Recent Art and Art History Requests
American Architecture by
Leading historian Dell Upton's Architecture in America reveals the dazzling richness of America's human landscape. The text covers indigenous, folk, ethnic, and popular architectures like Chaco Canyon, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Native American houses while also exploring the great monuments oftraditional histories like Jefferson's Monticello and Wright's Fallingwater.
Call Number: NA705 .U775 2020ISBN: 019024528XPublication Date: 2019
Art and Politics in the 1930s by Call Number: N72.P6 P57 1999ISBN: 9781877675287Publication Date: 1999-02-01
The Art Happens Here: Net Art Anthology by
This richly illustrated volume retells the history of net art from the 1980s to the present day through thematic essays and interview extracts. It centers around the 100 works selected, restored and presented as part of the Net Art Anthology initiative, which originated as an online exhibition series in 2016 and continues with a touring gallery exhibition from January 2019. Artists featured include Morehshin Allahyari, Cory Arcangel, Shu Lea Cheang, DIS, Constant Dullaart, C cile B. Evans, exonemo, Cao Fei, Lynn Hershman Leeson, JODI, Oliver Laric, Olia Lialina, Eva & Franco Mattes, Jayson Musson, Paper Rad, Pope.L, Jon Rafman, Rafa l Rozendaal, Wolfgang Staehle, Martine Syms, Ryan Trecartin, UBERMORGEN, Amalia Ulman, Artie Vierkant, Miao Ying and others. The book and exhibition are the work of Rhizome, the born-digital art organization founded by artist Mark Tribe in 1996. Leveraging more than two decades of experience with net art and digital culture, The Art Happens Here represents Rhizome's most complete effort to date to contextualize the art forms it champions. Bringing to life the artistic communities, the surrounding social and political realities, and the changing technological contexts that have shaped artistic uses of the internet over a period of decades, The Art Happens Here features a unique design by Jiminie Ha/With Projects. Intended to function as an "informational object," the book boasts a chroma-key green cover, "scrolling" text that spills off the top and bottom of the page and wraps around the back cover, and images that ask the reader to rotate the book as they would a smartphone.
Call Number: NX180.I57 A75 2019ISBN: 9780692173084Publication Date: 2019- Artists Against War and Fascism by
Papers of the First American Artists' Congress
Call Number: N6512 .A585 1936ISBN: 9780813511252Publication Date: 1986-02-01
Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965–1975 by
Artists Respond brings together works by many of the most visionary and provocative artists of the period, including Asco, Chris Burden, Judy Chicago, Corita Kent, Leon Golub, David Hammons, Yoko Ono, and Nancy Spero. It explores how the moral urgency of the Vietnam War galvanized American artists in unprecedented ways, challenging them to reimagine the purpose and uses of art and compelling them to become politically engaged on other fronts, such as feminism and civil rights. The book presents an era in which artists struggled to synthesize the turbulent times and participated in a process of free and open questioning inherent to American civic life.
Call Number: N72.P6 A794 2019 +ISBN: 9780691191188Publication Date: 2019
The Art of Solidarity by
The Cold War claimed many lives and inflicted tremendous psychological pain throughout the Americas. The extreme polarization that resulted from pitting capitalism against communism held most of the creative and productive energy of the twentieth century captive. Many artists responded to Cold War struggles by engaging in activist art practice, using creative expression to mobilize social change. The Art of Solidarity examines how these creative practices in the arts and culture contributed to transnational solidarity campaigns that connected people across the Americas from the early twentieth century through the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. This collection of original essays is divided into four chronological sections: cultural and artistic production in the pre-Cold War era that set the stage for transnational solidarity organizing; early artistic responses to the rise of Cold War polarization and state repression; the centrality of cultural and artistic production in social movements of solidarity; and solidarity activism beyond movements. Essay topics range widely across regions and social groups, from the work of lesbian activists in Mexico City in the late 1970s and 1980s, to the exchanges and transmissions of folk-music practices from Cuba to the United States, to the uses of Chilean arpilleras to oppose and protest the military dictatorship. While previous studies have focused on politically engaged artists or examined how artist communities have created solidarity movements, this book is one of the first to merge both perspectives.
