The Critique Handbook: A Sourcebook and Survival Guide by
"This unique textbook is an invaluable tool for students in any art course requiring critiques. The Critique Handbook is an excellent resource both for beginners and more experienced students. This text was written to address an existing gap in text offerings for art students. Although the critique is central to all art programs, there have been no textbooks or comprehensive guides to help students navigate the critique process. The Critique Handbook fills the need for such a book."
Key Writers on Art: The Twentieth Century by
Key Writers on Art: The Twentieth Century offers a unique and authoritative guide to modern responses to art. Featuring 48 essays on the most important twentieth century writers and thinkers and written by an international panel of expert contributors, it introduces readers to key approaches and analytical tools used in the study of contemporary art. It discusses writers such as Adorno, Barthes, Benjamin, Freud, Greenberg, Heuser, Kristeva, Merleau-Ponty, Pollock, Read and Sontag.
Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist. From bestselling author Ross King, a brilliant portrait of legendary artist Claude Monet and the story of his most memorable achievement, the water lilies. Claude Monet is perhaps the world's most beloved artist, and among all his creations, the paintings of the water lilies in his garden at Giverny are most famous. Seeing them in museums around the world, viewers are transported by the power of Monet's brush into a peaceful world of harmonious nature. Monet himself intended them to provide "an asylum of peaceful meditation." Yet, as Ross King reveals in his magisterial chronicle of both artist and masterpiece, these beautiful canvases belie the intense frustration Monet experienced at the difficulties of capturing the fugitive effects of light, water, and color. They also reflect the terrible personal torments Monet suffered in the last dozen years of his life. Mad Enchantment tells the full story behind the creation of the Water Lilies, as the horrors of World War I came ever closer to Paris and Giverny, and a new generation of younger artists, led by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, were challenging the achievements of Impressionism. By early 1914, French newspapers were reporting that Monet, by then 73 and one of the world's wealthiest, most celebrated painters, had retired his brushes. He had lost his beloved wife, Alice, and his eldest son, Jean. His famously acute vision--what Paul Cezanne called "the most prodigious eye in the history of painting"--was threatened by cataracts. And yet, despite ill health, self-doubt, and advancing age, Monet began painting again on a more ambitious scale than ever before. Linking great artistic achievement to the personal and historical dramas unfolding around it, Ross King presents the most intimate and revealing portrait of an iconic figure in world culture--from his lavish lifestyle and tempestuous personality to his close friendship with the fiery war leader Georges Clemenceau, who regarded the Water Lilies as one of the highest expressions of the human spirit.
Paul Cézanne: Drawings and Watercolors by
Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) was one of the most influential artists of his day, producing work derived from "the most acute sensibility at grips with the most searching rationality" according to his friend, the writer Joachim Gasquet. Honoring tradition while also challenging it, his example made possible the advances of numerous younger artists such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque, thereby paving the way for the emergence of modern art.
Taking Shots: The Photography of William S. Burroughs by
Marking the centenary of William S. Burroughs's birth, this exciting book reproduces the celebrated writer's many rarely seen photographs. Renowned and highly regarded for his experiments with literature, painting, film, and music, William S. Burroughs was also a prolific photographer. However, his photographic work, consisting of several thousand images, has so far received little critical attention or sustained public exposure. This book reproduces many previously unseen photographs and offers fascinating insights into his photographic practices. It also provides convincing evidence that his photos should be considered a significant aspect of his entire body of work. It includes portraits and self-portraits, location shots from his travels in Europe, the Americas, and North Africa, images of construction and demolition sites, and his individual and collaborative experiments with photomontage, assemblage, and collage. Essays by internationally acclaimed scholars of photography and of Burroughs's work offer a variety of critical perspectives on his photographic oeuvre, examining its sources, methodologies, biographical contexts, influences, and purposes. Certain to appeal to his many devoted fans, this publication also coincides with a recent revival of critical and cultural interest in the 1960s art scene and the Beat Generation's writers and artists.
Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century by
Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century is a groundbreaking thematic survey of sculptural work by thirty of today's leading artists. The book will be published in conjunction with the inaugural exhibition of the New Museum of Contemporary Art's landmark new building on the Bowery in New York.
The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen by
This Companion offers a multi-disciplinary approach to literature on film and television. Writers are drawn from different backgrounds to consider broad topics, such as the issue of adaptation from novels and plays to the screen, canonical and popular literature, fantasy, genre and adaptations for children. There are also case studies, such as Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the nineteenth-century novel and modernism, which allow the reader to place adaptations of the work of writers within a wider context. An interview with Andrew Davies, whose work includes Pride and Prejudice (1995) and Bleak House (2005), reveals the practical choices and challenges that face the professional writer and adaptor. The Companion as a whole provides an extensive survey of an increasingly popular field of study.
