The Eternal Present, Volume I

The Eternal Present, Volume I

Author: Sigfried Giedion

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-10-17

Total Pages: 616

ISBN-13: 0691251916

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A groundbreaking reevaluation of paleolithic art through the lens of modernism, from the acclaimed historian of art and architecture In The Beginnings of Art, Sigfried Giedion, best known as a historian of architecture, shifts his attention to art and its very origins. Breaking with an earlier, materialistic approach, he explores paleolithic art by bringing abstraction, transparency, and simultaneity into play as modern art has revealed them anew. Focusing on the dual concepts of constancy and change, he examines paleolithic paintings, engravings, and sculpture, as well as modern art and recent examples of “primitive art.” He argues that the two keys to the meaning of prehistoric art are the symbol, portraying reality before reality exists, and the animal as humankind’s superior in the unified primordial world in which both human and animal were embedded. The result is a highly original and important study of prehistoric art.


Prehistoric Pictures and American Modernism

Prehistoric Pictures and American Modernism

Author: Elke Seibert

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-09-21

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1350185256

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In April 1937, the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted an exhibition that served as a catalyst for the appropriation of prehistoric rock art in postwar abstract painting. With the title "Prehistoric Rock Pictures in Europe and Africa", it displayed a range of copies from the influential collection of the German ethnologist Leo Frobenius. Largely disregarded in modern American art history up until now, this book highlights the importance of this exhibition to artists such as Josef Albers, Adolph Gottlieb, David Smith, and The American Abstract Artists group, who sought inspiration from the prehistoric images' primordial creativity. With a transnational scope, this book reveals new facts about the connections between Paris and New York, and the importance of communication and collaboration between them for these artists. In doing so, Seibert shows that this debate was about more than just legitimizing abstract art forms from the past, but about recognizing an autonomous American abstract art. Presenting unseen archival material, letters, and exhibition documentation, Prehistoric Pictures and American Modernism offers a new reading of the development of modern American abstraction, and will hold an important place in the historiography of the movement, its global traditions, and its legacy.


Explanations in Iconography

Explanations in Iconography

Author: Carol Diaz-Granados

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2023-10-15

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13:

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Case studies combine archaeological data and oral tradition to illustrate how the archaeological expression of beliefs and meanings passed down in the oral tradition may be interpreted. Explanations in Iconography: Ancient American Indian Art, Symbol, and Meaning is a significant contribution to the field of archaeology – a contribution in iconography studies that has gradually been coming into its own. Iconography is a rich and fascinating field, as applied to the complex, and heretofore enigmatic, imagery on many ancient Pre-Columbian artifacts. When viewed through the lens of early ethnographic records and American Indian oral traditions, as well as information from knowledgeable American Indian elders, it opens a world of understanding and clarity until recently unknown in the field of anthropological archaeology. It brings us closer to the people who created the artifacts and offers a glimpse into the symbols and beliefs that were important to them. Chapters cover a wide variety of artifacts and imagery from several ancient American Indian cultures. These artifacts include petroglyphs and pictographs (rock art), mounds, engraved shell cups and gorgets, burial architecture and grave furniture, pottery, copper repoussé, and other media. Ancient graphics, engravings, mounds, and all were created to deliver a message to the viewer – and many of those messages are finally coming to light. The artifacts included are from a variety of regions, mainly in the Midwest and Eastern United States. We hope that this volume will encourage others to look more deeply into the meaning behind the ancient imagery and arts and give the past a chance to be known.


