This tendency can be found in practices and projects ranging from El Lissitzky's exhibition designs to Allan Kaprow's happenings, from minimalist objects to installation art. More recently, this kind of participatory art has gone so far as to encourage and produce new social relationships. Guy Debord's celebrated argument that capitalism fragments the social bond has become the premise for much relational art seeking to challenge and provide alternatives to the discontents of contemporary life. This publication collects texts that place this artistic development in historical and theoretical context.Participation begins with writings that provide a theoretical framework for relational art, with essays by Umberto Eco, Bertolt Brecht, Roland Barthes, Peter B�rger, Jen-Luc Nancy, Edoaurd Glissant, and F�lix Guattari, as well as the first translation into English of Jacques Ranci�re's influential Problems and Transformations in Critical Art. The book also includes central writings by such artists as Lygia Clark and H�lio Oiticica, Joseph Beuys, Augusto Boal, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. And it features recent critical and curatorial debates, with discussions by Lars Bang Larsen, Nicolas Bourriaud, Hal Foster, and Hans-Ulrich Obrist.Copublished with Whitechapel Art Gallery, London

    The daughter of the second most important man in France, Louis XVI's Minister of Finances, Jacques Necker, Madame de Stael was born into a world of political and intellectual prominence. Later, she married Sweden's ambassador to the French court, and for a span of twenty years, she held the limelight as a political figure and prolific writer. Despite a plain appearance, she was notoriously seductive and enjoyed whirlwind affairs with some of the most influential men of her time. She always attracted controversy, and was demonized by Napoleon for her forthrightness, the sheer power of her intellect, and the progressiveness of her salon, which was a hotbed for the expression of liberal ideals. The emperor exiled her, on and off, for the last fifteen years of her life. Madame de Stael--force of nature, exuberant idealist, and ultimate enthusiast--waged a lifelong struggle against all that was tyrannical, cynical, or passionless in her time, and left Europe a legacy of enlightened liberalism that radiated throughout the continent during the nineteenth century.

    Corrupt cops, hapless criminals, and murder figure in this raucous history with contemporary overtones that questions which gang was tougher: the petty criminals, or the police themselves.Aaron Chapman is a writer, historian, and musician and the author of two Vancouver nightclub histories, Live at the Commodore and Liquor, Lust, and the Law.

    Choice of dress has always been affected by numerous influences-social and economic, artistic and technical-and, or course, the vagaries of individual taste.

    Writing with characteristic verve, the author tackles cultural topics in chapters such as Living on $1,000 a Year in Paris, American Bohemians in Paris, and Parisian Boorishness. "The scum of Greenwich Village, New York, has been skimmed off and deposited in large ladles on that section of Paris adjacent to the Café Rotonde. New scum, of course, has risen to take the place of the old, but the oldest scum, the thickest scum and the scummiest scum," Hemingway wryly observes, "has come across the ocean, somehow, and with its afternoon and evening levees has made the Rotonde the leading Latin Quarter showplace for tourists in search of atmosphere."

    But by the age of 39, the man whose brilliant compositions had thrilled audiences in the most fashionable salons lay dying of consumption, penniless and abandoned by his lover. In the fall of 1849, his lavish funeral was attended by thousands—but not by George Sand.In this intimate portrait of an embattled man, Eisler tells the story of a turbulent love affair, of pain and loss redeemed by art, and of worlds—both private and public—convulsed by momentous change.

    The sparkling redesigned city fostered a culture of energetic crowd-pleasing and multi-sensory amusements that would apprehend and represent real life as spectacle.Vanessa R. Schwartz examines the explosive popularity of such phenomena as the boulevards, the mass press, public displays of corpses at the morgue, wax museums, panoramas, and early film. Drawing on a wide range of written and visual materials, including private and business archives, and working at the intersections of art history, literature, and cinema studies, Schwartz argues that "spectacular realities" are part of the foundation of modern mass society. She refutes the notion that modern life produced an unending parade of distractions leading to alienation, and instead suggests that crowds gathered not as dislocated spectators but as members of a new kind of crowd, one united in pleasure rather than protest.

    Where does our current obsession for interactivity stem from? After the consumer society and the communication era, does art still contribute to the emergence of a rational society? Bourriaud attempts to renew our approach toward contemporary art by getting as close as possible to the artists works, and by revealing the principles that structure their thoughts: an aesthetic of the inter-human, of the encounter; of proximity, of resisting social formatting.

