Close
This guide provides information on resources in the Fine Art and History of Art subject areas.
Find out more about print and online books and journals, audio visual databases, special collections of artists' books and magazines, how-to videos, and details of further training available through LibrarySkills@UCL.
Getting started: new to UCL? Try our online library induction to find out how to use our libraries and access all the resources you will need for your course.
Image: Jitterbugs (II), William H. Johnson, ca. 1941. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Douglas E. Younger
Adieu Maria Magdalena considers recurring themes and motifs from Andersson's oeuvre and suggests complex and potent feelings related to loss. Employing trompe l'oeil, the artist produces a subtly claustrophobic effect in this domestic space by layering uncanny interior scenes taken from her own home and her imagination, an interplay of surfaces and imagery that, like other works in the exhibition, probes the nature of representation. Pulling inspiration from other Scandinavian painters including Carl Fredrik Hill and Vilhelm Hammershøi, Andersson explores the tension between interiority and the external world, imbuing her compositions with a haunting stillness and introspection.
The first publication to document the 250 posters that comprise the Lawrence Weiner Poster Archive Featuring an introductory essay by exhibition curator Grant Arnold, who has worked with the Lawrence Weiner Poster Archive since the mid- 1990s, and short commissioned texts from artists, scholars and curators who worked closely with Weiner throughout his career, Of & About Posters will be the definitive text on this central aspect of Lawrence Weiner's production. Lawrence Weiner is considered one of the foremost conceptual artists worldwide.
A significant catalogue of Pakistani-American artist Huma Bhabha's layered and nuanced sculptures and works on paper that center on a reinvention of the figure and its expressive possibilities. Through the artist's fusion of materials and influences, Bhabha's work unites the ancient and the futuristic, evoking both familiarity and otherworldliness. Her formally innovative practice pulls from a wide range of references, from those that span the history of art to quotidian influences such as science fiction and horror films and the makeshift structures and detritus of urban life. Instinctive and rigorous, her work brings diverse aesthetic, cultural, and psychological touchstones into contact with matters of surface, materiality, and formal construction.
A reevaluation of American art of the 1960s that foregrounds the role of surrealism during a period of social and political upheaval Challenging what we think we know about art of the 1960s, this volume moves beyond the established movements of pop art, minimalism, and conceptualism to shine a light on how American artists created a unique type of surrealism, making works suffused with eroticism, dread, wonder, violence, and liberation. A series of essays reveals how this new surrealism enabled artists to reconnect art to an increasingly untethered reality following the period of rapid postwar transformation and to imagine new worlds and models for art rooted in political and social change.
In Transatlantic Disbelonging, Bimbola Akinbola redirects the focus in diaspora studies from questions of loss and longing to acts of unapologetic self-definition through the study of Nigerian diasporic women artists navigating disparate geographies, allegiances, and identities. Drawing on the work of contemporary visual and performance artists, experimental filmmakers, and writers--including Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Zina Saro-Wiwa, ruby onyinyechi amanze, and Nnedi Okorafor--Akinbola articulates how these artists use their experiences as cultural outsiders to redefine home and national belonging on their own terms. Taking a capacious interdisciplinary approach, she explores how these women employ anti-respectability, taboo, the erotic, and play to challenge oppressive colonial legacies and expectations pertaining to gender and morality.
Okwui Enwezor's 2016 exhibition Postwar: Art between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965 redefined the history of art produced in those two decades. Nearly a decade later, Postwar Revisited returns to these debates to present an image of a historical period in which Western conceptions of art, aesthetics, and philosophy are all thrown into intense flux after Auschwitz and Hiroshima, while the cultural energies of decolonization generate myriad artistic and intellectual practices across the globe, which re-engage the connections of art to life itself. Focusing on modernist artists, artist collectives, and architects central to dissonant regional traditions, as well as influential exhibitions and patronage systems, the contributors produce a new understanding of emergent postwar global art.
Okwui Enwezor is widely regarded as a leader among the brilliant curators who emerged in the 1990s to set agendas for understanding the global expansiveness of contemporary art. Among his pathfinding exhibitions were the second Johannesburg Biennale (1997), the paradigm-shifting Documenta11 (2002), Archive Fever (2008), and Postwar (2016). In addition to breaking ground as a curator, Enwezor was also a prolific critic, essayist, and theorist. Selected Writings--a landmark two-volume set--brings together Enwezor's most influential and foundational works. Spanning a quarter-century, these selections reflect the depth and breadth of Enwezor's writing and its role in his tireless efforts to decolonize the art world.
