Download or read book The Europe Illusion written by Stuart Sweeney and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was one of the pre-eminent figures of the Italian Renaissance – he was also one of the most paradoxical. He spent an incredible amount of time writing notebooks, perhaps even more time than he ever held a brush, yet at the same time Leonardo was Renaissance culture’s most fanatical critic of the word. When Leonardo criticized writing he criticized it as an expert on words; when he was painting, writing remained in the back of his mind. In this book, Joost Keizer argues that the comparison between word and image fuelled Leonardo’s thought. The paradoxes at the heart of Leonardo’s ideas and practice also defined some of Renaissance culture’s central assumptions about culture and nature: that there is a look to script, that painting offered a path out of culture and back to nature, that the meaning of images emerged in comparison with words, and that the difference between image-making and writing also amounted to a difference in the experience of time.
Download or read book The Germany Illusion written by Marcel Fratzscher and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insightful and in-depth analysis of the state of Germany's economic and social policies and Germany's role as reluctant hegemon in Europe.
Download or read book Grand Illusion written by Karen Fiss and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franco-German cultural exchange reached its height at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair, where the Third Reich worked to promote an illusion of friendship between the two countries. Through the prism of this decisive event, Grand Illusion examines the overlooked relationships among Nazi elites and French intellectuals. Their interaction, Karen Fiss argues, profoundly influenced cultural production and normalized aspects of fascist ideology in 1930s France, laying the groundwork for the country’s eventual collaboration with its German occupiers. Tracing related developments across fine arts, film, architecture, and mass pageantry, Fiss illuminates the role of National Socialist propaganda in the French decision to ignore Hitler’s war preparations and pursue an untenable policy of appeasement. France’s receptiveness toward Nazi culture, Fiss contends, was rooted in its troubled identity and deep-seated insecurities. With their government in crisis, French intellectuals from both the left and the right demanded a new national culture that could rival those of the totalitarian states. By examining how this cultural exchange shifted toward political collaboration, Grand Illusion casts new light on the power of art to influence history.
Download or read book The Germany Illusion written by Marcel Fratzscher and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insightful and in-depth analysis of the state of Germany's economic and social policies and Germany's role as reluctant hegemon in Europe.
Download or read book Ministry of Illusion written by Eric Rentschler and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1996-10 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Overview of Nazi cinema
Download or read book Indivisible Germany written by James H. Wolfe and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II the quadriga, the impressive figure of the charioteer Victory driving four horses, on top of the Brandenburg Gate was destroyed. Later, both the East and West German au thorities agreed to replace it with a copy of the original. The former possessed the molds; the latter supplied the metal for casting. The process of negotiation and production required nearly two years. After the new quadriga was mounted, it was found that the Commu nists had made an important change: the chariot driven by Victory was placed so that it faces east and not west as in former times. The wit of the Berliners is sharp. It soon became known along the Kur fiirsten Damm (and not quite so loudly along what was then Stalin Allee) that Victory was advancing to defeat the East. The Pankow regime had unwittingly created an apparently prophetic symbol of its impending collapse.
Download or read book The German Illusion written by Olivier Morel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-12-14 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines Jewish-German “tropes” in Hélène Cixous's oeuvre and life and their impact on her work as a feminist, poet, and playwright. Hélène Cixous is a poet, philosopher, and activist known worldwide for her manifesto on Écriture feminine (feminine writing) and for her influential literary texts, plays, and essays. While the themes were rarely present in her earlier writings, Germany and Jewish-German family figures and topics have significantly informed most of Cixous's late works. Born in Algeria in June 1937, she grew up with a mother who had escaped Germany after the rise of Nazism and a grandmother who fled the racial laws of the Third Reich in 1938. In her writing, Cixous refines the primitive scene of a “German” upbringing in French-occupied colonial, antisemitic Algeria. Scholar and filmmaker Olivier Morel delves into the signs and influences that “Germany,” “German,” and “Osnabrück” have exerted over Cixous's work. Featuring an exclusive interview with Hélène Cixous and stills from their travel together to Osnabrück in Morel's 2018 documentary, Ever, Rêve, Hélène Cixous, Morel's The “German Illusion” examines the unique literary meditation on the Holocaust sustained throughout her later texts. Morel helps us to understand an uncannily original oeuvre that embodies the complexities of modernity's genocidal history in a new way.
