Authors
- Michael Archer
- Norman Rosenthal
Publication date: 2000-09
RRP: £35.00
Price: £9.05
Review Apocalypse: Beauty and Horror in Contemporary Art / Thames & Hudson Ltd:The horror, the horror. Three years after Royal Academy Exhibition Secretary Norman Rosenthal organised the controversial "Sensation" comes the sequel, "Apocalypse". It takes as its philosophical starting point the Book of Revelations, though the subtitle exposes a compromising catch-all: "Beauty and Horror in Contemporary Art". The kitsch creations of Jeff Koons and Mariko Mori, and the casual photography of Wolfgang Tillmans, provide superficial beauty, while the most obvious horror is "Hell", Jake and Dinos Chapman's truly apocalyptic sculpture comprising nine glass cases arranged in a swastika, containing 5,000 figurines of Nazis and their torturers indulging in unspeakable sadism. This Goya-esque vision of eternal return is the centrepiece of the exhibition, and rightly so. Charles Saatchi's money was well spent. But, apart from the brutally understated paintings of Luc Tuymans' paintings, Rosenthal's evangelical vision creates an art theme park, from Gregor Schneider's claustrophobic cellarage, "a cathedral of erotic misery", or, more prosaically, a fairground Haunted House through which one clambers, to Mori's dream machine, and Darren Almond's Auschwitz bus stops. After such one-trick ponies, Maurizio Cattelan's blackly comic fallen Pope, struck by a meteorite, proves welcome. Alive or dead, infallible, or found out, the rich ambiguity goes to the crux of belief. Rosenthal's attractive catalogue for these memento mori from his 13 international Cassandras gives the exhibition invaluable context and strategy, especially given the apologia passing for notes on the gallery walls. [+]Visually, it is the Royal Academy's boxed-set Black Album, and in some ways exceeds the art it describes. Alongside a CV are photographs of other works by each artist, followed by stills of their Apocalyptic exhibit. This can have a strange effect: Schneider's assemblage suddenly appears cinematic, while the films of Chris Cunningham, of Bjork and Aphex Twin video fame, and Mike Kelley become necessarily photographic. And there is a typically overblown introductory essay by Rosenthal, which justifies his idiosyncratic curatorial conceit. Intended as a bifocal survey incorporating history and the post-millennial present, "Apocalypse" proves not so much a sensation as a curate's egg. -David Vincent.
Publication date: 2001-03-01
Dewey code: 709
RRP: £25.00
Price: £15.84
Review Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism / Yale University Press:Modernism was always troubled by its epoch and this tension helped produce some of the most wonderful pieces of modern art. As soon as non-representational art began to dominate the art world the importance of art as critique grew. The critical element inevitably allied itself with those movements that defined an emancipatory project and, in modernism's time, in our time, that project was socialism. With what has been seen as the end of the socialist possibility with the fall of the Russian empire and its Eastern satellite states, and the subsequent confirmation of the bankruptcy of Official Marxism, modernism no longer had a project of realisable utopia to link itself to. Modernism has ended, like Marxism, without reaching its goals. But did they depend on each other? Was the fact that they were coterminous merely a coincidence? How did they interact? What was the nature of their mutual engagement? T. J. Clark's Farewell to an Idea is a beautiful, vital, polemical volume, peppered with stunning reprints, that charts the conversation that these meta-narratives had, investigates the art that was produced, and questions and improves our understanding of what modern art really is. -Mark Thwaite.
