These photographs, essays, drawings, and original texts document the rich agit-art legacy of the Situationist International, a group of European artists and writers who emerged from such avant-garde movements as COBRA, Lettrisme, and the Imaginary Bauhaus and from the breakup of surrealism to launch a strategy of art as cultural critique.

Abstract…observations of skylfull pylotts is the onlye waye to bring it in rule; for it passeth the reach of naturall philosophy. – Michael Gabriel, 1576 (Collinson, 1867, p. 30)Abstract The tension between empirical data and formal theory pervades the entire history of geomagnetism, from the Middle Ages up to the present day. This paper explores its early-modern history (1500–1800), using a hybrid approach: it applies a methodological framework used in modern geophysics to interpret early-modern developments, exploring to (...) what extent formal conjectures shaped observation and vice versa. A range of pertinent case studies supports classification of this entire period as proto-scientific, characterised by the initial formation of theories being largely disconnected from observational constraints, and their subsequent evolution being advanced primarily by their empirical falsification, and not necessarily associated with the introduction of an alternative. The few exceptional instances of purely data-driven discovery were essentially due to an improved signal-to-noise ratio. (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

An innovative new history of how the migration of designers in the 20th century shaped modernist art and architecture.

Madness and Modernism provides a phenomenological study of schizophrenic disorders, criticizing some standard conceptions of these disorders. Sass argues that many aspects of this group of disorders can actually involve more sophisticated (albeit dysfunctional) forms of mind and experience.

Hegel’s assertion that, for us moderns, art is a matter of the past has obscured his genuine interest in the art of his time and modern art in general. This article attempts to correct this situation. First, it contextualizes the claim in its historical and conceptual aspects; second, it returns to Hegel’s approaches to modern art, neglected hitherto by interpreters. This revision implies clarifying what for Hegel is the modern, whose concept comes from the freedom and autonomy (...) of thought, and does not conform to what, in developments of Aesthetics, after Hegel, represent tendencies and prescriptions such as the avant-garde or turns such as aesthetic modernity and postmodernity. Modern art is the product of an artist who freely disposes of the means and content of art since he places himself above them. (shrink)

This thesis is to make sure the art's political possibility especially in the age of the technological reproduction. Since Benjamin declared the death of the 'aura' in the modern art, the concept of the art has been criticized and changed, that of the simulacre which Plato had blamed in his 'republics' newly appeared passing through the post-modern application of Baudrillard. But the simulacre is not negative any more here, even though it was the side effect of the mimesis(the (...) poetic process, so long as it is not oblivious that simulacre is just the fake reality as Plato and Baudrillard said, it was different from the real. The artwork could not be free from the destiny of the dream, for it is available after awakening out of it. In the post-modernism the distinction between the dream and the real disappeared, which could be linked to understanding the fetishism of the technological reproduction widely spreading among the highly industrialized people. The semiology of Saussure could be borrowed to make people isolated of it awakened to the revolutionary subject. That is to say, if the simulacre is like the dreaming, to draw the social revolutionary possibility of it, they need to overcome these fetishism, that is, the learning that this dream is not the reality, and after that they can leap as another subject perceiving the power of that dream. According Freud, the dream is based on the unconscious process of the empty signs. And the teaching of 'the signs of the equivalent differences' in Saussure makes us free from the essentialism of the word(a sort of the fetishism), know that we are so much as the sign or the citizen empty in it, and so get to know that we need another signs, or neighbors even though, and for they are empty, too. The revolutionary subject is not based on the great individual subject but the empty(lost) 'us' that so need to associate each other. And the post-modern art, popular mass art can help us being social subjects. That is what Benjamin had dreamed in post-aura art through 'the artworks in the age of the technological reproduction'. (shrink)