Download or read book War of Illusions written by Fritz Fischer and published by R.S. Means Company. This book was released on 1975-05-01 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Peace of Illusions written by Christopher Layne and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a provocative book about American hegemony, Christopher Layne outlines his belief that U.S. foreign policy has been consistent in its aims for more than sixty years and that the current Bush administration clings to mid-twentieth-century tactics--to no good effect. What should the nation's grand strategy look like for the next several decades? The end of the cold war profoundly and permanently altered the international landscape, yet we have seen no parallel change in the aims and shape of U.S. foreign policy. The Peace of Illusions intervenes in the ongoing debate about American grand strategy and the costs and benefits of "American empire." Layne urges the desirability of a strategy he calls "offshore balancing": rather than wield power to dominate other states, the U.S. government should engage in diplomacy to balance large states against one another. The United States should intervene, Layne asserts, only when another state threatens, regionally or locally, to destroy the established balance. Drawing on extensive archival research, Layne traces the form and aims of U.S. foreign policy since 1940, examining alternatives foregone and identifying the strategic aims of different administrations. His offshore-balancing notion, if put into practice with the goal of extending the "American Century," would be a sea change in current strategy. Layne has much to say about present-day governmental decision making, which he examines from the perspectives of both international relations theory and American diplomatic history.
Download or read book Illusion in Cultural Practice written by Katharina Rein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores illusionism as a much larger phenomenon than optical illusion, magic shows, or special effects, as a vital part of how we perceive, process, and shape the world in which we live. Considering different cultural practices characterized by illusionism, this book suggests a new approach to illusion via media theory. Each of the chapters analyses a specific kind of illusionistic practice and the concept of illusionism it entails in a given context, including philosophy, perception and cognitive theory, performance magic, occultism, optics, physiology, early cinema, cartomancy, spiritualism, architecture, shamanic rituals, and theoretical physics, to show the diversity of shapes that illusionism and illusions can take. The book provides detailed analyses of illusions within performance and ritual magic, philosophy, art history and psychology as well as a first approach to the study of illusions outside of these established fields. It aims to find ways of identifying and analysing a wider range of illusions in the humanities. This multidisciplinary and comprehensive volume will appeal to scholars and students with an interest in media and culture, theatre and performance, philosophy, sociology, politics and religion. This publication was supported by the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar with funds from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. IKKM Books Volume 47 An overview of the whole series can be found at www.ikkm-weimar.de/schriften Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 license https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003188278-8/vanishing-lady-railway-illusions-movement-1-katharina-rein?context=ubx&refId=fe124e6e-8290-43e9-9d48-753bad162c50 Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003188278-13/talking-rocks-illusory-sounds-projections-otherworld-julia-shpinitskaya-riitta-rainio?context=ubx&refId=3aa829a8-8c0b-4103-870a-6fe5a4393e71
Download or read book The Phoney Victory written by Peter Hitchens and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was World War II really the `Good War'? In the years since the declaration of peace in 1945 many myths have sprung up around the conflict in the victorious nations. In this book, Peter Hitchens deconstructs the many fables which have become associated with the narrative of the `Good War'. Whilst not criticising or doubting the need for war against Nazi Germany at some stage, Hitchens does query whether September 1939 was the right moment, or the independence of Poland the right issue. He points out that in the summer of 1939 Britain and France were wholly unprepared for a major European war and that this quickly became apparent in the conflict that ensued. He also rejects the retroactive claim that Britain went to war in 1939 to save the Jewish population of Europe. On the contrary, the beginning and intensification of war made it easier for Germany to begin the policy of mass murder in secret as well as closing most escape routes. In a provocative, but deeply-researched book, Hitchens questions the most common assumptions surrounding World War II, turning on its head the myth of Britain's role in a `Good War'.
