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Although V. Gordon Childe died 36 years ago, he remains the world's most renowned prehistorian. His What Happened in History, first published in 1942, is probably the most widely read book ever written by an archaeologist. His influence and reputation endure despite the fact that many of the theoretical ideas he propounded, as well as his interpretations of European and West Asian prehistory, have been profoundly modified, or even rejected, since his death.

With contributions from such distinguished prehistorians as Kent V. Flannery, David Harris, Leo S. Klejn, John Mulvaney, Colin Renfrew, Michael Rowlands, and Bruce Trigger, The Archaeology of V. Gordon Childe is an attempt to evaluate Childe's achievement from different "partly national" perspectives and to assess how far, and why, his work remains significant today. The contributors examine such persistent themes in Childe's thought as the nature of culture and the role of diffusion in cultural evolution and debate the question of whether Childe anticipated "processual archaeology" in his famous models of the Neolithic and Urban Revolutions. Also included are evaluations of Childe's early career in Australia, his relations with Soviet archaeology, including a previously unknown letter from Childe to Soviet archaeologists, and his impact on American archaeology.

Archetypal Process is a pioneering study linking the ideas of process philosophy, as developed by Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, with the archetypal psychology of C. G. Jung and James Hillman. This is the first work to examine the interconnections of these two modes of thought.

Archetypal Process examines the importance of cosmological thinking and the need to ground archetypal psychology in a metaphysical, philosophical framework. It treats the necessity for symbol and myth, the nature of the spirit, and language as a metaphorical vehicle of thought, and finally, it adds a much-needed feminist perspective to the debate.

Winner of the 1998 Spiro Kostof Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.

Chicago has always held a special fascination for those interested in architectural and urban history. For many, the defining moment occurred at the turn of the century when Chicago was booming and the world came to the city by the lake. But the story most often told in architectural history—the tale of single creative geniuses like Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan—does little to explain the birth of the everyday modern city, with its high-rise downtown, diverse neighborhoods, and sprawling suburbs. This book connects architectural history with urban history by looking at the work of a major architectural firm, Holabird & Roche. No firm in any large American city had a greater impact.

With projects that ranged from tombstones to skyscrapers, boiler rooms to entire industrial complexes, Holabird & Roche left an indelible stamp on the city of Chicago and, indeed, far beyond. In this volume, the first of two on Holabird & Roche and its successor, Holabird & Root, Robert Bruegmann traces the firm’s history from its founding in 1880 to the end of the First World War. Incorporating meticulous research based on the extensive architectural holdings of the Chicago Historical Society, Bruegmann documents the firm’s work from the boom years of the 1880s through the period of sustained growth and innovation after the turn of the century. In chapters devoted to topics as diverse as downtown commercial and retail development, business hotels, civic buildings, automobile showrooms, and suburban clubs and housing, Bruegmann creates a sustained historical narrative that considers the profound interdependence of architecture and modern urban life.

From sprawling houses to compact bungalows and from world-famous museums to a still-working gas station, Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs can be found in nearly every corner of the country. While the renowned architect passed away more than fifty years ago, researchers and enthusiasts are still uncovering structures that should be attributed to him.
William Allin Storrer is one of the experts leading this charge, and his definitive guide, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, has long been the resource of choice for anyone interested in Wright.  Thanks to the work of Storrer and his colleagues at the Rediscovering Wright Project, thirty-seven new sites have recently been identified as the work of Wright. Together with more photos, updated and expanded entries, and a new essay on the evolution of Wright’s unparalleled architectural style, this new edition is the most comprehensive and authoritative catalog available.
Organized chronologically, the catalog includes full-color photos, location information, and historical and architectural background for all of Wright’s extant structures in the United States and abroad, as well as entries for works that have been demolished over the years. A geographic listing makes it easy for traveling Wright fans to find nearby structures and a new key indicates whether a site is open to the public.
Publishing for Wright’s sesquicentennial, this new edition will be a trusted companion for anyone embarking on their own journeys through the wonder and genius of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Elaborately conceived, grandly constructed insane asylums—ranging in appearance from classical temples to Gothic castles—were once a common sight looming on the outskirts of American towns and cities. Many of these buildings were razed long ago, and those that remain stand as grim reminders of an often cruel system. For much of the nineteenth century, however, these asylums epitomized the widely held belief among doctors and social reformers that insanity was a curable disease and that environment—architecture in particular—was the most effective means of treatment.

