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During the 1960s and 1970s, the Russian conceptual artist Ilya Kabakov was a galvanizing figure in Moscow's underground art community, ultimately gaining international prominence as the “leader” of a band of artists known as the Moscow Conceptual Circle. Throughout this time, he created texts that he would distribute among his friends, and by the late 1990s his written production amounted to hundreds of pages. Devoted to themes that range from the “cosmism” of pre-Revolutionary Russian modernism to the philosophical implications of Moscow's garbage, Kabakov's handmade booklets were typed out on paper, then stapled or sewn together using rough butcher paper for their covers. Among these writings are faux Socialist Realist verses, theoretical explorations, art historical analyses, accompaniments to installation projects, and transcripts of dialogues between the artist and literary theorists, critics, journalists, and other artists. This volume offers for the first time in English the most significant texts written by Kabakov. The writings have been expressly selected for this English-language volume and there exists no equivalent work in any language.

En 1998, à l'initiative du Lieu, centre en art actuel, se tenait à Québec une rencontre internationale relatant l'art action des vingt dernières années, en effectuant un retour critique sur les années soixante et soixante-dix. De ce rassemblement découla l'ouvrage intitulé Art action 1958-1998, compte rendu des discussions menées par les protagonistes historiques et actuels d'art performance et explorant quatre décennies de pratiques artistiques dans l'action. À l'automne 2018 – vingt ans après la tenue de cette rencontre charnière – avait lieu un événement équivalent, couvrant l'évolution à l'échelle mondiale des pratiques performatives de 1998 à 2018. L'objectif demeurait le même : produire un ouvrage témoignant des recherches et constats de nos nombreux collaborateurs, et ainsi faire suite au travail entamé sur le sujet il y a 20 ans. La publication Art action 1998-2018 propose un bilan des artistes, des pratiques, des organisations et du milieu artistique des régions explorées par le projet, soit plus de 65 pays.

'[Greenlaw] wields her erudition lightly.'Sunday Times'Remarkable, visionary.'CELIA PAUL'Indescribably brilliant.'Daily Telegraph'Kaleidoscopic.'Guardian'A rare pleasure... rewarding and thought-provoking.'Irish Times From the celebrated poet, novelist and memoirist, The Vast Extent is a constellation of'exploded essays'about light and image, seeing and the unseen. Each is a record of how thought builds and ideas emerge, aligning art, myth, strange voyages and scientific scrutiny with a poet's response so that they cast light upon each other. In this original and illuminating work, Lavinia Greenlaw invites us to observe our world and beyond with a new sensitivity.

Knausgaard's struggle is still ongoing with In the Land of the Cyclops as he continues to navigate the fjord of truth between reality and experience“This, which we perhaps could call inexhaustible precision, is the goal of all art, and its essential legitimacy.” —Jessica Ferri, The Los Angeles TimesIn his first essay collection to be published in English, the New York Times bestselling author of the My Struggle series Karl Ove Knausgaard explores art, philosophy, and literature with piercing candor and remarkable erudition. Paired with full color-images, his essays render the shadowlands of Cindy Sherman's photography, illuminate the depth of Stephen Gill's eye, and tussle with the inner mechanics of Ingmar Bergman's workbooks. In one essay he describes the figure of Francesca Woodman, arms coiled in birch bark and reaching up toward the sky—a tree. In another, he unearths Sally Mann's photographs of decomposing corpses, so much so that branches and limbs, hair and grass, begin to harmonize.Each essay bristles with Knausgaard's searing honesty and longing to authentically see, understand, and experience the world.

Everyone is a designer. But while many practitioners may be looking for solutions or ideological certainties, Easterling argues that solutions are mistakes and ideologies are unreliable markers. Instead, Medium Design speaks to anyone looking for alternative approaches to the world's unresponsive or intractable dilemmas-from climate cataclysm to inequality to concentrations of authoritarian power. Such an approach joins many disciplines in considering not only separate objects, ideas and events but also the space between them.In case studies dealing with everything from automation and migration to explosive urban growth and atmospheric changes, Medium Design looks not to new innovations but rather to sophisticated relationships between emergent and incumbent technologies. It does not try to eliminate problems but put them together into productive combinations. And it offers forms of activism for modulating power and temperament in organization of all kinds

Kurt Schwitters was a major protagonist in the histories of modern art and literature, whose response to the contradictions of modern life rivals that of Marcel Duchamp in its importance for artists working today. His celebrated Merz pictures—collaged and assembled from the scrap materials of popular culture and the debris of the studio, such as newspaper clippings, wood, cardboard, fabric, and paint—reflect a lifelong interest in collection, fragmentation, and abstraction, techniques he also applied to language and graphic design. As the first anthology in English of the critical and theoretical writings of this influential artist, Myself and My Aims makes the case for Schwitters as one of the most creative thinkers of his generation. Including material that has never before been published, this volume presents the full range of his prolific writing on the art and attitudes of his time, joining existing translations of his children's stories, poetry, and fiction to give new readers unprecedented access to his literary imagination. With an accessible introduction by Megan R. Luke and elegant English translations by Timothy Grundy, this book will prove an exceptional resource for artists, scholars, and enthusiasts of his art.

