A full account of Renaissance artist Raphael's prodigious yet short-lived career.
A challenging, iconoclastic history of empire-building from the point of view of women.
A return by essential film critic Laura Mulvey to questions of film theory and feminism.
This incisive and illuminating biography follows the three themes that shaped the life of Leonardo da Vinci and, through him, forever changed Western art and imagination: nature, art, and self-fashioning. Nature and art helped form Leonardo. He spent his first twelve years in the Tuscan countryside before entering the most reputed artistic workshop of Florence. There he blossomed as one of the most promising painters of his time and promptly applied his skills to explore and question the world through science and invention. Leonardo was also self-fashioned: he received only a basic education and grew up around peasants and artisans. But from the 1480s onwards, he transformed himself into a court artist and became a familiar of kings and rulers. Following the chronology of Leonardo's extraordinary life, this book examines Leonardo as artist, courtier, and thinker, and explores how these aspects found expression in his paintings, as well as in his work in sculpture, architecture, theater design, urban planning, engineering, anatomy, geology, and cartography. François Quiviger concludes with observations on Leonardo's relevance today as a model of the multidisciplinary artist who combines imagination, art, and science--the original, and ultimate, Renaissance Man.
A global history of restaurants beyond white tablecloths and maître d's, Dining Out presents restaurants both as businesses and as venues for a range of human experiences. From banquets in twelfth-century China to the medicinal roots of French restaurants, the origins of restaurants are not singular--nor is the history this book tells. Katie Rawson and Elliott Shore highlight stories across time and place, including how chifa restaurants emerged from the migration of Chinese workers and their marriage to Peruvian businesswomen in nineteenth-century Peru; how Alexander Soyer transformed kitchen chemistry by popularizing the gas stove, pre-dating the pyrotechnics of molecular gastronomy by a century; and how Harvey Girls dispelled the ill repute of waiting tables, making rich lives for themselves across the American West. From restaurant architecture to technological developments, staffing and organization, tipping and waiting table, ethnic cuisines, and slow and fast foods, this delectably illustrated and profoundly informed and entertaining history takes us from the world's first restaurants in Kaifeng, China, to the latest high-end dining experiences.
"Art is often seen as a solitary, even a reclusive, endeavor. But visual artists, writers, and musicians often find themselves energized by a collective environment. Sharing ideas around a table has always provided a starting, and a continuing, place for fruitful exchanges between artists of all kinds. In her wide-ranging new book, Mary Ann Caws explores a rich variety of gathering places, past and present, which have been conducive to the release and sustenance of creative energies. Creative Gatherings surveys meeting locations across Europe and the United States, from cityscapes to island hideouts, from private homes to public cafes and artists' colonies. Examples include Florence Griswold's house in Old Lyme, Connecticut, meeting place of the Old Lyme Art Colony; Prague's Le Louvre caf, haunt of Kafka and Einstein; Picasso's modernist hangout in Barcelona, Els Quatre Gats; Charleston, gathering place of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa and Duncan Bell; and the caf s of Saint-Germain-des-Pr s and Montparnasse: the hangouts of Apollinaire, Sartre, and Patti Smith. Interweaving two hundred examples of collaborative artworks throughout the text, with more than one hundred in color, Creative Gatherings is a beautiful, erudite commingling as inspiring as the gathering places Caws depicts."--Publisher's description.
Boxing is one of the oldest and most exciting of sports: its bruising and bloody confrontations have permeated Western culture since 3000 BC. Looking afresh at everything from neo-classical sculpture to hip-hop lyrics, the author also explores the way in which the history of boxing has intersected with the history of mass media.
An accessible and entertaining portrait of humans as a brilliantly inventive, yet self-destructive animal.
Psyche on the Skin charts the secret history of self-harm. This book describes its many forms, from sexual self-mutilation and hysterical malingering in the late Victorian period, to self-castrating religious sects, to self-mutilation and self-destruction in art, music and popular culture.
Live Wires explores how five key electronic technologies revolutionized music.
