Theory of art Books

Drawing on an interdisciplinary panel of contributors, this book presents a stimulating dialogue between economics and art theory and considers how this might aid our understanding of both areas of research.

Is writing a world art history possible? Does the history of art as such even exist outside the Western tradition? Is it possible to consider the history of art in a way that is not fundamentally Eurocentric? In this highly readable and provocative book,...

Just out of college, Patricia Hampl was mesmerized by a Matisse painting in the Art Institute of Chicago: an aloof woman gazing at goldfish in a bowl, a Moroccan screen behind her. In Blue Arabesque, Hampl explores the allure of this lounging woman,...

Women have been making art for centuries, yet their work has been seen as secondary or has gone unrecognised altogether. Women Making Art asks why this is so, and what it would take for us to realise the extent of women's extraordinary contribution to...

Drawing on recent theoretical frameworks from critical disability studies and art education including normalcy, ableism, disability and Crip theory, this book offers an analysis of the conceptualisation of ability in art education and its relationship...

Wide-ranging and timely, The Practice of Public Art brings together practicing artists, curators, activists, art writers, administrators, city planners, and educators from the United Kingdom and United States to offer differing perspectives on the many...

Continuing her feminist reconceptualisation of the ways we can experience and study the visual arts, world renowned art historian and cultural analyst, Griselda Pollock proposes a series of new encounters through virtual exhibitions with art made by...

Contemporary Curating, Artistic Reference and Public Reception undertakes a unique critical survey and analysis of prevailing group exhibition-making practices in Europe, the UK and North America.  

Why do painters paint? Obviously, there are numerous possible reasons. They paint to create images for others' enjoyment, to solve visual problems, to convey ideas, and to contribute to a rich artistic tradition. This book argues that there is yet...

This comprehensive text challenges the taken-for-granted opposition of science and art by combining the fundamental principles of psychology, art and creativity and presenting the interdependent disciplines together in one unique, clear, and accessible...

There are as many meanings to drawing and painting as there are cultural contexts for them to exist in. But this is not the end of the story. Drawings and paintings are made, and in their making embody unique meanings that transform our perception of...

This volume is a study of the connected ideas of "queer" and "gender performance" or "performativity" over the past several decades, providing an ambitious history and crucial examination of these concepts while questioning their very bases.

Creative Analysis: Art, Creativity and Clinical Process explores the dynamics of creativity in psychoanalytic treatment. It argues that the creative process of the analytic interaction is characterized by specific forms of feeling, thinking and most...

What does it mean to be visually literate? Does it mean different things in the arts and the sciences? In the West, in Asia, or in developing nations? If we all need to become "visually literate," what does that mean in practical terms? The essays...

This volume discusses the aesthetic and cognitive challenges of modern picturebooks from different countries, such as Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and USA. The overarching issue concerns the mutual relationship between...

Tales of shipwreck have always fascinated audiences, and as a result there is a rich literature of suffering at sea, and an equally rich tradition of visual art depicting this theme. Exploring the shifting semiotics and symbolism of shipwreck, the...

At a time when it is clear that climate change adaptation and mitigation are failing, this book examines how our assumptions about (valid and usable) knowledge are preventing effective climate action. Through a cross-disciplinary, empirically-based...

Counterfactual thinking has become an established method to evaluate decisions in a range of disciplines, including history, psychology and literature. Elke Reinhuber argues it also has valuable applications in the fine arts and popular media. A...

What would it mean to substitute care for economics as the central concern of politics? This anthology invites analysis, reflections and speculations on how contemporary artists and creative practitioners engage with, interpret, and enact care in...

In this study, Josefine Wikström challenges a concept of performance that makes no difference between art and non-art and argues for a new concept. This book confronts and criticises the way in which the dominating concept of performance has been used in...

In this collection of essays, a range of scholars from different disciplines look through the prism of technology at the much-debated notion of cultural memory, analyzing how the past is shaped or unsettled by cultural texts including visual art,...

This is the first major response to the new challenge of neuroscience to religion. There have been limited responses from a purely Christian point of view, but this takes account of eastern as well as western forms of religious experience. It challenges...

If the advancement toward the administered world is nearing completion, if spectacularised societies, industrialised cultures, and reified consciousness have taken control, then, Adorno and Art shows how radical and revolutionary Adorno's aesthetic...

Key Writers on Art: The Twentieth Century offers a unique and authoritative guide to modern responses to art. Featuring 48 essays on the most important twentieth century writers and thinkers and written by an international panel of expert contributors,...

Featuring some of the major voices in the world of art history, this volume explores the methodological aspects of comparison in the historiography of the discipline. The chapters assess the strengths and weaknesses of comparative practice in the history...

The authenticity of visual art has always commanded the attention of experts, dealers, collectors, and the art-minded public. Is it "real" or "original" is a way of asking what am I buying? What do I own? What am I looking at? And...

Shakespeare’s Philosophy Illustrated – Quaternary Teaching Aids features a series of charts and diagrams in colour throughout its 192 pages. It is organised into four distinct Parts as teaching aids for a Quaternary level of understanding...

This volume explores the relationship among beauty, violence, and representation in a broad range of artistic and cultural texts, including literature, visual art, theatre, film, and music. Charting diversifying interests in the subject of violence and...

Realism in theatre is traditionally defined as a mere seed of modernism, a crude attempt to reproduce an exact copy of reality on stage. Art, Vision & Nineteenth-Century Realist Drama redefines realism as a complex and under-examined form of visual...

Cross-Cultural Issues in Art provides an engaging introduction to aesthetic concepts, expanding the discussion beyond the usual Western theorists and Western examples. Steven Leuthold discusses both contemporary and historical issues and examples,...

Bringing together twenty-nine of Lawrence Alloway's most influential essays in one volume, this fascinating collection provides valuable perspectives on the art and visual culture of the second half of the twentieth century.Lawrence Alloway ranks among...

Acknowledgements Introduction The Commodification of the Arts Managing the Arts: 1945-79 Who Runs the Arts? The Network for Arts Policy in Britain The Arts at the Centre The Regional Politics of the Arts Local Government and the Arts The European...

The oral eye is a metaphor for the dominance of global designer capitalism. It refers to the consumerism of a designer aesthetic by the 'I' of the neoliberalist subject, as well as the aural soundscapes that accompany the hegemony of the capturing...

Traditional art is based on conventions of resemblance between the work and that which it is a representation "of". Abstract art, in contrast, either adopts alternative modes of visual representation or reconfigures mimetic convention. This book explores...

The topic of intangible natural heritage is new, recently emerging as an important subject of inquiry. It describes the untouchable elements of the environment that combine to create natural objects, and help define our relationship to them. These...

The presentation of bodies in pain has been a major concern in Western art since the time of the Greeks. The Christian tradition is closely entwined with such themes, from the central images of the Passion to the representations of bloody martyrdoms. The...

Gómez-Peña Unplugged is an anthology of recent and rewritten classic writings from Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a figure who stands alone as unique and ground-breaking in the history of performance art and as the artistic director of transdisciplinary...

This collection of interdisciplinary essays examines current cinematic and media landscapes from the perspective of transnational feminist practices and methodologies. Focusing on film, media art, and video essays, the contributors chart innovative...

In a series of philosophical discussions and artistic case studies, this volume develops a materialist and immanent approach to modern and contemporary art. The argument is made for a return to aesthetics--an aesthetics of effect--and for the...