Download or read book Enchanted Modernities written by Sarah Victoria Turner and published by Fulgur Press. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the occult came to the American West: individualism and magic in the art of California, from Agnes Pelton to Jess "It is in America that the transformation will take place, and has already silently commenced." With these words, written in The Secret Doctrine in 1888, occultist philosopher Helena Blavatsky drew a direct connection between the Theosophical Society and the dynamic energy of 19th-century Americanism. Blavatsky and her successors identified the American West as the perfect site for a rebirth and re-enchantment of humanity, drawing those seeking spiritual fulfilment outside of organized religion to the dramatic landscapes of California, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico--places which have long beckoned searchers of all kinds. The syncretic nature of Theosophy allowed for and even encouraged individualism in belief, making Theosophy a good fit for the notions of freedom and personal agency that characterized the American West in the popular imaginary. Among those drawn to the American West seeking spiritual answers in the early 20th century were artists. In 2014, the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum at Utah State University staged the first exhibition to explore artistic responses to this confluence of enchanted thought and the American West. Building on this precedent, Enchanted Modernities: Theosophy, the Arts and the American West is the first publication devoted to studying these relationships in art and music. Through a series of color plates, contextual essays, interviews and interpretations of individual works by artists such as the Dynaton group (Wolfgang Paalen, Gordon Onslow Ford, Lee Mullican), Oskar Fischinger, Emil Bisttram, Lawren Harris, Raymond Jonson, Agnes Pelton, Wolfgang Paalen, Beatrice Wood, Dane Rudhyar and Jess, Enchanted Modernities explores the role of Theosophical thought in redefining the relationship between enchantment and modernism, and fostering lively cultural networks in a region that that has long captured the world's imagination.

Download or read book The Brutish Museums written by Dan Hicks and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walk into any European museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objectsare all stolen. Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes - a collection of thousands of brass plaques and carved ivory tusks depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of BeninCity, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections. The story of the Benin Bronzes sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. In The Brutish Museums, Dan Hicks makes a powerful case for the urgent return of such objects, as part of a wider project of addressing the outstanding debt of colonialism.

Download or read book Jennifer West written by Andy Campbell and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West's material experiments in film and art explore Southern California's changing geography This debut monograph brings together nearly a decade of "analogital" experiments in film, sculpture and installation by Jennifer West (born 1966)--one of the most committed artists working on the West Coast today. Saturated in a history of avant-garde and Third World cinema (not to mention HIV/AIDS activism and the incipient Riot Grrrl movement) since she was an undergraduate at Evergreen State College, West's work today treads similar ground: challenging the utopianism of new media adoptees as well as the nostalgia of analog-only film adherents. The 11 projects reproduced in the book, all produced between 2014 and 2021, fall under the heading of Media Archaeology, and reveal the historical and material promiscuity of West's experiments in film and art, often tied to the changing geography of Los Angeles and its surrounds.

Download or read book The Western Town written by Alex Lehnerer and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Western town of roughly 1860-90 exists in an ephemeral moment of American history ... these towns vanished entirely from the prairie by the end of the nineteenth century. Yet even today, everyone has visited these towns, since they survive in their abstract and distilled form through the plot-generating sets of Western movies ... a clichéd but consistent host of characteristics and characters ... 22 towns in the Wild West are the protagonists in this book, including famous places like El Paso, Rio Bravo, and Lahood - not as clichés, but as constructed reality. Detailed maps offer a previously non-existent overview of spatial contexts and form the basis for an intensive exploration of architecture and urban planning. The culture of the "city without a future" in the American West between 1860 and 1900 has been maintained in the films out of which it arises. This architectural analysis does not attempt to nostalgically reactivate the Western town, but uses it instead as a vehicle to critique contemporary phenomena in terms of infrastructure, the link between architecture and city, and the role of urban planning - after the Stranger persuaded the residents of Lago to paint the whole town red, he declared himself ready to protect it from the approaching gunmen. With maps of the towns from the following films (selected): 'A Fistful of Dollars' (1964), 'Buchanan Rides Alone' (1958), 'For a Few Dollars More' (1965), 'Fort Apache' (1948).

