New Books In Art

Susan M. Squier’s book, Epigenetic Landscapes: Drawings as Metaphor (Duke University Press, 2017)  is about development— biological and ecological. It explores how the media (paintings, films, graphics) that experts have created to understand development and to communicate without verbal language has shaped—and continues to affect—the worlds in which we live. Squier’s book takes its title from a set of images from the embryologist C.H. Waddington, all meant to demonstrate his theory of how life developed—as a dynamic process emerging within multiple scales of time and space. The first Epigenetic Landscape was, literally, a landscape painting—thick and confounding—that Waddington commissioned from the artist John Piper. Over the next twenty years, Waddington created two additional images that suggested a less contextual, more individually focused conception of development. In her creative and persuasive book, Susan Squier follows iterations of the Epigenetic Landscape to spotlight moments of contingency in t

Modeled on Bad Girls of Japan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Bad Girls of the Arab World (University of Texas Press, 2017), edited by Nadia Yaqub and the late Rula Quawas stands apart from the edited volume crowd. It includes, not only academic entries, but personal essays and reflections on art by their artists, all centered on the theme of transgression, or to put it in the language of Bad Girls of the Arab World itself, bad girls. And there is no one bad girl. Some bad girls of the Arab world use their linguistic and cultural heritage to empower them, some rail against them. Some ally themselves with the West, some don’t think about the West and the East as binaries, but rather, apply a complicated, nuanced worldview to their universes. However, all are allotted their agency. Bad Girls of the Arab World will be a resource for students of the Middle East and the general public on gender and the Arab world. Nadia Yaqub is an associate professor at the Department of Asian Studies at the University of North Caro

Sewing, knitting, quilting, the crafts related to fabric making, are usually not what we think about when we consider our digital communications devices. Yet, many of the activities that we find ourselves doing with our devices touching the screen, scrolling, swiping, etc. and some of the language that we use to describe our actions, draw from textile culture. In his book The Fabric of Interface: Mobile Media, Design, and Gender (MIT Press, 2017), Stephen Montiero, at Concordia University, explores the connection between the fabric arts and computing. In it he investigates the relationship between gender and the construction of media technologies. A particular focus of his is an examination of how, as in former years sewing was dismissed as women’s work, social aspects of digital technologies are gendered and dismissed as inconsequential. Montiero also details the eraser of the contributions of many women to the evolution of the technology that is now ubiquitous. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaph

In his latest book, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences published in 2017 by Princeton University Press, Craig Clunas puts to question the entire concept of “Chinese painting” by looking at how this category is in fact a creation of its viewers. The book, which expanded on the A. W. Mellon lecture series Clunas gave at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 2012, was selected as one of the best art books of 2017 by The New York Times. The engaging and lavishly illustrated book draws on some familiar material but more importantly on a wide range of previously unknown or understudied sources. Spanning roughly the time period from the Ming period (1368-1644) until the present day, the book reveals how the notion of Chinese painting only became possible in early modern times, when audiences started to have a wider range of material they could choose from. Ricarda Brosch is a curatorial assistant at the Asian Art Museum Berlin (Museum fur Asiatische Kunst Berlin Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz), whi

In Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism (Oregon State University Press, 2017), Natchee Blu Barnd examines how Indigenous populations create space and geographies through naming, signage, cultural practices, and artistic expression within the confines of settler colonialism in the United States. Native Space explores these acts as everyday cultural practices, and also examines how settler societies deploy the concept of Indian-ness to create colonial geographies. Barnd takes an interdisciplinary approach toward these subjects, and examines these concepts through the use of demographic and cartographic data, stories, and imagery, each of which underscores the different methods Native peoples use to unsettle settler society and reclaim Indigenous spaces. Samantha M. Williams is a PhD candidate in History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is currently writing her dissertation, which examines the history of the Stewart Indian School in Carson City, Nevada through th

Singular Spaces: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments (Raw Vision, 2013) is an audacious tome. A comprehensive survey of 45 art environments on the Spanish mainland, it weighs just over eight and a half pounds and contains over 1300 color photographs (with over 4000 more plus site plans on the accompanying CD). Its author, Jo Farb Hernandez, is the Director of SPACES, a non-profit focused on art environments around the world. She first became interested in place-based creative constructions when she was an undergraduate in Wisconsin. In her introduction to Singular Spaces, she recounts how this particular book began: she and her husband were in the process of renovating an old farmhouse they’d purchased in Catalonia. They took a short road-trip to explore the area around their new home and chanced upon “the enormous roadside construction of Josep Pujiula I Vila, at that time one of the largest and most idiosyncratic art environments found worldwide” (16). Shortly thereafter Farb

This is the fourth in a series of podcasts from Zoe Kontes’ terrific “Looted.” Archaeologist Dr. Spencer Pope shares his thoughts on looting in Sicily, particularly at the site of Palik, a 2,400 year old town not far from Catania on Sicily’s east coast, in the fertile plains of the islands active volcano, Mt Etna. The site has a mystical nature, considered sacred since antiquity due to the bubbling lakes near which it is situated. Looters use metal detectors at the site to find ancient coins, and in the process destroy important scientific evidence for understanding the mix of cultures that once interacted here. On Looted: The Podcast, we uncover the hidden stories of ancient artifacts and their journeys in the illicit antiquities trade. I’m Zoe Kontes, and I’m an archaeologist. When we archaeologists dig, we carefully record what we find so we can make the best sense of the evidence. But go to any museum, auction house, or dealer with an antiquities collection—Ebay even—and you’ll be sure to find objects

