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Image: Jitterbugs (II), William H. Johnson, ca. 1941. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Douglas E. Younger
UCL has trial access to Alternative Press Index and Alternative Press Index Archive from EBSCO until 29th February 2024.
Alternative Press Index (API) and Alternative Press Index Archive (APIA) are bibliographic databases of journal, newspaper, and magazine articles from international alternative, radical, and left periodicals. Born of the New Left, the API was launched in 1969 to provide access to the emerging theories and practices of radical social change. API and APIA coverage is both international and interdisciplinary.
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Published in conjunction with the first comprehensive museum survey dedicated to the artist, LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity presents the full range of her practice and includes rarely seen and brand-new bodies of work. For more than two decades, the artist-activist LaToya Ruby Frazier has used photography, text, moving images, and performance to revive and preserve forgotten narratives of labor, gender, and race in the postindustrial era. Frazier has cultivated a practice that builds on the legacy of the social documentary tradition of the 1930s, the photo-conceptual forays of the 1960s and 1970s, and the work of socially conscious writers like Upton Sinclair, James Baldwin, and bell hooks.
Photography Bound. Reimagining Photobooks and Self-publishing is essentially a portable library, whore each book-selected by the most eclectic and vibrant voices working in the field today-is declared an urgent addition. The result is a multi-part manifesto that radically and intimately engages with photography and publishing. The book unfurls from a three-day conference organist by Antonio Cataldo and Adrià Julià in 2020 at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen and Fotogalleriet, Oslo. The conference found common but fragile ground amid a global health crisis. From there, it managed to catapult discussion and explore in depth the need to print and publish photobooks. Each contribution discloses a unique relationship to photobooks and publishing. Together, they are a trigger for social, political and cultural demands. This book makes a collective call to action-or actions-and asks each reader to reimagine where photography is bound to go.
From artists at the forefront of the Dutch Golden Age to avant-garde radicals in Soviet Russia and surrealist thinkers in exile, this book gathers together 65 painters from throughout history and across the world. Sometimes ignored - but always iconic - this highly opinionated guide will tell you everything you need to know, and nothing that you don't, about the women behind the canvas (and quite a bit about what's on the canvas too). Witty opinion is set alongside faithful colour reproductions in an elegant hardback that will persuade anyone that these painters are worth knowing about. The first book in a new series of Opinionated Guides on art movements, mediums and ideas which builds on the success of Hoxton Mini Press Opinionated Guides to London.
In a world of infinite images here is a guide to 65 of the best ever taken. From early experiments with light and form through Leica masterpeices and now articicially-generated images, take it or leave it, this is our opinion as to why these particular photographs rise above so many others and how they shaped the history of photography as an art form as well as the way we see ourselves and the world. The third book in a new series of Opinionated Guides on art movements, mediums and ideas which builds on the success of Hoxton Mini Press Opinionated Guides to London.
A remarkable look at Iran through the lenses of 23 women photographers, at a moment in history when Iranian women are fighting for their rights with courage and determination. Breathing Space showcases the work of twenty-three women photographers from Iran and their diverse approaches to their craft. Exploring a range of photographic styles and genres, they record the past and present upheavals of their homeland as well as tackling subjects such as the nature of memory, the tension between tradition and modernity, and the scars of conflict and loss. Whether documentary or conceptual, their images have global resonance and speak of the hunger for freedom and the power of women to shape the world.
* One of the most influential directors ever * Chantal Akerman's film Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was named best film of all time by magazine Sight and Sound * With her unique and hyper-personal style, the Belgian director transformed both the film and art world * This book is a posthumous collective portrait of Akerman as one of thé filmmakers of our time, with contributions from people who admired her and worked closely with her Filmmaker and artist Chantal Akerman was one of the most fearless filmmakers of her generation. Her work blurs the boundaries of time and space, of film and art. It can be seen in cinemas and museums worldwide. She may be largely unknown to the general public, but she is revered by cinephiles, visual artists and filmmakers. The impact of her oeuvre on world cinema became abundantly clear when Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was named best film of all time by British magazine Sight and Sound.
