Human tastes in the arts, Dutton argues, are evolutionary traits, shaped by Darwinian selection. They are not, as the past century of art criticism and academic theory would have it, just "socially constructed."Our love of beauty is inborn, and many aesthetic tastes are shared across remote cultures—just one example is the widespread preference for landscapes with water and distant trees, like the savannas where we evolved. Using forceful logic and hard evidence, Dutton shows that we must premise art criticism on an understanding of evolution, not on abstract "theory." He restores the place of beauty, pleasure, and skill as artistic values.Sure to provoke discussion in scientific circles and uproar in the art world, The Art Instinct offers radical new insights into both the nature of art and the workings of the human mind.

    

    Here, Mary Street Alinder--who collaborated with Adams on his memoir and was his assistant in later life--is not reticent about the major emotional episodes in Adams's life, including his marriage and extramarital affairs, and his not-altogether-successful fatherhood. She explores the major artistic influences on his work and gives in-depth profiles of the significant figures in his circle. She also explains the technique and style Adams developed to obtain his unique vision, as well as his uneasiness at becoming a commodity. Ansel Adams: A Biography is an intimate and provocative portrait of the world's most famous photographer.

    A study of the surrealist movement which traces its development and examines the work and thoughts of its major artists.

    From the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to the 2000 Whitney Biennial, a rapid succession of art movements and different styles reflected theextreme changes in American culture and society, as well as America's position within the international art world.This exciting new look at twentieth century American art explores the relationships between American art, museums, and audiences in the century that came to be called the American century. Extending beyond New York, it covers the emergence of Feminist art in Los Angeles in the 1970s; the Blackart movement; the expansion of galleries and art schools; and the highly political public controversies surrounding arts funding. All the key movements are fully discussed, including early American Modernism, the New Negro movement, Regionalism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, andNeo-Expressionism.

    Starting on the streets of New York with simple fly-posters, she has gone on to disseminate her truisms, slogans, memorials and poems through a variety of media. They are enunciated by an unstable register of personae, be it ad-man, stand-up comedian, torturer, victim or evangelist. The sites for her work range from T-shirts and golf balls to dazzling electronic signboards at baseball stadiums.Her work uses language to investigate the nature of ideologies as conscious and unconscious formations about identity and experience. Her complex and poetic texts can be shocking, humorous and intriguing in content. At the same time she draws on Minimalism's use of industrial materials and deploys scale, movement and light to create art of great formal power and beauty.In the Survey, art critic and academic David Joselit surveys Holzer's changing oeuvre, from the first appearance of the streetwise Truisms in the late 1970 to her large-scale installations in museums worldwide. Joan Simon, curator of Holzer's first solo US museum exhibition, discusses with the artist her use of language and its relationship to visual form. In the Focus, Slovenian cultural theorist and philosopher Renata Salecl takes an in-depth look at Holzer's Lustmord series, which was precipitated by the events in the former Yugoslavia and boldly addresses the atrocities committed in war. For the Artist's Choice, the artist's fragmented, unexpected language is mirrored in Samuel Beckett's Ill Seen Ill Said, which the artist has chosen alongside extracts from Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti. A text by the artist on her literary influences accompanies a selection of her signature texts in the Artist's Writings section.

    Stan Lee, the Mighty Man from Marvel, and John Buscema, active and adventuresome artist behind the Silver Surfer, Conan the Barbarian, the Mighty Thor and Spider-Man, have collaborated on this comics compendium: an encyclopedia of information for creating your own superhero comic strips. Using artwork from Marvel comics as primary examples, Buscema graphically illustrates the hitherto mysterious methods of comic art. Stan Lee’s pithy prose gives able assistance and advice to the apprentice artist. Bursting with Buscema’s magnificent illustrations and Lee’s laudable word-magic, How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way belongs in the library of everyone who has ever wanted to illustrate his or her own comic strip.

