Search results

During the Persian Gulf War, the world witnessed an unprecedented convergence of warfare and media coverage. Civilian televisions were broadcasting images that had just been seen by military censors; shortly afterwards, this data was being translated into computer games peddled to teens. Through the work of international artists, Serious Games investigates how devastation is transfigured into forms of entertainment that militarize the imagination.

In 1915 the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) embarked upon a mission to energize the American textile industry.  Curators sought to innovate a distinctly “American” design idiom drawing on a more universal “primitive” language. Ethnographic objects were included in study rooms; designers gained access to storage rooms; and museum artifacts were loaned to design houses and department stores. In order to attract designers and reluctant manufacturers, who quickly responded, collections wer...

An engaging survey of American still-life painting that reinterprets beloved works and introduces lesser-known ones, providing a compelling new synthesis of the subjectThe Art of American Still Life reconsiders the development and cultural significance of still-life painting in America, exploring renowned treasures alongside recently discovered works—some previously unpublished—in unexpected ways. Taking an innovative approach to the genre, this captivating survey newly divides American still li...

During his reign, King Charles I (1600-1649) assembled one of Europe's most extraordinary art collections. Indeed, by the time of his death, it contained some 2,000 paintings and sculptures. Charles I: King and Collector explores the origins of the collection, the way it was assembled and what it came to represent. Authoritative essays provide a revealing historical context for the formation of the King's taste. They analyse key areas of the collection, such as the Italian Renaissance, and how...

What is "camp"? Drawing from Susan Sontag’s seminal essay, this striking volume explores its meaning and its expression in fashion from its origins to today“[An] amazing catalogue. . . . Extraordinary.”—Christiane Amanpour, CNN Although an elusive concept, “camp” can be found in most forms of artistic expression, revealing itself through an aesthetic of deliberate stylization. Fashion is one of the most overt and enduring conduits of the camp aesthetic. As a site for the playful dynamics between...

Francisco de Goya and Edvard Munch revolutionised art through their groundbreaking pairing of raw realism and unique imaginative power. Exploring inner worlds and existential questions, they had a formative impact on art history and our understanding of our times. The book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Goya and Munch: Modern Prophecies, the first comprehensive presentation of these two artists in tandem. It is lavishly illustrated with reproductions of all the exhibited works a...

The years between the Revolution of 1848 and the end of World War II were characterised by profound social, intellectual, and political change in France. The art world, centred in Paris, also witnessed remarkable transformations as artists experimented with bold, expressive styles. Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism...All emerged in and around the French capital during this period, and had profound impacts on the Western artistic canon. This splen...

The core oeuvre of Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918) was produced within barely a decade, at the beginning of the twentieth century. His famous nudes probed the existential core of human experience. The paintings of British artist Jenny Saville (born 1970) are equally intense, with their physicality and confrontational stance. This catalogue brings the work of these two artists together for the first time. The stylistic and thematic proximity of the "body-landscapes" and portraits by the...

Based in New York, Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) was a unique association of engineers and artists that included Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman, Billy Kl ver and Fred Waldhauer. The initiative was launched to realize works of art in unprecedented collaborative ventures, employ cutting-edge technology and to create artworks that would not have been possible without the expertise of scientists. Among these works were Jean Tinguely's Homage to New York (1960) and David Tudor's Rai...

Artists defy Western conceptions of the “human” The term “no humans involved” emerged shortly after the 1991 beating of Rodney King, when it was discovered that the Los Angeles Police Department was using the term as a shorthand for casework that involved Black and Latino men and sex workers. In 1994, Jamaican scholar and theorist Sylvia Wynter challenged her academic colleagues to consider how they themselves might be contributing to the cultural mindset that gave rise to this exclusionary de...

How do today’s artists understand and depict notions of love? As witnessed in this compelling book, they often transcend traditional European romantic notions to create representations of love in less familiar manifestations. The title of this volume, The Progress of Love, refers to a group of 18th-century paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, who represented love as a contemporary phenomenon rather than in the guise of allegory or fiction. Today’s artists go further. Exploring the forces that sh...

Urban art at its most effective offers the liberatory tools for declaring oneself a part of one's environment, and for countering the strictures and regimentation of public space with murals and stenciled graffiti. By means of sometimes subtle, often humorous, occasionally confrontational or even deliberately offensive interventions in the urban landscape, artists have challenged our habitual ways of seeing and plunged us into a dynamic civic dialogue of actions, objects, sculptures and texts. A...

This volume introduces seven young artists--Duncan Campbell, Marcel van Eeden, Friederike Feldmann, Sabine Hornig, Julian Rosefeldt, Tatiana Trouv and Sascha Weidner.

In June 2008, Christian Boros opened his collection of contemporary art to the public in a bunker built in 1942 in the center of Berlin, which he renovated into a spectacular museum with 80 rooms. The first permanent exhibition, which this book records, features work by lesser-known talents alongside famous figures such as Olafur Eliasson, Elmgreen & Dragset, Sarah Lucas, Tobias Rehberger, Anselm Reyle and Santiago Sierra.