In The Architecture of Madness, Carla Yanni tells a compelling story of therapeutic design, from America’s earliest purpose—built institutions for the insane to the asylum construction frenzy in the second half of the century. At the center of Yanni’s inquiry is Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, a Pennsylvania-born Quaker, who in the 1840s devised a novel way to house the mentally diseased that emphasized segregation by severity of illness, ease of treatment and surveillance, and ventilation. After the Civil War, American architects designed Kirkbride-plan hospitals across the country.

Before the end of the century, interest in the Kirkbride plan had begun to decline. Many of the asylums had deteriorated into human warehouses, strengthening arguments against the monolithic structures advocated by Kirkbride. At the same time, the medical profession began embracing a more neurological approach to mental disease that considered architecture as largely irrelevant to its treatment.

Generously illustrated, The Architecture of Madness is a fresh and original look at the American medical establishment’s century-long preoccupation with therapeutic architecture as a way to cure social ills.

Carla Yanni is associate professor of art history at Rutgers University and the author of Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display.

"Warmly recommended. It is that rare achievement, a lively book which at the same time takes the fullest possible advantage of scholarly knowledge."—Charles C. Gillespie, New York Times Book Review

"There may not be any book on architecture so delightful to dip into; one wishes there were a pocket edition to take on an Italian vacation—not only for its information and vision but for such pleasant reminders as that the citizens of Treviso carried Tullio Lombardo's friezes through the town in triumph before they were attached to a building."—D. J. R. Bruckner, New York Times Book Review

In the 1990s, a generation of women born during the rise of the second wave feminist movement plotted a revolution. These young activists funneled their outrage and energy into creating music, and zines using salvaged audio equipment and stolen time on copy machines. By 2000, the cultural artifacts of this movement had started to migrate from basements and storage units to community and university archives, establishing new sites of storytelling and political activism.

 

The Archival Turn in Feminism chronicles these important cultural artifacts and their collection, cataloging, preservation, and distribution. Cultural studies scholar Kate Eichhorn examines institutions such as the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University, The Riot Grrrl Collection at New York University, and the Barnard Zine Library. She also profiles the archivists who have assembled these significant feminist collections.

 

Eichhorn shows why young feminist activists, cultural producers, and scholars embraced the archive, and how they used it to stage political alliances across eras and generations.

A volume in the American Literatures Initiative

Mumbai's textile industry is commonly but incorrectly understood to be an extinct relic of the past. In The Archive of Loss Maura Finkelstein examines what it means for textile mill workers—who are assumed not to exist—to live and work during a period of deindustrialization. Finkelstein shows how mills are ethnographic archives of the city where documents, artifacts, and stories exist in the buildings and in the bodies of workers. Workers' pain, illnesses, injuries, and exhaustion narrate industrial decline; the ways in which they live in tenements exist outside and resist the values expounded by modernity; and the rumors and untruths they share about textile worker strikes and a mill fire help them make sense of the industry's survival. In outlining this archive's contents, Finkelstein shows how mills, which she conceptualizes as lively ruins, become a lens through which to challenge, reimagine, and alter ways of thinking about the past, present, and future in Mumbai and beyond.

Excessively European, refreshingly European, not as European as it looks, struggling to overcome a delusion that it is European. Argentina—in all its complexity—has often been obscured by variations of the "like Europe and not like the rest of Latin America" cliché. The Argentina Reader deliberately breaks from that viewpoint. This essential introduction to Argentina’s history, culture, and society provides a richer, more comprehensive look at one of the most paradoxical of Latin American nations: a nation that used to be among the richest in the world, with the largest middle class in Latin America, yet one that entered the twenty-first century with its economy in shambles and its citizenry seething with frustration.

