Alice Aycock's large, semi-architectural works deal with the interaction of structure, site, materials, and the psychophysical responses of the viewer. Offered meaningful but contradictory clues by both her images and her texts, viewers attempt to discover not only what the work of art conveys but how it communicates its contents, in investigations that parallel the artist's own. In Alice Aycock: Sculpture and Projects, Robert Hobbs examines the development of Aycock's work over twenty years and her negotiation -- along with other artists who came of age in the early 1970s -- of the...

Tracing the history of the cult of Ludovica, the Altieri Chapel, and the statue, Shelley Perlove illuminates Bernini's contribution, both artistically and iconographically, to the chapel and proposes an interpretation of the precise nature of the experience the beata is undergoing in the sculpture. This interpretation is developed from an examination of the statue in the full context of other works of art in the chapel, medieval and Renaissance tomb sculpture, contemporary accounts of Ludovica's life and cult, and devotional Catholic literature undoubtedly known to Bernini. Woven...

The role of monuments in the Roman imperial cult.

From monumental cathedrals to simple parish churches, perhaps as many as 100,000 churches and civic buildings were constructed in Mexico during the viceregal or colonial period (1535-1821). Many of these structures remain today as witnesses to the fruitful blending of Old and New World forms and styles that created an architecture of enduring vitality.

In this profusely illustrated book, Robert J. Mullen provides a much-needed overview of Mexican colonial architecture and its attendant sculpture. Writing with just the right level of detail for students and general readers, he places...

Winner, Top 100 Books on Science, American Scientist, 2001

In 1992, the University of Texas Press published Before Writing, Volume I: From Counting to Cuneiform and Before Writing, Volume II: A Catalog of Near Eastern Tokens. In these two volumes, Denise Schmandt-Besserat set forth her groundbreaking theory that the cuneiform script invented in the Near East in the late fourth millennium B.C.--the world's oldest known system of writing--derived from an archaic counting device.

How Writing Came About draws material from both volumes...

Claude Levi-Strauss's fascination with Northwest Coast Indian art dates back to the late 1930s. "Sometime before the outbreak of the Second World War," he writes, "I had already bought in Paris a Haida slate panel pipe." In New York in the early forties, he shared his enthusiasm with a group of Surrealist refugee artists with whom he was associated. "Surely it will not be long," he wrote in an article published in 1943, "before we see the collections from this part of the world moved from ethnographic to fine arts museums to take their just place amidst the antiquities of Egypt of Persia...

A unique anthology of articles on contemporary sculptors drawn from the 25-year history of Sculpture magazine, A Sculpture Reader offers a valuable overview of three dimensional art since 1980. Focusing on individual artists rather than themes or movements, the 42 essays in A Sculpture Reader capture the wide-ranging possibilities that characterize contemporary sculpture.

Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, one of the world s leading experts on classical sculpture, turns her attention in this volume to the fourth century, a period of transition from the classical Athenian style to an array of styles found simultaneously in the Hellenistic diaspora. Though a period very rich in important monuments, the fourth century has been particularly challenging and vexing to scholars, and Ridgway s is the first comprehensive study of this sculpture in sixty years.
Ridgway s careful summaries of ongoing scholarly debates illustrate how the fourth century fits into the...

Late nineteenth-century Britain experienced an explosion of interest in sculpture. Sculptors of the "New Sculpture" movement sought a new direction and a modern idiom for their art. This book analyzes for the first time the art-theoretical concerns of the late-Victorian sculptors, focusing on their attitudes toward representation of the human body. David J. Getsy uncovers a previously unrecognized sophistication in the New Sculpture through close study of works by key figures in the movement: Frederic Leighton, Alfred Gilbert, Hamo Thornycroft, Edward Onslow Ford, and James Havard...