Nine Abstract Artists, Their Work and Theory
Author: Lawrence Alloway
Publisher:
Published: 1954
Total Pages: 108
ISBN-13:
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Abstraction in Post-War British Literature 1945-1980
Author: Natalie Ferris
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2022-03-29
Total Pages: 239
ISBN-13: 0192594125
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn a catalogue note for the 1965 exhibition 'Between Poetry and Painting' at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the poet Edwin Morgan probed the relationship between abstraction and literature: 'Abstract painting can often satisfy, but "abstract poetry" can only exist in inverted commas'. Language may be fragmented, rearranged, or distorted, abstract in so far as it is withdrawn from a particular system of knowledge, but Morgan was of the mind that to be wholly 'disruptive' was to deprive a poem of its 'point' as an 'object of contemplation'. Whilst abstract art may have come to fulfil or or fortify an impression of post-war taste, abstraction in literature continued to be treated with suspicion. But how does this speak to the extent to which Britain's literary culture was responsive to progress compared to its artistic culture? Abstraction in Post-War British Literature 1945-1980 traces a line of literary experimentation in post-war British literature that was prompted by the aesthetic, philosophical and theoretical demands of abstraction. Spanning the period 1945 to 1980, it observes the ways in which certain aesthetic advancements initiated new forms of literary expression to posit a new genealogy of interdisciplinary practice in Britain. At a time in which Britain became conscious of its evolving identity within an increasingly globalised context, this study accounts for the range of Continental and Transatlantic influences in order to more accurately locate the networks at play. Exploring the contributions made by individuals, such as Herbert Read, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Christine Brooke- Rose, as well as by groups of practitioners. It brings a wide range of previously unexplored archival material into the public domain and offers a comprehensive account of the evolving status of abstraction across cultural, institutional, and literary contexts.
Art and Pluralism
Author: Nigel Whiteley
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Published: 2012-08-03
Total Pages: 539
ISBN-13: 1781386145
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book examines the writings of Lawrence Alloway (1926-1990), one of the most influential and widely-respected art writers of the post-War years. It provides a close and critical reading of his writings, and sets his work in the cultural and political context of the London and New York art worlds of the 1950s to the early 1980s.
Dialectical Conversions
Author: David Craven
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Published: 2013-08-15
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 1846318114
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFew art critics in Western art history have ever had the broad-ranging impact over several decades of Donald Kuspit, a philosopher and psychoanalyst who from 1970 until the present has been a commanding figure on the international stage. A student of German thinker Theodor Adorno under whom he earned the first of his three doctorates, Kuspit introduced a new type of philosophical art criticism into the art world. He drew on both phenomenology and Critical Theory before he then increasingly adopted psychoanalysis. Since Kuspit himself has always measured his own place in the history of art criticism by how rigorously he engages with competing approaches, this book is a searching survey of Kuspit's role in triggering several historic shifts within art criticism, beginning with his now legendary 1974 article in Artforum, "A Phenomenological Approach to Artistic Intention." Dense and demanding, yet deft and incisive, Kuspit's multi-faceted art criticism has become world famous for reasons that artists, critics, art historians, and philosophers from at least ten different nations explain from various points of view. Divided into three parts and introduced by a lengthy introduction, the book features comments by recognized artists like Rudolf Baranik, Anselm Kiefer, and April Gornik, as well as critical commentaries by many scholars and critics from around the world on the richness of Kuspit's insights into art.
From Fingers to Digits
Author: Margaret A. Boden
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2019-07-16
Total Pages: 393
ISBN-13: 0262039621
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEssays on computer art and its relation to more traditional art, by a pioneering practitioner and a philosopher of artificial intelligence. In From Fingers to Digits, a practicing artist and a philosopher examine computer art and how it has been both accepted and rejected by the mainstream art world. In a series of essays, Margaret Boden, a philosopher and expert in artificial intelligence, and Ernest Edmonds, a pioneering and internationally recognized computer artist, grapple with key questions about the aesthetics of computer art. Other modern technologies—photography and film—have been accepted by critics as ways of doing art. Does the use of computers compromise computer art's aesthetic credentials in ways that the use of cameras does not? Is writing a computer program equivalent to painting with a brush? Essays by Boden identify types of computer art, describe the study of creativity in AI, and explore links between computer art and traditional views in philosophical aesthetics. Essays by Edmonds offer a practitioner's perspective, considering, among other things, how the experience of creating computer art compares to that of traditional art making. Finally, the book presents interviews in which contemporary computer artists offer a wide range of comments on the issues raised in Boden's and Edmonds's essays.
