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      • Trusted Partner
        History of Art / Art & Design Styles
        October 2016

        Fleshing out surfaces

        Skin in French art and medicine, 1650–1850

        by Series edited by Amelia Jones, Mechthild Fend, Marsha Meskimmon

        Fleshing out surfaces is the first English-language book on skin and flesh tones in art. It considers flesh and skin in art theory, image making and medical discourse in seventeenth to nineteenth-century France. Describing a gradual shift between the early modern and the modern period, it argues that what artists made when imitating human nakedness was not always the same. Initially understood in terms of the body's substance, of flesh tones and body colour, it became increasingly a matter of skin, skin colour and surfaces. Each chapter is dedicated to a different notion of skin and its colour, from flesh tones via a membrane imbued with nervous energy to hermetic borderline. Looking in particular at works by Fragonard, David, Girodet, Benoist and Ingres, the focus is on portraits, as facial skin is a special arena for testing painterly skills and a site where the body and the image become equally expressive.

      • Trusted Partner
        History of Art / Art & Design Styles
        October 2016

        Fleshing out surfaces

        Skin in French art and medicine, 1650–1850

        by Series edited by Amelia Jones, Mechthild Fend, Marsha Meskimmon

        Fleshing out surfaces is the first English-language book on skin and flesh tones in art. It considers flesh and skin in art theory, image making and medical discourse in seventeenth to nineteenth-century France. Describing a gradual shift between the early modern and the modern period, it argues that what artists made when imitating human nakedness was not always the same. Initially understood in terms of the body's substance, of flesh tones and body colour, it became increasingly a matter of skin, skin colour and surfaces. Each chapter is dedicated to a different notion of skin and its colour, from flesh tones via a membrane imbued with nervous energy to hermetic borderline. Looking in particular at works by Fragonard, David, Girodet, Benoist and Ingres, the focus is on portraits, as facial skin is a special arena for testing painterly skills and a site where the body and the image become equally expressive.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        September 2016

        Watching the red dawn

        The American avant-garde and the Soviet Union

        by Barnaby Haran

        This book offers the first sustained examination of the cultural relations of the American and Soviet avant-gardes in a period of major transformation. From the formation of the USSR in 1922 until its recognition by the American government, American avant-garde artists, writers and designers watched the 'Red Dawn' with fascination, enthusiastically reporting on its post-revolutionary cultural developments in articles and books, and brought these works to an American audience in ground-breaking exhibitions. Americans also emulated and adapted aspects of Soviet culture, as in the case of the New Playwrights Theatre, a group that mixed Russian avant-garde theatrical techniques with jazz, vaudeville and slapstick comedy in plays about strikes and racial injustice. Figures discussed include Louis Lozowick, Jane Heap, Frederick Kiesler, Ralph Steiner, John dos Passos, Margaret Bourke-White and Langston Hughes. Watching the red dawn takes an innovative interdisciplinary approach, considering these developments in architecture, theatre, film, photography and literature, and will be invaluable for students and specialists in these subject areas. It provides a new perspective on American avant-garde culture of the inter-war years. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        November 2013

        Out of the ivory tower

        The Independent Group and popular culture

        by Anne Massey, Christopher Breward, Bill Sherman

        The Independent Group is now the subject of global scholarly interest, and this book, a sequel to The Independent Group: Modernism and mass culture in Britain, 1945-59, explores the Anglo-American phenomenon from a new perspective. The Group included fine artists Magda Cordell, Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull; architects Alison and Peter Smithson, James Stirling and Colin St John Wilson; graphic designer Edward Wright; music producer Frank Cordell; and writers Lawrence Alloway, Reyner Banham, John McHale and Toni del Renzio. This radical collective met at the ICA in London during the early 1950s, and worked with and within the new world of both the avant-garde and popular culture. This sequel includes an in-depth discussion of the recent historiography of the Independent Group, and examines its history from an alternative perspective - that of popular culture. The themes of domestic space, Hollywood film, fashion, mass-circulation magazines, science-fiction and popular music are explored, broadening our general understanding. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Art & design styles: from c 1960
        May 2014