Download or read book The German Illusion written by Olivier Morel and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Examines Jewish-German "tropes" in Hélène Cixous's oeuvre and life and their impact on her work as a feminist, poet, and playwright"--
Download or read book The Memory Illusion written by Dr Julia Shaw and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'Truly fascinating.' Steve Wright, BBC Radio 2 - Have you ever forgotten the name of someone you’ve met dozens of times? - Or discovered that your memory of an important event was completely different from everyone else’s? - Or vividly recalled being in a particular place at a particular time, only to discover later that you couldn’t possibly have been? We rely on our memories every day of our lives. They make us who we are. And yet the truth is, they are far from being the accurate record of the past we like to think they are. In The Memory Illusion, forensic psychologist and memory expert Dr Julia Shaw draws on the latest research to show why our memories so often play tricks on us – and how, if we understand their fallibility, we can actually improve their accuracy. The result is an exploration of our minds that both fascinating and unnerving, and that will make you question how much you can ever truly know about yourself. Think you have a good memory? Think again. 'A spryly paced, fun, sometimes frightening exploration of how we remember – and why everyone remembers things that never truly happened.' Pacific Standard
Download or read book The Illusion of Separateness written by Simon Van Booy and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The uncanny beauty of Van Booy’s prose, and his ability to knife straight to the depths of a character’s heart, fill a reader with wonder.” — San Francisco Chronicle Award-winning author Simon Van Booy tells a harrowing and enchanting story of how one man’s act of mercy during World War II changed the lives of strangers, and how they each discover the astonishing truth of their connection. The characters in Van Booy's The Illusion of Separateness discover at their darkest moments of fear and isolation that they are not alone, that they were never alone, that every human being is a link in a chain we cannot see. This gripping novel—inspired by true events—tells the interwoven stories of a deformed German infantryman; a lonely British film director; a young, blind museum curator; two Jewish American newlyweds separated by war; and a caretaker at a retirement home for actors in Santa Monica. They move through the same world but fail to perceive their connections until, through seemingly random acts of selflessness, a veil is lifted to reveal the vital parts they have played in one another's lives, and the illusion of their separateness.
Download or read book The Illusion of Peace written by Sally Marks and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sally Marks provides a compelling analysis of European diplomacy between the First World War and Hitler's advent. She explores in clear and lively prose the reasons why successive efforts failed to create a lasting peace in the interwar era. Building on the theories of the first edition - many of which have become widely accepted since its publication in 1976 - Marks reassesses Europe's leaders of the period, and the policies of the powers between 1918 and 1933, and beyond. Strongly interpretative and archivally based, The Illusion of Peace examines the emotional, ethnic, and economic factors responsible for international instability, as well as the distortion of the balance of power, the abnormal position of the Soviet Union, the weakness of France and the uncertainty of her relationship with Britain, and the inadequacy of the League of Nations. In so doing, the study clarifies the complex topics of reparations and war debts and challenges traditional assumptions, concluding that widespread western devotion to disarmament and dedication to peace were two of several reasons why democratic statesmen could not respond decisively to Hitler's threat. In this new edition Marks also argues that the Allied failure to bring defeat home to the German people in 1918-19 generated a resentment which contributed to interwar instability and Hitler's rise. This highly successful study has been thoroughly revised and updated to reflect the latest scholarship. Now in its second edition, it remains the essential introduction to the tense political and diplomatic situation in Europe during the interwar years.
Download or read book Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination written by Frederick Burwick and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Virtual Art written by Oliver Grau and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-09-17 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of the art historical antecedents to virtual reality and the impact of virtual reality on contemporary conceptions of art. Although many people view virtual reality as a totally new phenomenon, it has its foundations in an unrecognized history of immersive images. Indeed, the search for illusionary visual space can be traced back to antiquity. In this book, Oliver Grau shows how virtual art fits into the art history of illusion and immersion. He describes the metamorphosis of the concepts of art and the image and relates those concepts to interactive art, interface design, agents, telepresence, and image evolution. Grau retells art history as media history, helping us to understand the phenomenon of virtual reality beyond the hype. Grau shows how each epoch used the technical means available to produce maximum illusion. He discusses frescoes such as those in the Villa dei Misteri in Pompeii and the gardens of the Villa Livia near Primaporta, Renaissance and Baroque illusion spaces, and panoramas, which were the most developed form of illusion achieved through traditional methods of painting and the mass image medium before film. Through a detailed analysis of perhaps the most important German panorama, Anton von Werner's 1883 The Battle of Sedan, Grau shows how immersion produced emotional responses. He traces immersive cinema through Cinerama, Sensorama, Expanded Cinema, 3-D, Omnimax and IMAX, and the head mounted display with its military origins. He also examines those characteristics of virtual reality that distinguish it from earlier forms of illusionary art. His analysis draws on the work of contemporary artists and groups ART+COM, Maurice Benayoun, Charlotte Davies, Monika Fleischmann, Ken Goldberg, Agnes Hegedues, Eduardo Kac, Knowbotic Research, Laurent Mignonneau, Michael Naimark, Simon Penny, Daniela Plewe, Paul Sermon, Jeffrey Shaw, Karl Sims, Christa Sommerer, and Wolfgang Strauss. Grau offers not just a history of illusionary space but also a theoretical framework for analyzing its phenomenologies, functions, and strategies throughout history and into the future.
