This book examines early modern Mito, today an ordinary provincial capital on the outskirts of the Tokyo commuter belt, but once the headquarters of Mito Domain, one of the most consequential places in all of Japan. As one of just three senior branches of the Tokugawa family—which ruled over Japan for 260 years—Mito’s ruling family enjoyed unparalleled status and exerted enormous influence throughout its history. In the seventeenth century, its scholars produced some of early modern Japan’...

Artist, Researcher, Teacher explores the relationship of three professional identities that often intersect in the lives of art practitioners, educators, and students.Challenging conventional wisdom about specialization and professional identity, Alan Thornton shows that many individuals have complex, varied, and evolving relationships with visual art—relationships that do not fit into any single category. Against the backdrop of an expanding research culture and current e...

Writing ought to be the easiest of the four skills for students of English as a Second or Foreign Language. Unlike listening and reading, the students control all the words. Unlike speaking, the students can go back, check their work, revise it, and resubmit it. It should then follow that writing would be one of the most popular courses to teach. Yet teachers rarely say, "I can't wait till I get tenure, so I can teach some of those composition classes of 35 students."However, writi...

A classic work of advice, criticism, and inspiration for aspiring artists and lovers of art"Art when really understood is the province of every human being." So begins The Art Spirit, the collected words, teachings, and wisdom of innovative artist and beloved teacher Robert Henri. Henri, who painted in the Realist style and was a founding member of the Ashcan School, was known for his belief in interactive nature of creativity and inspiration, and the enduring powe...

Painting Culture tells the complex story of how, over the past three decades, the acrylic "dot" paintings of central Australia were transformed into objects of international high art, eagerly sought by upscale galleries and collectors. Since the early 1970s, Fred R. Myers has studied—often as a participant-observer—the Pintupi, one of several Aboriginal groups who paint the famous acrylic works. Describing their paintings and the complicated cultural issues they raise, Myers looks...

Each of the five volumes in the Stone Art Theory Institutes series, and the seminars on which they are based, brings together a range of scholars who are not always directly familiar with one another’s work. The outcome of each of these convergences is an extensive and “unpredictable conversation” on knotty and provocative issues about art. This third volume in the series, What Do Artists Know?, is about the education of artists. The MFA degree is notoriously poorly conceptualized...

What is computer art? Do the concepts we usually employ to talk about art, such as ‘meaning’, ‘form’ or ‘expression’ apply to computer art?A Philosophy of Computer Art is the first book to explore these questions. Dominic Lopes argues that computer art challenges some of the basic tenets of traditional ways of thinking about and making art and that to understand computer art we need to place particular emphasis on terms such as ‘interactivity’ and ‘user’.Drawing on...

When Gene Logsdon realized that he experienced the same creative joy from farming as he did from writing, he suspected that agriculture itself was a form of art. Thus began his search for the origins of the artistic impulse in the agrarian lifestyle. The Mother of All Arts is the culmination of Logsdon"s journey, his account of friendships with farmers and artists driven by the urge to create. He chronicles his long relationship with Wendell Berry and discovers the playful humor of several...

This book elaborates on different aspects of the decision making process concerning the management of climate risk in museums and historic houses. The goal of this publication is to assist collection managers and caretakers by providing information that will allow responsible decisions about the museum indoor climate to be made. The focus is not only on the outcome, but also on the equally important process that leads to that outcome. The different steps contribute significantly to the und...

For anyone artistically inclined, observing the Moon and attempting to sketch or paint it can easily become a passion. The Moon presents a broad array of tone, texture, and form. Capturing this in a painting or sketch at the eyepiece of a telescope – or even with binoculars – develops observational skills, leaves a record of the observation, and can also be a delightful and rewarding pastime. However, the choice of media available is extensive (acrylic paint, oils, pen, charcoal, etc., and...

Life reform and progressive education developed various utopias and projected new ways of cultural, social, religious and political living. This book studies how these utopias lived on until World War II, how they still affect present life in Austria and Hungary, and it examines continuities and differences within the political, educational and cultural movements of both countries. The main focus lies on interrelations between educational utopias and strategies and the development of a col...

Critique has long been a central concept within art practice and theory. Since the emergence of Conceptual Art, artists have been expected by critics, curators, and art school faculty to focus their work on exposing and debunking ideologies of power and domination. Recently, however, the effectiveness of cultural critique has come into question. The appearance of concepts such as the "speculative," the "reparative," and the "constructive" suggests an emerging postcritical paradigm....