Visual Arts

Drawing is experiencing an unparalleled surge in the art world. Drawing is now fully recognized as its own art form - in the biennials, art fairs, museum exhibitions, and beyond. Drawing has come of age. Contemporary artists are increasingly discovering that drawing is something unique and different from painting. It is an intense, sensitive, compelling, personal, and utterly direct art form, one with its own concepts, characteristics, and techniques.

Explores how 20th and 21st century artists used drawing to understand and comment on the world. Topics include the politics of eroticism in South American drawing, anti-capitalist drawing from Eastern Europe, drawing and conceptual art, feminist drawing, and exhibitions that have put drawing practices at the centre of contemporary art. It demonstrates ways contemporary issues and concerns are addressed through drawing, reveals how drawing is used to make powerful social and political statements, situates works by contemporary practitioners within the context of their historical moment, explores how contemporary art practices utilize drawing as both process and finished artifact, shows how concepts of observation, representation, and audience have changed dramatically in the digital era and establishes drawing as a mode of thought.

This book is intended to guide the reader through a story-telling based approach to gesture drawing, utilizing different techniques and exercises that encourage and develop creative problem solving as it relates to observational studies. This book clearly outlines a work flow and process with a simple exercise program that encourages the artist to ask questions and create work that engages not only their audience but themselves.

In hyperdrawing: beyond the lines of contemporary art, authors and artists come together to explore the potential of what drawing in contemporary art theory and practice might become. In this follow-up to 2007's drawing now: between the lines of contemporary art, Phil Sawdon and Russell Marshall, two of the current directors of TRACEY, curate contemporary drawing within fine art practice from 2006 through to 2010. Four essays and images from 33 international artists collectively explore the boundaries of the hyperdrawing space, investigating in essence what lies beyond drawing - images that use traditional materials or subjects whilst also pushing beyond the traditional, employing sound, light, time, space and technology. Over and above traditional views and practices, the authors and artists in this book recognise and embrace the opportunities inherent in the essential ambiguity of drawing. Practitioners of hyperreal works, 2D3D4D pieces and installations that push beyond photorealism all find their place within this new conception of hyperdrawing as techne, a productive space no longer limited by spatial boundaries.Artists including Catherine Bertola, Layla Curtis, Garrett Phelan, Suzanne Treister and Ulrich Vogl alongside the essays of Emma Cocker, Siun Hanrahan and Marsha Meskimmon provide a contemporary view in both visual and written form of how ambiguity can be used as a strategic approach in drawing research and practice.A gallery in book form, hyperdrawing takes drawing beyond the interaction of pencil and paper and traces contemporary adventures in multiple dimensions and alternate realities.

Drawings and paintings are made, and in their making embody unique meanings that transform our perception of space-time and sense of finitude. These meanings have not been addressed by art history or visual studies hitherto, and have only been considered indirectly by philosophers (mainly in the phenomenological tradition). If these intrinsic meanings are explained and further developed, then the philosophy of art practice is significantly enhanced. The present work, accordingly, is a phenomenology of how the gestural and digital creation of visual imagery generates self-transformation through aesthetic space.

This is a critique of works of art dating from the early fifteenth century through to modern installations. Suggesting a series of questions to ask when looking at a painting this will help develop a critical understanding of art.

Drawings and paintings are made, and in their making embody unique meanings that transform our perception of space-time and sense of finitude. These meanings have not been addressed by art history or visual studies hitherto, and have only been considered indirectly by philosophers (mainly in the phenomenological tradition). If these intrinsic meanings are explained and further developed, then the philosophy of art practice is significantly enhanced. The present work, accordingly, is a phenomenology of how the gestural and digital creation of visual imagery generates self-transformation through aesthetic space.

From the cave paintings of Lascaux to the Madonnas of the Renaissance Italians, to the caustic canvases of the Pop Art movement, manifestations. Punctuated by extended commentaries of the paintings and biographies of the most influential artists, this work, with its thousand reproductions, contains virtually all of the history of art within its pages. The traditional and the controversial, the mythic and the understated, the quietly subversive and the deliberately challenging-all are presented in this guide, offering a fascinating view of the evolution of painting.

Studies the influence of the plastic arts on the major writers of Latin American modernism.

