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Books > Arts & Architecture > The arts: general issues > Theory of art
Since its first publication, The Artist's Way has inspired the
genius of Elizabeth Gilbert, Tim Ferriss and millions of readers to
embark on a creative journey and find a deeper connection to
process and purpose. Julia Cameron guides readers in uncovering
problems and pressure points that may be restricting their creative
flow and offers techniques to open up opportunities for self-growth
and self-discovery. The program begins with Cameron's most vital
tools for creative recovery: The Morning Pages and The Artist Date.
From there, she shares hundreds of exercises, activities, and
prompts to help readers thoroughly explore each chapter. A
revolutionary programme for personal renewal, The Artist's Way will
help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the
steps you need to change your life.
Learn how to paint on your iPad like the professionals in
Beginner's Guide to Procreate, a comprehensive introduction to this
industry-standard software. Accessible and versatile, Procreate is
an ideal tool for anyone wanting to give digital painting a go.
Step-by-step tutorials, quick tips, and inspiring artwork ensure
you'll have all you need to create stunning concept art quickly and
easily.
It is illustrated in a fresh and modern way with a touch of
abstract and so should appeal to a wider audience. With hints of
social and human psychology, spirituality combinded with creativity
- it just scratches each issue on the surface. The book doesn't
impose any strong views or lengthy "deep" writing to bore, but is
says enough - acting as a catalyst to encourage deeper thought,
reflection and discussion. "Themes Of Life.... A simple but
Spiritual, Creative and Psychological approach to tackling some key
issues which we face, In Human relationships & in Society
today"
Metaphor, which allows us to talk about things by comparing them to
other things, is one of the most ubiquitous and adaptable features
of language and thought. It allows us to clarify meaning, yet also
evaluate and transform the ways we think, create and act. While we
are alert to metaphor in spoken or written texts, it has, within
the visual arts, been critically overlooked. Taking into
consideration how metaphors are inventively embodied in the formal,
technical, and stylistic aspects of visual artworks, Mark Staff
Brandl shows how extensively artists rely on creative metaphor
within their work. Exploring the work of a broad variety of artists
- including Dawoud Bey, Dan Ramirez, Gaelle Villedary, Raoul Deal,
Sonya Clark, Titus Kaphar, Charles Boetschi, and more- he argues
that metaphors are the foundation of visual thought, are chiefly
determined by bodily and environmental experiences, and are
embodied in artistic form. Visual artistic creation is
philosophical thought. By grounding these arguments in the work of
philosophers and cultural theorists, including Noel Carroll, Hans
Georg Gadamer, and George Lakoff, Brandl shows how important
metaphor is to understanding contemporary art. A Philosophy of
Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art takes a neglected feature of
the visual arts and shows us what a vital role it plays within
them. Bridging theory and practice, and drawing upon a capacious
array of examples, this book is essential reading for art
historians and practitioners, as well as analytic philosophers
working in aesthetics and meaning.
The essential guide to colour theory and mixing for artists. Full
of beautiful, intricate handpainted colour wheels and practical
advice on using and mixing colour, this book is a must-have for any
artist working with pigment and paint. Starting from the basics of
colour and working up to the complexities of tonality, harmony,
opacity and pigment, artist Ian Goldsmith explores and explains all
the key elements of colour and what it can do. A comprehensive
paint index at the back of the book provides an indispensable
reference guide for choosing and purchasing materials that no
practising artist should be without. Including: - Understanding the
colour wheel - Primaries, secondaries and tertiaries - Colour
temperature - Hue, value and saturation - Opacity and transparency
- Materials and pigments
Colours of Art takes the reader on a journey through history via 80
carefully curated artworks and their palettes. For these pieces,
colour is not only a tool (like a paintbrush or a canvas) but the
fundamental secret to their success. Colour allows artists to
express their individuality, evoke certain moods and portray
positive or negative subliminal messages. And throughout history
the greatest of artists have experimented with new pigments and new
technologies to lead movements and deliver masterpieces. But as
something so cardinal, we sometimes forget how poignant colour
palettes can be, and how much they can tell us. When Vermeer
painted The Milkmaid, the amount of ultramarine he could use was
written in the contract. How did that affect how he used it? When
Turner experimented with Indian Yellow, he captured roaring flames
that brought his paintings to life. If he had used a more ordinary
yellow, would he have created something so extraordinary? And how
did Warhol throw away the rulebook to change what colour could
achieve? Structured chronologically, Colours of Art provides a fun,
intelligent and visually engaging look at the greatest artistic
palettes in art history - from Rafael's use of perspective and
Vermeer's ultramarine, to Andy Warhol's hot pinks and Lisa Brice's
blue women. Colours of Art offers a refreshing take on the subject
and acts as a primer for artists, designers and art lovers who want
to look at art history from a different perspective.
