photographs Examining the breadth and depth of thirty-five years of work by Jeff Koons (b. 1955), one of the most influential and controversial artists of the 20th century, this highly anticipated volume features all of his most famous pieces. In an engaging overview essay, Scott Rothkopf carefully examines the evolution of Koons' work and his development over the past thirty-five years, offering a fresh scholarly perspective on the artist's multi-faceted career. In addition, short essays by a wide range of interdisciplinary contributors-from academics to novelists-probe provocative topics such as celebrity and media, markets and money, and technology and fabrication. Also included are preparatory sketches and plans for sculptures and paintings as well as installation photographs that shed light on Koons' artistic process and trace the development of his work throughout his landmark career. Koons has risen to international fame making art that reimagines and recontextualizes images and objects from popular culture such as vacuum cleaners, basketballs, and balloon animals. Created with painstaking attention to detail by a team of fabricators, these objects raise questions about taste and popular culture, and position Koons as one of the most lauded and criticized artists working today. Distributed for the Whitney Museum of American Art Exhibition Schedule: Whitney Museum of American Art (06/27/14-10/19/14) Centre Pompidou (11/26/14-04/27/15) Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (06/05/15-09/27/15)

In the 1950s and 60s, Martin Heidegger turned to sculpture to rethink the relationship between bodies and space and the role of art in our lives. In his texts on the subject--a catalog contribution for an Ernst Barlach exhibition, a speech at a gallery opening for Bernhard Heiliger, a lecture on bas-relief depictions of Athena, and a collaboration with Eduardo Chillida--he formulates his later aesthetic theory, a thinking of relationality. Against a traditional view of space as an empty container for discrete bodies, these writings understand the body as already beyond itself in a world of relations and conceive of space as a material medium of relational contact. Sculpture shows us how we belong to the world, a world in the midst of a technological process of uprooting and homelessness. Heidegger suggests how we can still find room to dwell therein. Filled with illustrations of works that Heidegger encountered or considered, "Heidegger Among the Sculptors" makes a singular contribution to the philosophy of sculpture.

French sculptor Aristide Maillol (1861-1944) is sometimes referred to as the "Cezanne of sculpture" as he, like Paul Cezanne in painting, paved the way for abstraction. Though Maillol began as a painter, he produced an impressive collection of sculptures, many featuring women, over the course of his career. This book, published in conjunction with a comprehensive Maillol exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zurich, examines how the male gaze operates in Maillol's art and the changing perceptions of this gaze from the 19th century to today. A photo essay by Franca Candrian contrasts Maillol's Venus au collier with works by modern and contemporary women artists from the Kunsthaus Zurich's collection. An essay by feminist art historian and curator Catherine McCormack explores the presence of art depicting female nudes - in contemporary museums. Supplemented by an introduction by Philippe Buttner, curator of Kunsthaus Zurich's permanent collection, the book thus offers a fresh and unique view of Maillol and his art. Text in English and German.

Published to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of G.F. Watts, this book provides a lively and engaging introduction to one of the most charismatic figures in the history of British art. Covering all aspects of Watts's career, it places him back at the centre of the visual culture of the 19th century. George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) was one of the great artists of the 19th century. As a young man Watts exhibited alongside Turner, and by the end of his long career he was influential upon Picasso. Sculptor, portraitist and creator of classic Symbolist imagery, Watts was seen also as more than an artist - a philanthropic visionary whose art charted the progress of humanity in the modern world. After four years in Italy in the 1840s, Watts was recognized as a Renaissance master reborn in the Victorian age. Nicknamed 'Signor', and working in isolation from the mainstream commercial art-world, he became a cult figure, obsessively returning to a series of subjects describing the fundamental themes of existence - love, life, death, hope. Engaging in turn with Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Aesthetic Movement and Symbolism, Watts remained true to his own personal vision of the evolution of humanity. As a portraitist, Watts set out to capture the essence of the great characters of 19th-century Britain, donating his finest portraits to the National Portrait Gallery in London. Watts's portraits of figures such as William Morris, John Stuart Mill and the poets Tennyson and Swinburne have become the classic images of these cultural celebrities, while more intimate portraits such as Choosing, showing the artist's first wife, the actress Ellen Terry, are among the most popular of all British portraits. During the 1880s Watts emerged from his cult status to be embraced by the public. Feted as the great modern master, even as "England's Michelangelo", he was given large retrospective exhibitions in London and at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. His reputation grew also in Europe, where the Symbolists revered him as one of their great exemplars. Watts's most celebrated works, such as Love and Life, Hope, and the epic sculpture Physical Energy, were reproduced globally and their fame was unsurpassed within contemporary art in the years around 1900. By this time, Watts had acquired a country home in Surrey - Limnerslease - around which he and his second wife, the designer Mary Watts, built a type of utopian settlement, which has recently been restored and opened to the public as Watts Gallery - Artists' Village. By the end of his life Watts was a national figure, an inspirational artist who had found a meaningful role for art as a catalyst for social change and community integration.

