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Books > Arts & Architecture > The arts: general issues > Theory of art
To what extent have developments in global politics, artworld
institutions and local cultures reshaped the critical directions of
feminist art historians? The significant research gathered in
Feminism and Art History Now engages with the rich inheritance of
feminist historiography since around 1970, and considers how to
maintain the forcefulness of its critique while addressing
contemporary political struggles. Taking on subjects that reflect
the museological, global and materialist trajectories of
21st-century art historical scholarship, the chapters address the
themes of Invisibility, Temporality, Spatiality and Storytelling.
They present new research on a diversity of topics that span
political movements in Italy, urban gentrification in New York,
community art projects in Scotland and Canada's contemporary
indigenous culture. Case studies focus on the art of Lee Krasner,
The Emily Davison Lodge, Zoe Leonard, Martha Rosler, Carla Lonzi
and Womanhouse. Together with a synthesising introductory essay,
these case studies provide readers with a view of feminist art
histories of the past, present and future.
Dominic McIver Lopes articulates and defends a 'buck passing theory
of art', namely that a work of art is nothing but a work in one of
the arts. Having traced philosophical interest in theories of art
to a reaction to certain puzzle cases of avant-garde art, he argues
that none of the theories that have dominated philosophy since the
1960s adequately copes with these works. Whereas these theories
have reached a dialectical impasse wherein they reiterate, and
cannot resolve, disagreement over the puzzle cases, the buck
passing theory illuminates the radical provocations of avant-garde
art. In addition, when supplemented by a systematic framework for
crafting theories of the individual arts, the buck passing theory
grounds our empirical inquiries into the arts as well as our
practices of appreciation and art criticism. Lopes seeks to model
the diverse strategies employed by humanists and social and
behavioural scientists who study the different arts. He gives the
specificity of each art form a central role in our appreciative
endeavours, and yet he stresses the continuity of the arts with
similar, non-art activities such as fashion design, sports and
games, cuisine, nature appreciation, and non-literary writing.
When these essays first appeared in Artforum in 1976, their impact
was immediate. They were discussed, annotated, cited, collected,
and translated-the three issues of Artforum in which they appeared
have become nearly impossible to obtain. Having Brian O'Doherty's
provocative essays available again is a signal event for the art
world. This edition also includes "The Gallery as Gesture," a
critically important piece published ten years after the others.
O'Doherty was the first to explicitly confront a particular crisis
in postwar art as he sought to examine the assumptions on which the
modern commercial and museum gallery was based. Concerned with the
complex and sophisticated relationship between economics, social
context, and aesthetics as represented in the contested space of
the art gallery, he raises the question of how artists must
construe their work in relation to the gallery space and system.
These essays are essential reading for anyone interested in the
history and issues of postwar art in Europe and the United States.
Teeming with ideas, relentless in their pursuit of contradiction
and paradox, they exhibit both the understanding of the artist
(Patrick Ireland) and the precision of the scholar. With an
introduction by Thomas McEvilley and a brilliantly cogent afterword
by its author, Brian O'Doherty once again leads us on the perilous
journey to center to the art world: Inside the White Cube.
Interdisciplinary educational turn The challenges of a complex and
volatile world require solutions that reconcile divergent
perspectives and interests. In schools, interdisciplinarity has
been integrated within curricula for decades, yet it is rarely
applied as a collaborative practice. Communication between
different fields of research is not enough. Without meaningful
collaboration, opportunities to connect are lost, and teachers and
students fail to benefit from the experience of lived
interdisciplinarity. A new periodical, entitled EDU:TRANSVERSAL,
presents the latest findings of national and international
transversal research as well as the state of the art of
interdisciplinarity in didactics. The aim of this annual
publication is to stimulate a transversal turn in education. The
first issue of a new periodical of transversal research in
education New national and international interdisciplinary research
on didactics With contributions by Christine Kunzli David, Anna
Maria Loffredo, Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, and others
Molly Bang's brilliant, insightful, and accessible treatise is now
revised and expanded for its 25th anniversary. Bang's powerful
ideas remain unparalleled in their simplicity and genius: Explore
the intricate and thought-provoking ideas that Bang brings to
Picture This including thoughts about how the visual composition of
images works to engage the emotions, and how the elements of an
artwork can give it the power to tell a story. Why are diagonals
dramatic? Why are curves calming? Why does red feel hot and blue
feel cold? She asks the right questions to get your wheels turning
while the illustrations and thoughtful designs bring the words to
life. * Explores the mix of geometrical abstraction and emotional
expressions, plus how a few clear principles can be used to build
powerful visual statements. * Encourages you to answer the
question, "How does the structure of a picture-or any visual art
form-affect our emotional response?" * Includes powerful imagery
and beautiful illustrations to help readers feel connected to the
text. First published in 1991, Picture This has changed the way
artists, illustrators, reviewers, critics, and readers look at and
understand art. Molly Bang has authored and illustrated more than
three dozen books and has won three Caldecott Honors, a Kate
Greenaway Honor, and a Charlotte Zolotow Award, among other
accolades, in her long career as a writer and artist. Picture This
makes an imaginative and inspiring gift for any artist or loved one
who is interested in design.
