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Metamorphic Imagery in Ancient Chinese Art and Religion
2023Elizabeth Childs-Johnson and John S. Major
Metamorphic Imagery in Ancient Chinese Art and Religion demonstrates that the concept of metamorphism was central to ancient Chinese religious belief and practices from at least the late Neolithic period through the Warring States Period of the Zhou dynasty.
Central to the authors' argument is the ubiquitous motif in early Chinese figurative art, the metamorphic power mask. While the motif underwent stylistic variation over time, its formal properties remained stable, underscoring the image’s ongoing religious centrality. It symbolized the metamorphosis, through the phenomenon of death, of royal personages from living humans to deceased ancestors who required worship and sacrificial offerings. Treated with deference and respect, the royal ancestors lent support to their living descendants, ratifying and upholding their rule; neglected, they became dangerous, even malevolent. Employing a multidisciplinary approach that integrates archaeologically recovered objects with literary evidence from oracle bone and bronze inscriptions to canonical texts, all situated in the appropriate historical context, the study presents detailed analyses of form and style, and of change over time, observing the importance of relationality and the dynamic between imagery, materials, and affects.
This book is a significant publication in the field of early China studies, presenting an integrated conception of ancient art and religion that surpasses any other work now available. [Amazon.com]
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Process Music: Songs, Stories and Studies of Graphic Culture
2022Kenneth Fitzgerald and Debbie Millman (Preface)
In Process Music, Virginia-based author Kenneth FitzGerald provides deep readings of print-media artifacts and activities, often through the lens of music. Employing a range of narrative voices, the works combine academic rigor with the accessibility of popular forms such as music journalism. FitzGerald’s new book compiles over 40 of his pieces from the last decade―many of which are now inaccessible or behind a paywall―with reprinted works first appearing in outlets such as Emigre, Eye, Print, Idea, Modes of Criticism, Design Observer, Speak Up and Voice: AIGA Journal of Graphic Design. Divided into four thematic sections and a coda, Process Music considers a variety of influential figures working in design and music, including Barney Bubbles, Paul Rand, William Addison Dwiggins and Jacqueline Casey. A prelude composed by AIGA Design medalist and Design Matters host Debbie Millman also features. [Amazon.com]
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The Bread Makers: The Social and Professional Lives of Bakers in the Western Roman Empire
2020Jared Benton
Bread was the staple of the ancient Mediterranean diet. It was present in the meals of emperors and on the tables of the poorest households. In many instances, a loaf of bread probably constituted an entire meal. As such, bread was both something that unified society and a milieu through which social and ethnic divisions played out. Similarly, bakers were not a monolithic demographic. They served both the rich and the poor, but some bakers clearly operated within regional traditions. Some lived in big cities and others lived in small towns. Some bakers made flat breads and others made leavened loaves. Some made coarse brown loaves and others specialized in fancier white breads. This book offers new methods and new ways of framing bread production in the Roman world to reveal the nuances of an industry that fed an empire. Inscriptions, Roman law, and material remains of Roman-period bakeries are combined to expose the cultural context of bread making, the economic context of commercial baking, the social hierarchy within the workforces of bakeries, and the socio-economic strategies of Roman bakers. [Amazon.com]
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The Oxford Handbook of Early China
2020Elizabeth Childs-Johnson (Editor)
The Oxford Handbook on Early China brings 30 scholars together to cover early China from the Neolithic through Warring States periods (ca 5000-500BCE). The study is chronological and incorporates a multidisciplinary approach, covering topics from archaeology, anthropology, art history, architecture, music, and metallurgy, to literature, religion, paleography, cosmology, religion, prehistory, and history. [Amazon.com]
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Robert Ryman
2017Vittorio Colaizzi
The only comprehensive monograph on the artist whose abstract 'white' paintings have inspired generations. A much-revered figure in the art world, Robert Ryman has, over six decades, continuously and methodically experimented with the different possibilities inherent within a painting - abolishing color in order to focus on material, brushstroke, support, and scale. This, the only comprehensive monograph covering his career to date, places his famous square 'white' paintings with lesser-known but increasingly exhibited works, in order to show that he is not a reductionist, but in fact a restless experimenter. [Amazon.com]
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The Path of Humility: Caravaggio and Carlo Borromeo