Download or read book The Art of Reading written by Jamie Camplin and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Why do artists love books?” This volume takes this tantalizingly simple question as a starting point to reveal centuries of symbiosis between the visual and literary arts. First looking at the development of printed books and the simultaneous emergence of the modern figure of the artist, The Art of Reading appraises works by the many great masters who took inspiration from the printed word. Authors Jamie Camplin and Maria Ranauro weave together an engaging cultural history that probes the ways in which books and paintings represent a key to understanding ourselves and the past. Paintings contain a world of information about religion, class, gender, and power, but they also reveal details of everyday life often lost in history texts. Such artworks show us not only how books have been valued over time but also how the practice of reading has evolved in Western society. Featuring over one hundred works by artists from across Europe and the United States and all painting genres, The Art of Reading explores the two-thousand-year story of the great painters and the preeminent information-providing, knowledge-endowing, solace-giving, belief-supporting, leisure-enriching, pleasure-delivering medium of all time: the book.

Download or read book Franz West The 1990s written by Franz West and published by David Zwirner Books. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1990s, Franz West’s work moved in new and innovative stylistic directions, as his career was solidified through important international exhibitions. This publication delves into this significant decade in an effort to contextualize the evolution of West’s singular practice. The 1990s proved critical in the development of the idiosyncratic style for which West is still known today. His key innovations from this period—which included the addition of exuberant color to his papier-mâché forms, the incorporation of furniture both as art object and as social incubator, and the inclusion of work by other artists in his own installations—resulted in dynamic, frequently interactive installations that helped to expand the possibilities of sculpture and the ways in which art is experienced. Produced on the occasion of David Zwirner’s 2014 exhibition in New York, this fully illustrated publication gives an in-depth overview of the decade, arguably the most important of the artist’s lengthy career. It features essays by noted West scholars Eva Badura-Triska and Veit Loers, as well as a personal account by Bernhard Riff on video collaborations made with the artist throughout the 1990s.

Download or read book The State Historical Society of Wisconsin written by Reuben Gold Thwaites and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book East Goes West written by Younghill Kang and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautiful collectible hardcover edition of the father of Korean American literature's "wonderfully resplendent evocation of a newcomer's America" (Chang-rae Lee, author of Native Speaker) A Penguin Vitae Edition Having fled Japanese-occupied Korea for the gleaming promise of the United States with nothing but four dollars and a suitcase full of Shakespeare to his name, the young, idealistic Chungpa Han arrives in a New York teeming with expatriates, businessmen, students, scholars, and indigents. Struggling to support his studies, he travels throughout the United States and Canada, becoming by turns a traveling salesman, a domestic worker, and a farmer, and observing along the way the idealism, greed, and shifting values of the industrializing twentieth century. Part picaresque adventure, part shrewd social commentary, East Goes West casts a sharply satirical eye on the demands and perils of assimilation. It is a masterpiece not only of Asian American literature but also of American literature. Penguin Vitae―loosely translated as "Penguin of one's life"―is a deluxe hardcover series from Penguin Classics celebrating a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

Download or read book The Very Hungry Caterpillar s First Winter written by Eric Carle and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are so many ways to spend a chilly winter day. Join The Very Hungry Caterpillar and explore everything winter has to offer! Welcome winter with The Very Hungry Caterpillar and his friends in this sensory exploration of the season. Discover the very best of this time of year: snowy days full of play, the sounds of birds chirping atop a snowman, the smell of cookies fresh from the oven, and so much more!

Download or read book Stan Douglas written by Stan Douglas and published by arsenal pulp press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays based on a monumental-sized photograph by preeminent visual artist Stan Douglas.

Download or read book The Edna Lewis Cookbook written by Edna Lewis and published by Axios Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edna Lewis is renowned as one of the greatest American chefs and as an African-American woman who almost single handedly revived a forgotten world of refined Southern cooking. Lewis won many industry awards and was often referred to as "the Grande Dame of Southern Cooking" and the "South's answer to Julia Child."