Publication date: 2004-02-24
Dewey code: 709
RRP: £19.99
Price: £35.95
Review Franz Marc / Prestel:
Publication date: 1998-11
Dewey code: 703
RRP: £4.50
Price: £4.50
Review Animal Prints Origami Paper: Sheets in Six Different Patterns (Origami) / Dover Publications Inc.:
Publication date: 2005-11-25
Dewey code: 748.20282
RRP: £19.95
Price: £12.97
Review Glass Blowing: A Technical Manual / The Crowood Press Ltd:
Creator: Juhani Pallasmaa
Publication date: 2002-06-21
Dewey code: 720.92
RRP: £30.00
Price: £14.12
Review Rick Joy: The Desert Works (New voices in architecture) / Princeton Architectural Press:
Authors
- Jordan Kantor
- Gary Garrels
Dewey code: 708
RRP: £21.95
Price: £14.33
Review Drawing from the Modern: 1975-2005 No. 3 / Museum of Modern Art:
Publication date: 1986-02
Dewey code: 724.1
RRP: £7.95
Price: £3.51
Review The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century (World of Art) / Thames & Hudson Ltd:
Publication date: 2000-05-26
Dewey code: 709
RRP: £5.99
Price: £0.99
Review Van Gogh (Basic Art Album) / Taschen GmbH:
Creator: Carolinne White
Publication date: 2001-09-06
Dewey code: 270
RRP: £14.99
Price: £5.99
Review The Confessions of St.Augustine (Sacred Wisdom) / Frances Lincoln:
Publication date: 1999-04-26
Dewey code: 750.1
RRP: £12.95
Price: £10.81
Review What is Painting?: Representation and Modern Art / Thames & Hudson Ltd:In recent years art critics and historians have tended to shy away from the "big" questions, content instead to cultivate more manageable areas of artistic creation. It is therefore very refreshing to read Julian Bell's book What is Painting?, which, as its title suggests, reconsiders basic questions relevant to the practice and contemplation of painting. As a successful painter in his own right, it is fascinating to watch Bell's mind cut through the dense foliage of art history to produce a compelling account of the ways in which the personal and social significance of painting has changed over the centuries. Beginning with Aristotle and ending with the so-called "death of painting", Bell boldly tackles ideas and concepts central to an understanding of painting. Imitation, representation, form, modernity, abstraction and deconstruction are all explored through Bell's account of painters ranging from the Greeks to Lucian Freud. Running throughout What is Painting? is a passionate belief in the importance of painting as a means of private and public expression. For a book by a painter, it is rather light on colour illustrations (only 16 in all), and ironically the subtlety of Bell's argument often diminishes its polemical force as a statement on the current status of painting; but perhaps that says more about the nature of art historical polemic than the quality of What is Painting? -Jerry Brotton.
Publication date: 2007-12-01
Dewey code: 645
RRP: £24.99
Price: £15.09
Review Tiki Modern / Taschen GmbH:
Edition: 1
Publication date: 2008-03-27
Dewey code: 006
RRP: £35.99
Price: £18.33
Review Photoshop Studio with Bert Monroy: Digital Painting (Voices That Matter) / New Riders:
Creator: Steve Payne
Publication date: 2006-02
Dewey code: 731.42
RRP: £14.99
Price: £6.64
Review Polymer Clay Creative Traditions: Techniques and Projects Inspired by the Fine and Decorative Arts / Watson-Guptill Publications Inc.,U.S.:
Creator: Julian Rothenstein
Publication date: 2005-09-01
Price: £20.00
Review The Book of Shrigley / Redstone Press:
Edition: 3rd New edition
Publication date: 2004-07-30
Dewey code: 738.1
RRP: £31.99
Price: £20.02
Review Electric Kiln Ceramics / KP Books:
Creator: Cassandra Phillips
Publication date: 2007-09-28
RRP: £11.99
Price: £7.91
Review Letters from Lamledra: Cornwall 1914-1918 / Truran:
Publication date: 2008-12-11
Dewey code: 709.2
RRP: £12.99
Price: £12.99
Review Terence Koh (Whitney Museum of American Art) / Yale University Press:
Publication date: 2006-06-27
Dewey code: 709.2
RRP: £8.99
Price: £4.43
Review The Life of Michelangelo / Pallas Athene Arts:
Creator: Paul Delvaux
Publication date: 2007-03
Dewey code: 709
RRP: £26.50
Price: £25.85
Review Paul Delvaux / BAI NV:
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Apocalypse: Beauty and Horror in Contemporary Art, Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism, Franz Marc, Animal Prints Origami Paper: Sheets in Six Different Patterns (Origami), Glass Blowing: A Technical Manual, Rick Joy: The Desert Works (New voices in architecture), Drawing from the Modern: 1975-2005 No. 3, The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century (World of Art), Van Gogh (Basic Art Album), The Confessions of St.Augustine (Sacred Wisdom), What is Painting?: Representation and Modern Art, Tiki Modern, Photoshop Studio with Bert Monroy: Digital Painting (Voices That Matter), Polymer Clay Creative Traditions: Techniques and Projects Inspired by the Fine and Decorative Arts, The Book of Shrigley, Electric Kiln Ceramics, Letters from Lamledra: Cornwall 1914-1918, Terence Koh (Whitney Museum of American Art), The Life of Michelangelo, Paul Delvaux |
