The Art of Poverty is the first book in English to analyze depictions of beggars in 16th-century European art. Featuring works from Germany, the Low Countries, Britain, France, and Italy, it discusses a diverse body of imagery from crude woodcuts to monumental church altarpieces. It argues that these works largely conformed to two paradoxical, though mutually supportive, representational approaches. The book tracks the emergence of a trenchantly negative approach in Northern art, in which beggars are shown as vagabonds, alongside the other predominant visual mode, where beggars are exalted as examples of sacred purity. The Art of Poverty's progressive approach and cross-disciplinary theme makes it vital reading for those concerned with the development of early modern European culture.
What do they all mean – the lascivious ape, autophagic dragons, pot-bellied heads, harp-playing asses, arse-kissing priests and somersaulting jongleurs to be found protruding from the edges of medieval buildings and in the margins of illuminated manuscripts? Michael Camille explores that riotous realm of marginal art, so often explained away as mere decoration or zany doodles, where resistance to social constraints flourished. Medieval image-makers focused attention on the underside of society, the excluded and the ejected. Peasants, servants, prostitutes and beggars all found their place, along with knights and clerics, engaged in impudent antics in the margins of prayer-books or, as gargoyles, on the outsides of churches. Camille brings us to an understanding of how marginality functioned in medieval culture and shows us just how scandalous, subversive, and amazing the art of the time could be.
The National Gallery's collection encompasses the neoclassicism of Jacques-Louis David as well as the naturalism of the Barbizon painters. The works of Jean-August-Dominique Ingres, such as the Gallery's famous portrait of Madame Moitessier, are precursors to the classical style that dominated later in the century. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's verdant landscapes, Honoré Daumier's political satires, and Jean-François Millet's realism are also included in this richly illustrated volume.
To the question of &lquo;what is art?&rquo;, it is often simply responded that art is whatever is produced by the artist. For John Molyneux, this clearly circular answer is deeply unsatisfying. In a tour de force spanning renaissance Italy and the Dutch Republic to contemporary leading figures, The Dialectics of Art instead approaches its subject matter as a distinct field of creative human labour that emerges alongside and in opposition to the alienation and commodification brought about by capitalism. The pieces and individuals Molyneux examines — from Michelangelo’s Slaves to Rembrandts Jewish Bride to the vast drip paintings of Jackson Pollock – are presented as embodying the social contradictions of their times, giving art an inherently political relevance. In its relationship of creative and dialectical tension to prevailing social relationships and norms, such art points beyond the existing order of things, hinting at a potential future society not based on alienated labour in which creative production becomes the property and practice of all.
The 1960s San Francisco spiritual revolution - a view from inside. Memoir about a spiritual teacher and a student in 1960s San Francisco, a colorful cast - including Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Allen Ginsburg, Murshid Samuel Lewis ("Sufi Sam"), Swami Satchidananda, Ajari Warwick, Rabbi Zalman Shalomi Schachter, and many more - and lives that were changed forever. Aryae Coopersmith, a 22-year old college student in 1960s San Francisco, meets the charismatic rabbi and folk singer Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and decides to start a community for him. He rents a house and moves in with his best friends. Before long they find themselves - and their house - at the center of the San Francisco spiritual revolution as thousands of young people - Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Sufis, and followers of countless gurus - flood in through their doors. Giving concerts to packed halls all over the world, Shlomo is recognized as Judaism's most influential musician, and one of its greatest spiritual leaders, of the late 20th century. Their house - the House of Love and Prayer - becomes an historic part of the legend of 1960s San Francisco. Aryae and his fellow students who are running other spiritual communities bring their teachers and gurus together to create a big San Francisco event - the Meeting of the Ways - to celebrate the oneness of the world's spiritual traditions and all the world's people. Aryae's best friends Efraim and Leah leave San Francisco and head to Jerusalem, where they become ultra-Orthodox Hasidim. Many others from the "House" follow. Aryae stays behind and settles into a secular life as a Silicon Valley business owner. After Shlomo dies, Aryae feels compelled to tell the story. To try to understand the lives of his old friends and pull together the scattered fragments of his own, he travels to Jerusalem. This profoundly moving memoir tells a story of grace, loss, redemption, and ultimately of acceptance. It invites us to reflect on how the 1960s spiritual revolution - with its vision of the oneness of us all - has impacted each of our lives.
In a world where the slightest edge can mean the difference between success and failure, Leisha Camden is beautiful, extraordinarily intelligent ... and one of an ever-growing number of human beings who have been genetically modified to never require sleep. Once considered interesting anomalies, now Leisha and the other "Sleepless" are outcasts -- victims of blind hatred, political repression, and shocking mob violence meant to drive them from human society ... and, ultimately, from Earth itself. But Leisha Camden has chosen to remain behind in a world that envies and fears her "gift" -- a world marked for destruction in a devastating conspiracy of freedom ... and revenge.
He’s spoken of only in whispers. His origins are a mystery. Some say that he’s descended from the last of the angels. Others say much worse. By all appearances, Rol Cortishane is just another ruthless pirate roaming the lawless seas, raiding warships and slavers. But the truth is something far more complicated and dangerous than anyone can imagine, including Rol. Even as he seeks to escape his birthright, Rol is slowly discovering who—and what—he really is. But the revelation won’t come without exacting a terrible price from Rol and all he loves. Now a treacherous figure from his past has made him a proposition it would be fatal to turn down. Racing against time, Rol must chart a harrowing course across the sea, back to the beautiful Rowen and the people she would rule as Queen. With his steadfast crew—the battle-scarred Creed, the mirthful halftroll Gallico, and a young escaped slave named Giffon—Rol will plunge headlong into a destiny as dark as they come. And toward a terrifying battle against an enemy as determined to destroy the world as Rol is to save it.
The Elizabethan age was one of unbounded vitality and exuberance; nowhere is the color and action of life more vividly revealed than in the rogue books and cony-catching (confidence game) pamphlets of the sixteenth century. This book presents seven of the age's liveliest works: Walker's Manifest Detection of Dice Play; Awdeley's Fraternity of Vagabonds; Harman's Caveat for Common Cursitors Vulgarly Called Vagabonds; Greene's Notable Discovery of Cozenage and Black Book's Messenger; Dekker's Lantern and Candle-light; and Rid's Art of Juggling. From these pages spring the denizens of the Elizabethan underworld: cutpurses, hookers, palliards, jarkmen, doxies, counterfeit cranks, bawdy-baskets, walking morts, and priggers of prancers. In his introduction, Arthur F. Kinney discusses the significance of these works as protonovels and their influence on such writers as Shakespeare. He also explores the social, political, and economic conditions of a time that spawned a community of renegades who conned their way to fame, fortune, and, occasionally, the rope at Tyburn.
