ArtSpeak

Robert Atkins, an art historian and writer, is a frequent contributor to Art in America and a former staff columnist for the Village Voice. Atkins is an authority on digital art, queer art and culture, and Chinese contemporary art. He is a pioneering online media producer and a founding member of Visual AIDS, creators of Day With(out) Art and the Red Ribbon. His other books include ArtSpoke and Censoring Culture.

"In this important update of ArtSpeak, Atkins again offers reliable, succinct definitions of some 150 art terms, ideas, and movements, outlined in an easy-to-read, uniform format that gives the who, when, where, and what. Summing Up: Highly recommended." --CHOICE "In the end, ArtSpeak is informative and readable, a friendly invitation to better understand the language of contemporary art. Over its history, the book has transmuted from more or less a dictionary of terms into a relatively comprehensive survey of twenty-five years of art. Now, don't you want clearer understanding of movement Mono-ha?" --Rain Taxi Review of Books "The writing is simple, direct, nonjudgmental, and succinct. An essential update." --Library Journal, starred review "[ArtSpeak is] where you go to find out, quickly and clearly, what Semiotics means... It offers handy short takes on terms like commodification and formalism, along with the who, when, where, and sometimes why of Neo Dada, Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Geo, New Image, the New Leipzig school, New media, New Realism, New Wave, Nouveau Realisme, Socialist Realism, Social Realism, Social Practice, Space Art, and Spatialism, to name some more of the 146 categories in the book. It also explains what separates Pathetic Art from kitsch, and how Abject Expressionism differs from Abstract Expressionism." --ARTnews Praise for the previous editions: "From appropriation to manipulated photography to trans-avant garde, this handbook defines all the terms needed to sound au courant in the art world." --Village Voice "A must-have book for students, artists, collectors, and other interested observers." --Hartford Courant "A great book to take to the art museum." --Chicago Tribune "This is the book to carry on your next gallery crawl." --Art and Auction

• Table of Contents from: ArtSpeak Introduction How To Use This Book Timeline '85 New Wave Abject Expressionism Abstract Expressionism Academic Art Action/Actionism AIDS Art Allegory Alternative Space Anti-Art Antipodean Group Appropriation Art and Technology Art Brut Arte Povera Art Informel Artists' Books Artists' Furniture Art Market Art World Assemblage "Bad" Painting Bay Area Figurative Style Biennial Black Arts Movement Body Art Ceramic Sculpture Chicago Imagism CoBrA Color-Field Painting Comics Art Commodification Computer Art Conceptual Art Concrete Art Constructivism Contemporary Contemporary Indigenous Australian Art Content Copy Art Crafts-as-Art Culture Wars Cynical Realism Dada Dau al Set Documentation Dusseldorf School of Photography Earth Art East Village El Paso Existentialism Expressionism Fashion Aesthetic Feminist Art Figurative Finish Fetish Fluxus Formal/Formalism Found Object Funk Art Gesture/Gesturalism Graffiti Art Gutai Happening Hard-Edge Painting Installation Intermedia Junk Sculpture Kinetic Sculpture Kitsch Light-and-Space Art Mail Art Manipulated Photography Media Art Minimalism Mission School Modernism Mono-ha Mulheimer Freiheit Multiculturalism Multiple Narrative Art Neo-Concretism Neo-Dad Neo-Expressionism Neo-Geo New Image New Leipzig School New Media New Realism New Wave Nouveau Realisme Online Art Op Art The Other Outsider Art Painterly Pathetic Art Pattern and Decoration Performance Art Photo-Realism Picture Plane Pictures Generation Pluralism Political Art Political Pop Pop Art Popular Culture Post- Postmodernism Primitivism Print Revival Process Art Public Art Realism Regionalism Representation Saint Ives Painters Scatter Art School of London School of Paris Semiotics Shaped Canvas Simulation Situationism Snapshot Aesthetic Socialist Realism Social Practice Social Realism Sots Art Sound Art Space Art Spatialism Staged Photography Stars Group Straight Photography Street Art Style Surrealism Transavantgarde Tropicalism Video Art Young British Artists Zeitgeist Index Photography Credits