Title search results
Showing 29581 - 29600 of 36607 items
Tastemaker: Elizabeth Gordon, House Beautiful, and the Postwar American Home
By Monica Penick. 2017
A riveting and superbly illustrated account of the enigmatic House Beautiful editor’s profound influence on mid-century American taste From 1941…
to 1964, House Beautiful magazine’s crusading editor-in-chief Elizabeth Gordon introduced and promoted her vision of “good design” and “better living” to an extensive middle-class American readership. Her innovative magazine-sponsored initiatives, including House Beautiful’s Pace Setter House Program and the Climate Control Project, popularized a “livable” and decidedly American version of postwar modern architecture. Gordon’s devotion to what she called the American Style attracted the attention of Frank Lloyd Wright, who became her ally and collaborator. Gordon’s editorial programs reshaped ideas about American living and, by extension, what consumers bought, what designers made, and what manufacturers brought to market. This incisive assessment of Gordon’s influence as an editor, critic, and arbiter of domestic taste reflects more broadly on the cultures of consumption and identity in postwar America. Nearly 200 images are featured, including work by Ezra Stoller, Maynard Parker, and Julius Shulman. This important book champions an often-neglected source—the consumer magazine—as a key tool for deepening our understanding of mid-century architecture and design.From a leading art instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, a complete survey of drawing as…
an art form covering its history, materials, and key techniques, alongside step-by-step demonstrations. Foundations of Drawing is a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the history, aesthetics, methods, and materials of the drawing medium. Throughout, clearly defined demonstrations provide easy access to the practice of drawing as well as the history and development of core drawing techniques. Richly illustrated, the book contains reproductions of the finest master drawings from the fifteenth century to the present. Unlike other drawing instruction books that focus on step-by-step lessons exclusively, Foundations of Drawing provides readers with the context and background to help understand just why these materials and methods are so vital for successful drawing.New African Cinema
By Valérie K. Orlando. 2017
New African Cinema examines the pressing social, cultural, economic, and historical issues explored by African filmmakers from the early post-colonial…
years into the new millennium. Offering an overview of the development of postcolonial African cinema since the 1960s, Valérie K. Orlando highlights the variations in content and themes that reflect the socio-cultural and political environments of filmmakers and the cultures they depict in their films. Orlando illuminates the diverse themes evident in the works of filmmakers such as Ousmane Sembène’s Ceddo (Senegal, 1977), Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga (Angola, 1972), Assia Djebar’s La Nouba des femmes de Mont Chenoua (The Circle of women of Mount Chenoua, Algeria, 1978), Zézé Gamboa’s The Hero (Angola, 2004) and Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu (Mauritania, 2014), among others. Orlando also considers the influence of major African film schools and their traditions, as well as European and American influences on the marketing and distribution of African film. For those familiar with the polemics of African film, or new to them, Orlando offers a cogent analytical approach that is engaging.100 Must-See Movies for Grownups
By Bill Newcott. 2015
“Oh! What a wonderful list. Bill Newcott's top 100 makes you want to curl up with a stack of DVD’s…
and revisit Hollywood’s best.” — Arch Campbell, Broadcast Film Critics Association“...a treasure trove of sterling and often delightfully offbeat recommendations for discerning moviegoers, from the beginnings of film right up the present.” — Peter Rainer, author of Rainer on Film: Thirty Years of Film Writing in a Turbulent and Transformative EraFinally, an end to the old complaint, “There’s nothing to watch!” Since 2002, AARP’s Movies for Grownups has been celebrating movies with special appeal for the 50+ audience through reviews, film festivals, private screenings, and a weekly TV series. Now, in the first-ever Movies for Grownups book, MFG creator Bill Newcott selects the 100 essential films for those who love great cinema.The collection includes a variety of classics, from Gone with the Wind and Casablanca to new favorites like Capote and The King’s Speech. You’ll also find every film that has won the coveted trophy for the year’s Best Movie for Grownups, chosen by the editors of AARP the Magazine. Then there are the hidden gems—films you may never have heard of, but ones you’ll never forget once you see them, thanks to this comprehensive, concisely written collection.Ink: Culture, Wonder, and Our Relationship with the Written Word
By Ted Bishop. 2014
A rich and imaginative discovery of how ink has shaped culture and why it is here to stay.Ink is so…
