Art & Architecture
In this classic text on the 18th century and neoclassicism, Jean Starobinski pursues a subtle and brilliant meditation on the connections between art and revolution, comparing the style of the French Revolution as a political event to style in the contemporary visual arts."
Over the course of a career that spanned fifty years, Agnes Martin's austere, serene work anticipated and helped to define Minimalism, even as she battled psychological crises and carved out a solitary existence in the American Southwest. Martin identified with the Abstract Expressionists but her commitment to linear geometry caused her to be associated in turn with Minimalist, feminist, and even outsider artists. She moved through some of the liveliest art communities of her time while maintaining a legendary reserve. "I paint with my back to the world," she says both at the beginning and at the conclusion of a documentary filmed when she was in her late eighties. When she died at ninety-two, in Taos, New Mexico, it is said she had not read a newspaper in half a century.
Agnes Martin, the recipient of two career retrospectives as well as the National Medal of the Arts, was championed by critics as diverse in their approaches as Lucy Lippard, Lawrence Alloway, and Rosalind Krauss. The whole engrossing story, now available in paperback, Agnes Martin is essential reading for anyone interested in abstract art or the history of women artists in America.
Talks about the ancient art of tattooing as an expression of the sacred in the contemporary world. It is the natural alchemy that results when sacred images are emblazoned on the human body. Exploring the potentials of the skin art that has risen out of the popular tattoo culture, this book aims to take the tattoo experience beyond the obvious.
First published in France in 1958, then in the United States in 1959, Robert Frank's The Americans changed the course of 20th-century photography
First published in France in 1958, then in the United States in 1959, Robert Frank's The Americans changed the course of twentieth-century photography. In 83 photographs, Frank looked beneath the surface of American life to reveal a people plagued by racism, ill-served by their politicians and rendered numb by a rapidly expanding culture of consumption. Yet he also found novel areas of beauty in simple, overlooked corners of American life. And it was not just Frank's subject matter--cars, jukeboxes and even the road itself--that redefined the icons of America; it was also his seemingly intuitive, immediate, off-kilter style, as well as his method of brilliantly linking his photographs together thematically, conceptually, formally and linguistically, that made The Americans so innovative. More of an ode or a poem than a literal document, the book is as powerful and provocative today as it was 56 years ago.
This extraordinary catalogue accompanies a major traveling exhibition of 128 works of bronze, jade, and clay dating from the thirteenth century B.C. to the second century A.D. The majority of these stunningly sophisticated works of art--among the most unusual and spectacular produced anywhere in the ancient world--all come from a startling archaeological discovery made just fourteen years ago at the previously unknown site of Sanxingdui in Sichuan province. The discovery of this Bronze Age civilization fundamentally changes our understanding of Chinese history.
Representing fifteen hundred years of cultural production, these striking objects are extraordinarily varied, ranging from a monumental standing figure and an almost life-size bronze horse to ritual vessels, masks, and bronze heads of fantastic-looking supernatural beings, finely honed jade knives and ritual blades, and marvelous clay statuettes. Most have never before been seen in the United States. The exhibition and catalogue represent a unique international effort to continue the study of ancient Sichuan. Under the leadership of Robert Bagley, an international team of scholars contributes eight essays on the archaeological discoveries at Sanxingdui, the art historical importance of these objects, and the new history of ancient China they tell. Contributors are Michèle Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens, Jessica Rawson, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Alain Thote, Jenny F. So, Michael Nylan, and the Seattle Art Museum's Curator of Chinese Art, Jay Xu. In addition to the essays, there are individual entries for each object, nearly all of which have been newly photographed for this publication. Ancient Sichuan contributes to a revolutionary change in perceptions of ancient Chinese civilization, providing an unprecedented opportunity to explore the art, material culture, and spiritual life of ancient China. EXHIBITION SCHEDULE: Seattle Art Museum, SeattleMay-August 2001 Kimbell Museum of Art, Fort Worth
September 2001-January 2002 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
March-June 2002 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
August-November 2002
With her trademark style, wit, sensitivity, and spontaneity, Maira Kalman guides a whirlwind tour of American democracy.
