Author Biography:
James Elkins is Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the work of John Ruskin (1819-1900). The edition represents Ruskin's extraordinary literary output, ranging from lectures, essays, and treatises to reviews, correspondence, and critical notes. Ruskin has been called 'the most powerful and original thinker of the nineteenth century' and yet, like his two fellow Victorian Sages, Thomas Carlyle and Matthew Arnold, his work remains obscure to modern readers. This anthology hopes to remedy this situation by presenting the immense range of Ruskin's interests, from art to politics, museology to ornithology, architecture to geology, and morals to economics-all of which interests were indivisible in his view. Here are rapturous accounts of Turner, the Alps, Renaissance painters, and Gothic architecture; but here, too, are urgently dystopian analyses of the modern culture that we continue to inhabit: vacuousness in communication, callousness in labour relations, amoral sophistication in art, and rationalism in all its various delusory forms in politics, society, and the economy. There are special stresses on cultural preservation and the illusions that it both fosters and depends upon; the status of women in society, which Ruskin reflected on constantly; nature, wilderness, and eco-catastrophism; and the role of artists like the Pre-Raphaelites in a society mostly given over to Philistinism. In short, the nineteenth century continues to cast an interrogatory shadow over the twenty-first, and Ruskin is its most vital and critical antagonist in the English language, inspiring intellectuals as diverse as Tolstoy, Proust, and Gandhi during his lifetime and afterwards. He was, this collection suggests, nothing like a 'sage', but something much more important and much more like those impossible things, a Victorian Renaissance man, an English Rousseau, and a post-religious Jeremiah. Explanatory notes and commentary are included, to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life and works of Ruskin, and a Chronology.

From his rich, colourful and uncompromising oeuvre, it's easy to see why Khosrow Hassanzadeh is one of Iran's leading contemporary artists. A former fruit seller and volunteer soldier, he cuts an unusual figure in Tehran's high society art scene. Hassanzadeh works primarily with photography, collage, painting and mixed media, often layering contemporary images and photographs with figures drawn from Persian illuminated manuscripts and Farsi calligraphy. His stark paintings of figures wrapped in burial shrouds are reminiscent of Philip Guston's cartoon-like style but with a sinister immediacy; these images of shrouded corpses are seen all too often in today's tormented Middle East. Treating subjects as diverse as the Iran-Iraq war, murdered prostitutes, women in chadors and Iranian wrestlers, Hassanzadeh's multi-layered, humanist works place individuals at the centre of things and unflinchingly examine harsh political realities. The fact that his work is mainly exhibited outside Iran despite its focus on contemporary Iranian society makes for an intriguing, though slightly uneasy relationship with the Western art world. Each series is prefaced with an essay by leading scholars and critics contextualizing the work.

Contents:
Introduction, 1. Art and representation, Part I Art as representation, Part II What is representation? 2. Art and expression, Part I Art as expression, Part II Theories of expression, 3. Art and form, Part I Art as form, Part II What is artistic form? 4. Art and aesthetic experience, Part I Aesthetic theories of art, Part II The aesthetic dimension, 5. Art, definition and identification, Part I Against definition, Part II Two contemporary definitions of art, Part III Identifying art.

This edited collection explores the complex ways in which photography is used and interpreted: as a record of evidence, as a form of communication, as a means of social and political provocation, as a mode of surveillance, as a narrative of the self, and as an art form. What makes photographic images unsettling and how do the re-uses and interpretations of photographic images unsettle the self-evident reality of the visual field? Taking up these themes, this book examines the role of photography as a revelatory medium underscored by its complex association with history, memory, experience and identity.

Only since the Romantic period has art been understood in terms of an ineffable aesthetic quality of things like poems, paintings, and sculptures, and the art-maker as endowed with an inexplicable power of creation. From the Greeks to the 18th century, art was conceived as techne--the skill and know-how by which things and states of affairs are ordered. Techne Theory shows how to use this concept to cut through the Romantic notion of art as a kind of magic by returning to the original sense of art as techne, the standpoint of the person who actually knows how to make a work of art. Understood as techne, art-making, like all other cultural accomplishments, is a form of work performed by an artisan who has inherited the know-how of previous generations of artisans. Along the way, Techne Theory cuts through the humanist-structuralist impasse over the question of artistic agency and explains what 'form' really means.