        Performative monuments

        The rematerialisation of public art

        by Mechtild Widrich

        This book answers one of the most puzzling questions in contemporary art: how did performance artists of the '60s and '70s, famous for their opposition both to lasting art and the political establishment, become the foremost monument builders of the '80s, '90s and today? Not by selling out, nor by making self-undermining monuments. This book argues that the centrality of performance to monuments and indeed public art in general rests not on its ephemerality or anti-authoritarian rhetoric, but on its power to build interpersonal bonds both personal and social. Specifically, the survival of body art in photographs that cross time and space to meet new audiences makes it literally into a monument. The argument of the book spans art in Austria, the former Yugoslavia, and Germany: Valie Export, Peter Weibel and the Viennese Actionists (working in Austria and abroad), Marina Abramovic, Sanja Ivecovic and Braco Dimitrijevic (working in Yugoslavia and abroad), and Joseph Beuys and Jochen Gerz (working in Germany and abroad). These artists began by critiquing monumentality in authoritarian public space, and expanded the models developed on the streets of Vienna, Munich, Rome, Belgrade and Zagreb to participatory monuments that delegate political authority to the audience. Readers interested in contemporary art, politics, photography and performance will find in this book new facts and arguments for their interconnection.

      • Trusted Partner
        History of Art / Art & Design Styles
        July 2015

        Porous boundaries

        Art and essays

        by Edited by David Peters Corbett, Cyril Reade

        This innovative and exciting volume celebrates the career of Janet Wolff: a highly influential voice in the literature of sociology, cultural studies, visual studies and art history, as well as dance and modernism for several decades. Her work has significantly contributed to the way we view issues as diverse as modernism, the flâneur, British and American art in the early twentieth century, and the gendered literature of modernity. The volume contains contributions from a number of Janet Wolff's collaborators and others who are associated with the fields in which she has worked, including Zygmunt Bauman, Walid Raad and Griselda Pollock. The book includes original artworks, memoir and essays inspired by her example and which deal with questions she has discussed. The book will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students in any of these disciplines, as well as those interested by the form of a transatlantic academic career.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        August 2010

        Art, museums and touch

        by Fiona Candlin, Amelia Jones, Marsha Meskimmon

        Art, museums and touch examines conceptions and uses of touch within arts museums and art history. Candlin deftly weaves archival material and contemporary museology together with government policy and art practice to question the foundations of modern art history, museums as sites of visual learning, and the association of touch with female identity and sexuality. This remarkable study presents a challenging riposte to museology and art history that privileges visual experience. Candlin demonstrates that touch was, and still is, crucially important to museums and art history. At the same time she contests the recent characterisation of touch as an accessible and inclusive way of engaging with museum collections, and argues against prevalent ideas of touch as an unmediated and uncomplicated mode of learning. An original and wide-ranging enquiry, this book is essential reading for scholars and students of museum studies, art history, visual culture, disability, and for anyone interested in the cultural construction of the senses. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2017

        The synthetic proposition

        Conceptualism and the political referent in contemporary art

        by Amelia Jones, Marsha Meskimmon, Nizan Shaked

        The synthetic proposition examines the impact of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student, feminist and sexual-liberty movements on conceptualism and its legacies in the United States between the late 1960s and the 1990s. It focuses on the turn to political reference in practices originally concerned with abstract ideas, as articulated by Joseph Kosuth, and traces key strategies in contemporary art to the reciprocal influences of conceptualism and identity politics: movements that have so far been historicised as mutually exclusive. The book demonstrates that while identity-based strategies were particular, their impact spread far beyond the individuals or communities that originated them. It offers a study of Adrian Piper, David Hammons, Renée Green, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Lorna Simpson, Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser and Charles Gaines. By turning to social issues, these artists analysed the conventions of language, photography, moving image, installation and display.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2017

