Product Description: Hªl ne Cixous, the contemporary French philosopher with whom Roni Horn has collaborated on previous work, argues for a new language, one that acknowledges the life-giving force of the feminine. In tribute to Cixous, Horn, a major American photographer and sculptor, has created Index Cixous, which questions the nature of language in its most fundamental sense, in part by proposing a new language, one without words, but which can be read as any other...read more

Gives a history of drawing and includes chapters on such subjects as proportion, light, dimension, visual relationships, materials, and movement, and discusses how drawing is like language because it brings thoughts to life.

Product Description: What is the point of graphic design? Is it advertising or is it art? What purpose does it serve in our society and culture? Malcolm Barnard explores how meaning and identity are at the core of every graphic design project and argues that the role and function of graphic design is, and always has been, communication...read more

Some of the most innovative art of the past decade has been created far outside conventional galleries and museums. In a parking garage in Oakland, California; on a pleasure boat on the Lake of Zurich in Switzerland; at a public market in Chiang Mai, Thailand—artists operating at the intersection of art and cultural activism have been developing new forms of collaboration with diverse audiences and communities. Their projects have addressed such issues as political conflict in Northern Ireland, gang violence on Chicago's West Side, and the problems of sex workers in Switzerland. Provocative, accessible, and engaging, this book, one of the first full-length studies on the topic, situates these socially conscious projects historically, relates them to key issues in contemporary art and art theory, and offers a unique critical framework for understanding them.Grant Kester discusses a disparate network of artists and collectives—including The Art of Change, Helen and Newton Harrison, Littoral, Suzanne Lacy, Stephen Willats, and WochenKlausur—united by a desire to create new forms of understanding through creative dialogue that crosses boundaries of race, religion, and culture. Kester traces the origins of these works in the conceptual art and feminist performance art of the 1960s and 1970s and draws from the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, Jürgen Habermas, and others as he explores the ways in which these artists corroborate and challenge many of the key principles of avant-garde art and art theory.

Product Description: Art in Question explores the role of contemporary art within today's wider visual culture. This richly illustrated book brings together a series of specially commissioned interviews with leading, international artists, art historians, theorists and curators: Bill ViolaGriselda PollockRichard WentworthBarbara KrugerSadie PlantOkwui EnwezorMartin KempWJT MitchellHani RashidArt has always been argued over, never more than in our own times...read more

Product Description: Complete coverage of basic design principles illustrated by student examples Design for Communication offers a unique approach to mastering the basic design principles, conceptual problem-solving methods, and critical-thinking skills that distinguish graphic designers from desktop technicians...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Artwork by John Updike. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: With bracing clarity, James Elkins explores why images are taken to be more intricate and hard to describe in the twentieth century than they had been in any previous century. Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? uses three models to understand the kinds of complex meaning that pictures are thought to possess: the affinity between the meanings of paintings and jigsaw-puzzles; the contemporary interest in ambiguity and 'levels of meaning'; and the penchant many have to interpret pictures by finding images hidden within them...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Prepare your students to be intelligent participants in art with Artist and Audience. Author Terence Grieder gives your students a taste of the world of art in the opening chapter before moving into the various elements and media...read more

Product Description: In this richly illustrated book, Oleg Grabar shares a veteran art historian's love for the sheer sensuality of ornamentation. Grabar analyzes early and medieval Islamic objects and uses this art to show how ornament in general enables a direct, immediate encounter between viewers and art objects from any culture and time period...read more

A valuable introduction to the central issues in the sociology of the arts, this work draws on sociology, art history, feminism, and literary and media studies, to explain the social nature of the arts, their production, distribution, and reception. This second edition is the result of the author's chapter-by-chapter review and updating, taking into account not only her own re-thinking on these issues but also the work that has been done in cultural studies and the sociology of the arts since the first edition appeared in 1984. Wolff considers changes in sociology, literary studies, and cultural studies, and their implications for the project of the sociology of art: the relevance of post structuralist theory for an understanding of the author/artist; and the current, and perhaps unfounded, rejection of the concept of ideology. The author also assesses the question of cultural politics in relation to debates about postmodernism, as well as the matter of identity politics with regard to gender and ethnicity. Containing a wealth of information about both past and present thinking on the sociology of art, this book will be of particular interest both to students of the arts and students of sociology.

Product Description: This Austrian artist's drawings form the basis of his sculpture and architecture.

A look at advertising techniques and strategies includes explanations by artists and graphic designers about how they create their works