This diverse collection brings together songs, articles, comic strips, scholarly essays, poems, and short stories. Most pieces are by Argentines. More than forty of the texts have never before appeared in English. The Argentina Reader contains photographs from Argentina’s National Archives and images of artwork by some of the country’s most talented painters and sculptors. Many selections deal with the history of indigenous Argentines, workers, women, blacks, and other groups often ignored in descriptions of the country. At the same time, the book includes excerpts by or about such major political figures as José de San Martín and Juan Perón. Pieces from literary and social figures virtually unknown in the United States appear alongside those by more well-known writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Ricardo Piglia, and Julio Cortázar.

The Argentina Reader covers the Spanish colonial regime; the years of nation building following Argentina’s independence from Spain in 1810; and the sweeping progress of economic growth and cultural change that made Argentina, by the turn of the twentieth century, the most modern country in Latin America. The bulk of the collection focuses on the twentieth century: on the popular movements that enabled Peronism and the revolutionary dreams of the 1960s and 1970s; on the dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 and the accompanying culture of terror and resistance; and, finally, on the contradictory and disconcerting tendencies unleashed by the principles of neoliberalism and the new global economy. The book also includes a list of suggestions for further reading.

The Argentina Reader is an invaluable resource for those interested in learning about Argentine history and culture, whether in the classroom or in preparation for travel in Argentina.

Oscar Chamosa brings forth the compelling story of an important but often overlooked component of the formation of popular nationalism in Latin America: the development of the Argentine folklore movement in the first part of the twentieth century. This movement involved academicians studying the culture of small farmers and herders of mixed indigenous and Spanish descent in the distant valleys of the Argentine northwest, as well as artists and musicians who took on the role of reinterpreting these local cultures for urban audiences of mostly European descent.

Oscar Chamosa combines intellectual history with ethnographic and sociocultural analysis to reconstruct the process by which mestizo culture—in Argentina called criollo culture—came to occupy the center of national folklore in a country that portrayed itself as the only white nation in South America. The author finds that the conservative plantation owners—the “sugar elites”—who exploited the criollo peasants sponsored the folklore movement that romanticized them as the archetypes of nationhood. Ironically, many of the composers and folk singers who participated in the landowner-sponsored movement adhered to revolutionary and reformist ideologies and denounced the exploitation to which those criollo peasants were subjected. Chamosa argues that, rather than debilitating the movement, these opposing and contradictory ideologies permitted its triumph and explain, in part, the enduring romanticizing of rural life and criollo culture, essential components of Argentine nationalism.

The book not only reveals the political motivations of culture in Argentina and Latin America but also has implications for understanding the articulation of local culture with national politics and entertainment markets that characterizes contemporary cultural processes worldwide today.

In The Argentine Silent Majority, Sebastián Carassai focuses on middle-class culture and politics in Argentina from the end of the 1960s. By considering the memories and ideologies of middle-class Argentines who did not get involved in political struggles, he expands thinking about the era to the larger society that activists and direct victims of state terror were part of and claimed to represent. Carassai conducted interviews with 200 people, mostly middle-class non-activists, but also journalists, politicians, scholars, and artists who were politically active during the 1970s. To account for local differences, he interviewed people from three sites: Buenos Aires; Tucumán, a provincial capital rocked by political turbulence; and Correa, a small town which did not experience great upheaval. He showed the middle-class non-activists a documentary featuring images and audio of popular culture and events from the 1970s. In the end Carassai concludes that, during the years of la violencia, members of the middle-class silent majority at times found themselves in agreement with radical sectors as they too opposed military authoritarianism but they never embraced a revolutionary program such as that put forward by the guerrilla groups or the most militant sectors of the labor movement.

Well traveled and gently reared, Elizabeth (Lily) Benton Frémont found herself heading for the rough-and-tumble West when her father, John C. Frémont, was named governor of Arizona Territory. In his shadow and that of her grandfather, U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton, her life on the frontier would have gone largely unremarked but for one thing: Lily kept a diary.

