New Books in Art

Alan John Ainsworth, "Sight Readings: Photographers and American Jazz, 1900-1960" (Intellect, 2022)

01 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Alan John Ainsworth's book Sight Readings: Photographers and American Jazz, 1900-1960 (Intellect, 2022) explores the work of a wide range of America...

Cole Roskam, "Designing Reform: Architecture in the People's Republic of China, 1970-1992" (Yale UP, 2021)

26 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

China’s urban landscapes are full of radically different architectural styles which memorialise different eras in the country’s political past, fr...

Katharine A. Burnett and Monica Carol Miller, "The Tacky South" (LSU Press, 2022)

19 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As a way to comment on a person’s style or taste, the word “tacky” has distinctly southern origins, with its roots tracing back to the so-called...

Monuments

15 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Erin L. Thompson talks about monuments, and their role in American public life. Public art intervenes in directly in politics, shaping social behavior...

Nicole Erin Morse, "Selfie Aesthetics: Seeing Trans Feminist Futures in Self-Representational Art" (Duke UP, 2022)

13 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Selfie Aesthetics: Seeing Trans Feminist Futures in Self-Representational Art (Duke University Press, 2022) Nicole Erin Morse examines how trans...

Matt Reingold, "Reenvisioning Israel Through Political Cartoons: Visual Discourses During the 2018-2021 Electoral Crisis" (Lexington, 2022)

11 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Reenvisioning Israel Through Political Cartoons: Visual Discourses During the 2018-2021 Electoral Crisis (Lexington Books, 2022) by Matt Reingold, p...

Andrew Witt, "Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture" (MIT Press, 2022)

08 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture (MIT Press, 2022), Andrew Witt examines the visual, methodological, and cultural intersections b...

Naman P. Ahuja, "Marg Magazine: Readings on the Temple"

07 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1946, shortly before Independence, Mulk Raj Anand founded Marg, a magazine that soon became a pioneering forum for research on Indian and ...

Ben Davis, "Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy" (Haymarket Books, 2022)

06 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It is a scary and disorienting time for art, as it is a scary and disorienting time in general. Aesthetic experience is both overshadowed by the spect...

Ashley Remer and Tiffany Isselhardt, "Exploring American Girlhood through 50 Historic Treasures" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021)

06 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Who are the girls that helped build America? Conventional history books shed little light on the influence and impact of girls’ contributions to soc...

Peter Hughes, "A History of Love and Hate in 21 Statues" (Aurum Press, 2021)

04 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The ongoing debate surrounding who gets to determine the subjects of public commemoration, particularly in the form of statues, has become more heated...

Biscuit Art

04 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ella Hawkins talks about the biscuits she makes, inspired by her research on Elizabethan dress, and on everything from William Morris wallpapers to TV...

Mary Wellesley, "Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and Their Makers" (Riverrun, 2021)

04 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Manuscripts teem with life. They are not only the stuff of history and literature, but they offer some of the only tangible evidence we have of entire...

Paul Dobryden, "The Hygienic Apparatus: Weimar Cinema and Environmental Disorder" (Northwestern UP, 2022)

01 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Hygienic Apparatus: Weimar Cinema and Environmental Disorder (Northwestern UP, 2022) traces how the environmental effects of industrialization re...

Jasmina Tumbas, "I Am Jugoslovenka!: Feminist Performance Politics During and After Yugoslav Socialism" (Manchester UP, 2022)

01 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

With I Am Jugoslovenka!: Feminist Performance Politics During and After Yugoslav Socialism (Manchester UP, 2022), Jasmina Tumbas examines forms of f...

Kuba Szreder, "The ABC of the Projectariat: Living and Working in a Precarious Art World" (Manchester UP, 2021)

01 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Labour has taken an about-turn. From Adam Smith’s proposal for specialisation which saw the factory line reorganised so that each worker needed to u...

Elena Tajima Creef, "Shadow Traces: Seeing Japanese/American and Ainu Women in Photographic Archives" (U Illinois Press, 2022)

17 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Images of Japanese and Japanese American women can teach us what it meant to be visible at specific moments in history. In Shadow Traces: Seeing Japa...

Lilianne Milgrom, "L' Origine: The Secret Life of the World's Most Erotic Masterpiece" (Girl Friday Books, 2021)

15 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Lilianne Milgrom about L' Origine: The Secret Life of the World's Most Erotic Masterpiece (Girl Friday Books, 2021). In 1866, mav...

Wanda M. Corn, "Georgia O'Keeffe: Living Modern" (Prestel Publishing, 2017)

14 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Wanda M. Corn's book Georgia O'Keeffe: Living Modern (Prestel Publishing, 2017) explores how Georgia O’Keeffe lived her life steeped in modernism,...

