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The ArtsMarch 1905Concerning the Spiritual in Art
by Wassily Kandinsky
A pioneering work in the movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality, this book is one of the most important documents in the history of modern art. Written by the famous nonobjective painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), it explains Kandinsky's own theory of painting and crystallizes the ideas that were influencing many other modern artists of the period. Along with his own groundbreaking paintings, this book had a tremendous impact on the development of modern art. Kandinsky's ideas are presented in two parts. The first part, called "About General Aesthetic," issues a call for a spiritual revolution in painting that will let artists express their own inner lives in abstract, non-material terms. Just as musicians do not depend upon the material world for their music, so artists should not have to depend upon the material world for their art. In the second part, "About Painting," Kandinsky discusses the psychology of colors, the language of form and color, and the responsibilities of the artist. An Introduction by the translator, Michael T. H. Sadler, offers additional explanation of Kandinsky's art and theories, while a new Preface by Richard Stratton discusses Kandinsky's career as a whole and the impact of the book. Making the book even more valuable are nine woodcuts by Kandinsky himself that appear at the chapter headings. This English translation of Über das Geistige in der Kunst was a significant contribution to the understanding of nonobjectivism in art. It continues to be a stimulating and necessary reading experience for every artist, art student, and art patron concerned with the direction of 20th-century painting.
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The ArtsOctober 2025Art and citizenship in conflict
British women war artists, 1939–45
by Lucy Curzon
Art and Citizenship in Conflict examines the work of women war artists in order to highlight the complexity of citizenship and gender in Britain during the Second World War. Evelyn Dunbar, Mary Kessell, Ethel Gabain, Stella Schmolle, and Laura Knight, among others, were commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC) to document the millions of women who took up sometimes unconventional roles-in agriculture, the auxiliary services, and manufacturing, among others-to support the British war effort. Indeed, their prints, drawings, and paintings were part of a broader scheme to uphold morale and promote much-needed citizen involvement on the home front. While there is growing interest, the importance of their remit in the history of the Second World War and the quality of their artistry have nonetheless not yet secured them a significant place in scholarship. Art and Citizenship in Conflict seeks to amend this gap while also broadening approaches to the study of war itself.
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The ArtsMarch 2026Surrealist women artists and mental illness
by Jenny Anger
Female mental illness has been a prominent and complicated theme in surrealist cultural traditions, including the idealization of women with mental illness in works such as André Breton's Nadja (1928). Art historians have examined this tendency before, but to date there has been no comprehensive study of the lived reality of women surrealist artists with mental illness. How did women's experience and their work intersect with this romanticized vision? Was the masculine dream of feminized, "mad" genius prohibitive or productive for these women artists? After establishing the ideological field within which these women worked, the book turns to case studies of well-known and some lesser-known artists, including Ángeles Santos, Leonora Carrington, Dora Maar, Claude Cahun, Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Sonja Sekula, and Unica Zürn. This collection of essays contains a wide range of responses, revealing surrealism's generative as well as restrictive force.
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The ArtsMarch 2026Contemporary art and ecological transformation in East and Southeast Asia
by Meiqin Wang
This anthology, presenting new research from fourteen scholars, delves into the interplay between contemporary art and ecological concerns in East and Southeast Asia. Focused on the concept of artistic remediation, the book unravels the diverse capacities of art to combat systemic anthropogenic destruction to the environment and ecology. At its core, the book articulates the ongoing ecological transformation in art and art history that embraces a paradigm shift in human-nature relationships, emphasizing interconnectedness of all life forms of the Earth. Bridging art studies, activism, and environmental studies, the book examines how artistic practices in the region have engaged with ecocritical reflection, biodiversity advocacy, sustainable practices, and environmental justice, among others. Providing a platform for critical and timely analysis of artistic interventions in the face of existential crises, the book acknowledges diverse voices of scholars who have situated their scholarship in the cultural and artistic specificities of various societies, locales, and communities in the region.