And the Pursuit of Happiness is beloved artist and author Maira Kalman's yearlong investigation of democracy and how it works. Energized and inspired by the 2008 elections, on inauguration day Kalman traveled to Washington, D.C., launching a national tour that would take her from a town hall meeting in Newfane, Vermont, to the inner chambers of the Supreme Court.
As we follow Kalman's wholly idiosyncratic journey, we fall in love with Lincoln alongside her as she imagines making a home for herself in the center of his magisterial memorial; ponder Alexis de Tocqueville's America; witness the inner workings of a Bronx middle-school student council; take a high-speed lesson in great American women in the National Portrait Gallery; and consider the cost of war to the brave American service families of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The observations she makes as she travels charm and inform, and-as we have come to expect with Kalman-the route is always one of fascinating indirection.
Kalman finds evidence of democracy at work all around us. And the cast of characters we meet along the way is rousing good company, featuring visits from Benjamin Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others. And the Pursuit of Happiness is a remarkable tribute to our history and a powerful reminder of the potential our future holds, from a true national treasure.
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And the Pursuit of Happiness is beloved artist and author Maira Kalman's yearlong investigation of democracy and how it works. Energized and inspired by the 2008 elections, on inauguration day Kalman traveled to Washington, D.C., launching a national tour that would take her from a town hall meeting in Newfane, Vermont, to the inner chambers of the Supreme Court.
As we follow Kalman's wholly idiosyncratic journey, we fall in love with Lincoln alongside her as she imagines making a home for herself in the center of his magisterial memorial; ponder Alexis de Tocqueville's America; witness the inner workings of a Bronx middle-school student council; take a high-speed lesson in great American women in the National Portrait Gallery; and consider the cost of war to the brave American service families of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The observations she makes as she travels charm and inform, and-as we have come to expect with Kalman-the route is always one of fascinating indirection.
Kalman finds evidence of democracy at work all around us. And the cast of characters we meet along the way is rousing good company, featuring visits from Benjamin Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others. And the Pursuit of Happiness is a remarkable tribute to our history and a powerful reminder of the potential our future holds, from a true national treasure.
Watch a Video
Authoritative reference deals primarily with animal symbolism in Japanese art, with occasional mention of the decorative art of China, India, and Persia. Arranged in the format of a dictionary, the explanatory text is rich with sidelights from literature and legend, while 673 black-and-white illustrations depict dragons, tigers, bats, and other creatures with symbolic significance.
Considered a great classic by all who seek for a meeting ground between science and the humanities, Art and Illusion examines the history and psychology of pictorial representation in light of present-day theories of visual perception information and learning. Searching for a rational explanation of the changing styles of art, Gombrich reexamines many ideas on the imitation of nature and the function of tradition. In testing his arguments he ranges over the history of art, noticing particularly the accomplishments of the ancient Greeks, and the visual discoveries of such masters as Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt, as well as the impressionists and the cubists. Gombrich's triumph in Art and Illusion arises from the fact that his main concern is less with the artists than with ourselves, the beholders.
Art and Value focuses on the questions of history, methods, and nature of art theories, and on the value and evaluation of art. It serves as a valuable primer to aesthetics, as well as a summary and extension of Dickie's contribution to the field.
Ad Reinhardt is probably best known for his black paintings, which aroused as much controversy as admiration in the American art world when they were first exhibited in the 1950s. Although his ideas about art and life were often at odds with those of his contemporaries, they prefigured the ascendance of minimalism. Reinhardt's interest in the Orient and in religion, his strong convictions about the value of abstraction, and his disgust with the commercialism of the art world are as fresh and valid today as they were when he first expressed them.
Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, Art as Experience has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.