For centuries common primroses have spread breathtaking carpets of pale lemon yellow across the globe, the first sign of spring. Abundant, edible, and beneficial for many ailments, they have supported civilization's social and cultural foundations. When undaunted plant hunters risked their lives to introduce the many Himalayan primroses of breathtaking beauty, the primrose gained iconic status. Capable of endless variation, primroses have captured the attention of gardeners, plant breeders, and scientists, while artists and poets have found them essential as both subject matter and muse. William Shakespeare introduced us to the "the primrose path," a pleasurable but destructive route, in several of his plays, and Charles Darwin spent more than thirty years working with primroses to solve an elegant evolutionary mystery. This book tells the story of how primroses became so successful, circling the Earth, adapting to human civilization, and yet holding their own on inaccessible craggy summits where they may never be seen. Bringing together facts, folklore, and beautiful images from around the world, Primrose is a delightful guide to this hugely popular flower.
"Many human beings have considered the powers and the limits of human knowledge, but few have wondered about the power that the idea of knowledge has over us. Steven Connor's The Madness of Knowledge is the first book to investigate this emotional inner life of knowledge - the lusts, fantasies, dreams, and fears that the idea of knowing provokes. There are in-depth discussions of the imperious will to know, of Freud's epistemophilia (or love of knowledge), and the curiously insistent links between madness, magical thinking, and the desire for knowledge. Connor also probes secrets and revelations, quarreling and the history of quizzes and "general knowledge," charlatanry and pretension, both the violent disdain and the sanctification of the stupid, as well as the emotional investment in the spaces and places of knowledge, from the study to the library. In an age of artificial intelligence, alternative facts, and mistrust of truth, The Madness of Knowledge offers an opulent, enlarging, and sometimes unnerving psychopathology of intellectual life."--Jacket flap.
We spend our lives moving through passages, hallways, corridors, and gangways, yet these channeling spaces do not feature in architectural histories, monographs, or guidebooks. They are overlooked, undervalued, and unregarded, seen as unlovely parts of a building's infrastructure rather than architecture. This book is the first definitive history of the corridor, from its origins in country houses and utopian communities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through reformist Victorian prisons, hospitals, and asylums, to the "corridors of power," bureaucratic labyrinths, and housing estates of the twentieth century. Taking in a wide range of sources, from architectural history to fiction, film, and TV, Corridors explores how the corridor went from a utopian ideal to a place of unease: the archetypal stuff of nightmares.
Will be of interest not only to beekeepers and producers of honey, but also to a wide general audience who appreciate the symbolism, society and cultural meanings of this industrious creature.
Difference exists; otherness is constructed. This book asks how important Western artists, from Giotto to Titian and Caravaggio, and from Bosch to D rer and Rembrandt, shaped the imaging of non-Western individuals in early modern art. Victor I. Stoichita's nuanced and detailed study examines images of racial otherness during a time of new encounters of the West with different cultures and peoples, such as those with dark skins: Muslims and Jews. Featuring a host of informative illustrations and crossing the disciplines of art history, anthropology, and postcolonial studies, Darker Shades also reconsiders the Western canon's most essential facets: perspective, pictorial narrative, composition, bodily proportion, beauty, color, harmony, and lighting. What room was there for the "Other," Stoichita would have us ask, in such a crystalline, unchanging paradigm?
The most radical and divisive composer of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg remains a hero to many, and a villain to many others. In this refreshingly balanced biography, Mark Berry tells the story of Schoenberg's remarkable life and work, situating his tale within the wider symphony of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history. Born in the Jewish quarter of his beloved Vienna, Schoenberg left Austria for his early career in Berlin as a leading light of Weimar culture, before being forced to flee in the dead of night from Hitler's Third Reich. He found himself in the United States, settling in Los Angeles, where he would inspire composers from George Gershwin to John Cage. Introducing all of Schoenberg's major musical works, from his very first compositions, such as the String Quartet in D Major, to his invention of the twelve-tone method, Berry explores how Schoenberg's revolutionary approach to musical composition incorporated Wagnerian late Romanticism and the brave new worlds of atonality and serialism. Essential reading for anyone interested in the music and history of the twentieth century, this book makes clear Schoenberg changed the history of music forever.