    Country musicians and magicians, professional wrestlers and rock stars, all have turned to Nashville's historic Hatch Show Print to create showstopping posters. Established in 1879, Hatch preserves the art of traditional printing that has earned a loyal following to this day (including the likes of Beck, Emmylou Harris, and the Beastie Boys). Hatch Show Print: The History of a Great American Poster Shop is the first fully illustrated tour of this iconic print shop and also chronicles the long life and large cast of employees, entertainers, and American legends whose histories are intertwined with it. Complete with 190 illustrations--as well as a special book jacket that unfolds to reveal an original Hatch poster on the reverse--Hatch Show Print is a dazzling document of this legendary institution.

    Opposed to the assumption that contemporary art is somehow belated, he argues that the avant-garde returns to us from the future, repositioned by innovative practice in the present. And he poses this retroactive model of art and theory against the reactionary undoing of progressive culture that is pervasive today.After the models of art-as-text in the 1970s and art-as-simulacrum in the 1980s; Foster suggests that we are now witness to a return to the real; to art and theory grounded in the materiality of actual bodies and social sites; If The Return of the Real begins with a new narrative of the historical avant-garde; it concludes with an original reading of this contemporary situation; and what it portends for future practices of art and theory, culture and politics.

    Unlike more traditional books on this topic that deal with the how of getting dressed, Get Dressed! instead tackles the why. The text “Get dressed to read about dragons” accompanies an illustration of a boy dressed in a makeshift knight costume. A girl in full floral garb stands in a garden alongside the text “Get dressed to hide.” The book features half and full gatefolds, which foreshadow the items of clothing to be seen and provide surprise reveals on each spread. With a die-cut magnetic closure, even the cover invites readers to peek inside!

    To look at these images is voyeuristic; to turn away is a gesture of respect.With The Cruel Radiance, Susie Linfield attacks those ideas head-on, arguing passionately that viewing such photographs—and learning to see the people in them—is an ethically and politically necessary act that connects us to our modern history of violence and probes our capacity for cruelty. Contending with critics from Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht to Susan Sontag and the postmoderns—and analyzing photographs from such events as the Holocaust, China’s Cultural Revolution, and recent terrorist acts—Linfield explores the complex connection between photojournalism and the rise of human rights ideals. In the book’s concluding section, she examines the indispensable work of Robert Capa, James Nachtwey, and Gilles Peress, and asks how photography has—and should—respond to the increasingly nihilistic trajectory of modern warfare.A bracing and unsettling book, The Cruel Radiance convincingly demonstrates that if we hope to alleviate political violence, we must first truly understand it—and to do that, we must begin to look.

    “Gothic” is an epithet with a strange history – evoking images of death, destruction, and decay. Ironically, its negative connotations have made the gothic an ideal symbol of rebellion for a wide range of cultural outsiders. Popularly associated with black-clad teenagers and rock musicians, gothic fashion encompasses not only subcultural styles (from old-school goth to cyber-goth and beyond) but also high fashion by such designers as Alexander McQueen, John Galliano of Christian Dior, Rick Owens, Olivier Theyskens, and Yohji Yamamoto. Fashion photographers, such as Sean Ellis and Eugenio Recuenco, have also drawn on the visual vocabulary of the gothic to convey narratives of dark glamour. As the text and lavish illustrations in this book suggest, gothic fashion has deep cultural roots that give it an enduring potency.

    Although original editions of this book are extremely rare, it is now available for the first time in a paperback edition, beautifully reproducing his drawings and watercolours. While the variety and detail of Haeckel's drawings display an impressive understanding of biological structure, the skill with which Haeckel drew these tiny, aquatic protozoa renders them genuine works of art. This volume features commentary and descriptions of each of the radiolarians from Haeckel's work.

    Spirit possession is an integral part of shamanism as well as many neo-pagan forms of worship that draw down deities or invite spirit possession. However, spirit possession is not for the unprepared. In Drawing Down the Spirits, Kenaz Filan and Raven Kaldera, both initiated and experienced in shamanic and Vodou traditions, present the practical guidance needed to participate in ritual possession. Addressing the benefits and the dangers that await the naive, Filan and Kaldera show that there is no such thing as a guaranteed “safe” possession because spirits have their own agenda--and they are much more powerful than we are. The authors provide a variety of techniques to prepare for possession and abort possession and to promote the safety of the possessed as well as the spirits and witnesses present. With a wide-ranging look at the historic forms of ritual possession found throughout the world--including Uganda, Nepal, Korea, Bali, Greece, Turkey, Scandinavia, and France--the authors also include numerous firsthand accounts collected from witnesses of modern spirit possession.