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Antonio Lopez Garcia's Everyday Urban Worlds: A Philosophy of
Painting is the first book to give the famed Spanish artist the
critical attention he deserves. Born in Tomelloso in 1936 and still
living in the Spanish capital today, Antonio Lopez has long
cultivated a reputation for impressive urban scenes-but it is urban
time that is his real subject. Going far beyond mere artist
biography, Benjamin Fraser explores the relevance of multiple
disciplines to an understanding of the painter's large-scale
canvasses. Weaving selected images together with their urban
referents-and without ever straying too far from discussion of the
painter's oeuvre, method and reception by critics-Fraser pulls from
disciplines as varied as philosophy, history, Spanish literature
and film, cultural studies, urban geography, architecture, and city
planning in his analyses. The book begins at ground level with one
of the artist's most recognizable images, the Gran Via, which
captures the urban project that sought to establish Madrid as an
emblem of modernity. Here, discussion of the artist's chosen
painting style-one that has been referred to as a 'hyperrealism'-is
integrated with the central street's history, the capital's famous
literary figures, and its filmic representations, setting up the
philosophical perspective toward which the book gradually develops.
Chapter two rises in altitude to focus on Madrid desde Torres
Blancas, an urban image painted from the vantage point provided by
an iconic high-rise in the north-central area of the city.
Discussion of the Spanish capital's northward expansion complements
a broad view of the artist's push into representations of landscape
and allows for the exploration of themes such as political
conflict, social inequality, and the accelerated cultural change of
an increasingly mobile nation during the 1960s. Chapter three views
Madrid desde la torre de bomberos de Vallecas and signals a turn
toward political philosophy. Here, the size of the artist's image
itself foregrounds questions of scale, which Fraser paints in broad
strokes as he blends discussions of artistry with the turbulent
history of one of Madrid's outlying districts and a continued focus
on urban development and its literary and filmic resonance. Antonio
Lopez Garcia's Everyday Urban Worlds also includes an artist
timeline, a concise introduction and an epilogue centering on the
artist's role in the Spanish film El sol del membrillo. The book's
clear style and comprehensive endnotes make it appropriate for both
general readers and specialists alike.
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Marxism and Urban Culture (Hardcover)
Benjamin Fraser; Contributions by Les Roberts, Malcolm Alan Compitello, Marc James Leger, Cayley Sorochan, …
bundle available
|
R2,718
Discovery Miles 27 180
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Marxism and Urban Culture is the first volume to reconcile social
science and humanities perspectives on culture. Covering a range of
global cities-Bologna, Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, Liverpool,
London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mahalla al-Kubra, Mexico City,
Montreal, Osaka, Strasbourg, Vienna-the contributions fuse
political and theoretical concerns with analyses of urban cultural
practices and historical movements, as well as urban-themed
literary and filmic art. Conceived as a response to the persistent
rift between disciplinary Marxist approaches to culture, this book
prioritizes the urban problematic and builds implicitly and
explicitly on work by numerous thinkers: not only Karl Marx but
also David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Friedrich Engels and Antonio
Gramsci, among others. Rather than reanimate reductive views either
of Marx or of urban theory, the chapters in Marxism and Urban
Culture speak broadly to the interdisciplinary connections that are
increasingly the concern of cultural scholars working across and
beyond the boundaries of geography, sociology, history, political
science, language and literature fields, film studies, and more. A
foreword written by Andy Merrifield (the author of Metromarxism)
and an introduction by Benjamin Fraser (the author of Henri
Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience) situate the book's
chapters firmly in interdisciplinary terrain.
This book highlights an interdisciplinary terrain where the
humanities and social sciences combine with digital methods. It
argues that while disciplinary frictions still condition the
potential of digital projects, the nature of the urban phenomenon
pushes us toward an interdisciplinary and digital future where the
primacy of cities is assured.
Toward an Urban Cultural Studies is a call for a new
interdisciplinary area of research and teaching. Blending Urban
Studies and Cultural Studies, this book grounds readers in the
extensive theory of the prolific French philosopher Henri Lefebvre.
