New Books in Art

Caveh Zahedi, "Digging My Own Grave: The Films of Caveh Zahedi" (Factory 25, 2015)

06 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Digging My Own Grave: The Films of Caveh Zahedi (Factory 25, 2015) is the most comprehensive collection of filmmaker Caveh Zahedi possible with 36 fi...

Stephen Ramsay, "On the Digital Humanities: Essays and Provocations" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

06 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephen Ramsey's On the Digital Humanities: Essays and Provocations (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) is a witty and incisive exploration of th...

Gennifer Weisenfeld, "Gas Mask Nation: Visualizing Civil Air Defense in Wartime Japan" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

05 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Airplanes, gas masks, and bombs were common images in wartime Japan. Yet amid these emblems of anxiety, tasty caramels were offered to children with p...

John Szwed, "Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith" (FSG, 2023)

03 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Who was Harry Smith? Was he an anthropologist, a filmmaker, a painter? Was he a charlatan? A genius? Was he a moocher, a schmuck, a bum? As John Szwed...

Elise Herrala, "Art of Transition: The Field of Art in Post-Soviet Russia" (Routledge, 2021)

03 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Art of Transition: The Field of Art in Post-Soviet Russia (Routledge, 2022) investigates contemporary art in Russia since the end of the Soviet Unio...

Heike Bauer et al., "Jewish Women in Comics: Bodies and Borders" (Syracuse UP, 2022)

02 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Jewish Women in Comics: Bodies and Borders (Syracuse UP, 2022), contributors draw upon a rich treasure trove of Jewish women’s comics to explor...

Hamid Keshmirshekan, "The Art of Iran in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Tracing the Modern and the Contemporary" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

30 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hamid Keshmirshekan's book The Art of Iran in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Tracing the Modern and the Contemporary (Edinburgh UP, 2023)...

Vanessa I. Corredera, "Reanimating Shakespeare's Othello in Post-Racial America" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

27 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Vanessa I. Corredera’s book Reanimating Shakespeare's Othello in Post-Racial America (Edinburgh Univeristy Press, 2022) looks at how that seventee...

Travis Holloway, "How to Live at the End of the World: Theory, Art, and Politics for the Anthropocene" (Stanford UP, 2022)

23 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

the near universal disappearance of shared social enterprise: the ruling class builds walls and lunar shuttles, while the rest of us contend with the ...

Adam Jasienski, "Praying to Portraits: Audience, Identity, and the Inquisition in the Early Modern Hispanic World" (Penn State UP, 2023)

21 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Praying to Portraits: Audience, Identity, and Inquisition in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Penn State University Press, 2023), art historian Adam...

Ramzi Fawaz, "The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics" (NYU Press, 2016)

17 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest is Ramzi Fawaz, the Romnes Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Published by NYU Press in 2016, The New Mutan...

Daniel Foliard, "The Violence of Colonial Photography" (Manchester UP, 2022)

08 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The late nineteenth century witnessed a rapid increase in colonial conflicts throughout the French and British empires. It was also the period in whic...

What Was Contemporary Art?

04 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Contemporary art in the early twenty-first century is often discussed as if the very idea of art that is contemporary is new. Yet all works of art wer...

Why Photography Matters

03 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Photography matters, writes Jerry Thompson, because of how it works--not only as an artistic medium but also as a way of knowing. With this provocativ...

Marnie Feneley, "Reconstructing God: Style, Hydraulics, Political Power and Angkor's West Mebon Visnu" (National U of Singapore Press, 2022)

02 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In December 1936, a villager was led by a dream to the ruins of the West Mebon shrine in Angkor where he uncovered remains of a bronze sculpture. This...

Taylor McCall, "The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

01 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Taylor McCall's The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe (Reaktion, 2023) is the first history of medieval European anatomical images. Richly illustr...

Ben Highmore, "In Good Taste: How Britain's Middle Classes Found Their Style" (Manchester UP, 2023)

31 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How did the rise of consumerism impact Britain? In In Good Taste: How Britain's Middle Classes Found Their Style (Manchester UP, 2023), Ben Highmor...

Tom Young, "Unmaking the East India Company: British Art and Political Reform in Colonial India, c. 1813-1858" (Paul Mellon Centre, 2023)

29 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Unmaking the East India Company: British Art and Political Reform in Colonial India, c. 1813-1858 (Paul Mellon Centre, 2023) by Dr. Tom Young illumin...