Okwui Enwezor is widely regarded as a leader among the brilliant curators who emerged in the 1990s to set agendas for understanding the global expansiveness of contemporary art. Among his pathfinding exhibitions were the second Johannesburg Biennale (1997), the paradigm-shifting Documenta 11 (2002), Archive Fever (2008), and Postwar (2016). In addition to breaking ground as a curator, Enwezor was also a prolific critic, essayist, and theorist. Selected Writings--a landmark two-volume set--brings together Enwezor's most influential and foundational works. Spanning a quarter-century, these selections reflect the depth and breadth of Enwezor's writing and its role in his tireless efforts to decolonize the art world.
Tate Modern exhibition: 9 October 2025 - 11 May 2026 The end of the Second World War witnessed the rise of Pan-African solidarity movements and the increased migration of African artists to European cosmopolitan centres. During Nigeria's struggle for national independence in particular, artists drew upon diverse cultural traditions to navigate the country's evolving social and political landscape, resulting in a rich and diverse body of work. This richly illustrated publication explores the multi-directional development of modern art in Nigeria from the period of British indirect rule to the years of national independence and post-independence, considering Nigerian art in relation to themes and ideas of Christian and Islamic art, traditional African sculpture, indigenous knowledge systems and Nigerian poetry and literature.
An unprecedented survey of contemporary Native American art edited by the late Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always marks the largest editorial endeavor in the late artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith's career and emphasizes her pivotal role in bringing forth a living Native Art history. This publication reproduces over one hundred works from a range of media and is a breathtaking celebration of contemporary Native American art. Including media from beadwork and jewelry to video and painting, the highly illustrated Indigenous Identities foregrounds the significance of identity in artmaking through the diverse practices of ninety-seven artists, representing more than fifty distinct Indigenous nations and tribes across the United States.
How did shadow arrive in art? A visual journey at play with light and darkness. It is always with us: our shadow. But when it comes to art, what role does this constant companion play? Richly illustrated and vividly narrated, this publication reveals the wide range of approaches and levels of meaning that shadow has in contemporary painting and photography, and in video art and installations Symbol of death and emblem of the uncanny, metaphor for beings that exist at the fringes, the shadow is a multifaceted, and frequently political, presence in contemporary art. Through stunning images, this volume portrays the emancipation of shadow as an autonomous element in contemporary art while offering astonishing discoveries in relation to classical artworks. In this generous survey, the shadow itself steps out of the shadows, revealing itself as a unique element of artistic style.
Accompanying the largest UK survey to date of work by the legendary Chicago-based figurative painter This volume is the most extensive publication on Kerry James Marshall to date, celebrating half a century of his work. It reveals the complex ways in which Marshall has transformed histories of Western painting, centering Black bodies in ambitious compositions set in barber shops, public housing projects, parks and beauty salons. It charts his use of portraiture to memorialize individuals such as Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman and Olaudah Equiano. A new series, illustrated here for the first time, looks at under-acknowledged aspects of the history of Africa. With lavish illustrations of all the works in the accompanying exhibition, the book also includes chapters on Marshall's Rythm Mastr project and his various public commissions, including his stained-glass windows for the cathedral in Washington, DC.
Barkley L. Hendricks: Piles of Inspiration Everywhere explores the physical space where renowned artist Barkley L. Hendricks worked and lived. A collaboration between photographer David Katzenstein and Hendricks's wife Susan, this book invites readers into the space Barkley and Susan shared for thirty-five years, offering readers a bold, detailed study of the artist's life. With large, double-page spread illustrations, this book takes the reader on a journey into the otherwise publicly inaccessible home and studio of Hendricks, showcasing the environment that both inspired and energized him. Writings from the artist's own journals published alongside the stunning photographs of his personal surroundings, this book ultimately offers an unprecedented look into this groundbreaking artist's life and creative process.
Light into Life encompasses monumental sculptures in the Kew landscape alongside a gallery exhibition that examines our complex and often challenging relationship with the natural world. It includes newly conceived artworks inspired by Kew's archives, scientific research and horticulture. These are accompanied by a selection of existing pieces, many of which explore the idea of nature as a fundamental part of humanity - a prominent focus of Marc Quinn's practice since the 1990s. Together, the works explore our common biological origins and reflect on humanity's capacity to both preserve and destroy nature.
