Criticism & Theory

The essence of art is to conceal art. A dancer or musician does not only need to perform with ability. There should also be a lack of visible effort that gives an impression of naturalness. To disguise technique and feign ease is to heighten beauty. To...

Contemporary Photography and Theory offers an essential overview of some of the key critical debates in fine art photography today. Building on a foundational understanding of photography, it offers an in-depth discussion of five topic areas: identity,...

Mark Rothko's classic book on artistic practice, ideals, and philosophy, now with an expanded introduction and an afterword by Makoto Fujimura Stored in a New York City warehouse for many years after the artist's death, this extraordinary manuscript by...

How is art criticism to be understood within an expanding artistic field? A look at its history and its manifestations within globalized conditions shows the variety of the genre, of the criteria and of the styles of writing. This reader is an attempt to...

Today, art and science are often defined in opposition to each other: one involves the creation of individual aesthetic objects, and the other the discovery of general laws of nature. Throughout human history, however, the boundaries have been less...

The first edition of this book, published in 1994, reshaped the direction of landscape studies by considering landscape not simply as an object to be seen or a text to be read, but as an instrument of cultural force, a central tool in the creation of...

Taking aim at the mostly male bastion of art theory and criticism, Mira Schor brings a maverick perspective and provocative voice to the issues of contemporary painting, gender representation, and feminist art. Writing from her dual perspective of a...

With "The Invention of Art", Larry Shiner challenges our conventional understandings of art and asks us to reconsider its history entirely, arguing that the category of fine art is a modern invention - that the lines drawn between art and craft resulted...

Yuri Tynianov was a key figure of Russian Formalism, an intellectual movement in early 20th century Russia that also included Viktor Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson. Tynianov developed a groundbreaking conceptualization of literature as a system within-and...

Atlas of Emotion is a highly original endeavour to map a cultural history of spatio-visual arts. In an evocative montage of words and pictures, emphasises that "sight" and "site" but also "motion" and "emotion" are irrevocably connected. In so doing,...

From world-renowned curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects offers a unique opportunity to learn about the lives and creativity of the world's leading artistsHans Ulrich Obrist has been conducting ongoing conversations...

The subject of writing and receiving letters, which recurs frequently in the work of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), is given dramatic tension in this masterful painting of two women in a mysterious moment of crisis. The artist seldom, if ever, surpassed...

'Race Is Everything' looks at ideas of 'racial science' in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, and how art was influenced by it. It looks at race in general, but with a particular concentration on attitudes towards and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780486217765Author Jay HambidgeFormat PaperbackPage Count 133Imprint Dover Publications Inc.Publisher Dover Publications Inc.Weight(grams)...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780262540292Author Donis A DondisFormat PaperbackPage Count 2042Imprint MIT PressPublisher MIT Press LtdWeight(grams) 295gDimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 13mm

An ambitious and revelatory investigation of the black female figure in modern art, tracing the legacy of Manet through to contemporary art This revelatory study investigates how changing modes of representing the black female figure were foundational to...

The use of perspective in Renaissance painting caused a revolution in the history of seeing, allowing artists to depict the world from a spectator's point of view. But the theory of perspective that changed the course of Western art originated...

'That this is a legitimate question, even a necessary one, is argued by Vergara in a pleasurable manner, with the pace and attitude of a peripatetic thinker. There is something here that reminds one of Montaigne or Stendhal.' - El Pais Throughout...

Looking at pictures, we see in them the scenes they depict, and any value they have springs from these experiences of seeing-in. Sight and Sensibility presents the first detailed and comprehensive theory of evaluating pictures. Dominic Lopes confronts...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9789491444371Format HardbackPage Count 168Imprint Artez PressPublisher Artez Press

The design arts -- from the design of buildings and machines to software and interfaces -- are associated with types of knowledge and performance thought to be structured, modular, and systematic. Such arts have become increasingly prestigious in our...

In this new and accessible book, Italy's best known feminist philosopher examines the moral and political significance of vertical posture in order to rethink subjectivity in terms of inclination. Contesting the classical figure of homo erectus or...

A collection of the New Yorker's groundbreaking writing on race in America, including work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and more From the pages of the New Yorker comes a...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781846382574Author Richard BirkettFormat PaperbackPage Count 96Imprint Afterall PublishingPublisher Afterall Publishing

An anthology of Pablo Picasso's statements about artAbout the AuthorDore Ashton's books include A Joseph Cornell Album, Picasso on Art, A Critical Study of Philip Guston, A Fable of Modern Art, The New York School, Noguchi East and West, and A Reading of...

In recent years, there has been a re-discovery of the importance of sensory experience in our daily lives. The senses play a vital role in our health, in our social interactions, and in enjoying food, music and the arts. This book provides an...

The Dada Painters and Poets offers the authentic answer to the question "What is Dada?" This incomparable collection of essays, manifestos, and illustrations was prepared by Robert Motherwell with the collaboration of some of the major Dada figures:...

Contemporary art is increasingly concerned with swaying the opinions of its viewier. To do so, the art employs various strategies to convey a political message. This book provides readers with the tools to decode and appreciate political art, a crucial...

Charting Richard Long's critical reception, this anthology of writings explores the artist's radical rethinking of the relationship between art and landscape. Widely considered as one of the most influential British artists of his generation, Long's...

Celebrated art critic and curator Guy Brett made a unique contribution to art criticism and exhibition making through his championing of experimental artists from across the world, writing seminal monographic essays on artists such as Susan Hiller, Rose...

CRITS: A Student Manual is a practical guide to help art and design students obtain maximum benefits from the most common method of teaching these subjects in college: the studio critique. CRITS positions studio critiques as positive, productive, and...

A comprehensive compendium of artists and writers confronting questions of Black identity, activism and social responsibility in the age of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, based on the landmark traveling exhibition A New York Magazine 2021 holiday...

Michael Ann Holly asserts that historical interpretation of the pictorial arts is always the intellectual product of a dynamic exchange between past and present. Recent theory emphasizes the subjectivity of the historian and the ways in which any...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781648893711Author Christine Vial KayserFormat PaperbackPage Count 332Imprint Vernon PressPublisher Vernon PressWeight(grams) 445gDimensions(mm) 229mm *...

Everyone is a designer. But while many practitioners may be looking for solutions or ideological certainties, Easterling argues that solutions are mistakes and ideologies are unreliable markers. Instead, Medium Design speaks to anyone looking for...

Midnight in the Kant Hotel is an absorbing account of contemporary art, composed over twenty years. The essays revisit the same artists as they develop, following them in time, changing perspectives as he, and they, develop. Mengham is a significant...

In Earworm and Event Eldritch Priest questions the nature of the imagination in contemporary culture through the phenomenon of the earworm: those reveries that hijack our attention, the shivers that run down our spines, and the songs that stick in our...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781912475551Author Jean CocteauFormat PaperbackPage Count 44Imprint ERISPublisher ERIS

Paul Klee on Modern Art, with an introduction by Herbert Read, represents the essential collection of thinking about art from one of the last century's most influential artists.Paul Klee on Modern Art, with an introduction by Herbert Read, represents the...

What is a family? And how is family experienced? These questions, explored through artists' eyes, are at the heart of the exhibition, Real Families: Stories of Change, a collaboration between the Fitzwilliam Museum and the University of Cambridge Centre...