Nina Lager Vestberg, "Picture Research: The Work of Intermediation from Pre-Photography to Post-Digitization" (MIT Press, 2023)

26 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Picture Research: The Work of Intermediation from Pre-Photography to Post-Digitization (MIT Press, 2023) focuses on how pictures were saved, stored, ...

Brigitte Buettner, "The Mineral and the Visual: Precious Stones in Medieval Secular Culture" (Penn State UP, 2022)

23 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Opulent jewelled objects ranked among the most highly valued works of art in the European Middle Ages. At the same time, precious stones prompted soph...

Robert Hillenbrand, "The Great Mongol Shahnameh" (Hali Publications et al., 2022)

20 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It’s amazing that art historians like Robert Hillenbrand got to study the “Great Mongol Shahnama” at all. 500 pages of Firahdosi’s epic poem, ...

Brahma Prakash, "Body on the Barricades: Life, Art and Resistance in Contemporary India" (LeftWord, 2023)

19 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Brahma Prakash's book Body on the Barricades: Life, Art and Resistance in Contemporary India (LeftWord, 2023) is an interesting gaze into life, art,...

Eliot Borenstein, "Marvel Comics in The 1970s: The World Inside Your Head" (Cornell UP, 2023)

11 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

I am excited to welcome Eliot Borenstein to the podcast today to discuss his new monograph, Marvel Comics in the 1970s: The World Inside Your Head, p...

Katherine Giuffre, "Outrage: The Arts and the Creation of Modernity" (Stanford UP, 2023)

10 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A cultural revolution in England, France, and the United States beginning during the time of the industrial and political revolutions helped usher in ...

Stephen Davies, "Adornment: What Self-Decoration Tells Us About Who We Are" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

10 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Elaborating the history, variety, pervasiveness, and function of the adornments and ornaments with which we beautify ourselves, Stephen Davies's Ado...

Robert Mills, "Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages" (U Chicago Press, 2015)

09 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages (University of Chicago, 2015) explores the relation between sodomy and motifs of vision and visibility in medieval ...

Rose Marie San Juan, "Violence and the Genesis of the Anatomical Image" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2023)

03 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nothing excited early modern anatomists more than touching a beating heart. In his 1543 treatise, Andreas Vesalius boasts that he was able to feel lif...

Adrian Rifkin, "Future Imperfect: The Past Between My Fingers..." (2021)

02 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Then let the story really begin in 1968, though it has little to do with May. By chance it opens in January of that year, and it really concerns me ra...

Bleak Houses: Disappointment and Failure in Architecture

01 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The usual history of architecture is a grand narrative of soaring monuments and heroic makers. But it is also a false narrative in many ways, rarely a...

Deirdre Bair on Artist Saul Steinberg

01 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we hear a 2011 talk by Deirdre Bair about the artist Saul Steinberg. Bair received the 1978 National Boo...

Surf Craft: Design and the Culture of Board Riding

01 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Surfboards were once made of wood and shaped by hand, objects of both cultural and recreational significance. Today most surfboards are mass-produced ...

Marie Arleth Skov, "Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation" (Intellect, 2023)

30 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In her book, Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation (Intellect Books, 2023), Marie Arleth Skov examines the punk movement...

Yael Rice, "The Brush of Insight: Artists and Agency at the Mughal Court" (U Washington Press, 2023)

30 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Mughal court painters evolved from illustrators of manuscripts and albums to active ...

TaTa Dada: The Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara

29 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tristan Tzara, one of the most important figures in the twentieth century's most famous avant-garde movements, was born Samuel Rosenstock (or Samueli ...

Rebecca Whiteley, "Birth Figures: Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

26 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rebecca Whiteley's book Birth Figures: Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body (University of Chicago Press, 2023) is first full study of “bir...

The Eternal Letter: Two Millennia of the Classical Roman Capital

20 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The fiftieth anniversary of Helvetica, the most famous of all sans serif typefaces, was celebrated with an excitement unusual in the staid world of ty...

Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art

19 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Games and art have intersected at least since the early twentieth century, as can be seen in the Surrealists' use of Exquisite Corpse and other games,...

Brett Brehm, "Kaleidophonic Modernity: Transatlantic Sound, Technology, and Literature" (Fordham UP, 2023)

16 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What stories remain hidden behind one of the most significant inventions of the nineteenth century? Kaleidophonic Modernity: Transatlantic Sound, Tec...

