How do we experience disaster films in cinema? And where does disaster cinema come from? The two questions are more closely related than one might initially think. For the framework of the cinematic experience of natural disasters has its roots in the mid-eighteenth century when the aesthetic category of the sublime was re-established as the primary mode for appreciating nature's violent forces. In this book, the sublime is understood as a complex and culturally specific meeting point between philosophical thought, artistic creation, social and technical development, and popular imagination. On the one hand, the sublime provides a receptive model to uncover how cinematic disaster depictions affect our senses, bodies and minds. On the other hand, this experiential framework of disaster cinema is only one of the most recent agents within the historical trajectory of sublime disasters, which is traced in this book among a broad range of media: from landscape and history painting to a variety of pictorial devices like Eidophusikon, Panorama, Diorama, and, finally, cinema.

Filling a critical gap in Vienna 1900 studies, this book offers a new reading of fin-de-siecle culture in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy by looking at the unusual and widespread preoccupation with embroidery, fabrics, clothing, and fashion - both literally and metaphorically. The author resurrects lesser known critics, practitioners, and curators from obscurity, while also discussing the textile interests of better known figures, notably Gottfried Semper and Alois Riegl. Spanning the 50-year life of the Dual Monarchy, this study uncovers new territory in the history of art history, insists on the crucial place of women within modernism, and broadens the cultural history of Habsburg Central Europe by revealing the complex relationships among art history, women, and Austria-Hungary. Rebecca Houze surveys a wide range of materials, from craft and folk art to industrial design, and includes overlooked sources-from fashion magazines to World's Fair maps, from exhibition catalogues to museum lectures, from feminist journals to ethnographic collections. Restoring women to their place at the intersection of intellectual and artistic debates of the time, this book weaves together discourses of the academic, scientific, and commercial design communities with middle-class life as expressed through popular culture.

"Art and Illusion" is a classic study of image-making. It seeks to answer a simple question: why is there such a thing as style? The question may be simple but there is no easy answer, and Professor Gombrich's wide-ranging exploration of the history and psychology of pictorial representation leads him into many important areas. He examines, questions and re-evaluates old and new ideas on the imitation of nature, the function of tradition, the problem of abstraction, the validity of perspective and the interpretation of expression, all of which reveal that pictorial representation is far from being a straightforward matter. First published in the 1960s, the text applies the findings of experimental science to the understanding of art and in tackling complex ideas and theoretical issues, Gombrich is rigorous; yet he always retains a sense of wonder at the inexhaustible capacity of the human brain, and at the subtlety of the relationships involved in seeing the world and in making and seeing art. With deep knowledge and his exceptional gift for clear exposition, he advances arguments as hypotheses to be tested. The problems of representation are fundamental to the history of art and t

'Incisive and provocative ... a sensitive and probing critique' The New York Times 'Essential reading ... gripping, inspirational, beautifully written and highly thought-provoking' Dr Helen Gorrill, author of Women Can't Paint A bold reconsideration of women in art - from the 'Old Masters' to the posts of Instagram influencers A perfect pin-up, a damsel in distress, a saintly mother, a femme fatale ... Women's identity has long been stifled by a limited set of archetypes, found everywhere in pictures from art history's classics to advertising, while women artists have been overlooked and held back from shaping more empowering roles. In this impassioned book, art historian Catherine McCormack asks us to look again at what these images have told us to value, opening up our most loved images - from those of Titian and Botticelli to Picasso and the Pre-Raphaelites. She also shows us how women artists - from Berthe Morisot to Beyonce, Judy Chicago to Kara Walker - have offered us new ways of thinking about women's identity, sexuality, race and power. Women in the Picture gives us new ways of seeing the art of the past and the familiar images of today so that we might free women from these restrictive roles and embrace the breadth of women's vision. 'A call to arms in a world where the misogyny that taints much of the western art canon is still largely ignored' Financial Times 'It felt like the scales were falling from my eyes as I read it.' The Herald