Offering a radical rewriting of the history of contemporary art from a feminist perspective, four distinguished authors explore the lineages of performance, abstraction, craft and ecofeminism in ways that reveal the debt these important genres owe to the work of pioneering women artists. The painters, sculptors and performance artists featured here have shaped ideas now dominating the art world: the vulnerability of the environment, the rise of activist art, the challenge to the reign of high technology (including digital culture), and the development of a new language of abstraction.
Continuing the work of the acclaimed Afro-Atlantic Histories, this publication from the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) compiles the collective curatorship and research carried out by artists and scholars from various territories and Indigenous groups in Australia, North America, South America and Scandinavia. For the traveling exhibition, MASP, in collaboration with Kode Bergen Art Museum, invited guest curators from Indigenous nations including Inuit, Maori and Sámi. With over 150 artists included, the featured artworks range from the historical to the contemporary―from 17th-century colonial religious paintings to modern film and video installations―in order to trace the impact of European colonization on Indigenous visual culture.
The Conscious Cultural Worker: Counter-Narratives of Black Women Artivists as Radical Educators uses narrative inquiry and Black feminist and womanist pedagogy to look at the teaching identities and lived experiences of Black women artivist educators in the current neoliberal anti-woke moment. Their counter-narratives are presented as vignettes to look at a certain time in the lives of Black women artists who use rap, spoken word, or visual art to turn public places like bars, clubs, galleries, lounges, and alleys into unofficial educational spaces that the author calls "Communities of Reciprocity" (CoR).
In Conversation with the Cosmos offers a recuperative study of the peripatetic gay Filipino artist David Medalla (1938-2020), an internationally influential figure in twentieth-century art. This publication, which accompanies an exhibition of the same title, contextualizes an elusive and experimental practice that spanned kinetic, performance, and participatory art movements. Medal la's life and work cultivated intimate forms of exchange between collaborators, friends, and lovers in the service of "cosmic propulsions," "Impromptus," and other other-worldly propositions. Supported by an array of works on paper, paintings, art objects, printed ephemera, documentation, and additional material remnants, the book's contents narrate Medalla's personal encounters alongside his involvement in political action, public performances, and exhibitions.
Surrounded by the widespread misery of the Depression, left-leaning classical music composers sought a musical language that both engaged the masses and gave voice to their concerns. Maria Cristina Fava explores the rich creative milieu shaped by artists dedicated to using music and theater to advance the promotion, circulation, and acceptance of leftist ideas in 1930s New York City. Despite tensions between aesthetic and pragmatic goals, the people and groups produced works at the center of the decade's sociopolitical and cultural life. Fava looks at the Composers' Collective of New York and its work on proletarian music and workers' songs before turning to the blend of experimentation and vernacular idioms that shaped the political use of music within the American Worker's Theater Movement. Fava then reveals how composers and theater practitioners from these two groups achieved prominence within endeavors promoted by the Works Project Administration.
The overriding question discussed in this Element can be stated simply as: can computers create art? This Element presents an overview of the controversies raised by various answers to this question. A major difficulty is that the technology is developing rapidly, and there are still many uncertainties and knowledge gaps as to what is possible today and in the near future. But a number of controversial issues are identified and discussed. The position taken on controversial issues will depend on assumptions made about the technology, about the nature and location of consciousness, about art and creativity. Therefore, a number of hypothetical answers are outlined, related to the assumptions made.
The life and afterlife of Rainer's landmark dance, with archival documentation and contemporary responses Yvonne Rainer's 1965 performance Parts of Some Sextets, for 10 people and 12 mattresses, represents a turning point in the American choreographer's oeuvre. Built on her formative years with the Judson Dance Theater, "my mattress monster," as Rainer calls it, was where she asserted her exploration of "ordinary" actions and her disregard for narrative constructions, creating an intricate choreography with a new scene every 30 seconds. More than half a century after its premiere, Rainer, in collaboration with dance artist Emily Coates, directed the 2019 revival of the piece for the Performa 19 Biennial in New York. Remembering a Dance focuses on the two distinct occurrences of this single dance.