A collection of inspiring essays by the photographer Robert Adams, who advocates the meaningfulness of art in a disillusioned society
In Art Can Help, the internationally acclaimed American photographer Robert Adams offers over two dozen meditations on the purpose of art and the responsibility of the artist. In particular, Adams advocates art that evokes beauty without irony or sentimentality, art that "encourages us to gratitude and engagement, and is of both personal and civic consequence." Following an introduction, the book begins with two short essays on the works of the American painter Edward Hopper, an artist venerated by Adams. The rest of this compilation contains texts--more than half of which have never before been published--that contemplate one or two works by an individual artist. The pictures discussed are by noted photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Emmet Gowin, Dorothea Lange, Abelardo Morell, Edward Ranney, Judith Joy Ross, John Szarkowski, and Garry Winogrand. Several essays summon the words of literary figures, including Virginia Woolf and Czeslaw Milosz. Adams's voice is at once intimate and accessible, and is imbued with the accumulated wisdom of a long career devoted to making and viewing art. This eloquent and moving book champions art that fights against disillusionment and despair.
In Art Can Help, the internationally acclaimed American photographer Robert Adams offers over two dozen meditations on the purpose of art and the responsibility of the artist. In particular, Adams advocates art that evokes beauty without irony or sentimentality, art that "encourages us to gratitude and engagement, and is of both personal and civic consequence." Following an introduction, the book begins with two short essays on the works of the American painter Edward Hopper, an artist venerated by Adams. The rest of this compilation contains texts--more than half of which have never before been published--that contemplate one or two works by an individual artist. The pictures discussed are by noted photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Emmet Gowin, Dorothea Lange, Abelardo Morell, Edward Ranney, Judith Joy Ross, John Szarkowski, and Garry Winogrand. Several essays summon the words of literary figures, including Virginia Woolf and Czeslaw Milosz. Adams's voice is at once intimate and accessible, and is imbued with the accumulated wisdom of a long career devoted to making and viewing art. This eloquent and moving book champions art that fights against disillusionment and despair.
The 192 pieces of Chinese calligraphy featured in this book are the most famous representatives, carefully selected and chronologically arranged from the Zhou (c.1046-221 BC) and Qin (221-206 BC) dynasties to the modern time.
If you look into a Chinese dictionary, you will find fifty to sixty thousand characters each with its own structure, and each presenting a unique challenge to the practitioner of the graceful art of Chinese calligraphy. In this fascinating, informative guidebook by an expert in the field, this ancient art comes alive for beginners and advanced calligraphers alike.
The author provides both practical instruction in Chinese calligraphy and an absorbing historical background from the pictographic beginnings of Chinese writing, more than 4,000 years ago, down to Kai, Hsing, and Tsao styles (each over 1,000 years old) that have endured to the present day. The basic construction of individual characters is explained, as are the many ways in which calligraphy is used by Chinese artists. Separate chapters are devoted to Chinese calligraphy as an art form, language as a way of understanding Chinese thought, Chinese porcelain and ceramics, calligraphic seals, and inscriptions on paintings.
The book's final chapters comprise a detailed, step-by-step guide to using Chinese painting equipment and to mastering the techniques needed to create stunning examples of brushwork calligraphy. This book will delight artists and calligraphers as well as all readers interested in Chinese art and culture or in the development of writing."
The author provides both practical instruction in Chinese calligraphy and an absorbing historical background from the pictographic beginnings of Chinese writing, more than 4,000 years ago, down to Kai, Hsing, and Tsao styles (each over 1,000 years old) that have endured to the present day. The basic construction of individual characters is explained, as are the many ways in which calligraphy is used by Chinese artists. Separate chapters are devoted to Chinese calligraphy as an art form, language as a way of understanding Chinese thought, Chinese porcelain and ceramics, calligraphic seals, and inscriptions on paintings.
The book's final chapters comprise a detailed, step-by-step guide to using Chinese painting equipment and to mastering the techniques needed to create stunning examples of brushwork calligraphy. This book will delight artists and calligraphers as well as all readers interested in Chinese art and culture or in the development of writing."
This book is devoted to Zen art as a living tradition. It explores the heart of Zen experience through contemporary Zen art, demonstrating how this time-honored visual form continues to flourish today.
