Criticism & Theory

Deftly deploying Derrida's notion of the 'unexperienced experience' and building on Paul Virilio's ideas about the aesthetics of disappearance, Vanishing Points explores the aesthetic character of presence and absence as articulated in contemporary art,...

In Duty Free Art, filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl wonders how we can appreciate, or even make art, in the present age. What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor museums, and some of the world's most valuable artworks are used as a fictional...

In the ten conversations with the writer and theologian Klaus Dermutz collected here, Kiefer returns to the essential elements of his art, his aesthetics, and his creative processes. The only visual artist to have won the Peace Prize of the German Book...

As public interest in modern art continues to grow, as witnessed by the spectacular success of Tate Modern and the Bilbao Guggenheim, there is a real need for a book that will engage general readers, offering them not only information and ideas about...

The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create...

Artists and organizers explore experimental learning initiatives fostering solidarity and dialogue With a focus on labor organizing within the arts and tech industries, Software for Artists Book 3 explores the potential of creating alternative...

Think Like an Artist by BBC Arts editor Will Gompertz - wisdom and smart thinking from Da Vinci to Ai WeiweiWhy do some people seem to find it easy to come up with fresh, brilliant ideas? And how do they turn them into something worthwhile?After spending...

'Incisive and provocative ... a sensitive and probing critique' The New York Times'Essential reading ... gripping, inspirational, beautifully written and highly thought-provoking' Dr Helen Gorrill, author of Women Can't PaintA bold reconsideration of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781949484069Author Benjamin H. D. BuchlohFormat PaperbackPage Count 176Imprint No Place PressPublisher No Place Press

In Art as Information Ecology, Jason A. Hoelscher offers not only an information theory of art but an aesthetic theory of information. Applying close readings of the information theories of Claude Shannon and Gilbert Simondon to 1960s American art,...

The prominent cultural critic Mieke Bal defines the new discipline of 'art writing' as a fresh mode of criticism, which aims to 'put the art first'. Following this definition, "Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism" puts the sites of the...

**LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024****SHORTLISTED FOR THE WRITERS' PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024**'A wonderful read (or a great present) for anyone who loves stories and art' Nina Stibbe, author of Love, NinaA beautifully illustrated...

* 'Great art has dreadful manners...' Simon Schama observes at the start of his epic exploration of the power, and whole point, of art. 'The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things, visions that soothe,...

The New York Times Bestseller "I wish I had read these rules forty years ago and carried them around like a bible. By chance or design I've followed most of them at some point but it took me a lifetime as an artist to find what worked. They are the...

This popular anthology of twentieth-century art theoretical texts has now been expanded to take account of new research, and to include significant contributions to art theory from the 1990s. New edition of this popular anthology of twentieth-century...

From painters and photographers to sculptors and performance artists, fifty of the most influential contemporary artists are profiled in this colorful and engaging book that traces the various artistic movements and radical changes of the second half of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781916425002Author Ghislaine LeungFormat PaperbackPage Count 10Imprint Divided PublishingPublisher Divided Publishing

The abundance of images in our everyday lives-and the speed at which they are consumed-seems to have left us unable to critique them. To rectify this situation, artists such as Daniel Richter, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Artur Zmijewski have...

One of the last surviving members of the futurist generation, Bruno Munari's Design as Art is an illustrated journey into the artistic possibilities of modern design translated by Patrick Creagh published as part of the 'Penguin on Design' series in...

Augusto Boal saw theatre as a mirror to the world, one that we can reach into to change our reality. This book, The Theatre of the Oppressed, is the foundation to 'Forum Theatre', a popular radical form practised across the world. Boal's techniques...

Only 16% of the most recent Venice Biennale artists were female. A mere 14% of MoMA's 2016 display is by non-white artists. Only one third of artists represented by US galleries are female, but over two-thirds of the enrolment in art and art-history...

Arthur C. Danto argues that recent developments in the art world, in particular the production of works of art that cannot be told from ordinary things, make urgent the need for a new theory of art and make plain the factors such a theory can and cannot...

Alchemy is the art of transmuting base metal into gold - a material process that also functions as a metaphor for spiritual transformation and creativity. This book contains all the information and skills you need to start practising alchemy - to unite...

How do the bodies we inhabit affect our relationship with art? How does art affect our relationship to our bodies? T Fleischmann uses Felix Gonzales-Torres's artworks-piles of candy, stacks of paper, puzzles-as a path through questions of love and loss,...

John Berger writes: 'The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the new world economic order. The people coming together are...

The perfect gift for Hockney fans and dog lovers everywhere, David Hockney's Dog Days, now in a gift edition, is an album devoted to two of the artist's closest friends, his dachshunds Stanley and Boodgie. This beautiful and engaging book includes almost...

Art History: A critical introduction to its methods provides a lively and stimulating introduction to methodological debates within art history. Offering a lucid account of approaches from Hegel to post-colonialism, the book provides a sense of art...

Molly Bang's brilliant, insightful, and accessible treatise is now revised and expanded for its 25th anniversary. Bang's powerful ideas remain unparalleled in their simplicity and genius: Explore the intricate and thought-provoking ideas that Bang...

Our homes contain us, but they are also within us. They can represent places to be ourselves, to recollect childhood memories, or to withdraw into adult spaces of intimacy; they can be sites for developing rituals, family relationships, and acting out...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780262534369Author Byung-Chul HanFormat PaperbackPage Count 104Imprint MIT PressPublisher MIT Press LtdDimensions(mm) 178mm * 114mm * 6mm

This prize-winning book offers the only comprehensive discussion available on materials, techniques, and condition issues in Western easel paintings from medieval times to the present."An essential handbook for the pro, and also a beautifully illustrated...

Contemporary art is obsessed with the politics of identity. Visit any contemporary gallery, museum or theatre, and chances are the art on offer will be principally concerned with race, gender, sexuality, power and privilege.The quest for truth, freedom...

Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference. In this Very Short Introduction the renowned...

What was the golden secret known to Leonardo da Vinci, Kepler, Plato and the ancient magicians? Can there really be a key to nature and life itself? In this small but compact volume, internationally renowned divine proportion supersleuth Dr. Olsen...

"This kaleidoscopic collection will help you see and comprehend the world anew-which is, in my book, what good art should do." -Astra Taylor It is a scary and disorienting time for art, as it is a scary and disorienting time in general. Aesthetic...

'Groundbreaking . . . a scintillating, intellectual investigation into black women and the very serious business of our hair, as it pertains to race, gender, social codes, tradition, culture, cosmology, maths, politics, philosophy and history' Bernardine...

This book is the culmination of nearly thirty years' work in caring for, studying, and developing the collections in this Museum by Timothy Wilson, long-time Keeper of Western Art. Wilson is well-known as a specialist in the study of European Renaissance...

"To great writers," Walter Benjamin once wrote, "finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives." Conceived in Paris in 1927 and still in progress when Benjamin fled the Occupation in 1940, The Arcades Project...

The book that turned the art world on its head, now with new and exciting discoveries. Hockney takes his thesis further, demonstrating how Renaissance artists used mirrors and lenses to develop perspective and chiaroscuro - radically challenging our...

In our age of fast-paced biotechnological progress and humans' increasing impact on the environment the autonomy of 'nature' has come into question. We can now engineer living things, blur the biological distinctions between humans and animals, and...