In this comprehensive treatment, distinguished diplomat Chas Freeman describes the fundamental principles of the art of statecraft and the craft of diplomacy. The book draws on the author's years of experience as a practicing diplomat but also his extensive reading of the histories of ancient India, China, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and the Islamic world as well as modern Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Among numerous other subjects, the book addresses the role of intelligence, political actions, cultural influence, economic measures, and military power, as well as diplomatic strategy and tactics, negotiation, and the tasks and skills of diplomacy.
The tension between two systems for understanding and picturing space, the concentric and the Cartesian, is regarded by the author as the key to composition in painting, sculpture and architecture
Jacob Burckhardt claimed that the state in Renaissance Italy became a work of art. In this book, the authors illiminate the corollary: that art in Italy became a work of state. They study centres of power under three distinctive governments - a civic republic of the 14th century, a princely court of the 15th, and an absolutist state of the 16th. The authors argue that, no less than armies, laws and taxes, painted halls of state were strategic instruments, tactical weapons and technical machines of government.
The taken-for-granted assumption about the place of the arts in liberal or social democratic states and the role of the arts in supporting or opposing the ideological work of government and non-government institutions is been the issue of this book. The challenges posed by the state to the arts and by the arts to the state, focusing on several transformations of the interrelations between state and commercial arts policies in the current era. These ongoing challenges include the control of repressive tolerance, complicity with and resistance to state power, and the commoditization of the arts, including their accommodation to market and state apparatuses. The contributors tackle social and cultural policy and practice in the arts as well as connections between national states and dissenting art from a range of genres.
How does secret knowledge shape how West African arts are created by different makers for disparate audiences? Recognizing that there is a tension between what is seen on the outside and what cannot be seen on the inside, Seeing the Unseen delves into the meaning of objects, assemblages, and performances among the Senufo-Mande people. The awareness of exceptional power and the profound knowledge of the artistic creators is constantly oscillating between what can be seen and what is known by their audiences. This constant negotiation of the mutual recognition of the others' potential agency provides a foundation for a new, compelling model for thinking about how the seen and unseen must operate in arts. The result is an engaging exploration of power associations and the social and political tensions they create through objects and performances.
Special features of this book: follows a geographical organization across the continent; each chapter is reader friendly with clear, accessible sub-headings; represents important religious and utilitarian art traditions from the Sahara desert, West Africa, Central Africa, Northeast Africa, Eastern Africa, and Southern Africa; gives special attention to the themes of gender, power, and life cycle rituals, which frequently intersect with one another to form an understanding of the arts of Africa; includes figurative sculpture, masquerades, architecture, textiles, dress, ceramics, wall painting, and leatherwork traditions; includes selected examples of the earliest known documented art works as well as contemporary art of each geographical region; includes an up-to-date bibliography, incorporating recent published field research for each chapter; and features 369 black and white illustrations, 16 colored plates, maps, and a time line.
In a tech-dominated world, the most needed degrees are the most surprising: the liberal arts. Did you take the right classes in college? Will your major help you get the right job offers? For more than a decade, the national spotlight has focused on science and engineering as the only reliable choice for finding a successful post-grad career. Our destinies have been reduced to a caricature: learn to write computer code or end up behind a counter, pouring coffee. Quietly, though, a different path to success has been taking shape. In You Can Do Anything, George Anders explains the remarkable power of a liberal arts education - and the ways it can open the door to thousands of cutting-edge jobs every week. The key insight: curiosity, creativity, and empathy aren't unruly traits that must be reined in. You can be yourself, as an English major, and thrive in sales. You can segue from anthropology into the booming new field of user research; from classics into management consulting, and from philosophy into high-stakes investing. At any stage of your career, you can bring a humanist's grace to our rapidly evolving high-tech future. And if you know how to attack the job market, your opportunities will be vast. In this book, you will learn why resume-writing is fading in importance and why "telling your story" is taking its place. You will learn how to create jobs that don't exist yet, and to translate your campus achievements into a new style of expression that will make employers' eyes light up. You will discover why people who start in eccentric first jobs - and then make their own luck - so often race ahead of peers whose post-college hunt focuses only on security and starting pay. You will be ready for anything.
Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts shows women how celebrating their sensuality can help them achieve their dreams—“think of it as The Power of Positive Thinking as interpreted by Anais Nin” (The New York Times). Relationship expert Regena Thomashauer teaches the lost “womanly arts” of identifying your desires, having fun no matter where you are, knowing sensual pleasure, befriending your inner bitch, flirting (in a way that makes your day, not just his), and more—because making pleasure your priority can actually help you reach your goals. So if you need a refresher course in fun—and you know you do—come to Mama.
A lavishly illustrated, witty, and original look at the awesome power of the political cartoon throughout history to enrage, provoke, and amuse. As a former editor of The New York Times Magazine and the longtime editor of The Nation, Victor S. Navasky knows just how transformative—and incendiary—cartoons can be. Here Navasky guides readers through some of the greatest cartoons ever created, including those by George Grosz, David Levine, Herblock, Honoré Daumier, and Ralph Steadman. He recounts how cartoonists and caricaturists have been censored, threatened, incarcerated, and even murdered for their art, and asks what makes this art form, too often dismissed as trivial, so uniquely poised to affect our minds and our hearts. Drawing on his own encounters with would-be censors, interviews with cartoonists, and historical archives from cartoon museums across the globe, Navasky examines the political cartoon as both art and polemic over the centuries. We see afresh images most celebrated for their artistic merit (Picasso's Guernica, Goya's "Duendecitos"), images that provoked outrage (the 2008 Barry Blitt New Yorker cover, which depicted the Obamas as a Muslim and a Black Power militant fist-bumping in the Oval Office), and those that have dictated public discourse (Herblock’s defining portraits of McCarthyism, the Nazi periodical Der Stürmer’s anti-Semitic caricatures). Navasky ties together these and other superlative genre examples to reveal how political cartoons have been not only capturing the zeitgeist throughout history but shaping it as well—and how the most powerful cartoons retain the ability to shock, gall, and inspire long after their creation. Here Victor S. Navasky brilliantly illuminates the true power of one of our most enduringly vital forms of artistic expression.
Which sort of seducer could you be? Siren? Rake? Cold Coquette? Star? Comedian? Charismatic? Or Saint? This book will show you which. Charm, persuasion, the ability to create illusions: these are some of the many dazzling gifts of the Seducer, the compelling figure who is able to manipulate, mislead and give pleasure all at once. When raised to the level of art, seduction, an indirect and subtle form of power, has toppled empires, won elections and enslaved great minds. In this beautiful, sensually designed book, Greene unearths the two sides of seduction: the characters and the process. Discover who you, or your pursuer, most resembles. Learn, too, the pitfalls of the anti-Seducer. Immerse yourself in the twenty-four manoeuvres and strategies of the seductive process, the ritual by which a seducer gains mastery over their target. Understand how to 'Choose the Right Victim', 'Appear to Be an Object of Desire' and 'Confuse Desire and Reality'. In addition, Greene provides instruction on how to identify victims by type. Each fascinating character and each cunning tactic demonstrates a fundamental truth about who we are, and the targets we've become - or hope to win over. The Art of Seduction is an indispensable primer on the essence of one of history's greatest weapons and the ultimate power trip. From the internationally bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, and The 33 Strategies Of War.
