He talks of the creation of the work of art, the importance of the community, the problem of communication, and the critical theories governing the artist and his audience.

    That will paint itself. Do the obvious thing before you do the superhuman thing. It may have been accidental, but you knew enough to let this alone. The good painter is always making use of accidents. Never try to repeat a success. Swing a bigger brush — you don’t know what fun you are missing. For 31 years, Charles Hawthorne spoke in this manner to students of his famous Cape Cod School of Art. The essence of that instruction has been collected from students’ notes and captured in this book, retaining the personal feeling and the sense of on-the-spot inspiration of the original classroom. Even though Hawthorne is addressing himself to specific problems in specific paintings, his comments are so revealing that they will be found applicable a hundred times to your own work.The book is divided into sections on the outdoor model, still life, landscape, the indoor model, and watercolor. Each section begins with a concise essay and continues with comments on basic elements: general character, color, form, seeing, posture, etc. It is in the matter of color that students will especially feel themselves in the presence of a master guide and critic. Hawthorne’s ability to see color and, more important, to make the student see color, is a lesson that will aid student painters and anyone else interested in any phase of art.Although it does not pretend to be a comprehensive or closely ordered course, this book does have much to offer. It also represents the artistic insight of one of the finest painter-teachers of the twentieth century."An excellent introduction for laymen and students alike." — Time"To read these notes and comments … is in itself an education. One cannot help but gain great help." — School Arts

    He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. This is Tom Wolfe "at his most clever, amusing, and irreverent" (San Francisco Chronicle).

    There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art. . . "In the 1920s Duchamp gave up, quit painting. He allowed, perhaps encouraged, the attendant mythology. One thought of his decision, his willing this stopping. Yet on one occasion, he said it was not like that. He spoke of breaking a leg. 'You don't mean to do it,' he said."The Large Glass. A greenhouse for his intuition. Erotic machinery, the Bride, held in a see-through cage-'a Hilarious Picture.' Its cross references of sight and thought, the changing focus of the eyes and mind, give fresh sense to the time and space we occupy, negate any concern with art as transportation. No end is in view in this fragment of a new perspective. 'In the end you lose interest, so I didn't feel the necessity to finish it.'"He declared that he wanted to kill art ('for myself') but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, 'a new thought for that object.'"The art community feels Duchamp's presence and his absence. He has changed the condition of being here."--Jasper Johns, from Marcel Duchamp: An Appreciation

    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.

    He laments that many children and adults are losing touch with the material objects that have nurtured human development for thousands of years. The objects are still here, but we seem to care less and know less about them. In his presentations to groups, he often asks an audience member what he or she knows about the chair the person is sitting in. Few people know much more than whether it's made of wood, plastic, or metal. If we know little about how things are made, it's hard to remain connected to the world around us.Fewer, Better Things explores the history of craft in its many forms, explaining how raw materials, tools, design, and technique come together to produce beauty and utility in handmade or manufactured items. Whether describing the implements used in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, the use of woodworking tools, or the use of new fabrication technologies, Adamson writes expertly and lovingly about the aesthetics of objects, and the care and attention that goes into producing them. Reading this wise and elegant book is a truly transformative experience.

    This eleventh edition has been carefully revised to expand and clarify concepts throughout the text, while adding new material on developing ideas, critical thinking, and time and motion.

    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.

    It situates different musics in their cultural and historical context, and analyses them in terms of cultural aesthetics. Paul Hegarty argues that noise is a judgement about sound, that what was noise can become acceptable as music, and that in many ways the idea of noise is similar to the idea of the avant-garde.While it provides an excellent historical overview, the book's main concern is in the noise music that has emerged since the mid 1970s, whether through industrial music, punk, free jazz, or the purer noise of someone like Merzbow. The book progresses seamlessly from discussions of John Cage, Erik Satie, and Pauline Oliveros through to bands like Throbbing Gristle and the Boredoms. Sharp and erudite, and underpinned throughout by the ideas of thinkers like Adorno and Deleuze, Noise/Music is the perfect primer for anyone interested in the louder side of experimental music.

    The aim of this substantial anthology is to equip the student, teacher and interested general reader with the necessary materials for an up-to-date understanding of twentieth-century art.Beside the writings of the century's major artists, Art in Theory includes relevant texts by critics, philosophers, politicians and literary figures. It is organised into eight sections, from the legacy of Symbolism at the turn of the century to contemporary debates about the Postmodern. Each section is prefaced by a brief essay. There are introductions for all of the 300-plus texts, which serve to place theories and critical approaches in context. The result is both a comprehensive collection of documents on twentieth-century art and an encylopaedic history of relevant theory.

    This book sets out to provide the first concise interpretation of the period as a whole, clarifying the artists and their works along the way. Closely informed by new critical approaches, it concentrates on the relationship between American and European art from the end of the Second World War to the eve of the new millennium.Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, and Damien Hirst are among many artists discussed, with careful attention being given to the political and cultural worlds they inhabited. Moving along a clear timeline, the author highlights key movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Postmodernism, and performance art to explain the theoretical and issue-based debates that have provided the engine for the art of this period.

    But whether they were in the Louvre or the Prado, the Mauritshuis of the Palazzo Pitti, they reveal the pleasures of truly looking.De Montebello shares the sense of excitement recorded by Goethe in his autobiography—"akin to the emotion experienced on entering a House of God"—but also reflects on why these secular temples might nevertheless be the "worst possible places to look at art." But in the end both men convey, with subtlety and brilliance, the delights and significance of their subject matter and some of the intense creations of human beings throughout our long history.

    In response, both artists and thinkers have sought to transform the spectator into an active agent and the spectacle into a communal performance.In this follow-up to the acclaimed The Future of the Image, Rancière takes a radically different approach to this attempted emancipation. First asking exactly what we mean by political art or the politics of art, he goes on to look at what the tradition of critical art, and the desire to insert art into life, has achieved. Has the militant critique of the consumption of images and commodities become, ironically, a sad affirmation of its omnipotence?

    Viewed by critics, artists, art historians, and students as the essential text on how prehistoric images have been “overlayed” onto contemporary art by today’s artists, Overlay is for anyone interested in the possibility of reintegrating art into the fabric of society as a whole, as in prehistoric times.From megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge to Richard Long’s minimalism, from the earliest examples of cave drawings to Ana Mendieta’s Cuban site art, from the matriarchal fertility rituals of the ancient Celts to Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, Lippard shows a continuum in the forms, materials, symbols, and imagery that artists have employed for thousands of years.Lavishly illustrated with over 320 black-and-white photographs and 8 pages of color images, Overlay includes the work of artists Carl Andre, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, Charles Simonds, Mary Beth Edelson, Anna Sofaer, Michelle Stuart, Sol LeWitt, Ad Reinhardt, Alice Aycock, Nancy Holt, Emily Carr, Dennis Oppenheim, and many others.

    Providing parents and teachers with valuable tips for making any visit to a museum with children a success, this guide offers a great primer or refresher course on art history, allowing adults to confidently answer common questions, such as why some paintings are signed and others are not, some pictures are small and others are very large, and why the Dutch paint so much fruit. Questions and answers about 30 well-known paintings provide historical background, explain genres such as still life and portrait, and demystify religious and mythological themes. Color-coded tabs let adults flip to sections appropriate to the ages of their children (5–7 years, 8–10 years, 11–13+ years).