In this wide-ranging, thought-provoking and sometimes provocative new book, leading sculptor Antony Gormley, informed and energised by a lifetime of making, and art critic and historian Martin Gayford, explore sculpture as a transnational art form with its own compelling history. The authors' lively conversations and explorations make unexpected connections across time and media. Sculpture has been practised by every culture throughout the world and stretches back into our distant past. The first surviving shaped stones may even predate the advent of language. Evidently, the desire to carve, mould, bend, chip away, weld, suspend, balance - to transform a vast array of materials and light into new shapes and forms - runs deep in our psyche and is a fundamental part of our human journey and need for expression. With more than 300 spectacular illustrations, Shaping the World juxtaposes a rich variety of works - from the famous Lowenmensch or Lion Man, c. 35,000 BCE to Michelangelo's luminous Pieta in Rome, the Terracotta Warriors in China to Rodin's The Kiss, Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades, Olafur Eliasson's extraordinary Weather Project and Kara Walker's Fons Americanus, and Tomas Saraceno's ongoing Aerocene project, as well as examples of Gormley's own work. Antony Gormley and Martin Gayford take into account materials and techniques, and consider overarching themes such as light, mortality and our changing world. Above all, they discuss their view of sculpture as a form of physical thinking capable of altering the way people feel, and they invite us to look at sculpture we encounter - and more broadly the world around us - in a completely different way.

Chinese Calligraphy Meets Western Performance In his paintings the Taiwanese artist Yahon Chang brings together traditional Chinese ink-wash painting and Western forms of artistic expression to produce a synthesis of East and West. Typically standing on large sheets of linen or Xuan paper and wielding a brush almost as long as he is tall, Chang creates works imbued with performative energy and characterized by large, sweeping brushstrokes. Drawing on Chinese literati and Zen (Chan) Buddhist traditions, the artist understands painting as an activity that connects body and mind. His entire body functions as an axis for these expressive paintings and is influenced by his training in calligraphy. This publication offers the first insight into the artist's extensive oeuvre and includes exhibition views as well as accompanying texts.

Governments around the world spend millions on art and cultural institutions, evidence of a basic human need for what the author refers to as "creating aesthetic significance." Yet what function or purpose does art satisfy in today's society? In this thorough and accessible text, Richard Hickman rejects the current vogue for social and cultural accounts of the nature of art-making in favor of a largely psychological approach aimed at addressing contemporary developmental issues in art education. Bringing to bear current ideas about evolutionary psychology, this second edition will be an important resource for anyone interested in arts education.

Motorways, airports, tower blocks, power stations, windfarms; TV and the internet, easy travel and shrinking distances; business parks, starter homes and vast shopping and leisure complexes. All of these helped define the later 20th-century world and their material remains remind us of the major changes brought about through innovation and rapidly developing technology. Illustrated with striking aerial and ground photographs of some stunning and sometimes surprising 20th-century landscapes, Images of Change highlights for perhaps the first time the impact the developments of the last century have had on the landscape and gives us a new angle on the industrial, military, domestic and agricultural influences at work around us. By turns dramatic, beautiful, perhaps even shocking, the images and accompanying text will convince that the later 20th century should not be seen as an age that has devalued or destroyed what went before. Understanding how the 20th-century landscape is perceived and how it connects to the past is part of what this book is about - helping us to understand that change and creation is as important in the landscape as preservation. We recognise and celebrate the process of landscape change for earlier periods - the 20th century should be no different.