Bold, eloquent, personal and clear-eyed, Alayo Akinkugbe is a major new voice in writing about art, museums and culture. This book will shift your frames of reference, expand your canvas, and give you hope for the future ― changing how you look at art while also making you look again at your ways of seeing' - Dan Hicks, author of The Brutish Museums 'To explore a history of Black communities across centuries of art is a love letter to the practice, a gift of knowledge and an ode to those who's creative expressions give us much to be inspired by today' - Sofia Akel, cultural historian and founder Since the inception of mainstream art history, Blackness has been distinctly ignored. In Reframing Blackness, art historian and founder of @ABlackHistoryOfArt, Alayo Akinkugbe challenges this void.
A groundbreaking volume on the role of the non-visual in art and the emerging field of blindness arts. In what ways can visual art be enjoyed beyond sight? Bringing together leading international scholars and artists in the emerging field of "blindness arts"--including blind and partially blind artists, curators, advocates for inclusive practices and models of audio description, cognitive psychologists, and theorists of installation, performance, and sound art--Beyond the Visual seeks to broaden the discussion of multisensory ways of beholding contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on modes that transcend a dependency upon sight. Through diverse examples of multisensory engagement, it contributes to ongoing conversations around accessibility and blindness in art while also challenging and expanding our understanding of how art is experienced.
At the dawn of the '70s, in a country still reeling from the aftershocks of World War 2, an underground movement of rock musicians resolved to tear it all up and start again. Welcome to France, 1968. Music fans in the English-speaking world are well-versed in the parallel Krautrock scene that sprung up across the border in Germany, but they are almost totally unaware of the French musical underground. There the radicalism of May '68 collided with the counterculture, post-psychedelic rock, and free-jazz to produce some of the most distinctive and vital music made anywhere in the '70s.Synths, Sax & Situationists tells the story of more famous bands like Magma, Etron Fou Leloublan, and Gong alongside almost-forgotten groups like Cheval Fou, Fille Qui Mousse, and Barricade.
A vivid showcase of work by more than thirty of the world’s leading contemporary female documentary photographers. Firecracker is a platform dedicated to supporting female photographers worldwide by showcasing their work. Building upon Firecracker’s foundations, this book brings together photography that encompasses an eclectic variety of styles, techniques and locations, from Alma Haser’s futuristic series of portraits that use origami to create 3D sculptures within the frame, to Laura El-Tantawy’s filmic and intensely personal series on political protest in Cairo. There is a recurring theme throughout the book that serves to unite these extraordinary women and their work: the exploration of individual stories and under-discussed subjects, seen by fresh eyes.
A collection of a significant group of artistic voices from the vast African diaspora that offers visual and philosophical thought rich in references to African history, mysticism, mythology, ecology, and fiction. The visual and textual proposals presented in Black Ancient Futures challenge the dominant aesthetic representations of Africa through languages that propose and reimagine a past, a present, and a future for the Black artistic experience in a transcontinental reality. These are broad proposals that don't aim to illustrate a current or movement but embrace the creation of fantasies, science-fiction narratives, and discourses where criticism, satire, and irony are evident. Artists featured include Baloji, April Bey, Jeannette Ehlers, Lungiswa Gqunta, Evan Ifekoya, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Gabriel Massan, Jota Mombaça, Sandra Mujinga, and Tabita Rezaire.
Photography's power to capture a subject--representing reality, or a close approximation--has inherently been linked with the construction and practice of identity. Since the camera's invention in 1839, and despite periods of severe homophobia, the photographic art form has been used by and for individuals belonging to dynamic LGBTQ+ communities, helping shape and affirm queer culture and identity across its many intersections. Queer Lens explores this transformative force of photography, which has played a pivotal role in increasing queer visibility. Lively essays by scholars and artists explore myriad manifestations of queer culture, both celebrating complex interpretations of people and relationships and resisting rigid definitions.
A critical investigation of Adam Pendleton's deep engagement with abstraction. Adam Pendleton's exploration of abstraction--through painting, drawing, screen printing, sculpture, language, book arts, and film--over the past five years constitutes the core of this study and the exhibition that spawned it. The book features essays by exhibition curator Meredith Malone and senior scholars Hal Foster and Joshua Chambers-Letson along with a conversation between Pendleton and the critic and theorist Isabelle Graw. These texts illuminate the artist's fundamental understanding of abstraction as a conscious articulation of unimagined alternatives and a mechanism of both resistance and active engagement.
