Matthew Israel – författare

Discover a new understanding of self-help and a better means to help yourself through the surprising histories behind some of society’s best ideas for living well.Trying to become a better person, husband, and father, Matthew Israel always found the latest self-help trends captivating—but his experience as a historian led him to question the hype. Diving into the fascinating histories behind nine of the most well-known self-help ideas in American culture today—such as practicing gratitude, cultivating joy, and exercise as therapy—Israel guides readers through a wide range of wisdom, from ancient philosophy to Buddhism, Christianity, psychology, and twentieth-century Black and feminist thought. The result is a compelling case that our “new” ideas can be much more trustworthy when understood in their historical context.The book is rich in takeaways we can all apply to our lives, including these nine best ideas for living well:Exercise for your mindQuestion productivityPractice gratitudeIncorporate death remindersSimplify your lifeExplore BuddhismRead philosophyFind community and celebratePracticeAs a result of this captivating deep dive that is part historical journey, part highly relatable autobiography, you will feel compelled to apply these lessons to your daily life, as the author does himself.

The Vietnam War (1964–1975) divided American society like no other war of the twentieth century, and some of the most memorable American art and art-related activism of the last fifty years protested U.S. involvement. At a time when Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art dominated the American art world, individual artists and art collectives played a significant role in antiwar protest and inspired subsequent generations of artists. This significant story of engagement, which has never been covered in a book-length survey before, is the subject of Kill for Peace.Writing for both general and academic audiences, Matthew Israel recounts the major moments in the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement and describes artists’ individual and collective responses to them. He discusses major artists such as Leon Golub, Edward Kienholz, Martha Rosler, Peter Saul, Nancy Spero, and Robert Morris; artists’ groups including the Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC) and the Artists Protest Committee (APC); and iconic works of collective protest art such as AWC’s Q. And Babies? A. And Babies and APC’s The Artists Tower of Protest. Israel also formulates a typology of antiwar engagement, identifying and naming artists’ approaches to protest. These approaches range from extra-aesthetic actions-advertisements, strikes, walk-outs, and petitions without a visual aspect-to advance memorials, which were war memorials purposefully created before the war’s end that criticized both the war and the form and content of traditional war memorials.

In the last few decades, the world of contemporary art has become more globalized and visible than ever before. And yet this world has long been perceived as closed and obscure, provoking in the uninitiated a range of responses from reverence to bafflement and rage. Taking the reader on a cross-continental journey through a notional calendar year in the field of art, Matthew Israel lifts the veil on a world that emerges from his narrative as diverse, adventurous, nuanced and meaningful to all. From Los Angeles to Hong Kong via Paris and New York, the author travels among the world’s best-known artists, curators, critics, gallerists and institutions as they work towards some of the art world’s most defining international events. A Year in the Art World relates the exploits of a curious insider, who ventures deep into the workings of the art industry to ask: what is it that people in the art world actually do? What drives an interest in working with art? How do artworks acquire value? And how has technology transformed the art world of today? Israel combines in-depth personal profiles with expert context to reveal both new and longstanding artworld realities. From biennials in summer to auctions in the fall, this fascinating narrative reveals how ‘the art world’ describes a realm that is both surprisingly vast and deeply interconnected.