Download or read book Vanishing Vernacular written by Steve Fitch and published by . This book was released on 2018-05-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steve Fitch is among America's most well-known chroniclers of the American West since the days of Easy Rider. He has been photographing examples of the West's changing vernacular landscape and vanishing roadside landmarks for more than 40 years. In his new book, he presents both the ancient and the modern by way of petroglyphs, neon motel signs and hand-painted business signs, drive-in movie theater screens, and radio and cell towers. All of them are now endangered because of the advent of the Interstate Highway System and corporate franchises.In this fascinating and comprehensive account, we are able to join in Fitch's expansive journey, truly an odyssey, as represented in the book's 120 unforgettable photographs, all sequenced to mimic the open road--both during day and night. Fitch explains the project in his informative introduction, in which, interestingly, he suggests that the petroglyphs of the ancient Pueblo people have endured far better and longer than anything made during the last sixty years. Curator Toby Jurovics, in his insightful concluding essay, positions Fitch's work in relation to that of the practitioners of the photographic style known as the "New Topographics" and Fitch's own view of photography as a visual form of cultural anthropology. Vanishing Vernacular: Western Landmarks is sure to become a modern-day classic, a book that will be all the more revered as America and Americans move farther away from the highways of the past. That economy and roadside culture are vanishing like endangered species, but Fitch was along for the ride. In sharing that past, he has been witness to his own form of historic preservation.

Download or read book Chronicles of Border Warfare Or A History of the Settlement by the Whites of North western Virginia and of the Indian Wars and Massacres in that Section of the State with Reflections Anecdotes c written by Alexander Scott Withers and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The focal point of Chronicles of Border Warfare is the American settlement throughout the northwestern portion of colonial Virginia (an area which today encompasses parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania) from the French and Indian War to the Battle of Fallen Timbers, and the ensuing clashes with the indigenous population. -- From the publisher.

Download or read book Franz West written by Eva Badura-Triska and published by Walther Konig Verlag. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The focus of this publication is Franz West's (1947-2012) Kombi-Werke installations, in which greatly differing individual pieces are brought together and then recomposed into new works. Gathering elements such as fittings, furniture, sculpture, videos and works on paper from all periods--and even works made by artist friends--into grand ensembles, the Kombi-Werke are without doubt key elements in West's legacy. An example is the three-part papier-mâché sculpture "Redundanz" its starting point is the gouache "Lost Weight" (1994), with its motif of a dieting woman showing her oversized pants. Omitting the "W," West transforms "Lost Weight" into "Lost Eight," in order to derive the title for a larger work, "Where Is my Eight?" With 250 color illustrations, this substantial and inspiring volume, and the exhibition it accompanies, were overseen by the artist himself, before his death in the summer of 2012.

Download or read book Last West Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange written by Tess Taylor and published by . This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed American poet Tess Taylor responds to Dorothea Lange's photography with a new work In Last West, poet Tess Taylor follows Dorothea Lange's winding paths across California during the Great Depression and in its immediate aftermath. On these journeys, Lange photographed migrant laborers, Dust Bowl refugees, tent cities and Japanese American internment camps. Taylor's hybrid text collages lyric and oral histories against Lange's own journals and notebook fragments, framing the ways social and ecological injustices of the past rhyme eerily with those of the present. The result is a stunning meditation on movement, landscape and place. "Scintillatingly rendered by Taylor as conversation, meditation, road trip, and vivid documentary account, Last West tracks the not-so-distant past into the erupting present, taking on as many poetic forms as there are California topographies." -Forrest Gander, Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets and winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Download or read book Looking East written by Helen Burnham and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Published in conjunction with the exhibition Looking East, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee, January 31-May 11, 2014; Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, June 28-September 15, 2014; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Japan, September 30-November 30, 2014; Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Japan, January 2-May 10, 2015; Musee National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec, Canada, June 11-September 27, 2015; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, California, October 30, 2015-January 24, 2016"--Colophon.

Download or read book The Story of Paul Bunyan written by Barbara Emberley and published by Ammo Books. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story traces the outdoor adventures of Paul Bunyan, the giant lumberjack, and his companion, Babe the Blue Ox.