Tangled Alphabets


Book Description

This exhibition presents new insights into these artists' visual deconstructions of language and examines the connections and collisions among visual art, the word and the social world.




Chicka Chicka Boom Boom


Book Description

A told B, and B told C, I'll meet you at the top of the coconut tree In this lively alphabet rhyme, all the letters of the alphabet race each other up the coconut tree. Will there be enough room? Oh, no -- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! The well-known authors of Barn Dance and Knots on a Counting Rope have created a rhythmic alphabet chant that rolls along on waves of fun. Lois Elhert's rainbow of bright, bold, and cheerful colors makes the merry parade of letters unforgettable.




Delirious


Book Description

Can postwar art be understood as an exercise in calculated insanity? Taking this provocative question as its basis, this book explores the art and history of delirium from 1950 to 1980, an era shaped by the brutality of World War II and the rapid expansion of industrial capitalism. Skepticism of science and technology—along with fear of its capability to promote mass destruction—developed into a distrust of rationalism, which profoundly influenced the art of the times. Delirious features work by more than sixty artists from Europe, Latin America, and the United States, including Dara Birnbaum, León Ferrari, Gego, Bruce Nauman, Howardena Pindell, Peter Saul, and Nancy Spero. Experimenting with irrational subject matter and techniques, these artists forged new strategies that directly responded to such unbalanced times. Disturbing and challenging, the works in this book—in multiple media and often, counterintuitively, incorporating highly ordered and systematic structures—upend traditional notions of aesthetic harmony. Three wide-ranging essays and a richly illustrated plates section investigate the degree to which delirious times demand delirious art, inviting readers to “think crazy." p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana}




The Untimely Art of Scribble


Book Description

This book offers new definitions, vocabularies and insights for “scribbling”, viewing it as a fascinating and revealing process shared by many different disciplines and practices. The book provides a fresh and timely perspective on the nature of mark making and the persistence of the gestural impulse from the earliest graphic marks to the most sophisticated artistic production. The typical treatment of scribbling in the literature of artistic development has cast the practice as a prelude to representation in drawing and writing, with only occasional acknowledgment of the continuing joy and experiment of making marks across many arts practices. The continuous line the author traces between the universal practice of scribbling in infancy and early childhood and the work of radical creativity for contemporary and historical artists is original and clarifying, expanding the range of drawing behaviors to that of avant-garde painters, performance and the digital.




Alphabets


Book Description

"A playful take on the alphabets relationship with art, design, typography, children's books, learning aides, commercial signage, contemporary culture and everything and anything in between"--Page 4 of cover.




The Shock of Recognition


Book Description

In The Shock of Recognition, Lewis Pyenson examines art and science together to shed new light on common motifs in Picasso’s and Einstein’s education, in European material culture, and in the intellectual life of one nation-state, Argentina.




The Art of Post-Dictatorship


Book Description

Since the end of the last dictatorship in 1983, Argentina’s visual artists and art-activists have been central to campaigns to demand the criminal prosecution of those initially granted amnesty and to a variety of commemorative projects. In The Art of Post-Dictatorship: Ethics and Aesthetics in Transitional Argentina Vikki Bell examines this involvement and intervention. She argues that the problematics that arise within the aesthetic realm cannot be understood solely through an art-historical approach; instead, they must be understood as a constitutive part of a broader collective endeavour. In this sense, the ‘art’ of post-dictatorship is not something that belongs to art or the artists themselves, but is about how the subjectivities and imaginations of new generations are constituted and entwined with questions of response, ethics and justice. It concerns how people align themselves between the past and the future. This book will be an invaluable resource for those studying the law, politics, art and sociology of contemporary Argentina as well as those concerned more widely with transitional justice and the politics of memory.




Deinstitutionalizing Art of the Nomadic Museum


Book Description

Deinstitutionalizing Art of the Nomadic Museum explores the possibility of the "nomadic museum" to facilitate social and political resistance through engagement with critical art practices and imagery. Grounded in a decade-long art therapy project in a contemporary art museum setting, this book offers a theoretically rich conceptualization of this experience. The text establishes an institutional critique of both the dominant psychopathology discourse and the instrumentalizations of art practices. Innovative in its approach, the results are analyzed in the framework of subjects such as hegemony-subalternity, subjectivity, resistance, the nomadic, critical art practices, narratives and minor language, deinstitutionalization, anti-psychiatries as well as institutional therapy. With a special focus on Latin America, international artists’ writings and works are intersected with the thoughts of curators and museum decision makers. The inevitable connection of the arts with social and political fields is highlighted, enabling the exploration of the intersections of art, critical analysis, social science, psychoanalysis, and political philosophy. This text will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, academics, researchers, libraries and museums curators in the fields of art therapy, psychoanalysis, contemporary art, social & cultural anthropology, and political philosophy.




Producing Indonesia


Book Description

The 26 scholars contributing to this volume have helped shape the field of Indonesian studies over the last three decades. They represent a broad geographic background—Indonesia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, Canada—and have studied in a wide array of key disciplines—anthropology, history, linguistics and literature, government and politics, art history, and ethnomusicology. Together they reflect on the "arc of our field," the development of Indonesian studies over recent tumultuous decades. They consider what has been achieved and what still needs to be accomplished as they interpret the groundbreaking works of their predecessors and colleagues. This volume is the product of a lively conference sponsored by Cornell University, with contributions revised following those interactions. Not everyone sees the development of Indonesian studies in the same way. Yet one senses—and this collection confirms—that disagreements among its practitioners have fostered a vibrant, resilient intellectual community. Contributors discuss photography and the creation of identity, the power of ethnic pop music, cross-border influences on Indonesian contemporary art, violence in the margins, and the shadows inherent in Indonesian literature. These various perspectives illuminate a diverse nation in flux and provide direction for its future exploration.




A Companion to Contemporary Drawing


Book Description

The first university-level textbook on the power, condition, and expanse of contemporary fine art drawing A Companion to Contemporary Drawing explores how 20th and 21st century artists have used drawing to understand and comment on the world. Presenting contributions by both theorists and practitioners, this unique textbook considers the place, space, and history of drawing and explores shifts in attitudes towards its practice over the years. Twenty-seven essays discuss how drawing emerges from the mind of the artist to question and reflect upon what they see, feel, and experience. This book discusses key themes in contemporary drawing practice, addresses the working conditions and context of artists, and considers a wide range of personal, social, and political considerations that influence artistic choices. Topics include the politics of eroticism in South American drawing, anti-capitalist drawing from Eastern Europe, drawing and conceptual art, feminist drawing, and exhibitions that have put drawing practices at the centre of contemporary art. This textbook: Demonstrates ways contemporary issues and concerns are addressed through drawing Reveals how drawing is used to make powerful social and political statements Situates works by contemporary practitioners within the context of their historical moment Explores how contemporary art practices utilize drawing as both process and finished artifact Shows how concepts of observation, representation, and audience have changed dramatically in the digital era Establishes drawing as a mode of thought Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series, A Companion to Contemporary Drawing is a valuable text for students of fine art, art history, and curating, and for practitioners working within contemporary fine art practice.