Sarah Teasley, "Designing Modern Japan" (Reaktion Books, 2022)

13 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Teasley's Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion, 2022) unpicks the history of Japanese design from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twe...

Sherri Irvin, "Immaterial: Rules in Contemporary Art" (Oxford UP, 2022)

10 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Art forms have rules, usually implicit, that govern the experiences that artists want their audiences to have: for example, a representational paintin...

Yi Gu, "Chinese Ways of Seeing and Open-Air Painting" (Harvard UP, 2021)

10 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Yi Gu's Chinese Ways of Seeing and Open-Air Painting (Harvard UP, 2020) examines the rise of open-air painting in 20th-century China, showing how th...

Hentyle Yapp, "Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic" (Duke UP, 2021)

09 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic (Duke UP, 2021), Hentyle Yapp analyzes contemporary Chinese art as it circulates on the glo...

Joshua Citarella, "Politigram and the Post-Left" (Blurb, 2021)

07 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The internet’s potential to perform political miracles has been a source of both hope and disappointment for many grassroots movements. We remember ...

Fleur Watson, "The New Curator: Exhibiting Architecture and Design" (Routledge, 2021)

07 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The New Curator: Exhibiting Architecture and Design (Routledge, 2021) examines the challenges inherent in exhibiting design ideas. Traditionally, ex...

Lisa Blackmore and Liliana Gómez, "Liquid Ecologies in Latin American and Caribbean Art" (Routledge, 2020)

07 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast, Lisa Blackmore, Senior Lecture in the School of Philosophy, History and Interdisciplinary Studies Center at the University of Essex,...

Andrew Shortland and Patrick Degryse, "When Art Isn’t Real: The World's Most Controversial Objects under Investigation" (Leuven UP, 2022)

03 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In When Art Isn’t Real: The World's Most Controversial Objects under Investigation (Leuven University Press, 2022), Dr. Andrew Shortland and Dr. P...

Shara Rambarran, "Virtual Music: Sound, Music, and Image in the Digital Era" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

03 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Virtuality has entered our lives making anything we desire possible. We are, as Gorillaz once sang, in an exciting age where 'the digital won't let [u...

Realism

02 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

William Ghosh talks to Saronik about Realism, and how it can both be subtly conservative and effectively radical, depending on its use. He takes us t...

On Nibiiro Art, the Dalai Lama, and Buddhism

31 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Rima Fujita was born in Tokyo and now resides in Southern California. She graduated from Parsons School of Design with her B.F.A. and has exhibited he...

Amanda Phillips, "Sea Change: Ottoman Textiles Between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean" (U California Press, 2021)

27 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Textiles were the second-most-traded commodity in world history, preceded only by grain. In the Ottoman Empire, in particular, the sale and exchange o...

Christopher J. Gilbert, "Caricature and National Character: The United States at War" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021)

26 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Christopher Gilbert, Assistant Professor of English at Assumption College, has a new book that examines the understanding of American national cha...

Farah Nayeri, "Takedown: Art and Power in the Digital Age" (Astra Publishing, 2022)

24 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For centuries, art censorship has been a top-down phenomenon—kings, popes, and one-party states decided what was considered obscene, blasphemous, or...

Autotheory

23 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode Kim speaks with Lauren Fournier about autotheory. Lauren has recently published a book on the subject, titled Autotheory as Feminist ...

Catherine McCormack, "Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies" (Norton, 2021)

23 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Art historian Catherine McCormack challenges how culture teaches us to see and value women, their bodies, and their lives. Venus, maiden, wife, mother...

Elizabeth Oyler and Katherine Saltzman-Li, "Cultural Imprints: War and Memory in the Samurai Age" (Cornell UP, 2022)

20 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Elizabeth Oyler and Katherine Saltzman-Li's book Cultural Imprints: War and Memory in the Samurai Age (Cornell UP, 2022) draws on literary works, a...

Mike Watson, "The Memeing of Mark Fisher: How the Frankfurt School Foresaw Capitalist Realism and What to Do about It" (Zero Books, 2021)

18 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Through his blog K-Punk, Mark Fisher become one of the cult figures of cultural theory after the economic crash of 2008. One of Fisher’s insights, ...

Paddy Docherty, "Blood and Bronze: The British Empire and the Sack of Benin" (Hurst, 2022)

17 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Benin Bronzes are among the British Museum’s most prized possessions. Celebrated for their great beauty, they embody the history, myth and artis...