Renowned art historian and pioneering feminist Linda Nochlin explores how, from the late 18th century, fragmented, mutilated and fetishized representations of the human body came to constitute a distinctively modern view of the world. Surprising, questioning, challenging, enriching: the Pocket Perspectives series celebrates writers and thinkers who have helped shape the conversation across the arts. Mixing classic and contemporary texts, reissues and abridgements, these are bite-sized, fully illustrated reads in an attractive, affordable and highly collectable package.
Exploring the role of the body and performance in the past two decades of Japanese contemporary art This book surveys the state of Japanese contemporary art in the 2000s, focusing on how bodies and performances are connected to society, environment, materiality and technology. Artists include: Dumb Type, Mari Katayama, Meiro Koizumi, Yoko Ono, Kishio Suga, Kazuo Shiraga.
An abundantly illustrated look at how queerness is performed within artistic practice Premodern archives from the Middle East show rich and diverse homoerotic worlds that were disrupted by the colonial imposition of Western models of sexuality. Andrew Gayed traces how contemporary Arab and Middle Eastern diasporic artists have remembered and reinvented these historical ways of being in their work in order to imagine a different present. Building on global art histories and transnational queer theory, Queer World Making illuminates contemporary understandings of queer sexuality in the Middle Eastern diaspora.
A richly illustrated account of the life and work of the twentieth-century Mexican artist and writer who reimagined what the book could look like, mean, and do Ulises Carrión (1941-1989) was one of the most remarkable artists and writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Part of a generation of artists that challenged the boundaries separating visual arts, literature, music, and performance, Carrión worked in a wide range of media: artists' books, sound poetry, performance art, mail art, video art, theoretical writing, and exhibitions. Today, Carrión's work is inspiring a new generation of artists, art historians, and cultural practitioners around the world.
A new history of postwar painting that explores how the desire to look backward shaped some of the period's most radical artmaking This incisive account of modernism's postwar development examines how painters, such as Joan Mitchell, Barnett Newman, and Rose Piper, invoked tradition in order to respond to, participate in, and disrupt the histories of the movement being written at midcentury. Saul Nelson argues that artists' turn to the past, often dismissed as regressive, offers an important counternarrative to the notion of modernism as always pushing forward. To be a modernist, Nelson contends, was to live in doubt--about which aspects of the past were still needed and how they might be put to new use.
"For all our sakes, I hope Deborah Roberts continues to stake a claim, through her work, for a more expansive view of Black children." --Dawoud Bey The definitive look at two decades of work by Austin-based artist Deborah Roberts (born 1962) with newly commissioned texts and a thorough dive into her archive, this monograph offers a comprehensive view of one of today's most significant social observers. An extensive plate section is accompanied by a heartfelt foreword from Dawoud Bey on "the tragic mischaracterization of Black children"; an insightful essay from Ekow Eshun on the social and political histories of innocence, race and the fractured nature of the contemporary Black experience; a celebratory tribute from author and artist Carolyn Jean Martin on the musicality, humility and generosity of Roberts' practice; and a free-ranging conversation between Roberts and cultural historian Sarah Elizabeth Lewis.
Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In draws parallels between two of the most significant practitioners in the history of photography, presenting fresh research, rare vintage prints, and previously unseen archival works. 'I feel that photographs can either document and record reality or they can offer images as an alternative to everyday life: places for the viewer to dream in.' - Francesca Woodman, 1980 Living and working over a century apart, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) and Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) experienced very different ways of making and understanding photographs. Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In accompanies the exhibition of the same name opening at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in March 2024. Spanning the careers of both artists, the beautifully illustrated catalogue includes their best-known photographs as well as less familiar images. The exhibition works are arranged into eight thematic sections with feature essays, offering an accessible, engaging opportunity to consider both artists in a new light.
TATE Modern Exhibition, 2 October 2024 - 9 March 2025 Mike Kelley (1954-2012) is widely considered one of the most influential artists of our time, with an irreverent and visionary practice that spanned and mixed performance, installation, drawing, painting, video, photography, sound, text and sculpture. Ghost and Spirit looks at his dense and colourful body of work, from early performances, to his iconic stuffed toy works, and on to his explorations of history, memory and trauma as they haunt our experiences of school or family. Asking prescient questions about how to exist among a world of media images, about the role of art and the artist, and about embodiment, Kelley adopted different personas and mediums, deliberately deflating his own status, and from his own position as a white, heterosexual man in postmodern, capitalist America, he challenged assumptions about identity, class and institutional authority.
