Konstteori

Why do we need art? What Art Does is an invitation to explore this vital question. It is a chance to understand how art is made by all of us. How it creates communities, opens our worlds, and can transform us.Curious and playful, richly illustrated, full of ideas and life, it is an inspiring call to imagine a different future.

Based on the BBC television series, John Berger's Ways of Seeing is a unique look at the way we view art, published as part of the Penguin on Design series in Penguin Modern Classics.'Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.''But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.' John Berger's Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the Sunday Times critic commented: 'This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures.' By now he has.John Berger (b. 1926) is an art critic, painter and novelist.born in Hackney, London. His novel G. (1972) won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Booker Prize. If you enjoyed Ways of Seeing, you might like Susan Sontag's On Photography, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of professional art critics ... he is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation'Peter Fuller, Arts Review'The influence of the series and the book ... was enormous ... It opened up for general attention areas of cultural study that are now commonplace'Geoff Dyer in Ways of Telling'One of the most influential intellectuals of our time'Observer

THE WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER - A VITAL GUIDE TO CREATIVITY, OVERCOMING OBSTACLES AND MAKING YOUR WORK NO MATTER WHAT 'Filled with insights that every artist and creator needs to hear' JAMES CLEAR'I've stolen tons of inspiration from this book ... and so will you' AUSTIN KLEON'The antidote to our creative ailments' DEBBIE MILLMAN'The ultimate pep talk for artists' WENDY MACNAUGHTONArt & Fear is about the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many creatives to give up along the way. Written by artists, for artists, the book delves into the internal and external challenges to making creative work, and shows how they can be overcome every day.First published in 1994, Art & Fear quickly became an underground classic, and word-of-mouth has placed it among the best-selling books on artmaking and creativity. It offers generous and wise insight into what pushes us to sit down at an easel or desk, go to a studio or performance space, and try to create new work to put into the world. Every creative and artist, whether a beginner or a prizewinner, a student or a teacher, faces the same fears - and this book illuminates the way through them.This new edition has a foreword by longtime friend and fan, bestselling author and photographer Sally Mann.

'Unlock your inner creativity and ease your anxiety' Daily Telegraph'I absolutely love this book' Emma Gannon**THE MULTI-MILLION COPY WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER**Since its first publication, The Artist's Way has inspired the genius of Elizabeth Gilbert, Tim Ferriss, Reese Witherspoon and millions of readers to embark on a creative journey and find a deeper connection to process and purpose. Julia Cameron guides readers in uncovering problems and pressure points that may be restricting their creative flow and offers techniques to open up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. A revolutionary programme for personal renewal, The Artist's Way will help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the steps you need to change your life.

The Times Art Book of the YearA Guardian Book of the YearThe paintings of Johannes Vermeer of Delft are some of the most beautiful, even sublime, in the history of art. Yet like the life of Vermeer himself, they are mysterious and have for centuries defied explanation. Following new leads, and drawing on a mass of historical evidence, some of it freshly uncovered in the archives of Delft and Rotterdam, Andrew Graham-Dixon paints a dramatically new picture of Vermeer, revealing many of the painter’s hitherto unknown friendships as well as his previously undetected allegiance to a radical movement driven underground by persecution.He also vividly evokes the world of the Dutch Republic as it was in its so-called Golden Age. This was a watery world of fortresses and flood plains, taverns rocked by argument and cities stunned by devastating attacks and explosions: all linked by a network of canals where a uniquely efficient public transport system, operated by horse-drawn passenger barge, enabled people, goods and ideas to glide effortlessly from one place to another. The author sets Vermeer firmly in the context of his time, revealing the patterns of patronage that make sense of his work, and also exposing the difficulties posed by his home life, which was dominated by his Jesuit mother-in law and disturbed by the psychotic behaviour of her only son.In the past Vermeer has been imagined as a remote and enigmatic figure, but he emerges from this new account as a man deeply engaged with his own society: well-travelled, a reader of books, a man personally connected to many of the most interesting people of his time, including merchants, philosophers, preachers, bankers and regents, as well as his childhood friend, a philanthropic baker named Hendrick van Buyten. Vermeer was also deeply affected by the struggles that shook his world, the Eighty Years War for Dutch independence and the yet more terrible Thirty Years War, which ravaged the neighbouring German lands and resulted in the deaths of millions. The author shows how he was moved to become a pacifist by such atrocities, and thereafter made many of his closest friends in the ranks of Europe’s first peace movement. A further revelation is that Vermeer’s closest collaborator and chief patron was a woman, as were many others in his immediate circle. These are all previously untold stories.The many piercingly direct descriptions of Vermeer’s pictures, which are the heart of the book, shed new light on the intentions of the artist. Nearly all of his best loved works, Graham-Dixon shows, were originally painted for a single significant location in Delft. In light of such discoveries every one of Vermeer’s major paintings, including The Girl with a Pearl Earring, A View of Delft and The Milkmaid, are reassessed and their meanings rethought. As a result the two great unresolved questions about Vermeer – why did he paint his pictures, and what do they mean? – are persuasively answered here for the first time.