Since the mid-1980s, Arthur C. Danto has been increasingly concerned with the implications of the demise of modernism. Out of the wake of modernist art, Danto discerns the emergence of a radically pluralistic art world. His essays illuminate this novel art world as well as the fate of criticism within it. As a result, Danto has crafted the most compelling philosophy of art criticism since Clement Greenberg. Gregg Horowitz and Tom Huhn analyze the constellation of philosophical and critical elements in Danto's new- Hegelian art theory. In a provocative encounter, they employ themes from Kantian aesthetics to elucidate the continuing persistence of taste in shaping even this most sophisticated philosophy of art.

Architectures of Transversality investigates the relationship between modernity, space, power, and culture in Iran. Focusing on Paul Klee's Persian-inspired miniature series and Louis Kahn's unbuilt blueprint for a democratic public space in Tehran, it traces the architectonics of the present as a way of moving beyond universalist and nationalist accounts of modernism. Transversality is a form of spatial production and practice that addresses the three important questions of the self, objects, and power. Using Deleuzian and Heideggerian theory, the book introduces the practices of Klee and Kahn as transversal spatial responses to the dialectical tension between existential and political territories and, in doing so, situates the history of the silent, unrepresented and the unbuilt - constructed from the works of Klee and Kahn - as a possible solution to the crisis of modernity and identity-based politics in Iran.

Art as worldmaking is a response to Alex Potts's provocative 2013 book Experiments in modern realism. Twenty essays by leading scholars test Potts's recasting of realism through examinations of art produced in different media and periods, ranging from eighth-century Chinese garden aesthetics to video work by the contemporary Russian collective Radek Community. While the book does not neglect avatars of pictorial realism such as Menzel and Eakins, or the question of nineteenth-century realism's historical antecedents, it is contemporary in orientation in that many contributors are particularly concerned with the questions that sculpture, photography and non-traditional media pose for realism as an aesthetic norm. It will be essential reading for students of art history concerned with art's truth value or more broadly with conceptual problems of representation and the intersections of art and politics. -- .

Since the mid-1980s, Arthur C. Danto has been increasingly concerned with the implications of the demise of modernism. Out of the wake of modernist art, Danto discerns the emergence of a radically pluralistic art world. His essays illuminate this novel art world as well as the fate of criticism within it. As a result, Danto has crafted the most compelling philosophy of art criticism since Clement Greenberg. Gregg Horowitz and Tom Huhn analyze the constellation of philosophical and critical elements in Danto's new- Hegelian art theory. In a provocative encounter, they employ themes from Kantian aesthetics to elucidate the continuing persistence of taste in shaping even this most sophisticated philosophy of art.

A voice contributing to the discourse on contemporary ethical issues in art and design, this text addresses the relationship of ethics to art and design practice, and the ability of the arts to "matter" in the 20th century "fin de siecle". Leading theoreticians and practitioners of art explore, through informal discussion or the formal essay, issues of political space, user-centred design, the social responsibility of the artist, design legislation, cultural hierarchy, modernism as colonialism, and the ethical opportunities and minefields of postmodernism.

Over the last two decades, multiple initiatives of transdisciplinary collaboration across art, science, and technology have seen the light of day. Why, by whom, and under what circumstances are such initiatives promoted? What does their experimental character look like - and what can be learned, epistemologically and institutionally, from probing the multiple practices of "art/science" at work? In answer to the questions raised, Practicing Art/Science contrasts topical positions and insightful case studies, ranging from the detailed investigation of "art at the nanoscale" to the material analysis of Leonardo's Mona Lisa and its cracked smile. In so doing, this volume brings to bear the "practice turn" in science and technology studies on the empirical investigation of multifaceted experimentation across contemporary art, science, and technology in situ. Against the background of current discourse on "artistic research," the introduction not only explains the particular relevance of the "practice turn" in STS to tackle the interdisciplinary task at hand, but offers also a timely survey of varying strands of artistic experimentation. In bringing together ground-breaking studies from internationally renowned scholars and upcoming researchers in sociology, art theory and artistic practice, as well as history and philosophy of science, Practicing Art/Science will be essential reading for practitioners and professionals in said fields, as well as postgraduate students and representatives of higher education and research policy more broadly.

