Reaktion 2003
186 pages B&W reproductions. ISBN 1861891822
15 x 21 cm English text. Softcover
Happiness is the signature tune of our times. The rise of therapists, gurus, new age cults and prozac are familiar indicators of how central this Jeffersonian pursuit has become in Western culture. Yet the state of mind we seek is highly elusive, while much of the energy devoted to searching for happiness is wasted or even self-defeating.
The dream of a happy life has preoccupied thinkers since Plato. By surveying this history Ziyad Marar shows how our modern obsession has evolved. He argues that happiness is a deceptively simple idea which will always be elusive because it is based on a paradox. Caught between the need for adventure or self-expression on the one hand and the hope of appreciation or belonging on the other we suffer perpetually from too much or too little . We are riven by conflict in wanting to feel good while simultaneously trying to be good. In a lively and accessible style The Happiness Paradox moves easily between the ivory tower and popular culture to discuss how these tensions permeate what Freud called the two central parts of a happy life: love and work. Drawing on a wide and varied range of sources from psychology, philosophy, history, novels and film this book will engage those who are looking for meaning in a secular culture. Price: £12.95
OUT OF STOCK
University of California Press 2003
440 pages B&W reproductions. ISBN 0520218035
15 x 23 cm English text. Hardcover
Long before e-mail and the Internet permeated society, Roy Ascott, a pioneering British artist and theorist, coined the term "telematic art" to describe the use of online computer networks as an artistic medium. In Telematic Embrace Edward A. Shanken gathers, for the first time, an impressive compilation of more than three decades of Ascott's philosophies on aesthetics, interactivity, and the sense of self and community in the telematic world of cyberspace. This book explores Ascott's ideas on how networked communication has shaped behavior and consciousness within and beyond the realm of what is conventionally defined as art.
Telematics, a powerful marriage of computers and telecommunication, made technologies we now take for granted--such as e-mail and automated teller machines (ATMs)--part of our daily life, and made art a more interactive form of expression. Telematic art challenges traditional relationships between artist, artwork, and audience by allowing nonlocal audiences to influence the emergent qualities of the artwork, which consists of the ebb and flow of electronic information. These essays constitute a unique archaeology of ideas, tracing Ascott's meditations on the formation of consciousness through the intertwined cultural histories of art and technology from the 1960s to the present.
Shanken's introduction situates Ascott's work within a history of ideas in art, technology, and philosophy. Given the increasing role of the Internet and the World Wide Web in the creation of commerce and community at the dawn of this new millennium, scholars, students, laypeople, policymakers, and artists will find this collection informative and thought-provoking. Price: £29.95
Yale University Press 2003
224 pages B&W reproductions. ISBN 0300097891
18 x 24 cm English text. Softcover
Art history, aesthetics, and visual studies today find themselves in contested new philosophical and institutional circumstances. This fascinating and challenging volume explores the connections and differences among these three methods of investigating visual representation.
What are the dominant aesthetic assumptions underlying art historical inquiry? How have these assumptions been challenged by visual studies? Are questions of quality, form, content, meaning, and spectatorship culturally specific? Can we still define the parameters of what should properly constitute the objects of the history of art? Fifteen distinguished scholars answer these and other questions, critically examining the relationships among these three scholarly fields from their founding moments through their contemporary practices.
Michael Ann Holly is director of Research and Academic Programs at the Clark Art Institute. Keith Moxey is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University.
Contributions by David Carrier, Philip Fisher, Hal Foster, Ivan Gaskell, Jonathan Gilmore, Thomas D. Kaufmann, Michael Kelly, Karen Lang, Stephen Melville, Kobena Mercer, Nicholas Mirzoeff, W. J. T. Mitchell, Griselda Pollock, Irene J. Winter and Janet Wolff Price: £17.50
Thames & Hudson 2003
416 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 0500284237
20.5 x 25.5 cm English text. Softcover
Making Contemporary Art is the ideal launchpad for anyone wanting to understand all the essential, but sometimes elusive, aspects of art-making today. In her inimitable voice - accessible, straightforward and jargon-free - Linda Weintraub explores the conceptual and practical concerns that go into making contemporary art. Six clearly defined thematic sections - Scoping an Audience, Sourcing Inspiration, Crafting and Artistic 'Self', Expressing an Artistic Attitude, Choosing a Mission and Measuring Success - draw on the work of forty contemporary artists, including Matthew Barney, Chris Ofili, Isaac Julien, Nan Goldin and Mariko Mori, to create a complex understanding of how to make and look at contemporary art. A series of interviews with various artists sheds light on every aspect of their work, from how they conceive and create their pieces to their more prosaic, practical concerns. In addition to being a fine read for anyone who simply wants to understand how to look at contemporary art, Making Contemporary Art is also an exceptional teaching tool, and one that plugs a huge gap in the art education market. Price: £22.50
Raw Vision 2005
228 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0954339304
16 x 21 cm English text. Softcover
Outsider Art has been gaining increasing attention over the past two decades. It has been described as the “hidden face of contemporary art”, rather like the hidden face of the moon.
