Trace the history of art through 48 paintings and four colors, woven together to form a fascinating and kaleidoscopic tale. BLUE: the color of the beyond and the divine RED: the color of blood, purity and sensuality GREEN: the color of new life, but also of sickness and death GOLD: the color of wealth, attributed to the things we value most These four colors tell the history of art in a way that few other details can. From the pigments that hold them - sometimes wildly expensive, like Ultramarine, or dangerously toxic, like Emerald Green - to the varied and changing meanings applied to them, these colors grant us access to fascinating stories, both of individual works of art and the world in which they were created
In Unfolded—Paper in Design, Art, Architecture and Industry paper conquers the third dimension and demonstrates the undreamed-of possibilities it holds today for lightweight construction, product design, fashion and art. From "Paper", the collection of bags by Stefan Diez, to Konstantin Grcic’s paper models and the scented paper garments of Issey Miyake, this book presents paper as a high-quality contemporary and ecological material. An enormous selection of projects, the lavish design and numerous illustrations provide designers with invaluable inspiration for their work. The content core of the book is a comprehensive list of state-of-the-art paper products and innovative paper technologies, supporting designers in their everyday work with detailed information on the "high-tech" material paper. From Japanese washi paper and paper foam, to ceramic paper and carbon fiber paper, Unfolded presents the latest in research and development, as well as the most important methods and technologies in handcrafts and industry.
Unfolding Practice: Reflections on Learning and Teaching is a conversation between two artist-educators. Flowing across five chapters, the double sided accordion book has been curated from ten years of recorded conversations, field notes, planning, sketches, reflection, and teaching. The front of the book weaves text, illustration, cutouts, and screen prints, journeying through artistic process and educational practice. The back of the book is a guide, expanding on the practice of using accordion books as a tool for capturing, visualizing, and building upon reflective thinking. The brown paper alludes to the craft paper that is ubiquitous in schools and captures process more than the preciousness of a final product.
Leading scholars take a wider view of new media, placing it in the context of art history and acknowledging the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach in new media art studies and practice. Digital art has become a major contemporary art form, but it has yet to achieve acceptance from mainstream cultural institutions; it is rarely collected, and seldom included in the study of art history or other academic disciplines. In MediaArtHistories, leading scholars seek to change this. They take a wider view of media art, placing it against the backdrop of art history. Their essays demonstrate that today's media art cannot be understood by technological details alone; it cannot be understood without its history, and it must be understood in proximity to other disciplines—film, cultural and media studies, computer science, philosophy, and sciences dealing with images. Contributors trace the evolution of digital art, from thirteenth-century Islamic mechanical devices and eighteenth-century phantasmagoria, magic lanterns, and other multimedia illusions, to Marcel Duchamp's inventions and 1960s kinetic and op art. They reexamine and redefine key media art theory terms—machine, media, exhibition—and consider the blurred dividing lines between art products and consumer products and between art images and science images. Finally, MediaArtHistories offers an approach for an interdisciplinary, expanded image science, which needs the "trained eye" of art history. Contributors Rudlof Arnheim, Andreas Broeckmann, Ron Burnett, Edmond Couchot, Sean Cubitt, Dieter Daniels, Felice Frankel, Oliver Grau, Erkki Huhtamo, Douglas Kahn, Ryszard W. Kluszczynski, Machiko Kusahara, Timothy Lenoir, Lev Manovich, W.J.T. Mitchell, Gunalan Nadarajan, Christiane Paul, Louise Poissant, Edward A. Shanken, Barbara Maria Stafford, and Peter Weibel
A stunning monograph and complete retrospective of the work of paper engineer and artist Matthew Shlian, covering a decade of unrivaled and unexpected creativity. Since its invention in approximately 100 BCE China, paper has been a cornerstone of civilization. The invention of paper shaped currency, communication, history, and religion. And yet, perhaps because of its widespread accessibility today, paper is underestimated as an artistic medium. Artist Matthew Shlian has always recognized paper’s significance as a medium and message, and as a material for experimentation and understanding. In his hands, engineering, science, and geometry form stunning and unexpected art. Folded, tessellated, compressed, extrapolated, two-dimensional paper becomes three-dimensional sculpture. Since he began in 2004, Shlian’s signature paper engineering has gained international recognition and led to collaborations with Apple, SUPREME, Shinola, Herman Miller, Warp Records, Sesame Street, and exhibitions around the world. Unfolding is the first monograph of Shlian’s genius, compiling his most important work over the past decade. A journey into the new possibilities of folding technology, the intricate complexities of Islamic patterns, and the sheer potential offered by a sheet of white paper, Unfolding is the celebration of a humble material, on the edge of its existence, elevated to timeless form and possibility.
Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the west central African kingdom of Kongo practiced Christianity and actively participated in the Atlantic world as an independent, cosmopolitan realm. Drawing on an expansive and largely unpublished set of objects, images, and documents, Cecile Fromont examines the advent of Kongo Christian visual culture and traces its development across four centuries marked by war, the Atlantic slave trade, and, finally, the rise of nineteenth-century European colonialism. By offering an extensive analysis of the religious, political, and artistic innovations through which the Kongo embraced Christianity, Fromont approaches the country's conversion as a dynamic process that unfolded across centuries. The African kingdom's elite independently and gradually intertwined old and new, local and foreign religious thought, political concepts, and visual forms to mold a novel and constantly evolving Kongo Christian worldview. Fromont sheds light on the cross-cultural exchanges between Africa, Europe, and Latin America that shaped the early modern world, and she outlines the religious, artistic, and social background of the countless men and women displaced by the slave trade from central Africa to all corners of the Atlantic world.
"The influential artist Hedi Kyle and renowned architecture graduate Ulla Warchol shows you how to create their unique designs using folding techniques. From creating flag books and fishbones, to blizzards and nesting boxes, you'll gain an invaluable insight into the work of two skilled artists with this fun read! With the help of their thorough instructions and simple illustrations, you'll be on your way to becoming a pro paper crafter in no time at all" – Sew magazine "A wonderful insight into the work of a truly skilled artist" – PaperCrafter The renowned and influential book artist Hedi Kyle shows you step–by–step how to create her unique designs using folding techniques in The Art of the Fold. Bookbinding and paper craft projects include flag books, blizzard books, the fishbone fold, and nesting boxes. Written by the doyenne of artists' books, Hedi Kyle, The Art of the Fold is a wonderful insight into the work of a truly skilled artist. Hedi will show you how to bind a book and fold paper to create over 35 of her cut–fold book designs. The book is beautifully illustrated with Hedi's finished works of art. An excerpt from the book: 'I can still remember the thrill I experienced when my first folded book structure emerged from my fingers – how eager I was to explore its possibilities and to share it with whoever was interested. The Flag Book, as I now call it, is a simple accordion and has interlocking pages oriented in opposite directions. Little did I know that this simple structure would have legs and be the catalyst for the next forty–plus years of thinking about and making books. The common perception of the book today is fairly straightforward: a series of pages organized around a spine and protected on either side by two covers. This format allows for easy access, storage and retrieval of information. Yet what happens when the book is stripped away of centuries of preconceptions and is allowed to reveal something else: playfulness, utility, invention? Expanding the notion of the book is what the structures in the following chapters of The Art of the Fold attempt to do. Exploring its tactile, sculptural form, primarily through folding methods, the book as a structural object is celebrated while content is considered in a new and unconventional way. My range in this medium has always been broad. In part this is due to my introduction to the world of bookbinding and some chance encounters. In the 1970s in New York City, the art and craft of hand bookbinding and papermaking were experiencing an unprecedented revival. I was fortunate to arrive in the city at just this moment. With an art–school background and an impulse to make things, I was naturally drawn to pursue this new opportunity. The Center for Book Arts, the famous forerunner of so many centers yet to come, was located in a small storefront just down the street from where I lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Under the direction of founder Richard Minsky, it had a radical mission: to push concept, materials, printing and making of artist books in a new direction. When Richard dared me to teach at the Center one evening a week, I was hooked. My career as a book conservator and a book artist has now spanned over 45 years. As head conservator at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, I've had the opportunity to handle some of the rarest volumes and manuscripts in the world. I have also dealt with decrepit books, torn maps and countless curiosities discovered in stacks and archives. All were endless sources for ideas and provided a springboard for a departure from tradition. Leading book–arts workshops around the world and a 25 year tenure teaching in the graduate program for Book Arts and Printmaking at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia have shown me, in retrospect, that the more I taught, t
As more parts of the world outside Europe became accessible =– and in the wake of social and technological developments in the 18th century – a growing number of exotic artefacts entered European markets. The markets for such objects thrived, while a collecting culture and museums emerged. This book provides insights into the methods and places of exchange, networks, prices, expertise, and valuation concepts, as well as the transfer and transport of these artefacts over 300 years and across four continents. The contributions are from international experts, including Ting Chang, Nélia Dias, Noëmie Etienne, Jonathan Fine, Philip Jones, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Léa Saint-Raymond, and Masako Yamamoto.
In this highly praised and seminal work, Alan Merriam demonstrates that music is a social behavior—one worthy and available to study through the methods of anthropology. In it, he convincingly argues that ethnomusicology, by definition, cannot separate the sound-analysis of music from its cultural context of people thinking, acting, and creating. The study begins with a review of the various approaches in ethnomusicology. He then suggests a useful and simple research model: ideas about music lead to behavior related to music and this behavior results in musical sound. He explains many aspects and outcomes of this model, and the methods and techniques he suggests are useful to anyone doing field work. Further chapters provide a cross-cultural round-up of concepts about music, physical and verbal behavior related to music, the role of the musician, and the learning and composing of music. The Anthropology of Music illuminates much of interest to musicologists but to social scientists in general as well.
