Artists, designers and researchers are increasingly seeking new ways to understand and explore the creative and practical significance of the senses. This ground-breaking book brings art and design into the field of sensory studies providing a clear introduction to the field and outlining important developments and new directions. A compelling exploration of both theory and practice, Sensory Arts and Design brings together a wide variety of examples from contemporary art and design which share a sensory dimension in their development or user experience. Divided into three parts, the book examines the design applications of new technology with sensing capacities; the role of the senses in creating new imaginative environments; and the significance of the senses within different cultural practices. The thirteen chapters cover a highly diverse range of issues - from the urban environment, architecture and soundscapes to gustatory art, multisensory perception in painting, music and drawing, and the relationship between vision and smell. Initiated by Insight, a research group at Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts -widely recognised as a center of research excellence - the project brings together a team of experts from Britain, Europe and North America. This timely book is destined to make a significant contribution to the scholarly development of this emerging field. An important read for students and scholars in sensory studies, design, art, and visual culture.

This timely collection examines the contemporary arts as political practice, offering critical insight into some of the more controversial talking points that have shaped Singapore's identity as a nation. Focusing on the role played by contemporary arts in shaping Singapore's political landscape as the country celebrated 50 years of independence in 2015, the authors consider how politics is often perceived as that which limits the flourishing of the arts. Contending that all art is political, and that all art form is a form of political practice, this collection examines ways in which the practice of art in Singapore redraws the boundaries that conventionally separate arts from politics. It critically examines the tenuous relationship between the arts and politics and offers a timely reevaluation of the relationship between the arts and politics. In doing so, it opens a dialogue between artistic practice and political practice that reinforces the mutuality of both, rather than their exclusivity, and redefines the concept of the political to demonstrate that political involvement is not a simple matter of partisan politics, but has an inherently aesthetic dimension, and aesthetics an inherently political one.

Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, "Art as Experience" has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.

The visual arts enrich our lives in many ways: bringing innovative ideas and the pleasures of beauty and emotion, but they can also confound. How To Understand Art sets out to enhance the viewer's experience by breaking down the elements of art and sculpture to provide a firm basis for simple enjoyment as well as further investigation. With 100 visual examples drawn from across the globe, the stress is on how to assess art objectively - a key skill for any art student, museum visitor or cultural enthusiast. Janetta Rebold Benton guides the reader to re-evaluate their experiences of looking at art by learning to move beyond 'I don't know much about art, but I know what I like,' and shift towards an understanding of 'why I like it'. Materials and techniques are discussed - drawing, painting, printing, photography, sculpture and decorative art - making it possible to assess what can (and cannot) be done in certain media. The book also features a section devoted to six key artists who have had a particularly notable and innovative influence on the history of art: Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt van Rijn, Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Perfectly aimed at students and the general reader, this indispensable guide to the subject is well-placed to encourage questions and discussion, especially in the light of current debates surrounding class, ethnicity, gender and race. With 111 illustrations in colour

What light can sociology shed on art and culture in contemporary society? What is distinctive about the sociological understanding of art? In what ways is the sociology of art today developing new insights into the nature of artistic life? This volume contains essays by a wide range of authors, each of whom is concerned with showing the multiple ways in which artistic processes are profoundly shaped by their social settings. Encompassing a wide range of artistic fields, including painting, film, ballet and architecture, the book demonstrates how sociological appreciations of art and artists provide rich and stimulating alternative perspectives to conventional art criticism.

Art Line Thought discusses the main issues that beset our time and philosophy by locating these same issues in artworks and describing closely what is shown there. While respecting their differences, art and philosophy are thus made to cross back and forth into one another, delineating in fresh ways our concerns about nature, the human and non-human, the body, femininity, ecology, technology, textism, the end of history, community, postmodernism, relativism and non-Eurocentric ethics. A `philosophy of line' gathers these issues, opposing the current dominance of `word' and linguistic analyses. Art has long been aware that the line communicates meaning at least as well as the word. The volume is divided between contemporary and prehistoric art in order to reveal the presumptions of `Western' culture and how we might move beyond it. Since the book is a critique of Eurocentric thinking and prose, it works at finding new styles of both. Its philosophical meditation is directed equally to those who are intellectually interested in contemporary and prehistoric art, in theories of postmodern culture and criticism, and in anthropology.