This book is an accessible introduction to the critical theories used in analysing art. It covers a broad range of approaches, presenting individual arguments, controversies and divergent perspectives. This edition has been updated to reflect recent scholarship in contemporary art and has been broken down into smaller sections for greater accessibility. The book begins with a revised discussion of the difference between method and theory. The following chapters apply the varying approaches to works of art, some of them new to this edition. The book ends with a new conclusion that focuses on the way the study of art is informed by theory.

Deeply learned, and with a style all his own, Marco Grassi is as at home with Duccio as he is with Norton Simon; Bronzino as with Bernard Berenson; a painting on his desk as with a Last Supper in Florence's Basilica of Santa Croce. In the Kitchen of Art selects the art conservator and dealer's most memorable contributions to The New Criterion over a span of nearly twenty years. Beginning with a previously unpublished memoir of his own Florentine upbringing, and continuing with in-depth critical discussions of the greats of Italian art along with recollections of the grandest collectors of the twentieth century, this book shows the art world in the round.

Published posthumously in 1964, this volume contains a fantastic collection of essays by R. G. Collingwood on the subject of art and it's relationship with philosophy. Robin George Collingwood, FBA (1889 – 1943) was an English historian, philosopher, and archaeologist most famous for his philosophical works including “The Principles of Art” (1938) and the posthumously-published “The Idea of History” (1946). This fascinating volume will appeal to those with an interest in Collingwood's seminal work, and is not to be missed by students of philosophy and art. Contents include: “Ruskin not a Philosophical Writer”, “Ruskin's Attitude towards Philosophy”, “On the Philosophy of Non-Philosophers”, “Logicism and Historicism”, “Ruskin as Historicist”, “The Anti-Historicism of Ruskin's Contemporaries”, “The Unity of the Spirit: Corollaries and Illustrations”, “Ruskin and Browning”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume today in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

As if John Berger's Ways of Seeing was re-written for the 21st century, Alexis L. Boylan crafts a guide for navigating the complexities of visual culture in this concise introduction.The visual surrounds us, some of it invited, most of it not. In this visual environment, everything we see--art, color, the moon, a skyscraper, a stop sign, a political poster, rising sea levels, a photograph of Kim Kardashian West--somehow becomes legible, normalized, accessible. How does this happen? How do we live and move in our visual environments? This volume offers a guide for navigating the complexities of visual culture, outlining strategies for thinking about what it means to look and see--and what is at stake in doing so.

Unter der Fragestellung »Absolutely Free«? ist die Jubiläumsschrift für den Kunsthistoriker Jürgen Wiener aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive der Produktion, Rezeption, Gestaltung und Wahrnehmung von Kunst gewidmet. Die Spanne der Aufsätze reicht von der Einheit und Vielfalt in der karolingischen Kunst über Spitzwegs Bildformate bis zur Konstruktion von (Kunst-)Geschichte bei Damien Hirst, von mittelalterlichen Stickereien über Berninis Tierdarstellungen am Vierströmebrunnen bis zu einem Plädoyer für Polyrhythmik in der zeitgenössischen Geschichtsschreibung nach dem Vorbild Frank Zappas. Mit Beiträgen von Vittoria Borsò, Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann, Dietrich Erben, Joachim Poeschke u.v.a.

The Necessity of Sculpture brings together a selection of articles on sculpture and sculptors from Eric Gibson's nearly four-decade career as an art critic. It covers subjects as diverse as Mesopotamian cylinder seals, war memorials, and the art of the American West; stylistic periods such as the Hellenistic in Ancient Greece and Kamakura in medieval Japan; Michelangelo, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and other historical figures; modernists like Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, and Alberto Giacometti; and contemporary artists including Richard Serra, Rachel Whiteread, and Jeff Koons. Organized chronologically by artist and period, this collection is as much a synoptic history of sculpture as it is an art chronicle. At the same time, it is an illuminating introduction to the subject for anyone coming to it for the first time.