Here, in rich detail, her day-by-day narrative and the editor's annotations bring to life Arizona's territorial capital of Prescott more than one hundred years ago. Lily gives us firsthand accounts of the operation of territorial government; of pressure from Anglo settlers to dispossess Pima Indians from their land; and of efforts by the governor and the army to deal with Indian scares. Here also, underlying her words, are insights into the dynamics of a close-knit Victorian family, shaping the life of an intelligent, educated single woman. As unofficial secretary for her father, Lily was well placed to observe and record an almost constant stream of visitors to the governor's home and office. Observe and record, she did. Her diary is filled with unvarnished images of personalities such as the Goldwaters, General O. B. Willcox, Moses Sherman, Judge Charles Silent, and a host of lesser citizens, politicians, and army officers.

Lily's anecdotes vividly re-create the periodic personality clashes that polarized society (and one full-fledged scandal), the ever-present danger of fire, religious practices (particularly a burial service conducted in Hebrew), and attitudes toward Native Americans and Chinese. On a more personal level, the reader will find intimate accounts of John Frémont's obsession with mining promotion, his complicated business dealings with Judge Silent, and his attempts to recoup his family's sagging fortune. Here especially, Lily outlines a telling profile of her father, a man roundly castigated then and now as a carpetbagger less interested in promoting Arizona's interests than his own.

For students of western history, Lily Frémont's diary provides a wealth of fresh information on frontier politics, mining, army life, social customs, and ethnicity. For all readers, her words from a century ago offer new perspectives on the winning of the West as well as fascinating glimpses of a world that once was and is no more.

Scores of wild species and ecosystems around the world face a variety of human-caused threats, from habitat destruction and fragmentation to rapid climate change. But there is hope, and it, too, comes in a most human form: zoos and aquariums. Gathering a diverse, multi-institutional collection of leading zoo and aquarium scientists as well as historians, philosophers, biologists, and social scientists, The Ark and Beyond traces the history and underscores the present role of these organizations as essential conservation actors. It also offers a framework for their future course, reaffirming that if zoos and aquariums make biodiversity conservation a top priority, these institutions can play a vital role in tackling conservation challenges of global magnitude.

While early menageries were anything but the centers of conservation that many zoos are today, a concern with wildlife preservation has been an integral component of the modern, professionally run zoo since the nineteenth century. From captive breeding initiatives to rewilding programs, zoos and aquariums have long been at the cutting edge of research and conservation science, sites of impressive new genetic and reproductive techniques. Today, their efforts reach even further beyond recreation, with educational programs, community-based conservation initiatives, and international, collaborative programs designed to combat species extinction and protect habitats at a range of scales. Addressing related topics as diverse as zoo animal welfare, species reintroductions, amphibian extinctions, and whether zoos can truly be “wild,” this book explores the whole range of research and conservation practices that spring from zoos and aquariums while emphasizing the historical, scientific, and ethical traditions that shape these efforts. Also featuring an inspiring foreword by the late George Rabb, president emeritus of the Chicago Zoological Society / Brookfield Zoo, The Ark and Beyond illuminates these institutions’ growing significance to the preservation of global biodiversity in this century.

Drawing visitors to the heart of Chicago's north side for 135 years, Lincoln Park Zoo is one of the oldest and most popular zoos in America. This thorough and fascinating history of the zoo combines archival materials, photographs, and oral histories to chronicle the zoo's development and chart the unique role it has played not just in the growth of Chicago but in the establishment of zoos in cities across America.
 
Lincoln Park Zoo was established in 1868 when New York's Central Park Commissioners sent the Lincoln Park Commissioners the gift of two pairs of swans. The swans were such a popular attraction that the park commissioners began acquiring other animals and building quarters for them, adding a bear cage, a bison enclosure, a sea lion pool, an eagle exhibit, and an animal house, all before 1900.
 
Although the zoo was initially conceived as a primarily recreational attraction, its mission has evolved over time, with conservation, science, and education now forming central elements. Starting in 1884, when the zoo saw what was reportedly the first-ever birth of a North American bison in captivity, Lincoln Park Zoo has been part of the effort to study and protect endangered species from all over the world.
 
This comprehensive history of Lincoln Park Zoo also tells the wider story of the growth of the American zoo movement and the changes that have occurred in the past century, as zoos evolved from a leisure pursuit into a multimillion-dollar industry and an invaluable participant in global conservation efforts.
 