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The ArtsJune 2026Borderline bodies in art and visual culture
Unsettling identity and place since 1800
by Keren Hammerschlag, Natasha Ruiz-Gómez, Tania Anne Cleaves
Borderline bodies offers original interpretations of visual representations of human bodies as bounded and unbounded, fortified and permeable, mobile and static-subject to borders and able to traverse and challenge them. It also takes as its focus images and objects that might be considered 'borderline' because they sit at the intersection of disciplines or sit outside accepted notions of what constitutes serious 'art.' By mapping the ways human bodies traverse borders and straddle-even dismantle-categories, this volume's essays approach afresh the relationship of bodies to traditional modes of representation, especially in art and medicine, and encourage us to think anew about how we understand the relationship between human corporeality, identity and place. Critical transdisciplinary and transnational analyses of objects and images from a range of geographies shed new light on the themes of: bodies and identity; typologies of the body; racialised bodies; 'normal' and 'abnormal' bodies; encounters between bodies; bodies in transition; bodies and mobility; and the bounded and unbounded human body. The outcome is a fresh approach to depictions of the human body produced for the purposes of artistic and medical education, aesthetic edification, and scientific and professional advancement, which disrupts assumptions about the normative human body perpetuated through Western image-making traditions.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJuly 2025Empirical art
Filmmaking for fieldwork in practice
by Andy Lawrence, Martha-Cecilia Dietrich
Empirical art: Filmmaking for fieldwork in practice is an insightful exploration of what the craft of filmmaking brings to social science research. Providing creative avenues on how to narrate encounters, relationships, and experiences during fieldwork, this comprehensive volume offers a rich tapestry of theoretical explorations and explorative methodologies. Skilfully connecting the worlds of ethnography, art and cinema, the contributors in this book act as a compass for filmmakers and researchers venturing to use a camera and microphone to relate and narrate their research collaborations and fieldsites. Drawing from the authors' extensive experience in disciplines like social anthropology, environmental humanities, and political science, "Empirical Art" breaks down the intricate process of crafting ethnographic films that departs from the researcher's subjectivity. Covering aspects of filmmaking from conceptualisation to production and distribution, readers are equipped with a treasure trove of collaborative techniques, innovative approaches, and ethical considerations necessary to generate and examine storytelling practices in contemporary fields of study. The authors discuss the significance of the multiple roles that technologies of filmmaking play in reflecting on cultural practices, social dynamics, and (beyond) human storytelling and their transformative potentials. Whether a seasoned filmmaker, an aspiring ethnographer, or an academic seeking new dimensions for their research, Empirical Art serves as a guide to integrating visual storytelling, cinema craft and empirical research.
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October 2022Ernst Haeckel
Zoologist, artist, philosopher and freethinker
by Rainer Willmann
Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) is one of the most famous and influential researchers of all times. This brilliant biography by Rainer Willmann recounts Haeckel's fascinating life for science and his fight for freedom of thought. Haeckel is a vehement advocate of Darwinian doctrine and develops it further, which is why he is fiercely attacked not only by the church but also by his fellow scientists. Among other things, we owe to Haeckel the freedom of research and teaching that we take so much for granted. That he was also a talented artist is proven by his drawings of marine organisms ... The gripping and highly interesting life story of an extraordinary freethinker and scientist.
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The ArtsSeptember 2025Counter print
The alternative art press in Britain after 1970
by Victoria Horne
The history of contemporary art is also a history of its newsletters, manifestos, magazines, pamphlets, and journals. Those periodical publications do not simply communicate or record ideas but have worked in exciting ways to shape art's practices, histories and communities. As a new generation of artists, activists and scholars seek to uncover the histories of alternative publishing and artistic networks, this book gathers original archival discoveries while offering methodologies for studying and thinking with those artefacts. As the first essay collection to focus on the periodical art press and the ways we study it, Counter print offers readers an alternative route into the past fifty years of contemporary art, one that is defiantly collaborative, border crossing and disruptive.
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The ArtsSeptember 2024Cases of citation
On literature in art
by Chloe Julius, Michael Green, Matthew Holman
Cases of citation presents a history of artists who incorporated literary references into their work from the 1960s onwards. Through a series of object-focused chapters that each take up a singular 'case of citation', the collection considers how literary citation emerged as a viable and urgent strategy for artists during this period. It surveys eleven artworks by a diverse group of artists - including David Wojnarowicz, Lis Rhodes, Romare Bearden and Silvia Kolbowski - whose citations draw on works as varied as Karl Marx's Das Kapital and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The book also features an interview with pioneering feminist artist Elaine Reichek that discusses her career-long commitment to working with text. Together, the artworks and cited texts are approached from various critical angles, with each author questioning and complicating the ways in which we can 'read' textual citations in art.