My students don’t remember Vietnam. That’s hard to believe, for someone born in 1968. But it’s true, nonetheless. High school history courses rarely make it past World War Two. The Cold War and the Berlin Wall are mysteries. And Vietnam, unless someone in their family fought there, is just a country. But most, if not all, of my students have heard of the Vietnam Memorial. They may not know what or who it commemorates. But they’ve seen it on class trips, or in textbooks. And they universally praise its power and simplicity. So, unless you’re my age, it’s hard to imagine the bitterness and divisions which greeted Maya Lin’s memorial. In his new book A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial (Arcade Publishing, 2017), James Reston, Jr. retells this story in a way that brings it alive again. Reston brings a journalist’s eye for character and narrative to the book. Several authors have told this tale, but Reston is by far the best at bringing the story to life. Less interested in

For most people the field of architecture is not what they think about when discussing artificial intelligence as we describe it today. Yet, architects are a part of the historic foundations of what we call the Internet and now AI. In her new book, Architectural Intelligence: How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape (MIT, 2017), Carnegie Mellon associate professor Molly Wright Steenson, considers four of these designers: Christopher Alexander, Richard Saul Wurman, Cedric Price, and Nicholas Negroponte, to examine how they included elements of interactivity in their projects. In so doing she illuminates how their work influences today’s technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the Arab world, photography is often tied to the modernizing efforts of imperial and colonial powers. However, indigenous photography was itself a major aspect of the cultural and social lives of Middle Eastern societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Stephen Sheehi’s The Arab Imago: A Social History of Indigenous Photography 1860-1910 (Princeton University Press, 2016) tells that story, focusing primarily on portraiture and those that took portraits. Sheehi examines the formalism of portraits in relation to changing notions of class, questioning whether or not portrait photography were creating new forms of sociability or vice versa. But photography is also another way Arab modernity was in relation to Ottomanism: The Arab Imago looks at how portrait studios developed in Istanbul and beyond, often operated by Armenian and Greek Orthodox photographers. The Arab Imago integrates photography, modernity, and the banal to give us one of the first histories of photography in the Middle Ea

James Delbourgo‘s new book Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane (Allen Lane, 2017) tells the fascinatingly complex and controversial story of Hans Sloane, the man whose collection and last will laid the foundation for the British Museum, the first national, free, public museum. For Delbourgo, Sloane was for far too long an overlooked figure, who knitted together the interests of a rising empire through methods of botany, natural history and medicine. Overshadowed in part by his counterpart Isaac Newton, Sloane’s life synchronizes with the changes from seventeenth-century England to eighteenth-century Britain. His life and the time are deeply interwoven with slavery and a new world of commerce. It was thanks to this interconnected world and the many intermediaries that Sloane managed to accumulate so many weird and wonderful objects from different places. He collected, catalogued, and exhibited them according to his own belief system, which centered around binaries of enlightenment vers

In The Phantom Unmasked: America’s First Superhero (University of Iowa Press, 2017), Kevin Patrick examines the history of The Phantom—an American comic strip superhero that made his debut in 1936. Although not popular in the United States, The Phantom knows a long history and popularity in Australia, Sweden, and India. In The Phantom Unmasked, Patrick explores this history. By tracing the publication history of The Phantom and connecting its success to the media licensing industries starting in the 1930s and 40s, Patrick presents an under-explored history to show the role of this comic in international markets and its importance for understanding how international markets worked. In The Phantom, Patrick assesses how historical, cultural, political, and economic conditions impacted The Phantom’s rise in popularity in Australia, Sweden, and India. In addition, he surveys Phans in order to explain how they have come to love the superhero. Well researched and informative, The Phantom Unmasked adds to the burgeo

Is making art a job? This question is central to The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers (Stanford University Press, 2017), the new book by Alison Gerber, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at Lund University. The book explores the working lives of artists by thinking through the idea of value in their work. At the heart of this exploration are four accounts of being an artist; four accounts of value; and four accounts of the occupation. These four accounts—pecuniary, credentialising, vocational, and relational—connect and conflict with each other to explain the place of both art and the artist in contemporary society. Using rich and detailed interview and ethnographic data, the book is essential reading for its contribution to contemporary sociology of culture and its insights into the art world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tom Mullaney’s new book The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press, 2017) provides a fascinating first look at the development of modern Chinese information technology. Spanning 150 years from the origins of telegraphy in the early 1800s to the advent of computing in the 1950s – the book explores the at times fraught relationship between Chinese writing and global modernity. It covers some of the earliest and varied attempts to make the Chinese script fit for Western communication systems, taking the reader on a journey through Chinese telegraphy, Morse code, typewriters and early computing. In addition, Mullaney includes reference to the many failed attempts, ideas and approaches in the history of Chinese information technology through a series of lively and insightful stories and people. Perhaps most interestingly, Mullaney covers how various inbuilt linguistic inequalities in turn eventually led to the evolution of innovative strategies and technologies, including input method and predictive text. Ric