2015Anne Muraoka
The Path of Humility: Caravaggio and Carlo Borromeo establishes a fundamental relationship between the Franciscan humility of Archbishop of Milan Carlo Borromeo and the Roman sacred works of Caravaggio. This is the first book to consider and focus entirely upon these two seemingly anomalous personalities of the Counter-Reformation. The import of Caravaggio’s Lombard artistic heritage has long been seen as pivotal to the development of his sacred style, but it was not his only source of inspiration. This book seeks to enlarge the discourse surrounding Caravaggio’s style by placing him firmly in the environment of Borromean Milan, a city whose urban fabric was transformed into a metaphorical Via Crucis. This book departs from the prevailing preoccupation – the artist’s experience in Rome as fundamental to his formulation of sacred style – and toward his formative years in Borromeo’s Milan, where humility reigned supreme. This book is intended for a broad, yet specialized readership interested in Counter-Reformation art and devotion. It serves as a critical text for undergraduate and graduate art history courses on Baroque art, Caravaggio, and Counter-Reformation art. [From Amazon.com]
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Volume: Writings on Graphic Design, Music, Art, and Culture
2010Kenneth FitzGerald
Volume—a word that refers to sound, collections, and the measurement of space—is a crucial characteristic of both graphic design and popular music. While expressing different aspects of these two pervasive cultural mediums, the term also introduces a discussion on their many links. Volume: Writings on Graphic Design, Music, Art, and Culture is a collection of both new and classic writings by frequent Emigre contributor and educator Kenneth FitzGerald that survey the discipline of graphic design in context with the parallel creative fields of contemporary music and art. The topics of the writings are diverse: the roles of class in design, design education, Lester Bangs and Creem magazine, pornography, album cover art, independent record labels, anonymity and imaginary creative identities, and design as cultural chaos-maker. [Amazon.com]
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Robert Ryman: Critical Texts Since 1967
2008Vittorio Colaizzi (Editor) and Karsten Schubert (Editor)
Through an extremely restricted vocabulary, Robert Ryman became a leading figure on the fringes of Minimalist and Conceptual art. This anthology of essays reviews and charts the evolution of the artist's critical reception. A comprehensive selection of over 60 essays and exhibition reviews has been collated into one volume, including texts by some of the most influential art historians, art critics, and cultural commentators, like Lucy Lippard, Dan Cameron, Ernesto Pujol, and Robert Storr. The writers look at Ryman's work within the context of the 'challenge to painting' during the 1960s, the artist's work in relation to other influential painters in art history, and contemporary cultural trends. Drawing upon the words of key contemporary thinkers, an introduction by Vittorio Colaizzi explores the importance of elements of 'support, color, brushstroke' in Ryman's paintings. [Amazon.com]
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Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s
2007Robert Wojitowicz (Editor)
Although Lewis Mumford is widely acknowledged as the seminal American critic of architecture and urbanism in the twentieth century, he is less known for his art criticism. He began contributing to this field in the early 1920s, and his influence peaked between 1932 and 1937, when he was art critic for the New Yorker. This book, for the first time, assembles Mumford's important art criticism in a single volume. His columns bring wit and insight to bear on a range of artists, from establishment figures like Matisse and Brancusi to relatively new arrivals like Reginald Marsh and Georgia O'Keeffe. These articles provide an unusual window onto the New York art scene just as it was casting off provincialism in favor of a more international outlook. On a deeper level, the columns probe beneath the surface of modern art, revealing an alienation that Mumford believed symptomatic of a larger cultural disintegration… [From Amazon.com]
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Greta Pratt: Using History
2005Greta Pratt, Rennard Strickland (Contributor), and Karal Ann Marling (Contributor)
According to critic Howard Zinn (People's History of the United States), "Greta Pratt's extraordinary photographs give us glimpses of people and places that stimulate us to think about our history, not only of the great American West, but of the nation itself. Her point of view is delightfully antic and provocative. We want not only to enjoy the moment of our viewing, but also to study and ponder each photograph, challenged to find its larger meaning." Using History takes us on a tour of Americans celebrating their past. From Civil War battle reenactments to Abraham Lincoln impersonators to colossal buffalos and Indians, Greta Pratt's color photographs examine how historic iconography is used, and her work challenges us to question who Americans are. Taking an approach that is both affectionate toward her subjects yet sardonic about the larger implications of their actions, Pratt cuts to the heart of the ambivalent drives that move Americans. [Amazon.com]