In 1568, the Seventeen Provinces in the Netherlands rebelled against the absolutist rule of the king of Spain. A confederation of duchies, counties, and lordships, the Provinces demanded the right of self-determination, the freedom of conscience and religion, and the right to be represented in government. Their long struggle for liberty and the subsequent rise of the Dutch Republic was a decisive episode in world history and an important step on the path to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And yet, it is a period in history we rarely discuss. In his compelling retelling of the conflict, Anton van der Lem explores the main issues at stake on both sides of the struggle and why it took eighty years to achieve peace. He recounts in vivid detail the roles of the key protagonists, the decisive battles, and the war's major turning points, from the Spanish governor's Council of Blood to the Twelve Years Truce, while all the time unraveling the shifting political, religious, and military alliances that would entangle the foreign powers of France, Italy, and England. Featuring striking, rarely seen illustrations, this is a timely and balanced account of one of the most historically important conflicts of the early modern period.
A cultural history of the myths, magic, and meaning surrounding shapeshifters. Featuring an array of examples from history, literature, film, TV, and computer games, it explores our secret desire to become something other than human.
Five Years Ahead of My Time: Garage Rock from the 1950s to the Present tells the story of an explosive musical phenomenon whose continuing influence on popular culture is dramatic and deep.
Cosmos: The Art and Science of the Universe charts the human love affair with the heavens in art and astronomy, based on sound science and insightful art and cultural history.
What's your favorite cookie (or biscuit, for any British baking show buffs)? Chocolate chip, ginger spice, or Oreo? Oatmeal-and-raisin, black-and-white, digestive, or florentine? Or do you just prefer the dough? Our choice biscuits and cookies are as diverse as the myriad forms and flavors these chewy treats take, and well they should be. These baked delights have a history as rich as their taste: evidence of biscuit-making dates back to around 4000 BC. In Biscuits and Cookies, Anastasia Edwards explores the delectable past of these versatile snacks, from their earliest beginnings through Middle Eastern baking techniques, to cookies of Northern Europe in the Middle Ages, and on into the New World. From German lebkuchen to the animal cracker (more than half a billion of which are produced each year in the United States alone), from brownies and sugar cookies in the United States to shortbread and buttery tea biscuits in the United Kingdom, to Anzac and Girl-Guide biscuits in New Zealand and Australia, this book is crammed with biscuit and cookie facts, stories, images, and recipes from around the world and across time. And there's no need to steal from the cookie jar.
Gifts of the Gods: A History of Food in Greece is a comprehensive history of Greek food from prehistoric times to the 21st century. The book reveals the many links between ancient and modern, and features numerous recipes, firmly based in Greek tradition, which the reader can try at home.
This sumptuously illustrated volume, edited by eminent war historian Joanna Bourke, offers a comprehensive visual, cultural and historical account of the ways in which armed conflict has been represented in art.
This engaging history brings together the interwoven stories of the original Goths, who sacked the imperial city of Rome and set in motion the decline and fall of the western Roman empire, and the diverse Gothic legacy, a legacy that continues to shape our modern world.
Fairies: A Dangerous History tells the story of the many fairy terrors which lay behind Titania or Tinkerbell.
Victor Hugo (1802-85) is an icon of French culture. He achieved immense success as a poet, dramatist, and novelist, and he was also elected to both houses of the French Parliament. Leading the Romantic campaign against artistic tradition and defying the Second Empire in exile, he became synonymous with the progressive ideals of the French Revolution. His state funeral in Paris made headlines across the world, and his breadth of appeal remains evident today, not least thanks to the popularity of his bestseller, Les Miserables, and its myriad theatrical and cinematic incarnations. This biography provides a comprehensive exploration of Hugo's monumental body of work within the context of his dramatic life. Hugo wrestled with family tragedy and personal misgivings while being pulled into the turmoil of the 19th century, from the fall of Napoleon's Empire to the rise of France's Third Republic.
The story of the canine has since the earliest times been fundamentally entwined with that of humanity itself, and this ancient and fascinating story is told in Susan McHugh's Dog.
Prenumerera på vårt nyhetsbrev för att få fantastiska erbjudanden och inspiration för din nästa läsning.
Genom att registrera dig accepterar du vår personuppgiftspolicy.
