Art & Architecture

Buddhism, a faith of perpetual evolution and regeneration, has flourished for over two thousand years and has been embraced by peoples of many cultures. Veneration for the Buddha in all his myriad forms has inspired glorious imagery that celebrates his beliefs. This magnificent book presents and discusses works of art from many countries that portray the life of Buddha and address the different ideas that have shaped the religion through the ages to the present day.

Buddha: Radiant Awakening provides illustrations of paintings, sculpture, metalwork, manuscripts, mandalas, and textiles, with images that range from early Indian sculptures to Japanese and Chinese scrolls, from a Tibetan tangka to a contemporary set of panels created from digital media. Each image is explained, and longer essays by authorities in the field discuss such topics as the life of Buddha, Buddhist cosmology, Buddha lands, and Buddhas of the past, present, and future. A comprehensive glossary is also included.

Lavishly illustrated with some 150 full-color photographs, this book offers a compelling example of the enduring fascination with and power of Buddha.

Over 180 color photographs from temples, museums, historical sites, and private collections enhance this attractive survey of the Buddhist art of India, Central Asia, China, Korea, Japan, Nepal, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar), Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. It presents the life story and teachings of Sakyamuni Buddha, founder of Buddhism, as shown in paintings, sculptures, and other works of art, and explores the major schools of Buddhism--Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, Zen--and the styles and characteristics of the Buddhas, bodhisattvas, deities, and other images seen in their art.

Everyone interested in Buddhist art and its enduring significance will find this volume a useful reference for the study and appreciation of the various gestures, poses, and artistic elements seen in Buddhist art through the ages.

A vision of architecture that transcends concerns of form and function and finds the connections between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative to provide a better place for society.

The forced polarity between form and function in considerations of architecture--opposing art to social interests, ethics to poetic expression--obscures the deep connections between ethical and poetical values in architectural tradition. Architecture has been, and must continue to be, writes Alberto Pérez-Gómez, built upon love. Modernity has rightly rejected past architectural excesses, but, Pérez-Gómez argues, the materialistic and technological alternatives it proposes do not answer satisfactorily the complex desire that defines humanity. True architecture is concerned with far more than fashionable form, affordable homes, and sustainable development; it responds to a desire for an eloquent place to dwell--one that lovingly provides a sense of order resonant with our dreams. In Built upon Love Pérez-Gómez uncovers the relationship between love and architecture in order to find the points of contact between poetics and ethics--between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative to provide a better place for society.

Eros, as first imagined by the early lyric poets of classical Greece, is the invisible force at the root of our capacity to create and comprehend the poetic image. Pérez-Gómez examines the nature of architectural form in the light of eros, seduction, and the tradition of the poetic image in Western architecture. He charts the ethical dimension of architecture, tracing the connections between philia--the love of friends that entails mutual responsibility among equals--and architectural program. He explores the position of architecture at the limits of language and discusses the analogical language of philia in modernist architectural theory. Finally, he uncovers connections between ethics and poetics, describing a contemporary practice of architecture under the sign of love, incorporating both eros and philia.

Discover the healing and relaxing power inherent in calligraphic handwriting and the Medieval art of copying with this beautifully designed activity book that includes interactive sections filled with inspirational words and sentences to carefully mimic, each created by calligraphy master Màlleus.

Navigating a nonstop interconnected digital world leaves most of us frazzled and exhausted. One of the most enjoyable ways of learning to slow down is calligraphy and the art of copying. Many studies show that writing nicely and carefully can be therapeutic like meditation--repeating certain graphic signs and reciting a mantra have a similar effect. In fact, the art of copying is a kind of meditation: it improves concentration, provides a sense of order, and channels impatience and restlessness--helping to alleviate stress and quiet anxiety. The tactile nature of writing--putting fingers to pen to paper--makes our thoughts tangible and concrete. Tapping into our inner nature, writing focuses our attention so we can discover what we want most, organize our thoughts, and work towards making our dreams come true.

Calm Calligraphy is a beautiful spiritual guide and activity book that introduces you to the world of copying. Calligraphy master Màlleus offers a brief philosophical overview and introduction to his art and then provides relaxing words, phrases, and sentences on lined pages to help you unwind as you improve your skill and ultimately master the art of copying. The selections have been carefully created by the author and are inspired by the books collected in Màlleus' acclaimed scriptorium.

For older people, the exercises in Calm Calligraphy offer a way to stretch hand and finger muscles and warm up aching joints, while younger people can learn to create beautiful fine script, once a common practice taught in schools, that is quickly becoming a lost art.

