Kategoria BISAC: Art >> Criticism & Theory

Known for--and even overshadowed by--his brutal and spectacular building cuts, Gordon Matta-Clark's oeuvre is unique in the history of American art. He worked in the 1970s on the borders between art and architecture and his diverse practice is often understood as an outright rejection of the tenets of high modernism. Stephen Walker argues instead for the artist's ambivalent relationship with the architectural heritage he is often claimed to disavow, thus making this the first book to extrapolate Matta-Clark's thinking beyond its immediate context.

Walker considers the broad range of...

This book explores craft practices in both North America and Britain, revealing an astonishingly rich and diverse picture of artisanal work today. The text ranges across both urban and rural crafts, and analyzes how the country/city dichotomy creates differing approaches, practices and objects. Analyzed in the context of their environment and its localized history, crafted objects are shown to embody or critique particular urban/rural myths and traditions. Covering both traditional and cutting-edge crafts from the small-scale domestic to large outdoor works, "Contemporary Crafts...

The last few decades have witnessed an explosion in ideas and theories on art. Art itself has never been more popular, but much recent thinking remains inaccessible and difficult to use. This book assesses the work of leading thinkers (including artists) who are having a major impact on making, criticizing and interpreting art. Each entry, written by a leading international expert, presents a concise, critical appraisal of a thinker and their contribution to thought about art and its place in the wider cultural context. A guide to the key thinkers who shape today's world of art, this book...

How do common household items such as basic plastic house wares or high-tech digital cameras transform our daily lives? The Design of Everyday Life considers this question in detail, from the design of products through to their use in the home. Drawing on interviews with consumers themselves, the authors look at how everyday objects, ranging from screwdrivers to photo management software, are used on a practical level. Closely investigating the design, production and use of mass-market goods, the authors offer new interpretations of how consumers' needs are met and manufactured....

Sustainability is now a buzzword both among professionals and scholars. However, though climate change and resource depletion are now widely recognized by business as major challenges, and while new practices like "green design" have emerged, efforts towards change remain weak and fragmented. Exposing these limitations, Design Futuring systematically presents ideas and methods for Design as an expanded ethical and professional practice.

Design Futuring argues that responding to ethical, political, social and ecological concerns now requires a new type of practice which...

This book presents a broad introduction to design theory and practice. Historical, contextual, philosophical, technical, visual and practical approaches to Design are often presented separately. But each approach impacts on others and together they are critical to a rounded understanding of design. Beautiful Thing presents a clear synthesis of these approaches, explaining all the basic concepts and allowing the reader to connect the different elements of Design. Both lively and accessible, the book takes the reader step by step through the key topics of taste, design evolution,...

Art as Far as the Eye Can See puts art back where it matters -- at the center of politics. Art used to be an engagement between artist and materials but it has now become technologized. Its materials have become light rather than matter. In the 21st Century the new battleground is art as light versus art as matter.

Virilio argues that this change reflects how speed and politics - the defining characteristics of the 20th Century - have been transformed in the 21st Century to speed and mass culture. Politics has been replaced with mass culture...and the defining characteristic...

Trash, garbage, rubbish, dross, detritus -- in this enjoyably radical exploration of junk, Gillian Whiteley re-thinks art's historical and present appropriation of junk within our eco-conscious and globalized culture. She does this through an illustrated exploration of particular materials, key moments and locations and the telling of a panoply of trash narratives. Found and ephemeral materials are primarily associated with assemblage -- object-based practices which emerged in the mid-1950s and culminated in the seminal exhibition ""The Art of Assemblage"" in New York in 1961. With its...

The pioneering film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein is known for the unequalled impact his films have had on the development of cinema. Less is known about his remarkable and extensive writings, which present a continent of ideas about film. Robert Robertson presents a lucid and engaging introduction to a key area of Eisenstein's thought: his ideas about the audiovisual in cinema, which are more pertinent today than ever before. With the advent of digital technology, music and sound now act as independent variables combined with the visual medium to produce a truly audiovisual...