Download or read book 100 Years 100 Artworks written by Agnes Berecz and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dazzling book showcases the history of modern and contemporary art using one hundred of the most significant art works--one per year--of the past 100 years. Starting with Marcel Duchamp's 1919 whimsical, brilliant L.H.O.O.Q., this compendium offers a year-by-year tour of iconic paintings, photographs, sculptures, installations, and performance pieces from all over the world. The works are carefully selected to showcase a diverse range of artists. Read from cover to cover, this volume offers an evocative summary of stylistic trends, historic events, and technological innovations that changed art over the past 100 years. Opening the book to any random page will illuminate a singular perspective and aesthetic delight. Each work is impeccably reproduced and presented in double-page spreads alongside informative and engaging texts. From Georgia O'Keeffe and Man Ray to Kara Walker and Ai Weiwei, this unique survey will both satisfy and surprise art lovers everywhere.

Download or read book What Are You Looking At written by Will Gompertz and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For skeptics, art lovers, and the millions of us who visit art galleries every year—and are confused—What Are You Looking At? by former director of London’s Tate Gallery Will Gompertz is a wonderfully lively, accessible narrative history of Modern Art, from Impressionism to the present day. What is modern art? Who started it? Why do we either love it or loathe it? And why is it such big money? Join BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz on a dazzling tour that will change the way you look at modern art forever. From Monet's water lilies to Van Gogh's sunflowers, from Warhol's soup cans to Hirst's pickled shark, hear the stories behind the masterpieces, meet the artists as they really were, and discover the real point of modern art. You will learn: not all conceptual art is bollocks; Picasso is king (but Cézanne is better); Pollock is no drip; Dali painted with his moustache; a urinal changed the course of art; why your 5-year-old really couldn't do it. Refreshing, irreverent and always straightforward, What Are You Looking At? cuts through the pretentious art speak and asks all the basic questions that you were too afraid to ask. Your next trip to the art gallery is going to be a little less intimidating and a lot more interesting. With his offbeat humor, down-to-earth storytelling, and flair for odd details that spark insights, Will Gompertz is the perfect tour guide for modern art. His book doesn’t tell us if a work of art is good; it gives us the knowledge to decide for ourselves.

Download or read book Clement Greenberg Between the Lines written by Thierry de Duve and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clement Greenberg (1909–1994), champion of abstract expressionism and modernism—of Pollock, Miró, and Matisse—has been esteemed by many as the greatest art critic of the second half of the twentieth century, and possibly the greatest art critic of all time. This volume, a lively reassessment of Greenberg’s writings, features three approaches to the man and his work: Greenberg as critic, doctrinaire, and theorist. The book also features a transcription of a public debate with Greenberg that de Duve organized at the University of Ottawa in 1988. Clement Greenberg Between the Lines will be an indispensable resource for students, scholars, and enthusiasts of modern art. “In this compelling study, Thierry de Duve reads Greenberg against the grain of the famous critic’s critics—and sometimes against the grain of the critic himself. By reinterpreting Greenberg’s interpretations of Pollock, Duchamp, and other canonical figures, de Duve establishes new theoretical coordinates by which to understand the uneasy complexities and importance of Greenberg’s practice.” John O’Brian, editor of Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticisms “De Duve is an expert on theoretical aesthetics and thus well suited to reassess the formalist tenets of the late American art critic's theory on art and culture. . . . De Duve's close readings of Greenberg . . . contain much of interest, and the author clearly enjoys matching wits with ‘the world's best known art critic.’” Library Journal

Download or read book Memento Mori in Contemporary Art written by Taylor Worley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-28 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how four contemporary artists—Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, Robert Gober, and Damien Hirst—pursue the question of death through their fraught appropriations of Christian imagery. Each artist is shown to not only pose provocative theological questions, but also to question the abilities of theological speech to adequately address current attitudes to death. When set within a broader theological context around the thought of death, Bacon’s works invite fresh readings of the New Testament’s narration of the betrayal of Christ, and Beuys’ works can be appreciated for the ways they evoke Resurrection to envision possible futures for Germany in the aftermath of war. Gober’s immaculate sculptures and installations serve to create alternative religious environments, and these places are both evocative of his Roman Catholic upbringing and virtually haunted by the ghosts of his excommunication from that past. Lastly and perhaps most problematically, Hirst has built his brand as an artist from making jokes about death. By opening fresh arenas of dialogue and meaning-making in our society and culture today, the rich humanity of these artworks promises both renewed depths of meaning regarding our exit from this world as well as how we might live well within it for the time that we have. As such, it will be a vital resource for all scholars in Theology, the Visual Arts, Material Religion and Religious Studies.

