Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics


Herschel B. Chipp - 1968
    Chipp's Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book By Artists and Critics is a collection of texts from letters, manifestos, notes and interviews. Sources include, as the title says, artists and critics—some expected, like van Gogh, Gauguin, Apollinaire, Mondrian, Greenberg, just to name a few—and some less so: Trotsky and Hitler, in the section on Art and Politics. The book is a wonderful resource and insight into the way artists think and work.

The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays


Mikhail Bakhtin - 1975
    The Dialogic Imagination presents, in superb English translation, four selections from Voprosy literatury i estetiki (Problems of literature and esthetics), published in Moscow in 1975. The volume also contains a lengthy introduction to Bakhtin and his thought and a glossary of terminology.Bakhtin uses the category "novel" in a highly idiosyncratic way, claiming for it vastly larger territory than has been traditionally accepted. For him, the novel is not so much a genre as it is a force, "novelness," which he discusses in "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse." Two essays, "Epic and Novel" and "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel," deal with literary history in Bakhtin's own unorthodox way. In the final essay, he discusses literature and language in general, which he sees as stratified, constantly changing systems of subgenres, dialects, and fragmented "languages" in battle with one another.

Going Public


Boris Groys - 2010
    Rather, art comes between the subject and the world, and any aesthetic discourse used to legitimize art must also necessarily serve to undermine it. Following his recent books Art Power and The Communist Postscript, in Going Public Boris Groys looks to escape entrenched aesthetic and sociological understandings of art—which always assume the position of the spectator, of the consumer. Let us instead consider art from the position of the producer, who does not ask what it looks like or where it comes from, but why it exists in the first place.

The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family


Richard Avedon - 2007
    The subject of the first essay was John F. Kennedy and his young family, who sat for formal black-and-white portraits just three weeks prior to Kennedy's presidential inauguration. Six images appeared in the magazine's February 1961 issue.That same day, Avedon created more informal color portraits of Kennedy and his family at the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach. One of these images ran as the cover of LOOK magazine's February 28 issue, with photographs by Avedon inside. Just before the magazine hit the newsstands and was delivered to over 6.5 million people, a set of photographs, comprised mostly of the LOOK images, was released by the White House and appeared in newspapers across the country.During his lifetime, Richard Avedon donated more than two hundred images to the Smithsonian Institution, including all of the photographs of the Kennedy family sitting for Harper's Bazaar. Smithsonian curator Shannon Thomas Perich has culled more than seventy-five images from that donation for The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family, making these stunning photographs available for view for the first time. Perich's introductory essay—accompanied by a wealth of archival photographs of both Avedon and the Kennedy family—provides historical background on the two sittings within a political and cultural context and critically examines the work of one of the finest photographers of the twentieth century. A foreword by Robert Dallek, distinguished historian and author of the bet-selling An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, provides authoritative and compelling insight to one of the most fascinating presidents in American history.

The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things


George Kubler - 1962
    George Kubler draws upon new insights in fields such as anthropology and linguistics and replaces the notion of style with the idea of a linked succession of works distributed in time as recognizably early and late versions of the same action. The result is a view of historical sequence aligned on continuous change more than upon the ecstatic concept of style--the usual basis for conventional histories of art.

Andy Goldsworthy


Andy Goldsworthy - 1990
    The many-pointed star formed from large icicles balances on a rock in a quiet Dumfriesshire valley, a delicate bamboo screen stands on a Japanese beach, a great serpentine ridge of earth extends along a disused railway cutting on Tyneside, four massive snow rings mark the position of the North Pole.

Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion


Harry Sword - 2020
    Harry Sword traces the line from neolithic Indo-European traditions to the modern underground by way of mid-20th Century New York, navigating a beguiling topography of archeoacoustics, ringing feedback, chest plate sub bass, avant-garde eccentricity, and fervent spiritualism. From ancient beginnings to bawdy medieval troubadours, Sufi mystics to Indian raga masters, North Mississippi bluesmen to cone-shattering South London dub reggae sound systems, Hawkwind's Ladbroke Grove to the outer reaches of Faust, Ash Ra Temple and sonic architects like La Monte Young, Brian Eno, and John Cale, the opium-fueled fug of The Theatre of Eternal Music to the caveman doom of Saint Vitus, the cough syrup reverse hardcore of Swans to the seedy VHS hinterland of Electric Wizard, ritual amp worship of Earth and Sunn O))) and the many touch points in between, Monolithic Undertow probes the power of the drone: something capable of affording womb-like warmth or evoking cavernous dread alike.This story does not start in the twentieth century underground: the monolithic undertow has bewitched us for millennia. The book takes the drone not as codified genre but as an audio carrier vessel deployed for purposes of ritual, personal catharsis, or sensory obliteration, revealing also a naturally occurring auditory phenomenon spanning continents and manifesting in fascinatingly unexpected places.Monolithic Undertow will be a book about music and the very human need for transcendence and intoxication through sound. It seeks to reveal the drone as a tool of personal liberation that exists far outside the brittle confines of commodity culture.

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.