Avigdor Arikha was one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. He was born in Romania to German-speaking Romanian Jewish parents and spent most of his life in Paris. A talented child, he started drawing early on. During the Second World War, he was deported to a concentration camp in the Ukraine, where he drew the horrors he witnessed. These drawings saved his life. During the 1950s, he established himself in Paris and was enjoying a successful career as an abstract painter. In 1965, a Caravaggio exhibition prompted him to convert to drawing from life. He stopped using colour until 1973, when he started again to paint. He worked with a religious, almost war-like, intensity until his death. Arikha was also an erudite and passionate scholar, endowed with a deep understanding of the history of art and its techniques, well-versed in world history and fascinated by science. He wrote many essays and curated important exhibitions of masters such as Poussin, Velázquez and Ingres. In this collection of essays that he wrote between 1965 and 1994, Arikha expounds on art and artists (Mantegna, Velázquez, Poussin, David, Ingres, Degas, Matisse, and more), technique, seeing, and the state of culture in his day, which, one could argue, is no more hopeful today—almost thirty years later—than it was then.'Throughout his whole development I have never ceased to admire the acuteness of his vision and his faultless insight into the art of the past.'—Samuel Beckett

Hot Cold Heavy Light collects 100 writings—some long, some short—that taken together forma group portrait of many of the world's most significant and interesting artists. From Pablo Picasso to Cindy Sherman, Old Masters to contemporary masters, paintings to comix, and saints to charlatans, Schjeldahl ranges widely through the diverse and confusing art world, an expert guide to a dazzling scene. No other writer enhances the reader's experience of art in precise, jargon-free prose as Schjeldahl does. His reviews are more essay than criticism, and he offers engaging and informative accounts of artists and their work. For more than three decades, he has written about art with Emersonian openness and clarity. A fresh perspective, an unexpected connection, a lucid gloss on a big idea awaits the reader on every page of this big, absorbing, buzzing book.

A rich collection of essays tracing the relationship between art and sound. In the 1970s David Toop became preoccupied with the possibility that music was no longer bounded by formalities of audience: the clapping, the booing, the short attention span, the demand for instant gratification. Considering sound and listening as foundational practices in themselves leads music into a thrilling new territory: stretched time, wilderness, video monitors, singing sculptures, weather, meditations, vibration and the interior resonance of objects, interspecies communications, instructional texts, silent actions, and performance art. Toop sought to document the originality and unfamiliarity of this work from his perspective as a practitioner and writer. The challenge was to do so without being drawn back into the domain of music while still acknowledging the vitality and hybridity of twentieth-century musics as they moved toward art galleries, museums, and site-specificity. Toop focused on practitioners, whose stories are as compelling as the theoretical and abstract implications of their works.Inflamed Invisible collects more than four decades of David Toop's essays, reviews, interviews, and experimental texts, drawing us into the company of artists and their concerns, not forgetting the quieter, unsung voices. The volume is an offering, an exploration of strata of sound that are the crossing points of sensory, intellectual, and philosophical preoccupations, layers through which objects, thoughts and air itself come alive as the inflamed invisible.

Winner of the 2019 Robert S. Liebert Award (established jointly by the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine and the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research)In the final years of the 19th century, Sigmund Freud began to construct evidence for the workings of an “unconscious.” On Dangerous Ground offers an innovative assessment of the complex role that his encounters with visual cultures-architecture, objects from earlier cultural epochs (“antiquities”), paintings, and illustrated books-played in that process. Diane O'Donoghue introduces, often using unpublished archival sources, the ways in which material phenomena profoundly informed Freud's decisions about what would, and would not, constitute the workings of an inner life. By returning to view content that Freud treated as forgettable, as distinct from repressed, O'Donoghue shows us a realm of experiences that Freud wished to remove from psychical meaning. These erasures form an amnesic core within Freud's psychoanalytic project, an absence that includes difficult aspects of his life narrative, beginning with the dislocations of his early childhood that he declared “not worth remembering.” What is made visible here is far from the inconsequential surface of experience; rather, we are shown a dangerous ground that exceeds the limits of what Freud wished to include within his early model of mind. In Freud's relation to visual cultures we find clues to what he attempted, in crafting his unconscious, to remove from sight.

“If you want to write, paint, sing, compose, act, or make films, read The Gift.” —from the Introduction by Margaret Atwood A modern classic cherished by many of the greatest artists of our time and a brilliant, life-changing defense of the value of creative labor. Drawing on examples from folklore and literature, history and tribal customs, economics and modern copyright law, Lewis Hyde demonstrates how our society—governed by the marketplace—is poorly equipped to determine the worth of artists'work. He shows us that another way is possible: the alternative economy of the gift, which allows creations and ideas to circulate freely, rather than hoarding them as commodities. Illuminating and transformative, The Gift is a triumph of originality and insight—an essential book for anyone who has ever given or received a work of art.