The 50th anniversary edition of a classic text, featuring an expanded selection of color studies  “The landmark 1963 book by Josef Albers . . . isn’t just for aspiring artists. Its mesmerizing illustrations are a revelation for anyone interested in color theory and human perception.”—Pilar Viladas, New York Times  “A visionary work.”—Malcolm Jones, Newsweek  Josef Albers’s classic Interaction of Color is a masterwork in art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this influential book presents Albers’s singular explanation of complex color theory principles.  Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten color studies chosen by Albers, and has remained in print ever since. With over a quarter of a million copies sold in its various editions since 1963, Interaction of Color remains an essential resource on color, as pioneering today as when Albers created it.  Fifty years after Interaction’s initial publication, this anniversary edition presents a significantly expanded selection of close to sixty color studies alongside Albers’s original text, demonstrating such principles as color relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusion of transparency and reversed grounds. A celebration of the longevity and unique authority of Albers’s contribution, this landmark edition will find new audiences in studios and classrooms around the world.

Detta är en bok om bildtolkning och det intrikata samspelet mellan bild och text i läromedel, faktaböcker och populärkultur. Författaren belyser bildens tysta budskap, det vill säga de normer och värderingar som gestaltas i bilder men förblir okommenterade i texten.I den första upplagan behandlades främst undervisningsbilder och vetenskapliga illustrationer som riktar sig till barn och ung-domar. I den här omarbetade andra upplagan har författaren vidgat perspektivet och diskuterar informationsgrafik, visual management, teknikinformation och instrumentella bilder som en del av den visuella kulturen.Boken vänder sig till studenter vid universitet och högskolor i ämnen som behandlar bild, men även till yrkesverksamma som på något sätt hanterar bild och text i sitt arbete.

Var Pablo Picasso inblandad i stölden av Mona Lisa 1911? Vem är världens skickligaste konstförfalskare? Och hur gick det till när Ivar Lo-Johansson skänkte bort en van Gogh-målning? Högt, lågt, tragiskt och komiskt. Följ med i rafflande historier om stölder, förbjudna konstverk, förfalskningar, nazistiska konstutställningar och sanningen om när drottning Kristina lade grunden till Nationalmuseum. I den här boken finns berättelser från både Sverige, Europa och USA, från 1600-tal till nutid om allt det hemliga eller bortglömda i konstvärlden som du kanske aldrig har kommit på att undra över. Från van Goghs öra till Mona Lisas leende: Livsöden, skandaler och berömda konstverk samlar dolda berättelser från västvärldens alla hörn och binder en väv av allt det fördolda, mänskliga och vackra som ligger bakom den konsthistoria vi känner till idag. Göran Hellström, född 1947, har en bakgrund som journalist. Han var redaktör på specialtidskriften Antik & Auktion och arbetade sen som informationschef på Bukowskis. Under många år arbetade han som chefredaktör på tidningen Konstvärlden. 1992 publicerade han boken Det stora konstspelet, skriven tillsammans med Carl-Gustaf Petersén, som sammanfattar konsthaussen i slutet av 1980-talet. Från 2009 har han ställt ut samtidskonst i egna galleriet Vargåkra Gård.