14 lectures and talks, Ilkley, Yorkshire, August 5-17, 1923 (CW 307) In this fine introduction to Waldorf education, written out of a series of lectures given in 1924, Steiner provides one of the most comprehensive introductions to his pedagogical philosophy, psychology, and practice. Steiner begins by describing the union of science, art, religion and morality, which was the aim of all his work and underlies his concept of education. Against this background, many of the lectures describe a new developmental psychology. (...) On this basis, having established how children's consciousness develops, Steiner discusses how different subjects should be presented so that individuals can grow and flourish inwardly. Only if the child absorbs the right subject in the right way at the right time can the inner freedom so necessary for life in the modern world become second nature. Contents: Introduction by Christopher Bamford Science, Art, Religion, Morality The Principles of Greek Education Greek Education and the Middle Ages Spirit's Relationship to the Body Freeing Volition in the Human Organism Walking, Speaking, Thinking Rhythm, Sleep, Imitation Reading, Writing, Nature Study Arithmetic, Geometry, History Physics, Chemistry, Handwork, Language, Religion Memory, Temperaments, Physical Education, Art Education toward Inner Freedom The Three Eras of Human Religious Education Closing Address Index "Readers of Steiner's lectures printed here will be 'quietly astonished' and 'genuinely enthusiastic.' After an introduction, in which he speaks of reuniting science (intellectual knowledge), art, and morality once again, he turns to the principles of Greek education, in which body, soul, and spirit were still a unity. He then traces the development through the Middle Ages, during which new, evolving elements were added. In our time, he says, we must understand the concrete connection of the spirit with the human being, so that thinking, feeling, and willing can once more become alive. He relates this to the child's developmental stages, as well as the human basics such a sleeping and waking. Then he turns to the specifics of the curriculum: reading, writing, nature study, arithmetic, geometry, history physics, chemistry, crafts, language, and religion. Finally, he turns to memory, the temperaments, physical culture, art, and the actual organization of a Waldorf school--to which this volume is, all in all, one of the best introductions." --Christopher Bamford, from his introduction German source: Gegenw rtiges Geistesleben und Erziehung (GA 307). Previous English edition: Education and Modern Spiritual Life. (shrink)

The first sustained phenomenological approach to modern art, taking a new approach and drawing upon an unsual selection of thinkers.

How should a post-formalist history of modern visual art be written? One unfamiliar but useful way to do that, Butterfield-Rosen argues, is by reference to evol.

Joseph Masheck wants to take art, historical and modern, as a field of lively interrelations, rather than just second the motion that art history should be nonlinear; and he takes the task of art criticism to be theory in practice. Thus significant new art is represented in the thirty essays in _Modernities_, besides already "classic" modern architecture, sculpture, and photography, and contemporary painting by artists. Alternating between a comprehensive sense of art history and engagement with the new and (...) unplumbed contemporary arts, he considers himself a kind of aesthetic double agent. Because Masheck is concerned with the concrete standing of artworks, he speculates on how works of art, including Marcel Duchamp's "ready-mades," relate to other things. More general themes range from the origin of the modern sense of form in prehistoric art to the historical underpinnings of expressionism and on to latter-day "graffiti" culture. (shrink)

In The Shock of Recognition, Lewis Pyenson uses a method called Historical Complementarity to identify the motif of non-figurative abstraction in modern art and science. He identifies the motif in Picasso's and Einstein's educational environments. He shows how this motif in domestic furnishing and in urban lighting set the stage for Picasso's and Einstein's professional success before 1914. He applies his method to intellectual life in Argentina, using it to address that nation's focus on an inventory of the natural (...) world until the 1940s, its adoption of non-figurative art and nuclear physics in the middle of the twentieth century, and attention to landscape painting and the wonder of nature at the end of the century. (shrink)

Close to the beginning of Death in Venice, Thomas Mann sets up a relationship between aesthetic production and social context that bears strongly on the parameters of twentieth-century cultural life. After introducing his central figure, the fictive writer Aschenbach, Mann goes on to offer some exposition which, as always with Mann, is much more than exposition, since it draws attention to one of the central philosophical questions of the text: “It was a spring afternoon in that year of grace 19--, (...) when Europe sat upon the anxious seat beneath a menace that hung over its head for months. Aschenbach had sought the open soon after tea. (shrink)