What terms do we use to describe and evaluate art, and how do we judge if art is good, and if it is for the social good? In How Art Can Be Thought Allan deSouza investigates such questions and the popular terminology through which art is discussed, valued, and taught. Adapting art viewing to contemporary demands within a rapidly changing world, deSouza outlines how art functions as politicized culture within a global industry. In addition to offering new pedagogical strategies for MFA programs and the training of artists, he provides an extensive analytical glossary of some of the most common terms used to discuss art while focusing on their current and changing usage. He also shows how these terms may be crafted to new artistic and social practices, particularly in what it means to decolonize the places of display and learning. DeSouza's work will be invaluable to the casual gallery visitor and the arts professional alike, to all those who regularly look at, think about, and make art—especially art students and faculty, artists, art critics, and curators.

Artistic research has become an established mode of inquiry and knowledge production in many fields. Johanna Schindler examines the collaborative practices of two artistic research projects in the fields of digital musical instrument design and responsive environments. How are individual research modes organized? Which forms of knowledge are at stake? And what sort of influence do institutional settings, spatial arrangements, and boundary objects have on the emerging research dynamics? Schindler's ethnographic study explores these questions and suggests concrete measurements that can be utilized to adapt the research environments, funding structures, and evaluation criteria of artistic research projects to the specific needs of this emerging field.

The surge of evolutionary and neurological analyses of art and its effects raises questions of how art, culture, and the biological sciences influence one another, and what we gain in applying scientific methods to the interpretation of artwork. In this insightful book, Matthew Rampley addresses these questions by exploring key areas where Darwinism, neuroscience, and art history intersect.Taking a scientific approach to understanding art has led to novel and provocative ideas about its origins, the basis of aesthetic experience, and the nature of research into art and the humanities. Rampley's inquiry examines models of artistic development, the theories and development of aesthetic response, and ideas about brain processes underlying creative work. He considers the validity of the arguments put forward by advocates of evolutionary and neuroscientific analysis, as well as its value as a way of understanding art and culture. With the goal of bridging the divide between science and culture, Rampley advocates for wider recognition of the human motivations that drive inquiry of all types, and he argues that our engagement with art can never be encapsulated in a single notion of scientific knowledge.Engaging and compelling, The Seductions of Darwin is a rewarding look at the identity and development of art history and its complicated ties to the world of scientific thought.

Psychoanalysts have long been fascinated with creative artists, but have paid far less attention to the men and women who motivate, stimulate, and captivate them. The Muse counters this trend with nine original contributions from distinguished psychoanalysts, art historians, and literary scholars—one for each of the nine muses of classical mythology—that explore the muses of disparate artists, from Nicholas Poussin to Alison Bechdel. The Muse breaks new ground, pushing the traditional conceptualization of muses by considering the roles of spouse, friend, rival, patron, therapist—even a late psychoanalytic theorist—in facilitating creativity. Moreover, they do so not only by providing inspiration, but also by offering the artist needed material and emotional support; tolerating competitive aggression; promoting reflection and insight; and eliciting awe, anxiety and gratitude. Integrating art history and literary criticism with a wide spectrum of contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives, The Muse is essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists interested in the relationships that enhance and support creative work. Fully interdisciplinary, it is also accessible to readers in the fields of art, art history, literature, memoir, and film. The Muse sheds new light on that most mysterious dyad, the artist and muse—and thus on the creative process itself.

In this brilliant collection of diverse works-essays, short stories, poems, translations-which spans a lifetime's engagement with art, John Berger reveals how he came to his own unique way of seeing. He challenges readers to rethink their every assumption about the role of creativity in our lives. Paying homage to the writers and thinkers who influenced him, he pushes at the limits of art writing, demonstrating beautifully how his artist's eye makes him a storyteller, rather than a critic. His expansive perspective takes in artistic movements and individual artists-from the Renaissance to the present-while never neglecting the social and political context of their creation. Landscapes-alongside Portraits-completes a tour through the history of art that will be an intellectual benchmark for many years to come.

