Showing titles in History & Criticism

Forty essays on history, art, and literature to lift your mind and spirit. Guy Davenport serves as the listener's guide through history and literature, providing links between music and sculpture, modernist poets and classic philosophers, the past and present-pointing out the values and avenues of thought that have shaped our ideas and our thinking.

Poor Artists follows aspiring artist Quest Talukdar as she embarks on a surreal journey into the creative industry, where she must decide whether she cares more about success or staying true to herself. Featuring dialogue from anonymous interviews with real people who have all had to ask themselves the same question – including a Turner Prize winner or two, a recluse, a Venice Biennale fraudster, a communist messiah, a ghost, and a literal knight – The White Pube tell the story of art like never before.

A beekeeper herself, she gives insight into the activity in the hive and describes the bees' natural order and habits. She explores the myths of the past and how and when they were replaced by fact. For example, the heated discussions that broke out in the 18th century when it was discovered that the hive was ruled by a queen, not a king as had been the belief since Aristotle. 

Straightened. Stigmatised. 'Tamed'. Celebrated. Erased. Managed. Appropriated. Forever misunderstood. Black hair is never 'just hair'. This book is about why black hair matters and how it can be viewed as a blueprint for decolonisation. Emma Dabiri takes us from pre-colonial Africa, through the...

As Hitler was attempting to conquer the western world, his armies were methodically pillaging the finest art in Europe, from Michelangelos to Vermeers, all stolen for the Führer. The Monuments Men had a mandate from President Roosevelt to find these artworks, but no vehicles, typewriters, or authority. In a race against time to save the world’s greatest cultural treasures from destruction at the hands of Nazi fanatics, each man constructed his own treasure map....

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Feel Free by Zadie Smith, read by Nikki Amuka-Bird. From the MAN BOOKER PRIZE- and WOMEN'S PRIZE-SHORTLISTED author of Changing My Mind and Swing Time - discover a second unmissable collection of essays from Zadie Smith 'Generous, courageous, and...

One spring day in 1683, a notary's clerk in Delft entered the home of the late Magdalena Pieters van Ruijven and stumbled upon one of the wonders of the seventeenth-century world: twenty paintings by Johannes Vermeer. Rather than dispel the mysteries of Vermeer's life, this discovery merely gave...

Der Essay analysiert Goethes gleichnamigen Roman aus philosophischer und ästhetischer Perspektive – ein Werk, das sowohl das Verhältnis von Naturgesetzen als auch das der Menschen zueinander auf eine neue Ebene hebt. Benjamin legt die verborgenen Spannungen in Goethes Werk offen: zwischen Gefühl und Gesetz, Liebe und Ordnung, Natur und Moral. Seine Interpretation gilt bis heute als bahnbrechender Beitrag zur literaturwissenschaftlichen Moderne und als früher Beleg seines kritischen Denkens.

In Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik – Versuch einer Selbstkritik und philosophisches Weltbild verbindet Friedrich Nietzsche seine philosophischen Überlegungen mit der Kunsttheorie und der griechischen Tragödie. Er entwickelt die berühmten Konzepte des Apollinischen und Dionysischen als grundlegende Prinzipien der Kunst und Kultur. In seinem später verfassten „Versuch einer Selbstkritik" reflektiert Nietzsche seine frühen Gedanken kritisch und zeigt die Entwicklung seines Denkens.

'A rare and wonderful book... I could not be more enthusiastic.' Simon Winchester 'A treasure trove of human history and obsession...the breadth of research and insight is dazzling.' Glasgow Herald 'A highly companionable guide, adventurous and romantic' Independent on Sunday On a journey that...

The Louvre is the most famous museum in the world, attracting millions of visitors every year with its masterpieces. In Adventures in the Louvre, Elaine Sciolino immerses herself in this magical space and helps us fall in love with what was once a forbidding fortress. Exploring galleries, basements, rooftops, and gardens, Sciolino demystifies the Louvre, introducing us to her favorite artworks, both legendary and overlooked, and to the people who are the museum's lifeblood.

Em um momento no qual conceitos como “Colonialidade”, “Descolonialidade”, “Decoloniedade” e “Contracolonialidade” estão na ordem do dia, Olivier Marboeuf, em Fugas Decoloniais, foge de explicações estereotipadas e lugares-comuns acadêmicos. Com uma análise arguta e inteligente, pautada em sólidas referências, o autor apresenta, através de “lições” e “conversas”, como as estratégias da cultura e da economia neoliberal se esforçam por manter as estruturas das esferas coloniais.

The British Isles hold a unique position in the history of art, a place where local traditions fuse with international ideas. At once isolated by coastal boundaries, yet also part of larger networks of diverse peoples, these islands have always benefited from a dual perspective.

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.

Brought to you by Puffin. A beautiful journey through the untold stories of art, adapted from the global sensation The Story of Art Without Men, by expert art historian and bestselling author Katy Hessel. Step into the incredible lives of the women artists who have gone uncelebrated for too long...

An illuminating exploration of the relationship between the restitution of looted art, global status, and the international construction of national cultural heritage. Why is art restitution a matter of politics? How does the artwork displayed in national museums reflect the international status...

古代末期から中世にかけて，ヨーロッパでは，石やガラスのかけらを使ったモザイクが床や壁に作られた．ローマ帝国の版図を実感させる絵から，聖堂を訪れ救済を求める人々を見守ったイエス像まで，「永遠の絵」は今も私たちの心を捉えて離すことはない．

"Шедевры Третьяковки. Личный взгляд" – это увлекательная прогулка по залам Третьяковской галереи вместе с Зельфирой Трегуловой. В книге описываются знаменитые полотна российских художников XIX и XX веков: Ильи Репина, Михаила Врубеля, Казимира Малевича и других. Автор рассказывает о том, какие картины кажутся ей наиболее значимыми для истории мирового искусства и почему. Книга будет интересна читателям, которые хотят по-настоящему оценить сокровища российской живописи и взглянуть на них глазами одного из самых уважаемых кураторов страны.

Karl Kraus gilt als einer der bedeutendsten Aphoristiker deutscher Sprache. Ob berühmte Schriftsteller oder die Presse - nichts und niemand wurde von der gnadenlosen Kritik seiner Feder verschont. Bekannte Künstler wie Stefan Zweig, Georg Trakl, Thomas Mann und andere zollten ihm Respekt, aber die Zahl seiner Feinde in Kunst und Gesellschaft war enorm. Als Vorleser hinterließ er aufgrund seiner Sprachgewalt und Persönlichkeit angeblich einen äußerst außergewöhnlichen Eindruck.

The Post-Impressionist artist and writer Paul Gauguin led an extraordinary, troubled and restlessly itinerant life; he came late to painting and spent most of his last decade in the Pacific islands of Tahiti and the Marquesas, where he produced paintings loosely based on Polynesian tradition that heralded the emergence of primitivism and would exert a profound influence on modernist artists from Picasso and Matisse to Jackson Pollock. But his art, despite its growing popularity following Gauguin’s death in 1903, has provoked mixed responses.