 

Arkansas Post, the first European settlement in what would become Jefferson’s Louisiana, had an important mission as the only settlement between Natchez and the Illinois Country, a stretch of more than eight hundred miles along the Mississippi River. The Post was a stopping point for shelter and supplies for those travelling by boat or land, and it was of strategic importance as well, as it nurtured and sustained a crucial alliance with the Quapaw Indians, the only tribe that occupied the region.

The Arkansas Post of Louisiana covers the most essential aspects of the Post’s history, including the nature of the European population, their social life, the economy, the architecture, and the political and military events that reflected and shaped the Post’s mission.

Beautifully illustrated with maps, portraits, lithographs, photographs, documents, and superb examples of Quapaw hide paintings, The Arkansas Post of Louisiana is a perfect introduction to this fascinating place at the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers, a place that served as a multicultural gathering spot, and became a seminal part of the history of Arkansas and the nation.

Utah Series in Middle East Studies

In 1915, the Ottoman government, then run by the Young Turks, deported most of its Armenian citizens from their eastern Anatolian lands. According to reliable estimates, close to forty percent of the prewar population perished, many in brutal massacres. Armenians call it the first genocide of the twentieth century. Turks speak of an instance of intercommunal warfare and wartime relocation made necessary by the treasonous conduct of their Armenian minority.

The voluminous literature on this tragic episode of World War I is characterized by acrimony and distortion in which both sides have simplified a complex historical reality and have resorted to partisan special pleading.

The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey examines the rich historical evidence without political preconceptions. Relying on archival materials as well as eye-witness testimony, Guenter Lewy avoids the sterile “was-it-genocide-or-not” debate and presents a detailed account of what actually happened. The result is a book that will open a new chapter in this contentious controversy and may help achieve a long-overdue reconciliation of Armenians and Turks.

Utah Series in Middle East Studies

Before World War I, the ancient city of Van in southeastern Anatolia had a population of approximately 100,000 people, while the population of Van Province was about 500,000. Armenians formed a large minority, with Kurdish tribes and Turks in the majority.

The Armenian Rebellion at Van presents a long-overdue examination of Van from the 1870s to 1919. As the authors state, "The Armenian Revolt was an integral part of the great disaster that overcame the people of the Ottoman East. The slaughter of Muslims that accompanied the Armenian revolt in Van Province inexorably led first to Kurdish reprisals on the Armenians, then to a general and mutual massacre of the people of the East."

The actions at Van offer a window into the far-reaching events that soon followed in other parts of Anatolia.

One of Norway’s most celebrated literary figures of the nineteenth century, Henrik Wergeland worked tirelessly for the civil rights of Jews in Norway. He used the words and structure of his poetry to enliven the ideals of truth, freedom, and equality. This translated volume, containing several of Wergeland’s most prominent poems, beautifully encapsulates the compelling force of his message, allowing its enduring influence to benefit a wider contemporary audience.

The art museum has become a prestige commission for contemporary architects, and for several decades reference has been made to a “museum building boom.” Among these new museums, those of Louis Kahn are especially admired. This significant American architect, who ranks in this century with Frank Lloyd Wright both as a creator and as an influence, has made a special contribution to the architecture of museums and has helped create a subtle but telling change in the concept of what a late twentieth-century museum building should be.
After a brief look at the development of a tradition in museum architecture, this study examines Kahn’s three art museums: the Yale University Art Gallery, the Kimbell Art Museum, and the Yale Center for British Art. It traces the development of each museum through museum through its various stages: the background of the institutions and the commissions, the programs for the buildings, their designs and evolutions, their constructions, and the evaluations of the completed buildings. Material on Kahn’s plans for a museum for the De Menil collection, begun shortly before his death, is also included.
Accompanying the text are illustrations of the buildings, including Kahn’s personal sketches, architectural plans and sections, and presentation perspective drawings. Photographs of the finished buildings present the transformed vision of the architect in tangible form, showing that the museums, while related, are individualized accomplishments. This is the first comprehensive study of Kahn’s museums.

