art criticism

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 271 pages, paperback. Cultural criticism regarding the Weimar Republic. With many color and black-and-white illustrations throughout. Unmarked. Bright and clean; a tight copy. Examines intellectual life in the Weimar Republic, looks at paintings, caricatures, dance, architecture, and films, and discusses the Nazi rise to power.

Hardcover. Berghahn Books, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 193 pages, b&w illustrations. With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish emigre from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, McGraw-Hill, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 474 pages. This wonderful collection contains all of Bogan's criticism, most of it written during her many years as poetry critic for The New Yorker magazine. "One does not easily recall another writer of such stature who served her fellow writers, and the reading public, for so long, or with such pertinence and distinction." She lived from 1897-1970. Flap price crossed out with smaller price in ink. Otherwise like new condition.

Hardcover. NY, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 310 pages, 250 b&w illustrations. The life of one of America's major literary artists, Henry David Thoreau: , born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts: a schoolmaster, tutor, surveyor, mason, gardener, farmer, house painter, carpenter, day-laborer, abolitionist, pencil-maker. lecturer, naturtalist, writer. Small name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth, 262 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs. Clean, tight copy. This portrait of Disderi and the carte de visite he patented in Paris in 1854 is far more than a biography. The c-d-v, or photographic calling card, was a relatively inexpensive product that made the photographic portrait available to the middle class . McCauley's carefully documented work explores Disderi's career and oeuvre , the impact of mass-produced celebrity cartes on the social and cultural life of mid-19th-century France, and aesthetics in c-d-v portraiture. The final third of the book is an art historical evaluation of the importance of the c-d-v for portrait painting of the period . The fine bibliography, generous illustrative matter, and detailed notes add to the value of this work for the avid student of photohistory or 19th-century studies.

Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, reprint, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover with pages and covers in pristine condition. Like new, in shrinkwrap. Rosenberg's critial essays on the theatre. Originally published in 1970. CONTENTS: The stages: geography of action; A psychological case; From play acting to self; Criticism-action; Actor in history; Guilt to the vanishing point; Missing persons. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, England, Macmillan and Co. , 2nd Edition, 1922, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 503 pages. Hardcover. Previous owner's name on front flyleaf. Blue cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine, some chipping to edges of boards. Tanning to pages and edges from age. Binding very good. Spine straight. Benedetto Croce is one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His work in aesthetics and historiography has been controversial, but enduring.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Brothers, 1st, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket that is taped to covers, 554 pages. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. La Jolla CA, Green Tiger Press, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 60 pages. An exploration of illustration and children's books. Text by Welleran Poltarnees. Color illustrations by Arthur Rackham, Kate Greenaway, Maurice Sendak, Beatrix Potter, Kay Nielson, and Dorothy Lathrop; Additional illustrations by Dugald Stuart Walker, A.B. Frost, Edward Ardizzone, H.J. Ford, and others. Stiff wraps with an die-cut oval window to the front cover; 60 pages; 13 tipped-in color plates + monochrome text illustrations throughout; 7 x 8.25 inches.

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 594 pages. A landmark in postwar American literary criticism, forty-one extended essays on contemporary poets, including Robert Bly, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, W.S. Merwin, Denise Levertov, and James Merrill. Blending biography, textual analysis, and philosophical reflection, it defined a generation's poetic discourse. The book stands as both a map of mid-century American verse and a statement of Howard's erudite critical voice. Light shelfwear, fraying to top, bottom of dust jacket spine. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Museum of Art New York, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 320 pages. Hardcover. Dust jacket unclipped. Color and b/w illustrations throughout. In excellent condition, clean inside and out.

Softcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 520 pages. Whitney Balliett's long-awaited 'big book.' In it are all the jazz profiles he has written for The New Yorker during the past 24 years. These include his famous early portraits of Pee Wee Russell, Red Allen, Earl Hines, and Mary Lou Williams, done when these giants were in full flower; his recent reconstructions of the lives of such legends as Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, Jack Teagarden, Zoot Sims, and Dave Tough; His quick but indelible glimpses into the daily (or nocturnal) lives of Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus; and his vivid pictures of such on-the-scene masters as Red Norvo, Ornette Coleman, Buddy Rich, Elvin Jones, Art Farmer, Michael Moore, and Tommy Flanagan. Also included are such lesser known but invaluable players as Art Hodes, Jabbo Smith, Joe Wilder, Warne Marsh, Gene Bertoncini, Joe Bushkin, and Marie Marcus. Clean, like new.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, 1970, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 243 pages, 150 b&w plates. Illustrated covers, perfect binding, divided into seven sections organized by historical period, profusely illustrated with b&w plates. Mild rubbing to covers, very minor markings to bottom of page block, front top right corner creased; otherwise a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 400 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. The book presents contemporary art comics produced by 75 artists, along with some classic comic strips and other related fine art and historical materials. Brunetti arranges the book to reflect the creative process itself, connecting stories and art to each other in surprising ways: nonlinear, elliptical, sometimes whimsical, even poetic. He emphasizes continuity from piece to piece, weaving themes and motifs throughout the volume. As gorgeously produced as Brunetti's previous anthology of graphic fiction, this book does full justice to the creative work of Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Charles Burns, Gary Panter, and the other prominent or emerging comic artists who are currently at work at the cutting edge of their medium.

Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 222 pages. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean. Applying feminist theory to some lesser-known works by well known authors and painters, Munich (English, SUNY, Stony Brook) explores the psychological and cultural implications of the Victorian (male) treatment of the Perseus and Andromeda myth and its medieval analog, the legend of St. George and the dragon. With 31 photographs of the works discussed. A mild musty odor.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This book examines the far-reaching legacy of one of the great myths of classical antiquity. According to Greek legend, Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, secretly buried her brother in defiance of the orders of Creon, king of Thebes. Creon sentenced Antigone to death, but, before the order could be executed, she committed suicide. The theme of the conflict between Antigone and Creon - between the state and the individual, between young and old, between men and women - has captured the Western imagination for more than 2,000 years. Antigone and Creon are as alive in the politics and poetics of our own day as they were in ancient Athens. Here, Steiner examines the treatment of the Antigone theme in Western art, literature and thought, leading us to look again at the unique influence Greek myths exercise on twentieth-century culture.

Softcover. NY, Da Capo Press, 1st pbk., 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 546 pages, b&w illustrations, Apollinaire champions Picasso, Braque, Cezanne, Delaunay, Duchamp, Rousseau ,cubism, surrealism, and much more. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 327 pages, clean copy. Few diseases have exercised the Western imagination as chronically as hysteria--from the wandering womb of ancient Greek medicine, to the demonically possessed witch of the Renaissance; from the "vaporous" salon women of Enlightenment Paris, through to the celebrated patients of Sigmund Freud, with their extravagant, erotically charged symptoms. In this fascinating and authoritative book, Mark Micale surveys the range of past and present readings of hysteria by intellectual historians; historians of science and medicine; scholars in gender studies, art history, and literature; and psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and neurologists. In so doing, he explores numerous questions raised by this ever-growing body of literature: Why, in recent years, has the history of hysterical disorders carried such resonance for commentators in the sciences and humanities? What can we learn from the textual traditions of hysteria about writing the history of disease in general? What is the broader cultural meaning of the new hysteria studies? In the second half of the book, Micale discusses the many historical "cultures of hysteria." He reconstructs in detail the past usages of the hysteria concept as a powerful, descriptive trope in various nonmedical domains, including poetry, fiction, theater, social thought, political criticism, and the arts. His book is a pioneering attempt to write the historical phenomenology of disease in an age preoccupied with health, and a prescriptive remedy for writing histories of disease in the future.

Hardcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY TATUM on the front fly leaf. In this readable and scholarly work, Tatum looks at the enduring appeal of Apuleius' novel, the sophistication and artistry the work, and places The Golden Ass within its ancient contexts. This is the first book-length study of The Golden Ass. It is aimed at both specialists and a general audience.

Hardcover. NY, Horizon Press, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 176 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Basic Books, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 306 pages. Morse Peckham "considers the various roles played by pornography, especially within that hateful siege of contraries which constitutes stability and innovation." Chapters: What is Pornography?, The Art in Pornography, An Explanation for Pornography, Pornography and Culture.

Softcover. Williamstown MA, Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute/Yale University Press., 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 271 pages. Art history, aesthetics, and visual studies today find themselves in contested new philosophical and institutional circumstances. This fascinating and challenging volume explores the connections and differences among these three methods of investigating visual representation. What are the dominant aesthetic assumptions underlying art historical inquiry? How have these assumptions been challenged by visual studies? Are questions of quality, form, content, meaning, and spectatorship culturally specific? Can we still define the parameters of what should properly constitute the objects of the history of art? Fifteen distinguished scholars answer these and other questions, critically examining the relationships among these three scholarly fields from their founding moments through their contemporary practices. Clean copy.

Softcover. University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 228 pages, b&w illustrations. Art has the power to affect our thinking, changing not only the way we view and interact with the world but also how we create it. In Art in Mind, Ernst van Alphen probes this idea of art as a commanding force with the capacity to shape our intellect and intervene in our lives. Rather than interpreting art as merely a reflection of our social experience or a product of history, van Alphen here argues that art is a historical agent, or a cultural creator, that propels thought and experience forward.Examining a broad range of works, van Alphen--a renowned art historian and cultural theorist--demonstrates how art serves a socially constructive function by actually experimenting with the parameters of thought. Employing work from artists as diverse as Picasso, Watteau, Francis Bacon, Marlene Dumas, and Matthew Barney, he shows how art confronts its viewers with the "pain points" of cultural experience-genocide, sexuality, diaspora, and transcultural identity-and thereby transforms the ways in which human existence is conceived. Clean, like new.

Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, reprint, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover with pages and covers in pristine condition. Like new, in shrinkwrap. Rosenberg's essays on modern art.