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Books > Arts & Architecture > The arts: general issues > Theory of art
This work identifies the possibilities, concepts, needs and strategies for radical reform of traditional art education by resituating it within the postmodern paradigm. It advocates continued research to inform theory and practice in art education, providing detailed summaries of new methodologies, such as semiotics and deconstruction.
This book analyses how three artists - Adrian Piper, Nancy Spero and Mary Kelly - worked with the visual dimensions of language in the 1960s and 1970s. These artists used text and images of writing to challenge female stereotypes, addressing viewers and asking them to participate in the project of imagining women beyond familiar words and images of subordination. The book explores this dimension of their work through the concept of 'the other woman', a utopian wish to reach women and correspond with them across similarities and differences. To make the artwork's aspirations more concrete, it places the artists in correspondence with three writers - Angela Davis, Valerie Solanas, and Laura Mulvey - who also addressed the limited range of images through which women are allowed to become visible. -- .
Art in Three Dimensions is a collection of essays by one of the most eminent figures in philosophy of art. The animating idea behind Noel Carroll's work is that philosophers of art should eschew the sort of aestheticism that often implicitly -- but sometimes explicitly, as in the case of aesthetic theories of art and of their commitments to the notion of the autonomy of art -- governs their methodology. Instead, Carroll argues that philosophers of art need to refocus their attention on the ways in which art enters the life of culture and the lives of individual audience members. The reference to "three dimensions" in the title refers to Carroll's view that philosophers of art should look at art from multiple angles and treat it as a substantial participant not only in society, but also as a significant influence upon the moral and emotional experiences of audiences.
Written with verve and intensity (and a good bit of wordplay), this
is the long-awaited study of Flaubert and the modern literary field
that constitutes the definitive work on the sociology of art by one
of the world's leading social theorists. Drawing upon the history
of literature and art from the mid-nineteenth century to the
present, Bourdieu develops an original theory of art conceived as
an autonomous value. He argues powerfully against those who refuse
to acknowledge the interconnection between art and the structures
of social relations within which it is produced and received. As
Bourdieu shows, art's new autonomy is one such structure, which
complicates but does not eliminate the interconnection.
This volume is a collection of public writings and insights of the German poststructuralist, Friedrich A. Kittler. It merges the discourse of literature, war and technology into a unified theme. His research results in a vision of the future in which the distinction between mediums is erased. The introduction by John Johnston explicates the theoretical and practical consequences of Kittler's insights into the social and psychological effects of the processes by which metaphor in one medium is made real by another.
Diotima's Children is a re-examination of the rationalist tradition of aesthetics which prevailed in Germany in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. It is partly an historical survey of the central figures and themes of this tradition But it is also a philosophical defense of some of its leading ideas, viz., that beauty plays an integral role in life, that aesthetic pleasure is the perception of perfection, that aesthetic rules are inevitable and valuable. It shows that the criticisms of Kant and Nietzsche of this tradition are largely unfounded. The rationalist tradition deserves re-examination because it is of great historical significance, marking the beginning of modern aesthetics, art criticism, and art history.
Written with verve and intensity (and a good bit of wordplay), this
is the long-awaited study of Flaubert and the modern literary field
that constitutes the definitive work on the sociology of art by one
of the world's leading social theorists. Drawing upon the history
of literature and art from the mid-nineteenth century to the
present, Bourdieu develops an original theory of art conceived as
an autonomous value. He argues powerfully against those who refuse
to acknowledge the interconnection between art and the structures
of social relations within which it is produced and received. As
Bourdieu shows, art's new autonomy is one such structure, which
complicates but does not eliminate the interconnection.
"In 1871, the greatest, most revolutionary poets of their time-Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Charles Cros, Germain Nouveau, Andre Gill-gathered at the Hotel des Etrangers in Paris to realize a joint, subversive, and forward-looking project: the Album Zutique. Later, in the 20th century, artists and poets, initially close to Dadaism and Surrealism, dedicated themselves to cooperative ways of working. Their Cadavres exquis-works characterized by chance and playfulness, and based on the principle of "blind" team work-are still outstanding examples of artistic collaborations today. These were characterized in the 20th and 21st centuries by friendships as well as by political convictions. This publication explores the genesis of these collaborative artworks. The methods of production and the synergetic and often cross-genre nature of these collaborations are for the first time the focus of a detailed art-historical examination. Featuring Pablo Picasso and Francis Picabia, Alexander Calder and Joan Miro, Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Yayoi Kusama and Carolee Schneemann, Jenny Holzer and Landy Pink, and many more, the catalogue brings together some one hundred works. Also included are collective works by performers, musicians, and filmmakers."