Film Criticism in the Digital Age by
Over the past decade, as digital media has expanded and print outlets have declined, pundits have bemoaned a "crisis of criticism" and mourned the "death of the critic." Now that well-paying jobs in film criticism have largely evaporated, while blogs, message boards, and social media have given new meaning to the saying that "everyone's a critic," urgent questions have emerged about the status and purpose of film criticism in the twenty-first century. In Film Criticism in the Digital Age, ten scholars from across the globe come together to consider whether we are witnessing the extinction of serious film criticism or seeing the start of its rebirth in a new form. Drawing from a wide variety of case studies and methodological perspectives, the book's contributors find many signs of the film critic's declining clout, but they also locate surprising examples of how critics--whether moonlighting bloggers or salaried writers--have been able to intervene in current popular discourse about arts and culture. In addition to collecting a plethora of scholarly perspectives, Film Criticism in the Digital Age includes statements from key bloggers and print critics, like Armond White and Nick James. Neither an uncritical celebration of digital culture nor a jeremiad against it, this anthology offers a comprehensive look at the challenges and possibilities that the Internet brings to the evaluation, promotion, and explanation of artistic works.
It's Only a Movie! : Films and Critics in American Culture by
Once derided as senseless entertainment, movies have gradually assumed a place among the arts. Raymond Haberski's provocative and insightful book traces the trajectory of this evolution throughout the twentieth century, from nickelodeon amusements to the age of the financial blockbuster. Haberski begins by looking at the barriers to film's acceptance as an art form, including the Chicago Motion Picture Commission hearings of 1918--1920, one of the most revealing confrontations over the use of censorship in the motion picture industry. He then examines how movies overcame the stigma attached to popular entertainment through such watershed events as the creation of the Museum of Modern Art's Film Library in the 1920s. The arguments between Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris's heralded a golden age of criticism, and Haberski focuses on the roles of Kael, Sarris, James Agee, Roger Ebert, and others, in the creation of "cinephilia." Described by Susan Sontag as "born of the conviction that cinema was an art unlike any other," this love of cinema centered on coffee houses, universities, art theaters, film festivals, and, of course, foreign films. The lively debates over the place of movies in American culture began to wane in the 1970s. Haberski places the blame on the loss of cultural authority and on the increasing irrelevance of the meaning of art. He concludes with a persuasive call for the re-emergence of a middle ground between art and entertainment, "something more complex, ambiguous, and vexing -- something worth thought."
Television and Criticism by
Television and Criticism unites distinguished scholars from the fields of literary criticism, media studies, and film studies to challenge the traditional boundaries between high and low culture. Through a theoretical lens, this volume addresses such topics as the blurring of genres, television and identity, and the sophistication of television audiences by examining examples from soap operas, televised adaptations of classic novels, film noir, and popular shows like Queer as Folk, Seinfeld, and Ally McBeal. Ranging from Shakespeare to Dragnet, this comprehensive study will interest cultural studies scholars and media buffs alike.
They Went Thataway: Redefining Film Genres by
Reviews by dozens of well-known film critics are included in this collection of articles on movies that attempt to redefine film genres.
Warning Shadows: Home Alone with Classic Cinema by
In his illuminating new work, Gary Giddins explores the evolution of film, from the first moving pictures and peepshows to the digital era of DVDs and online video-streaming. New technologies have changed our experience of cinema forever; we have peeled away from the crowded theater to be home alone with classic cinema. Recounting the technological developments that films have undergone, Warning Shadows travels through time and across genres to explore the impact of the industry's most famous classics and forgotten gems. Essays such as "Houdini Escapes! From the Vaults! Of the Past!," "Edward G. Robinson, See," and "Prestige and Pretension (Pride and Prejudice)" capture the wit and magic of classic cinema. Each chapter--ranging from the horror films of Hitchcock to the fantastical frames of Disney--provides readers with engaging analyses of influential films and the directors and actors who made them possible.