Photography - A Queer History examines how photography has been used by artists to capture, create and expand the category 'Queer'. It bookmarks different thematic concerns central to queer photography, forging unexpected connections to showcase the diverse ways the medium has been used to fashion queer identities and communities. How has photography advanced fights against LGBTQ+ discrimination? How have artists used photography to develop a queer aesthetic? How has the production and circulation of photography served to satisfy the queer desire for images, and created transnational solidarities? Photography - A Queer History includes the work of 84 artists. It spans different historical and national contexts, and through a mix of thematic essays and artist-centred texts brings young photographers into conversation with canonical images.
Both personal and universal, Harris' oeuvre weaves together legacies of family dynamics, queer histories and Afro-cosmopolitanism Gathering photographs, assemblages, video installations and archival selections from his celebrated and lesser-known series, Our first and last love charts new connections across the artistic practice of New York-based artist Lyle Ashton Harris (born 1965). Informed by an adolescence that unfolded in New York City and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as well as several years spent living in Ghana, Harris explores the complexities of African and African American collective identity while forging his own personal narrative as a Black queer man. This book and its accompanying solo survey exhibition chronicles Harris' approach to representation and self-portraiture while tracing recurrent themes and formal techniques in his work over the last 35 years.
In 1993, at the University of California, Irvine, Charles Gaines and Catherine Lord mounted a category-breaking exhibition of Black artists from different generations, working across Fluxus, Conceptualism, assemblage, photography and installation. Challenging the racializing of Black artists' work, the exhibition confronted the discourse around race difference in the United States by including excerpts of writing by art critics who had discussed the featured artists. On the 30th anniversary of this event, this publication reprints the eponymous 1993 volume documenting the show, which contained essays by Gaines, Lord and Berger, and the transcript of a roundtable of artists and writers. Reproducing images of the exhibition in color for the first time, this new edition augments the original publication.
The first-ever A-Z of the major modern and contemporary artists of the Middle East, a region attracting international attention for its new museums, private collections, exhibitions and art fairs. Saeb Eigner shares his intimate knowledge of the stylistic, literary and linguistic histories of the Middle East and North Africa in the detailed biographies of almost 100 culturally significant artists from the region, ranging from early modernists such as Shafic Abboud, Marwan, Bahman Mohassess and Gazbia Sirry to contemporary artists such as Mona Hatoum, Nabil Nahas and Shirin Neshat.
Opening up the cosmos of an entire continent - New perspectives on Africa This lavishly illustrated volume approaches the vast continent of Africa from a variety of viewpoints; beyond prejudice and stereotypes, via cultural history and contemporary art: by means of permanent changes of perspective and a diversity of artistic voices. The history of humankind meets the colonial past and the omnipresence of aspects of Africa in many regions of the world. On the one hand, surprising views of Africa are focused on from Europe. And on the other, works and installations by Africans or protagonists from the diaspora present ideas, impulses and identities which all signify Africa. The texts illustrate the broad time frame from the first humans to Pan-Africanism and Afro-Futurism, as well as present literary and philosophical narratives.
More than 60 works across media, including major ensemble performances, emerging in the afterlife of postmodern dance Philadelphia-based artist, dancer and choreographer Ralph Lemon (born 1952) is one of the most significant figures to arise from New York's downtown scene in the 1990s. This catalog, published on the occasion of the first US museum exhibition of Lemon's work in movement, film and installation, traces the arc of his ongoing collaborations, which extend far beyond the paradigm of dance.
Luminous and tranquil, Saar's newest installation uses natural objects and materials to take the viewer on a spiritual journey This volume features the Huntington Library and Museum's commissioned site-specific installation Drifting toward Twilight (2023) by Betye Saar (born 1926). A solitary canoe drifts on a bed of brambles, illuminated by a cool neon glow. Inside, three passengers are transported to a mystical destination by two otherworldly beings. Guided by the dawn, the dusk and the phases of the moon, they transition from one cosmic reality to another. Part dreamscape and part altar, Drifting toward Twilight conjures journeys and the constant cycles of the natural world. Like cards pulled from a tarot deck, each object inside takes on a symbolic power: a monumental canoe, birdcages, antlers and plant material harvested from the Huntington's grounds.