Contemporary art is obsessed with the politics of identity. Visit
any contemporary gallery, museum or theatre, and chances are the
art on offer will be principally concerned with race, gender,
sexuality, power and privilege.The quest for truth, freedom and the
sacred has been thrust aside to make room for identity politics.
Mystery, individuality and beauty are out; radical feminism, racial
grievance and queer theory are in. The result is a drearily
predictable culture and the narrowing of the space for creative
self-expression and honest criticism.Sohrab Ahmari's book is a
passionate cri de coeur against this state of affairs. The New
Philistines takes readers deep inside a cultural scene where all
manner of ugly, inept art is celebrated so long as it toes the
ideological line, and where the artistic glories of the Western
world are revised and disfigured to fit the rigid doctrines of
identity politics.The degree of politicisation means that art no
longer performs its historical function, as a mirror and repository
of the human spirit - something that should alarm not just art
lovers but anyone who cares about the future of liberal
civilisation.
In Six Years Lucy R. Lippard documents the chaotic network of ideas
that has been labeled conceptual art. The book is arranged as an
annotated chronology, into which is woven a rich collection of
original documents including texts by and taped discussions among
and with the artists involved and by Lippard, who has also provided
a new preface for this edition. The result is a book with the
character of a lively contemporary forum that provides an
invaluable record of the thinking of the artists - an historical
survey and essential reference book for the period.
On the toxicity of the immediate What changes when we religiously
worship the toxic? In this era of catastrophe, can a cosmic
connection be achieved through a cult of pollution? Toxic Temple is
an artistic-philosophical quest to understand the current parlous
state of the world. We offer our inner contradictions and
destructive lusts as objects of worship. We enter wastelands
instead of new territory, leaving space for artifacts, expressing
solidarity with the factual. We encounter colorful assemblages of
things that connect the known cosmos, tread the shaky ground of
novel divinity, inhale pungent odors that transport us to the
sublime. Garbage dumps are the new temples. In a mania of sadistic
composure we breathe in the here and now. Transformative forces are
released, free radicals; rituals that expose the chaos that lurks
beneath the surface. New transdisciplinary ecosophical approaches
Multimedia art project with comprehensive documentation and
numerous illustrations With contributions by Julieta Aranda,
Heather Davis, Elisabeth Falkensteiner, and Julia Grillmayr, among
others
The authors show how the idea of art has developed in the last
5,000 years and how we have reached the point we are at now. They
provide a complete survey of all of the aesthetic, historical and
practical questions that surround the idea of art.
For decades, aesthetics has been subjected to a variety of
critiques, often concerning its treatment of beauty or the autonomy
of art. Collectively, these complaints have generated an
anti-aesthetic stance prevalent in the contemporary art world. Yet
if we examine the motivations for these critiques, Michael Kelly
argues, we find theorists and artists hungering for a new kind of
aesthetics, one better calibrated to contemporary art and its moral
and political demands. Following an analysis of the work of Stanley
Cavell, Arthur Danto, Umberto Eco, Susan Sontag, and other
philosophers of the 1960s who made aesthetics more responsive to
contemporary art, Kelly considers Sontag's aesthetics in greater
detail. In On Photography (1977), she argues that a photograph of a
person who is suffering only aestheticizes the suffering for the
viewer's pleasure, yet she insists in Regarding the Pain of Others
(2003) that such a photograph can have a sustainable
moral-political effect precisely because of its aesthetics. Kelly
considers this dramatic change to be symptomatic of a cultural
shift in our understanding of aesthetics, ethics, and politics. He
discusses these issues in connection with Gerhard Richter's and
Doris Salcedo's art, chosen because it is often identified with the
anti-aesthetic, even though it is clearly aesthetic. Focusing first
on Richter's Baader-Meinhof series, Kelly concludes with Salcedo's
enactments of suffering caused by social injustice. Throughout A
Hunger for Aesthetics, he reveals the place of critique in
contemporary art, which, if we understand aesthetics as critique,
confirms that it is integral to art. Meeting the demand for
aesthetics voiced by many who participate in art, Kelly advocates
for a critical aesthetics that confirms the power of art.