much a part of daily life that we take it for granted, yet its invention was as significant as the wheel. Ink not only recorded culture, it bought political power, divided peoples, and led to murderous rivalries. Ancient letters on a page were revered as divine light, and precious ink recipes were held secret for centuries. And, when it first hit markets not so long ago, the excitement over the disposable ballpoint pen equalled that for a new smartphone--with similar complaints to the manufacturers. Curious about its impact on culture, literature, and the course of history, Ted Bishop sets out to explore the story of ink. From Budapest to Buenos Aires, he traces the lives of the innovators who created the ballpoint pen--revolutionary technology that still requires exact engineering today. Bishop visits a ranch in Utah to meet a master ink-maker who relishes igniting linseed oil to make traditional printers' ink. In China, he learns that ink can be an exquisite object, the subject of poetry, and a means of strengthening (or straining) family bonds. And in the Middle East, he sees the world's oldest Qur'an, stained with the blood of the caliph who was assassinated while reading it. An inquisitive and personal tour around the world, Ink asks us to look more closely at something we see so often that we don't see it at all.O Glorious City: A Love Letter to San Francisco
By Jeremy Fish. 2017
O Glorious City is an exuberant love letter to San Francisco from Jeremy Fish, a beloved artist who enjoys a…
massive fan base for his edgy artwork. When Fish was invited to create 100 new works of art in honor of City Hall's 100th birthday, he moved his studio into a City Hall office to become the city's first-ever artist in residence. This celebratory book gathers all 100 pieces of artwork—each rendered in his signature whimsical style—featuring everything from the city's famous architecture and treasured local landmarks to portraits of colorful local residents in a gallery of "unofficial mayors." Together these images form an energetic, visual tour de force showcasing San Francisco's vivacious spirit and vibrant history.Manga Art: Inspiration and Techniques from an Expert Illustrator
By Mark Crilley. 2017
The world of manga (Japanese comics) has captured the imagination of artists, both aspiring and professional alike. Now best-selling artist…
and art instructor Mark Crilley presents the most complete look yet at the variety of creative options available in the world of manga. Crilley fills each chapter with gorgeous, original artwork created with a variety of tools (pencils, colored pencils, digital art, pen and ink, and more) and in a variety of manga-inspired styles. He pairs each piece with information on the materials used and the inspiration that led to its creation. Manga Art provides readers a one-of-a-kind chance to hear from one of the leading artists in the field of manga instruction, as he reveals the unlimited possibilities of manga and the creative secrets behind over 100 pieces of original, never-before-seen artwork.Projecting the World: Representing the "Foreign" in Classical Hollywood
By Russell Meeuf, Anna Cooper. 2017
The classical Hollywood films that were released between the 1930s and 1960s were some of the most famous products of…
global trade, crisscrossing borders and rising to international dominance. In analyzing a series of Hollywood films that illustrate moments of nuanced transnational engagement with the “foreign,” Projecting the World: Representing the “Foreign” in Classical Hollywood enriches our understanding of mid-twentieth-century Hollywood cinema as a locus of imaginative geographies that explore the United States’ relationship with the world. While previous scholarship has asserted the imperialism and racism at the core of classical Hollywood cinema, Anna Cooper and Russell Meeuf’s collection delves into the intricacies—and sometimes disruptions—of this assumption, seeing Hollywood films as multivalent and contradictory cultural narratives about identity and politics in an increasingly interconnected world. Projecting the World illustrates how Hollywood films negotiate shifting historical contexts of internationalization through complex narratives about transnational exchange—a topic that has thus far been neglected in scholarship on classical Hollywood. The essays analyze the “foreign” with topics such as the 1930s island horror film, the 1950s Mexico-set bullfighting film, Hollywood’s projection of “exoticism” on Argentina, and John Wayne’s film sets in Africa. Against the backdrop of expanding consumer capitalism and the growth of U.S. global power, Hollywood films such as Tarzan and Anatahan, as well as musicals about Paris, offered resonant images and stories that dramatized America’s international relationships in complicated ways. A fascinating exploration of an oft-overlooked aspect of classical Hollywood films, Projecting the World offers a series of striking new analyses that will entice cinema lovers, film historians, and those interested in the history of American neocolonialism.Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-Twentieth-Century Latin American Art
By Alexander Alberro. 2017
During the mid-twentieth century, Latin American artists working in several different cities radically altered the nature of modern art. Reimagining…