Since the advent of train travel, railways have compressed space
and crossed national boundaries to become transnational icons,
evoking hope, dread, progress, or obsolescence in different
cultural domains. Spanning five continents and a diverse range of
contexts, this collection offers an unprecedentedly broad survey of
global representations of trains. From experimental novels to
Hollywood blockbusters, the works studied here chart fascinating
routes across a remarkably varied cultural landscape.
Although many depictions of the city in prose, poetry and visual
art can be found dating from earlier periods in human history,
Obsession, Aesthetics, and the Iberian City emphasizes a particular
phase in urban development. This is the quintessentially modern
city that comes into being in the nineteenth century. In social
terms, this nineteenth-century city is the product of a specialist
class of planners engaged in what urban theorist Henri Lefebvre has
called the bourgeois science of modern urbanism. One thinks first
of the large scale and the wide boulevards of Baron Georges von
Haussmann's Paris or the geometrical planning vision of Ildefons
CerdA's Barcelona. The modern science of urban design famously
inaugurates a new way of thinking the city; urban modernity is now
defined by the triumph of exchange value over use value, and the
lived city is eclipsed by the planned city as it is envisioned by
capitalists, builders and speculators. Thus urban plans,
architecture, literary prose and poetry, documentary cinema and
fiction film, and comics art serve as windows into our modern
obsession with urban aesthetics. Our collective cultural obsession
with the urban environment has endured, from the nineteenth century
through today. This book investigates the social relationships
implied in our urban modernity by concentrating on four cities that
are in broad strokes representative of the cultural and linguistic
heterogeneity of the Iberian peninsula. Each chapter introduces but
moves well beyond an identifiable urban area in a given city,
noting the cultural obsession implicit in its reconstruction as
well as the role of obsession in its artistic representation of the
urban environment. These areas are Barcelona's Eixample district,
Madrid's Linear City, Lisbon's central Baixa area, and Bilbao's
Seven Streets, or Zazpikaleak. The theme of obsession-which as
explored is synonymous with the concept of partial madness-provides
a point of departure for understanding the interconnection of both
urbanistic and artistic discourses.
Although many depictions of the city in prose, poetry and visual
art can be found dating from earlier periods in human history,
Obsession, Aesthetics, and the Iberian City emphasizes a particular
phase in urban development. This is the quintessentially modern
city that comes into being in the nineteenth century. In social
terms, this nineteenth-century city is the product of a specialist
class of planners engaged in what urban theorist Henri Lefebvre has
called the bourgeois science of modern urbanism. One thinks first
of the large scale and the wide boulevards of Baron Georges von
Haussmann's Paris or the geometrical planning vision of Ildefons
CerdA's Barcelona. The modern science of urban design famously
inaugurates a new way of thinking the city; urban modernity is now
defined by the triumph of exchange value over use value, and the
lived city is eclipsed by the planned city as it is envisioned by
capitalists, builders and speculators. Thus urban plans,
architecture, literary prose and poetry, documentary cinema and
fiction film, and comics art serve as windows into our modern
obsession with urban aesthetics. Our collective cultural obsession
with the urban environment has endured, from the nineteenth century
through today. This book investigates the social relationships
implied in our urban modernity by concentrating on four cities that
are in broad strokes representative of the cultural and linguistic
heterogeneity of the Iberian peninsula. Each chapter introduces but
moves well beyond an identifiable urban area in a given city,
noting the cultural obsession implicit in its reconstruction as
well as the role of obsession in its artistic representation of the
urban environment. These areas are Barcelona's Eixample district,
Madrid's Linear City, Lisbon's central Baixa area, and Bilbao's
Seven Streets, or Zazpikaleak. The theme of obsession-which as
explored is synonymous with the concept of partial madness-provides
a point of departure for understanding the interconnection of both
urbanistic and artistic discourses.