    Widely acknowledged as both beautiful and intelligent, a sourcebook of art informed by feminism from the 1960s to the start of the 21st century, now available in paperback.

    But although he lived in the German golden age of Goethe, Schiller and Mozart, he also believed that art was in terminal decline.To resolve this apparent paradox, as Michael Inwood explains in his incisive Introduction, we must understand the particular place of aesthetics in Hegel's vast intellectual edifice. Its central pillars consist of logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy of spirit. Art derives its value from offering a sensory vision of the God-like absolute, from its harmonious fusion of form and content, and from summing up the world-view of an age such as Homer's. While it scaled supreme heights in ancient Greece, Hegel doubted art's ability to encompass Christian belief or the reflective irony characteristic of modern societies. Many such challenging ideas are developed in this superb treatise; it counts among the most stimulating works of a master thinker.Table of ContentsIntroductory Lectures on Aesthetics Introduction A Note on the Translation and CommentaryINTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON AESTHETICSChapter I: The Range of Aesthetic Defined, and Some Objections against the Philosophy of Art Refuted[α Aesthetic confined to Beauty of Artβ Does Art merit Scientific Treatment?γ Is Scientific Treatment appropriate to Art?δ Answer to βε Answer to γ]Chapter II: Methods of Science Applicable to Beauty and Art[1. Empirical Method - Art-scholarship(a) Its Range(b) It generates Rules and Theories(c) The Rights of Genius2. Abstract Reflection3. The Philosophical Conception of Artistic Beauty, general notion of]Chapter III: The Conception of Artistic BeautyPart I - The Work of Art as Made and as Sensuous1. Work of Art as Product of Human Activity[(a) Conscious Production by Rule(b) Artistic Inspiration(c) Dignity of Production by Man(d) Man's Need to produce Works of Art]2. Work of Art as addressed to Man's Sense[(a) Object of Art - Pleasant Feeling?(b) Feeling of Beauty - Taste(c) Art-scholarship(d) Profounder Consequences of Sensuous Nature of Art(α) Relations of the Sensuous to the Mind(αα) Desire(ββ) Theory(γγ) Sensuous as Symbol of Spiritual(β) The Sensuous Element, how Present in the Artist(γ) The Content of Art Sensuous]Part II - The End of Art3. [The Interest or End of Art(a) Imitation of Nature?(α) Mere Repetition of Nature is -(αα) Superfluous(ββ) Imperfect(γγ) Amusing Merely as Sleight of Hand(β) What is Good to Imitate?(γ) Some Arts cannot be called Imitative(b) Humani nihil - ?(c) Mitigation of the Passions?(α) How Art mitigates the Passions(β) How Art purifies the Passions(αα) It must have a Worthy Content(ββ) But ought not to be Didactic(γγ) Nor explicitly addressed to a Moral Purpose(d) Art has its own Purpose as Revelation of Truth]Chapter IV: Historical Deducation of the True Idea of Art in Modern Philosophy1. Kant[(a) Pleasure in Beauty not Appetitive(b) Pleasure in Beauty Universal(c) The Beautiful in its Teleological Aspect(d) Delight in the Beautiful necessary though felt]2. Schiller, Winckelmann, Schelling3. The IronyChapter V: Division of the Subject[1. The Condition of Artistic Presentation is the Correspondence of Matter and Plastic Form2. Part I - The Ideal3. Part II - The Types of Art(α) Symbolic Art(β) Classical Art(γ) Romantic Art4. Part III - The Several Arts(α) Architecture(β) Sculpture(γ) Romantic Art, comprising(i) Painting(ii) Music(iii) Poetry5. Conclusion]Commentary

