Kathryn Brown

A Gryphon's Journey

Audience participation has polarized recent debates about contemporary art. This collection of essays sheds new light on the political, ethical and aesthetic potential of participatory artworks and tests the very latest theoretical approaches to this subject. Internationally renowned art historians, curators and artists analyze the impact of collaborative aesthetics on personal and social identity, concepts of the artist, the ontology of art and the role of museums in contemporary society. Essential reading for students and specialists, Interactive Contemporary Art offers a vital critical evaluation of interactivity in contemporary art.

Participation in Practice

Interactive Contemporary Art

Investigating the complex history of visual art?s engagement with literature, this collection demonstrates that the art of the book is a fully interdisciplinary and distinctly modern form. The essays in the collection develop new critical approaches to the analysis of twentieth-century bookworks and explore ways in which European writers and painters challenged the boundary between visual and linguistic expression in the content, production, and physical form of books. The Art Book Tradition in Twentieth-Century Europe offers a detailed examination of word-image relations in forms ranging from the livre d?artiste to personal diaries and almanacs. It analyzes innovative attempts to challenge familiar hierarchies between texts and images, to fuse different expressive media, and to reconceptualize traditional notions of ekphrasis. Giving consideration to the material qualities of books, the works discussed in this collection also test and celebrate the act of reading, while locating it in the context of other sensory experiences. Essays examine works by Dufy, Matisse, Beckett, Kandinsky, Braque, and Ponge, among other European artists and writers active during the twentieth century.

The Art Book Tradition in Twentieth-Century Europe

Dialogues with Degas demonstrates the ongoing relevance of Edgar Degas to 20th- and 21st-century ideas and art practices. The first in-depth examination of this major artist's impact on contemporary art, this book explores how contemporary practitioners have used Degas's creativity as a springboard to engage imaginatively and critically with themes of colonialism, gender, race and class. Individual chapters are devoted to dialogues between Degas's art and works produced by Frank Auerbach, Cecily Brown, Xinyi Cheng, Ryan Gander, Maggi Hambling, Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Chantal Joffe, Leon Kossoff, R.B. Kitaj, Juan Muñoz, Paula Rego, Jenny Saville, Yinka Shonibare, Cy Twombly and Rebecca Warren. Through close analyses of selected paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures, Kathryn Brown explores how Degas's technical and compositional experiments have been extended or challenged in innovative ways. By experimenting with the materials and methods of existing works, contemporary artists generate visual palimpsests that make new demands of the viewer and prompt a reconsideration of ideas that have informed histories of 19th-century French art. The book overturns familiar conceptions of influence by eschewing a genealogical approach and prioritizing, instead, the analysis of non-linear encounters between artworks. This encourages a new conception of the agency of visual artefacts and of the conversations they are capable of entertaining with each other. While this study sheds new light on Degas's art and that of his interlocutors, it also has methodological significance for the writing of art history.

Dialogues with Degas

Christel H. Force

By the turn of the 20th century, Paris was the capital of the art world. While this is usually understood to mean that Paris was the center of art production and trading, this book examines a phenomenon that has received little attention thus far: Paris-based dealers relied on an ever-expanding international network of peers. Many of the city's galleries capitalized on foreign collectors' interest by expanding globally and proactively cultivating transnational alliances. If the French capital drew artists from around the world-from Cassatt to Picasso-the contemporary-art market was international in scope. Art dealers deliberately tapped into a growing pool of discerning collectors in northern and eastern Europe, the UK, and the USA. International trade was rendered not just desirable but necessary by the devastating effects of wars, revolutions, currency devaluation, and market crashes which stalled collecting in Europe. Pioneers of the Global Art Market assembles original scholarship based on a close inspection of and fresh perspective on extant dealer records. It caters to an amplified curiosity concerning the emergence and workings of our unprecedented contemporary-centric and global art market. This anthology fills a significant gap in the expanding field of art market studies by addressing how, initially, contemporary art, which is now known as historical modernism, made its way into collections: who validated what by promoting and selling it, where, and how. It includes unpublished material, concrete examples, bibliographical and archival references, and appeals to students, academics, curators, educators, dealers, collectors, artists and art lovers alike. It celebrates the modern art dealer as transnational impresario, the global reach of the modern-art market, and the impact of traders on the history of collecting, and ultimately on the history of art.