Few musicians shaped Iberian jazz more than pianist Vicenc "Tete"
Montoliu i Massana (1933-97). Fascinated by the modernist
aesthetics of mid-century jazz, Montoliu was known for a carefully
crafted mix of lyricism and dissonance, a penchant for discordant
crashes, and a development of highly original compositions. Over
the course of his career, he boasted some 100 recordings spanning
Denmark, Germany, Holland, Spain, and the United States, and
performed with the most notable jazz luminaries including Lionel
Hampton, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Dexter Gordon, and Archie Shepp. In
drawing from the Black American jazz form, Montoliu fashioned an
adjacent critical space shaped by his experiences as a Catalan and
a person with congenital visual impairment living under the
dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Beyond Sketches of Spain: Tete
Montoliu and the Construction of Iberian Jazz explores the artist's
life, musical production, and international reception within a
cultural studies framework, invoking Fumi Okiji's notion of
gathering in difference. In its investigation of this impressive
and often overlooked transnational jazz legend, the book moves
beyond mere sketches of Spanish nationhood, challenges conventional
scholarly narratives, and recovers links between the United States,
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, and Europe.
|
Marxism and Urban Culture (Paperback)
Benjamin Fraser; Contributions by Les Roberts, Malcolm Alan Compitello, Marc James Leger, Cayley Sorochan, …
bundle available
|
R1,273
Discovery Miles 12 730
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
Marxism and Urban Culture is the first volume to reconcile social
science and humanities perspectives on culture. Covering a range of
global cities-Bologna, Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, Liverpool,
London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mahalla al-Kubra, Mexico City,
Montreal, Osaka, Strasbourg, Vienna-the contributions fuse
political and theoretical concerns with analyses of urban cultural
practices and historical movements, as well as urban-themed
literary and filmic art. Conceived as a response to the persistent
rift between disciplinary Marxist approaches to culture, this book
prioritizes the urban problematic and builds implicitly and
explicitly on work by numerous thinkers: not only Karl Marx but
also David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Friedrich Engels and Antonio
Gramsci, among others. Rather than reanimate reductive views either
of Marx or of urban theory, the chapters in Marxism and Urban
Culture speak broadly to the interdisciplinary connections that are
increasingly the concern of cultural scholars working across and
beyond the boundaries of geography, sociology, history, political
science, language and literature fields, film studies, and more. A
foreword written by Andy Merrifield (the author of Metromarxism)
and an introduction by Benjamin Fraser (the author of Henri
Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience) situate the book's
chapters firmly in interdisciplinary terrain.
Trains, Literature and Culture: Reading and Writing the Rails
delves into the rich connections between rail travel and the
creation of cultural products from short stories to novels, from
photographs to travel guides, and from artistic manifestos of the
avant-garde to Freud's psychology. Each of the contributions
engages in critical readings of textual or visual representations
of trains across a wide spectrum of time periods and
traditions-from English and American to Mexican, West African and
European literary cultures. By turns trope, metaphor, and emblem of
technological progress, these textual and visual representations of
the train serve at times to index racial and gender inequalities,
to herald the arrival of a nation's independence, and at still
others to evince the trauma of industrialization. In each instance,
the figure of the train emerges as a complex narrative form engaged
by artists who were "Reading & Writing the Rails" as a way of
assessing the competing discursive investments of cultural
modernity.
Toward an Urban Cultural Studies is a call for a new
interdisciplinary area of research and teaching. Blending Urban
Studies and Cultural Studies, this book grounds readers in the
extensive theory of the prolific French philosopher Henri Lefebvre.
More and more people are noticing links between urban geography and
the spaces within the layout of panels on the comics page. Benjamin
Fraser explores the representation of the city in a range of comics
from across the globe. Comics address the city as an idea, a
historical fact, a social construction, a material-built
environment, a shared space forged from the collective imagination,
or as a social arena navigated according to personal desire.
