Yale University Press 2001
320 pages Colour and B&W reproductions.ISBN 0300081553
20 x 26.5 cm English text. Hardcover
In this highly readable history of minimalist art James Meyer argues that "minimalism" was not a coherent movement but a field of overlapping and sometimes opposed practices. He traces in comprehensive detail the emergence of six figures associated with the development—Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, and Anne Truitt—and how the notion of minimalism came to be constructed around their art in the 1960s. Despite distinctive differences in method and points of view, Meyer shows, these artists became equated in a series of important exhibitions and texts that led to their designation as minimalists.
Beginning with the first reviews of minimalist shows, the book tracks the development of an art that critics dubbed Cool Art, ABC Art, and Primary Structures before settling on the deprecating label "minimal art." Suggesting that such work was overly reduced in form and facture, this term implied that the new abstraction was barely legible as fine art to some viewers. Meyer describes the heated polemic that unfolded in response to these practices, the differing claims of the artists, and the sometimes intense rivalries that developed within a highly competitive, fashion-minded New York art scene. The book culminates with an analysis of minimalism’s canonization in the late sixties, its reception in Europe, and its discrediting by leftist viewers who associated the new art with American capitalist-imperialism of the Vietnam War. Price: £35.00
Open Editions 2002
272 pages ISBN 0949004138
15.5 x 23.5 cm English text. Softcover
We live in an age of increased mobility. The circulation of people, culture and commodities forms the hub of our global culture, but where does this freedom of movement take us?
In this collection of essays, artists and writers unpack and argue ideas surrounding the presumed benefits of mobility. Through art works, photo essays, autobiography and cultural theory, contributors question the pleasure of travel and the desire to move, relocate or adopt new identities and lifestyles. The resulting, multi-faceted collection takes us on a journey encompassing Hong Kong's 'Californian' housing communities, Romania's faux migrants, the cultural politics of food, flights of fancy, the home, hybridity, paradise and Switzerland's Goa Party scene. In examining how travel both defines and erodes identity, this book prompts us to ask when does freedom from location become dislocation; the ability to escape an inability to belong? Price: £14.95
OUT OF STOCK
266 pages ISBN 158115092X
16.5 x 24 cm English text. Hardcover
A companion anthology to the critically acclaimed Uncontrollable Beauty, this volume pushes the polemic on beauty even further, speculating where the beautiful and the Sublime will be situated in our post-modern, new technology era. Readers will discover intriguing essays by such respected creators and critics as Harold Bloom, Barbara Maria Stafford, and Anthony Harden-Guest, many of which were composed exclusively for this extraordinary work. Art history lovers, academics, and anyone else interested in art appreciation will be surprised and entertained by what these internationally acclaimed authors have to say on an idea that has captivated and tangled the minds of great thinkers for centuries. Price: £20.00
Verso 2002
480 pages ISBN 1859846505
English text. Hardcover
Henri Lefebvre’s three-volume Critique of Everyday Life is perhaps the richest, most prescient work by one of the twentieth century’s greatest philosophers. The first volume presented an introduction to the concept of everyday life. Written twenty years later, this second volume attempts to establish the necessary formal instruments for analysis, and outlines a series of theoretical categories within everyday life such as the theory of the semantic field and the theory of moments.
The moment at which the book appeared—1962—was significant both for France and for Lefebvre himself: he was just beginning his career as a lecturer in sociology at Strasbourg, and then at Nanterre, and many of the ideas which were influential in the events leading up to 1968 are to found in this critique. In its impetuous, often undisciplined prose, the reader may catch a glimpse of how charismatic a lecturer Lefebvre must have been.