“A rich and lovely exploration of art history” from the world-renowned art critic behind Ways of Seeing (Slate)!A diverse cast of artists comes to life in this jargon-free study Zadie Smith hails as “among the greatest books on art I've ever read.”One of the world's most celebrated art writers takes us through centuries of drawing and painting, revealing his lifelong fascination with a diverse cast of artists. Berger grounds the artists in their historical milieu in revolutionary ways, whether enlarging on the prehistoric paintings of the Chauvet caves or Cy Twombly's linguistic and pictorial play.In penetrating and singular prose, Berger presents entirely new ways of thinking about artists both canonized and obscure, from Rembrandt to Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock to Picasso. Throughout, Berger maintains the essential connection between politics, art and the wider study of culture. The result is an illuminating walk through many centuries of visual culture featuring 100 black and white images, from one of the contemporary world's most incisive critical voices.“A wonderful artist and thinker.” —Susan Sontag

“Essential reading”—n+1Creative and political art criticism on landscape works from the Renaissance to the present from a “master” storyteller (Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things)In this brilliant collection of diverse pieces—essays, short stories, poems, translations—which spans a lifetime's engagement with art, John Berger reveals how he came to his own unique way of seeing. He pays homage to the writers and thinkers who influenced him, such as Walter Benjamin, Rosa Luxemburg and Bertolt Brecht. His expansive perspective takes in artistic movements and individual artists—from the Renaissance to the present—while never neglecting the social and political context of their creation.Berger pushes at the limits of art writing, demonstrating beautifully how his artist's eye makes him a storyteller in these essays, rather than a critic. With “landscape” as an animating, liberating metaphor rather than a rigid definition, this collection surveys the aesthetic landscapes that have informed, challenged and nourished John Berger's understanding of the world. Landscapes—alongside its companion Portraits—completes a tour through the history of art that will be an intellectual benchmark for many years to come.

John Berger, one of the world's most celebrated storytellers and writers on art, tells a personal history of art from the prehistoric paintings of the Chauvet caves to 21st century conceptual artists. Berger presents entirely new ways of thinking about artists both canonized and obscure, from Rembrandt to Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock to Picasso. Throughout, Berger maintains the essential connection between politics, art and the wider study of culture. The result is an illuminating walk through many centuries of visual culture, from one of the contemporary world's most incisive critical voices.

Guy Davenport demonstrates his unparalleled critical vision as he interprets art, literature, and culture In this collection of 20 essays, Guy Davenport applies his insightful gaze and critical wisdom to topics including modern art and the effects of the automobile on contemporary society. His work ranges from “What Are Those Monkeys Doing?” in which he links the paintings of Rousseau to the writings of Rimbaud and Flaubert, to “Imaginary Americas,” a survey of the different roles America has filled in the imagination of Europeans. Davenport, 1 of the foremost American critics and intellectuals of the 20th century, brings his piercing intellect, encyclopedic references, and careful eye for detail to each piece in Every Force Evolves a Form. Whether writing on the philosophy behind modernism or a study of table manners, the paintings of Henri Rousseau or the design of Shaker handicrafts, Davenport always devotes his full attention and multi-angled analysis to the subject at hand. To read this thought-provoking collection is to see the inner-workings of Davenport's brilliant mind, with its varied fascinations and unparalleled insights.

Jean Hélion, the French painter who died at eighty-three in 1987, brought together in his copious and essential writing on art the theoretical authority of the intellectual and the fundamental insights of the craftsman in his studio. His writing extended throughout the five decades or more of his career.Soon after the young painter's arrival in Paris from the provinces, he began a literary-art magazine; he wrote polemical articles as a leading avant-garde abstractionist; he wrote about the great tradition of figure painting while still painting abstractions; and he wrote journals, notes on studio practice, pieces about the role of the artist in society, and much more. His prolificacy is made more extraordinary because he wrote in two languages—having lived in the United States for some years, he wrote many of his articles in English for an American and British audience.This volume collects, for the first time, the diverse writings by Hélion that appeared in print originally in English, including “The Abstract Artist in Society,” “Poussin, Seurat, and Double Rhythm,” “Objects for a Painter,” and many more. Double Rhythm is sure to become essential reading for art historians and painters.

Making Sense utilises art practice as a pro-active way of thinking that helps us to make sense of the world. It does this by developing an applied understanding of how we can use art as a method of healing and as a critical method of research. Drawing from poststructuralist philosophy, psychoanalysis, arts therapies, and the creative processes of a range of contemporary artists, the book appeals to the fields of art theory, the arts therapies, aesthetics and art practice, whilst it opens the regenerative affects of art-making to everyone. It does this by proposing the agency of'transformative therapeutics', which defines how art helps us to make sense of the world, by activating, nourishing and understanding a particular world view or situation therein. The purpose of the book is to question and understand how and why art has this facility and power, and make the creative and healing properties of certain modes of expression widely accessible, practical and useful.

Tolstoy shares his views about the imprecision of general opinions on art, the time, effort, public funds, and public respect spent on art and artists. The difficulty of meaning in art, and especially what is good, useful art, art for the sake of which we might condone such sacrifices as are being offered at its shrine. So, what is art?