A common lament among artists is that there are no books available that give specific, practical information about the procedures used by those creative geniuses collectively known as the Old Masters. The reason for this dearth is that such a work's author would have to possess extraordinarily wide-ranging expert knowledge and skills. Thomas Gullick's credentials indicate a great capability in taking up this challenge. He was a professional artist and scholar living in the mid-19th century, and so was in an exemplary position to discuss the intricacies of traditional techniques, and to compare modern systems to the styles and methods of previous eras. The book's exceptionally insightful combination of art history, aesthetic theory and erudite analysis made it highly regarded at the time, and it was given as a prize for outstanding achievement at the Royal College of Art in London. In this important new edition, with a newly compiled comprehensive index, Gullick authoritatively covers the aims and objectives the artist should have when interpreting reality, with stress laid on accuracy of detail, depth and transparency. Apropos of these principles, he skilfully discusses the surprisingly complex theories of art that existed in ancient times, including that of the Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans. Also, the spiritual features of Christian Medieval art are explored, as are the distinctive traits of the national schools of Italy, Germany, the Low Countries, and England. Of particular value to the working artist are the detailed sections dealing with technical issues of pre-modern forms of painting, many of which are poorly understood today, but that could, if used, greatly facilitate and expand the range of visual expression. The reader will learn about various physical processes such as encaustic, mosaic, tempera, fresco, oil and miniature painting. There is also a wealth of knowledge pertaining to implements, vehicles, varnishes, grounds, colours, subjectiles (i.e. supports), chemical formulations, the arrangement of the work-room and studio, and much more. Despite the sophisticated nature of the material, the author does not neglect the human dimension, for he cites pertinent facts, as well as witty anecdotes, from the life stories of many well-known and not so well-known artists.

Baudelaire and Photography

The relevance of painting has been questioned many times over the last century, by the arrival of photography, installation art and digital technologies. But rather than accept the death of painting, Mark Titmarsh traces a paradoxical interface between this art form and its opposing forces to define a new practice known as 'expanded painting' giving the term historical context, theoretical structure and an important place in contemporary practice. As the formal boundaries tumble, the being of painting expands to become a kind of total art incorporating all other media including sculpture, video and performance. Painting is considered from three different perspectives: ethnology, art theory and ontology. From an ethnological point of view, painting is one of any number of activities that takes place within a culture. In art theory terms, painting is understood to produce objects of interest for humanities disciplines. Yet painting as a medium often challenges both its object and image status, 'expanding' and creating hybrid works between painting, objects, screen media and text. Ontologically, painting is understood as an object of aesthetic discourse that in turn reflects historical states of being. Thus, Expanded Painting delivers a new kind of saying, a post-aesthetic discourse that is attuned to an uncanny tension between the presence and absence of painting.

How to Read Paintings is a valuable visual guide to Western European painting. Through a gallery of artworks accompanied by informative commentary, it enables readers to swiftly develop their understanding of the grammar and vocabulary of painting, and to discover how to look at diverse paintings in detail, closely reading their meanings and methods. In the first part of the book, the Grammar of Paintings, the author reveals how to read paintings by considering five key areas: shape and support, medium and materials, composition, style and technique, and signs and symbols, as well as the role of the artist. In the second part, we explore fifty paintings through extracted details, accompanied by insightful commentary, training the reader and viewer to understand context and discover meaning within art. As a collection, the pictures featured in How to Read Paintings have a strong relationship with one another, and underpin the story of painting. This book will be a valuable tool whether you are viewing the real thing on a gallery wall, or simply reading around the subject to learn more about Western art.

In this study, first published in 1979, Landow contends that Hunt's version of Pre-Raphaelitism concerned itself primarily with an elaborate system of painterly symbolism rather than with a photographic realism as has been usually supposed. Like Ruskin, Hunt believed that a symbolism based on scriptural typology - the method of finding anticipations of Christ in Hebrew history - could produce an ideal art that would solve the problems of Victorian painting. According to Hunt, this elaborate symbolism could simultaneously avoid the dangers of materialism inherent in a realistic style, the dead conventionalism of academic art, and the sentimentality of much contemporary painting. George Landow examines Hunt's work in the context of this argument and, drawing on much unknown or previously inaccessible material, shows how he used texts, frames, and symbols to create a complex art of mediation that became increasingly visionary as the artist grew older. This book is ideal for students of art history.

What is depiction? A new answer is given to this venerable question by providing a syncretistic theory of depiction that tries to combine the merits of the previous theories on the matter while dropping their defects. Thus, not only perceptual, but also both conventional and causal factors contribute in making something a picture of something else.