Call Number: N6502.5 .A73 2018ISBN: 1477316396Publication Date: 2018
Canons and Values (Issues and Debates) - Ancient to Modern by Call Number: N7476 .C35 2019ISBN: 1606065971Publication Date: 2019
Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time by
How West African gold and trade across the Sahara were central to the medieval world The Sahara Desert was a thriving crossroads of exchange for West Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe in the medieval period. Fueling this exchange was West African gold, prized for its purity and used for minting currencies and adorning luxury objects such as jewelry, textiles, and religious objects. Caravans made the arduous journey by camel southward across the Sahara carrying goods for trade--glass vessels and beads, glazed ceramics, copper, books, and foodstuffs, including salt, which was obtained in the middle of the desert. Northward, the journey brought not only gold but also ivory, animal hides and leatherwork, spices, and captives from West Africa forced into slavery. Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time draws on the latest archaeological discoveries and art historical research to construct a compelling look at medieval trans-Saharan exchange and its legacy. Contributors from diverse disciplines present case studies that form a rich portrayal of a distant time. Topics include descriptions of key medieval cities around the Sahara; networks of exchange that contributed to the circulation of gold, copper, and ivory and their associated art forms; and medieval glass bead production in West Africa's forest region. The volume also reflects on Morocco's Gnawa material culture, associated with descendants of West African slaves, and movements of people across the Sahara today. Featuring a wealth of color images, this fascinating book demonstrates how the rootedness of place, culture, and tradition is closely tied to the circulation of people, objects, and ideas. These "fragments in time" offer irrefutable evidence of the key role that Africa played in medieval history and promote a new understanding of the past and the present. Published in association with the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University Exhibition Schedule Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University January 26-July 21, 2019 Aga Khan Museum, Toronto September 21, 2019-February 23, 2020 Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC April 8-November 29, 2020
Call Number: NK700 .C36 2019ISBN: 069118268XPublication Date: 2019
Classical Art by
How did the statues of ancient Greece wind up dictating art history in the West? How did the material culture of the Greeks and Romans come to be seen as "classical" and as "art"? What does "classical art" mean across time and place? In this ambitious, richly illustrated book, art historian and classicist Caroline Vout provides an original history of how classical art has been continuously redefined over the millennia as it has found itself in new contexts and cultures. All of this raises the question of classical art's future. What we call classical art did not simply appear in ancient Rome, or in the Renaissance, or in the eighteenth-century Academy. Endlessly repackaged and revered or rebuked, Greek and Roman artifacts have gathered an amazing array of values, both positive and negative, in each new historical period, even as these objects themselves have reshaped their surroundings. Vout shows how this process began in antiquity, as Greeks of the Hellenistic period transformed the art of fifth-century Greece, and continued through the Roman empire, Constantinople, European court societies, the neoclassical English country house, and the nineteenth century, up to the modern museum. A unique exploration of how each period of Western culture has transformed Greek and Roman antiquities and in turn been transformed by them, this book revolutionizes our understanding of what classical art has meant and continues to mean.
Call Number: N5613 .V68 2018ISBN: 9780691177038Publication Date: 2018
Cosmos by
Since time immemorial, the nocturnal skies have mesmerized us, and heavenly bodies have inspired the imaginations of artists, poets, and scientists. Featuring paintings, sculpture, drawings, watercolors, prints, as well as plates from books, celestial diagrams, and astronomical photography, this book showcases the superstars of the firmament and the universe beyond in sumptuous illustrations. Cosmos: The Art and Science of the Universe charts the human love affair with the heavens in art and astronomy in a story based on sound science and insightful art and cultural history.