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The ArtsDecember 2025Counter-realism
Art and subjectivity in contemporary capitalism
by Tamara Trodd
Counter-Realism: Art and subjectivity in contemporary capitalism is an ambitious and original study of key works of film and video art made since 2008 by leading contemporary artists, including William Kentridge, Amalia Ulman, Melanie Gilligan, Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin and Elizabeth Price. It argues their work should be understood as a reconfigured form of 'realism', expressing economic forces and political pressures across contexts ranging from post-apartheid South Africa, through austerity-era Spain, to contemporary Britain and North America. Supported by original artist interviews and detailed visual analysis of individual works of art, as well as a wide-ranging research base, which synthesises arguments from a variety of disciplines including art history, literary, film and political studies, the book is clearly written, and makes legible the ways in which some of the most vivid and compelling works of contemporary moving-image art engage with historical and contemporary political debates.
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The ArtsJune 2026Cases of citation
On literature in art
by Chloë Julius, Michael Green, Matthew Holman
Cases of citation presents a history of artists who incorporated literary references into their work from the 1960s onwards. Through a series of object-focused chapters that each take up a singular 'case of citation', the collection considers how literary citation emerged as a viable and urgent strategy for artists during this period. It surveys nine artworks by a diverse group of artists - including David Wojnarowicz, Lis Rhodes, Romare Bearden and Silvia Kolbowski - whose citations draw on literary works with authors ranging from Gertrude Stein to Jean Genet. The book also features an interview with pioneering feminist artist Elaine Reichek that discusses her career-long commitment to working with text. Together, the artworks and cited texts are approached from various critical angles, with each author questioning and complicating the ways in which we can 'read' textual citations in art.
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Literature & Literary StudiesMarch 2017
Imperialism and juvenile literature
by Jeffrey Richards
Popular culture is invariably a vehicle for the dominant ideas of its age. Never was this truer than in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when it reflected the nationalist and imperialist ideologies current throughout Europe. It both reflects popular attitudes, ideas and preconceptions and it generates support for selected views and opinions. This book examines the various media through which nationalist ideas were conveyed in late-Victorian and Edwardian times: in the theatre, "ethnic" shows, juvenile literature, education and the iconography of popular art. It seeks to examine in detail the articulation and diffusion of imperialism in the field of juvenile literature by stressing its pervasiveness across boundaries of class, nation and gender. It analyses the production, distribution and marketing of imperially-charged juvenile fiction, stressing the significance of the Victorians' discovery of adolescence, technological advance and educational reforms as the context of the great expansion of such literature. An overview of the phenomenon of Robinson Crusoe follows, tracing the process of its transformation into a classic text of imperialism and imperial masculinity for boys. The imperial commitment took to the air in the form of the heroic airmen of inter-war fiction. The book highlights that athleticism, imperialism and militarism become enmeshed at the public schools. It also explores the promotion of imperialism and imperialist role models in fiction for girls, particularly Girl Guide stories.
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The ArtsDecember 2024Addressing the other woman
Textual correspondences in feminist art and writing
by Kimberly Lamm
This book analyses how three artists - Adrian Piper, Nancy Spero and Mary Kelly - worked with the visual dimensions of language in the 1960s and 1970s. These artists used text and images of writing to challenge female stereotypes, addressing viewers and asking them to participate in the project of imagining women beyond familiar words and images of subordination. The book explores this dimension of their work through the concept of 'the other woman', a utopian wish to reach women and correspond with them across similarities and differences. To make the artwork's aspirations more concrete, it places the artists in correspondence with three writers - Angela Davis, Valerie Solanas, and Laura Mulvey - who also addressed the limited range of images through which women are allowed to become visible.
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The ArtsAugust 2010Art, 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. ;
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The ArtsMarch 2006Art history
A critical introduction to its methods
by Michael Hatt, Charlotte Klonk
Art History: A critical introduction to its methods provides a lively and stimulating introduction to methodological debates within art history. Offering a lucid account of approaches from Hegel to post-colonialism, the book provides a sense of art history's own history as a discipline from its emergence in the late-eighteenth century to contemporary debates. By explaining the underlying philosophical and political assumptions behind each method, along with clear examples of how these are brought to bear on visual and historical analysis, the authors show that an adherence to a certain method is, in effect, a commitment to a set of beliefs and values. The book makes a strong case for the vitality of the discipline and its methodological centrality to new fields such as visual culture. This book will be of enormous value to undergraduate and graduate students, and also makes its own contributions to ongoing scholarly debates about theory and method. ;
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The ArtsMarch 2018Art versus industry?