Advertisers in the nineteenth and early twentieth century pushed the boundaries of printing, manipulated language, inspired a new form of art and exploited many formats, including calendars, bookmarks and games. This collection of essays examines the extent to which these standalone advertisements – which have survived by chance and are now divorced from their original purpose – provide information not just on the sometimes bizarre products being sold, but also on class, gender, Britishness, war, fashion and shopping. Starting with the genesis of an advertisement through the creation of text, image, print and format, the authors go on to examine the changing profile of the consumer, notably the rise of the middle classes, and the way in which manufacturers and retailers identified and targeted their markets. Finally, they look at advertisements as documents that both reveal and conceal details about society, politics and local history. Copiously illustrated from the world-renowned John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera and featuring work by influential illustrators John Hassall and Dudley Hardy, this attractive book invites us to consider both the intended and unintended messages of the advertisements of the past.

The critical literary world has spent a wealth of thought and words on the question of Hawthorne himself: Where does he stand in his works? In history? In literary tradition? In this major new study, G. R. Thompson recasts the "Hawthorne question" to show how authorial presence in the writer's works is as much a matter of art as the writing itself. The Hawthorne who emerges from this masterful analysis is not, as has been supposed, identical to the provincial narrator of his early tales; instead he is revealed to be the skillful manipulator of that narrative voice, an author at an ironic distance from the tales he tells.
By focusing on the provincial tales as they were originally conceived--as a narrative cycle--Thompson is able to recover intertextual references that reveal Hawthorne's preoccupation with framing strategies and variations on authorial presence. The author shows how Hawthorne deliberately constructs sentimental narratives, only to deconstruct them. Thompson's analysis provides a new aesthetic context for understanding the whole shape of Hawthorne's career as well as the narrative, ethical, and historical issues within individual works.
Revisionary in its view of one of America's greatest authors, The Art of Authorial Presence also offers invaluable insight into the problems of narratology and historiography, ethics and psychology, romanticism and idealism, and the cultural myths of America.

In The Art of Being In-between Yanna Yannakakis rethinks processes of cultural change and indigenous resistance and accommodation to colonial rule through a focus on the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, a rugged, mountainous, ethnically diverse, and overwhelmingly indigenous region of colonial Mexico. Her rich social and cultural history tells the story of the making of colonialism at the edge of empire through the eyes of native intermediary figures: indigenous governors clothed in Spanish silks, priests’ assistants, interpreters, economic middlemen, legal agents, landed nobility, and “Indian conquistadors.” Through political negotiation, cultural brokerage, and the exercise of violence, these fascinating intercultural figures redefined native leadership, sparked indigenous rebellions, and helped forge an ambivalent political culture that distinguished the hinterlands from the centers of Spanish empire.

Through interpretation of a wide array of historical sources—including descriptions of public rituals, accounts of indigenous rebellions, idolatry trials, legal petitions, court cases, land disputes, and indigenous pictorial histories—Yannakakis weaves together an elegant narrative that illuminates political and cultural struggles over the terms of local rule. As cultural brokers, native intermediaries at times reconciled conflicting interests, and at other times positioned themselves in opposing camps over the outcome of municipal elections, the provision of goods and labor, landholding, community ritual, the meaning of indigenous “custom” in relation to Spanish law, and representations of the past. In the process, they shaped an emergent “Indian” identity in tension with other forms of indigenous identity and a political order characterized by a persistent conflict between local autonomy and colonial control. This innovative study provides fresh insight into colonialism’s disparate cultures and the making of race, ethnicity, and the colonial state and legal system in Spanish America.

The Art of Defiance is an ethnographic portrait of how graffiti writers see their city and, in turn, how their city sees them. It explores how becoming a graffiti writer helps disenfranchised urban citizens negotiate their cultural identities, build their social capital, and gain a voice within an urban environment that would prefer they remain quiet, passive, and anonymous.
 
In order to both demystify and complicate our understanding of the practice of graffiti writing, this book pushes past the narrative that links the origins of graffiti to criminal gangs and instead offers a detailed portrait of graffiti as a rich urban culture with its own rules and practices. To do so, it examines the cultural history of graffiti in Philadelphia from the early 1970s onward and explores what it is like to be a graffiti writer in the city today. Ultimately, Tyson Mitman aims to humanize graffiti writers and to show that what they do is not merely destructive or puerile, but, rather, adds something important to the urban experience that is a conscious and deliberate act on the part of its practitioners.