Call Number: N8217.C62 O46 2019ISBN: 1789140544Publication Date: 2019
Degenerate Art by
The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany 1937 During the Nazi regime in Germany, "degenerate art" was the official term for much of the most important modern art of the day. "Degenerate art" was defined by the Nazi regime as artwork that was not in line with the National Socialists' ideas of beauty. Their condemnation extended to works in nearly every major art movement: Expressionism, Dada, New Objectivity, Surrealism, Cubism and Fauvism. Banned artists included Max Beckmann, Paul Klee and Oskar Kokoschka. Richly illustrated, Degenerate Art elucidates the historical and intellectual context of the notorious exhibition in Munich in 1937, which spurred the attack on modern art. The book contains reflections on the genesis and evolution of the term "degenerate art" and details of the National Socialist policy on art. Art works from the exhibition Degenerate Art are compared to works of art from The Great German Art Exhibition, which was held at the same time and displayed the works of officially approved artists. The book also presents the after effects of the attack on modernism that are felt even today. AUTHOR: Olaf Peters is Professor of Modern Art at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. SELLING POINTS: * This book accompanies the first major museum exhibition devoted to a reconstruction of the infamous Nazi display of modern art since the presentation originated by the Los Angeles County 320 illustrations
Call Number: N6868.5.N37 D44 2014ISBN: 9783791353678Publication Date: 2014
Diversity and Design by
Diversity and Design explores how design - whether of products, buildings, landscapes, cities, media, or systems - affects diverse members of society. Fifteen case studies in television, marketing, product design, architecture, film, video games, and more, illustrate the profound, though often hidden, consequences design decisions and processes have on the total human experience. The book not only investigates how gender, race, class, age, disability, and other factors influence the ways designers think, but also emphasizes the importance of understanding increasingly diverse cultures and, thus, averting design that leads to discrimination, isolation, and segregation. With over 140 full-color illustrations, chapter summaries, discussion questions and exercises, Diversity and Design is a valuable tool to help you understand the importance of designing for all.
Call Number: NK1520 .D59 2016ISBN: 9781138023161Publication Date: 2015
Enchanted Islands by
In Enchanted Islands, renowned art historian Mary D. Sheriff explores the legendary, fictional, and real islands that filled the French imagination during the ancien regime as they appeared in royal ballets and festivals, epic literature, paintings, engravings, book illustrations, and other objects.
Call Number: PQ265 .S58 2018ISBN: 9780226483108Publication Date: 2018
Enlightened Judgments, Ch'ing-Ming Chi by
The first English translation of a selection of legal documents from Sung Dynasty China, this work provides a fascinating look at the legal, social, and economic history of that era.
Call Number: KNN63.4 .M56213 1999ISBN: 9780791442432Publication Date: 1999
Fool's Errand by
In its first four months of operation, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture surpassed one million visits and quickly became a cherished, vital monument to the African American experience. And yet this accomplishment was never assured. In A Fool's Errand, founding director Lonnie Bunch tells his story of bringing his clear vision and leadership to bear to realize this shared dream of many generations of Americans.
Call Number: E185.53.W3 N383 2019ISBN: 1588346684Publication Date: 2019
Frans Hals by
This exhibition is the first devoted to Frans Hals' family group portraiture. The show and the catalogue will unite all of his four family portraits along with related w orks by the artist and will examine the topic of Hals's family portraiture as a whole, placing it in the context of his complete oeuvre.
Call Number: ND653.H2 A4 2018ISBN: 9783777430072Publication Date: 2018
Genealogy of Tropical Architecture by Call Number: NA2542.T7 C48 2016ISBN: 0415840775Publication Date: 2016
The Gift by
Discusses the argument that a work of art is essentially a gift and not a commodity.
Call Number: GN449.6 .H93 1983ISBN: 9780394715193Publication Date: 1983-02-12
Global Frankenstein by
Consisting of sixteen original essays by experts in the field, including leading and lesser-known international scholars, Global Frankenstein considers the tremendous adaptability and rich afterlives of Mary Shelley's iconic novel, Frankenstein, at its bicentenary, in such fields and disciplines as digital technology, film, theatre, dance, medicine, book illustration, science fiction, comic books, science, and performance art. This ground-breaking, celebratory volume, edited by two established Gothic Studies scholars, reassesses Frankenstein's global impact for the twenty-first century across a myriad of cultures and nations, from Japan, Mexico, and Turkey, to Britain, Iraq, Europe, and North America. Offering compelling critical dissections of reincarnations of Frankenstein, a generically hybrid novel described by its early reviewers as a "bold," "bizarre," and "impious" production by a writer "with no common powers of mind", this collection interrogates its sustained relevance over two centuries during which it has engaged with such issues as mortality, global capitalism, gender, race, embodiment, neoliberalism, disability, technology, and the role of science.
