Theory of Art

Protecting, healing, or punishing—people of various eras and origins have attributed such powers to the sculptures that are being presented togethe...

'Julia Cameron invented the way people renovate the creative soul' - New York Times ONE OF THE WATKINS TOP 100 MOST SPIRITUALLY INFLUENTIAL PEOPL...

The interrelations between objects and organisms take many forms, from the microbes known to inhabit medieval manuscripts to the biomorphic forms o...

By the end of the 18th century, notions of "forces of nature" (Naturkräfte) were increasingly discussed across disciplinary bounds: attraction and ...

A Japanese teahouse, an audio installation with Nigerian sounds, and a bronze flagpole divided in two: In the extensive areas of the Humboldt Forum...

In this authoritative, lively book, the celebrated Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic id...

In this book, Murray Edelman continues his quest to understand the influence of perception on the political process by turning to the role of art. ...

Explores the rich spectrum of problems, concepts and theories raised by the colour grey across philosophy, art and art history Explores the rich s...

Every human society displays some form of behavior that can be called “art,” and in most societies other than our own the arts play an integral par...

Michael Fried's often controversial art criticism defines the contours of late modernism in the visual arts. This volume contains 27 pieces, includ...

"A remarkably rich and provocative set of essays on the virtually infinite kinds of meanings generated by images in both the verbal and visual arts...

During his decades of world fame as a novelist, Tolstoy also wrote prolifically in a series of essays and polemics on issues of morality, social ju...

This book examines the legacy of international interwar modernism as a case of cultural transfer through the travels of a central motif: the square...

Today the Museum of Modern Art is widely recognized for establishing the canon of modern art; yet in its early years, the museum considered modern ...

Ästhetische Erfahrungen sind ohne spezifische Objekte grundsätzlich nicht zu denken. Welche Folgen hat diese Objektbezogenheit für das Wesen ästhet...

The abundance of images in our everyday lives—and the speed at which they are consumed—seems to have left us unable to critique them. To rectify th...

This book provides original grounds for integrating the bodily, somatic senses into our understanding of how we make and engage with visual art. Ro...

The ultimate guide for artists in every medium. Every artist needs to know how to create the illusion of depth and distance. Packed with specific t...

(Re)Thinking "Art": A Guide for Beginners is a primer that considers the term "art," what it means and why it matters. Rather than being about any ...

(Re)Thinking "Art": A Guide for Beginners is a primer that considers the term "art," what it means and why it matters. Rather than being about any ...

In this lucid and insightful essay, renowned linguist Roy Harris reflects on the early nineteenth-century doctrine of 'art for art's sake'. Attacke...

In his well-known work of art criticism Art of the Modern Age, Jean-Marie Schaeffer offered a lucid and powerful critique of what he identified as ...

It is often assumed that reading about the lives of artists enhances our understanding of their work - and that their work will reveal to us someth...

To the eye of some viewers, Renoir’s Great Bathers are the very picture of female sensuality and beauty. To others, they embody a whole tradition o...

In recent years, neuroscientists have made ambitious attempts to explain artistic processes and spectatorship through brain imaging techniques. But...

"Cosmos" offers new approaches on the stunning art works of Eduardo Terrazas (* 1936). Four well known authors present a multidisciplinary vision o...

In recent years, neuroscientists have made ambitious attempts to explain artistic processes and spectatorship through brain imaging techniques. But...

When Constructivism emerged shortly after the Russian Revolution, its central principles concerned structure and efficiency in the work of art and ...

This engaging publication explores the artistic practices that employ evocation—the calling forth of past emotions, desires, frustrations, and memo...

While comparative literature is a well-recognized field of study, the notion of comparative arts remains unfamiliar to many. In this fascinating bo...

Martha Banta reaches across several disciplines to investigate America's early quest to shape an aesthetic equal to the nation's belief in its cult...

A pioneering artist continues his visionary inquiry into hyperspace In this insightful book, which is a revisionist math history as well as a revis...

Representing a new generation of theorists reaffirming the radical dimensions of art, Gail Day launches a bold critique of late twentieth-century a...

How are we to think of works of art? Rather than treat art as an expression of individual genius, market forces, or aesthetic principles, Michael J...

Gabriel Rockhill opens new space for rethinking the relationship between art and politics. Rather than understanding the two spheres as separated b...

Triangles abounded in the intellectual culture of early modern Europe - the Christian Trinity was often mapped as a triangle, for instance, and per...

Instead of treating art as a unique creation that requires reason and refined taste to appreciate, Elizabeth Grosz argues that art-especially archi...

The term “network” is now applied to everything from the Internet to terrorist-cell systems. But the word’s ubiquity has also made it a cliché, a c...

People all over the world make art and take pleasure in it, and they have done so for millennia. But acknowledging that art is a universal part of ...

This, in a nutshell, is the central problem in the theory of art. It has fascinated philosophers from Plato to Wittgenstein. And it fascinates arti...

Is all knowledge the product of thought? Or can the physical interactions of the body with the world produce reliable knowledge? In late-nineteenth...

Bertolt Brecht once worried that our sympathy for the victims of a social problem can make the problem's "beauty and attraction" invisible. In The ...

The term “network” is now applied to everything from the Internet to terrorist-cell systems. But the word’s ubiquity has also made it a cliché, a c...

Despite its foundational role in the history of philosophy, Plato's famous argument that art does not have access to truth or knowledge is now rare...

Norman Rockwell’s scenes of everyday small-town life are among the most indelible images in all of twentieth-century art. While opinions of Rockwel...