By foregrounding the overlaps between sculpture and the decorative, this volume of essays offers a model for a more integrated form of art history writing. Through distinct case studies, from a seventeenth-century Danish altarpiece to contemporary British ceramics, it brings to centre stage makers, objects, concepts and spaces that have been marginalized by the enforcement of boundaries within art and design discourse. These essays challenge the classed, raced and gendered categories that have structured the histories and languages of art and its making. Sculpture and the Decorative in Britain and Europe is essential reading for anyone interested in the history and practice of sculpture and the decorative arts and the methodologies of art history.

Heinz Mack (*1931) has been working as a sculptor and painter for more than sixty years. From the ZERO period in around 1960 to the present day he has created a wide-ranging work whose essential aspects, such as the significance of light, structure and colour are portrayed with often surprising perspectives. The authors accompany Mack in his constant search for a new concept of art, thereby discovering little-known connections to Minimal Art, Land Art, Yves Klein and Constantin Brancusi. The journey through Mack's rich oeuvre culminates finally in his passionate plea for the "idea of beauty in the 21st century". Heinz Mack is an artist who has left his mark on our times. He has made a pioneering contribution to the question of a new concept of art, which has been of fundamental importance since the post-war period. This volume offers for the first time a monograph with an overview of Mack's philosophy of art as well as his multi-faceted oeuvre: from ZERO and the legendary Sahara Project to light art and his most recent paintings.

Ausgehend von Konzepten der psychoanalytischen Selbstpsychologie, psychologischen Phanomenologie und kunstwissenschaftlichen Ikonologie skizziert der Autor am Beispiel ausgewahlter kunstlerischer Werke von Camille Claudel, Albrecht Durer, Dante Gabriel Rossetti und Kurt Schwitters einen tiefenpsychologisch orientierten Zugang zur bildenden Kunst. Gleichzeitig verweist der Autor auf die Bedeutung der sozialen Funktion von Kunst und ihre Anwendung im Rahmen rezeptiver kunsttherapeutischer Verfahren.

The activities of Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400-1464) were much wider in scope than the well-known painted oeuvre that has been the subject of so many publications. This book, with its focus on stone sculpture in Brussels at the time that Rogier was established there, an area of art history that to date has been little explored, offers a fresh and fascinating look at the context in which Brussels's famous city painter operated. Bart Fransen leads you through a network of stoneworkers and craftsmen, from the stone quarry to the sculptor's workshop, to discover a number of remarkable but unknown or misjudged sculptures now in churches, an abbey, a beguinage, a museum's reserve collection and a castle chapel. With the various case studies in mind he goes on to examine Rogier van der Weyden's direct involvement in sculptural projects, turning to the evidence revealed by archival documents, drawings and sculpture itself. The result is a highly readable and plentifully illustrated book that re-establishes the close relationship between the various art forms that existed in the fifteenth century.

What is an immersive soundscape? It can be as simple as a recording made in a forest: leaves crunching underfoot, birds chirping, a squirrel chattering. Or it can be as complex as a movie soundtrack, which involves music but also uses many other sounds--to set the mood for the action and to literally put the viewer in the picture. Sound art defies categorization, and artists using this medium describe their work in many different ways: as sound installations, audio art, radio art, and music.
"The Art of Immersive Soundscapes" provides a fascinating tour of contemporary sound art practices that comprises scholarly essays, artists' statements, and a DVD with sonic and visual examples. Included are perspectives from soundscape composition and performance, site-specific sound installation, recording, and festival curation. The book and accompanying DVD will appeal to a broad audience interested in music, sound, installation art, the environment, digital culture, and media arts. Importantly, it recognizes the pioneering place of Canadian sound artists within this international field.

Figural and non-figural supports are a ubiquitous feature of Roman marble sculpture; they appear in sculptures ranging in size from miniature to colossal and of all levels of quality. At odds with modern ideas about beauty, completeness, and visual congruence, these elements, especially non-figural struts, have been dismissed by scholars as mere safeguards for production and transport. However, close examination of these features reveals the tastes and expectations of those who commissioned, bought, and displayed marble sculptures throughout the Mediterranean in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Drawing on a large body of examples, Greek and Latin literary sources, and modern theories of visual culture, this study constitutes the first comprehensive investigation of non-figural supports in Roman sculpture. The book overturns previous conceptions of Roman visual values and traditions and challenges our understanding of the Roman reception of Greek art.

Transforming unlikely pieces of scrap metal into significant works of art - giving new life to things we throw away - is an accessible, creative and fulfilling activity. This book describes and illustrates the concerns and techniques involved in making this kind of sculpture, looking behind the work at the richness and diversity of an area of sculpture that deserves to be far better known. Topics covered include the role and purpose of sculpture, the particular qualities of sculpture made from scrap metal and the practical processes involved in its making. It also covers sources of scrap metal, identifying metals, reviewing metalworking techniques, creative approaches, different types of sculpture, and the making, finishing and installation of pieces of sculpture.