Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art


Georges Didi-Huberman - 1990
    According to Didi-Huberman, visual representation has an "underside" in which seemingly intelligible forms lose their clarity and defy rational understanding. Art historians, he goes on to contend, have failed to engage this underside, where images harbor limits and contradictions, because their discipline is based upon the assumption that visual representation is made up of legible signs and lends itself to rational scholarly cognition epitomized in the "science of iconology."To escape from this cul-de-sac, Didi-Huberman suggests that art historians look to Freud's concept of the "dreamwork," not for a code of interpretation, but rather to begin to think of representation as a mobile process that often involves substitution and contradiction. Confronting Images also offers brilliant, historically grounded readings of images ranging from the Shroud of Turin to Vermeer's Lacemaker.

The One Plus One: Free Ebook Sampler


Jojo Moyes - 2013
    But it's hard on your own. And sometimes you take risks you shouldn't. Because you have to . . . One chaotic family Jess's gifted, quirky daughter Tanzie is brilliant with numbers, but without a helping hand she'll never get the chance to shine. And Nicky, Jess's teenage stepson, can't fight the bullies alone. Sometimes Jess feels like they're sinking . . . One handsome stranger Into their lives comes Ed Nicholls, a man whose life is in chaos, and who is running from a deeply uncertain future. But he has time on his hands. He knows what it's like to be lonely. And he wants to help . . . One unexpected love story The One Plus One is a captivating and unconventional romance from Jojo Moyes about two lost souls meeting in the most unlikely circumstances. Praise for Jojo Moyes: 'Majestic, utterly compelling, tremendous. A heart-stopping read' Independent on Sunday'Truly beautiful. Made us laugh, smile and sob like a baby - you simply have to read it' Closer'A triumph. Packs such an emotional punch, you'll need a box of tissues' ElleJojo Moyes is a novelist and a journalist. She worked at the Independent for ten years before leaving to write full time. Her previous novels have all been critically acclaimed and include The Ship of Brides, Foreign Fruit, The Last Letter From Your Lover, winner of Spring 2012's most popular Richard and Judy Book Club title Me Before You and most recently The Girl you Left Behind. She lives in Essex with her husband and their three children.

As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art


Rebecca Solnit - 2001
    The organic world, to Solnit, gives rise to the social, political, and philosophical landscapes we inhabit. As Eve Said to the Serpent skillfully weaves the natural world with the realm of art--its history, techniques, and criticism--to offer a remarkable compendium of Solnit's research and ruminations.The nineteen pieces in this book range from the intellectual formality of traditional art criticism to highly personal, lyrical meditations. All are distinguished by Solnit's vivid, original style that blends imaginative associations with penetrating insights. These thoughts produce quirky, intelligent, and wryly humorous content as Solnit ranges across disciplines to explore nuclear test sites, the meaning of national borders, deserts, clouds, and caves--as well as ideas of the feminine and the sublime as they relate to our physical and psychological terrains.Sixty images throughout the book display the work of the contemporary artists under discussion, including landscape photographers, performance artists, sculptors, and installation artists. Alongside her text, Solnit's gallery of images provides a vivid excursion into new ways of perceiving landscape, bodies, and art. Animals and the human body appear together with space and terra firma as Solnit reconfigures the blurred lines that define nature.

White Girls


Hilton Als - 2013
    The result is an extraordinary, complex portrait of "white girls," as Als dubs them—an expansive but precise category that encompasses figures as diverse as Truman Capote and Louise Brooks, Malcolm X and Flannery O’Connor. In pieces that hairpin between critique and meditation, fiction and nonfiction, high culture and low, the theoretical and the deeply personal, Als presents a stunning portrait of a writer by way of his subjects, and an invaluable guide to the culture of our time.

What Good Are the Arts?


John Carey - 2005
    John Carey--one of Britain's most respected literary critics--here cuts through the cant surrounding the fine arts, debunking claims that the arts make us better people or that judgments about art are anything more than personal opinion. But Carey does argue strongly for the value of art as an activity and for the superiority of one art in particular: literature. Literature, he contends, is the only art capable of reasoning, and the only art that can criticize. Literature has the ability to inspire the mind and the heart towards practical ends far better than any work of conceptual art. Here then is a lively and stimulating invitation to debate the value of art, a provocative book that anyone seriously interested in the arts should read (Michael Dirda, The Washington Post).

Interaction of Color


Josef Albers - 1971
    Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this timeless book presents Albers’s unique ideas of color experimentation in a way that is valuable to specialists as well as to a larger audience.Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten representative color studies chosen by Albers. The paperback has remained in print ever since and is one of the most influential resources on color for countless readers.This new paperback edition presents a significantly expanded selection of more than thirty color studies alongside Albers’s original unabridged text, demonstrating such principles as color relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusions of transparency and reversed grounds. Now available in a larger format and with enhanced production values, this expanded edition celebrates the unique authority of Albers’s contribution to color theory and brings the artist’s iconic study to an eager new generation of readers.