One of the most important works of cultural theory ever written, Walter Benjamin's groundbreaking essay explores how the age of mass media means audiences can listen to or see a work of art repeatedly – and what the troubling social and political implications of this are.Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

'The decade's most stimulating art book' Financial Times A Guardian History Book of the Year 'For those, though, who relish brilliant analysis of painting – as well as former students of art history, like me, for whom, at university, Clark was a sort of god – Those Passions will be essential reading. Its finest essays engage in depth with painting’s subtle minutiae, observing and explaining how tiny touches can contribute to powerful overall effects. A bravura study of Henri Matisse’s Woman with a Hat (1905) is a case in point. ... Likewise, his scintillating exposition of The Lion Hunt (1855) by Eugène Delacroix – a detail from which, reproduced on a French poster which he bought in 1966, dominates his study' Sunday Telegraph 'A timely study of the connection between art and politics' Observer The careful distillation of a lifetime’s writing by the internationally renowned art historian T.J. Clark, who addresses key issues of art’s relationship with politics. Is art obliged to engage with politics? If so, how? By taking sides in political struggle; by singing the song of the barricade, the new nation, the bombed city? Or by giving form to the deeper patterns of experience – the raw materials of ‘society’ – from which any politics is made? Using case studies stretching across the centuries, from Hieronymus Bosch to Jacques-Louis David and the French Revolution, from Walter Benjamin to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Those Passions aims to show how modern art has responded to the chaos and danger of modern life. In the book’s three sections – ‘Precursors’, ‘Moderns’ and ‘Modernities’ – internationally renowned art historian T. J. Clark unpicks the nature of capitalist society and its visual culture. He tries to understand the politics of appearance which is now our natural home – the twists and turns of consumerism, the arrival of the 24-hour image-world, the changing modes of symbolic production and the ongoing saturation of life by pictures and ‘data’ – and take stock of our guilty love affair with the imagery of violence, our attitude to the dream-world of advertising, the power and pathos of screen time. Written over the course of twenty-five years, these radical, provocative essays rethink issues central to art-making and political life today.

Available for the first time in English: the complete and annotated transcripts of Deleuze’s 1981 seminars on paintingFrom 1970 until 1987, Gilles Deleuze held a weekly seminar at the Experimental University of Vincennes and, starting in 1980, at Saint-Denis. In the spring of 1981, he began a series of eight seminars on painting and its intersections with philosophy. The recorded sessions, newly transcribed and translated into English, are now available in their entirety for the first time. Extensively annotated by philosopher David Lapoujade, On Painting illuminates Deleuze’s thinking on artistic creation, significantly extending the lines of thought in his book Francis Bacon. Through paintings and writing by Rembrandt, Delacroix, Turner, CÉzanne, Van Gogh, Klee, Pollock, and Bacon, Deleuze explores the creative process, from chaos to the pictorial fact. The introduction and use of color feature prominently as Deleuze elaborates on artistic and philosophical concepts such as the diagram, modulation, code, and the digital and the analogical. Through this scrutiny, he raises a series of profound and stimulating questions for his students: How does a painter ward off grayness and attain color? What is a line without contour? Why paint at all? Written and thought in a rhizomatic manner that is thoroughly Deleuzian-strange, powerful, and novel-On Painting traverses both the conception of art history and the possibility of color as a philosophical concept. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

Design History has become a complex and wide-ranging discipline. It now examines artefacts from conception to development, production, mediation, and consumption. Over the last few decades, the discipline has developed a diverse range of theories and methodologies for the analysis of objects. Design History presents the most comprehensive overview and guide to these developments. The book first traces the development of the discipline, explaining how it draws from Art History, Industrial Design, Cultural History and Material Culture Studies. The core of the book then analyses the seminal methodologies used in Design History today. The final section highlights the key issues concerning knowledge and meaning in Design. Throughout, the aim is to present a concise and accessible introduction to this complex field. A map to the intellectual landscape of Design History, the book will be an invaluable guide for students and a very useful reference for scholars.