Design students today are more visually literate than ever before, and their learning style naturally favors the visual over the textual. So why should they learn art and design theory from a traditional textbook? The only guide of its kind, Line Color Form offers a thorough introduction to design theory and terminology in a visually appealing and accessible format. With hundreds of illustrations and minimal text, this primer was created with visual learners in mind, making it ideal for art students as well as those for whom English is a second language. Each chapter focuses on a single aspect of visual composition, such as line, color, or material. After an illustrated discussion of fundamental vocabulary, the chapters move on to applications of the concepts covered. These applications are again demonstrated through images, including photographs, color wheels, significant works of art, and other visual aids. Each image is accompanied by a descriptive paragraph offering an example of how the vocabulary can be applied in visual analysis. The book culminates with a section on formal analysis, aimed at teaching readers how to express their observations in formal writing and critical discourse. With its emphasis on the visual, this unique guide is a highly effective learning tool, allowing readers to gain an ownership and mastery of terms that will benefit them academically and professionally. Whether you are a design educator, student, or professional, native or non-native English speaker, this bright and concise reference is a must.

Wolfgang Paalen was a central figure in internationalist surrealist circles in the late 1930s. Artist and intellectual, he was a European whose fascination with archaic cultures led him finally to Mexico, where he founded the influential magazine DYN in 1941. In the bold texts from DYN that make up Form and Sense, we encounter a unique artistic mind and an oracular voice.Paalen's book is an intellectual delight with essays on cubism, surrealism, the universality of forms in architecture, and the relationships that exist between art and science. He weaves together the new ideas and archaic inspirations in twentieth-century painting and sculpture. His nuanced and original considerations of some key figures—Mondrian, Kandinsky, Picasso—marked Paalen in turn as a significant thinker in the world of modern art.This painter's book, illustrated with carefully chosen examples of the art he examines, makes us not only understand but also experience the rich interplay between idea and image that informs the art of our own time. A new introduction by the scholar Martica Sawin examines Paalen's career, particularly his influential writing on surrealism and abstraction.

Art has a way of raising questions. Since 2009 the Guggenheim Forum has pondered how themes from art affect life outside the museum's walls: What is the role of spirituality in contemporary life? What is reality in the virtual era? And what's in a name? By bringing together writers, scientists, artists, and other experts from diverse fields, the Guggenheim Forum examines complex topics from all points of view, stimulating a lively dialogue among panelists. This volume gathers nine conversations from the Forum's first four years. Participants include NPR's Krista Tippet, designer Ellen Lupton, artist Martha Rosler, author Douglas Hofstadter, and novelist Francisco Goldman.

The eighteenth-century Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo spent his life executing commissions in churches, palaces, and villas, often covering vast ceilings like those at the Würzburg Residenz in Germany and the Royal Palace in Madrid with frescoes that are among the glories of Western art. The life of an epoch swirled around him—but though his contemporaries appreciated and admired him, they failed to understand him.Few have even attempted to tackle Tiepolo's series of thirty-three bizarre and haunting etchings, the Capricci and the Scherzi, but Roberto Calasso rises to the challenge, interpreting them as chapters in a dark narrative that contains the secret of Tiepolo's art. Blooming ephebes, female Satyrs, Oriental sages, owls, snakes: we will find them all, as well as Punchinello and Death, within the pages of this book, along with Venus, Time, Moses, numerous angels, Cleopatra, and Beatrice of Burgundy—a motley company always on the go.Calasso makes clear that Tiepolo was more than a dazzling intermezzo in the history of painting. Rather, he represented a particular way of meeting the challenge of form: endowed with a fluid, seemingly effortless style, Tiepolo was the last incarnation of that peculiar Italian virtue sprezzatura, the art of not seeming artful.

'Little madnesses'are our most deeply felt enthusiasms, investments and attachments in the sphere of culture. The term was coined by the child psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, whose work on transitional phenomena grew out of his naming of the transitional object, and extended into preliminary explorations of the crucial role played by cultural experience in a life that feels satisfying. In our socially and culturally sanctioned little madnesses, everyone can find relief from the burden of having to maintain a clear boundary between inner and outer worlds, fantasy and reality, because it is in the space between them that we can find the enthusiasms and passions that excite our creative imaginations. This idea offers intriguing pathways towards understanding how we can engage effectively with the world at a public, social level without setting aside our inner lives, our emotions and our most deeply felt attachments.In Little Madnesses, writers, artists, scholars and experts in a range of fields and disciplines explore the idea of transitional phenomena and consider its potential to extend and deepen our understanding of cultural experience in mental and social life, focusing on the importance of space, place and boundaries in cultural experience; on how we can negotiate media use and cultural identity; and on the aesthetic and creative aspects of cultural experience. Topics covered include cult films, computer use, installation art, trips to the cinema, museums and galleries, the agony and ecstasy of making art and the significance of life stage in cultural experience.