In The Book of Circles, his companion volume to the popular Book of Trees, Manuel Lima takes us on a lively tour through millenia of information design. Three hundred detailed and colourful illustrations cover an encyclopedic array of subjects, drawing fascinating parallels across time and culture. The clay tokens used by ancient Sumerians as a system of recording trade are juxtaposed with the logos of modern retailers like Target; Venn diagrams are discussed side by side with symbols of the Christian trinity, the trefoil shape of the biohazard symbol, and the Olympic rings; a diagram revealing the characteristics of 10,000 porn stars displays structural similarities to early celestial charts placing the earth at the centre of the universe.
In a world where privatisation and capitalism dominate the global economy, the essays in this book ask how to make socially responsive communication, design and art that counters the role of the food industry as a machine of consumption. Food Democracy brings together contributions from leading international scholars and activists, critical case studies of emancipatory food practices and reflections on possible models for responsive communication design and art. A section of visual communication works, creative writings and accounts of participatory art for social and environmental change - curated by the Memefest Festival of Socially Responsive Communication and Art on the theme of "Food Democracy" - are also included here. The beautifully designed book also includes a unique and delicious compilation of socially engaged recipes by the academic, artist and activist community. Aiming not just to advance scholarship, but to push ahead real change in the world, Food Democracy is essential reading for scholars and citizens alike.
Available for the first time in English, "Portrait of an Artist" brings the work and philosophy of Willem Sandberg (1897-1962), the legendary director of Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum, to a broad readership. In the wake of World War II, Sandberg transformed the Stedelijk into a dynamic center for modern art and culture. Collaborating closely with artists and architects, Sandberg had strong views about heading up a museum for modern and contemporary art, about the importance of art, dealing with artists and his work as typographic designer. Based on interviews with Sandberg, "Portrait of an Artist" offers firsthand insight into museum culture, providing a vivid picture of the period with fascinating stories about artists such as Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso and Alexander Calder, and architects such as Gerrit Rietveld, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.
*** 'An indispensable volume' Vogue 'As rabid admirers and collectors of contemporary art and photography we wholeheartedly recommend this passionate and joyous book. Without art the human soul is unfulfilled. This collection by Russell and Robert fully explains why.' Sir Elton John and David Furnish 'Russell and Robert have made talking art not just pleasurable but necessary.' Lena Dunham 'As witty, wise and well informed as Russell and Robert's excellent podcast.' Edward Enninful, OBE When launching the Talk Art podcast in 2018, actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament had one clear aim: to make the art world more accessible. Since then, the podcast has grown to be a global hit, featuring exclusive interviews with leading artists, curators, gallerists, actors, musicians and fellow art lovers such as Lena Dunham, Sir Paul Smith, David Shrigley, Noel Fielding, Edward Enninful, Rose Wylie and Sir Elton John. Talk Art, the book, is a beautiful and accessible celebration of contemporary art, and a guidebook to navigating and engaging with the art world. Covering a range of different media from photography and ceramics to performance and sound art, the book explores the way art interacts with our society, highlights lesser-known artists, and provides a snapshot of the art world as it is today. With a wealth of imagery - some never before seen in print and some created exclusively for the book - and an informative, engaging narrative, Talk Art will become the must-have book art lovers return to again and again. The book features highlights from interviews with: Tracey Emin, Jordan Casteel, Jerry Saltz, Elton John, Grayson Perry, Ian McKellen, Alasdair McLellan, Helen Cammock, Somaya Critchlow and many more. Praise for the podcast: 'Lively, accessible and enthusiastic' - Financial Times 'As fast-paced and gossipy as it is genuinely interesting' - Dazed 'Trendy, gossipy, fast-paced conversational fun' - New York Times 'It's an education, but not in an alienating highbrow way' - NME
Design and Aesthetics: A Reader is a comprehensive student reader on design history and aesthetic theory. It includes contributions from many of the writers whose work has been foundational to these two fields, including classic articles by Raymond Williams and Roger Scruton, and newer articles which provide an overview of current concerns and debates. The role of design in the world today has aroused much controversy. The first half of this book deals with the main arguments which have emerged from contemporary analysis of its role in the communication process. Essays focus on the question of absolute aesthetic standards versus cultural relativism, and the role of objects in cultural and social life. The second part turns to particular areas of design history, ranging from architecture and pottery to the history of dress. These two main sectors are prefaced by contextualising introductions by Jerry Palmer and Mo Dodson.