A comprehensive reference that explores the history, evolution, creation and, application of pigment in the world of art and painting.The history and science are riveting; the recipes and techniques are alchemy; the added vision that can be added to an artist’s statement is unparalleledJoin artist and pigment maker Lucy Mayes at work on location and in her studio with this vibrant, dynamic book: a tribute to her passion for the subject and desire to share its stories, riches, and recipesDiscover the techniques and recipes to create colorful shades from everyday waste and even the rocks from your back yardPerfect for the growing trend of eco art materials and learning how to make paint to add greater narrative, purpose and meaning to your artworkWelcome to the ancient and modern world of art and painting media.

*#1 New York Times bestseller* *Shortlisted for The ALCS Gold Dagger Award for Non-Fiction*'A breath-taking read, as compelling as a Highsmith novel. I loved it' – Maggie O'Farrell'Brilliant… A thrilling heist caper along the lines of Ocean’s Eleven’ –Sunday Times‘Gripping' – Observer------------A spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, from the bestselling author of The Stranger in the Wood.For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than 200 heists over nearly ten years – in museums and cathedrals all over Europe – Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than 300 objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Possessed of a remarkable appreciation for art and an innate ability to assess practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtakingly number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop – until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.This is a riveting true story of art, crime, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost. As a real page-turner that seems almost unbelievable in its twists and turns, The Art Thief explores the true story of the art collector who went to extreme lengths to expand his personal collection – and the thrill of the heist that kept him going.------------‘Thrilling’ – Economist'Enthralling' – The Wall Street Journal‘A thrilling read’ – The New YorkerA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Lit Hub

When the French edition of Confronting Images appeared in 1990, it won immediate acclaim because of its far-reaching arguments about the structure of images and the histories ascribed to them by scholars and critics working in the tradition of Vasari and Panofsky. According to Didi-Huberman, visual representation has an “underside” in which seemingly intelligible forms lose their clarity and defy rational understanding. Art historians, he goes on to contend, have failed to engage this underside, where images harbor limits and contradictions, because their discipline is based upon the assumption that visual representation is made up of legible signs and lends itself to rational scholarly cognition epitomized in the “science of iconology.” To escape from this cul-de-sac, Didi-Huberman suggests that art historians look to Freud’s concept of the “dreamwork,” not for a code of interpretation, but rather to begin to think of representation as a mobile process that often involves substitution and contradiction. Confronting Images also offers brilliant, historically grounded readings of images ranging from the Shroud of Turin to Vermeer’s Lacemaker.

Why human nature is an aesthetic phenomenon—and why we need art and philosophy to understand ourselvesIn The Entanglement, philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, arguing that we have greatly underestimated what this entangled reality means for understanding human nature.Life supplies art with its raw materials, but art, Noë argues, remakes life by giving us resources to live differently. Our lives are permeated with the aesthetic. Indeed, human nature is an aesthetic phenomenon, and art—our most direct and authentic way of engaging the aesthetic—is the truest way of understanding ourselves. All this suggests that human nature is not a natural phenomenon. Neither biology, cognitive science, nor AI can tell a complete story of us, and we can no more pin ourselves down than we can fix or settle on the meaning of an artwork. Even more, art and philosophy are the means to set ourselves free, at least to some degree, from convention, habit, technology, culture, and even biology. In making these provocative claims, Noë explores examples of entanglement—in artworks and seeing, writing and speech, and choreography and dancing—and examines a range of scientific efforts to explain the human.Challenging the notions that art is a mere cultural curiosity and that philosophy has been outmoded by science, The Entanglement offers a new way of thinking about human nature, the limits of natural science in understanding the human, and the essential role of art and philosophy in trying to know ourselves.

Revolutionary essays on design, aesthetics and materialism - from one of the great masters of modern architectureAdolf Loos, the great Viennese pioneer of modern architecture, was a hater of the fake, the fussy and the lavishly decorated, and a lover of stripped down, clean simplicity. He was also a writer of effervescent, caustic wit, as shown in this selection of essays on all aspects of design and aesthetics, from cities to glassware, furniture to footwear, architectural training to why 'the lack of ornament is a sign of intellectual power'.Translated by Shaun WhitesideWith an epilogue by Joseph Masheck