Burning the Box of Beautiful Things
Author: Alex Seago
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 1995
Total Pages: 268
ISBN-13: 9780198174059
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAlex Seago's book has been inspired by his desire to understand and discover the origins of postmodern culture in Britain. One of the main points of his study is that it was art and design students who were among the first to be aware of and to articulate social implications of postmodernculture. Arguing that postwar art schools provided a vital crucible for the development of a particuarly English cultural sensibility, he focuses on cultural change at the Royal College of Art, London, during the 1950s and 1960s. The students' attack on the English 'box of beautiful things' - aterm used by a former student to describe the neo-Romantic, neo-Victorian, highly decorated tastes of some RCA tutors - took several forms which eventually resulted in the Pop Art produced by the 1959-62 generation (Boshier, Phillips, Jones, Hockney et al.)Alex Seago traces the emergence of English postmodernism through the pages of ARK: The Journal of the Royal College of Art, interviewing ARK's editors, art editors, and contributors including Len Deighton, novelist and art editor of ARK 10; Clifford Hatts, student at the RCA 1946-8 and later head ofthe Design Group, BBC; Peter Blake (RCA Painting School, 1953-6); Robyn Denny (RCA Painting School, 1954-7). ARK's object of enquiry remained 'the elusive but necessary relationships between the arts and the social context' throughout its twenty-five year history, making it a valuable archive forthe cultural historian: in its most memorable issues, ARK's layouts complemented the contents to produce distillations of the energy and enthusiasm of the period under review.
The Fran and Ray Stark Collection of 20th-century Sculpture at the J. Paul Getty Museum
Author: Christopher Bedford
Publisher: Getty Publications
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 188
ISBN-13: 9780892369041
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis catalogue celebrates the recently installed collection of twentieth-century sculpture donated to the J. Paul Getty Trust by the Fran and Ray Stark Trust in 2005. The book takes the reader on a visual tour of the J. Paul Getty Museum's new sculpture gardens and installations, which features twenty-eight works by artists such as Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Ferdinand Léger, Roy Lichtenstein, René Magritte, Aristide Maillol, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, and Isamu Noguchi. The book offers essays on the curatorial decisions involved in establishing harmonious groupings; a history of European and American sculpture within built outdoor environments and gardens; and catalogue entries that discuss individual pieces within their broader art-historical contexts.
Transculturation
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2016-08-01
Total Pages: 281
ISBN-13: 9401201242
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTransculturation: Cities, Spaces and Architectures in Latin America explores the critical potential inherent in the notion of “transculturation” in order to understand contemporary architectural practices and their cultural realities in Latin America. Despite its enormous theoretical potential and its importance within Latin American cultural theory, the term transculturation had never permeated into architectural debates. In fact, none of the main architectural theories produced in and about Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century engaged seriously with this notion as a way to analyze the complex social, cultural and political circumstances that affect the development of the continent’s cities, its urban spaces and its architectures. Therefore, this book demonstrates, for the first time, that the term transculturation is an invaluable tool in dismantling the essentialist, genealogical and hierarchical perspectives from which Latin American architectural practices have been viewed. Transculturation: Cities, Spaces and Architectures in Latin America introduces new readings and interpretations of the work of well-known architects, new analyses regarding the use of architectural materials and languages, new questions to do with minority architectures, gender and travel, and, from beginning to end, it engages with important political and theoretical debates that have rarely been broached within Latin American architectural circles.
Shaping the City to Come
Author: Deborah Lewittes
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Published: 2022-02-15
Total Pages: 320
ISBN-13: 180207077X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis study reassesses modern architecture and town planning in mid-twentieth-century England, highlighting ideas and debates that were in circulation as modernist ideals gradually took root. The book reveals an architectural culture that was serious, active, and visionary, with impact that extended into the postwar years. Through close studies of specific works and writings, the author acknowledges the importance of the international context of modern architecture as it intersected with the variety of narratives that defined English modernism, such as national identity, the New Empiricism, and the picturesque, taking into account the large community of émigré architects who settled in England with the approach of World War II, as well as a more general dissemination of international style forms and theories from continental Europe. The book places familiar figures such as Berthold Lubetkin and Ernö Goldfinger, as well as projects such as Tecton’s Penguin Pool and the Festival of Britain’s “Live Architecture” Exhibition, in new light, presenting a rich picture of the modern architectural climate in England. The study draws attention to the debates, proposals, and processes that fed into the development of modernist, urban-minded, and forward-looking architectural ideals.
The Independent Group
Author: Anne Massey
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 1995
Total Pages: 180
ISBN-13: 9780719042454
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis study looks at the artists, designers and writers who formed the Independent Group in the early 1950s including such influential figures as Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Nigel Henderson, William Turnball, Rayner Banham and Alison and Peter Smithson. As a group they aimed to raise the status of popular objects and icons within modern visual culture. The development of the Independent Group is mapped out against the changing nature of modernism during the Cold War era, as well as the impact of mass consumption on post-war British society. In this book, Massey examines the cultural context of the formation of the Group, covering the founding of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the meanings of modernism, and the creation of a national identity. Key exhibitions such as "Parallel of Life and Art" and "This Is Tomorrow" are also examined.