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Bitter Witness: Otto Dix and the Great War
2001Linda F. McGreevy
Bitter Witness is an intensive, factual study of Otto Dix’s war-related art. It is the first book to place Dix’s etching cycle, Der Krieg, alongside numerous paintings and drawings in the perspective of his war experience on two fronts from mid-1915 to 1918’s finale. It includes a full history of the war, the Weimar Republic’s socio-political upheavals, and the Nazi years, following Dix and his colleagues, including Kaethe Kollwitz, through the artistic movements and events in the first half of Germany’s most turbulent century. [From Amazon.com]
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Frank Lloyd Wright & Lewis Mumford: Thirty Years of Correspondence
2001Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer and Robert Wojitowicz (Editors)
What began as a simple letter--a mid-career architect's comments to a young writer--turned into a 32-year correspondence, by turns amusing, inflamed, and conciliatory. Frank Lloyd Wright and Lewis Mumford, two pivotal figures in 20th-century American architecture and urbanism, were both passionate writers, keenly aware of world events. Their 150 letters from 1926--1958 covered a wide range of topics, including Wright's position in the history of American architecture and contemporary practice, their friends and rivals, the invention and spread of the International Style, and political events in Europe and the US. A fallout over isolationist politics in the early 1940s led to a 10-year gap in their exchange, and when it resumed, the two were on an entirely different footing: Wright, the elder dean of American architecture at the height of his creative powers, and Mumford, an established critic in late middle age deeply committed to rebuilding a humanist outlook in the aftermath of World War II. Frank Lloyd Wright & Lewis Mumford offers an intimate look inside the minds and hearts of these two cultural giants, deepening our understanding of the men and the society they helped shape. [From Amazon.com]
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Sidewalk Critic: Lewis Mumford's Writings on New York
1998Robert Wojitowicz (Editor)
Best known for his "Sky Line" column in the New Yorker, where he served as architecture critic for over 30 years, Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) is still revered as one of America's leading cultural critics and an international authority on architecture and urbanism. His provocative and polemical pieces were as well known for the emotion of his writing as for the wit and clarity of his style. A man of letters and part of Manhattan's intellectual elite, Mumford wrote more than 20 books over 6 decades, bridging the seemingly disparate disciplines of architecture, technology, literary criticism, biography, sociology, and philosophy, which he synthesized into a highly original body of work. Sidewalk Critic collects over 50 of Mumford's writings that were originally published in the New Yorker between 1931 and 1940. These seminal essays focus almost exclusively on the New York metropolitan area, providing an unusual glimpse into one of the formative decades in the city's history. They cover all aspects of New York's architecture, including museums, theaters, bridges, tenements, parks, and recreational areas, and they range from a short musing on a midtown luncheonette to an extended series on Rockefeller Center. [From Amazon.com]
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Lewis Mumford and American Modernism: Eutopian Theories for Architecture and Urban Planning
1996Robert Wojitowicz
Lewis Mumford and American Modernism examines the career and writings of America's leading critic of architecture and urbanism. The author of numerous books on the history of architecture, Mumford focused on the roles that technology and urbanism have played in modern civilization. Indeed, his writings have proved to be prescient, forming the basis for architecture and urban planning at a time of transition and redefinition at the end of the twentieth century. [From Amazon.com]
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In Search of the Corn Queen
1994Greta Pratt
Greta Pratt returns to the county fairs of her childhood to present a vision of American Midwest communities largely unfamiliar to millions of urban dwellers. In this book she has created a visual anthology of fairgoers and fair participants of all shapes and sizes. For five summers, she traveled the Midwest chronicling the rural life of the region - parades of civic pride, displays of exemplary harvests, and heifers and swine groomed by the Future Farmers of America. The photographer's journey takes us to North Dakota, Minnesota, Tennessee, Kansas, Mississippi, among other states. She stops along the way at peculiar, yet somehow familiar, communities. … [Amazon.com]
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The Life and Works of Otto Dix: German Critical Realist
1981Linda F. McGreevy
A revision of the author's thesis, University of Georgia, 1975. From the series, Studies in Fine Arts, No. 12.
A gallery of books by faculty in the Department of Art, College of Arts & Letters, Old Dominion University.
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