        The synthetic proposition

        Conceptualism and the political referent in contemporary art

        by Amelia Jones, Marsha Meskimmon, Nizan Shaked

        The synthetic proposition examines the impact of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student, feminist and sexual-liberty movements on conceptualism and its legacies in the United States between the late 1960s and the 1990s. It focuses on the turn to political reference in practices originally concerned with abstract ideas, as articulated by Joseph Kosuth, and traces key strategies in contemporary art to the reciprocal influences of conceptualism and identity politics: movements that have so far been historicised as mutually exclusive. The book demonstrates that while identity-based strategies were particular, their impact spread far beyond the individuals or communities that originated them. It offers a study of Adrian Piper, David Hammons, Renée Green, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Lorna Simpson, Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser and Charles Gaines. By turning to social issues, these artists analysed the conventions of language, photography, moving image, installation and display.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        September 2017

        The face of medicine

        Visualising medical masculinities in late nineteenth-century Paris

        by Mary Hunter, Amelia Jones, Marsha Meskimmon

        The face of medicine examines the overlapping worlds of art and medicine in late nineteenth-century France. It sheds new light on the relevance of the visual in medical and scientific cultures, and on the relationship between artistic and medical practices and imagery. By examining previously unstudied sources that traverse disciplinary boundaries, this original study rethinks the politics of medical representations and their social impact. Through a focused examination of paintings from the 1886 and 1887 Paris Salons that portray famous men from the medical and scientific elite - Louis Pasteur, Jules-Émile Péan and Jean-Martin Charcot - along with the images and objects that these men made for personal and occupational purposes, Hunter argues that artworks and medical collections played a key role in forming the public face of scientific medicine.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2017

        Productive failure

        Writing queer transnational South Asian art histories

        by Amelia Jones, Marsha Meskimmon, Alpesh Kantilal Patel

        This title sets out to write new transnational South Asian art histories - to make visible histories of artworks that remain marginalised within the discipline of art history. However, this is done through a deliberate 'productive failure' - specifically, by not upholding the strictly genealogical approach that is regularly assumed for South Asian art histories. For instance, one chapter explores the abstract work of Cy Twombly and Natvar Bhavsar. The author also examines 'whiteness', the invisible ground upon which racialized art histories often pivot, as a fraught yet productive site for writing art history. This book also provides original commentary on how queer theory can deconstruct and provide new approaches for writing art history. Overall, this title provides methods for generating art history that acknowledge the complex web of factors within which art history is produced and the different forms of knowledge-production we might count as art history.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2017

        Productive failure

        Writing queer transnational South Asian art histories

        by Amelia Jones, Marsha Meskimmon, Alpesh Kantilal Patel

        This title sets out to write new transnational South Asian art histories - to make visible histories of artworks that remain marginalised within the discipline of art history. However, this is done through a deliberate 'productive failure' - specifically, by not upholding the strictly genealogical approach that is regularly assumed for South Asian art histories. For instance, one chapter explores the abstract work of Cy Twombly and Natvar Bhavsar. The author also examines 'whiteness', the invisible ground upon which racialized art histories often pivot, as a fraught yet productive site for writing art history. This book also provides original commentary on how queer theory can deconstruct and provide new approaches for writing art history. Overall, this title provides methods for generating art history that acknowledge the complex web of factors within which art history is produced and the different forms of knowledge-production we might count as art history.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2017

        Art and its global histories

        A reader

        by Diana Newall

        The Reader Art and its global histories represents an invaluable teaching tool, offering content ranging from academic essays and excerpts, new translations, interviews with curators and artists, to art criticism. The introduction sets out the state of art history today as it undergoes the profound shift of a 'global turn. Particular focus is given to British India, which represents a shift from the usual attention paid to Orientalism and French art in this period. The sources and debates on this topic have never before been brought together in a satisfactory way and this book will represent a particularly significant and valuable contribution for postgraduate and undergraduate art history teaching.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        February 2017