Published in conjunction with the most comprehensive retrospective in the U.S. of the artist Joan Jonas, spanning more than 50 years of her remarkable career. Since her earliest performances in the late 1960s, Joan Jonas has concerned herself with animation and moving images, asking what it means to move images, or to be moved by images. The artist returns constantly to her ever-expanding archive of images, sounds, gestures, ideas, and places reworking those materials into new forms across the decades. Published in conjunction with the artist's most comprehensive retrospective in the United States, this catalogue spans more than fifty years of her remarkable career and features works in all media, including videos, drawings, notebooks, photographs, and major installations and performances.
A comprehensive and inspiring collection of essays by Larry Neal, a founder of the seminal Black Arts Movement. "The Black Arts Movement is radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community. Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. As such, it envisions an art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America." - Larry Neal Growing up in Philadelphia, Neal was surrounded by Bebop music and writing. He culled inspiration and teachings from Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, and the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance. After studying folklore at the University of Pennsylvania, Neal became a prolific poet and critic, and he served as the arts editor for the Liberator where he published many of his essays about art. Neal encouraged artists to produce work that was not only politically engaged but also unapologetically rooted in the Black experience, and this message reverberated through African American literature, theater, music, and visual arts.
Highlights the role of creative expression in exposing, preventing, and combatting sexual violenceSince 2017 the #MeToo movement has expanded cultural awareness of the pervasiveness of sexual assault and tacit support for rape culture in the United States and beyond. Despite its ubiquity, sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes in the world in part because of the mistreatment and misunderstanding survivors often face from their communities and the legal system.Art, Activism, and Sexual Violence brings together creative work, in multiple genres, with analyses of the historical and cultural contexts of sexual violence from intersectional feminist perspectives.
'What happens when Black artists depict Black figures? What art does this produce, and what worlds of possibility does this reveal?' - Ekow Eshun Reframing the Black Figure showcases more than 20 of the most important Black figurative artists working in the UK and US today. This visual giftbook introduces readers to the field of Black figuration by highlighting a selection of key works from the National Portrait Gallery exhibition, The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure. Readers will encounter contemporary Black artists producing beautiful, urgent artworks that presents the Black form with nuance and depth. Richly illustrated with artworks and visual details, alongside short biographies for all featured artists, this accessible publication offers an opportunity for readers to experience some of the most exciting artworks depicting the Black form. Within this context, they take on a dual role, as the accomplished work of individual artists on the one hand, and as a collective assertion of Black presence on the other.
The 67 works shown and discussed here are representative of the rich and varied history of colour concepts since the 17th century, and while we have selected many familiar examples of colour concepts that are firmly established in colour history, we hope to have succeeded in putting them in a wider cultural context and to have looked at them with fresh eyes. In addition to these 'classic' examples in their field we have made a particular effort to feature some lesser-known, or more obscure works that deserve to be considered for their aesthetic and theoretical appeal and importance. One further aim is to give more room to works on colour written, published and illustrated by women in the last two centuries. The historical and geographical range offered here is wide, with examples from Europe, the United States and parts of Asia, but we have also sought to be as inclusive as possible with regard to genre and style
Punk, humor, poetry and pure rage: the full story of Pussy Riot as told by the group's members The Russian art collective and activist group Pussy Riot, formed in Moscow in 2011, is famous for its spontaneous and courageous actions challenging the Russian regime. Edited by Maria (Masha) Alyokhina, member and cofounder of the feminist-activist performance collective, this volume compiles, in chronological order, the last decade-plus of Pussy Riot's happenings in Russia. Recurrent themes in the group's feminist, anti-Putin practice include freedom of expression, human rights, LGBTQ+ rights and the release of political prisoners, while recent actions and works feature anti-war statements and support for Ukraine. Accompanying the eponymous traveling exhibition--the group's largest presentation of work to date and its first-ever museum show--it is bolstered by a vast selection of photos and video stills, as well as personal accounts from the group's members.