In this volume of The Photography Workshop Series, Vik Muniz--known for his playful pictures that complicate what is understood as a photograph, sculpture, or painting--offers his insight into thinking creatively and seeing the familiar in new and surprising ways. Aperture works with the world's top photographers to distill their creative approaches, teachings, and insights on photography--offering the workshop experience in a book. Our goal is to inspire photographers of all levels who wish to improve their work, as well as readers interested in deepening their understanding of the art of photography.
Dare to be eccentric! Courageous, free, humorous, touching, and disturbing: these works by fifty international artists show how eccentric means more than neurotic or decadent. Eccentricity resists all kinds of ideology, and indeed it can be an engine of social freedom and tolerance. Through approximately one hundred pieces--including painting, sculpture, installation art, video, and design--diversity is celebrated in ways that defy rigid norms and clichés. This is a dazzling publication that meets its eccentric topic in its extravagant design. Inspiring, thoughtful, and quick-witted, the short texts in this book introduce us to some of the most brilliant eccentrics of the art world.
One of the most influential artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Yayoi Kusama occupies a unique position within recent art history. Since the 1950s, she has created a profoundly personal oeuvre that resonates with a global audience. Distinctly recognizable, her works frequently deploy repetitive elements--such as dots--to evoke both microscopic and macroscopic universes. Celebrating the visitor experience, this publication offers an immersive tour of Kusama's 2023 exhibition at David Zwirner, New York. Illustrating thirty-five paintings, a gigantic sculptural installation of pumpkins, a trio of towering, colorful flower sculptures, and a fan-favorite Infinity Mirror Room, I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers is a vivid document with varying perspectives that echo Kusama's own.
This revelatory first look at the paintings of Lorna Simpson (b. 1960), an artist who has worked primarily as a photographer for much of her career, examines this significant new development in her practice over the last decade. Simpson's recent works, midway between photography and painting, advance her incisive explorations of gender, race, and history through bodies that emerge and disappear--peering from inky surfaces or dissolving into landscapes of melting ice. Her paintings draw on documentary photographs and images from vintage Ebony and Jet magazines, combining screen-printed collages of found images with washes of colorful ink on fiberglass, wood, or clayboard.
Saunders's work brings together his extensive formal training with his own observations and lived experience. His assemblage-style paintings frequently begin with a monochromatic black ground elaborated with white chalk-a pointed reversal of the traditional figure-ground relationship. He subsequently adds other markings and materials, such as wallpaper, advertisements, rulers, and paintbrushes. Expressionistic swaths of paint and line drawings tangle with found objects, signs, and doors collected from his physical surroundings at home and abroad, creating unexpected visual rhymes and resonances.
In The Human in Bits, Kris Cohen examines black abstractionist painting to demonstrate how race and computation are intimately entangled with the personal computer's graphic user interface. He shows how the personal computer and the graphical field of its screen meant to transform the human by transforming what environments humans were to labor in. It also provided the means for whiteness to tie itself to notions of colorblind meritocracy. Cohen focuses on the post-1960s experiments of black abstractionists Alma Thomas, Jack Whitten, Charles Gaines, and Julie Mehretu, who developed a nonrepresentational approach to blackness that was oriented more toward constraint than human expression.
These striking studio portraits, curated and brought together following ten years of research championed by Autograph, constitute the most comprehensive collection of nineteenth-century photography depicting the Black subject in the Victorian era, including some of the earliest known images of Black people photographed in Britain. The historically marginalized lives of both ordinary and prominent Black figures of African, Afro-Caribbean, South Asian, and mixed heritage are seen through a prism of curatorial advocacy and experimental scholarly assemblage. Black Chronicles features high quality reproductions of plate negatives, cartes de visite, and cabinet cards, many of which were buried deep in various private and public archives including the Hulton Archive's remarkable London Stereoscopic Company collection, unseen for decades. These photographs are linked with imperial and colonial narratives through newly commissioned essays and rare lecture transcripts, in-conversation and text interventions.
Thinking Women represents state-of-the-art feminist scholarship in the field of eighteenth-century French and British art and visual culture. Topics range from women and their activities in art and science, to gendered representations of childhood and animals to fashion, femininity and temporality. Some chapters center on individual genres like hunting portraits, or on specific paintings, such as David Martin's Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray (ca. 1780) or Marie Guillemine Benoist's Portrait of a Young Black Woman (Madeleine) (1800). Others make contributions on the work of familiar actors like Jean-Siméon Chardin or Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. The volume also brings to the fore lesser-known figures including Marie-Thérèse Reboul, Madeleine Basseporte, Marguerite Le Comte, and Gabrielle Capet.
