In the Forbidden City and other palaces around Beijing, Emperor Qianlong (r. 1736-1795) surrounded himself with monumental paintings of architecture, gardens, people, and faraway places. The best artists of the imperial painting academy, including a number of European missionary painters, used Western perspectival illusionism to transform walls and ceilings with visually striking images that were also deeply meaningful to Qianlong. These unprece ...
In the 1950s, the city of Seattle began a transformation from an insular, provincial outpost to a vibrant and cosmopolitan cultural center. As veteran Seattle journalist R. M. Campbell illustrates in Stirring Up Seattle: Allied Arts in the Civic Landscape, this transformation was catalyzed in part by the efforts of a group of civic arts boosters originally known as �The Beer and Culture Society.� This �merry band ...
Lorca's Sketches of Spain: Impressions and Landscapes is a unique book, now available in an unillustrated e-book edition as well as an illustrated print edition. Federico Garcia Lorca’s first book, published when he was just nineteen, is a series of meditations on Spanish art, landscapes and history. Brimming with passion and excitement, the young writer travels in search of Spain's essential spirit: sunsets in Granada, the Gothic magn ...
Gerald Brenan returned to Spain in 1949 for the first time since the Civil War. He was determined to see what had become of the country he loved, to speak to ordinary people and to experience life in small towns unvisited by foreigners. He had earlier lived in a remote village in the Sierra Nevada – now he returned to a land in the grip of famine where guerrilleros[/i] roamed the mountains and thousands of people were reduced ...
Contemporary artists are engaging more deeply than ever with religious imagery, themes, practices, and audiences. With a bracing, jargon-free style, Aaron Rosen–a leading scholar, art critic, and curator–takes readers into studios, galleries, and worship spaces as he paints a compelling picture of art and religion today. Focusing on individual artists, from eminent names to emerging stars, Rosen's essays and interviews tackle key questions, ...
Music can answer questions that often confound more discursive modes of thought. Music takes concepts that are all too familiar, reframes these concepts, and returns them to us with incisive clarity and renewed vision. Unity is one of these «all too familiar concepts,» thrown around by politicians, journalists, and pastors as if we all know what it means. By turning to music, especially musical space, the relational structure of unity becomes le ...
Keeping the Dream Alive contains full-color images of Harriet Lorence Nesbitt's art, giving an overview of her unique life and style. This monographic reflection explores the historical context of Nesbitt's work. William David Spencer's afterword contextualizes Harriet's vision as an advocate for the mentally ill, an artist, and a political columnist, describing how and why Harriet's life and art pulsed with vibrancy. ...
Evangelical discourse on the role of arts in the church can be radioactive, and the twenty-one contributors to this book walk right into the «hot zone» to pick up on twenty contentious questions. The volume is a series of written dialogues, each one keyed to a cranky question, one that a skeptic might raise (hence the title). Herein, the gainsayers are taken seriously and given their voice. They even find support in some of the contributors&apos ...
In 1985, the Sohio oil company commissioned Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen to design and construct a large outdoor sculpture for its new corporate headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. The result was Free Stamp, a bold and distinctive installation that captured both a Pop Art sensibility and a connection to the city’s industrial past. Sohio executives approved the design, and work was already underway, when British Petroleum acquired the co ...