With Calm Calligraphy, you can write away your stress, learn to focus better, and tune in to your inner desires.

Photographs and text document disappearing cultural landscapes and lifestyles in rural China, capturing poignant scenes far from Beijing or Shanghai.

Just a few kilometers from the glittering skylines of Shanghai and Beijing, we encounter a vast countryside, an often forgotten and seemingly limitless landscape stretching far beyond the outskirts of the cities. Following traces of old trade routes, once-flourishing marketplaces, abandoned country estates, decrepit model villages, and the sites of mystic rituals, the authors of this book spent seven years exploring, photographing, and observing the vast interior of China, where the majority of Chinese people live in ways virtually unchanged for centuries.

China's Vanishing Worlds is an impressive documentation in images and text of modernization's effect on traditional ways of life, and a sympathetic portrait of lives burdened by hardship but blessed by simplicity and tranquility. The scars of China's recent history and the decay of centuries-old traditions are made visible in this volume, but so is the lure and promise of technology and another life for young people. In the next twenty years, an estimated 280 million Chinese villagers will become city dwellers, leaving their ancestral homes in search of urban jobs and opportunities.

In striking and evocative color photographs, we see picturesque villages set against a background of rolling hills, planned centuries ago according to the principles of feng shui; a restaurant with bright pink resin chairs and a wide-screen television; traditional buildings preserved by the accident of poverty and isolation; ramshackle rooms decorated with portraits of Chairman Mao; backpack-wearing children walking to school; festivals with elaborately costumed performers; old men playing cards; buyers and sellers at open-air markets.

China's Vanishing Worlds offers readers a rare opportunity to glimpse China as it once was, and as it will soon no longer be.

A Chinese Bestiary presents a fascinating pageant of mythical creatures from a unique and enduring cosmography written in ancient China. The Guideways through Mountains and Seas, compiled between the fourth and first centuries b.c.e., contains descriptions of hundreds of fantastic denizens of mountains, rivers, islands, and seas, along with minerals, flora, and medicine. The text also represents a wide range of beliefs held by the ancient Chinese. Richard Strassberg brings the Guideways to life for modern readers by weaving together translations from the work itself with information from other texts and recent archaeological finds to create a lavishly illustrated guide to the imaginative world of early China.

Unlike the bestiaries of the late medieval period in Europe, the Guideways was not interpreted allegorically; the strange creatures described in it were regarded as actual entities found throughout the landscape. The work was originally used as a sacred geography, as a guidebook for travelers, and as a book of omens. Today, it is regarded as the richest repository of ancient Chinese mythology and shamanistic wisdom. The Guideways may have been illustrated from the start, but the earliest surviving illustrations are woodblock engravings from a rare 1597 edition. Seventy-six of those plates are reproduced here for the first time, and they provide a fine example of the Chinese engraver's art during the late Ming dynasty.

This beautiful volume, compiled by a well-known specialist in the field, provides a fascinating window on the thoughts and beliefs of an ancient people, and will delight specialists and general readers alike.

This classic work, first published in 1971, explores the transition in painting styles from the late Sung period to the art of Yuan dynasty literati. Building on the pioneering work of Oswald Siren and James Cahill, Susan Bush's investigations of painting done under the Chin dynasty confirmed the dominance of scholar-artists in the north and their gradual development of scholarly painting traditions, and a related study of Northern Sung writings showed that their theory was shaped as much by the views of their social class as by their artistic aims. Bush's perspective on Sung scholars' art and theory helps explain the emergence of literati painting as the main artistic tradition in Yuan times. Social history thus served to supplement an understanding of the evolution of artistic styles.

Nine of the most famous essays by the preeminent philosopher and art historian, exploring such subjects as the true function of aesthetics in art and the importance of symbolism.

Paul Thomas Anderson's evolution from a brash, self-anointed "Indiewood" auteur to one of his generation's most distinctive voices has been one of the most remarkable career trajectories in recent film history. From early efforts to emulate his cinematic heroes to his increasingly singular late films, Anderson has created a body of work that balances the familiar and the strange, history and myth: viewers feel perpetually off balance, unsure of whether to expect a pitch-black joke or a moment of piercing emotional resonance.

