Arts / Criticism & Theory

Dynamics and Performativity of Imagination: The Image between the Visible and the Invisible

by Bernd Huppauf & Christoph Wulf

In this interdisciplinary anthology, essays study the relationship between the imagination and images both material and mental. Through case studies on a diverse array of topics including photography, film,...

Key Writers on Art: From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century

by Chris Murray

Key Writers on Art: From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century offers a unique and authoritative guide to theories of art from Ancient Greece to the end of the Victorian era, written by an international panel...

Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures:

by Leonard Barkan

Why do painters sometimes wish they were poets--and why do poets sometimes wish they were painters? What happens when Rembrandt spells out Hebrew in the sky or Poussin spells out Latin on a tombstone? What happens...

Flirting with Space: Journeys and Creativity

by David Crouch

Illustrated with investigations undertaken by the author over the past 20 years into the work of artists, caravanning and tourism, photography and parish maps, this book devises new critical syntheses of the...

Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms

by Barry Sandywell

Exploring the languages and cultures of visual studies and offering a theoretical introduction to the many languages of visual discourse, this substantial dictionary explains the foundations of current theoretical...

Letters on Cézanne

by Rainer maria Rilke & Joel Agee

Rilke's prayerful responses to the french master's beseeching art

For a long time nothing, and then suddenly one has the right eyes.

Virtually every day in the fall of 1907, Rainer Maria Rilke returned to a Paris...

Inside Bruegel

by Edward Snow

In this brilliant, original and lavishly illustrated book, Edward Snow undertakes an inquiry into a single painting by the Flemish master Peter Bruegel the Elder—the kaleidoscopic Children’s Games—in order...

Meanings of Abstract Art: Between Nature and Theory

by Paul Crowther & Isabel Wünsche

Traditional art is based on conventions of resemblance between the work and that which it is a representation "of". Abstract art, in contrast, either adopts alternative modes of visual representation or reconfigures...

Art and Enlightenment: Scottish Aesthetics in the 18th Century

by Jonathan Friday

During the intellectual and cultural flowering of Scotland in the 18th century few subjects attracted as much interest among men of letters as aesthetics - the study of art from the subjective perspective of...

Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars

by Camille Paglia

WIth full-color illustrations throughout

From the best-selling author of Sexual Personae and Break, Blow, Burn and one of our most acclaimed cultural critics, here is an enthralling journey through Western art’s...

Theatre as Human Action: An Introduction to Theatre Arts

by Thomas S. Hischak

Through the use of four model plays-Macbeth, Our Town, A Raisin in the Sun, and Rent-this textbook informs the student about theatre arts, stimulates interest in the art form, leads to critical thinking about...

Aesthetics after Metaphysics: From Mimesis to Metaphor

by Miguel Beistegui

This book focuses on a dimension of art which the philosophical tradition (from Plato to Hegel and even Adorno) has consistently overlooked, such was its commitment - explicit or implicit - to mimesis and the...

Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime

by Patricia Hampl

Just out of college, Patricia Hampl was mesmerized by a Matisse painting in the Art Institute of Chicago: an aloof woman gazing at goldfish in a bowl, a Moroccan screen behind her. In Blue Arabesque, Hampl explores...

Time and the Digital: Connecting Technology, Aesthetics, and a Process Philosophy of Time

by Timothy Scott Barker

An original consideration of the temporal in digital art and aesthetics

Air Guitar

by Dave Hickey

The 23 essays (or "love songs") that make up the now classic volume Air Guitar trawl a "vast, invisible underground empire" of pleasure, through record stores, honky-tonks, art galleries, jazz clubs, cocktail...

Sculptors, Painters, and Italy

by Sirpa Salenius

The essays in Sculptors, Painters, and Italy: Italian Influence on Nineteenth-Century American Art examine the influence of Italy in the works of nineteenth-century American sculptors and painters. The focus...

A Hedonist's Guide to Art

by Laura K. Jones

A Hedonist's Guide to Art shines a light on both the little-known and the wilder shores of contemporary art, affording readers a peek inside the machinations of the gilded beast known as the "Art World." Here...

The View From The Studio Door: How Artists Find Their Way In An Uncertain World

by Ted Orland

How artists convert art theory into art making. Sequel to the author's previous best-seller, "Art & Fear".

Seen, Written: Kindle Edition

by Klaus Kertess

Curator and historian, gallerist and writer: Klaus Kertess has long been a decisive and forward-thinking presence in the art world. He founded the Bykert Gallery in 1966, where he represented artists including...

The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination

by Daniel J. Boorstin

By piecing the lives of selected individuals into a grand mosaic, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel J. Boorstin explores the development of artistic innovation over 3,000 years. A hugely ambitious chronicle...