This book takes a profound look at exhibition design, or scenography, as an artistic medium. Mathilde Roman's introductory essay highlights the pioneering historical contributions by designers and architects like Lily Reich, Franco Albini, Lina Bo Bardi, Carlo Scarpa, and others who revolutionized their discipline. It examines how during the 20th and early 21st century experimentation with the display, the frame, the pedestal, the picture rails has become an artistic act in its own right. ...

In On Stage, Mathilde Roman explores the resonances that fields of theatre – stage, décor, space, gaze and more – have in the practice of video arts. Using these notions of theatre both as points of reference and as a prism through which video installation can be approached, Roman concentrates on questions often overlooked by art historians, theorists and critics. These include questions of exhibition architecture, display, viewer experience, temporality and the importance of the ...

Atlas of Emotion is a highly original endeavour to map a cultural history of spatio-visual arts. In an evocative montage of words and pictures, emphasises that "sight" and "site" but also "motion" and "emotion" are irrevocably connected. In so doing, Giuliana Bruno touches on the art of Gerhard Richter and Annette Message, the film making of Peter Greenaway and Michelangelo Antonioni, the origins of the movie palace and its precursors, and her own journeys to her native Naples. Vi...

Hal Foster, author of the acclaimed Design and Crime, argues that a fusion of architecture and art is a defining feature of contemporary culture. He identifies a "global style" of architecture-as practiced by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano-analogous to the international style of Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies.More than any art, today's global style conveys both the dreams and delusions of modernity. Foster demonstrates that a study of the "art-architecture co...

The Routledge Companion to Scenography is the largest and most comprehensive collection of original essays to survey the historical, conceptual, critical and theoretical aspects of this increasingly important aspect of theatre and performance studies.Editor and leading scholar Arnold Aronson brings together a uniquely valuable anthology of texts especially commissioned from across the discipline of theatre and performance studies.Establishing a stable terminology f...

For skeptics, art lovers, and the millions of us who visit art galleries every year—and are confused—What Are You Looking At? by former director of London’s Tate Gallery Will Gompertz is a wonderfully lively, accessible narrative history of Modern Art, from Impressionism to the present day.What is modern art? Who started it? Why do we either love it or loathe it? And why is it such big money? Join BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz on a dazzling tour that will ...

In today's art world many strange, even shocking, things qualify as art. In this Very Short Introduction Cynthia Freeland explains why innovation and controversy are valued in the arts, weaving together philosophy and art theory with many fascinating examples. She discusses blood, beauty, culture, money, museums, sex, and politics, clarifying contemporary and historical accounts of the nature, function, and interpretation of the arts. Freeland also propels us into the future by surveying c...

An exploration of the mutual attraction between architecture and other forms of contemporary art from the author of Form Follows Libido.In this fresh, insightful, and beautifully illustrated book, renowned architectural critic and scholar Sylvia Lavin develops the concept of "kissing" to describe the growing intimacy between architecture and new types of art—particularly multimedia installations that take place in and on the surfaces of buildings—and to cap...

A visit to an art gallery can be a baffling experience - a bewildering parade of paintings, sculptures, artists and movements with little perspective on how they all fit together. 50 Art Ideas you Really Need to Know is here to help. For all those who don't know their Degas from Dali or their Monet from their Mondrian, this informative and insightful guide discusses 50 of the most important and influential concepts in art from the Ancient Greeks to the present.Taking in the definin...

Narrating Space / Spatializing Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and Geography Meet by Marie-Laure Ryan, Kenneth Foote, and Maoz Azaryahu offers a groundbreaking approach to understanding how space works in narrative and narrative theory and how narratives work in real space. Thus far, space has traditionally been viewed by narratologists as a backdrop to plot. This study argues that space serves important but under-explored narrative roles: It can be a focus of attention, a beare...

Along with plan and elevation, section is one of the essential representational techniques of architectural design; among architects and educators, debates about a project's section are common and often intense. Until now, however, there has been no framework to describe or evaluate it. Manual of Section fills this void.Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, and David J. Lewis have developed seven categories of section, revealed in structures ranging from simple one-story buildings to complex...

Picasso was born a Spaniard and, so they say, began to draw before he could speak. As an infant he was instinctively attracted to artist’s tools. In early childhood he could spend hours in happy concentration drawing spirals with a sense and meaning known only to himself. At other times, shunning children’s games, he traced his first pictures in the sand. This early self-expression held out promise of a rare gift. Málaga must be mentioned, for it was there, on 25 October 1881, that Pablo R...