Criticism & Theory

What is art? Why do we find some things beautiful but not others? Is it wrong to share MP3s? These are just some of the questions explored by aesthetics, the philosophy of art. In this sweeping introduction, Charles Taliaferro skilfully guides us through...

"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...

In this landmark text by one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Gilles Deleuze takes the paintings of Francis Bacon as his object of his study. The book presents a deep engagement with Bacon's work and the nature of art...

The texts in this volume represent Kristin Ross's attempt to think the question of the everyday across a range of discourses, practices and knowledges, from philosophy to history, from the visual arts to popular fiction, all the way to the forms taken by...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780593536759Author Zachary SmallFormat HardbackPage Count 368Imprint Random House IncPublisher Random House USA Inc

Viewers of contemporary art are often invited to involve themselves actively in artworks, by entering installations, touching objects, performing instructions or clicking on interactive websites. Why have artists sought to engage spectators in these new...

Explores the intrinsic relation of life to air, and breathing, through contemporary art In Out of Breath, Caterina Albano examines the cultural significance of breath and air to a wide array of forces in our midst, including economy, politics, infection,...

In this intriguing book, E.H. Gombrich, who was one of the world's foremost art historians, traces how cast shadows have been depicted in Western art through the centuries. Gombrich discusses the way shadows were represented-or ignored-by artists from...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780486238081Author Wassily KandinskyFormat PaperbackPage Count 192Imprint Dover Publications Inc.Publisher Dover Publications Inc.Weight(grams)...

Artist, psychoanalyst, and feminist theorist Bracha Ettinger presents an original theoretical exploration of shared affect and emergent expression, across the thresholds of identity and memory. Ettinger works through Lacan's late works, the anti-Oedipal...

Providing a thorough and comprehensive introduction to the study of photography, this second edition of Photography: The Key Concepts has been expanded and updated to cover more fully contemporary changes to photography. Photography is a part of everyday...

Art in Theory (1648-1815) provides a wide-ranging and comprehensive collection of documents on the theory of art from the founding of the French Academy until the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Like its highly successful companion volumes, Art in Theory...

The Italian colour bible: a gorgeously illustrated exploration of colour and the modern gaze, from an award-winning designer'Fresh and exciting, like an unopened packet of coloured pencils. Countless thought-provoking facts to ponder over, beautifully...

With an introduction by Hubertus von Amelunxen Media philosopher Vilem Flusser proposed a revolutionary new way of thinking about photography. An analysis of the medium in terms of aesthetics, science and politics provided him with new ways of...

The Routledge International Handbook of Neuroaesthetics is an authoritative reference work that provides the reader with a wide-ranging introduction to this exciting new scientific discipline. The book brings together leading international academics to...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9789493246119Author Janneke WesselingFormat PaperbackPage Count 336Imprint ValizPublisher ValizWeight(grams) 272gDimensions(mm) 198mm * 109mm * 30mm

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)...

Symmetry is a classic study of symmetry in mathematics, the sciences, nature, and art from one of the twentieth century's greatest mathematicians. Hermann Weyl explores the concept of symmetry beginning with the idea that it represents a harmony of...

Revolutionary essays on design, aesthetics and materialism - from one of the great masters of modern architectureAdolf Loos, the great Viennese pioneer of modern architecture, was a hater of the fake, the fussy and the lavishly decorated, and a lover of...

How do you draw Celtic knotwork? What are the secrets of keys? Are there tricks for drawing Celtic spirals? What do these mysterious patterns actually mean? Who drew them? Where did they come from? In this exquisite pocket book, author and artist Adam...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780486400877Author Roger FryFormat PaperbackPage Count 288Imprint Dover Publications Inc.Publisher Dover Publications Inc.Weight(grams) 388gDimensions(mm)...

In The Story of Looking, Mark Cousins takes us on a lightning-bright tour - in words and images - through how our looking selves develop over the course of a lifetime, and the ways that looking has changed over the centuries. From great works of art to...

Through an investigation of the Holloway prison writings of the suffragette Katie Gliddon, Mireille Fauchon explores illustration as a social research tool and creates within this book a model of practice-based enquiry. Illustrative methods and...

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...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781913947026Author Anne D'AllevaFormat PaperbackPage Count 200Imprint Laurence King PublishingPublisher Laurence King PublishingWeight(grams)...

The Arab art scene from the 1960s to the 1990s. Story of Water and Fire is a captivating account of the joint life of two prominent figures in the Iraqi art scene, poet and art critic May Muzaffar and artist Rafa Nasiri. This book offers a glimpse into...

This volume is an in-depth and exquisitely illustrated guide to the Second Age of Middle-earth, one of the least-explored periods of Arda's history.The Illustrated World of Tolkien: The Second Age, is the follow up companion to the best-selling The...

The second largest city in 17th-century Europe, Naples constituted a vital Mediterranean center in which the Spanish Habsburgs, the clergy, and Neapolitan aristocracy, together with the resident merchants, and other members of the growing professional...

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:...

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...

Film is considered by some to be the most dominant art form of the twentieth century. It is many things, but it has become above all a means of telling stories through images and sounds. The stories are often offered to us as quite false, frankly and...

A critical reexamination of Carpeaux's bust Why Born Enslaved! and other nineteenth-century antislavery images-this book interrogates the treatment of the Black figure as a malleable political symbol and locus of exoticized beauty This critical...

These interlocking essays uncover art as an active force in the world - neither elitist or remote, present to those who want it, affecting even those who don't. Winterson's own passionate vision of art is presented here, provocatively and personally, in...

The Photography Cultures Reader: Representation, Agency and Identity engages with contemporary debates surrounding photographic cultures and practices from a variety of perspectives, providing insight and analysis for students and practitioners. With...

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Embodying the entire system of Robert Henri's teaching, The Art Spirit contains much valuable advice, critical comment, and inspiration to every student of the arts.About the AuthorRobert Henri was born in Cincinnati in 1865 and died in 1929. He led the...

A new edition of conversations between the artist Ai Wei Wei and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, coming up to the present dayAi Weiwei - artist, architect, curator, publisher, poet and urbanist - extended the notion of art and is one of the world's most...

Contemporary art has never been so popular - but the art world is changing. In a landscape of increasing globalization there is growing interest in questions over the nature of contemporary art today, and the identity of who is controlling its future. In...

Practice-led research is a burgeoning area across the creative arts, with studio informed doctorates frequently favoured over traditional approaches to research. Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry is specifically designed as a...

"Every line we succeed in publishing today...is a victory wrested from the powers of darkness." So wrote Walter Benjamin in January 1940. Not long afterward, he himself would fall prey to those powers, a victim of suicide following a failed attempt to...