        Hot metal

        Material culture and tangible labour

        by Jesse Stein, Bill Sherman, Christopher Breward

        The world of work is tightly entwined with the world of things. Hot metal illuminates connections between design, material culture and labour between the 1960s and the 1980s, when the traditional crafts of hot-metal typesetting and letterpress were finally made obsolete with the introduction of computerised technologies. This multidisciplinary history provides an evocative rendering of design culture by exploring an intriguing case: a doggedly traditional Government Printing Office in Australia. It explores the struggles experienced by printers as they engaged in technological retraining, shortly before facing factory closure. Topics explored include spatial memory within oral history, gender-labour tensions, the rise of neoliberalism and the secret making of objects 'on the side'. This book will appeal to researchers in design and social history, labour history, material culture and gender studies. It is an accessible, richly argued text that will benefit students seeking to learn about the nature and erosion of blue-collar work and the history of printing as a craft.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        February 2017

        Hot metal

        Material culture and tangible labour

        by Jesse Stein, Bill Sherman, Christopher Breward

        The world of work is tightly entwined with the world of things. Hot metal illuminates connections between design, material culture and labour between the 1960s and the 1980s, when the traditional crafts of hot-metal typesetting and letterpress were finally made obsolete with the introduction of computerised technologies. This multidisciplinary history provides an evocative rendering of design culture by exploring an intriguing case: a doggedly traditional Government Printing Office in Australia. It explores the struggles experienced by printers as they engaged in technological retraining, shortly before facing factory closure. Topics explored include spatial memory within oral history, gender-labour tensions, the rise of neoliberalism and the secret making of objects 'on the side'. This book will appeal to researchers in design and social history, labour history, material culture and gender studies. It is an accessible, richly argued text that will benefit students seeking to learn about the nature and erosion of blue-collar work and the history of printing as a craft.

      • Trusted Partner
        Art & design styles: Baroque
        October 2016

        The matter of miracles

        Neapolitan baroque architecture and sanctity

        by Series edited by Amelia Jones, Helen Hills, Marsha Meskimmon

        This book investigates baroque architecture through the lens of San Gennaro's miraculously liquefying blood in Naples. This vantage point allows a bracing and thoroughly original rethink of the power of baroque relics and reliquaries. It shows how a focus on miracles produces original interpretations of architecture, sanctity and place which will engage architectural historians everywhere. The matter of the baroque miracle extends into a rigorous engagement with natural history, telluric philosophy, new materialism, theory and philosophy. The study will transform our understanding of baroque art and architecture, sanctity and Naples. Bristling with new archival materials and historical insights, this study lifts the baroque from its previous marginalisation to engage fiercely with materiality and potentiality and thus unleash baroque art and architecture as productive and transformational.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        September 2016

        Julia Margaret Cameron’s ‘fancy subjects’

        Photographic allegories of Victorian identity and empire

        by Jeff Rosen

        The Victorians admired Julia Margaret Cameron for her evocative photographic portraits of eminent men like Tennyson, Carlyle and Darwin. However, Cameron also made numerous photographs that she called 'Fancy subjects', depicting scenes from literature, personifications from classical mythology, and Biblical parables from the Old and New Testament. This book is the first comprehensive study of these works, examining Cameron's use of historical allegories and popular iconography to embed moral, intellectual and political narratives in her photographs. A work of cultural history as much as art history, this book examines cartoons from Punch and line drawings from the Illustrated London News, cabinet photographs and autotype prints, textiles and wall paper, book illustrations and lithographs from period folios, all as a way to contextualise the allegorical subjects that Cameron represented, revealing connections between her 'Fancy subjects' and popular debates about such topics as Biblical interpretation, democratic government and colonial expansion. ;

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