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The power of art : a human history of art: from Babylon to New York City
Unlocking the human stories behind millennia of art, the eminent curator, taking us from ancient Babylon to contemporary Pyongyang, explains art's power to illuminate our lives and reveals how great art resonates powerfully by transcending the boundaries of time.
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The Vienna School of Art History
Matthew Rampley’s The Vienna School of Art History is the first book in over seventy-five years to study in depth and in context the practices of art history from 1847, the year the first teaching position in the discipline was created, to 1918, the collapse of Austria-Hungary. It traces the emergence of art history as a discipline, the establishment of norms of scholarly enquiry, and the involvement of art historians in wider debates about the cultural and political identity of the monarchy. While Rampley also examines the formation of art history elsewhere in Austria-Hungary, the so-called Vienna School plays the central role in the study. Located in the Habsburg imperial capital, Vienna art historians frequently became entangled in debates that were of importance to art historians elsewhere in the Empire, and the book pays particular attention to these areas of overlapping interest. The Vienna School was well known for its methodological innovations and this book analyzes its contributions in this area. Rampley focuses most fully, however, on the larger political and ideological context of the practice of art history, in particular the way in which art historical debates served as proxies for wider arguments over the political, social, and cultural life of the Habsburg Empire.
eBook
What art does : an unfinished theory
Why do we need art? 'What Art Does' is an invitation to explore this vital question. It is a chance to understand how art is made by all of us. How it creates communities, opens our worlds, and can transform us. Curious and playful, richly illustrated, full of ideas and life, it is an inspiring call to imagine a different future.
BOOK
Almost nothing
This book proposes a new reading of contemporary art between 1958 and 2009 by sketching out a trajectory of ‘precarious’ art practices. Such practices risk being dismissed as ‘almost nothing’ because they look like trash about to be thrown out, because they present objects and events that are so commonplace as to be confused with our ordinary surroundings, or because they are fleeting gestures that vanish into the fabric of everyday life. What is the status of such fragile, nearly invisible, artworks? In what ways do they engage with the precarious modes of existence that have emerged and evolved in the socio-economic context of an increasingly globalised capitalism?Works discussed in this study range from Allan Kaprow’s assemblages and happenings, Fluxus event scores and Hélio Oiticica’s wearable Parangolé capes in the 1960s, to Thomas Hirschhorn’s sprawling environments and participatory projects, Francis Alÿs’s filmed performances and Gabriel Orozco’s objects and photographs in the 1990s. Significant similarities among these different practices will be drawn out, while crucial shifts will be outlined in the evolution of this trajectory from the early 1960s to the turn of the twenty-first century.This book will give students and amateurs of contemporary art and culture new insights into the radical specificities of these practices, by situating them within an original set of historical and critical issues. In particular, this study addresses essential questions such as the art object’s ‘dematerialisation’, relations between art and everyday life, including the three fields of work, labour and action first outlined by Hannah Arendt in 1958.
eBook
Art unpacked : 50 works of art: uncovered, explored, explained, with over 850 images
\"A down-to-earth, visual guidebook that shows how to \"read,\" understand, and get the most out of art. For beginners, art history might seem a daunting subject with complex rules and impenetrable technical language. Even for more seasoned art lovers the question of how to think about art is a perennial riddle. Art Uncovered is the perfect resource for both audiences: an engaging, visual primer for the general reader and educators. Designed like an instruction manual, fifty key artworks from around the world are deconstructed with explanations, diagrams, and close-ups in order to reveal the elements that comprise a masterpiece. Dating from the earliest times to the present, the artworks under analysis are drawn from many cultures and cover all forms of visual media, including drawing, illustration, photography, prints, and sculpture. Matthew Wilson's simple approach, using established art historical methods, enables the reader to discover the fundamentals of art history, from considerations of function, historical context, iconography, and artists' experience to broader issues of identity, including feminism, gender, and postcolonialism. Whether it's the mask of Tutankhamun or Dorothea Lange's photograph Migrant Mother, Katsushika Hokusai's GreatWave or Kara Walker's Gone, each image is dissected on the page in a no-nonsense style, with explanatory notes detailing artists' sources of inspiration, associated styles and movements, plus any relevant quotes, related visuals, and other contextual and issue-led information with keywords for handy cross-referencing. The resulting book is a dynamic visual resource that will inspire and spark enjoyment of art in all its forms\"--Publisher's description.
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We Make Each Other Beautiful
We Make Each Other Beautiful focuses on woman of color and queer of color artists and artist collectives who engage in direct political action as a part of their art practice. Defined by public protest, rule-breaking, rebellion, and resistance to governmental and institutional abuse, direct-action \"artivism\" draws on the aims, radical spirit, and tactics of the civil rights and feminist movements and on the struggles for disability rights, queer rights, and immigrant rights to seek legal and social change. Yxta Maya Murray traces the development of artivism as a practice from the Harlem Renaissance to Yoko Ono, Judy Baca, and Marsha P. Johnson. She also studies its role in transforming law and society. We Make Each Other Beautiful profiles the work and lives of four contemporary artivists —Carrie Mae Weems, Young Joon Kwak, Tanya Aguiñiga, and Imani Jacqueline Brown—and the artivist collective Drawn Together, combining new oral histories with sharp analyses of how their diverse and expansive artistic practices bear important aesthetic and politicolegal meanings that address a wide range of injustices.
eBook
Art, annotated : your expert guide to 500 of the world's greatest works of art
Combining reproductions of each work of art with precise annotations and visual analysis, it is an expertly curated selection of the finest paintings, sculptures, and prints in history. Immerse yourself in this book spanning 3,000 years of art.
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The political aesthetics of the Armenian avant-garde
This book addresses late-Soviet and post-Soviet art in Armenia in the context of turbulent transformations from the late 1980s to 2004. It explores the emergence of 'contemporary art' in Armenia from within and in opposition to the practices, aesthetics and institutions of Socialist Realism and National Modernism. This historical study outlines the politics (liberal democracy), aesthetics (autonomous art secured by the gesture of the individual artist), and ethics (ideals of absolute freedom and radical individualism) of contemporary art in Armenia and points towards its limitations. Through the historical investigation, a theory of post-Soviet art historiography is developed, one that is based on a dialectic of rupture and continuity in relation to the Soviet past. As the first English-language study on contemporary art in Armenia, the book is of prime interest for artists, scholars, curators and critics interested in post-Soviet art and culture and in global art historiography.
eBook
Children's book of art
Including all of the important art movements from Renaissance to Rococo as well as the great artists from these eras, this book presents a whirlwind tour of the world's greatest art forms.
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Fleshing out surfaces
Fleshing out surfaces is the first English-language book on skin and flesh tones in art. It considers flesh and skin in art theory, image making and medical discourse in seventeenth to nineteenth-century France. Describing a gradual shift between the early modern and the modern period, it argues that what artists made when imitating human nakedness was not always the same. Initially understood in terms of the body's substance, of flesh tones and body colour, it became increasingly a matter of skin, skin colour and surfaces. Each chapter is dedicated to a different notion of skin and its colour, from flesh tones via a membrane imbued with nervous energy to hermetic borderline. Looking in particular at works by Fragonard, David, Girodet, Benoist and Ingres, the focus is on portraits, as facial skin is a special arena for testing painterly skills and a site where the body and the image become equally expressive.
eBook