New perspectives on visual and industrial cultures in nineteenth-century Britain
by Christopher Breward, Kate Nichols, Bill Sherman, Rebecca Wade, Gabriel Williams
This book is about encounters between art and industry in nineteenth-century Britain. It looks beyond the oppositions established by later interpretations of the work of John Ruskin, William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement to reveal surprising examples of collaboration - between artists, craftspeople, designers, inventors, curators, engineers and educators - during a crucial period in the formation of the cultural and commercial identity of Britain and its colonies. Across thirteen chapters by fourteen contributors, Art versus industry? explores such diverse subjects as the production of lace, the mechanical translation of sculpture, the display of stained glass, the use of the kaleidoscope in painting and pattern design, the emergence of domestic electric lighting and the development of art and design education and international exhibitions in India.
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Humanities & Social SciencesAugust 2021The Red and the Black
The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic
by David Featherstone, Christian Høgsbjerg
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was not just a world-historical event in its own right, but also struck powerful blows against racism and imperialism, and so inspired many black radicals internationally. This edited collection explores the implications of the creation of the Soviet Union and the Communist International for black and colonial liberation struggles across the African diaspora. It examines the critical intellectual influence of Marxism and Bolshevism on the current of revolutionary 'black internationalism' and analyses how 'Red October' was viewed within the contested articulations of different struggles against racism and colonialism. Challenging European-centred understandings of the Russian Revolution and the global left, The Red and the Black offers new insights on the relations between Communism, various lefts and anti-colonialisms across the Black Atlantic - including Garveyism and various other strands of Pan-Africanism. The volume makes a major and original intellectual contribution by making the relations between the Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic central to debates on questions relating to racism, resistance and social change.
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Teaching, Language & ReferenceOctober 2025Into being
The radical craft of memoir and its power to transform
by Lily Dunn
The acclaimed author of Sins of My Father shares the secrets of writing a new, transformative kind of memoir. Into being is an essential guide to writing memoir in a radical and empowering way. Drawing on her experience as a memoirist and a teacher of creative writing, Lily Dunn presents the ground-breaking idea that the craft of memoir itself can offer a form of transformation. Dunn demystifies the memoirist's art, helping readers to find meaning in raw experience and elevate the personal to the universal. She considers intriguing questions, from why our memories give greater significance to certain events to how we can write honestly without intruding too far into the lives of our loved ones. She also explores how writers are extending the memoir form to create something hybrid, playful and subversive. In an age of social media, filled with confessions, re-inventions and distortions of the self, the question of what it means to be an individual is more urgent than ever. Into being shows readers how to turn writing memoir into a journey of discovery - one that can be shared with the whole world.
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The ArtsNovember 2018Art as worldmaking
Critical essays on realism and naturalism
by Malcolm Baker, Andrew Hemingway, Andrew Hemingway, Briony Fer, Joshua Shannon, Adrian Rifkin, Malcolm Baker, Martina Droth, Caroline Arscott, Anne Wagner, Martin Powers, Neil McWilliam, Celeste Brusati, T.J. Clark, Rebecca Zurier, Steve Edwards, Tamar Garb, Lisa Tickner, Alistair Rider, Thomas Crow, Gail Day
Art as worldmaking is a response to Alex Potts's provocative 2013 book Experiments in modern realism. Twenty essays by leading scholars test Potts's recasting of realism through examinations of art produced in different media and periods, ranging from eighth-century Chinese garden aesthetics to video work by the contemporary Russian collective Radek Community. While the book does not neglect avatars of pictorial realism such as Menzel and Eakins, or the question of nineteenth-century realism's historical antecedents, it is contemporary in orientation in that many contributors are particularly concerned with the questions that sculpture, photography and non-traditional media pose for realism as an aesthetic norm. It will be essential reading for students of art history concerned with art's truth value or more broadly with conceptual problems of representation and the intersections of art and politics.
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