In 1996, a book of photographs by an unknown young British photographer was launched on to the London contemporary art market to immediate popular and critical success. The pictures were taken within the claustrophobic, chaotic interior of a Birmingham council flat where the photographer’s father, Ray, an alcoholic, lived with Liz, his sedentary and occasionally violent mother, and his younger brother Jason. This reader traces the history of a body of work which remains as vital and provocative as on its first release, and whose story tells us much about the workings of art, publishing, and the politics of dissemination. Editor Liz Jobey charts the history in a new essay drawing on interviews with Billingham and all the primary protagonists of the work’s emergence, including Michael Collins, Julian Germain, and Paul Graham.
A visual history of the artists, fans, and fanzines of widely influential British punk. Zerox Machine is an immersive journey through the vibrant history of British punk and its associated fanzines from 1976 to 1988. Drawing on an extensive range of previously unpublished materials sourced from private collections across the United Kingdom, Matthew Worley describes and analyzes this transformative era, providing an intimate glimpse into the hopes and anxieties that shaped a generation. Far more than a showcase of covers, Zerox Machine examines the fanzines themselves, offering a rich tapestry of firsthand accounts, personal stories, and subcultural reflections.
A wide-ranging examination of Socialist Realism that shows it extended far beyond Eastern Europe. Was Socialist Realism Global? takes up a question that was posed by art historian Piotr Piotrowski in his final book. It offers new perspectives both on socialist realism in a strict sense and on aspects of politically and socially engaged art of the twentieth century that employed broadly understood figuration. Contributors to the volume shed light on the genealogy of figuration, relate socialist art and socialist realism from Europe to analogous artistic practices in Latin America and beyond, and more. To date, they argue, the rewriting of the artistic canon of the postcolonial world has failed to sufficiently underscore the fact that through the period of decolonization and Cold War divisions internationally, artists across half the globe were educated according to doctrines of real socialism.
A vivid and compelling collection of quotations from the influential contemporary artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat Neshat-isms is an exciting collection of quotations from award-winning Iranian-American visual artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat. Her experiences of loss and grief as an Iranian woman living in exile are central themes of her work in photography, video, and film. She is known for her outspoken advocacy for Iranian women and human rights, and for poetic and politically charged images and narratives that raise questions about power, religion, race, and gender. Gathered from interviews, talks, and writings, these powerful and thought-provoking quotations showcase the voice of one of the most important artists of our time. "Through my work I have continued to defy and resist the Western clichéd image of Iranian women as passive victims. While acknowledging the repressive situation in Iran, I have continued to represent Iranian women as empowered, courageous, defiant, and rebellious."
The untold story of women artists in the United States and the social impact of their work during the crucial decades of the 1950s to the 1970s. In Women Artists in Midcentury America, readers embark on a journey spanning two decades, delving into the evolving social and artistic landscapes through the lens of all-women exhibitions. These groundbreaking projects courageously confronted issues of sexual and racial discrimination, igniting profound discussions about women's roles within modernism and democracy. Looking closely at the inception and reception of these exhibitions by curators, artists, critics, and the public, the book sheds light on the remarkable contributions of numerous artists, from Ruth Asawa to Marguerite Zorach. By foregrounding the accomplishments of women artists during a conservative period overshadowed by the feminist movement of the 1970s, Daniel Belasco provides a fresh perspective on the complex history of women's art in America and its significance in the broader art world.
Highlighting the creativity and symbolism of covered portraits, this volume explores an intriguing but largely unknown aspect of Italian and Northern European Renaissance art Many small Renaissance portraits were richly adorned with covers or backs bearing allegorical figures, mythological scenes, or emblems that celebrated the sitter and invited the viewer to decipher their meaning. Hidden Faces includes seventy objects, ranging in format from covered paintings to miniature boxes, that illuminate the symbiotic relationship between the portrait and its pair. Texts by thirteen distinguished scholars vividly illustrate that the other "faces" of these portraits represent some of the most innovative images of the Renaissance, created by masters such as Hans Memling and Titian.