An historian and a sociologist, Henri Lefebvre developed his ideas over seven decades through intellectual confrontation with figures as diverse as Bergson, Breton, Sartre, Debord and Althusser. He authored more than sixty books, from Le nationalisme contre les nations in 1937 to La rythmanalyse which was published posthumously in 1992. Volume I of the Critique of Everyday Life was published by Verso in 1992; Volume III will be published in 2003. Price: £22.00
Harvard University Press 2001
504 pages ISBN 0674006712
Imperialism as we knew it may be no more, but Empire is alive and well. It is, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri demonstrate in this bold work, the new political order of globalization. It is easy to recognize the contemporary economic, cultural, and legal transformations taking place across the globe but difficult to understand them. Hardt and Negri contend that they should be seen in line with our historical understanding of Empire as a universal order that accepts no boundaries or limits. Their book shows how this emerging Empire is fundamentally different from the imperialism of European dominance and capitalist expansion in previous eras. Rather, today's Empire draws on elements of U.S. constitutionalism, with its tradition of hybrid identities and expanding frontiers.
Empire identifies a radical shift in concepts that form the philosophical basis of modern politics, concepts such as sovereignty, nation, and people. Hardt and Negri link this philosophical transformation to cultural and economic changes in postmodern society--to new forms of racism, new conceptions of identity and difference, new networks of communication and control, and new paths of migration. They also show how the power of transnational corporations and the increasing predominance of postindustrial forms of labor and production help to define the new imperial global order.
More than analysis, Empire is also an unabashedly utopian work of political philosophy, a new Communist Manifesto. Looking beyond the regimes of exploitation and control that characterize today's world order, it seeks an alternative political paradigm--the basis for a truly democratic global society. Price: £12.95
192 pages ISBN 0804732450
14 x 21.5 cm English text. Softcover
One of today’s foremost art historians and critics presents a strikingly original view of architecture and the city through the twin lenses of cultural theory and psychoanalysis. Hubert Damisch--whose work on the history of perspective, the notion of imitation, and the question of representation has emerged as the most important body of critical thought on painting since, perhaps, Meyer Shapiro’s collected essays--here engages a subject that has been of continuing interest to him over the last thirty years.
In the field of architecture, this book has been awaited for a long time; in the fields of art history and cultural studies, it will be welcomed as a powerful argument for utilizing in an urban context interpretive approaches developed for the analysis of spatial and visual phenomena. Though architecture has served since Descartes as a structural analogy for philosophical discourse and has played a similar role in literature, contemporary studies on architecture have tended to be very specialized, with little regard for their accessibility to scholars in the humanities and social sciences. This book, however, with its solid grounding in architecture and urban theory and its profoundly humanistic approach, will prove deeply rewarding to specialist and generalist alike.
The book engages a wide range of subjects, including reconstructions of the Egyptian labyrinth, architectural museums, European visions of New World cities, the great spaces and national parks of the American West, and landscape gardening in the United States. These subjects work together to develop a unique way of looking at the city and its architecture, the landscape and its spaces. Price: £11.95
Phaidon 2002
320 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 0714840718
245 x 172 mm English text. Hardcover
Cyber Reader is an anthology of extracts from key texts related to the theme of cyberspace - the virtual communicative space created by digital technologies. Approaching the subject from a variety of fields, including science fiction, this book reflects the multidisciplinary basis of cyberspace and illustrates how different disciplines can inform one another.
Over forty texts are presented in chronological order, beginning with some precursors to cyberspace theory as we know it today. Writings by early theoreticians such as Charles Babbage and Alan Turing, or authors such as EM Forster, help to give a historical perspective to the subject, while texts on theoretical developments show the parallels between real and imagined worlds.
Each extract is prefaced by a short introduction by editor Neil Spiller explaining key themes and terms and providing cross references to related texts. An extensive bibliography enables readers to pursue strands of study that interest them.
Cyber Reader is an essential source book, introducing students and researchers to cyberspatial theory and practice. It will help readers understand the wealth of opportunities, both practical and theoretical, that cyberspace engenders and enable them to chart its impact on many disciplines.