There exists a series of contemporary artists who continually defy
the traditional role of the artist/author, including Art &
Language, Guerrilla Girls, Bob and Roberta Smith, Marvin Gaye
Chetwynd and Lucky PDF. In Death of the Artist, Nicola McCartney
explores their work and uses previously unpublished interviews to
provoke a vital and nuanced discussion about contemporary artistic
authorship. How do emerging artists navigate intellectual property
or work collectively and share the recognition? How might a
pseudonym aid 'artivism'? Most strikingly, she demonstrates how an
alternative identity can challenge the art market and is
symptomatic of greater cultural and political rebellion. As such,
this book exposes the art world's financially incentivised
infrastructures, but also examines how they might be reshaped from
within. In an age of cuts to arts funding and forced
self-promotion, this offers an important analysis of the pressing
need for the artistic community to construct new ways to reinvent
itself and incite fresh responses to its work.
`Eco' awareness has had an enormous impact across all cultural and
political spectrums, not least in the art world. This accessible
and thought-provoking book is the first in-depth exploration of the
ways in which contemporary artists are confronting nature, the
environment, climate change and ecology. Organized into six
chapters, the book moves through the various levels of artists'
engagement, from those who act as independent commentators,
documenting and reflecting on nature, to those who use the physical
environment as the raw material for their art, and those committed
activists who set out to make art that transforms both our
attitudes and our habits. More than 300 illustrations feature the
work of 95 artists and art collectives from all over the world,
including The Artist as Family, Nyaba Leon Ouedraogo, Yao Lu, Tue
Greenfort, Eva Jospin, Ravi Agarwal, Nadav Kander, Naoya
Hatakeyama, Tattfoo Tan, Berndnaut Smilde, Simon Starling, and
Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla.
Repressive Regimes, Aesthetic States, and Arts of Resistance
investigates the tensions between politics and aesthetics by
exploring the ways in which various "arts" are mobilized in the
service of political repression and human emancipation. Building
upon theories of the arts/politics and aesthetics/states relation,
the book utilizes illuminating historical case studies to reveal
the roles public arts have played in the construction of different
types of "aesthetic" states: in ancient Rome during the transition
from Republic to Empire, in modern Europe during the transition
from feudalism to capitalism, and in the postmodern United States
under the conditions of advanced capitalism. After comparing
theories to practices of statecraft, the book goes on to explore
contemporary arts of resistance against corrupt corporate practices
and repressive political regimes. In light of these examples, it
becomes evident there is an ongoing world-historical battle between
those who "aestheticize the political" to perpetuate repressive
regimes and those who "politicize the aesthetic" to make states
less repressed and peoples more reasonable.
A provocative account of the philosophical problem of 'difference'
in art history, Tintoretto's Difference offers a new reading of
this pioneering 16th century painter, drawing upon the work of the
20th century philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Bringing together
philosophical, art historical, art theoretical and art
historiographical analysis, it is the first book-length study in
English of Tintoretto for nearly two decades and the first in-depth
exploration of the implications of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy for
the understanding of early modern art and for the discipline of art
history. With a focus on Deleuze's important concept of the
diagram, Tintoretto's Difference positions the artist's work within
a critical study of both art history's methods, concepts and modes
of thought, and some of the fundamental dimensions of its scholarly
practice: context, tradition, influence, and fact. Indicating
potentials of the diagrammatic for art historical thinking across
the registers of semiotics, aesthetics, and time, Tintoretto's
Difference offers at once an innovative study of this seminal
artist, an elaboration of Deleuze's philosophy of the diagram, and
a new avenue for a philosophical art history.