Download or read book The Art of Looking written by Lance Esplund and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A veteran art critic helps us make sense of modern and contemporary art The landscape of contemporary art has changed dramatically during the last hundred years: from Malevich's 1915 painting of a single black square and Duchamp's 1917 signed porcelain urinal to Jackson Pollock's midcentury "drip" paintings; Chris Burden's "Shoot" (1971), in which the artist was voluntarily shot in the arm with a rifle; Urs Fischer's "You" (2007), a giant hole dug in the floor of a New York gallery; and the conceptual and performance art of today's Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramovic. The shifts have left the art-viewing public (understandably) perplexed. In The Art of Looking, renowned art critic Lance Esplund demonstrates that works of modern and contemporary art are not as indecipherable as they might seem. With patience, insight, and wit, Esplund guides us through the last century of art and empowers us to approach and appreciate it with new eyes. Eager to democratize genres that can feel inaccessible, Esplund encourages viewers to trust their own taste, guts, and common sense. The Art of Looking will open the eyes of viewers who think that recent art is obtuse, nonsensical, and irrelevant, as well as the eyes of those who believe that the art of the past has nothing to say to our present.

Download or read book Defining Contemporary Art written by Daniel Birnbaum and published by Phaidon Press. This book was released on 2011-11-07 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1980s the sprouting of new movements that had driven modern art since the nineteenth century finally went dormant, sputtering out with a last few half-hearted lels ('pattern painting', 'neo-geo', 'commodity art'). But this was not the end of art history -- far from it. In the years since, art's creative development has remained more vibrant than ever, resulting in a staggering diversity of new forms. Defining Contemporary Art responds to this unique landscape with an innovative approach to art history. Assembled and written by eight of the most prominent curators working today, all of whom have both witnessed and shaped this period, Defining Contemporary Art tells the story of the two hundred pivotal artworks of the past twenty-five years. These artworks include not only the most talked out pieces but also the quietly influential works, those which may have been overlooked at the time of their making but which went on to change the paradigm of their era. Arranged year by year, these two hundred works provide a true chronological depiction of creativity in our era, forming a mosaic in which readers may find their own patterns..

Download or read book Ways of Looking written by Ossian Ward and published by Laurence King Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art has changed. Today's works of art may have no obvious focal point. Traditional artistic media no longer do what we expect of them. The styles and movements that characterized art production prior to the twenty-first century no longer exist. This book provides a straightforward guide to understanding contemporary art based on the concept of the tabula rasa – a clean slate and a fresh mind. Ossian Ward presents a six-step program that gives readers new ways of looking at some of the most challenging art being produced today. Since artists increasingly work across traditional media and genres, Ward has developed an alternative classification system for contemporary practice such as 'Art as Entertainment', 'Art as Confrontation', 'Art as Joke' -- categories that help to make sense of otherwise obscure-seeming works. There are also 20 'Spotlight' features which guide readers through encounters with key works. Ultimately, the message is that any encounter with a challenging work of contemporary art need not be intimidating or alienating but rather a dramatic, sensually rewarding, and thought-provoking experience.

Download or read book Robert Ryman written by Suzanne Perling Hudson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this first book-length study of Robert Ryman, Suzanne Hudson traces the artist's production from his first paintings in the early 1950s, many of which have never been exhibited or reproduced, to his more recent gallery shows. Ryman's largely white-on-white paintings represent his careful working over of painting's conventions at their most radically reduced. Through close readings of the work, Hudson casts Ryman as a painter for whom painting was conducted as a continuous personal investigation. Ryman's method--an act of "learning by doing"--as well as his conception of painting as "used paint" set him apart from second-generation abstract expressionists, minimalists, or conceptualists. Hudson's chapters--"Primer," "Paint," "Support," "Edge," and "Wall," named after the most basic elements of the artist's work--eloquently explore Ryman's ongoing experiment in what makes a painting a painting. Ryman's work, Hudson argues, tests the medium's material and conceptual possibilities. It neither signals the end of painting nor guarantees its continued longevity but keeps the prospect of painting an open question, answerable only through the production of new paintings."--From publisher description.