Gathers the essential beliefs and theories of the great teacher and American artist. "I would give anything to have come by this book years ago. It is . . . comparable only to the notes of Leonardo and Sir Joshua. . . . One of the finest voices . . . of modern men in painting."--George Bellows
"Julia Cameron invented the way people renovate the creative soul." -The New York Times
With its gentle affirmations, inspirational quotes, fill-in-the-blank lists and tasks -- write yourself a thank-you letter, describe yourself at 80, for example -- The Artist's Way proposes an egalitarian view of creativity: Everyone's got it.--The New York Times Morning Pages have become a household name, a shorthand for unlocking your creative potential--Vogue
Over four million copies sold! Since its first publication, The Artist's Way phenomena has inspired the genius of Elizabeth Gilbert and millions of readers to embark on a creative journey and find a deeper connection to process and purpose. Julia Cameron's novel approach guides readers in uncovering problems areas and pressure points that may be restricting their creative flow and offers techniques to free up any areas where they might be stuck, opening up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. The program begins with Cameron's most vital tools for creative recovery - The Morning Pages, a daily writing ritual of three pages of stream-of-conscious, and The Artist Date, a dedicated block of time to nurture your inner artist. From there, she shares hundreds of exercises, activities, and prompts to help readers thoroughly explore each chapter. She also offers guidance on starting a "Creative Cluster" of fellow artists who will support you in your creative endeavors. A revolutionary program for personal renewal, The Artist's Way will help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the steps you need to change your life.
With its gentle affirmations, inspirational quotes, fill-in-the-blank lists and tasks -- write yourself a thank-you letter, describe yourself at 80, for example -- The Artist's Way proposes an egalitarian view of creativity: Everyone's got it.--The New York Times Morning Pages have become a household name, a shorthand for unlocking your creative potential--Vogue
Over four million copies sold! Since its first publication, The Artist's Way phenomena has inspired the genius of Elizabeth Gilbert and millions of readers to embark on a creative journey and find a deeper connection to process and purpose. Julia Cameron's novel approach guides readers in uncovering problems areas and pressure points that may be restricting their creative flow and offers techniques to free up any areas where they might be stuck, opening up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. The program begins with Cameron's most vital tools for creative recovery - The Morning Pages, a daily writing ritual of three pages of stream-of-conscious, and The Artist Date, a dedicated block of time to nurture your inner artist. From there, she shares hundreds of exercises, activities, and prompts to help readers thoroughly explore each chapter. She also offers guidance on starting a "Creative Cluster" of fellow artists who will support you in your creative endeavors. A revolutionary program for personal renewal, The Artist's Way will help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the steps you need to change your life.
Margaret Randall reveals personal stories and profound insights about the artists who most influenced her life.
Artists in My Life is a collection of intimate and conversational accounts of the visual artists that have impacted the renowned poet activist Margaret Randall on her own journey as an artist. Randall writes of each relationship through multiple lenses: as makers of art, social commentators, women in a world dominated by male values, and in solitude or collaboration with communities and the larger artistic arena. Each story offers insight into the artist's life and work, and analyses the impact it had on Randall's own work and its impact on the larger art community. The work strives to answer bigger questions about visual art as a whole and its lasting political influence on the world stage. Randalls describes her motivations: "I go beneath the surface, asking questions and telling stories. I have wanted to answer questions such as: Why is it that visual art--drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, architecture--grabs me and, in particular instances, feels as if it changes me at the molecular level? How do art and memory interact? How do reason and intuition come together in art? Do women and men make art differently? Does great art change the viewer? Does it change the artist? How does art travel through time?"
For the fifth edition of his internationally renowned The Arts of China, Michael Sullivan has thoroughly revised and expanded every chapter of this classic history of Chinese art from the Neolithic period to the present day. This new edition reflects the latest archaeological discoveries, pays greater attention to the art of calligraphy, provides more information on Chan (Zen) art, and takes a close look at contemporary art. New images have been added to almost every chapter: the work now features more than four hundred photographs, maps, and illustrations, with more than two-thirds of them in full color.
