Carol Becker - Böcker

In The Subversive Imagination , professional writers, artists and cultural critics from around the world offer their views on the issue of the artist's responsibility to society. The contributors look beyond censorship and free speech issues and instead emphasize the subject of freedom. More specifically, the contributors question the ethical, mutual responsibilities between artists and the societies in which they live. The original essays address an eclectic range of subjects: censorship, multiculturalism, the transition from communism to capitalism in Eastern Europe, postmodernism, Salman Rushdie, and young black filmmakers' responsibility to the black community.

The first monograph of Chicago-based Theaster Gates, one of the most exciting and highly regarded contemporary artists at work todayTheaster Gates has developed an expanded artistic practice that includes space development, object making, performance and critical engagement with many publics. Gates transforms spaces, institutions, traditions, and perceptions.Gates's training as an urban planner and sculptor, and subsequent time spent studying clay, has given him keen awareness of the poetics of production and systems of organizing. Playing with these poetic and systematic interests, Gates has assembled gospel choirs, formed temporary unions, and used systems of mass production as a way of underscoring the need that industry has for the body.Gates refers to his working method as 'critique through collaboration' and his projects often stretch the form of what we usually understand visual art to be. His focus is also on the availability of information and the cross-fertilization of ideas. His multi-faceted exhibitions investigate themes of race and history through sculpture, installation, performance and two-dimensional works, furthering the artist’s interest in a critique of social practice, shared economies and the question of objects in relation to political and cultural thought.Gates' recent exhibition and performance venues include the Seattle Art Museum, Art Basel Miami Beach, Milwaukee Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and the Whitney Biennial in New York. Gates was a participating artist in Documenta 13 in Kassel (2012) with his total-living installation 12 Ballads for Huguenot House. Other notable solo exhibitions include An Epitaph for Civil Rights at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (2011) and My Labor Is My Protest, at White Cube Bermondsey, London (2012). Parallel to his artist career, Gates is also Director of Arts and Public Life Initiative at the University of Chicago and a board member of the city's South Side Community Center.Recently commissioned as the 2012 Armory Show Artist and a Loeb Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2011, Gates has received awards and grants from Creative Capital, the Joyce Foundation, Graham Foundation, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art.

The first monograph on the indefatigable explorer of relationships between people, technology, and environmental issuesDutch artist, Daan Roosegaarde, is one of the most innovative artists to emerge in the past decade. His sculptures and installations, made in collaboration with a team of engineers and designers, aim to create better conditions in cities and to make difficult areas habitable again, by rethinking processes and upgrading urban structures. At the core of Roosegaarde's practice is schoonheid, a Dutch word that stands both for 'clean-ness' and 'beauty.' It is this that has informed some of his most popular public projects, including Waterlicht (a virtual flood that shows the force of water); Smog Free Project (a large outdoor air purifier that turns smog into jewelry), and Smart Highway (an interactive road that charges throughout the day and glows at night).

Addresses the questions: What might be the role of the artist in the 21st century? How essential is art to the psychic and political well-being of American society?This collection of essays by cultural critic Carol Becker plumbs particular areas of controversy to understand what information these "zones of contention" might yield about the multifarious culture wars taking place within American society today.In the process she addresses the place of art and artists in society, the difficulties facing women in the workplace, why male bonding exists, why women experience anxiety in relationship to creative endeavors, and why artists are misunderstood within American society. She positions art and artists, as well as institutional dynamics within a philosophical framework.

In The Subversive Imagination , professional writers, artists and cultural critics from around the world offer their views on the issue of the artist's responsibility to society. The contributors look beyond censorship and free speech issues and instead emphasize the subject of freedom. More specifically, the contributors question the ethical, mutual responsibilities between artists and the societies in which they live. The original essays address an eclectic range of subjects: censorship, multiculturalism, the transition from communism to capitalism in Eastern Europe, postmodernism, Salman Rushdie, and young black filmmakers' responsibility to the black community.

Classic recipes from a beloved New York Bakery, now made vegan!William Greenberg Desserts has been a New York City staple for more than seventy years. Now those following a plant-based diet can partake in their fabulous treats, including soft and gooey Cinnamon Rolls, a fabulous Apricot Cheesecake, classic Thumbprint Cookies, and more. Home bakers will be delighted to find recipes for a variety of cookies, bars, cakes, tarts, breads, halva, and even some savory snacks, all made without dairy or eggs. Recipes include: Iced Oatmeal CookiesApricot Walnut BiscottiBlondiesPeanut Butter BrowniesLinzer TartsChocolate Pound CakeSour Cream Blueberry Coffee CakeStreusel Raspberry TartFruit & Nut BreadOlive BreadsticksCherry HalvaSkillet CornbreadAnd many more!This cookbook will carry on the tradition Mr. Greenberg started decades ago while making the delightful baked goods available to those following vegan, dairy-free, and Parve diets. Author Carol Becker writes, “It was essential to me that if these recipes were to have the Greenberg name on them, they had to be every bit as delicious as their full-dairy counterparts.” Try them out for yourself!

Carol Becker, preeminent arts educator and contributor to leading art magazines, offers a beautifully poignant meditation on the role of place in artistic creativity. She focuses on place as a historical, physical entity and a conceptual site where ideas come into meaning. The book explores places from the coal-mining towns of western Pennsylvania, to the Birla House where Gandhi was shot, to the sinking city of Venice. A cross between theory, memoir, and history, her writing creates the experiential effect of being in specific places as well as imagining the evolution of ideas as they are manifested in museums and often become agents for social change.

Carol Becker, preeminent arts educator and contributor to leading art magazines, offers a beautifully poignant meditation on the role of place in artistic creativity. She focuses on place as a historical, physical entity and a conceptual site where ideas come into meaning. The book explores places from the coal-mining towns of western Pennsylvania, to the Birla House where Gandhi was shot, to the sinking city of Venice. A cross between theory, memoir, and history, her writing creates the experiential effect of being in specific places as well as imagining the evolution of ideas as they are manifested in museums and often become agents for social change.

Losing Helen is a moving and inspiring essay that tracks an adult daughter through the many complex phases of grief as she anticipates the inevitable loss of her elderly mother. Finding strength and guidance in the spiritual insights of writers, artists, Western religion, and Eastern philosophies, the narrator undergoes a profound transformation while striving to design an end-of-life experience that is meaningful and sacred not only for her mother but also for herself.