"What good are the arts? Why should we care about the past? For millennia, humanity has sought to understand and transmit to future generations not just the "know-how" of life, but the "know-why"--the meaning and purpose of our existence, as expressed in art, architecture, religion, and philosophy. This crucial passing down of knowledge has required the radical integration of insights from the past and from other cultures. In Culture, acclaimed author,...

"In a world filled with great museums and great paintings, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is the reigning queen. Her portrait rules over a carefully designed salon, one that was made especially for her in a museum that may seem intended for no other purpose than to showcase her virtues. What has made this portrait so renowned, commanding such adoration? And what of other works of art that continue to enthrall spectators: What makes the Great Sphinx...

"Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the United States in the 1830s, The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s imagines how individuals at the time experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, this book follows painters, poets, enslaved individuals, farmers, and artisans through various settings. Some, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nat Turner, Thomas Cole, and Edgar Allan Poe, are well-known; others are not. All are creators...

"Pop culture is often maligned as fleeting, but history shows that sometimes what is pop in one culture has time-honored resonance in later ones. This book is an attempt to show that pop culture, especially as seen through the lenses of design, illustration, satiric and political art (and other things), is integral to a broader understanding of who we are and where we are going."-Steven Heller, from the Introduction. How do popular culture and graphic...

David Joselit is the Carnegie Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. His books include American Art Since 1945 (Thames & Hudson) and Feedback: Television against Democracy. How digital networks are transforming art and architecture Art as we know it is dramatically changing, but popular and critical responses lag behind. In this trenchant illustrated essay, David Joselit describes how art and architecture are being transformed in the...

In “Bright Stars”, Kate Bryan examines the lives and legacies of 30 great artists who died too young, celebrating their inspirational stories and extraordinary talent. Some of the world's greatest and most-loved artists died under the age of forty. But how did they turn relatively short careers into such long legacies? What drove them to create, against all the odds? And how can we use these stories to re-evaluate artists lost to the shadows,...

"The New York Times bestselling author of Cork Dork takes readers on another fascinating, hilarious, and revelatory journey-this time burrowing deep inside the impassioned, secretive world of art and artists An award-winning journalist obsessed with obsession, Bianca Bosker's existence was upended when she wandered into the art world-and couldn't look away. Intrigued by artists who hyperventilate around their favorite colors and art fiends who max...

9. 5 Theses on Art and Class seeks to show how a clear understanding of class makes sense of what is at stake in a broad number of contemporary art's most persistent debates, from definitions of political art to the troubled status of "outsider" and street art to the question of how we maintain faith in art itself. Ben Davis currently lives and works in New York City where he is Executive Editor at Artinfo.

"On city street corners, around telephone posts, through barbed wire fences, and over abandoned cars, a quiet revolution is brewing. "Knit graffiti" is an international guerrilla movement that started underground and is now embraced by crochet and knitting artists of all ages, nationalities, and genders. Its practitioners create stunning works of art out of yarn, then "donate" them to public spaces as part of a covert plan for world yarn domination....

"Banksy: Completed is the first in-depth investigation into the hidden meaning and social, political, and cultural impact of the world-famous street artist's work"-- Provided by publisher.