The first retrospective monograph for a legendary feminist artist and pedagogue who taught generations of artists at CalArts Accompanying the first retrospective exhibition showcasing three decades of work from Millie Wilson (born 1948), this publication delves into the influential, yet under-recognized, artist and educator whose work has deftly examined feminism, queerness and their historical erasure from art institutions. Her work joins 1980s postmodernism with the personally and politically charged conceptualism of the 1990s, reflecting a particularly unruly conception of queerness that emerged in California during these decades.
Contemporaneous with the Pop art movement, Chicago Imagism can be characterized as warm and wacky--a stark contrast to the cooler, more aloof styles in New York and London. The Imagist movement (a term coined by art historian Franz Schulze in 1972) was propelled by a core group of artists--all graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago--that exhibited their work together as The Hairy Who between 1966 and 1968 at the Hyde Park Art Center on Chicago's South Side. Though each artist had their own fiercely unique style, they shared a similar interest in popular culture, comics and material objects.
In A Reprise, David Alekhuogie remixes Walker Evans's photographs of African art, provoking timely questions about authorship and authenticity. A Reprise, David Alekhuogie's first monograph, confronts the intriguing legacy of narrative and authorship behind Western presentations of African art, and poses timely questions about how Black aesthetics are circulated, accessed, valued, and interpreted today. In 1935, Walker Evans was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, to photograph hundreds of African sculptures for the exhibition African Negro Art. Nearly ninety years later, Alekhuogie began investigating Evans's images, provocatively remixing them into his own vibrant and multilayered photographic collages.
For four decades, the legendary painter Wayne Thiebaud taught, passionately, at the University of California Davis, until retiring aged 70. As a teacher, Thiebaud had introduced thousands of undergraduates to the delights of great art and art making. Thiebaud still refers to exercises he would assign his students when explaining the dynamics of his own works. Here, collected for the first time, are student records of Thiebaud's famous lectures, which include Beginning Drawing, Descriptive Drawing, Life Drawing, Beginning Painting, Printmaking, and Theory and Criticism. These lecture notes are, apart from everything else, delightful and vibrant.
Combining representation and abstraction, Abney's vibrant works reference gender, sexuality and pop culture Committed to sharing social realities through fantastic, expansive forms, Nina Chanel Abney is an artist possessed of an iconic style and wit. Through stylized, cubistic and highly charged painterly symbols, she references radical traditions of graphic design and street art to communicate urgent political and cultural realities with immediacy to the largest possible audience. Abney's paintings and collages use dynamic color and form to draw viewers into complex narratives. Big Butch Energy/Synergy features Abney's recent exhibitions at ICA Miami and moCa Cleveland. In these works, Abney mines cinematic and media representations of student Greek life to explore how gender perception and performance is inspired by the legacies of social ritual and visual culture.
An exploration of queerness in visual and material culture with regard to the specific conditions of the making and experience of art in different cultural, sociopolitical, and historical contexts. ambivalent work*s presents case studies, close- and against-the-grain readings of artworks across different media and geographies, conversations on the epistemological and methodological frameworks of a queerly-informed art history, and artistic contributions. Together they revisit central aspects such as visibility, failure, transgression, and subversion in recent art production while at the same time providing valuable links for transhistorical explorations. Making a case for polyvalence and simultaneity, ambivalent work*s demonstrates how intersectional approaches extend the examination of queer capacities in art and art history beyond issues related solely to sexuality and gender. Scholarly and artistic articulations equally push the boundaries of the academic field of art history while giving shape to an (im)possible project of a "queer art history."
The astonishing debut monograph from contemporary abstract expressionist painter Genesis Tramaine Gimme Some Sugar is the much-anticipated first monograph from Genesis Tramaine, the renowned American artist whose star continues to rise in the international art world. Rooted in her 1980s New York City upbringing and strong spirituality, Tramaine imbues her abstract portraits of men and women with a transcendent emotion, devotion, and soundless musicality, borne from rhythmic brushstrokes and a visceral use of chromatic color. In her gestural style, she seeks, at once, to represent and universalize the humanness of the American Black face by obscuring the specificity of individual features, choosing instead to portray the inner turmoil and inner joy of one's mind and being. The book presents over 125 vibrant, full-color images of the artist's dynamic and enthralling portrait paintings, which are an inextricable homage to her deep faith, sense of self, and her Sunday mornings at church.