Deborah Stevenson, "Cultural Policy Beyond the Economy: Value, Work and the Social" (Edward Elgar, 2023)

16 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is the future for cultural policy? In Cultural Policy Beyond the Economy: Work, Value, and the Social (Edward Elgar, 2023),  Deborah Stevenso...

Michael B. Gill, "A Philosophy of Beauty: Shaftesbury on Nature, Virtue, and Art" (Princeton UP, 2022)

14 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) was a troubled soul – negative, misanthropic, and deeply troubled by his negativity and misanthropy. In A...

Samuel J. Redman, "The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience" (NYU Press, 2022)

13 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On an afternoon in January 1865, a roaring fire swept through the Smithsonian Institution. Dazed soldiers and worried citizens could only watch as the...

Arturo Rodríguez Morató and Alvaro Santana-Acuña, "Sociology of the Arts in Action: New Perspectives on Creation, Production, and Reception" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)

11 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What are the latest developments in the sociology of the arts? In Sociology of the Arts in Action: New Perspectives on Creation, Production, and Rece...

Kelcey Ervick and Tom Hart, "The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Graphic Literature" (Rose Metal Press, 2023)

10 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I interview Kelcey Ervick and Tom Hart about their new collaboration, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Graphic Literature (Rose Metal Press...

Monika Raesch, "Abbas Kiarostami: Interviews" (UP of Mississippi, 2023)

04 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The cinephile community knows Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) as one of the most important filmmakers of the previous decades. This volume illustrates ...

Art Auctions and Data Science

04 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What does data science tell us about art auctions?  This episode is syndicated from the new Harvard Data Science Review Podcast. Published by the MIT...

Lance Esplund, "The Art of Looking: How to Read Modern and Contemporary Art" (Basic, 2018)

04 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is art, and who gets to define it? Museums have long staked a claim on knowing what to show, but there has always been a wide range of how viewer...

Celia Fisher, "The Story of Follies: Architectures of Eccentricity" (Reaktion Books, 2022)

04 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Story of Follies: Architectures of Eccentricity (Reaktion, 2023), Celia Fisher presents an amusing, informative guide to a fanciful and charm...

Gender and Equality in Art and Exploration

03 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Featured episode from Between Art and Science, a new podcast from Leonardo. This episode, hosted by Erica Hruby, features a conversation between two a...

A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia

29 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Writer and academic Anthony Gardner (NSK from Kapital to Capital, Politically Unbecoming) interviews Marko Ilić about his new book A Slow Burning F...

Lisa McCormick, "The Cultural Sociology of Art and Music: New Directions and New Discoveries" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

28 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can sociology help us understand art and music? In The Cultural Sociology of Art and Music: New Directions and New Discoveries (Palgrave MacMill...

Publishing in Art, Architecture and Visual Culture

26 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This episode features discussions with Thomas Weaver (Senior Acquisitions Editor for Art and Architecture) and Victoria Hindley (Acquisitions Editor i...

Nicholas Scott Baker, "In Fortune's Theater: Financial Risk and the Future in Renaissance Italy" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

26 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, I was joined by Nicholas Scott Baker to discuss his book, In Fortune’s Theater: Financial Risk and the Future in Renaissance Italy...

The Place Is Here: The Work of Black Artists in 1980s Britain

24 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Aikens and Elizabeth Robles discuss The Place Is Here (Sternberg Press, 2019) and the range of perspectives on black art in Thatcherite Britain...

Jonathan Adeyemi, "Contemporary Art from Nigeria in the Global Markets: Trending in the Margins" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

21 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How does the art market work? In Contemporary Art from Nigeria in the Global Markets: Trending in the Margins (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Jonathan ...

Infrastructural Brutalism: Art and the Necropolitics of Infrastructure

20 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Truscello, author of Infrastructural Brutalism: Art and the Necropolitics of Infrastructure, discusses the ways in which infrastructure deter...

Full Version: Lauren Fournier and McKenzie Wark on Autotheory

19 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An extended conversation between Lauren Fournier, writer, independent curator, artist, and author of Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing...

Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of The Fern Loved Gully

19 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tai Shani (Turner Prize winning artist, educator and author of Our Fatal Magic) and Amy Hale (anthropologist, folklorist, and writer) discuss the...

Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism

18 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lauren Fournier, writer, independent curator, artist, and author of Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism discusses her for...

Pamela M. Lee, "Think Tank Aesthetics: Midcentury Modernism, the Cold War, and the Neoliberal Present" (MIT Press, 2020)

16 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In her groundbreaking and timely book Think Tank Aesthetics: Midcentury Modernism, the Cold War, and the Neoliberal Present (MIT Press, 2020), disti...

