It will prove indispensable to students of art and art history as well as students of cultural studies. Mirzoeff begins by defining what visual culture is, and explores how and why visual media - fine art, cinema, the Internet, advertising, performance, photography, television - have become so central to contemporary everyday life. He argues that the visual is replacing the linguistic as our primary means of communicating with each other and of understanding our postmodern world. Part One of the Introduction presents a history of modern ways of seeing, including: * the formal practices of line and colour in painting* photographys claim to represent reality * virtual reality, from the nineteenth century to the present. In Part Two, Mirzoeff examines: * the visualization of race, sexuality and human identity in culture* gender and sexuality and questions of the gaze in visual culture* representations of encounters with the other, from colonial narratives to Science Fiction texts such as The Thing, Independence Day, Star Trek and The X-Files * the death of Princess Diana and the popular mourning which followed as marking the coming of age of a global visualized culture.

    Sontag develops further the concept of 'transparency'. When anything can be photographed and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photograph freely with no expectations of discovering what it means. This collection of six lucid and invigorating essays, the most famous being "In Plato's Cave", make up a deep exploration of how the image has affected society.

    In this trenchant illustrated essay, David Joselit describes how art and architecture are being transformed in the age of Google. Under the dual pressures of digital technology, which allows images to be reformatted and disseminated effortlessly, and the exponential acceleration of cultural exchange enabled by globalization, artists and architects are emphasizing networks as never before. Some of the most interesting contemporary work in both fields is now based on visualizing patterns of dissemination after objects and structures are produced, and after they enter into, and even establish, diverse networks. Behaving like human search engines, artists and architects sort, capture, and reformat existing content. Works of art crystallize out of populations of images, and buildings emerge out of the dynamics of the circulation patterns they will house.Examining the work of architectural firms such as OMA, Reiser + Umemoto, and Foreign Office, as well as the art of Matthew Barney, Ai Weiwei, Sherrie Levine, and many others, After Art provides a compelling and original theory of art and architecture in the age of global networks.

    Relevant psychological principles will help you predict your viewer's emotional reaction to your photographic images, giving you more power, control, and tools for communicating your desired message. Knowing how our minds work helps photographers, graphic designers, videographers, animators, and visual communicators both create and critique sophisticated works of visual art. Benefit from this insight in your work. Topics covered in this book: gestalt grouping, memory and association, space, time, color, contours, illusion and ambiguity, morphics, personality, subliminals, critiquing photographs, and rhetoric.

    In this acclaimed reference work, Martin covers everything from the core aspects of working in Photoshop to advanced techniques for professional results. Subjects covered include organizing a digital workflow, improving creativity, output, automating Photoshop, and using Camera RAW. The style of the book is extremely clear, with real examples, diagrams, illustrations, and step-by-step explanations supporting the text throughout. This is, quite simply, the essential reference for photographers of all levels using Photoshop. All DVD content is now available online at http://booksite.focalpress.com/compan... for kindle and eBook readers. * Learn Photoshop the Martin Evening way! Everything you need to know for superb photographic results using Photoshop CS5 * Accompanying DVD includes the images used in the book, as well as QuickTime movie tutorials that show you how to get results fast * Packed with diagrams, step-by-steps, and over 750 color images

    In About Looking he explores our role as observers to reveal new layers of meaning in what we see. How do the animals we look at in zoos remind us of a relationship between man and beast all but lost in the twentieth century? What is it about looking at war photographs that doubles their already potent violence? How do the nudes of Rodin betray the threats to his authority and potency posed by clay and flesh? And how does solitude inform the art of Giacometti? In asking these and other questions, Berger quietly -- but fundamentally -- alters the vision of anyone who reads his work.

    Your Action World parodies the "inspirational" promotional materialsincluding books, tapes, and corporate advertising - with which we are inundated daily. Byrne's impulse is to fight back, "to stem the tide of images and bullying texts that assault all of us, by building dikes and dams of my own images and texts. To understand the enemy I must become one with the enemy, I must be of one mind with the enemy. I must infect myself in order to be immunized." An intelligent, quirky document from one of our most innovative artistswith a cool debossed PVC cover and 4-color stickerYour Action World will be the cult hit of the season.

    As a landscape photographer you will find great subjects everywhere. Despite this, taking great landscape photos is more of a challenge. In fact landscape photography is one of the most difficult genres in photography to get right.This book discuss the basics and what you can do to improve as a landscape photographer. This is a beginners guide but intermediate landscape photographers will also find useful information in the book.Correct exposure and sharp images are the two biggest struggles for landscape photographers. The book covers both topics. Topics covered in the book:What to look for when buying a camera for landscape photographyLearn basic camera settings and understand exposureDifferent lenses and how focal length impact on your landscape imagesThe importance of light and time in landscape photographyHow to compose striking landscape photosHow to choose you image editing softwareImplement the tactics discussed in the book and you will immediately improve your landscape photography. Get started now!

    The book features 2,000 images and documents, many previously unpublished. Note: PBS-TV's American Masters will broadcast a 2 hour Warhol documentary by Ric Burns to air in May 2006.

    Danto traces the evolution of the pop artist, including his early reception, relationships with artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and the Factory phenomenon. He offers close readings of individual Warhol works, including their social context and philosophical dimensions, key differences with predecessors such as Marcel Duchamp, and parallels with successors like Jeff Koons. Danto brings to bear encyclopedic knowledge of Warhol’s time and shows us Warhol as an endlessly multidimensional figure—artist, political activist, filmmaker, writer, philosopher—who retains permanent residence in our national imagination.Danto suggests that "what makes him an American icon is that his subject matter is always something that the ordinary American understands: everything, or nearly everything he made art out of came straight out of the daily lives of very ordinary Americans. . . . The tastes and values of ordinary persons all at once were inseparable from advanced art."

    Gestalt theory and the psychology of visual perception form the basis for an analysis of art and its basic elements.

    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.

    These different ways of describing and interpreting art are the methodologies of artistic analysis, the divining rods of meaning. Regardless of a work’s perceived difficulty, an art object is, in theory, complex. Every work of art is an expression of its culture (time and place) and its maker (the artist) and is dependent on its media (what it’s made of). The methodologies discussed here—formal analysis, iconology and iconography, Marxism, feminism, biography and autobiography, psychoanalysis, and structuralism—reflect the multiplicity of meanings in an artistic image.

    Illustrates outdoor sculptures created with a range of natural materials, including snow, ice, leaves, rock, clay, stones, feathers, and twigs.

    On the occasion of the centenary of his birth comes the definitive retrospective of the artist's work from his early years. Dali explores the development of the artist's technique and style, his relationship with the Surrealists, and his exploitation of Freudian ideas, as well as the image Dali created of himself as the mad genius artist. This catalogue will be the major reference work for Dali for decades to come. It includes illustrations of all the works loaned to the exhibition, as well as comparative illustrations and photographs. The volume contains an introductory essay by Dawn Ades, with scholarly research incorporated in a "Dali Dictionary," in the entries on individual works, and in the chronology, which includes a quantity of new material. The guide draws upon the best scholarship available on Dali, including that of Hank Hine, Director of the Salvador Dali Museum, Jennifer Mundy, Senior Curator of the Tate Museum, and Michael Taylor, Acting Chief Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.