A ground-breaking new anthology in the Art in Theory series,
offering an examination of the changing relationships between the
West and the wider world in the field of art and material culture
Art in Theory: The West in the World is a ground-breaking anthology
that comprehensively examines the relationship of Western art to
the art and material culture of the wider world. Editors Paul Wood
and Leon Wainwright have included 370 texts, some of which appear
in English for the first time. The anthologized texts are presented
in eight chronological parts, which are then subdivided into key
themes appropriate to each historical era. The majority of the
texts are representations of changing ideas about the cultures of
the world by European artists and intellectuals, but increasingly,
as the modern period develops, and especially as colonialism is
challenged, a variety of dissenting voices begin to claim their
space, and a counter narrative to western hegemony develops. Over
half the book is devoted to 20th and 21st century materials, though
the book's unique selling point is the way it relates the modern
globalization of art to much longer cultural histories. As well as
the anthologized material, Art in Theory: The West in the World
contains: A general introduction discussing the scope of the
collection Introductory essays to each of the eight parts,
outlining the main themes in their historical contexts Individual
introductions to each text, explaining how they relate to the wider
theoretical and political currents of their time Intended for a
wide audience, the book is essential reading for students on
courses in art and art history. It will also be useful to
specialists in the field of art history and readers with a general
interest in the culture and politics of the modern world.
Often derided as unscientific and self-indulgent, psychoanalysis
has been an invaluable resource for artists, art critics and
historians throughout the twentieth century. Art and Psychoanalysis
investigates these encounters. The shared relationship to the
unconscious, severed from Romantic inspiration by Freud, is traced
from the Surrealist engagement with psychoanalytic imagery to the
contemporary critic's use of psychoanalytic concepts as tools to
understand how meaning operates. Following the theme of the
'object' with its varying materiality, Walsh develops her argument
that psychoanalysis, like art, is a cultural discourse about the
mind in which the authority of discourse itself can be undermined,
provoking ambiguity and uncertainty and destabilising identity. The
dynamics of the dream-work, Freud's 'familiar unfamiliar',
fetishism, visual mastery, abjection, repetition, and the death
drive are explored through detailed analysis of artists ranging
from Max Ernst to Louise Bourgeois, including 1980s postmodernists
such as Cindy Sherman, the performance art of Marina Abramovic' and
post-minimalist sculpture. Innovative and disturbing, Art and
Psychoanalysis investigates key psychoanalytic concepts to reveal a
dynamic relationship between art and psychoanalysis which goes far
beyond interpretation. There is no cure for the artist - but art
can reconcile us to the traumatic nature of human experience,
converting the sadistic impulses of the ego towards domination and
war into a masochistic ethics of responsibility and desire.
From Eugene Delacroix's interpretation of the 1830 French
revolution to Uli Edel's version of the Baader-Meinhof Gang,
artistic representations of historical subjects are appealing and
pervasive. Movies often adapt imagery from art history, including
paintings of historical events. Films and art shape the past for us
and continue to affect our interpretation of history. While
historical films are often argued over for their adherence to "the
facts," their real problem is realism: how can the past be
convincingly depicted? Realism in the historical film genre is
often nourished and given credibility by its use of painterly
references. This book examines how art-historical images affect
historical films by going beyond period detail and surface design
to look at how profound ideas about history are communicated
through pictures. Art and the Historical Film: Between Realism and
the Sublime is based on case studies that explore the links between
art and cinema, including American independent Western Meek's
Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010), British heritage film Belle (Amma
Asante, 2013), and Dutch national epic Admiral (Roel Reine, 2014).
