Eleven scientists and artists answer the question, how can "complexity" be utilized to find the common ground between their two so very different worlds?. Since the beginnings of the scientific mode of thinking in the 16th century, science and art have appeared as polar opposites: science with its cold logic and art with its transcendent beauty. Yet both scientists and artists are seekers after truth. In the spring of 1998, a small group of scientists and artists joined veteran scientist-author...
A comprehensive analysis of every belief from the oldest tribal ceremonies to modern cults. Each faith is covered with analysis of the origins, practices, rituals and variations which make up each of the world's religions. The scope of the book is from the every earliest beliefs in the ancient world, worship of the Mother Goddess, prehistoric rites, through the 4000 years since classical civilization to the most contemporary world of cults and the self-styled Messiahs. It aims to put into contex...
Can art provide a critique of political economy? This question, originally formulated by the romantic philosophers John Ruskin and William Morris, continues to be at the core of contemporary anti-capitalist and post-colonial struggles. As art and culture feed an urban rentierism based on gentrification, mass-tourism and hyper-consumption, art commons are radicalizing urban politics across the globe through new political and artistic practices. Art/Commons is the first book to theorise the comm...
In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned book, Ayn Rand throws a new light on the nature of art and its purpose in human life. Once again Miss Rand eloquently demonstrates her refusal to let popular catchwords and conventional ideas stand between her and the truth as she has discovered it. The Romantic Manifesto takes its place beside The Fountainhead as one of the most important achievements of our time.
The book seeks to develop from a minimum of presupposition a framework within which the arts may be viewed and explained. The fundamental natures of poetry, painting and music are separately addressed allowing key distinctions to be made between these three art forms. More generally, the relationship of the arts to both religion and science is explored; and the development of the arts from the earliest times considered, along with whether there was (or will be) a best time to be an artist. A co...
Borges Laberintos Dumelic
by Jorge Luis Borges and Jose Edmundo Clemente
Jerrold Levinson, one of the most prominent philosophers of art today, presents a new collection of essays, following on from his four previous collections, Music, Art and Metaphysics (1990), The Pleasures of Aesthetics (1996), Contemplating Art (2006), and Musical Concerns (2015). Aesthetic Pursuits specifically complements Levinson's last volume, Musical Concerns, by collecting recent essays not concerned with music, but instead focusing on literature, film, and visual art, while addressing...
Sociopolitical Aesthetics (Radical Aesthetics-Radical Art)
by Kim Charnley
Since the turn of the millennium, protests, meetings, schoolrooms, reading groups and many other social forms have been proposed as artworks or, more ambiguously, as interventions that critique art's autonomy. The historical origins of these practices can be traced back to the avant-gardes of the early 20th century, which hoped to revolutionise both art and life. It is clear, however, that the social and political turbulence of the present requires a different framework of analysis than any of t...
Regarding Warhol
by Marla Prather, Mark Rosenthal, Ian Alteveer, and Rebecca Lowery
For decades, commentators have acknowledged Andy Warhol's phenomenal impact on contemporary art. Unlike the many existing books about the artist, Regarding Warhol: Fifty Artists, Fifty Years is the first full-scale exploration of his tremendous reach across several generations of artists who in key ways respond to his groundbreaking work. Examining in depth the nature of the Warhol sensibility, the book is organized around five significant themes in the artist's work: popular consumer culture an...
William Boyd's first ever collection of non-fiction is a substantial volume of writings from the last three decades that range widely over his particular interests and obsessions. "Bamboo" gathers together Boyd's writing on literature, art, the movie business, television, people he has met, places he has visited and autobiographical reflections on his African childhood, his years at boarding school and the profession of novelist. From Pablo Picasso to the allure of the British Caff, from Charles...