How Japan captured the Victorian imagination and transformed Western aesthetics From the opening of trade with Britain in the 1850s, Japan occupied a unique and contradictory place in the Victorian imagination, regarded as both a rival empire and a cradle of exquisite beauty.
An invitation to readers from every walk of life to rediscover the impractical splendors of a life of learningIn an overloaded, superficial, technological world, in which almost everything and everybody is judged by its usefulness, where can we turn for escape, lasting pleasure, contemplation, or connection to others?
A novel interpretation of architecture, ugliness, and the social consequences of aesthetic judgmentWhen buildings are deemed ugly, what are the consequences?
An exploration of cuteness and its immense hold on us, from emojis and fluffy puppies to its more uncanny, subversive expressionsCuteness has taken the planet by storm.
Demystifying the key ideas of the world's greatest philosophers, and exploring all of the most important branches of thought including philosophy of science, philosophy of religion and feminist philosophy in a uniquely visual way, this ebook is the perfect introduction to the history of philosophy.
WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTIONChosen as a Book of the Year by New Statesman, Financial Times, Guardian, Observer, Rough Trade and the BBCShortlisted for the Rathbones Folio PrizeLonglisted for the Jhalak Prize'Restlessly inventive, brutally graceful, startlingly beautiful .
In recent decades, we have witnessed an explosion in the number of visual images we encounter, as our lives have become increasingly saturated with screens.
En Desmarcar el territorio, Carla Macchiavello Cornejo realiza un análisis crítico de las prácticas performativas, conceptuales y estéticas que surgieron en Chile en oposición a la dictadura, centrándose en sus discursos territoriales y nacionalistas.
'To create today means to create dangerously'This new collection contains some of Camus' most brilliant political writing as he reflects on moral responsibility and the role of the artist in the world.
'We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks'In this series of remarkable pieces from across his career, John Berger celebrates and dissects the close links between art and society and the individual.
'Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life'The two works brought together here, 'The Decay of Lying' and 'The Critic as Artist', are Oscar Wilde's wittiest and most profound writings on aesthetics, in which he proposes that criticism is the highest form of creation and that lying, the telling of a beautiful untruth, is the ultimate aim of art.
'Foucault leaves no reader untouched or unchanged' Edward SaidAesthetics, the second volume of the complete collection of Michel Foucault's courses, articles and interviews, focuses on the philosophy, literature and art which informed his engagement with ethics and power, including brilliant commentaries on the work of de Sade, Rousseau, Marx, Magritte, Nietzsche, Freud and Wagner.
This book takes a dramatically original approach to the history of humanity, using objects which previous civilisations have left behind them, often accidentally, as prisms through which we can explore past worlds and the lives of the men and women who lived in them.
'This is a blast of fresh air' Jonathan Clark, TLS'Thank goodness for Gottlieb' Daily Telegraph'A joy to read' EconomistThe author of the celebrated The Dream of Reason vividly explains the rise of modern thought from Descartes to RousseauIn a short period - from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution - Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark on Western thought.
Nietzsche's first published book, The Birth of Tragedy is a compelling argument for the necessity of art in lifeThis landmark work of criticism is fuelled by Nietzsche's enthusiasms for Greek tragedy, the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the music of Wagner, to whom the book was dedicated.
In Either/Or, using the voices of two characters - the aesthetic young man of part one, called simply 'A', and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section - Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence, contemplating subjects as diverse as Mozart, drama, boredom, and, in the famous Seducer's Diary, the cynical seduction and ultimate rejection of a young, beautiful woman.
No philosopher has held a higher opinion of art than Hegel, yet nor was any so profoundly pessimistic about its prospects - despite living in the German golden age of Goethe, Mozart and Schiller.
First and foremost an outcry against injustice and inhumanity, Unto this Last is also a closely argued assault on the science of political economy, which dominated the Victorian period.
Revolutionary essays on design, aesthetics and materialism - from one of the great masters of modern architectureAdolf Loos, the great Viennese pioneer of modern architecture, was a hater of the fake, the fussy and the lavishly decorated, and a lover of stripped down, clean simplicity.
How decolonization and the cold war influenced literature from Africa, Asia, and the CaribbeanHow did superpower competition and the cold war affect writers in the decolonizing world?
How looking beautiful has become a moral imperative in today's worldThe demand to be beautiful is increasingly important in today's visual and virtual culture.
An invitation to readers from every walk of life to rediscover the impractical splendors of a life of learningIn an overloaded, superficial, technological world, in which almost everything and everybody is judged by its usefulness, where can we turn for escape, lasting pleasure, contemplation, or connection to others?
An exploration of cuteness and its immense hold on us, from emojis and fluffy puppies to its more uncanny, subversive expressionsCuteness has taken the planet by storm.
From the author of Think, an enlightening and entertaining exploration of narcissism and self-esteemEveryone deplores narcissism, especially in others.
A beautifully illustrated visual and cultural history of the color blue throughout the agesBlue has had a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world.
An acclaimed cultural history of blacknow available in an attractive, text-only, pocket-sized paperbackBlackfavorite color of priests and penitents, artists and ascetics, fashion designers and fascistshas always stood for powerfully opposed ideas: authority and humility, sin and holiness, rebellion and conformity, wealth and poverty, good and bad.