Download or read book Art written by Jonathan Vickery and published by Berg. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last few decades have witnessed an explosion in ideas and theories on art. Art itself has never been so topical, but much recent thinking remains inaccessible and difficult to use. This book assesses the work of those thinkers (including artists) who have had a major impact on making, criticizing and interpreting art since the 1960s. With entries by leading international experts, this book presents a concise, critical appraisal of thinkers and their ideas about art and its place in the wider cultural context. A guide to the key thinkers who shape today's world of art, this book is a vital reference for anyone interested in modern and contemporary art, its history, philosophy and practice.Theodor ADORNO * Roland BARTHES * Georges BATAILLE * Jean BAUDRILLARD * Walter BENJAMIN * JM BERNSTEIN * Pierre BOURDIEU * Nicolas BOURRIAUD * Benjamin BUCHLOH * Daniel BUREN * Judith BUTLER * Noël CARROLL * Stanley CAVELL * TJ CLARK * Arthur C. DANTO * Gilles DELEUZE * Jacques DERRIDA * George DICKIE * Thierry DE DUVE * James ELKINS * Hal FOSTER * Michel FOUCAULT * Michael FRIED * Dan GRAHAM * Clement GREENBERG * Fredric JAMESON * Mike KELLEY * Mary KELLY * Melanie KLEIN * Joseph KOSUTH * Rosalind KRAUSS * Julia KRISTEVA * Barbara KRUGER * Niklas LUHMANN * Jean-François LYOTARD * Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY * WJT MITCHELL * Robert MORRIS * Linda NOCHLIN * Adrian PIPER * Griselda POLLOCK * Robert SMITHSON * Jeff WALL * Albrecht WELLMER * Richard WOLLHEIM

Download or read book Visualizing Feeling written by Susan Best and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is late modern art 'anti-aesthetic'? What does it mean to label a piece of art 'affectless'? These traditional characterizations of 1960s and 1970s art are radically challenged in this subversive art history. By introducing feeling to the analysis of this period, Susan Best acknowledges the radical and exploratory nature of art in late modernism. The book focuses on four highly influential female artists--Eva Hesse, Lygia Clark, Ana Mendieta and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha--and it explores how their art transformed established avant-garde protocols by introducing an affective dimension. This aspect of their work, while often noted, has never before been analyzed in detail. Visualizing Feeling also addresses a methodological blind spot in art history: the interpretation of feeling, emotion and affect. It demonstrates that the affective dimension, alongside other materials and methods of art, is part of the artistic means of production and innovation. This is the first thorough re-appraisal of aesthetic engagement with affect in post-1960s art.

Download or read book When the Machine Made Art written by Grant D. Taylor and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considering how culturally indispensable digital technology is today, it is ironic that computer-generated art was attacked when it burst onto the scene in the early 1960s. In fact, no other twentieth-century art form has elicited such a negative and hostile response. When the Machine Made Art examines the cultural and critical response to computer art, or what we refer to today as digital art. Tracing the heated debates between art and science, the societal anxiety over nascent computer technology, and the myths and philosophies surrounding digital computation, Taylor is able to identify the destabilizing forces that shape and eventually fragment the computer art movement.

Download or read book Jeff Wall written by David Campany and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-05-27 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining a work that marked the emergence of photography as an art made for the gallery wall instead of the printed page. Jeff Wall's Picture for Women (1979) marks the transition of photography as an art form from the printed page to the gallery wall. Before this, photographs—from the orthodox photographic work of Walker Evans to the Conceptual photography of Dan Graham—seemed intended for the page even when hung in a gallery. In Picture for Women, a woman looks outward, as if at the viewer; a camera occupies the center of the photograph; the photographer stands on the right. Modeled on Manet's famous painting Un bar aux Folies-Bergère, in which a barmaid seems to look directly out of the painting, observed by a man on the right, Picture for Women establishes its own art historical genealogy, claiming its rightful position within the canon. Wall's photograph is an ambitious attempt to relate the artistic and spectatorial demands of the late 1970s to a modernist pictorial art that had been too hastily rejected by Conceptualism. In this illustrated study, David Campany offers an account of Wall's move from a Conceptual approach to a reengagement with the idea of a singular (as opposed to serial) picture. He shows that Wall's decision to present his work as a large-scale back-lit transparency, together with his commitment to a singular image, amounted to a radical departure. He contrasts Wall's idea of the photograph as a tableau or “picture,” inherited from the history of painting, with the works of the “Pictures Generation” - including Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and Jack Goldstein—and argues that Picture for Women is inseparable from the modern fate of the picture in general

