Arts / Criticism & Theory

The Art Spirit

by Robert Henri

The classic work of art criticism, in a beautiful new edition

The Art Instinct

by Denis Dutton

The Art Instinct combines two of the most fascinating and contentious disciplines, art and evolutionary science, in a provocative new work that will revolutionize the way art itself is perceived. Aesthetic taste,...

Visual Literacy

by James Elkins

What does it mean to be visually literate? Does it mean different things in the arts and the sciences? In the developed West and in Asia or in developing nations? If we all need to become

Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-century Art

by Wendy Steiner

Whereas previous eras had celebrated beauty as the central aim of art, the modernist avant-garde were deeply suspicious of beauty and its perennial symbols, woman and ornament, preferring instead the thrill...

Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics

by Georg Hegel & Bernard Bosanquet

No philosopher has held a higher opinion of art than Hegel, yet nor was any so profoundly pessimistic about its prospects - despite living in the German golden age of Goethe, Mozart and Schiller. For if the...

The Shape of a Pocket

by John Berger

The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the New World Economic Order. The people...

The Next Thing: Art in the Twenty-first Century

by Pablo Baler

The Next Thing: Art in the Twenty-first Century is an illustrated collection of commissioned essays that attempt to anticipate, through current artistic productions, the aesthetic sensibility that will define...

Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art

by Peter Osborne

A new reading of the philosophy of contemporary art by the author of The Politics of Time

Contemporary art is the object of inflated and widely divergent claims. What kind of discourse can help us give it a critical...

The State of Art Criticism

by James Elkins & Michael Newman

Art criticism is spurned by universities, but widely produced and read. It is seldom theorized and its history has hardly been investigated. The State of Art Criticism presents an international conversation...

Erotic Ambiguities: The Female Nude in Art

by Helen McDonald

Art is always ambiguous. When it involves the female body it can also be erotic. Erotic Ambiguities is a study of how contemporary women artists have reconceptualised the figure of the female nude. Helen McDonald...

Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture

by Liedeke Plate & Anneke Smelik

This volume pursues a new line of research in cultural memory studies by understanding memory as a performative act in art and popular culture. The authors take their cue from the observation that art and popular...

Make Good Art

by Neil Gaiman

In May 2012, bestselling author Neil Gaiman delivered the commencement address at Philadelphia's University of the Arts, in which he shared his thoughts about creativity, bravery, and strength. He encouraged...

Rethinking Aesthetics: The Role of Body in Design

by Ritu Bhatt

Rethinking Aesthetics is the first book to bring together prominent voices in the fields of architecture, philosophy, aesthetics, and cognitive sciences to radically rethink the relationship between body and...

What Art Is

by Arthur C. Danto

What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, What Art Is challenges the...

Femininity in Asian Women Artists' Work from China, Korea and USA: If the Shoe Fits

by Patricia Karetzky

Patricia Karetzky discusses the metaphor of the shoe and how it is present in different women artists' work in China, Korea and USA

Good Day Today: David Lynch Destabilises The Spectator

by Daniel Neofetou

This book argues that the films of David Lynch pose a radical challenge to conservative and absolutist ideologies.

Always Looking: Essays on Art

by John Updike & Christopher Carduff

In this posthumous collection of John Updike’s art writings, a companion volume to the acclaimed Just Looking (1989) and Still Looking (2005), readers are again treated to “remarkably elegant essays” (...

New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century

by Jed Perl

In this landmark work, Jed Perl captures the excitement of a generation of legendary artists–Jackson Pollack, Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ellsworth Kelly among them–who came to New York, mingled...

Antoine's Alphabet

by Jed Perl

Antoine Watteau, one of the most mysterious painters who ever lived, is the inspiration for this delightful investigation of the tangled relationship between art and life. Weaving together historical fact and...

Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present

by Alexander Dumbadze & Suzanne Hudson

An engaging account of today’s contemporary art world that features original articles by leading international art historians, critics, curators, and artists, introducing varied perspectives on the most important...