What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorAbout 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
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
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
Art in Theory 1900 - 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas
Charles Harrison, Paul Wood · 1,288 pages
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
After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History
Arthur C. Danto · 272 pages
Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
Rudolf Arnheim · 485 pages
Since its first publication in 1954, this work has established itself as a unique classic. It applies the approaches and findings of modern psychology to the study of art: it describes the visual process that takes place when people create- or look at- works in the various arts, and explains how the eye organizes visual material according to definite psychological laws. Fresh in thought, clean in
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
Scott McCloud · 215 pages
Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the secret world between the panels, through the lines, and within the hidden symbols of a powerful but misunderstood art
Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation
Gilles Deleuze · 209 pages
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin · 45 pages
"An attempt by literary critic Walter Benjamin to analyze the changed experience of art in modern society."--Page 4 of cover.
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
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol · 248 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,
The Architecture of Happiness
Alain de Botton · 288 pages
One of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of walls, chairs, buildings and streets that surround us.And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. The Architecture of Happiness starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and it argues th
Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
Stephen Nachmanovitch · 216 pages
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.
The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture and Literature
Jose Ortega y Gasset · 204 pages
The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution
Denis Dutton · 256 pages