Sharon Hecker and Raffaele Bedarida, "Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

13 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On the centenary of the fascist party's ascent to power in Italy, Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today (Bloo...

Andrew R. Casper, "An Artful Relic: The Shroud of Turin in Baroque Italy" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021)

11 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1578, a fourteen-foot linen sheet bearing the faint bloodstained imprint of a human corpse was presented to tens of thousands of worshippers in Tur...

Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value

10 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

C. Riley Snorton and Hentyle Yapp read from Saturation, a book that offers an analysis of racial representation and controversy in the art world. Co...

Benjamin Balint, "Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History" (Norton, 2023)

10 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The twentieth-century artist Bruno Schulz was born an Austrian, lived as a Pole, and died a Jew. First a citizen of the Habsburg monarchy, he would, w...

Barbara Penner et al., "Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects" (Reaktion Books, 2021)

08 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

So-called extinct objects are those that were imagined but were never in use, or that existed but are now unused—superseded, unfashionable, or simpl...

5.3 “It’s on the Illabus”

04 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

John Jennings—Hugo Award winner, New York Times bestselling author, curator, scholar, and Artist—is keenly aware that in adapting novels for the...

John McCannon, "Nicholas Roerich: The Artist Who Would Be King" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023)

03 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. John McCannon's new biography of Russian artist, mystic, and all-around fascinating character Nicholas Roerich follows its subject from his artist...

Craig Leonard, "Uncommon Sense: Aesthetics after Marcuse" (MIT Press, 2022)

29 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Uncommon Sense: Aesthetics after Marcuse (MIT Press, 2022), Craig Leonard argues for the contemporary relevance of the aesthetic theory of Herber...

Computer Graphics

27 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan talks with us about computer graphics. Emerging from tools for sailing and warmaking, like...

Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics

26 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast we discuss visibility, haunting and fascism with art historian and theorist Elizabeth Otto. Otto's book Haunted Bauhaus explores the...

Ferenc Hörcher, "Art and Politics in Roger Scruton's Conservative Philosophy" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ferenc Hörcher's book Art and Politics in Roger Scruton's Conservative Philosophy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) covers the field of and points to the ...

Catherine Grant, "A Time of One's Own: Histories of Feminism in Contemporary Art" (Duke UP, 2022)

22 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In A Time of One's Own: Histories of Feminism in Contemporary Art (Duke UP, 2022) Catherine Grant examines how contemporary feminist artists are tur...

Jonathan Gray, "Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste" (NYU Press, 2021)

20 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, our host Sim Gill discusses the book Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste (2021) by Jonathan Gray. You’...

Barbara Sjoholm, "From Lapland to Sápmi: Collecting and Returning Sámi Craft and Culture" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

19 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Material objects—things made, used, and treasured—tell the story of a people and place. So it is for the Indigenous Sámi living in Norway, Sweden...

Christopher S. Celenza, "The Italian Renaissance and the Origin of the Humanities: An Intellectual History, 1400-1800" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

13 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Christopher Celenza is one of the foremost contemporary scholars of the Renaissance. His ambitious new book The Italian Renaissance and the Origin of...

Tina Post, "Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression" (NYU Press, 2023)

12 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Explores expressionlessness, inscrutability, and emotional withholding in Black cultural production.  Arguing that inexpression is a gesture that acq...

John Miller, "The Heart of the Forest: Why Woods Matter" (British LIbrary, 2022)

12 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Heart of the Forest: Why Woods Matter (British Library, 2022) looks at threats to forest life across the globe. Dr. John Miller draws on literatu...

Daniel Neofetou, "Rereading Abstract Expressionism, Clement Greenberg and the Cold War" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

09 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Daniel Neofetou's Rereading Abstract Expressionism, Clement Greenberg and the Cold War (Bloomsbury, 2021) rereads Clement Greenberg's account of Abs...

Bettina Judd, "Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought" (Northwestern UP, 2022)

08 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Feeling is not “feelin”. Feelin, in African American Vernacular English, is how Black women artists approach and produce knowledge as sensation: i...

Simon Strange, "Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity and the Development of Punk, Post Punk and New Wave Music" (Intellect, 2023)

08 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity From Punk to New Wave (Intellect Publishing, 2022), Simon Strange explores the relationship between art an...

Natilee Harren, "Fluxus Forms: Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

05 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Fluxus Forms: Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network (U Chicago Press, 2020), Natilee Harren captures the magnetic energy of Fluxus activiti...