A groundbreaking volume resituating the Harlem Renaissance as integral to the development of twentieth-century modernism Beginning in the 1920s, Upper Manhattan became the center of an explosion of art, writing, and ideas that has since become legendary. But what we now know as the Harlem Renaissance, the first movement of international modern art led by African Americans, extended far beyond New York City. This volume reexamines the Harlem Renaissance as part of a global flowering of Black creativity, with roots in the New Negro theories and aesthetics of Alain Locke, its founding philosopher, as well as the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston. Featuring artists such as Aaron Douglas, Charles Henry Alston, Augusta Savage, and William H. Johnson, who synthesized the expressive figuration of the European avant-garde with the aesthetics of African sculpture and folk art to render all aspects of African American city life, this publication also includes works by lesser-known contributors, including Laura Wheeler Waring and Samuel Joseph Brown, Jr., who took a more classical approach to depicting Black subjects with dignity, interiority, and gravitas.
Thirty-five contemporary artists create their own version of Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. Édouard Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) is generally cited as the first modern painting. The entry slide in art history lectures about modernism, the work remains among the "most audacious painting[s] ever seen in France," as Ross King described it in The Judgement of Paris (2006). As Manet did with Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, the most provocative painters today collapse the historical and the contemporary onto one plane. Jeffrey Deitch invited a group of these influential artists to create their own versions, combined here with historical responses to Manet's painting. The slim volume features these often biting and satirical works alongside essays discussing Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe's enduring influence on contemporary figurative painting.
Artworks and archival documents from Lebanon's turbulent postwar years This volume revisits a turbulent chapter in Lebanese modernism, from the 1958 crisis to the 1975 outbreak of civil war. Through 230 works by 34 artists and more than 300 archival documents, it shows how collisions between art, culture and polarized political ideologies turned Beirut's art scene into a microcosm for larger transregional tensions.
From revolutionizing portraiture to redefining the nude, Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017) is rightly known among the foremost American figurative painters of the late 20th century. Yet his six-decade artistic oeuvre encompasses not only large-scale canvases of distinctively dressed (or undressed) individuals, but also includes evocative landscapes, hard-edged geometric abstractions, lush watercolors on paper and singular photographs informed by his studies with Walker Evans. This definitive volume spans all aspects of the artist's practice--probing his photographic experimentation as a forbear to contemporary street photography; celebrating his great sensitivity as a colorist whose unique expertise seamlessly combines oil-based and water-based pigments to evoke time and place; highlighting the observational genuineness in his provocative and personal interpretations of women, of unapologetically visible queer identities, and of his own beloved black communities across the African Diaspora.
Immerse yourself in Africa's vast and intricate story and discover Africa's true place in world history. Spanning more than 200,000 years, from the emergence of the first humans to the rise of megacities, Africa explores the history and cultures of the world's second-largest continent in vivid detail. It brings to life the stories that shaped Africa and the world around it, from powerful and influential empires and kingdoms such as Mali and Benin, through the struggle against colonization and the fight for independence to Africa's place on the global stage today.
This new edition of a landmark publication by avant-garde artist and cultural icon Yoko Ono combines never-before-published texts and invitation pieces written in 2016-2018 with drawings from the 'Franklin Summer' series she started in 1994.Embodying her visionary philosophy, Yoko Ono's latest artist's book is a companion for life.For Yoko Ono, words, artworks, and books still have the power to change the world we live in for the better. Thus, she continuously shares with us her vision of and philosophy on life--one that is made of pivotal experiences, unstoppable optimism, and a love for the other. Published on occasion of the exhibition 'Yoko Ono', 15 Feb - 1st Sep 2024, Tate Modern, London.
A massive panorama of Eastern Europe's postwar avant-gardes, featuring both canonical and lesser-known artists. Multiple Realities offers a sweeping survey of experimental art made in six Central Eastern European nations--GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia--during the 1960s to 1980s. Despite their geographical proximity, artists working during this time encountered different conditions for daily life and art-making, confronting varying degrees of control and pressure exerted by state authorities. Embracing conceptual or formal innovation and a spirit of adventurousness, Multiple Realities sheds light on ways that artists refused, circumvented, eluded and subverted official systems, in the process creating works often riddled with wit, humor or irony. While it presents select canonical figures from the region, the exhibition foregrounds lesser-known practitioners, particularly women artists, artist collectives and those exploring embodiment through an LGBTQ+ lens.