    She shows the shocking and hilarious sketches that didn’t make the cut and explains how these are essential stages in the evolution of a cover that stands the test of time but retains its edge. Her book captures contemporary history—from the farce of Monica Lewinsky to the adventures of Michelle and Barack to nuclear meltdown in Japan—in images that are as acute as they are outrageous. More than that, it shows how the magazine that exemplifies journalistic excellence in America also dares to cultivate a sense of humor when grappling with complex moral and political issues.Praise for Blown Covers:“Interesting failures are the driving force behind BLOWN COVERS: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant to See (Abrams, $24.95), by Françoise Mouly. Mouly is the art editor of The New Yorker, and paging through this book is like standing in the corner of her office as she pins up rejected covers on the wall. Mouly has dozens of tales about images that failed for one reason or another. Now, presumably with the approval of her bosses at Condé Nast, she has created a tell-all (or tell-most) that even non–illustrators and designers will find enlightening.” —New York Times Book Review “Yes, Blown Covers sometimes offends—and that’s the audacious joy of it.” —NPR.org“[New Yorker] art editor Mouly offers some true delights.” —Sacramento Bee

    This new book by Luis Royo promises to be his best yet, focusing on exotic fantasy body art and piercing as only Royo can create.

    A loosely formed autobiography by Andy Warhol, told with his trademark blend of irony and detachmentIn The Philosophy of Andy Warhol—which, with the subtitle "(From A to B and Back Again)," is less a memoir than a collection of riffs and reflections—he talks about love, sex, food, beauty, fame, work, money, and success; about New York, America, and his childhood in McKeesport, Pennsylvania; about his good times and bad in New York, the explosion of his career in the sixties, and his life among celebrities.

    Starting with Impressionism in 1860, art historian Amy Dempsey explains the essentials of Modernism, the postwar New Disorder, and beyond.Carefully arranged material explores seventy essential topics of modern art in a practical and easy-to-navigate structure. Each boldly designed topic feature includes a clear definition; a list of key artists, attributes, media, and collections; and expertly curated illustrations with explanatory captions. A reference section includes a useful glossary of modern art terms.

    Through his street roots in graffiti, Basquiat helped to establish new possibilities for figurative and expressionistic painting, breaking the white male stranglehold of Conceptual and Minimal art, and foreshadowing, among other tendencies, Germany's Junge Wilde movement. It was not only Basquiat's art but also the details of his biography that made his name legendary--his early years as "Samo" (his graffiti artist moniker), his friendships with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Madonna and his tragically early death from a heroin overdose. This superbly produced retrospective publication assesses Basquiat's luminous career with commentary by, among others, Glenn O'Brien, and 160 color reproductions of the work.Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father--an ethnic mix that meant young Jean-Michel was fluent in French, Spanish and English by the age of 11. In 1977, at the age of 17, Basquiat took up graffiti, inscribing the landscape of downtown Manhattan with his signature "Samo." In 1980 he was included in the landmark group exhibition The Times Square Show; the following year, at the age of 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist ever to be invited to Documenta. By 1982, Basquiat had befriended Andy Warhol, later collaborating with him; Basquiat was much affected by Warhol's death in 1987. He died of a heroin overdose on August 22, 1988, at the age of 27.

    Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present accompanies an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art that documents approximately 50 of the artist's ephemeral time- and media-based works from throughout her career. The book also discusses a unique element of the Museum's retrospective, live performance: a new work created for the occasion, and performed by Abramovic herself; and re-creations of the artist's works by other performers-the first such to be undertaken in a museum setting. The book spans over four decades of Abramovic's early interventions and sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances and collaborative performances made with the Dutch artist Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen). Essays by Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator of Media and performance art at MoMA, and four distinguished scholars examine Abramovic's ideas of time, duration and the reperformance of performance art as a way to extend it into posterity. The Artist Is Present also includes a CD with audio commentary by the artist that guides the reader through the publication. The artist is present not only in the exhibition but also in the experience of the book.Born in Belgrade just after the end of the Second World War, Marina Abramovic was raised in the Serbian Orthodox Church (her great uncle was a Patriarch and a canonized saint in the Church) and left Yugoslavia in 1976, having already established herself as a performance artist, living in Amsterdam and eventually New York, where she presently lives.