Accordingly, Fraser brings insights from urban theory to bear on
specific comics. The works selected comprise a variety of
international, alternative, and independent small-press comics
artists, from engravings and early comics to single-panel work,
graphic novels, manga, and trading cards, by artists such as Will
Eisner, Tsutomu Nihei, Hariton Pushwagner, Julie Doucet, Frans
Masereel, and Chris Ware. In the first monograph on this Subject,
Fraser touches on many themes of modern urban life: activism,
alienation, consumerism, flanerie, gentrification, the mystery
story, science fiction, sexual orientation, and working-class
labor. He leads readers to images of such cities as Barcelona,
Buenos Aires, London, Lyon, Madrid, Montevideo, Montreal, New York,
Oslo, Paris, Sao Paolo, and Tokyo. Through close readings, each
chapter introduces readers to specific comics artists and works and
investigates a range of topics related to the medium's spatial
form, stylistic variation, and cultural prominence. Mainly, Fraser
mixes interest in urbanism and architecture with the creative
strategies that comics artists employ to bring their urban images
to life.
|
Ben Katchor
Benjamin Fraser
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R477
R384
Discovery Miles 3 840
Save R93 (19%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Cultures of Representation is the first book to explore the
cinematic portrayal of disability in films from across the globe.
Contributors explore classic and recent works from Belgium, France,
Germany, India, Italy, Iran, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands,
Russia, Senegal, and Spain, along with a pair of globally resonant
Anglophone films. Anchored by David T. Mitchell and Sharon L.
Snyder's coauthored essay on global disability-film festivals, the
volume's content spans from 1950 to today, addressing socially
disabling forces rendered visible in the representation of
physical, developmental, cognitive, and psychiatric disabilities.
Essays emphasize well-known global figures, directors, and
industries - from Temple Grandin to Pedro Almodovar, from Akira
Kurosawa to Bollywood - while also shining a light on films from
less frequently studied cultural locations such as those portrayed
in the Iranian and Korean New Waves. Whether covering postwar
Italy, postcolonial Senegal, or twenty-first century Russia, the
essays in this volume will appeal to scholars, undergraduates, and
general readers alike.
Cultures of Representation is the first book to explore the
cinematic portrayal of disability in films from across the globe.
Contributors explore classic and recent works from Belgium, France,
Germany, India, Italy, Iran, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands,
Russia, Senegal, and Spain, along with a pair of globally resonant
Anglophone films. Anchored by David T. Mitchell and Sharon L.
Snyder's coauthored essay on global disability-film festivals, the
volume's content spans from 1950 to today, addressing socially
disabling forces rendered visible in the representation of
physical, developmental, cognitive, and psychiatric disabilities.
Essays emphasize well-known global figures, directors, and
industries - from Temple Grandin to Pedro Almodovar, from Akira
Kurosawa to Bollywood - while also shining a light on films from
less frequently studied cultural locations such as those portrayed
in the Iranian and Korean New Waves. Whether covering postwar
Italy, postcolonial Senegal, or twenty-first century Russia, the
essays in this volume will appeal to scholars, undergraduates, and
general readers alike.