Call Number: PR5397.F73 G56 2018ISBN: 9783319781419Publication Date: 2018-10-24
Going off the Grid by
Gary Collins documents his firsthand experience in this comprehensive guide on how to find property and build a self-sustaining home to achieve happiness through simplicity.
Call Number: GF78 .C65 2017ISBN: 1570673543Publication Date: 2017
Graphic Design History by
A Fresh Look at the History of Graphic Design - Graphic Design History, 2nd edition demonstrates the connection to the current practices of graphic arts, visual expression, and design with its engaging narrative and special features with a critical approach. Improve Critical Thinking - Chapters are framed by critical issues and historical themes so that students can fully grasp an understanding of the history of graphic design. Engage Students - Timelines and images with detailed captions easily highlight relevant information for students. For History of Graphic Design and History of Visual Communication courses.
Call Number: NC998 .D78 2013ISBN: 9780205219469Publication Date: 2012-03-02
Hearts of our people : Native women artists / by
Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists explores the artistic achievements of Native women and establishes their rightful place in the art world. This landmark book includes works of art from antiquity to the present, made in a variety of media from textiles and beadwork to video and digital arts. It showcases artists from more than seventy-five native nations to reveal the ingenuity and innovation that have always been foundational to the art of Native women.
Call Number: N6538.A4 H43 2019ISBN: 9780295745794Publication Date: 2019
Human Centered Built Environment Heritage Preservation by
Human-Centered Built Environment Heritage Preservation addresses the question of how a human-centred conservation approach can and should change practice. For the most part, there are few answers to this question because professionals in the heritage conservation field do not use social science research methodologies to manage cultural landscapes, assess historical significance and inform the treatment of building and landscape fabric.
Call Number: CC135 .H86 2019ISBN: 1138583944Publication Date: 2018
Julian Rosefeldt : manifesto : a film installation in twelve scenes / by
The thirteen part film installation Manifesto, produced by film and video artist Julian Rosefeldt is an homage to the explosive poetic power of key artist manifestos from the last 100 years.Australian actor
Call Number: N6888.R67 A4 2016 +ISBN: 3863358562Publication Date: 2016
Landscapes Between Then and Now by Call Number: TR184 .B73 2020ISBN: 1350024007Publication Date: 2020
Licentious Worlds by
Licentious Worlds is a history of sexual attitudes and behavior through five hundred years of empire-building around the world.
Call Number: HQ12 Pea 2019 (on order)ISBN: 1789141400Publication Date: 2019
Living on Campus: an architectural history of the American dormitory by
An exploration of the architecture of dormitories that exposes deeply held American beliefs about education, youth, and citizenship This richly illustrated book examines the architecture of dormitories in the United States from the eighteenth century to 1968, asking fundamental questions: Why have American educators believed for so long that housing students is essential to educating them? And how has architecture validated that idea?
Call Number: NA6602.D6 Y36 2019ISBN: 9781517904562Publication Date: 2019
The Lure of the Local by
As society becomes more mobile and disjointed, regional differences and local character disappear. Americans are losing their sense of place and their connections to the local. This book shows how artists can create new understandings about land, history, culture and place.
Call Number: GF503 .L56 1997ISBN: 9781565842472Publication Date: 1997- Manifesto by
From visual artist Julian Rosefeldt, MANIFESTO features Cate Blanchett in 13 vignettes that incorporate manifestos from 20th century art movements. From anchorwoman to homeless man, from Pop Art to Dogma 95
Call Number: VIDEO 3226ISBN: 9492059304Publication Date: 2017
Manifestos and Polemics in Latin American Modern Art by
Bringing together sixty-five primary documents vital to understanding the history of art in Latin America since 1900, Patrick Frank shows how modern art developed in Latin America in this important new work complementing his previous book, Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America, Revised and Expanded Edition.