Hidden, secret, or reclusive it may have been but today the large international following for Outsider Art stands as a testimony to its unique power and individuality.
The Outsider Art Source Book is the first international publication to act as a comprehensive guide through this fascinating field. It leads its readers to their own discoveries, showing where collections and exhibitions of Outsider Art can be found and how to visit the most sensational of the Visionary Environments.
Students, scholars and art followers are introduced to the principal theorists of art brut, to a guide through the important literature on the subject and an introduction to 50 classic Outsiders and to 20 stunning Visionary Environments.
With listings of over 100 specialized art galleries, alongside relevant web sites, organizations, publications, museums, auctions, art fairs and exhibitions, the Outsider Art Source Book is essential for enthusiasts and beginners alike. Price: £17.95
Flammarion 2006
320 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 2080305433
15.5 x 22 cm English text. Softcover
At the turn of the twentieth century, members of the European avant-garde began looking beyond the accepted canons of Western art in the search of new sources of inspiration: 'primitive' art, children's drawing, art of the insane, automatism, and graffiti all became new reference points which gradually found their way into modern art. This paved the way for Jean Dubuffet who, at the end of the Second World War, became interested in artworks by patients in psychiatric hospitals, and by other social outcasts, including self-taught artists and prisoners, whose spontaneous creativity seemed to provide a new way out of the "suffocation" of accepted culture. In 1948, Dubuffet founded the Art Brut society, whose purpose was to add to collections of this marginal art already begun by Dubuffet during two trips to Switzerland.Among the first artists to be "discovered" by Dubuffet were Wolfli, Aloise, and Muller, now recognized as leading figures of what was later to become known as "outsider art." Lucienne Peiry retraces here the extraordinary story of the founding of the Art Brut society, and the lives of the artists whose work the society promoted. Thoroughly documented and illustrated, her study is both exhaustive and compelling, and provides information and material essential to all those interested in outsider art - amateurs, students and scholars. Price: £16.95
Phaidon 2000
240 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0714840092
25 x 29 cm English text. Softcover
The art of visionaries, folk creators, spiritualists, recluses, the ‘mad’ and the socially marginalized, once scorned, is now recognized as speaking with great immediacy and power. Among the earliest to value and collect such work was the French artist Jean Dubuffet, who coined the term Art Brut, literally ‘raw art’ – raw because it was ‘uncooked’ by culture, because it came directly from the psyche, touched by a raw nerve. Some fifty years later, a wave of enthusiasm for contemporary folk art has gripped countries as far apart as India and the United States. John Maizels ties these disparate strands together, providing a guide to the self-taught art of the twentieth century. Following a brief history of the recognition and study of this art, he examines the different theories and definitions that have grown up around the subject. Providing detailed expositions of the work of numerous individual artists, he offers a fascinating account of human creativity. Price: £22.95
Musgrave Kinley Outsider Trust 2005
240 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0954993306
17 x 21 cm English text. Softcover
Monika Kinley is the widow of Victor Musgrave, the art dealer who first defined Outsider Art for a British audience, taking his lead from the French term, L'Art Brut, coined by Jean Dubuffet.
This is a book that says more about Outsider Art than just about any other source, not just because it is fantastically well illustrated, and in a tone of personal recollection and anecdote that actually fits the subject better than any other approach. Price: £15.00
180 pages Colour and B&W reproductions.ISBN 0954339312
21 x 30 cm English text. Softcover
Special edition of Raw Vision containing re-prints of all the articles in the historic first three issues of the journal. Published in 1989 and 1990, these issues contain a wealth of archival and reference material. These early issues have been out of print for many years and original copies are now expensive collectors' items.