Sandra Johnston, et al., "Actional Poetics-Ash She He: The Performance Actuations of Alastair MacLennan, 1971-2020" (Intellect, 2022)

16 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A retrospective monograph of Alastair MacLennan’s performance art practice, its influence on the Belfast art scene, and its relationships with wider...

Samuel J. Redman, "Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology" (Harvard UP, 2021)

11 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology (Harvard UP, 2021) is a searching account of nineteenth-century salvage anthropology, an effor...

Glenda E. Gilmore, "Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination: An Artist's Reckoning with the South" (UNC Press, 2022)

10 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination: An Artist's Reckoning with the South (UNC Press, 2022), Glenda Gilmore meticulously documents...

The Problem with Museums: A Conversation with Georgina Adam and Nizan Shaked

10 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the past few years, museums of contemporary art have come under a fair deal of scrutiny. Pressures from groups such as Decoloinise This Space or ...

Computational Creativity

06 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Saronik talks to Tuhin Chakrabarty about the creative processes of Artificial Intelligence, what we can expect from it, and how to keep the results...

Michael Mackenzie, "Otto Dix and the First World War: Grotesque Humor, Camaraderie and Remembrance" (Peter Lang, 2019)

03 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Otto Dix fought in the First World War for the better part of four years before becoming one of the most important artists of the Weimar era. Marked b...

The Future of Statues: A Conversation with Alex Von Tunzelmann

03 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What are the rights and wrongs of toppling statues? Sometimes everyone agrees it’s a good idea. After the second world war, for example, the defeat ...

Paul Geary, "Experimental Dining: Performance, Experience and Ideology in Contemporary Creative Restaurants" (Intellect Books, 2022)

02 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Paul Geary’s Experimental Dining: Performance, Experience and Ideology in Contemporary Creative Restaurants (Intellect, 2022) examines the wor...

What Remains: Textiles from Tuol Sleng

22 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What can textiles tell us about histories of genocide and the lived experiences of prisoners? In this episode, Dr. Magali-An Berthon discusses the tre...

Ayelet Zohar and Alison J. Miller, "The Visual Culture of Meiji Japan: Negotiating the Transition to Modernity" (Routledge, 2021)

21 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Visual Culture of Meiji Japan: Negotiating the Transition to Modernity (Routledge, 2021) examines the visual culture of Japan's transition to mod...

Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen, "Modern Art and the Remaking of Human Disposition" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

21 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

With this book, Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen brings a new formal and conceptual rubric to the study of turn-of-the-century modernism, transforming our un...

Delinda Collier, "Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa" (Duke UP, 2020)

20 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa (Duke University Press, 2020) Delinda Collier provides a sweeping new understanding of technologic...

Lisa Reilly, "The Invention of Norman Visual Culture: Art, Politics, and Dynastic Ambition" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

20 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Invention of Norman Visual Culture: Art, Politics, and Dynastic Ambition (Cambridge UP, 2020), Lisa Reilly establishes a new interpretive par...

Paul R. Deslandes, "The Culture of Male Beauty in Britain: From the First Photographs to David Beckham" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

19 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Spanning the decades from the rise of photography to the age of the selfie, The Culture of Male Beauty in Britain: From the First Photographs to Davi...

Charles Dellheim, "Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews Made the Art World Modern" (Brandeis UP, 2021)

19 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Since the late-1990s, the fate of Nazi stolen art has become a cause célèbre. In Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews Made the Art World Modern (Brand...

Hilton Judin, "Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital" (Routledge, 2021)

19 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hilton Judin's book Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital (Routledge, 2021) is the first comprehensive in...

Anadelia Romo, "Selling Black Brazil: Race, Nation, and Visual Culture in Salvador, Bahia" (U Texas Press, 2022)

13 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Selling Black Brazil: Race, Nation, and Visual Culture in Salvador, Bahia (University of Texas Press, 2022), Anadelia Romo argues that visual ima...

Autonomous Work of Art

12 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Kim talks with Pardis about Theodor Adorno’s concept of the autonomous work of art, as articulated in his Aesthetic Theory, and The Dialectic of ...

Josef Benson and Doug Singsen, "Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes: Whiteness and Its Borderlands in American Comics and Graphic Novels" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)

12 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

American comics from the start have reflected the white supremacist culture out of which they arose. Superheroes and comic books in general are produc...

David Maroto, "The Artist's Novel: A New Medium" (Mousse, 2020)

11 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For better or worse, artists write. But why would a visual artist write a novel? How should such a novel be experienced? How does the artist’s nove...

