What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorIn Praise of Shadows
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki · 69 pages
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
Walter Benjamin · 374 pages
A series of influential essays on the visual arts that were made possible by machines, and the implications for the future of culture.
Concerning the Spiritual in Art
Wassily Kandinsky · 92 pages
A pioneering work in the movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality, this book is one of the most important documents in the history of modern art. Written by the famous nonobjective painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), it explains Kandinsky's own theory of painting and crystallizes the ideas that were influencing many other modern artists of the period. Along with his o
The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World
Lewis Hyde · 352 pages
Starting with the premise that the work of art is a gift and not a commodity, this revolutionary book ranges across anthropology, literature, economics, and psychology to show how the 'commerce of the creative spirit' functions in the lives of artists and in culture as a whole.
The Poetics of Space
Gaston Bachelard · 241 pages
This book is another of the French philosopher's explorations into the meaning and being of art.
About Looking
John Berger · 198 pages
This successor to John Berger's Ways of Seeing, written over the last ten years, searches for meaning within and beyond what is looked at. Why do zoos disappoint children? Why do we take snapshots of those we love? How do the media use photographs of agony? When an animal looks us in the eyes, what does that look mean? Berger describes how a sixteenth-century masterpiece he saw in the 1960s com
On Art and Life
John Ruskin · 109 pages
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilizatio
Manifestoes of Surrealism
Andre Breton · 304 pages
After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History
Arthur C. Danto · 272 pages
The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture and Literature
Jose Ortega y Gasset · 204 pages
Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
Leonard Koren · 94 pages
“Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional... The immediate catalyst for this book was a widely publicized tea event in Japan. The Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi has long been associated with the tea ceremony, and this event promised to be a profound wabi-sabi experience. Hiroshi Tesh
But Is It Art?: An Introduction to Art Theory
Cynthia Freeland · 254 pages
History of Beauty
Umberto Eco, Girolamo De Michele · 438 pages
From the Publisher: What is beauty? What is art? What is taste and fashion? Is beauty something to be observed coolly and rationally or is it something dangerously involving? So begins Umberto Eco's intriguing journey into the aesthetics of beauty, in which he explores the ever-changing concept of the beautiful from the ancient Greeks to today. While closely examining the development of the visual
Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation
Gilles Deleuze · 209 pages
What is Art?
Leo Tolstoy · 208 pages
"Leo Tolstoy is one of the most celebrated novelists of all time. As well as writing literary classics such as Anna Karenina and War and Peace he was also the author of some hugely influential critical and philosophical works. First published in 1898 his book length essay What is Art? has lost none of its power to challenge our perception of art and its function in society today. In this provocati
Thinking Architecture
Peter Zumthor · 77 pages
Featuring four essays by Peter Zumthor, this volume exhibits the essence of Zumthor's architectural ideas.
Art in Theory 1900 - 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas
Charles Harrison, Paul Wood · 1,288 pages
The Timeless Way of Building
Christopher W. Alexander · 552 pages
The theory of architecture implicit in our world today, Christopher Alexander believes, is bankrupt. More and more people are aware that something is deeply wrong. Yet the power of present-day ideas is so great that many feel uncomfortable, even afraid, to say openly that they dislike what is happening, because they are afraid to seem foolish, afraid perhaps that they will be laughed at. Now,
Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 197 pages
On Photography
Susan Sontag · 207 pages
On Photography is a 1977 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. It originally appeared as a series of essays in the New York Review of Books between 1973 and 1977. In the book, Sontag expresses her views on the history and present-day role of photography in capitalist societies as of the 1970s. Sontag discusses many examples of modern photography, among these, she contrasts Diane Arbus's work with
Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman
Peter Korn · 179 pages
Following his personal experiences as a novice carpenter, designer/maker of fine furniture, and a teacher, Korn explores the nature and rewards of creative practice.
Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
Stephen Nachmanovitch · 216 pages