Jaqueline Tyrwhitt: A Transnational Life in Urban Planning and Design

Jaqueline Tyrwhitt: A Transnational Life in Urban Planning and Design

Author: Ellen Shoshkes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-06

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1317111273

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Jaqueline Tyrwhitt’s life story is truly a gap in the planning and urban design literature: while largely unacknowledged, she played a central role in twentieth-century design history. Here, Ellen Shoshkes provides a full and insightful appraisal of the British town planner, editor, and educator who was at the center of the group of people who shaped the post-war Modern Movement. Beginning with an examination of her early work planning for the physical reconstruction of post-war Britain, Shoshkes argues that Tyrwhitt forged a highly influential synthesis of the bioregionalism of the pioneering Scottish planner Patrick Geddes and the tenets of European modernism, as adapted by the Mars group, the British chapter of CIAM. The book traces Tyrwhitt’s subsequent contribution to the development of this set of ideas in diverse geographical, cultural and institutional settings and through personal relationships. In doing so, the book also sheds light on Tyrwhitt’s role in the revival of transnational networks of scholars and practitioners concerned with a humanistic, ecological approach to urban and regional planning and design following World War Two, notably those connecting East and West. The book details Tyrwhitt’s role in creating new programs for planning education in England, North America and Asia; pioneering methods for registered, overlay mapping (a forerunner of GIS), shaping post-war CIAM discourse on humanistic urbanism and assisting CIAM president Jose Luis Sert establish a new professional field of urban design based on this discourse at Harvard University (1956-69); consulting to the United Nations; collaborating with Sigfried Giedion on all of his major publications in English from 1947 on; and helping Constantinos Doxiadis promote a holistic approach to the study of human settlements, which he termed Ekistics, as a founding editor of the journal Ekistics and in the ten Delos Symposia Doxiadis hosted (1963-1972). The book concludes with an a


Relativism in the Arts

Relativism in the Arts

Author: Betty Jean Craige

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2010-12-01

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0820338052

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In a world where the acceptance of relativism has caused erosion in the tradition of Cartesian dualism, representationalism in the arts has come under serious questioning. The contributors to this book seek new standards for defining and evaluating works of art. Relativism in the Arts brings together thinkers in the fields of music, art criticism, literary criticism, philosophy, and the “history of consciousness” to confront the problems of relativist aesthetics. Their essays range from theoretical discussions of the definition of art in our times to close examinations of particular artworks or art forms. The introduction by Betty Jean Craige presents reasons for the cultural self-reflectivity that gives rise to the peculiarities of modern art.


Radical Affections

Radical Affections

Author: Miriam Nichols

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0817356215

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In 1950 the poet Charles Olson published his influential essay "Projective Verse" in which he proposed a poetry of "open field" composition-to replace traditional closed poetic forms with improvised forms that would reflect exactly the content of the poem. The poets and poetry that have followed in the wake of the "projectivist" movement-the Black Mountain group, the New York School, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the Language poets-have since been studied at length. But more often than not they have been studied through the lens of continental theory with the effect that these high.


The Living Goddesses

The Living Goddesses

Author: Marija Gimbutas

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2001-01-12

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780520229150

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Presents evidence to support the author's woman-centered interpretation of prehistoric civilizations, considering the prehistoric goddesses, gods and religion, and discussing the living goddesses--deities which have continued to be venerated through the modern era.


The Origins of Shamanism, Spirit Beliefs, and Religiosity

The Origins of Shamanism, Spirit Beliefs, and Religiosity

Author: H. Sidky

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-06-21

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1498551904

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In The Origins of Shamanism, Spirit Beliefs, and Religiosity, H. Sidky examines shamanism as an ancient magico-religious, divinatory, medical, and psychotherapeutic tradition found in various parts of the world. Sidky uses first-hand ethnographic fieldwork and scientific theoretical work in archaeology, cognitive and evolutionary psychology, and neurotheology to explore the origins of shamanism, spirit beliefs, the evolution of human consciousness, and the origins of ritual behavior and religiosity.


Disjunctive Poetics

Disjunctive Poetics

Author: Peter Quartermain

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992-06-26

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780521412681

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Disjunctive Poetics examines some of the experimental contemporary writers, including Stein and Zukofsky, whose work forms a counterpoint to the mainstream writing of our time. Peter Quartermain suggests that the explosion of such modern writing is linked to the severe political, social, and economic dislocation of non-English-speaking immigrants who arriving in America at the turn of the century found themselves uprooted from their tradition and disassociated from their culture.