art criticism

Softcover. Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pages. A photograph can serve as as both witness and catalyst, art object and call to action. In this catalog of a pivotal exhibition of works from the Ralph R. Parsons Photography Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, photographs capture the heartbeat and mindset of America. Works by French photographer Brassai set the stage; the bulk of the exhibition features photographs by Robert Frank, Helen Levitt , Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand, among others. When many of these works were first shown, they were met with criticism and outrage, but today, we've accepted them as profound documents of our nation and era. Includes essays by exhibition curator Cornelia H. Butler, as well as Max Kozloff, A.D. Coleman, Liz Kotz and Emily Aer. Dimension: 9 1/4 x 11 1/2 inches, 125 duotone & 11 color reproductions, Exhibition Catalog.

Softcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, reprint, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 470 pages. On January 10, 1999, a mobster walked into a psychiatrist's office and changed TV history. By shattering preconceptions about the kinds of stories the medium should tell, The Sopranos launched our current age of prestige television, paving the way for such giants as Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. As TV critics for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, New Jersey's The Star-Ledger, Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz were among the first to write about the series before it became a cultural phenomenon. Sepinwall and Seitz have reunited to produce The Sopranos Sessions, a collection of recaps, conversations, and critical essays covering every episode. Featuring a series of new long-form interviews with series creator David Chase, as well as selections from the authors' archival writing on the series, The Sopranos Sessions explores the show's artistry, themes, and legacy.

Hardcover. NY, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 227 pages. Emily Brady takes a fresh look at the sublime and shows why it endures as a meaningful concept in contemporary philosophy. In a reassessment of historical approaches, the first part of the book identifies the scope and value of the sublime in eighteenth-century philosophy (with a focus on Kant), nineteenth-century philosophy and Romanticism, and early wilderness aesthetics. The second part examines the sublime's contemporary significance through its relationship to the arts; its position with respect to other aesthetic categories involving mixed or negative emotions, such as tragedy; and its place in environmental aesthetics and ethics. Far from being an outmoded concept, Brady argues that the sublime is a distinctive aesthetic category which reveals an important, if sometimes challenging, aesthetic-moral relationship with the natural world. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown, and Company, reprint, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in black cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 298 pages. A collection of articles about the theater by Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966), a stage designer and theatrical producer and director. Although he directed only a handful of plays, "his controversial theories of scene design and stagecraft gave him eminence in the European and American theater" (The New York Times). For instance, he favored three-dimensional stage effects and more innovative lighting than the traditional footlights. Craig argues that theatre is not just a form of entertainment, but a powerful medium for social and political change. He advocates for a new kind of theatre that is not bound by traditional conventions and that challenges the audience's expectations. Craig also emphasizes the importance of the actor's body and movement, and he proposes new techniques for training actors to be more expressive and dynamic on stage. Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, unclipped. A collection of essays and articles relating to the "new theatre," the Third Theatre off-off Broadway, and the Living Theatre as it displayed itself on its recent American tour. Also includes non-theatre essays - on the Madison Avenue Villain; on horror movies; a memoir, and an assortment of literary reviews and speculations. 294 pages, clean copy.

Softcover. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 205 pages, b&w illustrations. A comprehensive look at a controversy that continues to fuel debates about the role of public art in America. Since its installation at and subsequent removal from New York City's Federal Plaza, noted sculptor Richard Serra's Tilted Arc has been a touchstone for debates over the role of public art. Installed in 1981, the 10-foot-high, 120-foot-long curved wall of Cor-Ten self-rusting steel instantly became a magnet for criticism. Art critics in the New York Times and the Village Voice labeled it the city's worst public sculpture, and many denounced it as an example of the elitism associated with art and as an obstacle to the use and enjoyment of the plaza. Harriet F. Senie explores the history of Tilted Arc, including its 1979 commission and the heated public hearings that eventually led to its removal in 1989 (it was dismantled and is currently stored in a government warehouse in Maryland). Analyzing the archive of popular opinion, Senie shows how the sculpture was caught in an avalanche of shifting local and national discussions about public funding for the arts. Clean copy.

Softcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, reprint, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 386 pages, b&w illustrations. The four essays in this volume constitute Derrida's most explicit and sustained reflection on the art work as pictorial artifact, a reflection partly by way of philosophical aesthetics (Kant, Heidegger), partly by way of a commentary on art works and art scholarship (Van Gogh, Adami, Titus-Carmel). The illustrations are excellent, and the translators, who clearly see their work as both a rendering and a transformation, add yet another dimension to this richly layered composition. Indispensable to collections emphasizing art criticism and aesthetics.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket. Autobiography of the owner of the bookshop La Maison des Amis des Livres in Paris, a center, between the World Wars, for the best contemporary French writing and for its authors. 536 pages, b&w illustrations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W.W. Norton & Co., 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 299 pages. The author investigate the trauma behind poets Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, and Delmore Schwartz. They formed one of the great constellations of talent in American literature. In the decades after World War II, they changed American poetry forever by putting themselves at risk in their poems in a new and provocative way. Their daring work helped to inspire the popular style of poetry now known as 'confessional.' But partly as a result of their openness, they have become better known for their tumultuous lives-afflicted by mental illness, alcoholism, and suicide-than for their work. This book reclaims their achievement by offering critical 'biographies of the poetry'-tracing the development of each poet's work, exploring their major themes and techniques, and examining how they transformed life into art. Clean copy.

Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, reprint, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 883 pages.The author reveals how musicians, both individually and collectively, learn to improvise. Chronicling leading musicians from their first encounters with jazz to the development of a unique improvisatory voice, Paul Berliner documents the lifetime of preparation that lies behind the skilled improviser's every idea. The product of more than fifteen years of immersion in the jazz world. Interviews with more than fifty professional musicians: bassists George Duvivier and Rufus Reid; drummers Max Roach, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Akira Tana; guitarist Emily Remler; pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris; saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Lee Konitz, and James Moody; trombonist Curtis Fuller; trumpeters Doc Cheatham, Art Farmer, Wynton Marsalis, and Red Rodney; vocalists Carmen Lundy and Vea Williams; and others. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, PA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 488 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap. Lavishly illustrated with more than 250 of Eakins's most significant paintings, watercolors, drawings, photographs, and sculpture, the book features essays by prominent scholars who place his art in the context of the history and culture of late nineteenth-century Philadelphia, where he lived.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 284 pages, color and b&w illustrations.Often featuring lighthouses, bridges, or quaint country homes, Thomas Kinkade's soft-focus landscapes have permeated American visual culture during the past twenty years, appearing on everything from Bibles to bedsheets to credit cards. Kinkade sells his work through his shopping-mall galleries, QVC, the Internet, and Christian stores. He is quite possibly the most collected artist in the United States. While many art-world and academic critics have dismissed him as a passing fad or marketing phenomenon, the contributors to this collection do not. Instead, they explore his work and its impact on contemporary art as part of the broader history of American visual culture. They consider Kinkade's imagery and career in relation to nineteenth-century Currier and Ives prints and Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, the collectibles market and the fine-art market, the Thomas Kinkade Museum and Cultural Center, and "The Village at Hiddenbrooke," a California housing development inspired by Kinkade's paintings. The conceptual artist Jeffrey Vallance, the curator of the first major museum exhibition of Kinkade's art and collectibles, recounts his experiences organizing that show. All of the contributors draw on art history, visual culture, and cultural studies as they seek to understand Kinkade's significance for both art and audiences. Along the way, they delve into questions about beauty, class, kitsch, religion, and taste in contemporary art. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Concord MA, Albert Lane/Erudite Press, 2nd Ed., 1903, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray-green boards over green cloth spine, 35 pages, frontis. portrait plus 3 halftone plates. First published in 1890, "It is a pious duty to his memory to correct the errors of fact that were ... reported in the first edition of the Glimpse 1890." Jones was part of the rehabilitation of Thoreau's reputation and appreciation. Previous owner's bookmark on inside front cover, Paper label on spine mostly gone, otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st US, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 288 pages, color & b/w plates, sources, index.

Softcover. DeKalb IL, Northern Illinois University Press, 1st pbk, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 232 pages. From the time of the first written sacred texts in the West, taboo has proscribed the act and art of translation. So argues the author of this book, exploring the age-old prohibition of translation of sacred texts. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 232 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in shrink wrap. Black & white and color photographs throughout. City scenes have been chronicled in photographs since the early 1800s, but street photography as traditionally defined has captured a relatively narrow field of these images. Revolutionizing the history of street photography, Unfamiliar Streets explores the work of Richard Avedon (1923-2004), Charles Moore (1931-2010), Martha Rosler (b. 1943), and Philip-Lorca diCorcia (b. 1951), four American photographers whose careers in fashion, photojournalism, conceptual art, and contemporary art are not usually associated with the genre.Bussard's lively and engaging text, a timely response to a growing interest in urban photography, challenges the traditional understanding of street photography and makes original and important connections among urban culture, social history, and the visual arts, constructing a new historical model for understanding street photography. Illustrated with more than one hundred images, this book provides an interpretation of a compelling genre that is as fresh as its consideration of the city streets themselves, sites of commerce, dispossession, desire, demonstration, power, and spectacle.

