In today's art world many strange, even shocking, things qualify as art. In this book, Cynthia Freeland explains why innovation and controversy are valued in the arts, weaving together philosophy and art theory with many fascinating examples. She discusses blood, beauty, culture, money, museums, sex, and politics, clarifying contemporary and historical accounts of the nature, function, and interpretation of the arts. Freeland also propels us into the future by surveying cutting-edge web sites, along with the latest research on the brain's role in perceiving art. This clear, provocative book engages with the big debates surrounding our responses to art and is an invaluable introduction to anyone interested in thinking about art.
This volume gathers together 17 articles published over the last 30 years, together with one appearing here for the first time. Their focus is primarily on enamel, the brilliant and colourful art form for which the Byzantines were famous throughout the medieval world, but sculpture and glyptics also figure. The author examines not only works which have retained the form in which they were first created, but others which have had their original Byzantine elements re-used, often by artists in the West. While most of the works featured here have been known to scholars before, one was unknown prior to its first publication in 2006.
Learn the language of Nebraska . . .and 49 other states With more entries than any other reference of its kind,McGraw-Hill’s Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs shows you how American English is spoken today. You will find commonly used phrasal verbs, idiomatic expressions, proverbial expressions, and clichés. The dictionary contains more than 24,000 entries, each defined and followed by one or two example sentences. It also includes a Phrase-Finder Index with more than 60,000 entries.
A complete collection of the British comedy show following Rowan Atkinson's hapless, rubber-faced clown. The set includes all episodes from the original series and the animated spin-off, as well as the two 'Mr Bean' movies. In 'Bean - The Ultimate Disaster Movie' (1997), Mr Bean (Atkinson) has obtained a job as an attendant at the National Gallery in London. He enjoys the protection of the chairman, but the gallery's governors are keen to be rid of him. When the Grierson Gallery in Los Angeles asks for an expert to give a speech on the recently-purchased painting of Whistler's mother, Bean is quickly despatched. On his arrival in America he begins wreaking havoc in the art world. In 'Mr Bean's Holiday' (2007), Bean has won a church fete raffle's top prize, consisting of a trip to France, where the language barrier predictably causes our hero no end of grief until he meets Emil (Karel Roden), a Russian director on his way to judge at Cannes.
The first comprehensive catalogue of the Getty Museum’s significant collection of French Rococo ébénisterie furniture. This catalogue focuses on French ébénisterie furniture in the Rococo style dating from 1735 to 1760. These splendid objects directly reflect the tastes of the Museum’s founder, J. Paul Getty, who started collecting in this area in 1938 and continued until his death in 1976. The Museum’s collection is particularly rich in examples created by the most talented cabinet masters then active in Paris, including Bernard van Risenburgh II (after 1696–ca. 1766), Jacques Dubois (1694–1763), and Jean-François Oeben (1721–1763). Working for members of the French royal family and aristocracy, these craftsmen excelled at producing veneered and marquetried pieces of furniture (tables, cabinets, and chests of drawers) fashionable for their lavish surfaces, refined gilt-bronze mounts, and elaborate design. These objects were renowned throughout Europe at a time when Paris was considered the capital of good taste. The entry on each work comprises both a curatorial section, with description and commentary, and a conservation report, with construction diagrams. An introduction by Anne-Lise Desmas traces the collection’s acquisition history, and two technical essays by Arlen Heginbotham present methodologies and findings on the analysis of gilt-bronze mounts and lacquer. The free online edition of this open-access publication is available at www.getty.edu/publications/rococo/ and includes zoomable, high-resolution photography. Also available are free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book, and JPG downloads of the main catalogue images.
Seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings were aesthetic, intellectual, and economic touchstones in the Parisian art world of the Revolutionary era, but their importance within this framework, while frequently acknowledged, never attracted much subsequent attention. Darius A. Spieth’s inquiry into Revolutionary Paris and the Market for Netherlandish Art reveals the dominance of “Golden Age” pictures in the artistic discourse and sales transactions before, during, and after the French Revolution. A broadly based statistical investigation, undertaken as part of this study, shows that the upheaval reduced prices for Netherlandish paintings by about 55% compared to the Old Regime, and that it took until after the July Revolution of 1830 for art prices to return where they stood before 1789.
Hugh Johnson has won a legion of fans with his keen ability to make the sometimes complex topic of wine wonderfully lucid—and every year, his popular pocket guide is a bestseller. That makes it number one in the market. Here, in it’s 30th anniversary year, he has completely revised and updated this classic, offering more current news than ever on over 6,000 wines, growers, and regions, along with up-to-the-minute vintage information, recommended wines (including budget options), and star ratings. With this book in hand, wine lovers won’t need anything else to help them select anything from a bottle for an everyday dinner to a prestige vintage for investment. A new section showcases Johnson’s special, personal choices, and there are plenty of quick-reference maps, charts, and fact boxes for a little extra guidance.
This book will tell all you need to know about British English spelling. It's a reference work intended for anyone interested in the English language, especially those who teach it, whatever the age or mother tongue of their students. It will be particularly useful to those wishing to produce well-designed materials for teaching initial literacy via phonics, for teaching English as a foreign or second language, and for teacher training. English spelling is notoriously complicated and difficult to learn; it is correctly described as much less regular and predictable than any other alphabetic orthography. However, there is more regularity in the English spelling system than is generally appreciated. This book provides, for the first time, a thorough account of the whole complex system. It does so by describing how phonemes relate to graphemes and vice versa. It enables searches for particular words, so that one can easily find, not the meanings or pronunciations of words, but the other words with which those with unusual phoneme-grapheme/grapheme-phoneme correspondences keep company. Other unique features of this book include teacher-friendly lists of correspondences and various regularities not described by previous authorities, for example the strong tendency for the letter-name vowel phonemes (the names of the letters ) to be spelt with those single letters in non-final syllables.
Tap dancing legends Fayard (b. 1914) and Harold (1918-2000) Nicholas amazed crowds with their performances in musicals and films from the 30s to the 80s. They performed with Gene Kelly in The Pirate, with Cab Calloway in Stormy Weather, with Dorothy Dandridge (Harold's wife) in Sun Valley Serenade, and with a number of other stars on the stage and on the screen. Author Hill not only guides readers through the brothers' showstopping successes and the repressive times in which their dancing won them universal acclaim, she also offers extensive insight into the history and choreography of tap dancing, bringing readers up to speed on the art form in which the Nicholas Brothers excelled.