Writers in the anthology include: Charles Babbage, EM Forster, Vannevar Bush, JD Bolter, Norbert Wiener, JCR Licklider, Douglas Engelbart, Marshall McLuhan, Gordon Pask, Cedric Price, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, William Gibson, Donna Haraway, K Eric Drexler, Greg Bear, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, Howard Rheingold, Marcos Novak, Manuel De Landa, Daniel C Dennett, Neal Stephenson, Steven Levy, Roger Lewin, Jeff Noon, Erik Davis, Scott Bukatman, Anne Balsamo, Sherry Turkle, Kevin Kelly, Greg Egan, William Mitchell, Karen A Franck, John Frazer, Nicholas Negroponte, Stelarc, John Perry Barlow, Mark Dery, Hans Moravec, Michael Heim, Anthony Dunne, Margaret Wertheim, Neil Spiller Price: £24.95
Routledge 2001
296 pages B&W reproductions. ISBN 0415198925
'Spatial images', wrote the German cultural theorist, Siegfried Kracauer, 'are the dreams of society. Wherever the hieroglyphics of any spatial image are deciphered, there the basis of social reality presents itself.' But how exactly are these spatial images to be deciphered?
This volume addresses this question with a series of insightful essays on some of the great metropolitan centres of the world. From political interpretations to gendered analyses, from methods of mapping to filmic representations, and from studies in consumption to economic surveys, the volume offers a range of strategies for reading and experiencing the modern metropolis. Price: £19.99
Art Issues Press 2001
128 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 0963726471
9 x 13 cm English text. Softcover
In ten often hilarious and deeply moving sermons, Reverend Ethan Acres binds together his lifelong concerns with religion, visual art, entertainment, and the human soul into a maelstrom of intellectual delight and insight. The Sermons of Reverend Ethan Acres is conceived as an updated pop version of a hand-held nineteenth-century bible or chapbook of sermons (or as Mao's little red book), with a glamorous white alligator skin cover, gold embossing, and a red ribbon. Highlights include a history of televangelism; a wedding clandestinely performed under the aesthetic glories of the Sistine Chapel; an Exorcism at the Santa Monica Museum of Art; a history of performance art; a pilgrimage to the Getty Museum; a letter to Jerry Falwell by the Teletubbie Tinky Winky; and more.
The Sermons of Reverend Ethan Acres concludes with a full-color section of seven specially commissioned art prints of the Reverend, alongside recipes by the Rev. Mrs. Throughout, the Right Reverend fights to defeat the Devil in all his evil forms and strives to put the "fun" back into Fundamentalism. Price: £16.95
Continuum 2002
224 pages ISBN 0826456278
15 x 23 cm English text. Softcover
The work of Michel Foucault has been extremely influential in fields as varied as philosophy, history, cultural studies, sociology and sexuality studies. In his later work, Foucault turned to the question of ethics. Working back through history, through the Christian interrogation of desire to the origins of the self in the texts of classical Greek, Foucault attempted to conceive of ethics as an art of the self, as an aesthetics of existence and as a practice of liberty.
Foucault and the Art of Ethics argues that Foucault's exploration of the history of sexuality and his re-interpretation of the critical philosophical tradition combine to frame a new approach both to the way we understand the tasks of philosophy and to the way we live our lives.
This is essential reading for all those working at the intersection of contemporary debates in philosophy, ethics, politics and cultural studies. Price: £14.99
Kunsthaus Bregenz 2001
146 pages ISBN 3883754781
16.5 x 21 cm English/German text. Hardcover
The image of art institutions is no longer typified by resistance to developments in society but rather by their adaptability to contemporary ideas of marketing and competitions, to inter-city rivalry and to the demands of corporate sponsorship. In this thought-provoking book, contemporary artists analyse processes of the production of meaning and value, mechanisms of exclusion and clashes of interests, and pay particular attention to the structural and functional changes of these increasingly dynamic cultural bodies. Through a series of statements, 33 renowned artists - including Rasheed Araeen, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Mark Dion, Hans Haacke, Martha Rosler and Stephen Willats - consider the inter-dependence of institutions, sponsors and practitioners, and conclude that the transition from the once conservative educational institutions into business-like suppliers of culture has by no means created ideologically vacuous zones. Price: £16.00