Manu Pillai, "False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma" (Juggernaut, 2021)

07 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It can be easy to think of the recent history of India—especially for those who aren’t from there—as a straight line, from the Mughal Empire, th...

Aura

04 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode Saronik asks Kim about the aura. The idea comes from Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reprod...

Lucy Donkin, "Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages" (Cornell UP, 2022)

01 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Lucy Donkin’s Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2022) illuminates how the floor surface shaped the ways in...

Abigail Susik, "Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work" (Manchester UP, 2021)

31 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

According to the definition offered by Tate on the occasion of the exhibition Surrealism Without Borders, Surrealism “aims to revolutionise human e...

Hannah Star Rogers, "Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies" (Routledge, 2021))

30 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

I spoke with Hannah Star Rogers, one of the editors of the Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies (Routledge, 2021). Art and sc...

Erin L. Thompson, "Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments" (Norton, 2022)

30 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the United States, the national debate over public monuments often frames the removal of statutes as a revision of history. But Dr. Thompson sugg...

Ilan Kelman, "Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries" (UCL Press, 2022)

29 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries (UCL Press, 2022) edited by Ilan Kelman Antarcticness joins disciplines, communication approaches, and...

Eiren L. Shea, "Mongol Court Dress, Identity Formation, and Global Exchange" (Routledge, 2020)

25 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Mongol period (1206-1368) marked a major turning point of exchange - culturally, politically, and artistically - across Eurasia. The wide-ranging ...

On Japanese Buddhist Art

25 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Vanhartingsveldt is a contributing columnist at Buddhistdoor Global. He works full-time at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art. He did his m...

Elayne Oliphant, "The Privilege of Being Banal: Art, Secularism, and Catholicism in Paris" (UChicago Press, 2021)

25 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

France, officially, is a secular nation. Yet Catholicism is undeniably a monumental presence, defining the temporal and spatial rhythms of Paris. At t...

Lily E. Hirsch, "Weird Al: Seriously" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020)

17 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Funny music is often dismissed as light and irrelevant, but Weird Al Yankovic’s fourteen successful studio albums prove there is more going on than...

On Bushi Sculpting, Filmmaking, and "Carving the Divine"

16 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Born and raised in Japan, Yujiro Seki discovered his passion for filmmaking when he was in high school. Yujiro earned a BA Degree in Film from the Uni...

Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon, "Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

14 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The humanities, considered by many as irrelevant for modern careers and hopelessly devoid of funding, seem to be in a perpetual state of crisis, at th...

Nadir Lahiji, "Architecture, Philosophy, and the Pedagogy of Cinema: From Benjamin to Badiou" (Routledge, 2021)

11 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Philosophers on the art of cinema mainly remain silent about architecture. Discussing cinema as ‘mass art’, they tend to forget that architecture,...

Dana Stevens, "Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century" (Simon and Schuster, 2022)

09 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate’...

Edward Tyerman, "Internationalist Aesthetics: China and Early Soviet Culture" (Columbia UP, 2021)

08 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

I am joined for my interview with Edward Tyerman by Ed Pulford, another host on our channel. Together, we discuss Edward’s new book, Internationali...

Sarah-Neel Smith, "Metrics of Modernity: Art and Development in Postwar Turkey" (U California Press, 2022)

08 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Metrics of Modernity: Art and Development in Postwar Turkey (University of California Press, 2022) is a vivid portrait of the art world of 1950s Tu...

Celia Stahr, "Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist" (St. Martin's Press, 2020)

07 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo adored adventure. In November, 1930, she was thrilled to realize her dream of traveling to the United States to live in San...

Julian Stallabrass, "Killing for Show: Photography, War, and the Media in Vietnam and Iraq" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020)

04 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the autumn of 2014, the Royal Air Force released blurry video of a missile blowing up a pick-up truck that may have had a weapon attached to its fl...

3.3 In the Editing Room with Ruth Ozeki and Rebecca Evans (EH)

03 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ruth Ozeki, whose most recent novel is The Book of Form and Emptiness, speaks with critic Rebecca Evans and guest host Emily Hyde. This is a conve...

Michael Merrill, "Louis Kahn: The Importance of Drawing" (Lars Muller Publishers, 2020)

03 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

“The importance of a drawing is immense, because it’s the architect’s language,” said the architect Louis Kahn to his masterclass in 1967. Whi...

Candace M. Keller, "Imaging Culture: Photography in Mali, West Africa" (Indiana UP, 2021)

28 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Imaging Culture: Photography in Mali, West Africa (Indiana University Press, 2021) is a sociohistorical study of the meaning, function, and aesthet...