Using empathy, as established by the Vienna School of Art History, complemented by insights on how the mind processes visual stimuli, as demonstrated by late 19th-century psychologists and art theorists, this book puts forward an innovative interpretative method of decoding the forms and spaces of Modern buildings. This method was first developed as scholars realized that the new abstract art appearing needed to be analysed differently than the previous figurative works. Since architecture experienced a similar development in the 1920s and 30s, this book argues that the empathetic method can also be used in architectural interpretation. While most existing scholarship tends to focus on formal and functional analysis, this book proposes that Modern architecture is too diverse to be reduced to a few common formal or ornamental features. Instead, by relying on the viewer's innate psycho-physiological perceptive abilities, sensual and intuitive understandings of composition, form, and space are emphasized. These aspects are especially significant because Modern Architecture lacks the traditional stylistic signs. Including building analyses, it shows how, by visually reducing cubical forms and spaces to linear configurations, the exteriors and interiors of Modern buildings can be interpreted via human perceptive abilities as dynamic movement systems commensurate with the new industrial transportation age. This reveals an inner necessity these buildings express about themselves and their culture, rather than just an explanation of how they are assembled and how they should be used. The case studies highlight the contrasts between buildings designed by different architects, rather than concentrating on the few features that relate them to the zeitgeist. It analyses the buildings directly as the objects of study, not indirectly, as designs filtered through a philosophical or theoretical discourse. The book demonstrates that, with technology and science affecting culture
This timely volume challenges the narrow Western-centrism of most art historical models. Archaeologists have found that, for tens of thousands of years, all human cultures have shared a desire for visual representation or expression. Yet the study of art history has traditionally focused on Western artworks of the past few centuries. "World Art Studies" examines the phenomenon of art through a broader cultural, global and temporal perspective, bringing together a uniquely exhaustive range of perspectives on art and borrowing approaches from the study of neuroscience, evolutionary biology, anthropology and geography as models--alongside more conventional art historical perspectives. In musicology or linguistics, using such diverse viewpoints for reflection and research is considered part of the normal process. In that spirit, this volume goes beyond abstract models, using case studies to demonstrate and examine specific methods of investigation.
This open access book takes a queer, feminist, and decolonial technoscience approach to the ecologies that emerge from our entanglements with nonhumans (air, rocks, algae, trees, soil and plants) and computational hard/software. In Plants by Numbers, artists and theorists working with computation address the urgent need to think beyond the human paradigm, opening up new fields of debate that question the troubled relationship between ecosystems and human technology. Organised around three key themes--techno-nature entanglements, plants as resistant agents, and becoming-with-plants--the volume provides a vital pathway through complex theoretical ideas that inform the practices of artists working in the fields of computation and ecology. Fusing art theoretical and art practice approaches, the contributors describe how we might design, make and imagine computational processes differently, or otherwise, through the co-production of artworks with plants. Showing how these artworks might act as communicative media between the biological and technological, Plants by Numbers opens up new potential areas of research whilst producing new ethical-political engagements. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Michigan.
In this book, well-known scholars describe new and exciting approaches to aesthetics, creativity and psychology of the arts, approaching these topics from a point of view that is biological or related to biology and answering new questions with new methods and theories. All known societies produce and enjoy arts such as literature, music and visual decoration or depiction. Judging from prehistoric archaeological evidence, this arose very early in human development. Furthermore, Darwin was explicit in attributing aesthetic sensitivity to lower animals. These considerations lead us to wonder whether the arts might not be evolutionarily based. Although such an evolutionary basis is not obvious on the face of it, the idea has recently elicited considerable attention. The book begins with a consideration of ten theories on the evolutionary function of specific arts such as music and literature. The theory of evolution was first drawn up in biology, but evolution is not confined to biology: genuinely evolutionary theories of sociocultural change can be formulated. That they need to be formulated is shown in several chapters that discuss regular trends in literature and scientific writings. Psychologists have recently rediscovered the obvious fact that thought and perception occur in the brain, so cognitive science moves ever closer to neuroscience. Several chapters give overviews of neurocognitive and neural network approaches to creativity and aesthetic appreciation. The book concludes with two exciting describing brain-scan research on what happens in the brain during creativity and presenting a close examination of the relationship between genetically transmitted mental disorder and creativity.