Call Number: N6502.5 .M36 2017ISBN: 9780826357878Publication Date: 2017
Market for Mesoamerica : reflections on the sale of Pre-Columbian antiquities by
Pre-Columbian artifacts are among the most popular items on the international antiquities market, yet it is becoming increasingly difficult to monitor these items as public, private, and digital sales proliferate. This timely volume explores past, current, and future policies and trends concerning the sales and illicit movement of artifacts from Mesoamerica to museums and private collections.Informed by the fields of anthropology, economics, law, and criminology, contributors critically analyze practices of research and collecting in Central American countries. They assess the circulation of looted and forged artifacts on the art market and in museums and examine government and institutional policies aimed at fighting trafficking.
Call Number: F1434.2.A7 M37 2019ISBN: 0813056446Publication Date: 2019
María Izquierdo and Frida Kahlo by Call Number: ND259.I97 D46 2015ISBN: 0292772424Publication Date: 2015- Mystical Themes in Le Corbuster's architecture in the Chapel Notre Dame Du Hout at Ronchamp by
This is a study of Le Corbusier's most controversial work after World War II: Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp. It reveals his Cubist interweaving of metaphysical themes and the various mystical strands of the Ronchamp riddle.
Call Number: NA5551.R55 C58 2000ISBN: 9780773477469Publication Date: 2000
New England / New Spain by
In 2014 the Denver Art Museum held a symposium hosted by the Frederick and Jan Mayer Center for Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art and co-organized by Donna Pierce and Emily Ballew Neff, Director of the Brooks Museum, Memphis. They assembled an international group of scholars to present recent research on portraiture in the Spanish colony of New Spain (Mexico) and the British colonies of North America. This volume presents revised and expanded versions of papers presented at the symposium. Michael Schreffler (University of Notre Dame) opens the volume with a discussion of portraits of Cortés and Moctezuma in sixteenth-century New Spain. Clare Kunny (Art Muse, Los Angeles) examines portraits of Antonio de Mendoza (1490-1552), the first viceroy of Mexico. Susan Rather (University of Texas, Austin) analyzes portraiture in colonial British America and landscapes included in them. Karl Kusserow (Princeton University Art Museum) explores selfhood and surroundings in British American portraits. Paula Mues Orts (National School of Conservation, Mexico) examines the portrait series commissioned and displayed in colonial Mexico by religious and civic organizations as a claim to power and prestige. James Middleton (independent scholar, New York) discusses clothing and accessories in New Spanish portraiture that allow a more precise dating of works. Jennifer Van Horn (George Mason University) follows the trans-Atlantic travels of portraitist Joseph Blackburn from England to New England and Bermuda. Kaylin Weber (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) explores the career of American Benjamin West and his trans-Atlantic move from Boston to London. Elizabeth Kornhauser (Metropolitan Museum of Art) addresses the portraits of New England painter Ralph Earl, who struggled to fashion a new style for the young American republic. Michael Brown (San Diego Museum of Art) closes the volume by comparing the fate of portraits from New England and New Spain in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America.
Call Number: N7592.8 .M39 2014ISBN: 9780914738503Publication Date: 2016
The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret by
George Washington's life has been scrutinized by historians over the past three centuries, but the day-to-day lives of Mount Vernon's enslaved workers, who left few written records but made up 90 percent of the estate's population, have been largely left out of the story. In "The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret," Mary Thompson offers the first comprehensive account of those who served in bondage at Mount Vernon. Drawing on years of research in a wide range of sources, Thompson brings to life the lives of Washington's slaves while illuminating the radical change in his views on slavery and race wrought by the American Revolution. Thompson begins with an examination of George and Martha Washington as slave owners. Culling from letters to financial ledgers, travel diaries kept by visitors and reminiscences of family members as well as of former slaves and neighbors, Thompson explores various facets of everyday life on the plantation ranging from work to domestic life, housing, foodways, private enterprise, and resistance. Along the way, she considers the relationship between Washington's military career and his style of plantation management and relates the many ways slaves rebelled against their condition. The book closes with Washington's attempts to reconcile being a slave owner with the changes in his thinking on slavery and race, ending in his decision to grant his slaves freedom in his will.