The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure edited by Ekow Eshun celebrates flourishing Black artists whose work illuminates the richness, beauty and complexity of Black life. The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure assembles contemporary African diasporic artists working in the UK and US whose practice foregrounds the Black figure. Edited and with texts by Ekow Eshun, and original essays by Bernardine Evaristo, Esi Edugyan and Dorothy Price. Published to coincide with the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, this publication explores and celebrates contemporary Black artists internationally who work within Black figuration.
This is the first book on the boundary-pushing practice of the artist, dancer, and educator Suzanne Harris (1940-1979). Harris was a protagonist in key avant-garde projects of the downtown New York City artists' community in the 1970s (the Anarchitecture group, 112 Greene Street, FOOD, The Natural History of the American Dancer, Heresies); yet her own oeuvre fell into abeyance. Harris' postminimalist work broke the mold of art categories, (feminist) art practices, art spaces, and the common notion of space. By transcending sculpture and dance, she created ephemeral, site-specific installations,which she conceived as body-oriented choreographic situations.
On the centennial anniversary of André Breton's first Surrealist Manifesto, Surrealism and Us shines new light on how Surrealism was consumed and transformed in the Caribbean and the United States. It brings together more than 50 works from the 1940s to the present that convey how Caribbean and African diasporic artists reclaimed a European avant-garde for their own purposes. Since its inception, the Surrealist movement--and many other European art movements of the early 20th century--embraced and transformed African art, poetry and music traditions. Concurrently, artists in the Americas proposed subsets of Surrealism more closely tied to African diasporic culture. In Martinique, Aimé and Suzanne Césaire proposed a Caribbean Surrealism that challenged principles of order and reason and embraced African spiritualities. Meanwhile, artists in the United States such as Romare Bearden and Ted Joans engaged deeply with Surrealist ideas. These trends lasted far beyond those of their European counterparts. Indeed, the term "Afro-surrealism" was created by poet Amiri Baraka in 1974; today the movement still flourishes in tandem with Afrofuturism.
In 2024, Dulwich Picture Gallery will present Soulscapes, a major exhibition of landscape art that will expand and redefine the genre. Published to coincide with this revelatory exhibition, this book features over 30 contemporary artworks, spanning painting, photography, film, tapestry and collage from leading artists including Hurvin Anderson, Phoebe Boswell, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Kimathi Donkor, Isaac Julien, Marcia Michael, Mónica de Miranda and Alberta Whittle, as well as some of the most important emerging voices working today. Soulscapes explores our connection with the world around us through the eyes of artists from the African Diaspora and considers the power of landscape art through the themes of belonging, memory, joy and transformation.
Energetic sculptures that ooze, blossom and sprawl: all exploring the concept of movement Encompassing over 50 years of contemporary sculpture, When Forms Come Alive highlights the ways in which artists have been inspired by movement, flux and organic growth: from a dancer's gesture to the breaking of a wave, or from a flow of molten metal to the interlacing of a spider's web. The richly illustrated publication features a range of dynamic sculptural forms that seem to trickle, undulate, ripple and erupt across gallery spaces. Texts on each of the 21 international artists situate the artists' works within the context of postminimalism and explore formal and material innovation in sculpture across the past half century.
This book is not a taste, nor an anti-taste, manual.
This is an interrogation of the importance we place on seemingly objective ideas of taste in a culture that is saturated by imagery, and the dangerous impact this has on our identities, communities and politics. This book is dedicated to understanding the industries of taste. From the food we eat to the way we spend our free time, Olah exposes the shallow waters of 'good' and 'bad' taste and the rigid hierarchies that uphold this age-old dichotomy.
A practical guide for anyone who wants to be inspired by the wide variety of possibilities offered by this easy-to-use technique including an overview of the work of print shops, design studios and artists from all over the world. In recent years risography has captured the attention of printers and artists, especially in independent and self-publishing circles, given the technical and visual qualities it offers. Varied and vivid spot colors, the warmth of the finishes, and occasional imperfections in uniformity and register are just some of these attractive features. The book begins by giving readers a brief history of the Risograph while outlining the basic principles of the printing process, including the equipment, tools and materials needed to get started. Designed mainly for high-volume photocopying and printing, Risographs are far less expensive than conventional photocopy machines and laser or ink printers. Rich in illustrations, pictures, detailed instructions and infographics, this practical guide to Risograph printing will teach readers how to set up a Risograph, how to prepare files to print, how to make overprints and knockouts, how to choose paper, how to handle freshly printed works, what ink to use and about any additional equipment they will need to become a Riso master.
