Art History Research and Discovery Guide

This important new study reevaluates British art writing and the rise of formalism in the visual arts from 1900 to 1939. Taking Roger Fry as his starting point, Sam Rose rethinks how ideas about form influenced modernist culture and the movement's significance to art history today. In the context of modernism, formalist critics are often thought to be interested in art rather than life, a stance exemplified in their support for abstract works that exclude the world outside. But through careful attention to early twentieth-century connoisseurship, aesthetics, art education, design, and art in colonial Nigeria and India, Rose builds an expanded account of form based on its engagement with the social world. Art and Form thus opens discussions on a range of urgent topics in art writing, from its history and the constructions of high and low culture to the idea of global modernism. Rose demonstrates the true breadth of formalism and shows how it lends a new richness to thought about art and visual culture in the early to mid-twentieth century. Accessibly written and analytically sophisticated, Art and Form opens exciting new paths of inquiry into the meaning and lasting importance of formalism and its ties to modernism. It will be invaluable for scholars and enthusiasts of art history and visual culture.

Writing Art is an attempt to respond to the possibilities of art, the potentialities in art, to the possible event that art is. Keeping in mind that events are always already potentially beyond us, are quite possibly unknown, unknowable. In this book, Jeremy Fernando meditates on art through a response to specifics works, to the specificity of the craft, tekhnē, of each work; offering a reading of specific works of photography (Photovoice sg), poetry (Tammy Ho Lai-Ming), installation art (Charles Lim), film (Tan Chui Mui), conceptual art (ZXEROKOOL), and charcoal drawings (Yanyun Chen). Through writing. For, to write is always also to scribble, to scratch, tear, quite possibly open - and perhaps more importantly, to open the possibility of a relation with another, to the unknowability that is the other. At the risk that this writing causes one to writhe, to be torn, to cry out; even if the very one is himself. Or, as Alessandro De Francesco, in his introduction, says: " ... Jeremy Fernando, essayiste del contemporaneo, pensa e realizza una teoria che allo stesso tempo una pratica artistica. La teoria dunque pratica dell'arte, nel senso che pratica l'arte, la attraversa, la frequenta, la rilancia e la riattiva nel reale, e pratica artistica, perch diviene essa stessa, nel momento in cui riflette, oggi, sul suo possibile - e il tema del possibile, fondamentale, anch'esso ricorrente nel lavoro di Fernando -, una forma d'arte."

The best-selling guide to writing about art Sylvan Barnet's A Short Guide to Writing About Art guides students through every aspect of writing about art. Students are shown how to analyze pictures (drawings, paintings, photographs), sculptures and architecture, and are prepared with the tools they need to present their ideas through effective writing. Coverage of essential writing assignments includes formal analysis, comparison, research paper, review of an exhibition, and essay examination. New to the 11th edition is a chapter on "Virtual Exhibitions: Writing Text Panels and Other Materials."

Intended for courses in History of Art and Art Appreciation as well as a supplement in Art studio courses and in Writing Across the Curriculum courses. Designed as a supplement to Art History survey and period texts, this title features a step-by-step approach to writing, from choosing a work to write about to preparing the final essay.