Call Number: E312.17 .T4665 2019ISBN: 9780813941844Publication Date: 2019
Oscar G. Rejlander - Artist Photographer by
A fascinating survey of the varied career of an inventive and influential 19th-century photographer, from allegorical montage to Darwin's catalogue of emotions Oscar G. Rejlander (1813-1875) was a Swedish-born photographer who pioneered the genre of art photography. He is best known for combining negatives to form elaborate allegorical compositions and for his ability to communicate expression through his photographic studies and portraits. His influence shines in the works of other important photographers of the day. This catalogue accompanies the first major retrospective on this vital yet understudied figure and considers the whole range of his activities, including his work as a painter and printmaker. Lori Pauli introduces Rejlander with a comprehensive survey of his life and career. Three essays follow, from leading scholars in the field of 19th-century photography, with topics ranging from Rejlander's engagement with Victorian painting, to his studio and working methods, to his artistic circle and work with Charles Darwin. Engagingly written and beautifully illustrated, this publication fills a void in scholarship on Rejlander; it also sheds light more broadly on the intersection of art and science and the uses of photography in Victorian culture, as well as the history of photography and its impact on Victorian culture.
Call Number: TR647 .R3947 2018 +ISBN: 9780300237092Publication Date: 2018
Painter's Chair by
"I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painters pencil, that I am now altogether at their beck ... no dray moves more readily to the Thill, than I do to the Painters Chair." -George Washington, 16, 1785 When George Washington was born, the New World had virtually no artists. Over the course of his life, a cultural transformation would occur. Virtually everyone regarded Washington as America's indispensable man, and the early painters and sculptors were no exception. Hugh Howard surveys the founding fathers of American painting through their portraits of Washington. Charles Willson Peale was the comrade-in-arms, John Trumbull the aristocrat, Benjamin West the mentor, and Gilbert Stuart the brilliant wastrel. Their images of Washington fed an immense popular appetite that has never faded, Stuart's image endures today on the $1 bill.The Painter's Chair isan eloquent narrative of how America's first painters toiled to create an art worthy of the new republic, and the hero whom they turned into an icon.
Call Number: N7628.W3 H42 2009ISBN: 9781596912441Publication Date: 2009
Painting 2. 0 by
Examining the resurgent interest in painting and the proliferation of new digital media in recent years, this generously illustrated book delineates painting's complex relationship with information technology. In a survey that begins in the mid-twentieth century, long before the birth of the Internet, this book traces painting's capacity to digest and transform other media, even as its own legitimacy has been questioned. Featuring the work of numerous renowned artists, from Sigmar Polke to Nicole Eisenman and from Cy Twombly to Amy Sillman, the book examines how painting has addressed digital technology as it relates to human experience and perception, and includes three in-depth essays and additional texts by influential thinkers from the field. Comprehensive and lavishly illustrated, the book presents a wide range of works that reconsider the assumed opposition of the digital and the analog, the human and the technological, arguing that painting has served as a means to represent--and even enact--new media. This book affirms the ongoing vitality of the medium of painting in the midst of a digital world.
Call Number: ND195 .P35 2015 +ISBN: 9783791354910Publication Date: 2016
Performance in Contemporary Art by
In this important new survey, Catherine Wood proposes that performance is not a genre of art separate from object making but rather an attitude that has infiltrated the entire terrain of contemporary art.
Call Number: NX460.5.P47 W66 2018ISBN: 9781849763110Publication Date: 2019
Performance Now by
Six chapters cover different themes of performance art, such as beauty, global citizenship, and activism, as well as its intersection with other media including film and technology, dance, theater and architecture--interspersed with illustrated profiles of some of the world's best-known performance artists, including Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, and Laurie Simmons. Extended captions assess the importance of specific works in context. At once a wonderful introduction to the medium and a must-have sourcebook for fans, Performance Now is the go-to reference for artists, students, and historians as well as lovers of avant-garde theater and film.