It is remarkably appropriate that this work on aesthetics should have been written by George Santayana, who is probably the most brilliant philosophic writer and the philosopher with the strongest sense of beauty since Plato. It is not a dry metaphysical treatise, as works on aesthetics so often are, but is itself a fascinating document: as much a revelation of the beauty of language as of the concept of beauty.This unabridged reproduction of the 1896 edition of lectures delivered at Harvard College is a study of'why, when, and how beauty appears, what conditions an object must fulfill to be beautiful, what elements of our nature make us sensible of beauty, and what the relation is between the constitution of the object and the excitement of our susceptibility.'Santayana first analyzes the nature of beauty, finding it irrational,'pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing.'He then proceeds to the materials of beauty, showing what all human functions can contribute: love, social instincts, senses, etc. Beauty of form is then analyzed, and finally the author discusses the expression of beauty. Literature, religion, values, evil, wit, humor, and the possibility of finite perfection are all examined. Presentation throughout the work is concrete and easy to follow, with examples drawn from art, history, anthropology, psychology, and similar areas.

Gottfried Boehms Frage, was ein Bild sei, hat für nachhaltige Unruhe in der kunsthistorischen Forschung und über ihre Grenzen hinaus gesorgt. Diese intellektuelle Irritation war der Ausgangspunkt für den Jubiläumsband, in dem Freunde, Weggefährten, Kollegen und Schüler oder Gottfried Boehm anderweitig verbundene Autorinnen und Autoren je ein prägnantes Beispiel für das, was ein Bild sein kann, präsentieren. Die Vielstimmigkeit des hier vorgelegten Bandes spiegelt so die weitreichende Resonanz, die die Bildfrage in den letzten Jahrzehnten gefunden hat. Neben Gemälden, Skulpturen, Fotografien oder Mosaiken werden auch Werke und Objekte angesprochen, die traditionell seltener unter dem Vorzeichen von Bildlichkeit diskutiert wurden. Die Bandbreite reicht von der Architektur über Installationen, Filme, Theateraufführungen, Performances und literarische Erzeugnisse bis hin zu Computeranimationen, die jeweils auf ihre spezifisch ikonischen Momente hin befragt werden. Hinzu kommen Beispiele, die dezidiert nicht dem Bereich der Künste entstammen – vom Faustkeil über das Werbeplakat bis hin zur Google-Bildsuche. Was ist ein Bild? 89 Autorinnen und Autoren geben Gottfried Boehm anhand eines von Ihnen gewählten Beispiels eine wie immer auch provisorische Antwort.

A classic work of advice, criticism, and inspiration for aspiring artists and lovers of art'Art when really understood is the province of every human being.'So begins The Art Spirit, the collected words, teachings, and wisdom of innovative artist and beloved teacher Robert Henri. Henri, who painted in the Realist style and was a founding member of the Ashcan School, was known for his belief in interactive nature of creativity and inspiration, and the enduring power of art. Since its first publication in 1923, The Art Spirit, has been a source of inspiration for artists and creatives from David Lynch to George Bellows. Filled with valuable technical advice as well as wisdom about the place of art and the artist in American society, this classic work continues to be a must-read for anyone interested in the power of creation and the beauty of art.

In The Scar of Visibility, Petra Kuppers examines the use of medical imagery practices in contemporary art, as well as different arts of everyday life. Among the works she investigates are the controversial Body Worlds exhibition of plastinized corpses, films like David Cronenbergs Crash that fetishize body wounds, representations of the AIDS virus on CSI: Crime Scene Investigations, and the paintings of outsider artist Martin Ram?rez.

Arnheim, Gestalt and Art is the first book-length discussion of the powerful thinking of the psychologist of art, Rudolf Arnheim. Written as a complete overview of Arnheim's thinking, it covers fundamental issues of the importance of psychological discussion of the arts, the status of gestalt psychology, the various sense modalities and media, and developmental issues. By proceeding in a direction from general to specific and then proceeding through dynamic processes as they unfold in time (creativity, development, etc.), the book discovers an unappreciated unity to Arnheim's thinking. Not content to simply summarize Arnheim's theory, however, Arnheim, Art, and Gestalt goes on to enrich (and occasionally question) Arnheim's findings with the contemporary results of gestalt-theoretical research from around the world, but especially in Italy and Germany. The result is a workable overview of the psychology of art with bridges built to contemporary research, making Arnheim's approach living and sustainable.

