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...

In essays that span three decades, one of contemporary art's most esteemed critics celebrates artists who have persevered in the service of a medium. The job of an art critic is to take perpetual inventory, constantly revising her ideas about the...

Philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman is one of the most innovative and influential critical thinkers writing today. This book is the first English-language study of his writing on images. An image is a form of representation, but what are...

In this bold book Klara Kemp-Welch offers a compelling account of the way that artists in Central Europe embraced alternative forms of action-based practice, just as their dissident counterparts were formulating alternative models of politics - in...

What is beauty, and what is truth? These are some of the questions which aesthetics tries to answer. In our everyday life, we talk about the 'aesthetics' of an artwork or a piece of design. But aesthetics goes beyond the simple experience of art. It is...

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud observed that the life-enhancing pleasure principle seems disrupted by something internal to the psyche. He took into account the possibility of a "death instinct" bent on returning the living organism to its...

Sustainability is now a buzzword both among professionals and scholars. However, though climate change and resource depletion are now widely recognized by business as major challenges, and while new practices like 'green design' have emerged, efforts...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780262534321Author Paul O'NeillFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint MIT PressPublisher MIT Press Ltd

Light pervades the world, and when it is not light, darkness emerges and is combated by electric illumination. Despite this globally shared human experience in which spaces appear radically different depending on time, season, and weather, social science...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9789078088769Author Nathalie ZonnenbergFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint ValizPublisher ValizWeight(grams) 454gDimensions(mm) 234mm * 165mm * 20mm

Fashion in Fiction examines the ways in which dress 'performs' in a wide range of contemporary and historical literary texts. Essays by North American, European and Australian scholars explore the function of clothing within fictional narratives,...

A century after the Bauhaus's founding in 1919, this book reassesses it as more than a highly influential art, architecture, and design school. In myriad ways, emerging ideas about the body in relation to health, movement, gender, and sexuality were at...

This engaging introduction outlines the cultural and political contexts in which the avant-gardes operated, taking readers on a journey throughout the whole of Europe. It discusses the most salient features of the avant-gardes' work in all the arts,...

Why have some of the most interesting artists of our time committed themselves to some of the most devastating conflicts on Earth? Why are some of the most interesting artists of our time committed to engaging with conflict and exploitation around the...

Elusive, subtle and atmospheric, Lost in Translation was one of the indie hits of 2004, earning widespread critical praise, awards and success at the box office. But what was the basis of its appeal and how exactly is the film marked as a distinctly...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780880103961Author Rudolf SteinerFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint SteinerBooks, IncPublisher Anthroposophic Press IncWeight(grams) 590gDimensions(mm)...

Artists, art historians, and critics look at the legacies of feminism and critical theory in the work of women artists, more than thirty years after the beginning of the modern women's movement and Linda Nochlin's landmark essay "Why Have There Been...

Key Writers on Art: The Twentieth Century offers a unique and authoritative guide to modern responses to art. Featuring 48 essays on the most important twentieth century writers and thinkers and written by an international panel of expert contributors,...

Almost thirty years ago, W. J. T. Mitchell's Iconology helped launch the interdisciplinary study of visual media, now a central feature of the humanities. Along with his subsequent Picture Theory and What Do Pictures Want?, Mitchell's now-classic work...

What terms do we use to describe and evaluate art, and how do we judge if art is good, and if it is for the social good? In How Art Can Be Thought Allan deSouza investigates such questions and the popular terminology through which art is discussed,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9782839920674Author Brooke HolmesFormat HardbackPage Count 304Imprint Fondation DESTE pour l'art ContemporainPublisher Fondation DESTE pour l'art Contemporain

Proposes a revolutionary approach to the interpretation of art, film, and the digital. In Touch, Laura U. Marks develops a critical approach more tactile than visual, an intensely physical and sensuous engagement with works of media art that enriches our...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9783037643723Author Jens HoffmannFormat PaperbackPage Count 80Imprint JRP RingierPublisher JRP RingierWeight(grams) 83gDimensions(mm) 165mm * 105mm * 10mm

In this intellectually wide-ranging book John Roberts develops a labor theory of culture as a model for explaining the dynamics of avant-garde art and the expansion of artistic authority in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.From Duchamp to Warhol,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780997874402Author Lucia FarinatiFormat PaperbackPage Count 216Imprint Errant BodiesPublisher Errant Bodies

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9789492095121Author Jorinde SeijdelFormat PaperbackPage Count 496Imprint ValizPublisher ValizWeight(grams) 1111gDimensions(mm) 239mm * 165mm * 41mm

In this provocative, closely argued book, Ellen Handler Spitz explores three principal psychoanalytic approaches to art. The first considers the relations between an artist's life and work; the second focuses on the work of art itself; and the third...

The Italian Renaissance was a creative period for art criticism as well as for art itself. The early efforts to give verbal accounts of visual representations and their quality throw light not only on art during the Renaissance but also on art criticism...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9789492095466Author Taru ElfvingFormat PaperbackPage Count 272Imprint ValizPublisher Valiz

Connects Cold War material and conceptual technologies to 21st century arts, society and cultureFrom futures research, pattern recognition algorithms, nuclear waste disposal and surveillance technologies, to smart weapons systems, contemporary fiction...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781949484021Author Pamela M. LeeFormat HardbackPage Count 112Imprint No Place PressPublisher No Place Press

Each of the five volumes in the Stone Art Theory Institutes series, and the seminars on which they are based, brings together a range of scholars who are not always directly familiar with one another's work. The outcome of each of these convergences is...

In the popular imagination, art history remains steeped in outmoded notions of tradition, material value and elitism. How can we awaken, define and orientate an ecological sensibility within the history of art? Building on the latest work in the...

An illuminating collection of essays from the preeminent scholar of architectural history and theory One of the most distinguished scholars in the fields of architectural history and theory today, James Sloss Ackerman is best known for his work on...

This book draws on aesthetic theory, including ideas from the history of painting, music and dance, to offer a fresh perspective on the video game as a popular cultural form. It argues that games like Grand Theft Auto and Elektroplankton are aesthetic...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9783037645352Author Gustav MetzgerFormat PaperbackPage Count 680Imprint JRP RingierPublisher JRP Ringier

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780990693925Author James ElkinsFormat PaperbackPage Count 254Imprint New Academia Publishing/ The SpringPublisher New Academia Publishing/ The...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781905464296Author Charles HarrisonFormat PaperbackPage Count 271Imprint RidinghousePublisher Ridinghouse

Featuring some of the major voices in the world of art history, this volume explores the methodological aspects of comparison in the historiography of the discipline. The chapters assess the strengths and weaknesses of comparative practice in the history...

This ground-breaking book presents a critical study of pictorial narrative in nineteenth-century European painting. Covering works from France, Germany, Britain, Italy and elsewhere, it traces the ways in which immensely popular artists like Jean-Leon...