The transformative power of contemporary textiles is the subject of this exhibition catalog that examines how and why textile has been a fertile medium for artists to question regimes of power and hierarchies of value. Bringing together more than 100 works by a diverse range of international practitioners, this eye-opening volume explores how textile art can be as discomforting as it is beautiful, and how age-old materials and processes are being reimagined with boundary-smashing innovations. From intimate hand-crafted works to large-scale sculptural installations, this book celebrates the legacies of artists such as Pacita Abad, the arpilleristas, and José Leonilson. Also featured here are works by living artists such as Igshaan Adams, Tracey Emin, and Cecilia Vicuña. Featuring new essays by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Miguel A. Lopez and Denise Ferriera da Silva, and texts by Michelle Adler, Diego Chocano, Wells Fray-Smith, Lotte Johnson and Amanda Pinatih, this beautifully produced book features a collection of renowned artists from around the world and reveals the extraordinary potential of textiles to confront fixed notions of history, race, gender, sexual expressions, and class--and how, ultimately, it can be a powerful force for both resistance and repair.
Tate Modern curator of international art Ann Coxon presents a captivating visual exploration of Motherhood, as seen through the eyes of artists over the last 150 years. Depictions of motherhood are ever present in Western art, yet are rarely questioned or challenged. Perhaps we may shy away from a subject that could be seen as sentimental or overly associated with idealistic constructs of femininity, nurture, and care. Whether we are mothers ourselves or we bring--or nurture--life in a wider sense, we all have some understanding of motherhood. We are all born of a woman's body. We are formed from the messy, challenging, self-denying, and transformative experiences of motherhood.
Shining Lights is the first critical anthology to bring together the ground-breaking work of Black women photographers active in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s, providing a richly illustrated overview of a signif-icant and overlooked chapter of photographic history. Seen through the lens of Britain?s sociopolitical and cultural contexts, the publication draws on both lived experience and historical investigation to explore the communities, experiments, collaborations, and complexities that defined the decades. The innovative and diverse work created during this period spanned documentary and conceptual practices, including the experimental use of photomontage, self-portraiture, staged imagery, and photography in dialogue with other media.
A unique survey of 350 artworks by a global and diverse array of LGBTQ+ artists - many underrecognized and overlooked - from the last 50 years Though the Stonewall Riots might now be shorthand for the start of the gay rights movement, so much of art and culture has been 'queer' since the beginning of time. In About Face, art historian and curator Jonathan D. Katz explores this concept head-on, curating a tapestry of works that connect historical threads and reveal how gender and sexual identity have been interwoven by artists contemporaneous to and since Stonewall. With more than 350 artworks by over 40 LGBTQ+ artists across nationalities and generations, and original texts by artists and scholars, About Faceis as stunning as it is important.
Get involved and help us expand the library's Latin American Art collection! Fill in this form to share your ideas.
LAAR (Latin American Art Resources) is an initiative supported by UCL ChangeMakers that aims to promote and expand Latin American Art resources within the print and electronic collections of UCL Libraries.
See the LAAR reading list that offers an overview of and an introduction to Latin American art via resources in UCL libraries, with sections covering topics such as political resistance, Colonial Latin America, identities and ideologies, and rethinking Modernism(s).
If you have any questions for the LAAR team please contact us:
Júlia Couto (UCL Slade School of Fine Art) julia.ferreira.19@ucl.ac.uk
Daen Palma Huse (UCL History of Art) daen.huse.20@ucl.ac.uk
Manuela Portales Sanfuentes (UCL History of Art) manuela.portales.20@ucl.ac.uk
Elizabeth Lawes (UCL Library Services) e.lawes@ucl.ac.uk
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.
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.
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.
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.