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Classical Music in a Changing Culture: Essays From The American Record Guide by
In Classical Music in a Changing Culture: Essays from The American Record Guide, Vroon delves into a variety of topics: orchestra finances, contemporary music, classical music marketing, attracting young crowds, musical aesthetics, the future of classical music, the sale and distribution of music in the modern era; the decline of American culture and its causes; the role of misguided ideologies that affect American music, from political correctness to multiculturalism to period performance practice, and the true richness of our music and its subculture. As Vroon argues, since all criticism is cultural criticism, music criticism in the broadest sense--from its composition to its distribution to its reception--is a window onto broader culture issues. Classical Music in a Changing Culture should appeal to anyone serious about classical music and worried about its increasing marginalization in our contemporary culture. These essays are not written for specialists but for thinking readers who love music and care about its place in our lives.
Death Metal and Music Criticism: Analysis at the Limits by
Death metal is one of popular music's most extreme variants, and is typically viewed as almost monolithically nihilistic, misogynistic, and reactionary. Studies tend to view the music as a reflection of these listeners' social conditions and are concerned with metal's pleasures so long as these can be seen within that context: as responses to cultural and economic circumstances. Michelle Phillipov's Death Metal and Music Criticism: Analysis at the Limits, in contract, offers an account of listening pleasure on its own terms. Through an analysis of death metal's sonic and lyrical extremity, Phillipov shows how violence and aggression can be configured as sites for pleasure and play in death metal music, with little relation to the 'real' lives of listeners. In some cases, gruesome lyrical themes and fractured song forms invite listeners to imagine new experiences of the body and of the self. In others, the speed and complexity of the music foster a 'technical' or distanced appreciation akin to the viewing experiences of graphic horror film fans. These aspects of death metal listening are often neglected by scholarly accounts concerned with evaluating music as either 'progressive' or 'reactionary.' By contextualizing the discussion of death metal via substantial overviews of popular music studies as a field, Phillipov's Death Metal and Music Criticism highlights how the premium placed on political engagement in popular music studies not only circumscribes our understanding of the complexity and specificity of death metal, but of other musical styles as well. Exploring death metal at the limits of conventional music criticism helps not only to develop a more nuanced account of death metal listening--it also offers some important starting points for a rethinking of popular music scholarship as a whole.
Interpreting Music by
Interpreting Music is a comprehensive essay on understanding musical meaning and performing music meaningfully--"interpreting music" in both senses of the term. Synthesizing and advancing two decades of highly influential work, Lawrence Kramer fundamentally rethinks the concepts of work, score, performance, performativity, interpretation, and meaning--even the very concept of music--while breaking down conventional wisdom and received ideas. Kramer argues that music, far from being closed to interpretation, is ideally open to it, and that musical interpretation is the paradigm of interpretation in general. The book illustrates the many dimensions of interpreting music through a series of case studies drawn from the classical repertoire, but its methods and principles carry over to other repertoires just as they carry beyond music by working through music to wider philosophical and cultural questions.
Musical Performance: A Guide to Understanding by
This accessible guide for students, teachers and performers at all levels unravels the complexities of musical performance and focuses on key aspects of learning, playing and responding to music. A survey of performance through the ages leads to a presentation of basic historical, analytical and psychological concepts. Four chapters follow on teaching, development, practice and memorization. The next section considers the 'translation' from score to sound, physical projection, ensemble playing and performance anxiety. The final section addresses the act of listening, the legacy of recordings, music criticism and 'performers on performance'.
Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts by
Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts is a tribute to the ethnomusicologist Beverley Diamond in recognition of her outstanding scholarly accomplishments. The volume includes essays by leading ethnomusicologists and music scholars as well as a biographical introduction. The book's contributors engage many of the critical themes in Diamond's work, including musical historiography, musical composition in historical and contemporary frameworks, performance in diverse contexts, gender issues, music and politics, and how music is nested in and relates to broader issues in society. The essays raise important themes about knowing and understanding musical traditions and music itself as an agent of social, cultural, and political change. Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts will appeal to music scholars and students, as well as to a general audience interested in learning about how music functions as social process as well as sound.
Writing about Music: A Style Sheet by
Where do you place the hyphen in "Beethoven" if it breaks between two lines? How do you cite John Coltrane's album A Love Supreme? Is it "premiere" or "première"? The answers and much more can be found in this definitive resource for authors, students, editors, concert producers--anyone who deals with music in print. Extending the principles devised for the classical repertoires, this revised and expanded edition now includes examples from world music, rock, jazz, popular music, and cinema. This essential volume covers some of the thorniest issues of musical discourse: how to go about describing musical works and procedures in prose, the rules for citations in notes and bibliography, and proper preparation of such materials as musical examples, tables, and illustrations. One section discusses program notes, while others explain the requirements for submitting manuscripts and electronic files, and outline best practices for student writers. An appendix lists common problem words. Updates include greatly simplified citations of Internet locators, the recognition of multiple platforms, and the expectation of paperless transmission and storage of work. Cited as the authority by The Chicago Manual of Style, this classic handbook is the go-to source for anyone writing about music.