"The art historian after Erwin Panofsky and Ernst Gombrich is not only participating in an activity of great intellectual excitement; he is raising and exploring issues which lie very much at the centre of psychology, of the sciences and of history itself. Svetlana Alpers's study of 17th-century Dutch painting is a splendid example of this excitement and of the centrality of art history among current disciples. Professor Alpers puts forward a vividly argued thesis. There is, she says, a truly fundamental dichotomy between the art of the Italian Renaissance and that of the Dutch masters. . . . Italian art is the primary expression of a 'textual culture,' this is to say of a culture which seeks emblematic, allegorical or philosophical meanings in a serious painting. Alberti, Vasari and the many other theoreticians of the Italian Renaissance teach us to 'read' a painting, and to read it in depth so as to elicit and construe its several levels of signification. The world of Dutch art, by the contrast, arises from and enacts a truly 'visual culture.' It serves and energises a system of values in which meaning is not 'read' but 'seen,' in which new knowledge is visually recorded."—George Steiner, Sunday Times

"There is no doubt that thanks to Alpers's highly original book the study of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century will be thoroughly reformed and rejuvenated. . . . She herself has the verve, the knowledge, and the sensitivity to make us see familiar sights in a new light."—E. H. Gombrich, New York Review of Books

The Art of Eastern India, 300–800 was first published in 1980. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Though scholars have extensive knowledge of the art that flourished during Pala rule in Eastern India (ca. 800-1200), little is known about Eastern Indian art during the preceding 500 years. This half-millennium includes the period of the Gupta dynasty and the two centuries that bridge Gupta and Pala rule, when no single dynasty long maintained control of Eastern India. In this study, Frederick M. Asher challenges arthistorical assumptions about Pala art — that it is a new school virtually without links to earlier art 00 by demonstrating that sculpture during the Gupta period and the subsequent three centuries evolved along lines that connect it with Pala art. In so doing, he draws attention to important sculptures, most of them never previously studied, that tell us not only about an unexplored period in Indian art but also about broader aspects of the cultural history and geography of Eastern India.

Asher's work is based on field research in Bihar, West Bengal, and Bangladesh. There he gave special attention to the sites of once-flourishing Buddhist monasteries and to Hindu images still worshipped in village India. The author's photographs of the bronze, terra cotta, and stone sculptures, and his detailed text, provide a virtual catalogue raisonne of the known works of the period.

Asher's analyses of the images and his attributions of dates to them are based upon close attention to artistic style and iconography, and the study of dynastic and social history, contemporary travelers' reports, and religious history. Drawing together these diverse strands of information, he describes the evolution of art forms over a long period in which there was little apparent historic unity. John M. Rosenfield, professor of art history at Harvard University and author of The Art of the Kushans, says, of The Art of Eastern India,"The scholarship is scrupulously detailed and careful . . . [The book] is in the finest tradition of classical scholarship, and will be consulted or several generations."

The remarkable detail and subtly stylized lines characterizing the artistry of celebrated woodcarver Ivan Denton are in abundant evidence in this beautifully illustrated volume of The Art of I. Denton. Behind each carving presented here, is its story from a piece of wood to a work of art, told in the words of Mr. Denton himself.

This is, in fact, a tour guided by Ivan Denton covering the best of his efforts, his love for the wood, and the process which turns a craftsman into an artist. As he says in describing his work: “Art exists only when you share it. When a tree falls in the woods, in school they said, ‘This tree doesn’t make a noise if someone doesn’t hear it.’ Because, you know, the sound waves don’t bump against the eardrum . . . The idea of not being able to get rid of a piece is basically the concept of an amateur. Not only does a professional need the money, and not only does he need his ego flattered, it’s just that the art doesn’t really exist until it’s shared. That’s an even deeper joy than the ego.”

Chosen from collections across the country, these pieces represent the masterworks from one of a disappearing breed of artisans. But The Art of I. Denton is more than a document of our cultural heritage, it is a tribute to the man and his art.