the relationship of art to its public, these artists granted the spectator an unprecedented role in the realization of the artwork. The first book to explore this phenomenon on an international scale, Abstraction in Reverse traces the movement as it evolved across South America and parts of Europe. Alexander Alberro demonstrates that artists such as Tomás Maldonado, Jesús Soto, Julio Le Parc, and Lygia Clark, in breaking with the core tenets of the form of abstract art known as Concrete art, redefined the role of both the artist and the spectator. Instead of manufacturing autonomous art, these artists produced artworks that required the presence of the spectator to be complete. Alberro also shows the various ways these artists strategically demoted regionalism in favor of a new modernist voice that transcended the traditions of the nation-state and contributed to a nascent globalization of the art world.The Global Work of Art: World's Fairs, Biennials, and the Aesthetics of Experience
By Caroline A Jones. 2017
Global biennials have proliferated in the contemporary art world, but artists’ engagement with large-scale international exhibitions has a much longer…
history that has influenced the present in important ways. Going back to the earliest world’s fairs in the nineteenth century, this book argues that “globalism” was incubated in a century of international art contests and today constitutes an important tactic for artists. As world’s fairs brought millions of attendees into contact with foreign cultures, products, and processes, artworks became juxtaposed in a “theater of nations,” which challenged artists and critics to think outside their local academies. From Gustave Courbet’s rebel pavilion near the official art exhibit at the 1855 French World’s Fair to curator Beryl Madra’s choice of London-based Cypriot Hussein Chalayan for the off-site Turkish pavilion at the 2006 Venice Biennale, artists have used these exhibitions to reflect on contemporary art, speak to their own governments back home, and challenge the wider geopolitical realm—changing art and art history along the way. Ultimately, Caroline A. Jones argues, the modern appetite for experience and event structures, which were cultivated around the art at these earlier expositions, have now come to constitute contemporary art itself, producing encounters that transform the public and force us to reflect critically on the global condition.Heading North
By Ewa Mazierska. 2017
This collection presents a number of films and television programmes set in the North of England in an investigation of…
how northern identity imbricates with class, race, gender, rural and urban identities. Heading North considers famous screen images of the North, such as Coronation Street and Kes (1969), but the main purpose is to examine its lesser known facets. From Mitchell and Kenyon's 'Factory Gate' films to recent horror series In the Flesh, the authors analyse how the dominant narrative of the North of England as an 'oppressed region' subordinated to the economically and politically powerful South of England is challenged. The book discusses the relationship between the North of England and the rest of the world and should be of interest to students of British cinema and television, as well as to those broadly interested in its history and culture.The Eclipse of Equality: Arguing America on Meet the Press
By Solon Simmons. 2013
Red state vs. blue state. Republican vs. Democrat. Fox News vs. The Daily Show. The so-called culture wars have become…
such a fixture of American politics that dividing the country into rival camps seems natural and political gridlock seems inevitable. Entering the fray, Solon Simmons offers an intriguing twist on the debate: Our disagreements come not from unbridgeable divides, but from differing interpretations of a single underlying American tradition—liberalism. Both champions of traditional liberal values, Republicans have become the party of individual freedom while Democrats wear the mantle of tolerance. Lost in this battle of sides is the third pillar of liberalism—equality. Simmons charts the course of American politics through the episodes ofMeet the Press. On the air since 1945,Meet the Pressprovides an unparalleled record of living conversation about the most pressing issues of the day. In weekly discussions, the people who directly influenced policy and held the reins of power in Washington set the political agenda for the country. Listening to what these people had to say—and importantly how they said it—Meet the Pressopens a window on how our political parties have become so divided and how notions of equality were lost in the process. Telling the story of the American Century, Simmons investigates four themes that have defined politics and, in turn, debate onMeet the Press—war and foreign affairs, debt and taxation, race struggles, and class and labor relations—and demonstrates how political leaders have transformed these important political issues into symbolic pawns as each party advocates for their own understanding of liberty, whether freedom or tolerance. Ultimately, withThe Eclipse of Equality, he looks to bring back to the debate the question lurking in the shadows—how can we ensure the protection of a peaceful civil society and equality for all?Attunement: Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science
By Alberto Pérez-Gómez. 2016
Architecture remains in crisis, its social relevance lost between the two poles of formal innovation and technical sustainability. In Attunement,…