This is the third in a series of podcasts from Zoe Kontes’ terrific “Looted.” There’s nothing like a full-bodied ancient Greek bronze nude to get the crowds to a museum. A visitor might even fall in love (speaking from personal experience Riace Bronzes, here’s looking at you). We’ll focus on two of these very rare figures, found in US museums, but currently the subject of great debates of identification and international ownership. On Looted: The Podcast, we uncover the hidden stories of ancient artifacts and their journeys in the illicit antiquities trade. I’m Zoe Kontes, and I’m an archaeologist. When we archaeologists dig, we carefully record what we find so we can make the best sense of the evidence. But go to any museum, auction house, or dealer with an antiquities collection—Ebay even—and you’ll be sure to find objects that have been removed from the ground without this kind of proper excavation. Looting destroys the context of artifacts, and while they may look beautiful in a display case, we lose

The Syrian Revolution, which began in March 2011, has since resulted in what can be described as a civil war, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the forced migrations of millions of Syrians. This story has been told countless times in news media. However, less known is the story of the Syrian artists who have portrayed the revolution with all of its nuances. miriam cooke’s Dancing in Damascus: Creativity, Resilience and the Syrian Revolution (Routledge, 2017) tells that story, beginning before the revolution and continuing until the present. Through cooke’s work, we see how oppression can beget creativity and how art in the Syrian context can create public memory. cooke brings together different mediums to show how different conversations cut through the Syrian artistic community and how Syrians relate to one another. Dancing in Damascus is comprehensive, provocative, and hopeful. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on t

In his new book, Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), cultural historian and biographer Bob Batchelor examines the life of Marvel’s Stan Lee one of the most iconic figures in comic book history. Batchelor has written the first biography of Stan Lee. Starting with his childhood as a Depression-era New Yorker born to immigrant parents, Batchelor follows Lee’s career as a teenage editor at Marvel Comics, his stint as a playwright for the United States Army during World War II, and his unrelenting work ethic and drive that transformed the comic book industry and brought characters such as Spider Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the X-Men to life. Batchelor explores the larger place in popular and American cultural history that Stan Lee has played over the past 70 years from comics to television to film, reflecting on the role of the superhero in the American experience. Well researched, Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel gives insight not only into well-known

John Neel’s Focus in Photography: Master the Advanced Techniques That Will Change Your Photography Forever (Ilex Press, 2016) is both instructional manual and analysis on why focus is such an important artistic tool for photographers. Neel uses his own images to illustrate how focus works to directs viewers into and around an image. In his book Neel creates the first serious treatment of the topic in the digital age, by showing how mastery of the lens will greatly enhance the quality and “wow” factor of photographs. John Neel is a graduate of the University of South Florida, School of Fine Arts and has an MFA from the Visual Studies Workshop SUNY. He has an interest in merging photography, design and illustration. Recently he has become interested in the relationship of synthesized sound and electronic images and became a member of the electronic band uforkestra as the group’s visual musician. His work is held in public and private galleries in both the US and Canada, including the George Eastman House, the

In Horace Poolaw, Photographer of American Indian Modernity (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), Laura E. Smith, Assistant Professor of Art History at Michigan State University, unravels the compelling life story of Kiowa photographer Horace Poolaw (1906-84), one of the first professional Native American photographers. Born on the Kiowa reservation in Anadarko, Oklahoma, Poolaw bought his first camera at the age of fifteen and began taking photos of family, friends, and noted leaders in the Kiowa community, also capturing successive years of powwows and pageants at various fairs, expositions, and other events. Though Poolaw earned some income as a professional photographer, he farmed, raised livestock, and took other jobs to help fund his passion for documenting his community. Smith examines the cultural and artistic significance of Poolaw’s life in professional photography from 1925 to 1945 in light of European and modernist discourses on photography, portraiture, the function of art, Native American identi

This is the second in a series of podcasts from Zoe Kontes’ terrific “Looted.” Marble figurines made ca. 5,000 years ago in the Cycladic Islands of the Aegean became all the rage for collectors, and a great influence in Modernist Art. Easily looted and almost as easily faked, these objects have a unique role in the modern world. The question is, what was their role in the ancient world? More to see, read and hear: Gill, D. W. J., and C. Chippindale. “Material and intellectual consequences of esteem for Cycladic figures.” American Journal of Archaeology 97 (1993): 601-59. Chippindale, C., and D. W. J. Gill. “Cycladic figurines: art versus archaeology?” In Antiquities: trade or betrayed. Legal, ethical and conservation issues, edited by K. W. Tubb (1993): 131-42. Review: A Seductive and Troubling Work. Reviewed Work:The Cycladic Spirit: Masterpieces from the Nicholas P. Goulandris Collectionby Colin Renfrew, Christos Doumas. Review by: Ricardo J. Elia,Archaeology. Vol. 46, No. 1 (JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993), pp.