eBook downloads, eBook resources & eBook authors
Applies research on how humans perceive, process and store information to the viewing and interpretation of art. The author argues that the clearest view of the mind comes from creating or experiencing art. The illustrations cover a range of examples but focus primarily on Western art.
Although Edgar Allan Poe is most often identified with stories of horror and fear, there is an unrecognized and even forgotten side to the writer. He was a self-declared lover of beauty who “from childhood’s hour . . . [had] not seen / As others saw.” Poe and the Visual Arts is the first comprehensive study of how Poe’s work relates to the visual culture of his time. It reveals his “deep worship of all beauty,” which resounded in his earliest writing and never entirely faded, despite the demands of his commercial writing career. Barbara Cantalupo examines the ways in which Poe integrated visual art into sketches, tales, and literary criticism, paying close attention to the sculptures and paintings he saw in books, magazines, and museums while living in Philadelphia and New York from 1838 until his death in 1849. She argues that Poe’s sensitivity to visual media gave his writing a distinctive “graphicality” and shows how, despite his association with the macabre, his enduring love of beauty and knowledge of the visual arts richly informed his corpus.
'Ethics and the Visual Arts' offers insights on matters as far ranging as art and censorship, cultural globalization, the effect of the Internet on art and artists, and the ethics and role of new media.
What is the relation of art and history? What is art today? Why does art affect us? In Field Notes on the Visual Arts, seventy-five scholars, curators, and artists traverse chronology and geography to reveal the meanings and dilemmas of art. Organized under seven major headings--anthropomorphism, appropriation, contingency, detail, materiality, time, and tradition--the contributions are written by historians of art, literature, culture, and science, as well as archaeologists, anthropologists, philosophers, curators, and artists. By bringing together voices that are generally separated both inside and outside the academy, Field Notes on the Visual Arts makes clear that the work of art is both meaningful and resistant to meaning.
“A curator, a paintings conservator, a photographer, and a conservation scientist walk into a bar.” What happens next? In lively and accessible prose, color science expert Roy S. Berns helps the reader understand complex color-technology concepts and offers solutions to problems that occur when art is displayed, conserved, imaged, or reproduced. Berns writes for two types of audiences: museum professionals seeking explanations for common color-related issues and students in conservation, museum studies, and art history programs. The seven chapters in the book fall naturally into two sections: fundamentals, covering topics such as spectral measurements, metamerism, and color inconstancy; and applications, where artwork display, painting materials, and color reproduction are discussed. A unique feature of this book is the use of more than 200 images as its main medium of communication, employing color physics, color vision, and imaging science to produce visualizations throughout the pages. An annotated bibliography complements the main text with suggestions for further reading and more in-depth study of particular topics. Engaging, incisive, and absolutely critical for any scholar or student interested in color science, Color Science and the Visual Arts is sure to become a key reference for the entire field.
Why are the visual arts so important and what is it that makes their forms significant? Countering recent interpretations of meaning that understand visual artworks on the model of literary texts, Crowther formulates a theory of the visual arts based on what their creation achieves both cognitively and aesthetically. He develops a phenomenology that emphasizes how visual art gives unique aesthetic expression to factors that are basic to perception. At the same time, he shows how various artistic media embody these factors in distinctive ways. Attentive to both the creation and reception of all major visual art forms (picturing, sculpture, architecture, and photography), Phenomenology of the Visual Arts also addresses complex idioms, including abstract, conceptual, and digital art.
'Art Practice as Research' presents a compelling argument that the creative and cultural inquiry undertaken by artists is a form of research. The text explores themes, practice, and contexts of artistic inquiry and positions them within the discourse of research.
Sometimes seeing is more difficult for the student of art than believing. Taylor, in a book that has sold more than 300,000 copies since its original publication in 1957, has helped two generations of art students "learn to look." This handy guide to the visual arts is designed to provide a comprehensive view of art, moving from the analytic study of specific works to a consideration of broad principles and technical matters. Forty-four carefully selected illustrations afford an excellent sampling of the wide range of experience awaiting the explorer. The second edition of Learning to Look includes a new chapter on twentieth-century art. Taylor's thoughtful discussion of pure forms and our responses to them gives the reader a few useful starting points for looking at art that does not reproduce nature and for understanding the distance between contemporary figurative art and reality.