Debates over the 'end of art' have tended to obscure Hegel's work on the arts themselves. Benjamin Rutter opens this study with a defence of art's indispensability to Hegel's conception of modernity; he then seeks to reorient discussion toward the distinctive values of painting, poetry, and the novel. Working carefully through Hegel's four lecture series on aesthetics, he identifies the expressive possibilities particular to each medium. Thus, Dutch genre scenes animate the everyday with an appearance of vitality; metaphor frees language (...) from prose; and Goethe's lyrics revive the banal routines of love with imagination and wit. Rutter's important study reconstructs Hegel's view not only of modern art but of modern life and will appeal to philosophers, literary theorists, and art historians alike. (shrink)

Prehistory is an invention of the later nineteenth century. It was in this moment of technological progress and the acceleration of production and circulation, that three major Western narratives about time took shape. One after another, these new fields of inquiry delved into the obscure immensity of the past: first, to reckon the age of the Earth; second, to find a point of emergence of human beings; and third, to ponder the age of art. Maria Stavrinaki's Transfixed by Prehistory considers (...) the inseparability of these accounts of temporality from the disruptive forces of modernity. She asks what a history of modernity and its art would look like if it was considered through these three, at once consecutive and interwoven, inventions of the longue durée? This book attempts to articulate such a history, which turns out to be more complex than that of an inevitable march of progress leading up to the "Anthropocene." Rather, it's a history of stupor, defamiliarization, regressive acceleration and incessant invention, since the "new" was also found in the deep sediments of the Earth. Composed as much of speed as of slowness, as much of change as of deep time, as much of confidence as of skepticism and doubt, modernity is a complex phenomenon that needs to be thought again. This book focuses on this intrinsic tension through major artistic practices (Cézanne, Matisse, De Chirico, Ernst, Picasso, Dubuffet, Smithson, Morris, and contemporary artists such as Pierre Huyghe and Thomas Hirschhorn), philosophical discourses (Bataille, Blumenberg, and Jünger) and the human sciences. This groundbreaking book will attract readers interested in the intersections of art history, anthropology, psychoanalysis, mythology, geology, and archaeology. (shrink)

Puritanism in modern art has resulted in a quest for meaning and reality at the expense of the spirit of creativity and spontaneity.

In The Psychologizing of Modernity, Mark Jarzombek examines the impact of psychology on twentieth-century aesthetics. Analysing the interface between psychology, art history and avant-gardist practices, he also reflects on the longevity of the myth of aesthetic individuality as it infiltrated not only avant-garde art, but also history writing. The principal focus of this study is pre-World War II Germany, where theories of empathy and Entartung emerged; and post-war America, where artists, critics and historians gradually shifted from their reliance on psychology (...) to philosophy, and, most recently, to theory. Included are discussions of writers such as Heinrich Wölfflin, Ludwig Volkmann, John Dewey, Vincent Scully and Richard Arnheim, among others. The Psychologizing of Modernity is a broad and erudite study of the evolution of modern aesthetic thinking in the fields of art and architectural history. (shrink)

Chapter One Introduction Serial Iteration in Modern Art This book is an analysis of the theoretical and historical relations between modern painting and seriality. While many modern artists have created and presented their works in the ...

