As it ranges from the traditions of the medieval marriage bed to Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child, this lavishly illustrated book will entertain anyone with an interest in history, art or culture. It is full of unexpected delights that will charm the mind and invigorate the senses - just like the carnation itself.
If there is one thing we are short on these days, it's attention. Attention is central to everything we do and think, yet it is mostly an intangible force, an invisible thing that connects us as subjects with the world around us. We pay attention to this or that, let our attention wander--we even stand at attention from time to time--yet rarely do we attend to attention itself. In this book, Gay Watson does just that, musing on attention as one of our most human impulses. As Watson shows, the way we think about attention is usually through its instrumentality, by what can be achieved if we give something enough of it--say, a crisply written report, a newly built bookcase, or even a satisfied child who has yearned for engagement. Yet in losing ourselves to the objects of our fixation, we often neglect the process of attention itself. Exploring everything from attention's effects on our neurons to attention deficit disorder, from the mindfulness movement to the relationship between attention and creativity, Watson examines attention in action through many disciplines and ways of life. Along the way, she offers interviews with an astonishing cast of creative people--from composers to poets to artists to psychologists--including John Luther Adams, Stephen Batchelor, Sue Blackmore, Guy Claxton, Edmund de Waal, Rick Hanson, Jane Hirshfield, Wayne Macgregor, Iain McGilchrist, Garry Fabian Miller, Alice and Peter Oswald, Ruth Ozeki, and James Turrell. A valuable and timely account of something central to our lives yet all too often neglected, this book will appeal to anyone who has felt their attention under threat in the clamors of modern life.
In this new critical biography Frida Beckman traces Gilles Deleuze's remarkable intellectual journey, mapping the encounters from which his life and work emerged.
Contains many fascinating facts about the world's fastest animal, including falcons in secret military projects and espionage; falcons nesting in the middle of cities; the history of the race to save the peregrine; and the colourful sport of falconry.
The zombie has shuffled with dead-eyed, remorseless menace from its beginnings in folklore and primitive superstition to become the dominant image of the undead. Roger Luckhurst sifts material from anthropology, folklore, long-forgotten pulp literature, B-movies, medical history and cultural theory to give a definitive introduction to the zombie.
Drawing on archaeological evidence and a wealth of oral and written history, this book reveals the journey Vietnamese food has traversed through history to become a much-loved cuisine today.
In this compelling journey through peaks both real and imaginary, Veronica della Dora explores how the history of mountains is deeply interlaced with cultural values and aesthetic tastes, with religious beliefs and scientific practices.
Edible Flowers is the fascinating history of how flowers have been used in cooking from ancient customs to modern kitchens. It also serves up novel ways to prepare and eat soups, salads, desserts and drinks. Discover something new about the flowers all around you with this surprising history.
Chillies traces the culinary journey of the spice and uncovers cultural and spiritual links between chillies and humans, from their use as an aphrodisiac, to the recent discovery that chilli heat shows promise as a treatment for neuropathic pain, prostate cancer and leukaemia.
An exploration of the issues that arise when philosophers ask 'how are we to eat?'
For those who visit the United Arab Emirates (UAE), staying in its the lavish hotels and browsing in the ultra-modern shopping malls of Abu Dhabi or Dubai, the country can be a mystery, a glass and concrete creation that seems to have sprung from the desert overnight. Keepers of the Golden Shore looks behind this glossy façade, illuminating the region's history, which stretches from the ancient Arabian tribes who controlled a desolate but economically important shoreline to the ostentatious architectural wonders--bankrolled by a massive wealth of oil--that characterize it today. As Michael Quentin Morton recounts, the region now known as the UAE likely began as a trading post between Mesopotamia and Oman, and since that time has been the stage of important economic and cultural exchanges. It has seen the rise and fall of a thriving pearl industry, piracy, invasions and wars, and the arrival of the oil age that would make it one of the richest countries on earth. Since the early 1970s, when seven sheikhs agreed to enter into a union, it has been a sovereign nation, carrying on the resourceful spirit--with resplendent fervor--that the brutally inhospitable landscape has long demanded of the people. Ultimately, Morton shows that the country is not only rich in oil and money but in an extraordinarily deep history and culture.
A new, critical biography of enigmatic French theorist, writer, actor and artist Antonin Artaud examining Artaud's work in relation to his life, as well as the many influential figures he came into contact with.
Meteorite: Nature and Culture is a unique, richly illustrated cultural history of these ancient and mysterious phenomena.