Alberto Pérez-Gómez calls for an architecture that can enhance our human values and capacities, an architecture that is connected -- attuned -- to its location and its inhabitants. Architecture, Pérez-Gómez explains, operates as a communicative setting for societies; its beauty and its meaning lie in its connection to human health and self-understanding.Our physical places are of utmost importance for our well-being. Drawing on recent work in embodied cognition, Pérez-Gómez argues that the environment, including the built environment, matters not only as a material ecology but because it is nothing less than a constituent part of our consciousness. To be fully self-aware, we need an external environment replete with meanings and emotions.Pérez-Gómez views architecture through the lens of mood and atmosphere, linking these ideas to the key German concept of Stimmung -- attunement -- and its roots in Pythagorean harmony and Vitruvian temperance or proportion. He considers the primacy of place over space; the linguistic aspect of architecture -- the voices of architecture and the voice of the architect; architecture as a multisensory (not pictorial) experience, with Piranesi, Ledoux, and Hejduk as examples of metaphorical modeling; and how Stimmung might be put to work today to realize the contemporary possibilities of attunement.Seizing Jerusalem: The Architectures of Unilateral Unification
By Alona Nitzan-Shiftan. 2017
After seizing Jerusalem’s eastern precincts from Jordan at the conclusion of the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel unilaterally unified the…
city and plunged into an ambitious building program, eager to transform the very meaning of one of the world’s most emotionally charged urban spaces. The goal was as simple as it was controversial: to both Judaize and modernize Jerusalem. Seizing Jerusalem, the first architectural history of “united Jerusalem,” chronicles how numerous disciplines, including architecture, landscape design, and urban planning, as well as everyone from municipal politicians to state bureaucrats, from Israeli-born architects to international luminaries such as Louis Kahn, Buckminster Fuller, and Bruno Zevi, competed to create Jerusalem’s new image. This decade-long competition happened with the Palestinian residents still living in the city, even as the new image was inspired by the city’s Arab legacy. The politics of space in the Holy City, still contested today, were shaped in this post-1967 decade not only by the legacy of the war and the politics of dispossession, but curiously also by emerging trends in postwar architectural culture.Drawing on previously unexamined archival documents and in-depth interviews with architects, planners, and politicians, Alona Nitzan-Shiftan analyzes the cultural politics of the Israeli state and, in particular, of Jerusalem’s influential mayor, Teddy Kollek, whose efforts to legitimate Israeli rule over Jerusalem provided architects a unique, real-world laboratory to explore the possibilities and limits of modernist design—as built form as well as political and social action. Seizing Jerusalem reveals architecture as an active agent in the formation of urban and national identity, and demonstrates how contemporary debates about Zionism, and the crisis within the discipline of architecture over postwar modernism, affected Jerusalem’s built environment in ways that continue to resonate today.Transmaterial Next: A Catalog of Materials that Redefine Our Future
By Blaine Brownell. 2017
Virtually every revolution in architecture has been preceded by a revolution in materials: think iron, glass, steel, concrete, plastics, or…
composites. What is the next revolutionary material that will reshape the very nature of architecture? A solid that's lighter than air, metal latticework so delicate it rests on a dandelion, building insulation made from processed seaweed, self-generating microbial glue that repairs cracks in concrete, or transparent solar panels? Materials expert Blaine Brownell, author of our bestselling Transmaterial series, reveals emerging trends and applications that are transforming the technological capacity, environmental performance, and design potential of architecture in Transmaterial Next. This book is an essential compendium for thinking architects, designers, and other creative professionals passionate about materials and looking for their bleeding edge and practical implementation.Shopping Town: Designing the City in Suburban America
By Anette Baldauf, Victor Gruen. 2017
Victor Gruen was one of the twentieth century’s most influential architects and is regarded as the father of the U.S.…
shopping mall. In spring 1979, less than a year before his death, he began reconstructing his life story. Now available in English for the first time, Shopping Town is the long overdue account of a man whose work fundamentally altered the course of city development. Shopping Town opens in Vienna in 1938 with the Anschluss—the turning point in Gruen’s life—as he narrowly escaped the Nazi regime. A few years later, in the suburbs of postwar America, the Jewish refugee sought to reproduce the vitality of Vienna’s city center and invented the commercial apparatus now known as the shopping mall. Gruen’s Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota, was the first fully enclosed shopping center in America. He then translated the concept to economically neglected city centers, setting the path for pedestrian zones and fighting passionately for an urban ideal without compromise. Highlighting Gruen’s sense of humor as well as reflections on the complex forces that sustained the postwar transformation of American cities, Shopping Town embeds Gruen’s experiences and perspectives in a wider social and political context while helping us understand his problematic place in American architectural culture. With afterwords by his son and daughter, Shopping Town closes with Anette Baldauf’s richly insightful essay on the legacy of Victor Gruen.Traditional Chinese Architecture: Twelve Essays