Ideas of selfhood, from Descartes'theory of'I think therefore I am'to postmodern notions of the fragmented and de-centred self, have been crucial to the visual arts. Gen Doy explores this relationship, from Holbein's'Ambassadors'and the early modern period up to and beyond Marc Quinn's'Self'(Blood Head). Arguing that the importance of subjectivity for art goes far beyond self-portraits, she explores such topics as self-expression; the self, work and consumption; self-presentation; photography and the theatre of the self; the marginalized - beggars and asylum seekers - and'the real me'. A wide range of artists, including Tracey Emin, Jeff Wall, Eugene Palmer and Karen Knorr, are discussed, as well as historical material from earlier periods.

Includes index.

Since its inception, art therapy has relied largely on theory'borrowed'from psychotherapeutic approaches. In this provocative and original book on art therapy, Frances Kaplan outlines a scientific approach to art therapy. Kaplan examines the relationship between art and science, delineating the role of research and encouraging a spirit of enquiry in art therapy. She looks at the latest scientific developments, especially those in biology, evolution, and brain science, and relates them to theories about the creation and interpretation of art. This leads her to show how art therapists would benefit from learning more about neurology and the physical effects of art on the brain, and from being able to apply this knowledge in their art therapy practice. The scientific evidence presented offers support for an art-based theory of art therapy. By demonstrating the relationship between two disciplines which are traditionally thought of as opposing, Kaplan challenges our assumptions about art therapy and issues a call for further research and debate.

From Holbein to Hockney, from Norman Rockwell to Pablo Picasso, from sixteenth-century Rome to 1980s SoHo, Robert Hughes looks with love, loathing, warmth, wit and authority at a wide range of art and artists, good, bad, past and present. As art critic for Time magazine, internationally acclaimed for his study of modern art, The Shock of the New, he is perhaps America's most widely read and admired writer on art. In this book: nearly a hundred of his finest essays on the subject. For the realism of Thomas Eakins to the Soviet satirists Komar and Melamid, from Watteau to Willem de Kooning to Susan Rothenberg, here is Hughes—astute, vivid and uninhibited—on dozens of famous and not-so-famous artists. He observes that Caravaggio was “one of the hinges of art history; there was art before him and art after him, and they were not the same”; he remarks that Julian Schnabel's “work is to painting what Stallone's is to acting”; he calls John Constable's Wivenhoe Park “almost the last word on Eden-as-Property”; he notes how “distorted traces of [Jackson] Pollock lie like genes in art-world careers that, one might have thought, had nothing to do with his.” He knows how Norman Rockwell made a chicken stand still long enough to be painted, and what Degas said about success (some kinds are indistinguishable from panic). Phrasemaker par excellence, Hughes is at the same time an incisive and profound critic, not only of particular artists, but also of the social context in which art exists and is traded. His fresh perceptions of such figures as Andy Warhol and the French writer Jean Baudrillard are matched in brilliance by his pungent discussions of the art market—its inflated prices and reputations, its damage to the public domain of culture. There is a superb essay on Bernard Berenson, and another on the strange, tangled case of the Mark Rothko estate. And as a finale, Hughes gives us “The SoHoiad,” the mock-epic satire that so amused and annoyed the art world in the mid-1980s. A meteor of a book that enlightens, startles, stimulates and entertains.

'I would give anything to have come by this book years ago. It is in my opinion comparable only to the notes of Leonardo and Sir Joshua... One of the finest voices which express the philosophy of modern men in painting.'— George BellowsA well-respected American artist, Robert Henri was also a gifted and influential teacher who attracted a large and devoted group of disciples. The Art Spirit, compiled by one of his former students, offers an unparalleled record of Henri's thoughts and theories. Essays, lectures, and notes not only embody the practical techniques of his approach to painting, but also articulate his belief that the joy and wisdom of the creative process are vital and accessible to everyone.The Art Spirit presents the entire system of Henri's teaching, complete with technical advice and critical comments, and will appeal to readers who delight in all forms of the arts. This classic guide offers information and inspiration for students, teachers, and professionals.

With this provocative and infinitely moving collection of essays, a preeminent critic of our time responds to the profound questions posed by the visual world. For when John Berger writes about Cubism, he writes not only of Braque, Léger, Picasso, and Gris, but of that incredible moment early in this century when the world converged around a marvelouis sense of promise. When he looks at the Modigiliani, he sees a man's infinite love revealed in the elongated lines of the painted figure. Ranging from the Renaissance to the conflagration of Hiroshima; from the Bosphorus to Manhattan; from the woodcarvers of a French village to Goya, Dürer, and Van Gogh; and from private experiences of love and of loss to the major political upheavals of our time, The Sense of Sight encourages us to see with the same breadth, courage, and moral engagement that its author does.