Mauro Resmini, "Italian Political Cinema: Figure of the Long '68" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

04 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Traditionally, the definition of political cinema assumes a relationship between cinema and politics. In contrast to this view, author Mauro Resmini s...

Rhea Myers, "Proof of Work: Blockchain Provocations 2011-2021" (MIT Press, 2023)

03 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

NFT, BTC, DAO, ETH, WAGMI, HODL. It would have been hard to avoid these acronyms only a year ago. The hype around cryptocurrencies and blockchain art ...

Mike Jay, "Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind" (Yale UP, 2023)

02 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mike Jay's Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind (Yale UP, 2023) is a provocative and original history of the scientists and writers...

Colleen Lye and Christopher Nealon, "After Marx: Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

31 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Colleen Lye and Christopher Nealon's edited volume After Marx: Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge UP, 2022) demon...

Larisa Grollemond and Bryan C. Keene, "The Fantasy of the Middle Ages: An Epic Journey through Imaginary Medieval Worlds" (Getty, 2022)

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This abundantly illustrated book is an illuminating exploration of the impact of medieval imagery on three hundred years of visual culture. From the s...

Kristin Hass, "Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices" (Beacon Press, 2022)

26 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices (Beacon Press, 2022) provides a field g...

Claudia Brittenham, "Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica" (U Texas Press, 2023)

24 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica (U Texas Press, 2023), Claudia Brittenham unravels one of the most puzzling phenomen...

Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks

24 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Maximilian Schich, Isabel Meirelles, and Roger Malina discuss the contents and creation of the new article collection, Arts, Humanities, and Complex ...

Seeing Truth in the Climate Crisis

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Feeling bad about the environment? You should. Artist Alexis Rockman talks about his art, the potential for real change, and his ongoing relationship ...

David Houston Jones, "Visual Culture and the Forensic: Culture, Memory, Ethics" (Routledge, 2022)

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The relationship between images and truth has a complicated history. In the Western tradition, the Kantian settlement on aesthetic judgment as detache...

Megan Swift, "Picturing the Page: Illustrated Children’s Literature and Reading under Lenin and Stalin" (U Toronto Press, 2020)

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Based on sources from rare book libraries in Russia and around the world, Picturing the Page: Illustrated Children’s Literature and Reading under L...

John Miller, "The Philosophy of Tattoos" (British Library, 2021)

19 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Philosophy of Tattoos (British Library, 2021) by Dr. John Miller presents an impressively broad yet personal account, exploring tattooing as a un...

Arya Aryan, "The Postmodern Representation of Reality in Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton" (Cambridge Scholars, 2022)

19 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Arya Aryan's book The Postmodern Representation of Reality in Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton (Cambridge Scholars, 2022) explores the postmodernist repre...

Nicholas Brown, "Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2019)

19 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism (Duke University Press, 2019), Nicholas Brown offers a fresh perspective on aesthetic au...

The Sharing of Sound Art

18 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast, Claire MacDonald and Sarah Parry discuss the history of recording, the sharing of sound art between artists, how recording has shaped...

Rick de Villiers, "Eliot and Beckett's Low Modernism: Humility and Humiliation" (Edinburgh UP, 2021)

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Humility and humiliation have an awkward, often unacknowledged intimacy. Humility may be a queenly, cardinal or monkish virtue, while humiliation poin...

Annie Pfeifer, "To the Collector Belong the Spoils: Modernism and the Art of Appropriation" (Cornell UP, 2023)

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

To the Collector Belong the Spoils: Modernism and the Art of Appropriation (Cornell UP, 2023) rethinks collecting as an artistic, revolutionary, and ...

Jan Harrison's “Animal Tongues”

09 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Artist Jan Harrison's work explores the connections between human and animal psyches and takes the form of painting, pastel, sculpture, and performanc...

Elina Gertsman and Barbara H. Rosenwein, "The Middle Ages in 50 Objects" (Cambridge UP, 2018)

08 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The extraordinary array of images included in The Middle Ages in 50 Objects (Cambridge UP, 2018) reveals the full and rich history of the Middle Age...

Helen Solterer and Vincent Joos, "Migrants Shaping Europe, Past and Present: Multilingual Literatures, Arts, and Cultures" (Manchester UP, 2022)

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Helen Solterer and Vincent Joos edited volume Migrants Shaping Europe, Past and Present: Multilingual Literatures, Arts, and Cultures (Manchester UP...