Download or read book 100 Years of Contemporary Paintings from Vietnam written by Hâ̂ Thúc Can and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Unspeakable Art of Bill Viola written by Ronald R. Bernier and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-05-19 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The breach of art from religion is just one of the many unhappy legacies of modernism. There was a time, however, when the aesthetic and the spiritual were of a piece. This study of the work of American video artist Bill Viola considers the possible reemergence of a theological dimension to contemporary art--a reenchantment of art, as some have called it. Using the high-tech apparatus of modern video, Viola's art is rooted precisely in this theological tradition of transcendent mystical experience and spiritual self-concentration. The technological apotheosis of modern image-making--high speed film, high-definition video, LCD and plasma screens, and sophisticated sound recording--are put to use by Viola in ways that significantly challenge prevailing intellectual and artistic traditions and return us to the power of the Sublime--that which, by definition, defeats language. Viola's art as such converges with postmodern notions of the "unrepresentable" and with the ancient theological tradition of apophasis, "speaking away" or "unsaying." The fullness of "meaning," then, appears only as a promise of presence through embodied absence, neither fully here and now nor entirely elsewhere and beyond. This study seeks to define, through the work of a courageous and thoughtful contemporary artist, the theological sublime as an aesthetic of revelation.

Download or read book Robert Ryman written by Suzanne P. Hudson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first book-length study of Robert Ryman argues that his work is a continuous experiment in the possibilities of painting. In this first book-length study of Robert Ryman, Suzanne Hudson traces the artist's production from his first paintings in the early 1950s, many of which have never been exhibited or reproduced, to his recent gallery shows. Ryman's largely white-on-white paintings represent his careful working over of painting's conventions at their most radically reduced. Through close readings of the work, Hudson casts Ryman as a painter for whom painting was conducted as a continuous personal investigation. Ryman's method—an act of “learning by doing”—as well as his conception of painting as “used paint” sets him apart from second-generation abstract expressionists, minimalists, or conceptualists. Ryman (born in 1930) is a self-taught artist who began to paint in earnest while working as a guard at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the 1950s. Hudson argues that Ryman's approach to painting developed from quotidian contact with the story of modern painting as assembled by MoMA director and curator Alfred Barr and rendered widely accessible by director of the education department Victor D'Amico and colleagues. Ryman's introduction to artistic practice within the (white) walls of MoMA, Hudson contends, was shaped by an institutional ethos of experiential learning. (Others who worked at the MoMA during these years include Lucy Lippard, who married Ryman in 1961; Dan Flavin, another guard; and Sol LeWitt, a desk assistant.) Hudson's chapters—“Primer,” “Paint,” “Support,” “Edge,” and “Wall,” named after the most basic elements of the artist's work—eloquently explore Ryman's ongoing experiment in what makes a painting a painting. Ryman's work, she writes, tests the medium's material and conceptual possibilities. It signals neither the end of painting nor guarantees its continued longevity but keeps the prospect of painting an open question, answerable only through the production of new paintings.

Download or read book An Atlas of Drawings written by Luis Pérez Oramas and published by The Museum of Modern Art. This book was released on 2006 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication approaches MoMA's incomparable drawings collection from a new direction, presenting works not by date but by specific sequences of forms. It suggests that the meaning of a work of art depends not only on its own internal structures but also on relationships to other works.

Download or read book What are You Looking At written by Will Gompertz and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suitable for sceptics, art lovers, and the millions of us who visit art galleries every year - and are confused, this book is a history of Modern Art, from Impressionism to the present day.