In this major reinterpretation of the Victorian Aesthetic Movement, Linda Dowling argues that such classic works of Victorian art writing as Ruskin's Stones of Venice or Morris's Lectures on Art or Wilde's Critic as Artist become wholly intelligible only within the larger ideological context of the Whig aesthetic tradition. Tracing the genealogy of Victorian Aestheticism back to the first great crisis of the Whig polity in the earlier eighteenth century, Dowling locates the source of the Victorians' utopian hopes for art in the "moral sense" theory of Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury's theory of a universal moral sense, argues The Vulgarization of Art, became the transcendental basis for the new Whig polity that proposed itself as an alternative to older theories of natural law and divine right. It would then sustain the Victorians' hope that their own nightmare landscape of commercial modernity and mass taste might be transformed by a universal pleasure in art and beauty. The Vulgarization of Art goes on to explore the tragic consequences for the Aesthetic Movement when a repressed and irresolvable conflict between Shaftesbury's assumption of "aristocratic soul" and the Victorian ideal of "aesthetic democracy" repeatedly shatters the hopes of such writers as Ruskin, Morris, Pater, and Wilde for social transformation through the aesthetic sense.

How do science, producing knowledge and technology, and art, producing revelations and sensations, confront each other? We have taken up the two myths of Albert Einstein and Rene Magritte to address this question. The meeting between Einstein and Magritte is presented as an experiment, with which we hope to go beyond the many programmatical appeals, in order to cut across art and science. The experiment brings together scientists, artists and philosophers who have already - in their own distinctive ways - taken the path towards interdisciplinarity. This book presents their different attitudes, and encloses new perspectives and insights. The contributions have been written for a broad audience of scholars, students and anyone interested in the similarities between science and art.

Heidegger and the Work of Art History explores the impact and future possibilities of Heidegger's philosophy for art history and visual culture in the twenty-first century. Scholars from the fields of art history, visual and material studies, design, philosophy, aesthetics and new media pursue diverse lines of thinking that have departed from Heidegger's work in order to foster compelling new accounts of works of art and their historicity. This collected book of essays also shows how studies in the history and theory of the visual enrich our understanding of Heidegger's philosophy. In addition to examining the philosopher's lively collaborations with art historians, and how his longstanding engagement with the visual arts influenced his conceptualization of history, the essays in this volume consider the ontological and ethical implications of our encounters with works of art, the visual techniques that form worlds, how to think about 'things' beyond human-centred relationships, the moods, dispositions, and politics of art's history, and the terms by which we might rethink aesthetic judgment and the interpretation of the visible world, from the early modern period to the present day.

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.

How older people have been perceived during various periods of history from the Middle Ages to the 19th century is the focus of this heavily illustrated study of the elderly in Western society. Herbert Covey presents the reader with a wide range of portrayals of the elderly in both art and literature and goes on to analyze, in detail, the images and symbols of aging, sexuality, family, and death found in these depictions. His analyses of the works reflect a variety of disciplines, including fine arts, gerontology, history, sociology, psychology, and literature. This book increases our consciousness of images of older people in Western culture by debunking common images and providing background information on how current images and perceptions have developed.

"Images of Older People in Western Art and Society" illustrates how society has both defined and portrayed advanced age in Western painting, drawing, literature, and drama. First, images of aging are presented. Then, recognizable symbols that have been used throughout history as metaphors for characteristics of aging are shown. Because the elderly are often closely involved with family, one chapter is devoted to images of the elderly within the family structure. Current art often shows the elderly as sexless, but that wasn't always so. Today, death is frequently associated with old age, although throughout history, death has been associated with all ages. Social historians, gerontological practitioners, and sociologists will find a great deal to study in this visual history. The book is illustrated with 41 black-and-white reproductions of paintings and drawings.

In the twentieth century, avant-garde movements have pushed the concept of art far beyond its traditional boundaries. In this dynamical process of constant renewal the prestige of thinking about art as a legitimizing practice has come to the fore. So it is hardly surprising that the past decades have been characterized by a revival or even breakthrough of philosophy of art as a discipline. However, the majority of books on aesthetics fail to combine a systematical philosophical discourse with a real exploration of art practice.

Thinking Art attempts to deal with this traditional shortcoming. It is indeed not only an easily accessible and systematic account of the classical, modern and postmodern theories of art, but also concludes each chapter with an artista (TM)s studio in which the practical relevance of the discussed theory is amply demonstrated by concrete examples. Moreover, each chapter ends with a section on further reading, in which all relevant literature is discussed in detail.

Thinking Art provides its readers with a theoretical framework that can be used to think about art from a variety of perspectives. More particularly it shows how a fruitful cross-fertilization between theory and practice can be created. This book can be used as a handbook within departments of philosophy, history of art, media and cultural studies, cultural history and, of course, within art academies. Though the book explores theories of art from Plato to Derrida it does not presuppose any acquaintance with philosophy from its readers. It can thus be read also by artists, art critics, museum directors and anyone interested in the meaning of art.