Imaginarium: The Process Behind the Pictures is a compendium of practical advice and information covering the photographic process--from idea cultivation through execution. The guidance in this book is written with an understanding of the nature of artists at their core and explores the science of how ideas are born, the conditions that facilitate the productive creation of art, and the elements necessary to make creative work. This compendium is applicable across genres, for individual artists and for those working in a commercial capacity. It brings together strategies and tools to help readers generate compelling ideas and create unique images. From the simplest idea to the most fantastical, you will learn brainstorming, concept development, pre-visualization, pre-production, problem solving, and execution steps in the creative process, including practical tools and ideas for overcoming obstacles and achieving success along the way. Contributors: Beth Taubner Mercurylab Alessia Glaviano Vogue Italia Rebecca Manson The Post Office Interviews with: Maggie Steber, Roger Ballen, Sara Lando, Gabriela Iancu, Robin Schwartz, and Eleanor Macnair *** Imaginarium: The Process Behind the Pictures Table of Contents 1: ON ART The Purpose of Art Strong Images Development of an Artist Goals for Making Work Chapter Wrap-Up 2: ARTISTIC LIFESTYLE The Foundation Curation of Experiences Tapping into the Unconscious Creative Psychology Health Nurturing Creativity Community of Artists Chapter Wrap-Up 3: TIME MANAGEMENT Motion Versus Progress Productivity Motivation Work That Fits into Your Life Chapter Wrap-Up 4: PREVISUALIZATION Concept Generation Triggers Divergent Thinking Free Association Brainstorming Mind Mapping Mood Boards Previsualization Concept Development Chapter Wrap-Up 5: PRODUCTION Pre-Production Resources and Research Building a Team Plan B, C, and D On Set Checklist Best Practices Editing Post-Production Chapter Wrap-Up 6: THE VIEWER EXPERIENCE The Viewer Experience Presentation Considerations Critique and Feedback Series and Long-Term Projects Assignments/Commissions Body of Work: What We Leave Behind Chapter Wrap-Up Conclusion Artist Interviews

The second edition of Why Art Photography? is an updated, expanded introduction to the ideas behind today's striking photographic images. Lively, accessible discussions of key issues such as ambiguity, objectivity, fiction, authenticity, and photography's expanding field are supplemented with new material around timely topics such as globalization, selfie culture, and photographers' use of advanced digital technologies, including CGI and virtual reality. The new edition includes: an expanded introduction extended chapters featuring emerging trends a larger selection of images, including new color images an improved and expanded bibliography. This new edition is essential for students looking to enrich their understanding of photography as a complex and multi-faceted art form.

In this wide-ranging book, renowned philosopher and cultural theorist Peter Sloterdijk examines art in all its rich and varied forms: from music to architecture, light to movement, and design to typography. Moving between the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, his analyses span the centuries, from ancient civilizations to contemporary Hollywood. With great verve and insight he considers the key issues that have faced thinkers from Aristotle to Adorno, looking at art in its relation to ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, society, politics, anthropology and the subject. Sloterdijk explores a great variety of topics, including the Greek-Roman invention of postcards, medieval barter with purgatory and relics, the capitalist art market, the black boxes and white cubes of modernism, the rise of world's fairs in the 19th century, the growth of museum and memorial culture, images of the city and the role of creativity. In doing so, Sloterdijk extends his characteristic method of defamiliarisation to transform the way we look at works of art and movements. His bold and original approach leads us away from the well-trodden paths of conventional art history to develop a theory of aesthetics which rejects strict categorisation, emphasising instead the crucial importance of individual subjectivity as a counter to the latent dangers of collective culture. This sustained collection of reflections, at once playful, serious and provocative, goes to the very heart of Sloterdijk's enduring philosophical preoccupation with the aesthetic. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy and aesthetics and will appeal to anyone interested in culture and the arts more generally.

How do our senses help us to understand the world? This question, which preoccupied Enlightenment thinkers in Western Europe, also emerged as a key theme in depictions of animals in eighteenth-century art. This book examines the ways in which painters, sculptors, porcelain modelers, and other decorative designers portrayed animals as sensing subjects who physically confirmed the value of material experience. The independent agency of animals with their own right to free existence, a topic of growing urgency in our own era, emerges in striking and often surprising ways within this early nexus of artistic experimentation. The sensual style known today as the Rococo encouraged the proliferation of animals as exemplars of empirical inquiry in the eighteenth century, ranging from the popular subject of the monkey artist to the alchemical wonders of the life-sized porcelain animals created for the Saxon court. Examining writings on sensory knowledge by La Mettre, Condillac, Diderot and other philosophers side by side with depictions of the animal in art, Cohen argues that artists promoted the animal as a sensory, thinking subject while also validating the material basis of their own professional practice.