Written in the engaging and lucid style that is Sullivan's hallmark, The Arts of China is readily accessible to general readers as well as serious students of art history. Sullivan's approach remains true to the way the Chinese themselves view art, providing readers with a sense of the sweep of history through China's dynasties. This organizational strategy makes it easy for readers to understand the distinct characteristics of each period of art and to gain a clearer view of how Chinese art has changed in relation to its historical context. With many improvements that bring it fully up to date, The Arts of China will remain the most comprehensive and widely read introduction to the history of Chinese art.
Written in the engaging and lucid style that is Sullivan's hallmark, The Arts of China is readily accessible to general readers as well as serious students of art history. Sullivan's approach remains true to the way the Chinese themselves view art, providing readers with a sense of the sweep of history through China's dynasties. This organizational strategy makes it easy for readers to understand the distinct characteristics of each period of art and to gain a clearer view of how Chinese art has changed in relation to its historical context. With many improvements that bring it fully up to date, The Arts of China will remain the most comprehensive and widely read introduction to the history of Chinese art.
Internationally renowned and a crucial classroom text, The Arts of China has been revised and expanded by the late Michael Sullivan, with Shelagh Vainker. This new, sixth, edition has an emphasis on Chinese art history, not as an assemblage of related topics, but as a continuous story. With updated attributions and dating throughout and a revised bibliography, it reflects the latest archaeological discoveries, as well as giving increased attention to modern and contemporary art and to calligraphy throughout China's history, with additional discussions of work by women artists. Visual enhancements include all new maps, and approximately one hundred new color illustrations--bringing the total to well over four hundred color illustrations.
Written in the engaging and lucid style that is Sullivan's hallmark, The Arts of China is readily accessible to general readers as well as to serious students of art history. Sullivan's approach remains true to the way the Chinese themselves view art, providing readers with a sense of the sweep of history through China's dynasties. This organizational strategy makes it easy for readers to understand the distinct characteristics of each period of art and to gain a clearer view of how Chinese art has changed in relation to its historical context. With many improvements that bring it fully up to date, The Arts of China will remain the most comprehensive and widely read introduction to the history of Chinese art.
Written in the engaging and lucid style that is Sullivan's hallmark, The Arts of China is readily accessible to general readers as well as to serious students of art history. Sullivan's approach remains true to the way the Chinese themselves view art, providing readers with a sense of the sweep of history through China's dynasties. This organizational strategy makes it easy for readers to understand the distinct characteristics of each period of art and to gain a clearer view of how Chinese art has changed in relation to its historical context. With many improvements that bring it fully up to date, The Arts of China will remain the most comprehensive and widely read introduction to the history of Chinese art.
Dancing lords and praying goddesses, swirling dragons and Buddhas atop lotus blossoms. We see these images in Asian art, but how can we learn to appreciate them? This guide introduces the history, artistry, and religious and literary symbolism of Asian art. Beautifully designed, the portfolio comes with twenty-four full-color reproductions of frameable quality and an accompanying booklet that covers three millennia of Asian art. The lush reproductions from the Asia Society's Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection highlight masterpieces from India to Japan, Indonesia to China, Korea to Thailand.
Walter De Maria's "Lightning Field" is 400 stainless steel poles, positioned 220 feet apart, in the desert of central New Mexico. Over the course of several visits, it becomes, for Raicovich, a site for confounding and revealing perceptions of time, space, duration, and light; how changeable they are, while staying the same.
From At the Lightning Field Chaos and coincidences of history
Edward Lorenz was a meteorologist at MIT in the early 1960s. Looking for a devil in the detail of meteorological data, he was trying to forecast global weather patterns (creating forecasting models that would later be applied toeconomics and financial analysis). Complicated sets of equations, sometimes arbitrary webs of information, measurements of "initial conditions" churned through a primitive computer. The machine was named the Royal McBee.
Laura Raicovich works as President and Executive Director of The Queens Museum. She is the author of A Diary of Mysterious Difficulties, a book based on Viagra and Cialis spam (Publication Studio) and is an editor of Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production (O/R Books).