0-06-430231-8 the Methodologies of Art: an Introduction 0-8133-3429-2 Key Monuments of the Italian Renaissance 0-8133-3430-6 Key Monuments of the Baroque 0-8133-3691-0 Italian Renaissance Art
What is it like to be an artist? Drawing on interviews with professional artists, this book takes the reader inside the creative process. The author, an artist and a psychotherapist, uses psychoanalytic theory to shed light on fundamental questions such as the origin of new ideas and the artist's state of mind while working. Based on interviews with 33 professional artists, who reflect on their experiences of creating new works of art, as well as her own artistic practice, Patricia Townsend traces the trajectory of the creative process from the artist's first inkling or 'pre-sense', through to the completion of a work, and its release to the public. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, particularly the work of Donald Winnicott, Marion Milner and Christopher Bollas, the book presents the artist's process as a series of interconnected and overlapping stages, in which there is a movement between the artist's inner world, the outer world of shared 'reality', and the spaces in-between. Creative States of Mind: Psychoanalysis and the Artist's Process fills an important gap in the psychoanalytic theory of art by offering an account of the full trajectory of the artist's process based on the evidence of artists themselves. It will be useful to artists who want to understand more about their own processes, to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in their clinical work, and to anyone who studies the creative process.
Decode the secrets and uncover the origins and meanings of over 2,000 signs and symbols, from ancient hieroglyphs to modern-day logos. Why is a heart pierced by an arrow a classic symbol of love? What are the ancient roots of fertility symbols? Why are scales a symbol of justice? Delve into the meaning of each symbol and investigate how they have been interpreted in myth, religion, folklore, and art over time, with authoritative text from experts in the field and striking line drawings and photography that emphasize the visual strength and beauty of signs. Divided into six thematic sections - the cosmos, the natural world, human life, myths and religions, society and culture, and symbol systems - this guide to the secret language of signs and symbols is a must-have for those who want to understand the world around them.
By paying tribute to matter, materiality and materialisation, the examples of contemporary art assembled in What's Next? Eco Materialism and Contemporary Art challenge the social, cultural and ethical norms that prevailed in the twentieth century. This significant frontier of contemporary culture is identified as Eco Materialism because it affirms the emergent philosophy of Neo Materialism and attends to the pragmatic urgency of environmentalism. In this highly original book, Linda Weintraub surveys the work of 40 international artists who present materiality as a strategy to convert society's environmental neglect into responsible stewardship. These bold art initiatives, enriched by their associations with philosophy, ecology and cultural critique, bear the hallmark of a significant new art movement. This accessible text, written for students and a wider readership, is augmented with interactive opportunities that actuate eco material attitudes and behaviours. They invite readers to engage in this timely arena of contemporary art. Printed in high quality black and white throughout, colour reproductions of the artworks discussed are available to view through the author's website.
In the digital age, photography confronts its future under the competing signs of ubiquity and obsolescence. While technology allows amateurs and experts alike to create high-quality photographs, new electronic formats have severed the photochemical link between image and subject. At the same time, cinematic, staged, or digitally enhanced art styles stretch the concept of photography and raise questions about its truth value. Despite this ambiguity, photography remains a stubbornly substantive form of evidence. Referenced by artists, filmmakers, and writers as a powerful emblem of truth, photography has found its home in other media at the moment of its own material demise. By examining the medium as articulated in literature, film, and the graphic novel, Daguerreotypes demonstrates how photography secures identity for figures with an unstable sense of self. From Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz to Alison Bechdel's Fun Home - we find traces of these "fugitive subjects" throughout contemporary culture. Ultimately, Daguerreotypes reveals how the photograph has inspired a range of modern artistic and critical practices.
First published in 1983. This anthology of sixty-nine essays drawn from fourteen different journals was assembled in order to reproduce in convenient form some of the more important articles on British painting published from 1849 to 1860 in Great Britain. Reviews of major exhibitions form a large part of the collection, but essays treating individual artists, discussions of the effect of state patronage of the arts and attempts to assess the uniqueness of the English tradition of painting are also included. This title will be of great interest to students of Art History. |
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