Ireland and Britain have an entwined and contentious past. Though southern Ireland broke with the Commonwealth in 1948, Northern Ireland remains a member of the United Kingdom to this day. As Fionna Barber shows in Art In Ireland since 1910, Ireland's relationship to its closest neighbor has played a key role in the development of its visual culture. Using the work of Jack B. Yeats, William Leech, John Lavery, William Orpen, F. E. McWilliam, Francis Bacon, and others, Barberlooks at how Ireland's art practice during the past century has been shaped by the twin forces of nationhood and modernity. Barber reveals that the drive to decolonization in the Irish Free State underpinned a predominance of images of remote landscapes and rugged peasantry. She moves beyond discussions of art in Northern Ireland--often reduced to a concern with the Troubles, the period of ethno-political conflict that began in 1969, and the significance of its status as part of Britain--to consider the region's art practice in relation to ideas of nation and the modern. Drawing parallels with artists from other former British colonies, she also looks at the theme of diaspora and migration in the work of Irish artists working in Britain during the 1950s. The first book to examine Irish art from the early twentieth century to the present day, this beautifully illustrated book adds a new dimension to our conception of this idyllic country.
Though gardening is beloved the world over, the style of gardens themselves varies from region to region, determined as much by culture as climate. In this series of illustrated essays, John Dixon Hunt takes us on a world tour of different periods in the making of gardens.
Martha Jay traces the history of allium family - onions, shallots, garlic, chives, and leeks - back to the earliest civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and the recipes of ancient Mesopotamia.
A cultural and natural history of the moth, which may seem drab compared to the butterfly, but which in fact has more species and brighter colouring than its day-flying cousin.
A classic account of how landscape has been central to questions of 'Englishness' - of national identity, history and modernity, as well as concepts of citizenship and the body.
A stunning, beautifully illustrated exploration of urban underground spaces, bringing together a collection of 80 subterranean sites from around the world.
Charlotte Horlyck explores oil and ink paintings to video art, multi-media installations, ready-mades and performance, and the questions that arise about the role of art and the artist's position within society.
An acclaimed reassessment of Italian master painter Jacopo Tintoretto, now available in compact pocket format, which charts Tintoretto's life and work in the context of Venetian art and the culture of the Cinquecento.
One of France's most high-profile writers and a Nobel Prize-winner, Albert Camus experienced both public adulation and acrimonious rejection during his career, which was cut short by a fatal car accident in 1960. Edward J. Hughes unravels the life of a complex personality whose work and stance were the subjects of intense interest and scrutiny.
Walter Benjamin's essay 'A Short History of Photography' (1931) made bold statements about photographic pioneers such as David Octavius Hill and Nicéphore Niépce, and the social and historical context of their work. This first selection of Benjamin's writings on photography includes a new translation of this influential essay as well as a range of Benjamin's other writings, both published and unpublished, some of which are translated into English for the first time here.
We might think the Egyptians were the masters of building tombs, but no other civilization has devoted more time and resources to underground burial structures than the Chinese. For at least five thousand years, from the fourth millennium B.C.E. to the early twentieth century, the Chinese have been building some of the world's most elaborate tombs and furnishing them with exquisite objects. It is these objects and the concept of the tomb as a "treasure-trove" that The Art of the Yellow Springs seeks to critique, drawing on recent scholarship to examine memorial sites the way they were meant to be experienced: not as a mere store of individual works, but as a work of art itself. Wu Hung bolsters some of the new trends in Chinese art history that have been challenging the conventional ways of studying funerary art. Examining the interpretative methods themselves that guide the study of memorials, he argues that in order to understand Chinese tombs, one must not necessarily forget the individual works present in them--as the beautiful color plates here will prove--but consider them along with a host of other art-historical concepts. These include notions of visuality, viewership, space, analysis, function, and context. The result is a ground-breaking new assessment that demonstrates the amazing richness of one of the longest-running traditions in the whole of art history.
St George: A Saint for All is a compelling account of the myth of St George, one of the most significant mythic figures in Christian culture, as well as many other religions world-wide. The book describes St George's lively and diverse following today, and shows how the saint has inspired artists, poets and painters.
Ruins and Fragments is a wide-ranging, elliptical, engaging view of the history of modernity through the lens of the ruined and fragmentary. It explores literary fragments such as the plays of Aeschylus, as well as how writers - Joyce, Coleridge, Pound, T. S. Elliot - exploit fragmentary techniques and forms.
The first book to examine the films of Jim Jarmusch from a sound-oriented perspective. The three essential acoustic elements that structure a film - music, words and noise - propel this book's fascinating journey through his work, including Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down By Law (1986), Dead Man (1995), and Only Lovers Left Alive (2013).
A lively history of tequila, an unusual liquor that can only be produced in Mexico. This book relates the beginnings of tequila and how it was introduced into the global market, and contains many recipes for tequila-based cocktails, as well as advice on buying, storing, tasting and serving tequila.
Exploring sugar's reputation as one of the most beloved yet reviled substances that we consume, this compelling history of the infamous ingredient is peopled with determined adventurers, relentless sugar barons and greedy plantation owners.
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