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) had been widely known for decades when the young Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke traveled to Paris to interview him for an essay to be published in a German art book series. Intensely sensitive to art, and in particular to the irreducible power of objects, Rilke responded to Rodin's work in prose of great lyricism and clarity. His essay, a sustained and deeply personal meditation on Rodin's sculpture, was published in 1903. Loosely structured around a chronology of Rodin's life, it serves as an engaging introduction to both the sculpture of Rodin and the maturing sensibility of its author. Rilke stayed on to work as Rodin's secretary, in one of the most intriguing apprenticeships in the annals of twentieth-century culture; the second volume of his breakthrough collection New Poems (1908) would be dedicated to the sculptor who so deeply influenced it. The Rodin essay, meanwhile, was met with great acclaim in Germany, selling tens of thousands of copies during the poet's lifetime. It is published here in the original English translation of 1919 by an American poet and artist, Jessie Lemont, and her husband, Hans Trausil, both of whom knew Rilke and Rodin well. An introduction by the scholar Alexandria Parigoris situates the essay in the context of both men's work and assesses its enduring value today.
Sculptor Auguste Rodin was fortunate to have his secretary Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the most sensitive poets of our time. These two pieces discussing Rodin's work and development as an artist are as revealing of Rilke as they are of his subject. Written in 1902 and 1907, these essays mark the entry of the poet into the world of letters. Rilke's description of Rodin reveals the profound psychic connection between the two great artists, both masters of giving visible life to the invisible. Michael Eastman's evocative photographs of Rodin's sculptures shed light on both Rodin's art and Rilke's thoughts and catapult them into the 21st century.
"Rilke's observations are wonderfully astute. For readers interested in either [sculpture or poetry], this volume is a treat." -- The Christian Science Monitor
During the early 1900s, the great German poet lived and worked in Paris with Auguste Rodin. In a work as revealing of its author as it is of his famous subject, Rainer Maria Rilke examines Rodin's life and work, and explains the often elusive connection between the creative forces that drive timeless literature and great art.
Rilke served for several years as Rodin's secretary -- living in the sculptor's workshops, watching the shaping of his creations, and discussing his views and ideas. Written in 1903 and 1907, these essays about the master's work and development as an artist mark Rilke's entry into the world of letters. Rodin himself paid the poet the ultimate tribute, declaring these meditations the supreme interpretation of his work. This excellent translation, complemented by 33 illustrations, will fascinate students of literature, philosophy, and art history.
During the early 1900s, the great German poet lived and worked in Paris with Auguste Rodin. In a work as revealing of its author as it is of his famous subject, Rainer Maria Rilke examines Rodin's life and work, and explains the often elusive connection between the creative forces that drive timeless literature and great art.
Rilke served for several years as Rodin's secretary -- living in the sculptor's workshops, watching the shaping of his creations, and discussing his views and ideas. Written in 1903 and 1907, these essays about the master's work and development as an artist mark Rilke's entry into the world of letters. Rodin himself paid the poet the ultimate tribute, declaring these meditations the supreme interpretation of his work. This excellent translation, complemented by 33 illustrations, will fascinate students of literature, philosophy, and art history.
This innovative book offers a dynamic presentation of world-class Tibetan Buddhist art, elucidating its esoteric themes through visual storytelling.
A collection of essential quotations and other writings from artist and icon Jean-Michel Basquiat
One of the most important artists of the late twentieth century, Jean-Michel Basquiat explored the interplay of words and images throughout his career as a celebrated painter with an instantly recognizable style. In his paintings, notebooks, and interviews, he showed himself to be a powerful and creative writer and speaker as well as image-maker. Basquiat-isms is a collection of essential quotations from this godfather of urban culture. In these brief, compelling, and memorable selections, taken from his interviews as well as his visual and written works, Basquiat writes and speaks about culture, his artistic persona, the art world, artistic influence, race, urban life, and many other subjects. Concise, direct, forceful, poetic, and enigmatic, Basquiat's words, like his art, continue to resonate. Select quotations from the book:
The eight essays in Beauty in Photography provide a critical appreciation of photography by one of its foremost proponents. The result is a rare book of criticism, alive to the pleasure and mysteries of true exploration.