The Clever Object presents a multidisciplinary exploration of the ways objects materialise, embody, or negotiate various forms of intelligence, revealing its use as an analytic tool of art-historical interpretation. * Presents an original theory ( the clever object ) that draws on contributions from a variety of fields, including history of art, anthropology, philosophy of science, and design history * Features interviews with two contemporary artists * Advances a theoretical conversation by combining historical contributions (from medieval/early modern) with contemporary perspectives * Represents the results of a project developed from an intensive research seminar in which all contributors participated and developed their work in evolving dialogue

Arts Reviewing: A Practical Guide is an accessible introduction to the world of arts criticism. Drawing on professional expertise and a range of cultural reviews from music, film, theatre, visual arts, television and books, Andy Plaice discusses different approaches to arts criticism, with tips on crafting great reviews. Chapters explore: * a brief history of arts criticism; * researching and preparing for an assignment; * legal and ethical boundaries when reviewing; * finding your own writing style; * starting and sustaining a career in arts criticism in the digital age. The book is underpinned by over 20 interviews with leading practitioners from across Britain, America and Australia. They offer fascinating insights into the life of a critic, including their best and worst career moments and the debates impacting the field of arts criticism. Interviewees include Neil McCormick, rock critic at the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian theatre critic Lyn Gardner and television critic Mark Lawson (BBC/ the Guardian). New approaches to reviewing techniques and writing style are combined with real-world advice from leading professionals in the field, making this book an ideal resource for students and graduates of journalism, cultural studies and media studies.

"On Curating," Carolee Thea's second volume of interviews with ten of today's leading curators, explores the intellectual convictions and personal visions that lay the groundwork for the most prestigious and influential exhibitions in the world today. Among the aesthetic and theoretical issues raised are the relationship between artist and curator, globalism, post-colonialism, capitalism, the future of cultural tourism and the biennial as spectacle or utopian ideal. As Thea notes in her introduction, "the biennial or mega-exhibition--a laboratory for experimentation, investigation and aesthetic liberation--is where the curators' experience and knowledge are tested. As they negotiate venues for artistic expression, intellectual critiques and humanistic concerns in their own societies and others, they are challenged by the certainties and uncertainties of a constantly evolving future." Thea's interviewees are Joseph Backstein, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Okwui Enwezor, Charles Esche, Massimiliano Gioni, RoseLee Goldberg, Mary Jane Jacob, Pi Li, Virginia Perez-Ratton and Rirkrit Tiravanija. "On Curating" also includes 50 color illustrations of relevant works by (among others) Kutlug Ataman, Tamy Ben-Tor, John Bock, Cao Fei, Olafur Eliasson, Isaac Julien, Francois & Philippe Parreno, Yvonne Rainer, Michael Rakowitz, Doris Salcedo, Allan Sekula, Yinka Shonibare and Francesca Woodman.
Carolee Thea is a curator, critic, art historian and independent scholar. Her first book, "Foci: Interviews with Ten International Curators" was published in 2001. She is contributing editor at "ArtAsiaPacific" and "Sculpture" magazine and was the English editor of "Atlantica" 45. Her articles, reviews and interviews have been published in many arts journals, among them "Parkett, " Artforum.com, " The New Art Examiner, Modern Painters, " Artnet.com, "ZSijue 21 Beijing, Heresies, Tema Celeste, Parachute" and "ArtNews."

The 2021 Capitol Hill Riot marked a watershed moment when the 'old world' of factbased systems of representation was briefly overwhelmed by the emerging hyper-individual politics of aestheticized emotion. In The Trump Effect in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, Kit Messham-Muir and Uros Cvoro analyse the aesthetics that have emerged at the core of 21st-century politics, and which erupted at the US Capitol in January 2021. Looking at this event's aesthetic dimensions through such aspects as QAnon, white resentment and strongman authoritarianism, they examine the world-wide historical trends towards ethno-nationalism and populism that emerged following the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the dawning of the current post-ideological age. Building on their ground-breaking research into how trauma, emotion and empathy have become well-worn tropes in contemporary art informed by conflict, Messham-Muir and Cvoro go further by highlighting the ways in which art can actively disrupt an underlying drift in society towards white supremacism and ultranationalism. Utilising their outsiders' perspective on a so-called American phenomenon, and rejecting American exceptionalism, their theorising of the 'Trump Effect' rejects the idea of Trump as a political aberration, but as a symptom of deeper and longer-term philosophical shifts in global politics and society. As theorists of contemporary art and visual culture, Messham-Muir and Cvoro explore the ways in which these features of the Trump Effect operate through aesthetics, in the intersection of politics and contemporary art, and provide valuable insight into the current political context.

With the sustained, coherent perspective of an authored text and the diverse, authoritative views typical of an anthology, "Philosophy of Art: Aesthetic Theory and Practice "by David Boersema provides the context and commentary students need to comprehend the various issues in philosophy of art. Throughout the book, issues are examined using the lenses of the three broad areas of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory. That is, concerns are raised about what is expressed, how it is expressed, and why it is expressed. Chapters on the artist, the audience, and the artwork further break down the discipline and are applied to the final chapters on the specific types of art. The differences between art and science as well as the relationship of art and society provide a refreshing discussion of overlooked areas in philosophy of art.