Paris-Based Dealer Networks, 1850-1950

Pioneers of the Global Art Market

Patricia MacLachlan

Arriving on the American prairie in the hope of making a new home, Nora, a little girl from Russia, struggles with loneliness until Papa brings her a dozen chicks and two geese who follow Nora everywhere she goes. By the Newbery Medal-winning author of Sarah, Plain and Tall.

Nora's Chicks

Throughout his career, Henri Matisse used imagery as a means of engaging critically with poetry and prose by a diverse range of authors. Kathryn Brown offers a groundbreaking account of Matisse's position in the literary cross-currents of 20th-century France and explores ways in which reading influenced the artist's work in a range of media. This study argues that the livre d'artiste became the privileged means by which Matisse enfolded literature into his own idiom and demonstrated the centrality of his aesthetic to modernist debates about authorship and creativity. By tracing the compositional and interpretive choices that Matisse made as a painter, print maker, and reader in the field of book production, this study offers a new theoretical account of visual art's capacity to function as a form of literary criticism and extends debates about the gendering of 20th-century bibliophilia. Brown also demonstrates the importance of Matisse's self-placement in relation to the French literary canon in the charged political climate of the Second World War and its aftermath. Through a combination of archival resources, art history, and literary criticism, this study offers a new interpretation of Matisse's artist's books and will be of interest to art historians, literary scholars, and researchers in book history and modernism.

Critical Performance in the Artists Book

Matisses Poets

Gary Stringer seems to have it all: a great job, fantastic friends, a love for the night-life and a penchant for sex. However, upholding his reputation as a ladies' man isn't quite that easy when, at twenty-seven, he still hasn't cut the apron strings.What Gary wants more than anything is his own bachelor pad - a place where the ever-increasing notches on his bedpost can be noisily etched, far away from the watchful eyes of his mother. But can he afford it? More to the point, is he actually ready to take that leap and, for once in his life, wash his own socks?As Gary ponders his dilemma, he's faced with yet another when two beautiful women enter his life within a matter of days. Will his reputation precede him? Will he make the decision to string along two women? Or will he finally admit that the feeling in his heart is a little more than just indigestion? Will it be Janice or Lisa? And will Alfie and Jez - his lifelong bachelor friends - be a help or a hindrance?

Notches on Bedposts

Bedknobs and Bachelors

Critical Performance in the Artist’s Book

Matisse’s Poets

The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History offers a broad survey of cutting-edge intersections between digital technologies and the study of art history, museum practices, and cultural heritage. The volume focuses not only on new computational tools that have been developed for the study of artworks and their histories but also debates the disciplinary opportunities and challenges that have emerged in response to the use of digital resources and methodologies. Chapters cover a wide range of technical and conceptual themes that define the current state of the field and outline strategies for future development. This book offers a timely perspective on trans-disciplinary developments that are reshaping art historical research, conservation, and teaching. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, historical theory, method and historiography, and research methods in education.

The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History

David Papke

Michael Asimow

Commentators have noted the extraordinary impact of popular culture on legal practice, courtroom proceedings, police departments, and government as a whole, and it is no exaggeration to say that most people derive their basic understanding of law from cultural products. Movies, television programs, fiction, children’s literature, online games, and the mass media typically influence attitudes and impressions regarding law and legal institutions more than law and legal institutions themselves. Law and Popular Culture: International Perspectives enhances the appreciation of the interaction between popular culture and law by underscoring this interaction’s multinational and international features. Two dozen authors from nine countries invite readers to consider the role of law-related popular culture in a broad range of nations, socio-political contexts, and educational environments. Even more importantly, selected contributors explore the global transmission and reception of law-related cultural products and, in particular, the influence of assorted works and media across national borders and cultural boundaries. The circulation and consumption of law-related popular culture are increasing as channels of mass media become more complex and as globalization runs its uncertain course. Law and Popular Culture: International Perspectives adds to the critical understanding of the worldwide interaction of popular culture and law and encourages reflection on the wider implications of this mutual influence across both time and geography.

Kathryn Brown

Books

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