A close look at a portfolio of forty-six botanical drawings by Hilma af Klint, and the abstract diagrams the artist developed to express the interconnectedness of the natural and spiritual realms. "I have shown," wrote the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, "that there is a connection between the plant world and the world of the soul." Her Nature Studies portfolio (1919-20), recently acquired by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, comprises 46 sheets of exquisitely rendered botanical drawings. Documenting each plant's particular qualities along with Latin names, Swedish common names, and dates of observation, af Klint follows the typical format of a botanical reference book, known as a Flora; however, hers is a Flora of the spirit, a mapping of the natural world in spiritual terms that would stand alongside any scientific resource. Carefully drawn and vividly colored plants, flowers, and lichen are juxtaposed with geometric forms: a blooming sunflower is echoed by three nested circles, a central dot, a solid red line, a ring of points; a white narcissus is set against a pinwheel of softened primary hues; a cluster of budding branches is accompanied by checkerboard boxes of dots and stroke.
The most comprehensive survey to date of contemporary video and moving-image art from the last decade Video has never been more prevalent in contemporary art than it is today. At a time when moving images have saturated daily life, artists continue to draw new possibilities from the medium. From live-action documentation to hand-drawn animation, participatory video-game technologies, and computer-generated imagery,Vitamin V: Video and the Moving Image in Contemporary Art presents over 850 images from more than 100 artists. Discover recent work by established names as well as rising stars in the contemporary art world, all nominated by a global panel of high-profile art-world figures. Richly illustrated with multiple examples of works by each artist, including stills and installation views,Vitamin V is the first book in Phaidon's celebrated Vitamin series to focus on the moving image. An insightful essay by renowned scholar Erika Balsom surveys the history of video art from the 1960s until today.
You can access a wide variety of print and electronic books to support your research. Find your module reading list to see what key readings you can access electronically or search Explore to find more books and e-books.
We subscribe to a number of subject focused and interdisciplinary databases that will be relevant when researching the History of Art and Fine Art practice. Use the databases to find a range of material including journal articles, films for streaming and more.
Full-text archive of art and architecture magazines, dating from the late-nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Subjects covered include fine art, decorative arts, architecture, interior design, industrial design, and photography. Accessibility statement for Art & Architecture Archive, 1895-2015.
This collection includes the specialist indexes ARTbibliographies Modern (covering modern and contemporary art), Design and Applied Arts Index (for all aspects of design and crafts) and the International Bibliography of Art (covering scholarship on Western art history), together with a complementary collection of current full-text journals, Arts and Humanities database.
Access for UCL students and staff only. Access to BoB is only permitted within the United Kingdom. Requires login with UCL username and password. BoB is Learning on Screen’s on demand TV and radio service for education allowing users to record programmes from over 75 free-to-air channels, access over 2.2 million broadcasts dating back to the 1970s, create playlists, clips and clip compilations; search programme transcripts and subtitles; embed content in VLEs and share on social media
Archive of important scholarly journals. Core resource. Accessibility statement for JSTOR.
Best streamed on Chrome, Safari, or Edge. Providing video streaming to over 26,000 films including thousands of award-winning documentaries, training films and theatrical releases. The collection includes a number of leading producers, such as the Criterion Collection, PBS, Kino Lorber, New Day Films, The Great Courses, California Newsreel, BBC and hundreds more. Accessibility statement for Kanopy.
For training and support with Library resources and research, book an appointment using my live bookings calendar.
UCL Library collections have been developed over 200 years. Some material reflects historic and structural inequalities in the university and in society. Today, as we work on ensuring our current collecting policy and practice supports and reflects a fully inclusive range of voices and perspectives, we still, on occasion, acquire material which is required for teaching and research that may be considered harmful or offensive. Find out more on our Inclusive Collections webpages.
Generative AI (GenAI) is increasingly being used as source of information, translation tool, text editor and much more. The information in this box provides links to guidance on using GenAI for academic research, including strengths and limitations.
Other UCL resources include:
You can choose to study in any of UCL's Libraries and study spaces, including bookable study and group work spaces. There are also areas for postgraduate use only.