This scholarly book (Literary Criticism and Geography) expands upon
previous interpretations of Chilean Baldomero Lillo and Argentine
Leopoldo Lugones in order to read each author against the other-and
both against the grain. Departing from staid literary paradigms
that see Lugones as the quintessential Modernist and Lillo as
Zola's Latin American Naturalist counterpart, Fraser explores those
aspects of each writer's work that have resisted canonical
explanation. Each chapter is devoted to an individual
element-Earth, Fire, Air and Water-and dialogues with geographical
understandings of the intersection between space and culture. WHAT
THE CRITICS ARE SAYING: Fraser's unexpected comparison of the prose
works by Chilean Baldomero Lillo (1867-1923) and the Argentine
Leopoldo Lugones (1874-1938) has resulted in a fascinating and
insightful study that opens new avenues of investigation. Focusing
on issues related to modernization, the abuse of natural resources,
and the unpredictability of scientific explorations, Fraser makes
these early twentieth-century texts relevant today and to
disciplines beyond literary studies. -CATHY L. JRADE, Vanderbilt
University, Chancellor's Professor of Spanish and Department Chair
In Elemental Geographies Benjamin Fraser-known for his work on
Spanish literature and culture successfully crosses over into the
study of Spanish American literature with a comparative examination
of the short fiction of two seemingly disparate writers. Fraser
illuminates the points of convergence between Lillo and Lugones
while carrying out an analysis of exceptional breadth that should
appeal to readers interested in Spanish American modernismo,
studies of sound and space, ecocriticism, and the study of early
twentieth century occult sciences. -NAOMI E. LINDSTROM, University
of Texas at Austin, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Benjamin
Fraser has constructed a singularly enlightening, multi-faceted
matrix of the overlapping areas-and previously uncharted
territories-that lie between and among naturalism and modernismo;
literature and geography; science and the occult; landscape,
seascape, and soundscape. With Elemental Geographies, Fraser adds a
highly original and fecund analysis to the field of Latin American
literary and cultural studies, illuminating the prose works of
Leopoldo Lugones and Baldomero Lillo with imminence and urgency for
the 21st-century reader. -BRUCE DEAN WILLIS, University of Tulsa,
Associate Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature _
BENJAMIN FRASER is Associate Professor of Hispanic Cultural Studies
and Film at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. The
author/editor of nine books and some sixty articles in Hispanic
Studies and beyond, he is the current Managing Editor of the
Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, the Founding and
Executive Editor of the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, and an
Associate Editor of the Journal Hispania.
Born in Mallorca, Pere Joan Riera (known professionally as Pere
Joan) thrived in the underground comics world, beginning in the
mid-1970s with the self-published collections Baladas Urbanas and
MuZrdago, both of which were released almost immediately after the
death of the dictator Francisco Franco and Spain's transition to
democracy. The first monograph in English on a comics artist from
Spain, The Art of Pere Joan takes a topographical approach to
reading comics, applying theories of cultural and urban geography
to Pere Joan's treatment of space and landscape in his singular
body of work. Balancing this goal with an exploration of specific
works by Pere Joan, Benjamin Fraser demonstrates that looking at
the thematic, structural, and aesthetic originality of the artist's
landscape-driven work can help us begin to newly understand the
representational properties of comics as a spatial medium. This
in-depth examination reveals the resonance between the cultural
landscapes of Mallorca and Pere Joan's metaphorical approach to
both rural and urban environments in comics that weave emotional,
ecological, and artistic strands in revolutionary ways.
Cognitive Disability Aesthetics explores the invisibility of
cognitive disability in theoretical, historical, social, and
cultural contexts. Benjamin Fraser's cutting edge research and
analysis signals a second-wave in disability studies that
prioritizes cognition. Fraser expands upon previous research into
physical disability representations and focuses on those
disabilities that tend to be least visible in society (autism, Down
syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia). Moving beyond
established literary approaches analyzing prose representations of
disability, the book explores how iconic and indexical modes of
signification operate in visual texts. Taking on cognitive
disability representations in a range of visual media (painting,
cinema, and graphic novels), Fraser showcases the value of
returning to impairment discourse. Cognitive Disability Aesthetics
successfully reconfigures disability studies in the humanities and
exposes the chasm that exists between Anglophone disability studies
and disability studies in the Hispanic world.
More and more people are noticing links between urban geography and
the spaces within the layout of panels on the comics page. Benjamin
Fraser explores the representation of the city in a range of comics
from across the globe. Comics address the city as an idea, a
historical fact, a social construction, a material-built
environment, a shared space forged from the collective imagination,
or as a social arena navigated according to personal desire.