In this wide-ranging book, renowned philosopher and cultural theorist Peter Sloterdijk examines art in all its rich and varied forms: from music to architecture, light to movement, and design to typography. Moving between the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, his analyses span the centuries, from ancient civilizations to contemporary Hollywood. With great verve and insight he considers the key issues that have faced thinkers from Aristotle to Adorno, looking at art in its relation to ethics, metaphysics, society, politics, anthropology and the subject.Sloterdijk explores a variety of topics, from the Greco-Roman invention of postcards to the rise of the capitalist art market, from the black boxes and white cubes of modernism to the growth of museums and memorial culture. In doing so, he extends his characteristic method of defamiliarization to transform the way we look at works of art and artistic movements. His bold and original approach leads us away from the well-trodden paths of conventional art history to develop a theory of aesthetics which rejects strict categorization, emphasizing instead the crucial importance of individual subjectivity as a counter to the latent dangers of collective culture.This sustained reflection, at once playful, serious and provocative, goes to the very heart of Sloterdijk’s enduring philosophical preoccupation with the aesthetic. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy and aesthetics and will appeal to anyone interested in culture and the arts more generally.

James Hyde, a practicing painter, presents a radical and historically detailed investigation into how the concept of pictorial space in art emerged.Using primary documents and a selection of images, Hyde exposes what many will find surprising—that space only becomes part of the descriptive apparatus of art and architecture at the turn of the 20th century, not earlier. Remarkably, this is the first critical study of pictorial space as a historical construction. In this retelling of art history, Hyde presents it as a concept bound to historical circumstance, developing —often contentiously—in philosophy, mathematics and science, to finally become common in 20th century theorizations of art. Hyde investigates and identifies the historical moments when space first enters discussions about art and how it originally developed in religion, philosophy, mathematics and science. He shows that only after several key controversies were stabilized that space finally emerged as a topic for visual art at the turn of the 20th century. The stories of these debuts introduce Kant, Poincare and Panofsky, thinkers who provided theories of space that were taken up by artists. They reveal the creative and imaginative ideas that forged the belief that space is essential to understanding art. The ease of applying space to almost any context makes space prevalent today. It is unexamined faith, rather than a clear-eyed understanding of its historical construction that currently anchors space within the discourse of art. Hyde’s original reading of what has become a broad, catch-all concept provides a reconsideration of the foundations of the history and philosophy of visual art.

I ett samtal som ingår i "Märkligt väder" framhåller Olivia Laing att hon aldrig vill hålla sig till en enda sak utan gillar att kunna röra sig fram och tillbaka mellan olika saker. Och om det är något som är påtagligt i texterna i den här volymen, så är det just rörligheten, viljan att vidga perspektiven, kliva rätt ut (eller rätt in) i något annat, något oväntat – oavsett om texterna handlar om konst, litteratur, musik, politik, sexualitet, miljöaktivism eller vad det nu kan vara. En av dem tar till exempel med läsaren till en trädgård, närmare bestämt den som filmaren Derek Jarman skapade på en blåsig udde och skrev en redan klassisk bok om. Laing visar att det finns ett tydligt samband mellan Jarmans högst personliga form av trädgårdsskötsel och den politiska och estetiska radikalitet som genomsyrar hans konstnärskap. Hon är bra på att urskilja sådant. David Bowie, Ali Smith, Marguerite Duras, Freddie Mercury, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Chris Kraus och Georgia O’Keeffe är andra konstnärliga gränsöverskridare vi får bekanta oss med mellan pärmarna. Men här finns även texter som på ett mer vardagsförankrat vis vänder och vrider på de utmaningar människor står inför i en tid präglad av ojämlikhet, populism och tunnelseende. Utmaningar som inte verkar göra Laing dyster, snarare klarvaken och uppfinningsrik. "Märkligt väder" blir också på så vis en bok om motstånd och hopp. Olivia Laing, född 1977, har ett flertal böcker bakom sig. På svenska finns "Den ensamma staden. Om konst, ensamhet och överlevnad" (2017).

This is one of the classic books on craftsmanship and design. In it, David Pye explores the meaning of skill and its relationship to design and manufacture. Cutting through a century of fuzzy thinking, he proposes a new theory of making based on the concept of good workmanship and shows how it imparts all-important diversity to our visual environment.