The chapters create immersive worlds that communicate distinct
ideas about the past through cinematography, production design, and
direction, as the films adapt, reference, and transpose paintings
by artists such as Rubens, Albert Bierstadt, and Jacques-Louis
David.
In his influential essay "Provisional Painting," Raphael Rubinstein
applied the term "provisional" to contemporary painters whose work
looked intentionally casual, dashed-off, tentative, unfinished or
self-cancelling; who appeared to have deliberately turned away from
"strong" painting for something that seemed to constantly risk
failure or inconsequence. In this collection of essays, Rubinstein
expands the scope of his original article by surveying the
historical and philosophical underpinnings of provisionality in
recent visual art, as well as examining the works of individual
artists in detail. He also engages crucial texts by Samuel Beckett
and philosopher Gianni Vattimo. Re-examining several decades of
painting practices, Rubinstein argues that provisionality, in all
its many forms, has been both a foundational element in the history
of modern art and the encapsulation of an attitude that is
profoundly contemporary.
Art & Fear is about the way art gets made, the reasons it often
doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so
many artists to give up along the way. Drawing on the authors' own
experiences as two working artists, the book delves into the
internal and external challenges to making art in the real world,
and shows how they can be overcome every day. First published in
1994, Art & Fear quickly became an underground classic, and
word-of-mouth has placed it among the best-selling books on
artmaking and creativity. Written by artists for artists, it offers
generous and wise insight into what it feels like to sit down at
your easel or keyboard, in your studio or performance space, trying
to do the work you need to do. Every artist, whether a beginner or
a prizewinner, a student or a teacher, faces the same fears - and
this book illuminates the way through them.
Celebrated novelist, biographer and critic Peter Ackroyd paints a
vivid picture of one of the world's greatest cities in this
brilliant and original work, exploring how the city's many hues
have come to shape its history and identity. Think of the colours
of London and what do you imagine? The reds of open-top buses and
terracotta bricks? The grey smog of Victorian industry, Portland
stone and pigeons in Trafalgar square? Or the gradations of
yellows, violets and blues that shimmer on the Thames at sunset -
reflecting the incandescent light of a city that never truly goes
dark? We associate green with royal parks and the District Line;
gold with royal carriages, the Golden Lane Estate, and the tops of
monuments and cathedrals. Colours of London shows us that colour is
everywhere in the city, and each one holds myriad links to its
past. The colours of London have inspired artists (Whistler, Van
Gogh, Turner, Monet), designers (Harry Beck) and social reformers
(Charles Booth). And from the city's first origins, Ackroyd shows
how colour is always to be found at the heart of London's history,
from the blazing reds of the Great Fire of London to the blackouts
of the Blitz to the bold colours of royal celebrations and vibrant
street life. This beautifully written book examines the city's
fascinating relationship with colour, alongside specially
commissioned colourized photographs from Dynamichrome, which bring
a lost London back to life. London has been the main character in
Ackroyd's work ever since his first novel, and he has won countless
prizes in both fiction and non-fiction for his truly remarkable
body of work. Here, he channels a lifetime of knowledge of the
great city, writing with clarity and passion about the hues and
shades which have shaped London's journey through history into the
present day. A truly invaluable book for lovers of art, history,
photography or urban geography, this beautifully illustrated title
tells a rich and fascinating story of the history of this great and
ever-changing city.
Although beauty, in the pre-modern Arab world, was enjoyed and
promoted almost everywhere, Islam does not possess a general theory
on aesthetics or a systematic theory of the arts. This is a study
of the Arabic discourse on beauty. The author had to search for her
evidence in written statements from a wide variety of sources, such
as the Qur'an, legal, religious and Sufi texts, chronicles,
biographies, belle-lettres, literary criticism, and scientific,
geographic and philosophical literature. The result is a compendium
of references to beauty in chapters on the Religious Approach,
Secular Beauty and Love, Music and Belle-Lettres, and the Visual
Arts. This approach is informative and provocative. For the
generalist, it provides comparative material for an understanding
of the early Arab cultural context. For the specialist, it raises
questions of sponsorship and purpose.
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