Call Number: NX456.5.P38 G65 2018ISBN: 9780500021255Publication Date: 2018
The Reenchantment of Art by
Confronts the effects of modernism on society and proposes a remedy based on a redefinition of our art and culture
Call Number: N71 .G28 1991ISBN: 9780500276891Publication Date: 1992
Simulations by
Baudrillard's bewildering thesis, a bold extrapolation on Ferdinand de Saussure's general theory of general linguistics, is in fact a clinical vision of contemporary consumer societies where signs don't refer anymore to anything except themselves. They all are generated by the matrix. Simulations never existed as a book before it was "translated" into English. Actually it came from two different bookCovers written at different times by Jean Baudrillard. The first part of Simulations, and most provocative because it made a fiction of theory, was "The Procession of Simulacra." It had first been published in Simulacre et Simulations (1981). The second part, written much earlier and in a more academic mode, came from L'Echange Symbolique et la Mort (1977). It was a half-earnest, half-parodical attempt to "historicize" his own conceit by providing it with some kind of genealogy of the three orders of appearance: the Counterfeit attached to the classical period; Production for the industrial era; and Simulation, controlled by the code. It was Baudrillard's version of Foucault's Order of Things and his ironical commentary of the history of truth. The book opens on a quote from Ecclesiastes asserting flatly that "the simulacrum is true." It was certainly true in Baudrillard's book, but otherwise apocryphal.One of the most influential essays of the 20th century, Simulations was put together in 1983 in order to be published as the first little black book of Semiotext(e)'s new Foreign Agents Series. Baudrillard's bewildering thesis, a bold extrapolation on Ferdinand de Saussure's general theory of general linguistics, was in fact a clinical vision of contemporary consumer societies where signs don't refer anymore to anything except themselves. They all are generated by the matrix.In effect Baudrillard's essay (it quickly became a must to read both in the art world and in academe) was upholding the only reality there was in a world that keeps hiding the fact that it has none. Simulacrum is its own pure simulacrum and the simulacrum is true. In his celebrated analysis of Disneyland, Baudrillard demonstrates that its childish imaginary is neither true nor false, it is there to make us believe that the rest of America is real, when in fact America is a Disneyland. It is of the order of the hyper-real and of simulation. Few people at the time realized that Baudrillard's simulacrum itself wasn't a thing, but a "deterrence machine," just like Disneyland, meant to reveal the fact that the real is no longer real and illusion no longer possible. But the more impossible the illusion of reality becomes, the more impossible it is to separate true from false and the real from its artificial resurrection, the more panic-stricken the production of the real is.
Call Number: BD236 .B38 1983ISBN: 9780936756028Publication Date: 1983
Situating el Lissitzky by
Situating El Lissitzky reassesses the complex career of one of the most influential yet controversial experimental artists of the early twentieth century. A prolific painter, designer, architect, and photographer, El Lissitzky (1890-1941) worked with the Soviet and the European artistic avant-gardes in the 1920s and as a propagandist for the Stalinist regime in the following decade. Taking readers into the thick of current debates about Lissitzky's artistic personae, Situating El Lissitzky reconstructs aspects of his elusive identity across different periods, places, and media. Following an introduction in which Nancy Perloff distills and draws together the volume's eight essays, Christina Lodder, Éva Forgács, and Maria Gough offer revisionist accounts of Lissitzky's years as an international constructivist and exhibition designer in Europe. John E. Bowlt then investigates the role of handicraft and the symbol of the hand in Lissitzky's artistic production, and Leah Dickerman and Margarita Tupitsyn elucidate the interplay between physicality and opticality at different stages in Lissitzky's development as a photographer. Finally, T. J. Clark and Peter Nisbet address the disconcerting balance of aesthetic value and political expediency in Lissitzky's overtly Communist art. The result is a kaleidoscopic portrait of Lissitzky as Bolshevik visionary, craftsman, modernist, internationalist, and Soviet propagandist.