Hardcover. New York, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 3rd Printing, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 426 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Sunfading to dust jacket. Light soiling to textblock edges. Otherwise a very clean, unmarked copy with only minor dust jacket wear. A tight copy. Black and white illustrations throughout.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 316 pages, b&w illustrations. The history, theoretical frameworks, methodology, and pedagogy of the new field of visual culture; current debates and the possibility for future consensus. In recent years, visual culture has emerged as a growing and important interdisciplinary field of study. Visual culture regards images as central to the representation of meaning in the world. It encompasses "high" art without an assumption of its higher status. But despite the current proliferation of studies and programs in visual culture, there seems to be no consensus within the field itself as to its scope and objectives, definitions, and methods. In Visual Culture, Margaret Dikovitskaya offers an overview of this new area of study in order to reconcile its diverse theoretical positions and understand its potential for further research. Clean copy. Uncommon in the hardcover.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 316 pages. Few twentieth-century thinkers have proven as influential as Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish philosopher and cultural and literary critic. Richard Wolin's book remains among the clearest and most insightful introductions to Benjamin's writings, offering a philosophically rich exposition of his complex relationship to Adorno, Brecht, Jewish Messianism, and Western Marxism. Wolin provides nuanced interpretations of Benjamin's widely studied writings on Baudelaire, historiography, and art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In a new Introduction written especially for this edition, Wolin discusses the unfinished Arcades Project, as well as recent tendencies in the reception of Benjamin's work and the relevance of his ideas to contemporary debates about modernity and postmodernity. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. UK, British Broadcasting Corporation / Penguin Books, reprint, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 166 pages, profusely illustrated in b&w. Based on the 1972 BBC series and comprised of 7 essays, 3 of which are entirely pictorial, Ways of Seeing is a seminal work which examines how we view art. Mild soil to front cover, clean internally.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 532 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very light wear to jacket, two small scratches to upper jacket spine. Otherwise very clean and tight copy. In this superb collection of essays, reviews and articles, Giddins brings together, for the first time, more than 140 pieces written over a 14-year period, most of them for his column in the Village Voice (also called "Weather Bird"). The book is first and foremost a celebration of jazz, with illuminating commentary on contemporary jazz events, on today's top musicians, on the best records of the year, and on leading figures from jazz's past. Readers will find extended pieces on Louis Armstrong, Erroll Garner, Benny Carter, Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Billie Holiday, Cassandra Wilson, Tony Bennett, and many others.

Hardcover. Zurich, Scheidegger and Spiess, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial cloth, 210 pages, 164 color and 76 b/w illustrations. Le Corbusier (1887-1965) is one the most influential architects of the twentieth century. In the Scandinavian countries, his influence is arguably most pronounced in the writings and art of the Danish experimentalist Asger Jorn (1914-1973). Their collaboration on Le Corbusier's pavilion for the 1937 Paris World Exhibition sparked Jorn's lifelong fascination with the great architect and with architecture more broadly as an inherently public form of art. At the same time, Le Corbusier started working in the visual arts and began to move from a rational, technological approach to architecture towards a more poetic, materialist approach. Published in collaboration with the Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, What Moves Us? focuses specifically on the reception of Le Corbusier in Scandinavia, with the relationship between Jorn and Le Corbusier as a thematic thread. The book first highlights the architect's change of direction and subsequently takes readers through his influence on the young artist. The book's distinguished contributors explore the relationships that emerged among their artistic theories and practices, including Jorn's later critique of Le Corbusier. Essays also explore the wider influence of Le Corbusier on Scandinavian architecture and urbanization and consider Le Corbusier alongside the Danish architect Jorn Oberg Utzon and the Aarhus Brutalism movement.

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 474 pages, b&w illustrations. "A "heroic" and "fascinating" biography of John Cage showing how his work, and that of countless American artists, was transformed by Zen Buddhism". (The New York Times). Where the Heart Beats is the story of the tremendous changes sweeping through American culture following the Second World War, a time when the arts in America broke away from centuries of tradition and reinvented themselves. Painters converted their canvases into arenas for action and gesture, dancers embraced pure movement over narrative, performance artists staged "happenings" in which anything could happen, poets wrote words determined by chance.

Softcover. NY, Aperture, 3rd pr., 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 186 pages. A now classic text on the art, Why People Photograph gathers a selection of essays by the great master photographer Robert Adams, tackling such diverse subjects as collectors, humor, teaching, money and dogs. Adams also writes brilliantly on Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Laura Gilpin, Judith Joy Ross, Susan Meiselas, Michael Schmidt, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Eugene Atget. The book closes with two essays on "working conditions" in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century American West, and the essay "Two Landscapes." Clean copy.