This book provides the most complete account of Anderson's career to date, encompassing his varied side projects and unproduced material; his personal and professional relationships with directors such as Jonathan Demme, Robert Altman, and Robert Downey Sr.; and his work as a director of music videos for Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, and Haim. Ethan Warren explores Anderson's recurring thematic preoccupations--the fraught dynamics of gender and religious faith, biological and found families, and his native San Fernando Valley--as well as his screenwriting methods and his relationship to his influences. Warren argues that Anderson's films conjure up an alternate American history that exaggerates and elides verifiable facts in search of a heightened truth marked by a deeper level of emotional hyperrealism. This book is at once an unconventional primer on Anderson's films and a provocative reframing of what makes his work so essential.

The past two decades have seen revolutionary shifts in our ability to navigate, inhabit, and define the spatial realm. The data flows that condition much of our lives now regularly include Global Positioning System (GPS) readings and satellite images of a quality once reserved for a few militaries and intelligence agencies, and powerful geographic information system (GIS) software is now commonplace. These new technologies have raised fundamental questions about the intersection between physical space and its representation, virtual space and its realization.

In Close Up at a Distance, Laura Kurgan offers a theoretical account of these new digital technologies of location and a series of practical experiments in making maps and images with spatial data. Neither simply useful tools nor objects of wonder or anxiety, the technologies of GPS, GIS, and satellite imagery become, in this book, the subject and the medium of a critical exploration.

Close Up at a Distance records situations of intense conflict and struggle, on the one hand, and fundamental transformations in our ways of seeing and of experiencing space, on the other. Kurgan maps and theorizes mass graves, incarceration patterns, disappearing forests, and currency flows in a series of cases that range from Kuwait (1991) to Kosovo (1999), New York (2001) to Indonesia (2010).

Using digital spatial hardware and software designed for military and governmental use in reconnaissance, secrecy, monitoring, ballistics, the census, and national security, Kurgan engages and confronts the politics and complexities of these technologies and their uses. At the intersection of art, architecture, activism, and geography, she uncovers, in her essays and projects, the opacities inherent in the recording of information and data and reimagines the spaces they have opened up.

Charts color exploration and expression from the 1600s to the present day through painters' tools, art, ephemera, and literature

Throughout history, artists, scientists, and philosophers have attempted to explain and order the visible color spectrum. Color: A Visual History from Newton to Modern Color Matching Guides offers the fascinating history of how color has been recorded, explored, and understood. Using an extraordinary collection of original color material that includes charts, wheels, artists' palettes, and swatches, the book showcases centuries of significant scientific discoveries and artistic exploration. It celebrates the visual quality and beauty of various color theories over time and highlights the creativity of their design and codification. The book showcases everything from fourteenth-century illuminated manuscripts to Moses Harris's The Natural System of Colours (ca. 1769), and from 1814's Werner's Nomenclature of Colours to Paul Klee's color harmonies to highlight the fascinating interactions of science and art. This stunning display of shades, tints, and tones is an authoritative guide for anyone working in the arts, as well as anyone passionate about color in their personal lives, homes, and surroundings.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Arthur Wesley Dow literally wrote the book on composition--and this is it! Dow's Composition exercised an enormous influence on emerging modern artists of a century ago. A thought-provoking examination of the nature of visual representation, it remains ever-relevant to all the visual arts.
A well-known painter and printmaker, Dow taught for many years at Columbia University and acted as a mentor to countless young artists, including Georgia O'Keeffe. His text, presented in a workbook format, offers teachers and students a systematic approach to composition. It explores the creation of freely constructed images based on harmonic relations between lines, colors, and dark and light patterns. The author draws upon the traditions of Japanese art to discuss a theory of flat formal equilibrium as an essential component of pictorial creation. Practical and well-illustrated, this classic guide offers valuable insights into modern design.

Including a number of short essays by Bataille and Leiris on aspects of the other's work as well as excerpts on Bataille from Leiris' diaries, this collection of correspondence throws new light on two of Surrealism's most radical dissidents.
In the autumn of 1924, just before André Breton published the Manifeste du surréalisme, two young men met in Paris for the first time. Georges Bataille, 27, starting work at the Bibliothèque Nationale; Michel Leiris, 23, beginning his studies in ethnology. Within a few months, they were both members of the Surrealist group, although their adherence to Surrealism (unlike their affinities with it) would not last long: in 1930 they were among the signatories of "Un cadavre," the famous tract against Breton, the "Machiavelli of Montmartre," as Leiris put it. But their friendship would endure for more than 30 years, and their correspondence, assembled here for the first time in English, would continue until the death of Bataille in 1962.