Accordingly, Fraser brings insights from urban theory to bear on
specific comics. The works selected comprise a variety of
international, alternative, and independent small-press comics
artists, from engravings and early comics to single-panel work,
graphic novels, manga, and trading cards, by artists such as Will
Eisner, Tsutomu Nihei, Hariton Pushwagner, Julie Doucet, Frans
Masereel, and Chris Ware. In the first monograph on this Subject,
Fraser touches on many themes of modern urban life: activism,
alienation, consumerism, flanerie, gentrification, the mystery
story, science fiction, sexual orientation, and working-class
labor. He leads readers to images of such cities as Barcelona,
Buenos Aires, London, Lyon, Madrid, Montevideo, Montreal, New York,
Oslo, Paris, Sao Paolo, and Tokyo. Through close readings, each
chapter introduces readers to specific comics artists and works and
investigates a range of topics related to the medium's spatial
form, stylistic variation, and cultural prominence. Mainly, Fraser
mixes interest in urbanism and architecture with the creative
strategies that comics artists employ to bring their urban images
to life.
Mariano Jos de Larra (1809-1837) was the most critical literary
voice of the first third of the Spanish nineteenth century. Whether
directed against censorship, the police and the Inquisition, or
mypoic social attitudes and passing fads, his writings always
showcased his unique, ironic and biting temperament. Moreover, many
of his essays reflected the consequences of the ongoing
urbanization of Madrid. The essays titled Jardines p blicos (1834),
La fonda nueva (1833), Las casas nuevas (1833), La vida de Madrid
(1834) and El d a de Difuntos de 1836. F garo en el cementerio
(1836) are republished here as a way of prompting discussion of
Larra as an urban critic.Ram n de Mesonero Romanos (1803-1882) best
expressed the characteristically triumphant and triumphalist
attitude of modernity, understood as a bourgois product. The essays
and excerpts of more extensive works republished here - Los
jardines del Retiro (1840), La casa de Cervantes (1833), El
alquiler de un cuarto (1837), Paseo por las calles (1835), and R
pida ojeada sobre el estado de la capital y los medios de mejorarla
(1835)- testify to the author's sympathy for Madrid. As a planner,
Mesonero bemoaned the destruction of Madrid's monuments, encouraged
a touristic vision of its advantages (apologizing for its defects)
and saw to improvements that greatly changed Madrid.A critical
introduction in Spanish (penned by Benjamin Fraser) engages the
fundamental premise of Urban Cultural Studies in language
accessible to a wide range of readers.
Driven by a dual analysis, Encounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain
looks at French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) in Spain--his
more or less direct influence on Spanish letters--and also at
Bergsonism in Spain--the more indirect resonance with his
methodological posture--articulated through Spanish texts as well
as theoretical approaches to film and urban space. Through this
twin investigation, one part historical and the other part
methodological, Benjamin Fraser seeks to broaden the scope of
interest in Bergson's philosophy, to emphasize the
interdisciplinary nature of Bergson's thought, and to insist upon
the relevance of Bergson's methodological premise to two of the
most important cultural studies disciplines today--film studies and
urban geography. Following an eclectic and interdisciplinary
methodology that the French philosopher himself advocated, Fraser
reconciles works by some of the most notable twentieth-century
authors and critics with compelling aspects of Bergsonism. From
novelists Pio Baroja, Miguel de Unamuno, Juan Benet and Belen
Gopegui to filmmakers Victor Erice ( El sol del membrillo ),
Alejandro Amenabar ( Abre los ojos ) and Carlos Saura ( Taxi ), as
well as urban theorists Henri Lefebvre and Manuel Delgado Ruiz,
this work takes up philosopher Gilles Deleuze's call for a ""return
to Bergson,"" pushing past the established boundaries of
interdisciplinary to what lies beyond. Fans of Bergson from all
disciplines will also be eager to read English translations of
Bergson's lectures at the Ateneo in Madrid the 2nd and 6th of May
1916, included here as an appendix. |Benjamin Fraser seeks to
broaden the scope of interest in Henri Bergson's philosophy, to
emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of Bergson's thought, and to
insist upon the relevance of Bergson's methodological premise to
two of the most important cultural studies disciplines today--film
studies and urban geography.
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