This 180 page special edition of Raw Vision will be published to coincide with the Outsider Art Fair in New York. It is expected that this much awaited edition will become instantly collectable and will be on sale to enthusiasts and collectors of Outsider Art for many years to come. Price: £24.00
Thames & Hudson 2000
224 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0500203342
Outsider Art is the work produced outside the mainstream of modern western art by self-taught, untrained visionaries, spiritualists, eccentric recluses, folk artists, psychiatric patients, criminals and others beyong the imposed margins of society and the art market. Coined by Roger Cardinal in 1972, the term in English derived from the French artist Jean Dubuffet's 'Art Brut' - literally 'raw art', 'uncooked' by culture, unaffected by fashion, unmoved by artistic standards. In this book I survey the history and reception of Outsider Art from its origins at the beginning of the last century to developments at its end, while providing new critical insights into the achievements of both major figures, such as Madge Gill, Wolfli and Aloise, and recently discovered artists, such as Roy Wenzel and malcolm McKesson. Artists from Europe and America form the core of the book, although a chapter on 'World Art' explores issues on the limits of definition. Price: £7.95
England & Co 2001
26 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 1902046137
21 x 23 cm English text. Softcover Price: £8.00
Abrams 2005
176 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 0810992027
17.5 x 22 cm English text. Softcover
Outsider Art has become a catchall phrase for everything that is raw, untutored, and extreme in art. Recently, it has grown from being the hobby of a few collectors to a movement of significant importance in the art world, and is on the verge of being integrated into the contemporary art mainstream. However, even many aficionados can't say precisely what Outsider Art is or identify the best artists, baffled by a world without rules. How to Look at Outsider Art gives an overview of the field's most exciting works, some of them never before published in book form. It offers guidelines for aesthetic and collecting judgments, and gives compelling accounts of some of the field's spectacular successes and equally visible failures. This book features case studies, which provide indepth examinations of individual works by particular artists and discusses their critical and popular reception. Price: £12.95
Zed Books 2003
288 pages ISBN 1842772635
15 x 23.5 cm English text. Softcover
Arts Under Pressure reveals how economic globalisation affects decision making in cultural matters worldwide, specifically in the field of the arts. It looks at the theoretical and practical implications of of economic globalisation on the creation, production, distribution, promotion and reception of all forms of the arts in all parts of the world. The impact of cultural conglomerates on local institutions and activities is huge. Ownership is now the core issue in a world-wide battle for mass audiences. Joost Smiers proposes radical alternatives to this steady convergence under ever-widening corporate umbrellas, to restore and develop cultural diversity, enrich the public domain and be beneficial to the arts and artists in the Third World. He advocates the abolition of copyright which has become one of the most important commercial products of the 21st century and which he argues no longer protects the interests of the majority of creative artists. He proposes a new International Treaty on Cultural Diversity, to enable countries to reduce the market domination of cultural industries and to formulate their own cultural policies. Price: £15.95
192 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 3883756830
This publication represents the multiplicity of Wall's work. Well known art writers have been invited to submit essays on Wall's work and its place in the wider context of photography since the late 70s. Includes essays from Homay King on Wall and film theory, Kaja Silverman on the visible and the invisible in photography, and Tom Holert on Wall's interest in popular visual codes and contemporary iconography. Also features 32 full colour plates of Wall's work from 1970s - 2001. Price: £18.50
Alberta Press 2003
64 pages
In the first week of April 2003, two individuals involved with contemporary art in the UK wrote reviews of 100 art exhibitions in London. Working against time, each responded to 50 different exhibitions across the city. From hip contemporary dealers to the bastions of traditional painting, from small artist-run galleries to major public institutions, each reviewer brought their own interests, tastes, prejudices and tempers to bear, creating a snapshot of art in London today, and a dynamic gathering of critical viewpoints. Price: £6.00
400 pages B&W reproductions. ISBN 0300095104
12.5 x 19.5 cm English text. Softcover
Richard Cork is one of the most serious, most influential, and best-informed art critics in Britain today. These four volumes contain a selection of his articles from the seventies, eighties, nineties, and the year 2000. The result is a fascinating chronicle and invaluable record of a turbulent period that gives an overview and survey of British art and its reception over the past thirty years which is wholly unprecedented in its scope.
Against the odds, artists emerged from the economic blight of the early 1990s with a determination to achieve renewal, but there was a marked absence of optimism. The excitement centred on the energy of artists, while their work often grew dark and intensely sceptical, concerned with isolation, fragmentation, dislocation and frustration.
Far from wallowing in morbidity, however, the new generation was resilient. This sense of defiance contributed to the surprisingly wide appeal of their work, and turned enfants terribles like Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin into celebrities. A strong sense of momentum was established, building in particular on possibilities opened up in the 1970s. By the time the controversial Sensation went on an international tour in the late 1990s, turnstile figures far outstripped expectations.