Starting with the basics of camera control and moving on to shutter speeds, aperture, zoom and flash, Langford's Starting Photography gives you the only introduction to digital photography you'll ever need. Once you've mastered the basics, examples and projects allow you to explore the key methods for capturing a variety of subjects from portraits and pets to landscapes and sports photography, alongside straightforward advice on using editing software to get the best out of your digital shots, will have you producing unforgettable images in moments. More inspiring than a textbook, more interesting than a reference, and more in-depth than a photography class, Langford's Starting Photography is the only guide you need to start taking great images.

Adobe Photoshop CC for Photographers by acclaimed digital imaging professional Martin Evening has been revamped to include detailed instruction for all of the updates to Photoshop CC on Adobe's Creative Cloud, including significant new features, such as the painting tool and Pen path tool refinements and Range Masking in Camera Raw. This guide covers all the tools and techniques photographers and professional image editors need to know when using Photoshop, from workflow guidance to core skills to advanced techniques for professional results. Using clear, succinct instruction and real world examples, this guide is the essential reference for Photoshop users. The accompanying website has been updated with new sample images, tutorial videos, and bonus chapters.

Photography- The Key Concepts is core reading for all courses that consider the place of photography in society, within photographic practice, visual culture, art, media and cultural studies. Outlining an overview of photographic genres, David Bate explores how these varied practices can be coded and interpreted using key theoretical models. Building upon the genres included in the first edition - documentary, portraiture, landscape, still life, art and global photography - this second edition includes two new chapters on snapshots and the act of looking.

This innovative text recounts the history of photography through a series of thematically structured chapters. Designed and written for students studying photography and its history, the book offers students an accessible route to gain an understanding of the key genres, theories and debates that are fundamental to the study of this rich and complex medium. Individual chapters cover major topics, including: Description and Abstraction, Truth and Fiction, The Body, Landscape, War, Politics of Representation, Form, Appropriation, Museums, The Archive, The Cinematic, Fashion Photography

Sculpture has been a central aspect of almost every art culture, contemporary or historical. This volume comprises thirteen essays at the cutting edge of thinking about sculpture in philosophical terms, representing approaches to sculpture from the perspectives of both Anglo-American and European philosophy. All of the essays pay strict attention to actual sculptural examples in their discussions. There is an array of philosophical problems unique to sculpture, namely certain aspects of its three-dimensionality, physicality, temporality, and morality.

In recent years the intersections between art history and archaeology have become the focus of critical analysis by both disciplines. Contemporary sculpture has played a key role in this dialogue. The essays in this volume, by art historians, archaeologists and artists, take the intersection between sculpture and archaeology as the prelude for analysis, examining the metaphorical and conceptual role of archaeology as subject matter for sculptors, and the significance of sculpture as a three-dimensional medium for exploring historical attitudes to archaeology.

In this book, Dan Adler addresses recent tendencies in contemporary art toward assemblage sculpture and how these works incorporate tainted materials - often things left on the side of the road, according to the logic and progress of the capitalist machine - and combine them in ways that allow each element to retain a degree of empirical specificity. Adler develops a range of aesthetic models through which these practices can be understood to function critically. Each chapter focuses on a single exhibition.

From its prehistoric origins to the conceptual modernity of the 20th century, sculpture has literally and figuratively moulded the art world. Offering an integral vision of the evolution of forms across civilisations and epochs, 30 Centuries of Sculpture presents the masterpieces of sculpture that, with their intriguing silhouettes, have shaped the current notion of beauty. Sculptures can reflect an era, an artist, or his public; this gallery in high relief presents, with its numerous references, detailed commentaries on works, and biographies of artists, an open door to history and art, and an ideal guide for both students and neophytes.

This book describes an unexplored tendency in the development of the relationship between sculpture and the natural elements, referred to here as Elemental Sculpture. The studies included in this book reveal the context of locations where this kind of sculpture may be found - park, urban landscape, nature - and discuss the impact of these places on the development of sculpture.
This book examines the tendency towards Elemental Sculpture as part of a new level of relationship between man and nature in arts and in general. It presents in-depth research of contemporary sculpture, the roots of Elemental Sculpture and its development in the works of such well-known sculptors as Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, George Rickey, and Susumu Shingu, among others.