The use of the term posthistory in Arnold Gehlen’s writings can be traced back to as early as the Fifties. It occurs also in his work Zeit-Bilder. Zur Soziologie und Ästhetik der modernen Malerei, where his theory of the art-historical development of pictorial rationality and his notion of ‘peinture conceptuelle’ are formulated as key tendencies of modern painting. Focusing on both Gehlen’s notion of modern art’s aesthetics and on his ‘theorem’ of posthistory, my attempt in this paper is (...) to highlight the contribution of the so-called “conservative thinker” with regard to contemporary debates in art and art history. (shrink)

Arnold Gehlen's use of the term posthistory can be traced back to his writings from the 50s. It occurs also in Zeit-Bilder. Zur Soziologie und Ästhetik der modernen Malerei, where his theory of pictorial racionality in art history is formulated and "peinture conceptuelle" as the key tendency of modern painting is appointed. Focusing on both, Gehlen's aesthetics of modern art and his theorem of posthistory, we try to remind of the conservative thinker's contribution to today's debates of art (...) and art history. (shrink)

Arnold Gehlen's use of the term posthistory can be traced back to his writings from the 50s. It occurs also in Zeit-Bilder. Zur Soziologie und Ästhetik der modernen Malerei, where his theory of pictorial racionality in art history is formulated and "peinture conceptuelle" as the key tendency of modern painting is appointed. Focusing on both, Gehlen's aesthetics of modern art and his theorem of posthistory, we try to remind of the conservative thinker's contribution to today's debates of art (...) and art history. (shrink)

Arnold Gehlen's use of the term posthistory can be traced back to his writings from the 50s. It occurs also in Zeit-Bilder. Zur Soziologie und Ästhetik der modernen Malerei, where his theory of pictorial racionality in art history is formulated and "peinture conceptuelle" as the key tendency of modern painting is appointed. Focusing on both, Gehlen's aesthetics of modern art and his theorem of posthistory, we try to remind of the conservative thinker's contribution to today's debates of art (...) and art history. (shrink)

The aesthetic is present everywhere—in the street, in department stores, movie houses, mountainsides, as in the art gallery, the cathedral, the sacred grove. By universalizing the concept of the aesthetic, modern art has destroyed the barrier that once marked off Beauty and the Sublime as separate realms of being. In the eyes of modern art and modernist aesthetics, anything can legitimately appeal to taste. President Eisenhower, complaining about modern art, said that he had been brought up to (...) believe that art was intended to carry one away from the dangers and unpleasantness of everyday life but that the new paintings reminded him of traffic accidents. A recent statement by Francis Bacon, the celebrated British painter, also mentions traffic accidents. Bacon agrees with Ike that this type of event is not excluded by modern art. But Bacon finds traffic accidents to be a source of beauty. "If you see somebody lying on the pavement with the blood streaming from him," he explains in the catalogue of his exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in spring 1975, "that is in itself—the color of the blood against the pavement—very invigorating . . . exhilarating. . . . In all the motor accidents I've seen, people strewn across the road, the first thing you think of is the strange beauty." Harold Rosenberg is a professor, poet and art critic for the New Yorker. Among his influential works are The Tradition of the New, The Anxious Object, Artworks and Packages, Act and Actor, The De-Definition of Art, Discovering the Present, and Art on the Edge. (shrink)

Inspired by Farshad Zahedi’s audiovisual essay The Petrified Object and the Poetics of Time in Cinema, this article briefly presents three philosophical approaches to cinema’s ways of expressing time – as articulated by Bergson, Tarkovsky, and Deleuze – and questions how absolute time and chronological time are brought to a state of crisis by this modern form of art.

The concept of `the feminine' has generally been employed to denigrate the work of women artists. A central project of feminist art historians, therefore, has been to challenge the use of the term. This article argues instead that the term can be mobilized in a more productive way, to investigate the very constitution of discourses of gender and, in particular, the discursive production of modernism as itself `masculine'. Reading for `inscriptions in the feminine', as well as for tensions and contradictions (...) in `the masculine', allows for a critical practice which is based on interrogation rather than correction, and which refuses the idea of modernism as monolithic. The article approaches these questions about modern art through a discussion of gender and modernity and, in particular, through an exploration of the prospects of such a critique available in some of the writings of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin. (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1953 edition.