Call Number: N6999.L5 S57 2003ISBN: 9780892366774Publication Date: 2003
Slavery, Geography and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica by
This is among the first Slavery Studies books - and the first in Art History - to juxtapose temperate and tropical slavery. Breaking new ground, Nelson reveals how gender and race mediated the aesthetic and scientific access of such - mainly white, male - artists. She analyzes this moment of deep political crisis for British slave owners (between the end of the slave trade in 1807 and complete abolition in 1833) who employed visual culture to imagine spaces free of conflict. Nelson explores how vision and cartographic knowledge translated into authority, which allowed colonizers to 'civilize' the terrains of the so-called New World, while belying the oppression of slavery and indigenous displacement.
Call Number: N8243.S576 N45 2016ISBN: 9781409468912Publication Date: 2016
Starchitecture by
In recent decades, attention has been lavished on the role of famous designers and their spectacular architecture, not only in their profound effects on the urban fabric, but also in the growing concept of a city's brand. The narrative of the oBilbao Effecto has spread globally, leading to an environment in which cities compete for the highest-profile cultural facilities, skyscrapers, and amenities designed by star architects whom even casual readers know by first name- Frank, Bjarke, Jean, Zaha, Norman, Rem. Yet in many cases, these developments occur with little regard for their urban context, size, and functions in the global market. The spectacular, visually seductive proposals are intended to generate public interest and tacit approval, while attention to the rationales involved in such decision-making processes are constrained, or even tacitly or deliberately misleading. This fascinating study by urbanism scholars Davide Ponzini and Michele Nastasi seeks to explain and critique this growing global condition by revealing how starchitecture has been deployed in several key cities- Abu Dhabi, Paris, Bilbao, New York City, and the architectural microcosm of the Vitra campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany. In all, Starchitectureseeks to answer important questions- how do architectural works get commissioned and procured, and what can politicians, city planners, architects, and engineers learn from the past and apply to successful city-making today?
Call Number: NA2543.F35 P66 2016ISBN: 9781580934688Publication Date: 2016- Tale of two women painters : Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia FontanaCall Number: ND622 .T35 2019ISBN: 9788484805373Publication Date: 2019
Thomas Jefferson, Architect by
A compelling reassessment of Thomas Jefferson's architecture that scrutinizes the complex, and sometimes contradictory, meanings of his iconic work
Call Number: NA737.J4 D49 2019ISBN: 030024620XPublication Date: 2019
Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist by Call Number: DA16.8 .F85 2020ISBN: 0300243065Publication Date: 2020
Women Artists in Early Modern Italy by
In ten chapters spanning two centuries, this collection of essays examines the relationships between women artists and their publics, both in early modern Italy as well as across Europe. Drawing upon archival evidence, these essays afford abundant documentary evidence about the diverse strategies that women utilized in order to carry out artistic careers, from Sofonisba Anguissola's role as a lady-in-waiting at the court of Philip II of Spain, to Lucrezia Quistelli's avoidance of the Florentine market in favor of upholding the prestige of her family, to Costanza Francini's preference for the steady but humble work of candle painting for a Florentine confraternity. Their unusual life stories along with their outstanding talents brought fame to a number of women artists even in their own lifetimes - so much fame, in fact, that Giorgio Vasari included several women artists in his 1568 edition of artists' biographies. Notably, this visibility also subjected women artists to moral scrutiny, with consequences for their patronage opportunities. Because of their fame and their extraordinary (and often exemplary) lives, works made by women artists held a special allure for early generations of Italian collectors, including Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici, who made a point of collecting women's self-portraits. In the eighteenth century, British collectors wishing to model themselves after the Italian virtuosi exhibited an undeniable penchant for the Italian women artists of a bygone era, even though they largely ignored the contemporary women artists in their midst.
Call Number: N6915 .W66 2016ISBN: 1909400351Publication Date: 2016
