Showing results for "Arts" in History & Criticism

Western art, with its lineage from the ancient world to the present, has given us works of genius by the likes of Phidias, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Monet, Van Gogh, and many more. In the 25 engrossing lectures of Understanding Western Art: Stories, Styles, and Masterworks, you’ll explore the larger themes, principles, and expressive currents that tell the story of Western art, and which shed light on its deeper meanings.

Brought to you by Penguin. A dazzlingly original reassessment of women's stories, bodies and art - and how we think about them. For decades, feminist artists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth about their experiences as bodies. Queer bodies, sick bodies, racialised bodies...

In Reshaping Art, T. M. Krishna examines what art is and how we can harness its power to make ourselves and our communities open and sensitive. Well known for his attempts to break Karnatik music out of its high-caste confines, the author takes us through a journey of understanding what art means to different groups of people and the ways in which we all create and enjoy it.

The story of Italian art is one of the greatest in human history: a golden thread that begins in ancient Rome, weaves through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and continues to shape the way we understand beauty, faith, and the world today. From the Etruscans’ vivid tomb frescoes to Michelangelo’s masterpieces on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to Caravaggio’s dramatic use of light and shadow, Italian artists have created works that define Western Civilization.

Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. This is a book about what it feels like to sit in your studio or classroom, at your wheel or keyboard, easel or camera, trying to do the work you need to do. It is about committing your future to your own hands, placing free will above predestination, choice above chance. It is about finding your own work.

Art today is defined by its relationship to money as never before. Prices of living artists' works have been driven to unprecedented heights, conventional boundaries within the art world have collapsed, and artists now think ever more strategically about how to advance their careers. Artists no longer simply make art, but package, sell, and brand it. Noah Horowitz exposes the inner workings of the contemporary art market, explaining how this unique economy came to be, how it works, and where it's headed.

Imagine a Museum of Lost Art. If this imaginary museum contained just the artwork we knew was lost— whether from theft, purposeful destruction, vandalism, war, or the forces of nature—it would still contain more masterpieces than those in all the world’s current museums combined. Imagine that! In Lost Art: The Stories of Missing Masterpieces, art historian Noah Charney guides you through just such an imaginary museum. In 12 fascinating lectures, you will hear the stories behind the theft and/or destruction of some of the world’s most famous pieces of art.

Brought to you by Penguin. What is art, where do I find it, and once I’m in front of it, what am I supposed to think about it? Kate Bryan is a self-confessed art addict who has worked with art for over twenty years. But before she studied art history at university, she’d been into a gallery...

A compelling call to rediscover the transformative power of art in an age of distraction, coercion and spectacle - with a new introduction by Donna Tartt In Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, J. F. Martel offers a compelling and incisive meditation on the nature of art in a world dominated...

Brought to you by Penguin. How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway? Discover the glittering Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the...

Starting with the Civil War and cartoonist Thomas Nast, creator of the lasting images of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus, author Jeremy Dauber whizzes listeners through the progress of comics in the 20th century and beyond. Follow the history from the golden age of newspaper comic strips - Krazy Kat, Yellow Kid, Dick Tracy - to the midcentury superhero boom - Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman - and from the moral panic of the Eisenhower era to the underground comix movement; from the grim and gritty Dark Knights to the graphic novel’s rise.

Today both reality and entertainment crowd our fields of vision with brutal imagery. The pervasiveness of images of torture, horror, and war has all but demolished the 20th-century hope that such imagery might shock us into a less alienated state, or aid in the creation of a just social order. What to do now? When to look, when to turn away? Genre-busting author Maggie Nelson brilliantly navigates this contemporary predicament, with an eye to the question of whether or not focusing on representations of cruelty makes us cruel.

Charlotte Mullins brings art to life through the stories of those who created it and, importantly, reframes who is included in the narrative to create a more diverse and exciting landscape of art. She shows how art can help us see the world differently and understand our place in it, how it helps us express ourselves, fuels our creativity, and contributes to our overall wellbeing and positive mental health.

Are art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Can they find common ground? In this book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how reductionism - the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components - has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths.

Conceived over 30 years of painting and creating in his studio, this book is Makoto Fujimura's broad and deep exploration of creativity and the spiritual aspects of "making". What he does in the studio is theological work as much as it is aesthetic work. In between pouring precious, pulverized minerals onto handmade paper to create the prismatic, refractive surfaces of his art, he comes into the quiet space in the studio, in a discipline of awareness, waiting, prayer, and praise.

When launching the Talk Art podcast in 2018, actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament had one clear aim: to make the art world more accessible. Since then, the podcast has grown to be a global hit, featuring exclusive interviews with leading artists, curators, gallerists, actors, musicians and fellow art lovers such as Lena Dunham, Sir Paul Smith, David Shrigley, Noel Fielding, Edward Enninful, Rose Wylie and Sir Elton John.

Can anyone really own a culture? This magnificent account argues that the story of global civilisations is one of mixing, sharing, and borrowing. It shows how art forms have crisscrossed continents over centuries to produce masterpieces. From Nefertiti's lost city and the Islamic Golden Age to twentieth century Nigerian theatre and Modernist poetry, Martin Puchner explores how contact between different peoples has driven artistic innovation in every era - whilst cultural policing and purism have more often undermined the very societies they tried to protect.

The meteoric rise of the largest unregulated financial market in the world -- for contemporary art -- is driven by a few passionate, guileful, and very hard-nosed dealers. They can make and break careers and fortunes “Shnayerson tackles his subject with gusto, parading a cast of colorful...

This new biographical look at Leonardo da Vinci explores the Renaissance master's groundbreaking portrayal of women which forever changed the way the female form is depicted.Leonardo da Vinci was a revolutionary thinker, artist, and inventor who has been written about and celebrated for...

In the six lectures of A Short History of Role-Playing Games, gaming consultant and avid gamer Jamin Warren will take you on a whirlwind tour of role-playing games, tracing a fascinating story of community-building, technical innovation, and, occasionally, cultural backlash.