Anneka Lenssen, "Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria" (U California Press, 2020)

28 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria (University of California Press, 2020), by Anneka Lenssen, focuses on modern art practice ...

Kerry Dean Carso, "Follies in America: A History of Garden and Park Architecture" (Cornell UP, 2021)

23 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Follies in America: A History of Garden and Park Architecture (Cornell UP, 2021) examines historicized garden buildings, known as "follies," from the...

Kristina Wilson, "Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Power in Design" (Princeton UP, 2021)

22 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the world of interior design, mid-century Modernism has left an indelible mark still seen and felt today in countless open-concept floor plans and ...

Keller Easterling, "Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World" (Verso, 2021)

17 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How do we formulate alternative approaches to the world’s unresponsive or intractable dilemmas, from climate change, to inequality, to concentration...

Michelle Millar Fisher and Amber Winick, "Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births" (MIT Press, 2021)

15 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births (MIT Press, 2021), Michelle Millar Fisher and Amber Winick along with more than fifty...

Peggy Wang, "The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

14 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking to Peggy Wang about her new book, The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art (Minnesota Universi...

Susan Jolliffe Napier, "Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art" (Yale UP, 2018)

08 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A thirtieth‑century toxic jungle, a bathhouse for tired gods, a red‑haired fish girl, and a furry woodland spirit—what do these have in common? ...

Jonathan Fenderson, "Building the Black Arts Movement: Hoyt Fuller and the Cultural Politics of the 1960s" (U Illinois Press, 2019)

07 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Building the Black Arts Movement: Hoyt Fuller and the Cultural Politics of the 1960s (U Illinois Press, 2019) explores the history of the Black Arts ...

Kimberly Cassibry, "Destinations in Mind: Portraying Places on the Roman Empire's Souvenirs" (Oxford UP, 2021)

04 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Destinations in Mind: Portraying Places on the Roman Empire's Souvenirs (Oxford UP, 2021), Kimberly Cassibry asks how objects depicting different...

Simon Critchley, "Bald: 35 Philosophical Short Cuts" (Yale UP, 2021)

03 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Bald: 35 Philosophical Short Cuts (Yale UP, 2021) brings together thirty-five essays, originally published in the Times, on a wide range of topics, ...

Midori Yamamura, "Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular" (MIT Press, 2015)

28 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Midori Yamamura’s Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular (MIT Press, 2015) is an in-depth examination of the famed artist’s early years in Japan a...

Grant Tavinor, "The Aesthetics of Virtual Reality" (Routledge, 2021)

28 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When philosophers have approached virtual reality, they have almost always done so through the lens of metaphysics, asking questions about the reality...

Jeffrey H. Jackson, "Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis" (Algonquin Books, 2020)

28 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Want to read a fantastic book about art, love, politics, and resistance during the Second World War? Jeffrey H. Jackson's Paper Bullets: Two Artists...

Bojana Videkanic, "Nonaligned Modernism: Socialist Postcolonial Aesthetics in Yugoslavia, 1945-1985" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2020)

27 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In less than half a century, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia successfully defeated Fascist occupation, fended off dominating pressures fr...

Samuel J. Spinner, "Jewish Primitivism" (Stanford UP, 2021)

26 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Around the beginning of the twentieth century, Jewish writers and artists across Europe began depicting fellow Jews as savages or "primitive" tribesme...

Eleanor Janega and Neil Max Emmanuel, "The Middle Ages: A Graphic History" (Icon Books, 2020)

25 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A unique, illustrated book that aspires to bring medieval history closer to the general audience will change the way you see medieval history, The Mi...

Howard Philips Smith, "A Sojourn in Paradise: Jack Robinson in 1950s New Orleans" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)

24 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Jack Robinson made his name as a much-sought-after fashion and celebrity photographer during the 1960s and early 1970s, and his work is well documente...

Sarah Jane Cervenak, "Black Gathering: Art, Ecology, Ungiven Life" (Duke UP, 2021)

21 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Black Gathering: Art, Ecology, Ungiven Life (Duke UP, 2021), Dr. Sarah Jane Cervenak engages with Black artists and writers who create alternati...

Aleksandra Prica, "Decay and Afterlife: Form, Time, and the Textuality of Ruins, 1100 to 1900" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

21 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Western ruins have long been understood as objects riddled with temporal contradictions, whether they appear in baroque poetry and drama, Romanticism’...

Ginger Nolan, "Savage Mind to Savage Machine: Racial Science and Twentieth-Century Design" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

18 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Attempting to derive aesthetic systems from natural structures of human cognition, designers looked toward the “savage mind”—a way of thinking t...