One of the most extraordinary artists associated with the Bauhaus school, Herbert Bayer united graphic design, art and architecture in an uncompromising artistic vision that came to represent the bold aesthetic approach of the movement. A teacher with the school until 1928, Bayer went on to become a highly successful graphic designer in Germany, and later one of the most prominent figures in the 20th-century art scene of the United States. This broad biographical account, which presents previously unseen archival photographs and episodes from the life of Bayer and other influential Bauhaus artists such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, follows Bayer through the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and finally to his exile in the United States. Specifically, Patrick Roessler reveals for the first time Bayer's unique experience of 1930s Germany, where, with his commercial and artistic life shattered by terror and censorship, he distracted himself with leading a hedonistic life. Shining a light on Bayer's time in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, and his route out of the Nazi state, Roessler provides rich new insights into how Bauhaus artists navigated a protracted period of social upheaval and dictatorship, where commercial success was fraught with a deep hostility towards the regime and the temptations of emigration. Revealing the tensions of an avant-garde artist struggling to practice during a period of repression, Herbert Bayer, Graphic Designer speaks to both the memory of those who left Nazi Germany, but also the perseverance of artists and intellectuals throughout history who have worked under authoritarian regimes. Drawing on never before interpreted documents, letters and archival material, Roessler tells Bayer's compelling story - documenting the life of a unique artist and offering a valuable contribution to research in emigre experiences.

In this wide-ranging and challenging book, David Davies elaborates and defends a broad conceptual framework for thinking about the arts that reveals important continuities and discontinuities between traditional and modern art, and between different artistic disciplines. The centerpiece is a novel and provocative view about the kinds of things that artworks are, with important consequences for how they are to be understood.

Beginning with a lively discussion of the difficulties that audiences experience in their attempts to grasp and appreciate much modern and contemporary art, Davies continues with illuminating considerations of important and influential works from a broad range of artistic media - including painting, music, literature, film, performance, and dance - steadily mounting a bold and persuasive theory of the arts which construes artworks as performances. Replete with examples drawn from both modern and traditional art, the book highlights core topics in aesthetics and art theory, including traditional theories about the nature of art, aesthetic appreciation, artistic intentions, performance, and artistic meaning.

Encounters Beyond the Gallery challenges the terms of their exclusion, looking to relational art, Deleuze-Guattarean aesthetics and notions of perception, as well as anthropological theory for ways to create connections between seemingly disparate worlds. Embracing a unique and experimental format, the book imagines encounters between the art works and art worlds of Rirkrit Tiravanija, Tamil women, the Shipibo-Conibo of Eastern Peru and a fictional female contemporary artist named Rikki T, in order to rethink normative aesthetic and cultural categories. Its method reflects the message of the book, and embraces a plurality of voices and perspectives to steer critical attention towards the complexity of artistic life beyond the gallery.

Italian futurism visualized diverse types of motion, which had been rooted in pervasive kinetic and vehicular forces generated during a period of dramatic modernization in the early 20th century. Yet, as David Mather's sweeping intellectual and art historical scholarship demonstrates, it was the camera-not the engine-that proved to be the primary invention against which many futurist ideas and practices were measured. Overturning several misconceptions about Italian futurism's interest in the disruptive and destructive effects of technology, Futurist Conditions provides a refreshing update to the historical narrative by arguing that the formal and conceptual approaches by futurist visual artists reoriented the possibly dehumanizing effects of mechanized imagery toward more humanizing, spiritual aims. Through its sustained analysis of the artworks and writings of Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, and the Bragaglia brothers, dating to the first decade after the movement's founding in 1909, Mather's account of their obsession with kinetic motion pivots around a 1913 debate on the place and relative import of photography among traditional artistic mediums-a debate culminating in the expulsion of the Bragaglias, but one that also prompted a range of productive responses by other futurist artists to world-changing social, political, and economic conditions.

Whose Truth, Whose Creativity? is an expert analysis of both neuroscience and art theory - this new book delves into the source of all art and creativity, from ancient cave paintings to contemporary art masterpieces. It explores why postmodern art theory has had a damaging impact on the art world and explains how neuroscience can prove this. Does talent spring, as Paul Cezanne would have you believe, from our unconscious mind? Or does it, as Marcel Duchamp theorized, come from our consciousness? Cognitive neuroscientific psychology, a fairly new field of psychology explains a natural, mental basis for human creativity. One of the intentions of this book is to expose-in no uncertain terms-the many falsehoods and distortions of postmodern reasoning and to demonstrate how, by following this disturbing, unnatural direction for decades, the art establishment has been responsible for initiating an era of cultural chaos.