Richard Cork was continually challenged and invigorated by this continuing spirit of audacity. Territorial limits were pushed out, shibboleths flouted and definitions of art widened. London became an exciting place to work, but there were plenty of other continental centres where contemporary art could thrive. Young artists from the USA and Europe held outstanding solo shows in London, while potent work came also from Canada, Mexico and Chicano Arts on the US border. Young black artists born in England also made powerful contributions. And increasing attention was paid to developments in Africa, China and Japan, ensuring that notions of contemporary art were not bounded by familiar Western limits. Price: £12.95
320 pages B&W reproductions. ISBN 0300095090
The 1980s began with an aggressive attempt to reassert the old dominance of painting, but a major exhibition in London, A New Spirit in Painting, included some, like Per Kirkeby and A.R. Penck, who regarded paint on canvas as only one way of working among many. It also gave prominence to a range of figurative painters exploring fresh territory. Artists as substantial as Georg Baselitz and Anselm Keifer finally began to receive the attention they deserved.
The decade also witnessed a flowering of art by women. An impressive number, including Helen Chadwich, Shirazeh Houshiery, Madgalena Jetolova, Cindy Sherman and Alison Wilding, played a distinguished part in the vitality of the new art. Meanwhile, interest grew in work beyond the familiar Euro-American boundaries, particularly from Africa, Bangladesh, the Caribbean, India and Japan. Cork also explores the wildly excessive reputation-making of the 1980s, spurred on by inflated prices in an ominously overheated market, and charts the decline of New York’s dominance of the art world.
The 1980s coincided with a dramatic resurgence of interest in sculptural activity. A new generation, among them Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Bill Woodrow, discovered the freedom to deploy a wealth of images and references excluded from sculpture a decade before. Price: £12.95
Continuum 2005
154 pages ISBN 0826479294
13 x 20 cm English text. Hardcover
Alain Badiou is already regarded as one of the most original and powerful voices in contemporary European thought. Almost alone among his peers, his work promises a radical renewal of philosophy.
Influenced by Plato, Lucretius, Heidegger, Lacan and Deleuze, Badiou is a critic of both the analytical and the postmodern schools of thought. His work spans the range of philosophy, from ethics, to mathematics to science, psychoanalysis, politics and art. His writing is rigorous and startling and takes no prisoners.
Infinite Thought brings together a representative selection of the range of Alain Badiou's work, illustrating the power and diversity of his thought. The pieces, including the final interview, are chosen for their accessibility to readers new to the work of a philosopher who is doing no less than changing the way we think about the world. Price: £8.99
msdm Publications 2003
74 pages B&W reproductions. No ISBN
18 x 24 pages English text. Softcover
Includes contributions by Melanie Keen, Zeigam Azizov, Anthony Iles, Montse Romani, Virginia Villaplana and Maria Ruido (el sueno colectivo), Diego Ferrari, Octavi Comeron, Sasha Costanza-Chock, Renauld Courvoisier, Consol Rodriguez, and others
Out/sourcing: The soft borders of art practice, the idea of labour, the link to the globalised productive system. to ask: what are the relations between the social and aesthetic thought? Where do the dynamics of art, production and the branded economy meet and collide? Not the corporate practice but a critical model to research the formal and the informal bonds - economic, emotional, irrational - that are being thread between cultural institutions and the autonomous cells that are today¹s freelance cultural workers. Not a themed group show around the notion of outsourcing but rather to outsource from a network of collaborators and the geographical and cultural location of the gallery, to think about the practice of exhibition-making. between a curatorial commission, a project space, an installation, a site - specific work, a public dialogue, a networked practice, an archive of collections, a collection of databases. Price: £4.99
Continuum 2003
208 pages ISBN 082646565X
16 x 20 cm English text. Hardcover
Is there life after theory? If the death of the Author has now been followed by the death of the Theorist, what's left? Indeed, who's left? To explore such riddles Life. After.Theory brings together new interviews with four theorists who are left, each a major figure in their own right: Jacques Derrida, Frank Kermode, Toril Moi, and Christopher Norris.
Framed and introduced by Michael Payne and John Schad, the interviews pursue a whole range of topics, both familiar and unfamiliar. Among other things, Derrida, Kermode, Moi and Norris discuss being an outsider, taking responsibility, valuing books, getting angry, doing science, listening to music, remembering Empson, rereading de Beauvoir, being Jewish, asking forgiveness, smoking in libraries, befriending the dead, committing bigamy, forgetting to forget, thinking, not thinking, believing, and being mad.
These four key thinkers explore why there is life after theory...but not as we know it. Price: £16.99