From the first page to the last, from Thomas Kinkaid (really ) to
Matthew Barney, this book serves as a launching pad. Conclusions
are perpetually delayed. Resolutions are continually postponed. The
text is written for takeoff, not arrival. It is a first step for
readers' explorations of current modes of art making and for their
own future artistic achievements. The much-anticipated follow-up to
"Art on the Edge... and Over," Linda Weintraub's highly accessible
introduction to contemporary art since the 1970s, "In the Making:
Creative Options for Contemporary Art" explores essential but
sometimes elusive facets of art making today. In her trademark
writing style--straightforward and jargon-free--Weintraub sets out
to itemize the conceptual and practical concerns that go into
making contemporary art in all its endless permutations. In six
clearly defined thematic sections--"Scoping an Audience," "Sourcing
Inspiration," "Crafting an Artistic 'Self'," "Expressing an
Artistic Attitude," "Choosing a Mission," and "Measuring
Success"--Weintraub moves artist by artist, in 40 individual
chapters, using each to explain a different aspect of art making.
Isaac Julien makes work for a highly specific audience; Michal
Rovner communicates through metaphor and symbol; Charles Ray
disrupts the viewer's assumptions; Pipilotti Rist is inspired by
female emotions; William Kentridge is moved by apartheid and
redemption; Vanessa Beecroft epitomizes the biography of a smart,
attractive, Caucasian woman; and Matthew Barney achieves success
through resistance. Through a compelling combination of renowned
and up-and-coming artists, Weintraub creates a complex
understanding of how to make and look at contemporary art--but in a
simple, easily digestible format and language.
In addition to being a fine read for anyone who simply wants to
understand how to look at contemporary art, "In the Making" is also
an exceptional pedagogical tool, one that addresses what is fast
becoming a huge gap in art education. Teaching artistic techniques
no longer provides young artists with a sufficient education--a
full range of conceptual issues needs to be considered in any
well-rounded studio practice. Yet these very same conceptual issues
are often those that are dealt with textually in art history and
criticism classes. Weintraub persuasively offers a series of texts
that fit squarely into this gap, addressing issues that concern
anyone who is learning how to make art or how to understand
it.
In addition, "In the Making" includes a series of interviews in
which many of the artists discuss the practical issues of their
life's work. Conducted by Weintraub's students at Oberlin College,
the interviews pose questions about the artists' schooling, their
studio space, and how they support themselves if their main income
doesn't come from their art--the kind of questions every art
student has always wanted to ask the artists whose work they see on
gallery walls.
In May 2008, five temporary art events by artists Alastair
MacLennan, Maura Hazelden, Simon Whitehead, Anna Lucas and Yvonne
Buchheim, took place in public spaces in Cardigan exploring themes
of ritual, community and place. Holy Hiatus sought to examine the
ways that artists can draw audiences into different, often
unexpected experiences of place through ritual. The temporary,
mobile and in some cases, understated nature of the works meant
that the impact was often subtle, but the artworks nonetheless
created a ripple of effect for audiences, leading witnesses to
wonder what they had just seen and to what extent had they
knowingly, or unknowingly, participated in it? The book also offers
a contextual framework for the project within a field of cultural
theory that ranges from contemporary art to anthropology, sociology
and religious studies
Common challenges and practical solutions for practicing open-ended
art in early childhood classrooms. Open-ended art is defined as art
activity where children are free to use their imagination as they
explore a variety of materials without a planned outcome. When
teachers embrace open-ended art, they emphasize the process of
creating and observe the developmental growth being experienced by
the children. Open-ended art provides children an important
opportunity to think about, feel, and express ideas. It allows
teachers to slow down the pace of the day and appreciate the beauty
that comes from simple experimentation with art materials. There
are many books available to educators that include art ideas and
projects, but Open-Ended Art for Young Children goes beyond the
basics to highlight why the field of early childhood education
advocates for open-ended art and explains how to adapt to new ways
of thinking about art. Authors Dr. Tracy Galuski and Dr. Mary Ellen
Bardsley present, chapter by chapter, the challenges teachers
encounter when faced with best practices and expectations related
art process and product. Each chapter begins with a classroom
vignette that describes the challenge, followed by a plethora of
solutions grounded in research and illustrated through practical
examples. Each chapter includes full-color pictures and photos and
ends with an activity or investigation for reflection.
Why are visual artworks experienced as having intrinsic
significance or normative depth? Why are some works of art better
able to manifest this significance than others? In this 2002 book
Paul Crowther argues that we can answer these questions only if we
have a full analytic definition of visual art. Crowther's approach
focuses on the pictorial image, broadly construed to include
abstract work and recent conceptually-based idioms. The
significance of art depends, however, essentially on the
transhistorical nature of the pictorial image, the way in which its
illuminative power is extended through historical transformation of
the relevant artistic medium. Crowther argues against fashionable
forms of cultural relativism, while at the same time showing why it
is important that an appreciation of the history of art is integral
to aesthetic judgment.
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