Theodor Seuss Geisel: The Early Works of Dr. Seuss, Vol. 1


Dr. Seuss - 2005
    Dr. Seuss) had a career in illustration that varied widely before he wrote his first juvenile book. Early Works Volume 1 is the first of a series collecting political cartoons, advertisements, and various images drawn by Geisel long before he had written any of his world-famous books.

Winogrand: Figments from the Real World


Garry Winogrand - 1988
    Grouped under the following titles-- Eisenhower Years, The Street, Women, The Zoo, On the Road, The Sixties, Etc, The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo, Airport and Unfinished Work-- many of the 179 plates are works that had never before been published. The last section includes 25 pictures chosen from the enormous body of work that Winogrand left unedited at the time of his death in 1984. In his essay, Szarkowski, who knew the photographer well during most of his career, describes the development of Winogrand's pictorial strategies during his years as a photojournalist, the increasing complexity of his motifs as he pursued more personal goals, and the challenge posed for other photographers by the powerful and distinctive authority of Winogrand's best work, "with its manic sense of a life balanced somewhere between animal high spirits and an apprehension of moral disaster."

Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning


Nancy R. Pearcey - 2010
    She crafts a fresh approach that exposes the real-world impact of ideas in philosophy, science, art, literature, and film--voices that surround us in the classroom, in the movie theater, and in our living rooms.A former agnostic, Pearcey offers a persuasive case for historic Christianity as a holistic and humane alternative. She equips readers to counter the life-denying worldviews that are radically restructuring society and pervading our daily lives. Whether you are a devoted Christian, determined secularist, or don't know quite where you stand, reading Saving Leonardo will unsettle established views and topple ideological idols. Includes more than 100 art reproductions and illustrations that bring the book's themes to life.

Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation


E.H. Gombrich - 1960
    It seeks to answer a simple question: why is there such a thing as style? The question may be simple but there is no easy answer, and Professor Gombrich's brilliant and wide-ranging exploration of the history and psychology of pictorial representation leads him into countless crucial areas. Gombrich examines, questions and re-evaluates old and new ideas on such matters as the imitation of nature, the function of tradition, the problem of abstraction, the validity of perspective and the interpretation of expression: all of which reveal that pictorial representation is far from being a straightforward matter. First published more than 40 years ago, Art and Illusion has lost none of its vitality and importance. In applying the findings of experimental science to a nuanced understanding of art and in tackling complex ideas and theoretical issues, Gombrich is rigorous.Yet he always retains a sense of wonder at the inexhaustible capacity of the human brain, and at the subtlety of the relationships involved in seeing the world and in making and seeing art. With profound knowledge and his exceptional gift for clear exposition, he advances each argument as an hypothesis to be tested. The problems of representation are forever fundamental to the history of art: Art and Illusion remains an essential text for anyone interested in understanding the complexities of art. For the sixth edition Professor Gombrich has written an entirely new 12-page preface, in which he makes use of the distinction between an image and a sign, so as to clarify his intentions in writing the book in the first place.

Punk House: Interiors In Anarchy


Abby Banks - 2007
    The most common type is often where a large group of like-minded punks cram into a house usually intended to accommodate two or three people, resulting in low rent and, thus, extended hours of leisure for the residents to pursue their true interests. "Punk House" features anarchist warehouses, feminist collectives, tree houses, workshops, artists studios, self-sufficient farms, hobo squats, community centers, basement bike shops, speakeasies, and all varieties of communal living spaces. In over 300 images of fifty houses in twenty-five cities in the US, photographer Abby Banks finds the already weathered face of a seventeen-year-old runaway; the soft hands of a vinyl junkie (record collector); the mohawked show-goer; the dirty dishes in the sink; silk screened posters on the wall; and many other revealing glimpses of these anarchist interiors.

Ashley Wood's Art of Metal Gear Solid


Ashley Wood - 2009
    And it's little wonder why. The story follows infiltration expert Solid Snake as he attempts to save the world.In addition to showcasing art from Ashley Wood's graphic novel adaptations of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty, this all-new collection features the work Ash did for the Metal Gear Solid: Mobile Portable Ops video game.

Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture


Stephen Duncombe - 1997
    In this multifarious underground, Pynchonesque misfits rant and rave, fans eulogize, hobbyists obsess. Together they form a low-tech publishing network of extraordinary richness and variety. Welcome to the realm of zines.In this, the first comprehensive study of zine publishing, Stephen Duncombe describes their origins in early-twentieth-century science fiction cults, their more proximate roots in 60s counter-culture and their rapid proliferation in the wake of punk rock. While Notes from Underground pays full due to the political importance of zines as a vital web of popular culture, it also notes the shortcomings of their utopian and escapist outlook in achieving fundamental social change. Duncombe’s book raises the larger questionof whether it is possible to rebel culturally within a consumer society that eats up cultural rebellion.Packed with extracts and illustrations from a wide array of publications, past and present, Notes from Underground is the first book to explore the full range of zine culture and provides a definitive portrait of the contemporary underground in all its splendor and misery.