The American Play, 1787-2000 by
In this brilliant study, Marc Robinson explores more than two hundred years of plays, styles, and stagings of American theater. Mapping the changing cultural landscape from the late eighteenth century to the start of the twenty-first, he explores how theater has--and has not--changed and offers close readings of plays by O'Neill, Stein, Wilder, Miller, and Albee, as well as by important but perhaps lesser known dramatists such as Wallace Stevens, Jean Toomer, Djuna Barnes, and many others. Robinson reads each work in an ambitiously interdisciplinary context, linking advances in theater to developments in American literature, dance, and visual art. The author is particularly attentive to the continuities in American drama, and expertly teases out recurring themes, such as the significance of visuality. He avoids neatly categorizing nineteenth- and twentieth-century plays and depicts a theater more restive and mercurial than has been recognized before. Robinson proves both a fascinating and thought-provoking critic and a spirited guide to the history of American drama.
Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber by
This new second edition of Enchanted Evenings offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America's best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals. Readers will find such all-time favorites as Show Boat, Carousel, Kiss Me, Kate, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Phantom of the Opera. Geoffrey Block provides a documentary history of each of the musicals, showing how each work took shape and revealing, at the same time, how the American musical evolved from the 1920s to today, both on stage and on screen. The book's particular focus is on the music, offering a wealth of detail about how librettist, lyricist, composer, and director work together to shape the piece. Block also includes trenchant social commentary and lively backstage anecdotes. Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Kurt Weill, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and other luminaries emerge as hardworking craftsmen under enormous pressure to sell tickets without compromising their dramatic vision. The second edition includes a greatly expanded chapter on Sondheim, a new chapter on Lloyd Webber, and two new chapters on the film adaptations of the main musicals featured in the text (including such hard to find films as the original 1936 version of Anything Goes and the 1959 film adaptation of Porgy and Bess). Packed with information, including a complete discography and plot synopses and song-by-song scenic outlines for each of the fourteen shows, Enchanted Evenings is an essential reference as well as a riveting history. A solid and fascinating work that should become a model of how to investigate and report on the evolution of a musical. Block's research is persuasive and his writing vivid. . .Indispensable for anyone who cares to know more about Broadway musicals than Playbill can provide. --Steven Bach, The Los Angeles Times Book Review
In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights by
Includes: Lee Breuer, Christopher Durang, Richard Foreman, Maria Irene Fornes, Charles Fuller, John Guare, Joan Holden, David Henry Hwang, David Mamet, Emily Mann, Richard Nelson, Marsha Norman, David Rabe, Wallace Shawn, Stephen Sondheim, Megan Terry, Luis Valdez, Michael Weller, August Wilson and Lanford Wilson.
Millennial Stages: Essays and Reviews, 2001-2005 by
A major figure in the world of theater as critic, playwright, scholar, teacher, director, actor, and producer, Robert Brustein offers a unique perspective on the American stage and its artists. In this wise, witty, and wide-ranging collection of recent writings, Brustein examines crucial issues relating to theater in the post-9/11 years, analyzing specific plays, emerging and established performers, and theatrical production throughout the world. Brustein relates our theater to our society in a manner that reminds us why the performing arts matter.
Persons of the Drama: Theater Criticism and Comment by 
Talking Drama by
The essays in Talking Drama ask what the relation is between drama and its critics. In so far as we conceive of drama and theatre as arising from and providing some sense of social ritual and comment, drama is itself a critical genre, showing up the foibles and problems of human existence as well as the general hubris and errors of society. Plays both constitute criticism--of society, of ideas, of other plays--and deploy such self-critical gambits as plays within plays, characters who watch other characters, characters feigning roles and personalities, and even the overt inclusion of characters who are critics. Plays, thus, comment both on themselves and on the art of theatre generally. At the same time, drama implies other kinds of critics in the guise of the audience, reviewers, and those who might participate in its ideas. Just as plays produce the seeds of their own critique, so they also spur critique of their aesthetics, the artistry of their performance, and the ideas and conflicts they illustrate. Critics who review play performances are as much an intrinsic part of theatrical events as the audience and the plays themselves.
