Showing titles in History & Criticism

At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the Western world, his armies were seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. He had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: "degenerate" works he despised. A special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others, called the Monuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture.

This accessible book contains everything you need to know to start practicing alchemy–the art of transmuting base metal into gold (whether practically or spiritually).

Perceiving the Arts presents the basic formal, technical, experiential, and contextual qualities of the arts in a brief, clear, and factual manner. Students will develop confidence in approaching the arts and will gain skills that encourage life-long artistic and cultural engagement. Intended to provide a basic overview of the major artistic disciplines—drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, architecture, music, theatre, cinema, dance, and literature—the book teaches listeners what to look and listen for in the humanities.

This is the story of the "Benin Bronzes", their creation, theft, and what should happen to them now. When first exhibited in London, they caused a sensation and helped reshape European attitudes towards Africa, challenging the prevailing view of the continent as "backward" and without culture. But seeing them in the British Museum today is, in the words of one Benin City artist, like "visiting relatives behind bars". In a time of fevered debate about the legacies of empire, loot, museums, and history, what does the future hold for the Bronzes themselves?

The Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable monuments in the world, a powerful symbol of freedom and the American dream. For decades, the myth has persisted that the statue was a grand gift from France, but now Liberty's Torch reveals how she was in fact the pet project of one quixotic and visionary French sculptor, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. Bartholdi not only forged this 151-foot-tall colossus in a workshop in Paris and transported her across the ocean, but battled to raise money for the statue and make her a reality.

La edad de la penumbra es la historia, en gran parte desconocida, de cómo una religión militante sometió y aniquiló deliberadamente las enseñanzas del mundo clásico, lo que abrió paso a siglos de adhesión incondicional a «una sola fe verdadera». El Imperio romano se había mostrado generoso acogiendo nuevas creencias, pero la llegada del cristianismo lo cambió todo. Esta nueva religión, pese a predicar la paz, era violenta, despiadada y decididamente intolerante.

Un retrato poderoso, moderno, íntimo y profundamente humano de una era de destrucción extrema y creatividad excepcional, el renacimiento italiano, un periodo que moldeó la cultura occidental y que fue mucho más extraño, oscuro y fascinante de lo que nos han enseñado.

Why would anyone want to watch horror movies? Why would Christians, in particular, bother with the genre? In Fear Not!, critic Josh Larsen makes the case that monster movies, creature features, slashers, and other fright films artfully reflect our deep worries in a way that resonates with the Christian experience. Combining critical observation and theological reflection, Larsen devotes each chapter to a different horror subgenre, connecting that subgenre to a commonly shared fear.

Following his divorce, down-and-out writer and Mississippi exile Lee Durkee holed himself up in a Vermont fishing shack and fell prey to a decades-long obsession with Shakespearian portraiture. It began with a simple premise: despite the prevalence of popular portraits, no one really knows what Shakespeare looked like. That the Bard of Avon has gotten progressively handsomer in modern depictions seems only to reinforce this point.

What do we hope to get out of seeing a famous piece of art? Jeannie Marshall asked that question of herself when she started visiting the Sistine Chapel frescoes. She wanted to understand their meaning and context—but in the process, she also found what she didn’t know she was looking for. All Things Move: Learning to Look in the Sistine Chapel tells the story of Marshall’s relationship with one of our most cherished artworks.

Modern Man is a penetrating psychological portrait of a true genius and constant self-inventor, as well as a sweeping tale filled with exotic locales, sex and celebrity (he was a lover of Josephine Baker), and high-stakes projects. In Flint's telling, Corbusier isn't just the grandfather of modern architecture but a man who sought to remake the world according to his vision, dispelling the Victorian style and replacing it with something never seen before.

"Know thyself" - this fundamental imperative appeared for the first time in ancient Greece. For the Greeks, self-knowledge and identity were the basics of their civilization and their sources were to be found in where one was born and into which social group. These determined who you were and what your duties were. In this book the independent scholar Ingrid Rossellini surveys the major ideas that, from Greek and Roman antiquity through the Christian medieval era up to the dawn of modernity in the Renaissance, have guided the Western project of self-knowledge.

For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental Europe. Thirty years ago, a new German state came into being. How much do we really understand this new Germany, and how do its people now understand themselves? Neil MacGregor argues that uniquely for any European country, no coherent, over-arching narrative of Germany's history can be constructed, for in Germany, both geography and history have always been unstable.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of What Are You Looking At? by Will Gompertz, read by Roy McMilllan. What is modern art? Why do we either love it or loathe it? And why is it worth so much damn money? Join Will Gompertz on a dazzling tour that will change the way you look at modern art forever. From Monet's water lilies to Van Gogh's sunflowers, from Warhol's soup cans to Hirst's pickled shark, hear the stories behind the masterpieces, meet the artists as they really were, and discover the real point of modern art.

The Bayeux Tapestry is the world's most famous textile: an exquisite 230-foot-long embroidered panorama depicting the events surrounding the Norman Conquest of 1066. It is also one of history's most mysterious and compelling works of art. This haunting stitched account of the battle that redrew the map of medieval Europe has inspired dreams of theft, waves of nationalism, visions of limitless power, and esthetic rapture.

Frida Kahlo was ahead of her time. She was bisexual and would have fit in perfectly in the time we live in now. Her disabilities would be acceptable in our society of today and her husband, Diego would probably be run out of town by the Real Housewives of “Cheaters”. Frida came with a lot of baggage in her life starting when she was only six years old and even more baggage piled on when she was in high school. Her suffering was more than anyone can imagine but she kept her head held high and forged her way forward.

In Robyn’s 2010 track Dancing on My Own, the Swedish pop-singer chronicles a night on the dance floor in the shadow of a former lover. She is bitter, angry, and at times desperate, and yet by the time the chorus arrives her frustration has melted away. She decides to dance on her own, and in this way, she transforms her solitude into a more complex joy. Taking inspiration from Robyn’s seminal track, emerging art critic and curator Simon Wu dances through the institutions of art, capitalism, and identity in these expertly researched, beautifully rendered essays.

What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is history an excuse? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it? Claire Dederer explores these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to apprehend the work on its own terms.

Laura Cumming reveals her passion for the art of the Dutch Golden Age and her determination to lift up the reputation of Fabritius. She reveals the Netherlands, where - wandering the narrow streets of Amsterdam, driving across the flatlands, or pausing at a quiet waterfront - she encounters the rich reality behind the shining beauty of Vermeer and Rembrandt, Hals and de Hooch. She shares too her relationship with her father, the Scottish artist James Cumming, who had his own deep connection to Dutch painting, and who taught her about colour, light and the rewards of looking deeply.

Etta and Claribel Cone had an eye for art that was unparalleled at their time, and they left Baltimore what is perhaps the best gift the city has ever received: their collection.