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The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art
Eileen Myles · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorAnd the Pursuit of Happiness
Maira Kalman · 471 pages
Filled with original art and photographs by the author who is also an illustrator and designer, each chapter represents a month of Kalman's yearlong travel across the U.S. and her reflections on democracy. She starts with a celebration of Barack Obama's Presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C., continues with the month of February and Abraham Lincoln, and explores democracy and the pursuit o
White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World
Geoff Dyer · 256 pages
"From "one of our most original writers" (Kathryn Schulz) comes an expansive and exacting book--firmly grounded, but elegant, witty, and always inquisitive--about travel, unexpected awareness, and the questions we ask when we step outside ourselves. Geoff Dyer's perennial search for tranquility, for "something better," continues in this series of fascinating and seemingly unrelated pilgrimages--wi
The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture and Literature
Jose Ortega y Gasset · 204 pages
Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
Madeleine L'Engle · 208 pages
In this classic book, Madeleine L'Engle addresses the questions, What makes art Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian artist? What is the relationship between faith and art? Through L'Engle's beautiful and insightful essay, readers will find themselves called to what the author views as the prime tasks of an artist: to listen, to remain aware, and to respond to creation through one's own
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.
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
Olivia Laing · 336 pages
"You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavor to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by thousands of strangers. The Lonely City is a roving cultural history of urban loneliness, centered on the ultimate city: Manhattan, that teeming island of gneiss, concrete, and glass. What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we're not intimately involved with an
The Clothing of Books
Jhumpa Lahiri · 80 pages
When I was a child, expressing myself through clothing was a source of anguish. I dreamt of sameness, even invisibility... When my books were first published, I discovered that another part of me had to be dressed and presented to the world.
Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction
Sabrina Chapadjiev · 245 pages
A visceral look at the bizarre entanglement of destructive and creative forces, Live Through This is a collection of original stories, essays, artwork, and photography. It explores the use of art to survive abuse, incest, madness and depression, and the often deep-seated impulse toward self-destruction including cutting, eating disorders, and addiction. Here, some of our most compelling cartoonist
Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
Georges Perec · 324 pages
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
Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art
Julian Barnes · 336 pages
An updated edition of the highly acclaimed collection of writing on art by one of Britain's best-loved authors, with seven new illustrated essays. 'Flaubert believed that it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another, and that great paintings required no words of explanation. Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when we said nothing at all in front of a painting. But we
The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty
Dave Hickey · 93 pages
"The Invisible Dragon made a lot of noise for a little book. When it was originally published in 1993 it was championed by artists for its forceful call for a reconsideration of beauty - and savaged by more theoretically oriented critics who dismissed the very concept of beauty as naive, igniting a debate that has shown no sign of flagging." "With this revised and expanded edition, Hickey is back
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
Silence
John Cage · 276 pages
Silence, A Year from Monday, M, Empty Words and X (in this order) form the five parts of a series of books in which Cage tries, as he says, "to find a way of writing which comes from ideas, is not about them, but which produces them." Often these writings include mesostics and essays created by subjecting the work of other writers to chance procedures using the I Ching (what Cage called "writing t
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
Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy
Mark Doty · 75 pages
Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think about Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth
A.O. Scott · 282 pages
"The New York Times film critic shows why we need criticism now more than ever. Few could explain, let alone seek out, a career in criticism. Yet what A.O. Scott shows in Better Living Through Criticism is that we are, in fact, all critics: because critical thinking informs almost every aspect of artistic creation, of civil action, of interpersonal life. With penetrating insight and warm humor, Sc
Art and the Bible: Two Essays
Francis A. Schaeffer · 78 pages
"The lordship of Christ should include an interest in the arts," writes Francis Schaeffer. "A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God, not just as tracts, mind you, but as things of beauty to the praise of God." Many Christians, wary of creating graven images, have steered clear of artistic creativity. But the Bible offers a robust affirmation of the arts. The human impulse to create r
Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration
David Wojnarowicz · 276 pages
**From Amazon.com:** In *Close to the Knives*, David Wojnarowicz gives us an important and timely document: a collection of creative essays -- a scathing, sexy, sublimely humorous and honest personal testimony to the "Fear of Diversity in America." From the author's violent childhood in suburbia to eventual homelessness on the streets and piers of New York City, to recognition as one of the mos