Whats in a shadow? Menace, seduction, or salvation? Immaterial but profound, shadows lurk everywhere in literature and the visual arts, signifying everything from the treachery of appearances to the unfathomable power of God. From Plato to Picasso, from Rembrandt to Welles and Warhol, from Lord of the Rings to the latest video game, shadows act as central players in the drama of Western culture. Yet because they work silently, artistic shadows often slip unnoticed past audiences and critics. Conceived as an accessible introduction to this elusive phenomenon, Grasping Shadows is the first book that offers a general theory of how all shadows function in texts and visual media. Arguing that shadow images take shape within a common cultural field where visual and verbal meanings overlap, William Sharpe ranges widely among classic and modern works, revealing the key motifs that link apparently disparate works such as those by Fra Angelico and James Joyce, Clementina Hawarden and Kara Walker, Charles Dickens and Kumi Yamashita. Showing how real-world shadows have shaped the meanings of shadow imagery, Grasping Shadows guides the reader through the techniques used by writers and artists to represent shadows from the Renaissance onward. The last chapter traces how shadows impact the art of the modern city, from Renoir and Zola to film noir and projection systems that capture the shadows of passers-by on streets around the globe. Extending his analysis to contemporary street art, popular songs, billboards, and shadow-theatre, Sharpe demonstrates a practical way to grasp the dark side that looms all around us.

The fourth in a series that documents architectural conservation in different parts of the world, Architectural Conservation in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands; National Experiences and Practice addresses cultural heritage protection in a region which comprises one third of the earth’s surface. In response to local needs, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands have developed some of the most important and influential legislation, doctrine, techniques, and theories in cultural heritage management in the world. The evolution of the heritage protection ethos and contemporary architectural conservation practices in Australia and Oceania are discussed on a national and regional basis using ample illustrations and examples. Accomplishments in architectural conservation are discussed in their national and international contexts, with an emphasis on original developments (solutions) and contributions made to the overall field. Enriched with essays contributed from over 55 specialists and thought leaders in the field, the book contains an extraordinary breadth and depth of research and synthesis on the why’s and how’s of cultural heritage conservation. Its holistic approach provides an essential resource and reference for students, academics, researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and all who are interested in conserving the built environment.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

A lively and thought-provoking tour of the intertwined histories of art and walking   What does a walk look like? In the first book to trace the history of walking images from cave art to contemporary performance, William Chapman Sharpe reveals that a depicted walk is always more than a matter of simple steps. Whether sculpted in stone, painted on a wall, or captured on film, each detail of gait and dress, each stride and gesture has a story to tell, for every aspect of walking is shaped by social practices and environmental conditions.   From classical statues to the origins of cinema, from medieval pilgrimages to public parks and the first footsteps on the moon, walking has engendered a vast visual legacy intertwined with the path of Western art. The path includes Romantic nature-walkers and urban flâneurs, as well as protest marchers and cell-phone zombies. It features works by artists such as Botticelli, Raphael, Claude Monet, Norman Rockwell, Agnès Varda, Maya Lin, and Pope.L. In 100 chronologically arranged images, this book shows how new ways of walking have spurred new means of representation, and how walking has permeated our visual culture ever since humans began to depict themselves in art.

From artifacts of ancient pre-Thai civilizations to achievements of the Thai kingdom in the early twentieth century, the enduring vestiges and persistent vitality of Thai heritage continue to entice visitors, residents, and researchers. Photographer and author Jim Wageman traveled to both well-known and little-visited sites throughout Thailand to capture images that convey the breadth and intricacy of the country's heritage. Wageman presents his images in a gorgeous layout that is matched by solid, well-researched captions and explanations. Beautiful and incisive, The Timeless Heritage of Thailand is an outstanding compendium for anyone fascinated by the treasures of Thailand's cultural heritage.

The relentless pace of urbanization since the industrial revolution has inspired a continuing effort to view, read, and name the modern city. "We are now at a point of transition to a new kind of city," write William Sharpe and Leonard Wallock, "and thus we are experiencing the same crisis of language felt by observers of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cities." "Visions of the Modern City" explores the ways in which artists and writers have struggled to define the city during the past two centuries and opens a new perspective on the urban vision of our time.

In their introduction, the editors outline three phases in the evolution of the modern city-- each having its own distinctive morphology and metaphor-- and argue that a new vocabulary is needed to describe the sprawling "urban field" of today. Eric Lampard draws a detailed demographic and geographic picture of urbanization since the late eighteenth century, culminating with the "decentered" city of the 1980s. Other contributors examine the representation of cities from the London and Paris of 1850 to the New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo of the present. Deborah Nord and Philip Collins follow Henry Mayhew and Charles Dickens, respectively, through the urban underworld of Victorian London. Theodore Reff traces the double life of Paris expressed in the work of Manet, while Michele Hannoosh shows bow Baudelaire influenced the Impressionists by transferring the aesthetic implications of the term nature to urban experience. Thomas Bender and William Taylor focus on tensions between the horizontal and the vertical in the architectural development of New York City, and Paul Anderer investigates the private, domestic spaces that represent Tokyo in postwar Japanese fiction. Steven Marcus analyzes the breakdown of the city as signifying system in the novels of Saul Bellow and Thomas Pynchon, writers who question whether the indecipherable contemporary city has any meaning left at all.