From 1952 to 1981, South Africa’s apartheid government ran an art school for the training of African art teachers at Indaleni, in what is today KwaZulu-Natal. The Art of Life in South Africa is the story of the students, teachers, art, and politics that circulated through a small school, housed in a remote former mission station. It is the story of a community that made its way through the travails of white supremacist South Africa and demonstrates how the art students and teachers made together became the art of their lives.

Daniel Magaziner radically reframes apartheid-era South African history. Against the dominant narrative of apartheid oppression and black resistance, as well as recent scholarship that explores violence, criminality, and the hopeless entanglements of the apartheid state, this book focuses instead on a small group’s efforts to fashion more fulfilling lives for its members and their community through the ironic medium of the apartheid-era school.

There is no book like this in South African historiography. Lushly illustrated and poetically written, it gives us fully formed lives that offer remarkable insights into the now clichéd experience of black life under segregation and apartheid.

Growing out of the collaborative research of an American ethnomusicologist and Zimbabwean musician, Paul F. Berliner’s The Art of Mbira documents the repertory for a keyboard instrument known generally as mbira. At the heart of this work lies the analysis of the improvisatory processes that propel mbira music’s magnificent creativity.

In this book, Berliner provides insight into the communities of study, performance, and worship that surround mbira. He chronicles how master player Cosmas Magaya and his associates have developed their repertory and practices over more than four decades, shaped by musical interaction, social and political dynamics in Zimbabwe, and the global economy of the music industry. At once a detailed exposition of the music’s forms and practices, it is also an indispensable historical and cultural guide to mbira in a changing world.

Together with Berliner and Magaya's compendium of mbira compositions, Mbira’s Restless Dance, The Art of Mbira breaks new ground in the depth and specificity of its exploration of an African musical tradition, and in the entwining of the authors’ collaborative voices. It is a testament to the powerful relationship between music and social life—and the rewards of lifelong musical study, performance, and friendship.

The Art of Mechanical Reproduction presents a striking new approach to how traditional art mediums—painting, sculpture, and drawing—changed in the twentieth century in response to photography, film, and other technologies. Countering the modernist view that the medium provides advanced art with “resistance” against technological pressures, Tamara Trodd argues that we should view art and its practices as imaginatively responding to the potential that artists glimpsed in mechanical reproduction, putting art into dialogue with the commercial cultures of its time.

The Art of Mechanical Reproduction weaves a rich history of the experimental networks in which artists as diverse as Paul Klee, Hans Bellmer, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Smithson, Gerhard Richter, Chris Marker, and Tacita Dean have worked, and it shows for the first time how extensively technological innovations of the moment have affected their work. Original and broad-ranging, The Art of Mechanical Reproduction challenges some of the most respected and entrenched criticism of the past several decades—and allows us to think about these artists anew.

Since ancient times people have depended on medical practitioners to enhance life, to treat illness and injuries, and to help reduce pain and suffering. The scientifically based discipline that we know today stands beside diverse traditions, belief systems, and bodies of medical knowledge that have evolved in fascinating ways across cultures and continents. Throughout this history, successive generations have created artistic representations of these varied aspects of medicine, illustrating instruction manuals, documenting treatments, and creating works of art that enable individuals to express their feelings and ideas about medicine, health, and illness. From ancient wall paintings and tomb carvings to sculpture, installations, and digitally created artworks, the results are extraordinary and pay tribute to how medicine has affected our lives and the lives of our ancestors.  

           

Drawing on the remarkable holdings of the Wellcome Collection in London, The Art of Medicine offers a unique gallery of rarely seen paintings, artifacts, drawings, prints, and extracts from manuscripts and manuals to provide a fascinating visual insight into our knowledge of the human body and mind, and how both have been treated with medicine. Julie Anderson, Emm Barnes, and Emma Shackleton take readers on a fascinating visual journey through the history of medical practice, exploring contemporary biomedical images, popular art, and caricature alongside venerable Chinese scrolls, prehistoric Mesoamerican drawings, paintings of the European Renaissance, medieval Persian manuscripts, and more. The result is a rare and remarkable visual account of what it was and is to be human in sickness and health.