By Alexandra Harrer, Nancy S Steinhardt, Xinian Fu. 2017
A groundbreaking book by one of the world's leading historians of Chinese architectureTranslated by Alexandra HarrerFu Xinian is considered by…
many to be the world's leading historian of Chinese architecture. He is an expert on every type of Chinese architecture from every period through the nineteenth century, and his work is at the cutting edge of the field. Traditional Chinese Architecture gathers together, for the first time in English, twelve seminal essays by Fu Xinian. This wide-ranging book pays special attention to the technical aspects of the building tradition since the first millennium BC, and Fu Xinian's signature drawings abundantly illustrate its nuances.The essays delve into the modular basis for individual structures, complexes, and cities; lateral and longitudinal building frames; the unity of sculpture and building to create viewing angles; the influence of Chinese construction on Japanese architecture; and the reliability of images to inform us about architecture. Organized chronologically, the book also examines such topics as the representation of architecture on vessels in the Warring States period, early Buddhist architecture, and the evolution of imperial architecture from the Tang to Ming dynasty. A biography of Fu Xinian and a detailed Chinese-English glossary are included. Bringing together some of the most groundbreaking scholarship in Chinese architectural history, Traditional Chinese Architecture showcases an uncontested master of the discipline.Smart Energy Control Systems for Sustainable Buildings
By Lakhmi C. Jain, Robert J. Howlett, Catalina Spataru, John Littlewood. 2017
There is widespread interest in the way that smart energy control systems, such as assessment and monitoring techniques for low…
carbon, nearly-zero energy and net positive buildings can contribute to a Sustainable future, for current and future generations. There is a turning point on the horizon for the supply of energy from finite resources such as natural gas and oil become less reliable in economic terms and extraction become more challenging, and more unacceptable socially, such as adverse public reaction to 'fracking'. Thus, in 2016 these challenges are having a major influence on the design, optimisation, performance measurements, operation and preservation of: buildings, neighbourhoods, cities, regions, countries and continents. The source and nature of energy, the security of supply and the equity of distribution, the environmental impact of its supply and utilization, are all crucial matters to be addressed by suppliers, consumers, governments, industry, academia, and financial institutions. This book entitled 'Smart Energy Control Systems for Sustainable Buildings' contains eleven chapters written by international experts based on enhanced conference papers presented at the Sustainability and Energy in Buildings International conference series. This book will be of interest to University staff and students; and also industry practioners.Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics
By Margo Natalie Crawford. 2017
A 2008 cover of The New Yorker featured a much-discussed Black Power parody of Michelle and Barack Obama. The image…
put a spotlight on how easy it is to flatten the Black Power movement as we imagine new types of blackness. Margo Natalie Crawford argues that we have misread the Black Arts Movement's call for blackness. We have failed to see the movement's anticipation of the "new black" and "post-black." Black Post-Blackness compares the black avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement with the most innovative spins of twenty-first century black aesthetics. Crawford zooms in on the 1970s second wave of the Black Arts Movement and shows the connections between this final wave of the Black Arts movement and the early years of twenty-first century black aesthetics. She uncovers the circle of black post-blackness that pivots on the power of anticipation, abstraction, mixed media, the global South, satire, public interiority, and the fantastic.Playwright, actor and director Charles Ludlam (1943–1987) helped to galvanize the Ridiculous style of theater in New York City starting…
in the 1960s. Decades after his death, his place in the chronicle of American theater has remained constant, but his influence has changed. Although his Ridiculous Theatrical Company shut its doors, the Ludlamesque Ridiculous has continued to thrive and remain a groundbreaking genre, maintaining its relevance and potency by metamorphosing along with changes in the LGBTQ community. Author Sean F. Edgecomb focuses on the neo-Ridiculous artists Charles Busch, Bradford Louryk, and Taylor Mac to trace the connections between Ludlam’s legacy and their performances, using alternative queer models such as kinetic kinship, lateral historiography, and a new approach to camp. Charles Ludlam Lives! demonstrates that the queer legacy of Ludlam is one of distinct transformation—one where artists can reject faithful interpretations in order to move in new interpretive directions.