This title was first published in 2002. To date, studies explaining decorative practice in the early modernist period have largely overlooked the work of women artists. For the most part, studies have focused on the denigration of decorative work by leading male artists, frequently dismissed as fashionably feminine. With few exceptions, women have been cast as consumers rather than producers. The first book to examine the decorative strategies of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women artists, Women Artists and the Decorative Arts concentrates in particular on women artists who turned to fashion, interior design and artisanal production as ways of critically engaging various aspects of modernity. Women artists and designers played a vital role in developing a broad spectrum of modernist forms. In these essays new light is shed on the practice of such well-known women artists as May Morris, Clarice Cliff, Natacha Rambova, Eileen Gray and Florine Stettheimer, whose decorative practices are linked with a number of fascinating but lesser known figures such as Phoebe Traquair, Mary Watts, Gluck and Laura Nagy.

First published in 1988, this book attempts to tackle the problem of how to write about art, culture, and the issues of postmodernism in a style appropriate to what is being claimed. The letters are written on art's behalf to a range of institutions and individuals, and have as their recurring concern the relation between art, culture and representation - both art as representation and how art is represented to, and for, the surrounding culture. They explore the context and viability of art through a range of themes, including writing, the aestheticisation of everyday life, style, design pleasure, fragmentation, hyphenation, technology, and the museum - drawing on materials from the visual arts, music, literature, post-structuralism, contemporary criticism, philosophy, and sociology.

First published in 1985, this book draws together the author's artistic with analytical practices which had been developed over many years of sociological enquiry. It interprets a 'work of art' as a site on which a viewer or critic is invited to share in questioning celebration of the painting itself. The author reassesses modern painting's relation to its own origins and to tradition in light of the emergence of 'postmodern' practice - exploring its engagement of fundamental questions about language and being. Also assessed is the relevance of the metaphors of writings and Reading to an understanding of painting and viewing practices - looking at painters' writings as well as phenomenological and post-structuralist writers.

Through a carefully curated selection of quotations, images and interviews, Artists on Art reveals what matters most to the masters. You'll discover how the giants of the different artistic genres developed their distinctive visual styles, the core ideas that underpin their practice and, most importantly, what art means to you.

John Ruskin (1819-1890), Walter Pater (1839-1894) and Adrian Stokes (1902-1972) represent three generations of English aesthetes whose writings have transformed art history and the formations of museums as we know them. This work assembles the autobiographical sketches of these influential aesthetes. David Carrier's "reading" reveals these aesthetes to be less concerned with art appreciation or an aesthetic approach to everyday life than with issues of identity, politics and desire. He unfolds their texts with the aim of exposing the complexity that lies beyond what was once thought merely to represent models of sensitivity and good taste. By comparing the differences and similarities in their social and cultural environment, Carrier points out that the views of Ruskin, Pater and Stokes have surreptitiously worked their way into modern outlooks and thoughts about art, its function and its history.

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.

Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe brings to Melville's work the insight not only of an art critic and theorist, but of a practicing artist as well. Navigating through the complexity of contemporary thought and philosophy, Gilbert-Rolfe unravels the Gordian knot of the diverse discourses that circumscribe Melville's views, revealing the practicality and clarity of Melville's speculative narratives.
Stephen Melville is one of the most thoughtful critics to emerge in recent years. He has applied the tools developed by Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan to the problems of contemporary art. With his roots in Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, he reopens questions of art's reception, interpretation, and commentary. Not only does he articulate the limitations of these categories, and how they are set into motion-stasis and balance are not the goal. He demonstrates how the territory of each of these discourses is maintained by their relationship to one another. Melville's texts not only represent the complexity of his subjec

The artists of the Organic School of the Russian avant-garde found inspiration as well as a model for artistic growth in the creative principles of nature. Isabel Wunsche analyzes the artistic influences, intellectual foundations, and scientific publications that shaped the formation of these artists, the majority of whom were based in St. Petersburg. Particular emphasis is given to the holistic worldviews and organic approaches prevalent among artists of the pre-revolutionary avant-garde, specifically Jan Ciaglinski, Nikolai Kulbin, and Elena Guro, as well as the emergence of the concept of Organic Culture as developed by Mikhail Matiushin, practiced at the State Institute of Artistic Culture, and taught at the reformed Art Academy in the 1920s. Discussions of faktura and creative intuition explore the biocentric approaches that dominated the work of Pavel Filonov, Kazimir Malevich, Voldemar Matvejs, Olga Rozanova, and Vladimir Tatlin. The artistic approaches of the Organic School of the Russian avant-garde were further promoted and developed by Vladimir Sterligov and his followers between 1960 and 1990. The study examines the cultural potential as well as the utopian dimension of the artists' approaches to creativity and their ambitious visions for the role of art in promoting human psychophysiological development and shaping post-revolutionary culture.

Every city has its unique and valuable identity, this identity is revealed through its physical and visual form, it is seen through the eyes of its residents and users. The city develops over time, and its identity evolves with it. Reflecting the rapid and constant changes the city is subjected to, Architecture and Arts, is the embodiment of the cultural, historical, and economical characteristics of the city. This conference was dedicated to the investigation of the different new approaches developed in Architecture and Contemporary arts. It has focused on the basis of urban life and identities. This volume provides discussions on the examples and tendencies in dealing with urban identities as well as the transformation of cities and urban cultures mentioned in terms of their form, identity, and their current art. Contemporary art, when subjected to experiments, continues to be produced in various directions, to be consumed and to put forward new ideas. Art continuously renews itself, from new materials to different means of communication, from interactive works to computer games, from new approaches to perceptional paradigms and problems of city and nature of the millennium. This is an Open Access ebook, and can be found on www.taylorfrancis.com.

The Explicit Body in Performance interrogates the avant-garde precedents and theoretical terrain that combined to produce feminist performance art. Among the many artists discussed are:
* Carolee Schneemann
* Annie Sprinkle
* Karen Finley
* Robbie McCauley
* Ana Mendieta
* Ann Magnuson
* Sandra Bernhard
* Spiderwoman
Rebecca Schneider tackles topics ranging across the 'post-porn modernist movement', New Right censorship, commodity fetishism, perspectival vision, and primitivism. Employing diverse critical theories from Benjamin to Lacan to postcolonial and queer theory, Schneider analyses artistic and pop cultural depictions of the explicit body in late commodity capitalism.
The Explicit Body in Performance is complemented by extensive photographic illustrations and artistic productions of postmodern feminist practitioners. The book is a fascinating exploration of how these artists have wrestled with the representational structures of desire.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203421078

The Explicit Body in Performance interrogates the avant-garde precedents and theoretical terrain that combined to produce feminist performance art. Among the many artists discussed are:
* Carolle Schneemann
* Annie Sprinkle
* Karen Finley
* Robbie McCauley
* Ana Mendieta
* Ann Magnuson
* Sandra Bernhard
* Spiderwoman
Rebecca Schneider tackles topics ranging across the 'post-porn modernist movement', New Right censorship, commodity fetishism, perspectival vision, and primitivism. Employing diverse critical theories from Benjamin to Lacan to postcolonial and queer theory, Schneider analyses artistic and pop cultural depictions of the explicit body in late commodity capitalism.
The Explicit Body in Performance is complemented by extensive photographic illustrations and artistic productions of postmodern feminist practitioners. The book is a fascinating exploration of how these artists have wrestled with the representational structures of desire.