The Singular Objects of Architecture


Jean Baudrillard - 2000
    Each in turn comes under scrutiny in this exhilarating dialogue between two of the most interesting thinkers working in philosophy and architecture today. From such singular objects, Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel move on to fundamental problems of politics, identity, and aesthetics as their exchange becomes an imaginative exploration of the possibilities of modern architecture and the future of modern life. Among the topics the two speakers take up are the city of tomorrow and the ideal of transparency, the gentrification of New York City and Frank Gehry’s surprising Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. As Nouvel prompts Baudrillard to reflect on some of his signature concepts (the virtual, transparency, fatal strategies, oblivion, and seduction, among others), the confrontation between such philosophical concerns and the specificity of architecture gives rise to novel and striking formulations—and a new way of establishing and understanding the connections between the practitioner and the philosopher, the object and the idea. This wide-ranging conversation builds a bridge between the fields of architecture and philosophy. At the same time it offers readers an intimate view of the meeting of objects and ideas in which the imagined, constructed, and inhabited environment is endlessly changing, forever evolving. Jean Baudrillard is one of the most influential thinkers of his generation and author of The Vital Illusion (2001). Jean Nouvel has designed buildings throughout the world, including the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and is a recipient of France’s Grand Prix d’Architecture. Robert Bononno, a translator and teacher, lives in New York City.

Exploring Art: A Global, Thematic Approach (with CourseMate Printed Access Card)


Margaret Lazzari - 2011
    EXPLORING ART uses art examples from around the world to discuss art in the context of religion, politics, family structure, sexuality, entertainment and visual culture.

Learn Tunisian Crochet: Beginner Stitch Guide & 6 Easy Potholder Patterns (Tiger Road Crafts Book 2)


Tara Cousins - 2014
    The "Getting Started" section will give you a great overview and help explain some things for the very beginner. Next, learn some easy stitch patterns in the section "Basic Stitches." When you're ready to try your first project, take a look at the "Potholder Patterns" section, but make sure to read the "Pattern Information & Notes" first for some important stuff that pertains to all the patterns. The ebook is also filled with photos to help you along your way.Why Potholders?Potholders are a great project to work with Tunisian crochet because:• The back/wrong side is hidden between the two layers• Tunisian crochet makes a very thick final product• Working square shapes is easy for the beginnerHave fun, and happy hooking to you!

A Short Guide to Writing About Art (The Short Guide Series)


Sylvan Barnet - 1981
    This best-selling text has guided tens of thousands of art students through the writing process. Students are shown how to analyze pictures (drawings, paintings, photographs), sculptures and architecture, and are prepared with the tools they need to present their ideas through effective writing.

In the Flow


Boris Groys - 2016
    The notion of works of art as sacred objects was decried and subsequently they would be understood merely as things. This meant an attack on realism, as well as on the traditional preservative mission of the museum. Acclaimed art theorist Boris Groys argues this led to the development of “direct realism”: an art that would not produce objects, but practices (from performance art to relational aesthetics) that would not survive. But for more than a century now, every advance in this direction has been quickly followed by new means of preserving art’s distinction. In this major new work, Groys charts the paradoxes produced by this tension, and explores art in the age of the thingless medium, the Internet. Groys claims that if the techniques of mechanical reproduction gave us objects without aura, digital production generates aura without objects, transforming all its materials into vanishing markers of the transitory present.

Who I Am and What I Want


David Shrigley - 2003
    In this mock autobiographical collection his mischievous drawings capture life's anxieties and ambitions from the mundane to the surreal. Here, at last, is The Truth about beer, doctors, shadow puppets, lunch, dolphins, boredom, and supernatural forces. Seductively strange and addictively amusing, this edgy little book welcomes the uninitiated and rewards the faithful.

The Oil Painting Course You've Always Wanted: Guided Lessons for Beginners and Experienced Artists


Kathleen Staiger - 2006
    Or maybe you weren’t afraid—maybe you just didn’t know what to ask or where to start. In The Oil Painting Course You’ve Always Wanted, author Kathleen Staiger presents crystal clear, step-by-step lessons that build to reinforce learning. Brush control, creating the illusion of three dimensions, foolproof color mixing, still-life painting, landscapes, and portraits—every topic is covered in clear text, diagrams, illustrations, exercises, and demonstrations. Staiger has taught oil painting for more than thirty-five years; many of her students are now exhibiting and selling their paintings. Everyone from beginning hobby painters, to art students, to BFA graduates has questions about oil painting. Here at last are the answers!

Turn: The Journal of an Artist


Anne Truitt - 1986
    The second journal of an artist by "an extraordinary woman: sensitive, intelligent, perceptive"--Doris Grumbach.

How To Unblock Everything On The Internet


Ankit Fadia - 2012
    Chat Software Stock Trading Websites. Career Websites. USB Ports. Download & Speed Limits. Torrents And just about everything else!Who should read this book? College Students. Office Goers. Travelers to countries where websites are blocked (China, UAE, Saudi Arabia and others). Anybody else who wants to unblock stuff on the Internet.About The AuthorAGE 10 - Gifted a computer at home by his parents.AGE 12 - Developed an interest in Computer Hacking.AGE 14 - Published his first book titled The Unofficial Guide to Ethical Hacking which became an instant bestseller worldwide, sold 3 million copies and was translated into 11 languages.AGE 16 - After the Sept. 11th attacks, cracked an encrypted email sent by the Al-Qaeda terrorist network for a classified intelligence agency.AGE 26 - Widely recognized as a Computer Security Expert and Cyber Terrorism guru. Written 14 bestselling books, delivered more than 1000 talks in 25 countries, received 45 awards, has trained more than 20,000 people in India & China, hosts his own TV show called MTV What the Hack!, is writing a script for a movie, runs his own consulting company and also went to Stanford University. His work has touched & influenced the cyber lives of millions of individuals and organizations worldwide.