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Sculpture is just a word, an English word, which elicits an image in the mind’s eye. Sculpture is a European idea. In China statues, stele and other figural objects were made for millennia but not valued or collected as Sculpture. There was no Sculpture in China. Imagining Sculpture is the story of this something that did not exist. Imagining Sculpture is a series of short vignettes, historical and fictional. Travelers, scholars, officials, collectors, and antiquarians encounter statues, fig...

Robert Layton provides an authoritative introduction to the richness and diversity of art forms in non-Western societies. He addresses the problems of aesthetic appreciation across cultures, the varied uses of art, and the fundamental problem of what constitutes 'art' in societies varying from the traditional kingdoms of West Africa, with their specialist craftsmen using precious metals, to Australian hunter-gatherers, with their sand paintings and body decoration. Art forms discussed include ba...

Each book in Taschen's "Basic Genre" series features: a detailed introduction with approximately 35 photographs, plus a timeline of the most important events (political, cultural, scientific, etc.) that took place during the time period; and, a selection of the most important works of the epoch. Each is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and, on the facing page, a description/interpretation of the work and brief biography of the artist as well as additional information such as a...

Discusses how the theories of art critics, such as Herbert Read, Roger Fry, a Sheldon Cheney, have distorted the actual ideas and aims of the artists.

Why painting today? In the digital age, with its powers of instant recall and infinite reproduction, why are we witnessing an unprecedented revival of figurative painting? A Brush with the Real presents a survey of key contemporary artists who have each embraced painting and are working within a realist tradition. Through individual interviews the book peers into the life and work of each of these artists, discussing their methods, motives and sources, from art history to the internet and the...

Michael Fried's often controversial art criticism defines the contours of late modernism in the visual arts. This volume contains 27 pieces, including the introduction to the catalogue for "Three American Painters," the text of his book "Morris Louis," and "Art and Objecthood." Originally published between 1962 and 1977, the essays continue to generate debate today. These are uncompromising writings, aware of their transformative power during a time of intense controversy about the nature of mod...

Continuously in print for more than 20 years, Abrams' Masters of Art series has always been known for its exceptional quality and value. Now these classic volumes devoted to the lives and works of the world's great painters have been newly redesigned and released in paperback for the first time. The comprehensive texts, written by distinguished art historians, provide incisive and informative portraits of the artists and perceptive commentaries on their works and achievements. Each book features...

Issues of representation affect every aspect of scientific activity, from the encoding, display, analysis, and presentation of data to the communication of scientific concepts and information to students and the general public. The essays in this collection explore the issues involved in the creation and deployment of visual representations in both the natural and the social sciences. Visual Cultures of Science offers a mix of theoretical analyses and revealing case studies. The latter address...

Revisiting the ideas of a Russian revolutionary and feminist on such topics as sexual politics, free love, and motherhood.Alexandra Kollontai was a prominent Russian revolutionary, a commissar of Social Welfare after the October revolution in 1917, and a long-term Soviet ambassador to Sweden. As a cofounder of the Zhenotdel, the “Women's Department” in the communist party, she introduced abortion rights, secularized marriage, and provided paid maternity leave. Kollontai considered “comradely lov...

An expansive collection catalogue that offers a multiplicity of fresh perspectives on recent modern and contemporary art acquisitions in The Phillips Collection. Planned to coincide with The Phillips Collection's centennial and exhibition, this ground-breaking volume offers an unprecedented breadth of insights and inclusive narratives on the Phillips's growing art collection from a range of voices, including artists, critics, and scholars. Seeing Differently features works across wide-ranging...

Art has its own power in the world, and is as much a force in the power play of global politics today as it once was in the arena of cold war politics. Art, argues the distinguished theoretician Boris Groys, is hardly a powerless commodity subject to the art market's fiats of inclusion and exclusion. In Art Power, Groys examines modern and contemporary art according to its ideological function. Art, Groys writes, is produced and brought before the public in two ways -- as a commodity and as a t...

'The Black Figure in the European Imaginary' studies the way in which the visual arts in Europe perceived , or imagined, the black figure during the long 19th century (c1750-1914) prompted by growing contact through colonisation, through the slave trade, and the fascination with all things African an Oriental, images of black people proliferated in all art forms across continental Europe. Such representations had multiple meanings, depending on the context in which they were created. With 40 ma...

This book offers a multidisciplinary and multi-domain approach to the most recent research results in the field of creative thinking and creativity, authored by renowned international experts. By presenting contributions from different scientific and artistic domains, the book offers a comprehensive description of the state of the art on creativity research. Specifically, the chapters are organized into four parts: 1) Theoretical Aspects of Creativity; 2) Social Aspects of Creativity; 3) Creativ...

Reading Rembrandt: Beyond the Word Image Opposition explores the potential for interdisciplinary methodology between literature and visual art. In a series of close analyses of works by Rembrandt works whose attribution is still challenged, but can still be considered within the context of this study-and texts related to those works, Mieke Bal questions the traditional boundaries between literary and visual analysis. Bal also studies Rembrandt's complex handling of gender and the representation...

This book includes essays, criticism, and performance scripts written between 1985 and 2003 by an artist whose artistic practice investigates and reveals the social structures of art and its institutions.Andrea Fraser's work, writes Pierre Bourdieu in his foreword to "Museum Highlights", is able to "trigger a social mechanism, a sort of machine infernale whose operation causes the hidden truth of social reality to reveal itself." It often does this by incorporating and inhabiting the social role...

Ed Ruscha is among the most innovative artists of the last forty years. He is also one of the first Americans to introduce a critique of popular culture and an examination of language into the visual arts. Although he first made his reputation as a painter, Ruscha is also celebrated for his drawings (made both with conventional materials and with food, blood, gunpowder, and shellac), prints, films, photographs, and books. Though often associated with Los Angeles as a Pop and Conceptual artist, R...