Book Description
In Roman Eyes, Jas Elsner seeks to understand the multiple ways that art in ancient Rome formulated the very conditions for its own viewing, and as a result was complicit in the construction of subjectivity in the Roman Empire.
Elsner draws upon a wide variety of visual material, from sculpture and wall paintings to coins and terra-cotta statuettes. He examines the different contexts in which images were used, from the religious to the voyeuristic, from the domestic to the subversive. He reads images alongside and against the rich literary tradition of the Greco-Roman world, including travel writing, prose fiction, satire, poetry, mythology, and pilgrimage accounts. The astonishing picture that emerges reveals the mindsets Romans had when they viewed art--their preoccupations and theories, their cultural biases and loosely held beliefs.
Roman Eyes is not a history of official public art--the monumental sculptures, arches, and buildings we typically associate with ancient Rome, and that tend to dominate the field. Rather, Elsner looks at smaller objects used or displayed in private settings and closed religious rituals, including tapestries, ivories, altars, jewelry, and even silverware. In many cases, he focuses on works of art that no longer exist, providing a rare window into the aesthetic and religious lives of the ancient Romans.
Book Description
A pictorial survey of the icon of steadfastness and strength: the American lighthouse.
The newest addition to the Norton/Library of Congress series, this abundantly illustrated book conveys the romance and beauty of lighthouses and beacons while explaining the development of the forms, materials, architecture, and engineering of their structure: wood, masonry, cast-iron plate, on- and off-shore skeletal, caisson, and reinforced concrete. It covers lighthouses from all parts of the United States from the late eighteenth century to the 1940s, when control of lighthouses was transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard and after which few new ones were constructed. Images of lighthouses from coast to coast provide examples of striking design and setting, celebrate technological achievement and the work of important engineers, and include associated structures such as keepers' quarters, fog signal buildings, boathouses and boat railroads, cistern buildings, barns, and workshops, as well as interiors and working details of the light mechanisms. 1200 illustrations.
Book Description
Germany of the 1920s offers a stunning moment in modernity, a time when surface values first became determinants of taste, activity, and occupation: modernity was still modern, spectacle was still spectacular. Janet Ward's luminous study revisits Weimar Germany via the lens of metropolitan visual culture, analyzing the power that 1920s Germany holds for today's visual codes of consumerism.
Book Description
Bombay Art Deco presents a treasury of Art Deco buildings comprising residential, commercial and civic architecture created during the glamorous and optimistic era of the mid 1930's and 1940's. The architects, a small list of first generation Indian architects and builders, were mostly educated in English schools and trained in western architectural traditions, if not actually in the West. Impatient with the British reluctance to shed the Gothic and Indo - Saracenic architectural styles that had dominated Imperial Bombay's urban landscape, these visionaries were determined to imbue the city with a new modern style. That style shares its provenance with the Art Deco architecture of Miami Beach, termed Tropical Deco by author Laura Cerwinske in her seminal 1981 book. Built in the same era, the Art Deco architecture of the two cities exhibits similar scale, geometry, tropical vocabulary, and love of romance.
Customer Reviews:
Faded Eastern promise.......2007-08-01
Who would have thought that Bombay would have the largest concentration of Art Deco buildings outside of Miami Beach. There is a photo on pages 272-273 of Marine Drive, Bombay and you could be forgiven for thinking, at a quick glance, that this might be Ocean Drive, Miami. Navin Ramani reveals the background to this remarkable architectural heritage in the front of his book: the opening of the Suez Canal, a merchant class settling in Bombay, the city becomes the center of the Indian architectural profession and extensive land reclamation from 1929 all helped to create a unique Far Eastern Deco habitat.
The book's many photos show plenty of apartments and commercial buildings with their concrete curved lines, geometric floor patterns and streamlined appearance. It's unfortunate though that the photos also show plenty pipe-work and aircon units spoiling the external look of so many of them. It is the movie palaces that really show off the Deco style. The interiors of the five featured bubble over with streamline curves, recessed lighting and flamboyant marble floor patterns.
Ramani's book will surely be the definitive one about Bombay deco but I was rather disappointed with many of the author's photos. They lack a sharpness and the color is rather muted and dull. I became aware of this when I compared them with Arnold Schwartzman's clean, focused photos of Deco LAndmarks: Art Deco Gems of Los Angeles and in fact there is a good example of the photographic difference in Ramani's book on pages 256-257, on the left is a dull, flat photo of 63 Marine Drive, Bombay and the right a similar looking Hotel Victor in Miami but the photo is sharp, clean and colorful. Still, despite this Bombay Art Deco is certainly worth having if you love this exuberant architecture.
***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.
A Beautiful Visual Journey of Art Deco in Bombay and Miami Beach.......2007-07-16
Bombay Art Deco is a beautiful book in many ways. The colorful photos of the Art Deco buildings complement the well-written prose. Navin Ramani is the perfect person to write such a book. He grew up in a Bombay Art Deco building as a child and now lives in South Florida and has immersed himself Miami Beach Art Deco. He truly loves and respects the architecture and is an advocate for its preservation. He takes beautiful photos, too.
As a Miami Beach Art Deco guide myself, I loved the chapter on BoMi(BOmbay-MIami Beach), A Tale of Two subtropical Deco Cities. The chapter compares the similar climate, seaside geography, optimism and Hollywood ties of Bombay and Miami Beach. On one page is a Miami Beach landmark and on the facing page is a comparable Bombay landmark. The similarities are truly amazing and one could easily be interchanged with the other. For example, the Indian Merchants Chamber (1935-40) is juxtaposed to what is now Jerry's Famous Deli (1940). The caption is "Curves folding in on curves."
I recommend this book to anyone who likes Art Deco. AFter reading this book, you will want to travel to Bombay to see these buildings for yourself.
Simply superb .......2007-03-14
For anyone in love with Mumbai or with Art Deco architecture, this book is an absolute must. Lovingly photographed and produced, you get to see everything from the Asiatic Library and the Cricket Club to the lovely cinemas Liberty, Eros, and Regal. A must for any armchair traveller and Mumbai lover, as well as required reading for architecture buffs.
Book Description
A far-reaching visual survey of farm buildings across the United States, tracing their historical and regional influences.
The first in the Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks series, Barns presents a broad, fresh, and newly informed visual analysis of one of America's fundamental building types. In a nation founded on agrarian principles, with a cultural and physical landscape as vast as it is diverse, the barn has long been recognized as an American icon. Drawn from the vast holdings of the Library of Congress, nearly 1,000 illustrations provide a tour of barns across the United States, from New England to the Great Lakes, the South, the Midwest, and the Far West.
Barns traces geographical and chronological continuities of type, design, and construction, and the Dutch, German, French, and Spanish influence. Captions identify each document and building, and all images are included on a CD-ROM (runs on both Windows and Macintosh platforms, requires Internet access) linked to the Library's high-resolution files. Barns is the first comprehensive visual resource of its kind, an invaluable tool for architects, historians, students-and anyone who loves barns. 1,000 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
The Best Resource on Barns.......2004-02-03
I highly recommend this book for general readers and researchers interested in relationships between architecture and history. John Vlach has a comprehensive knowledge of architecture, and he insightfully writes about the importance of barns and rural cultural landscapes as resources for studying history. This new volume is an important resource for studies of rural folk culture as it provides studies of a great variety of barns and an array of approaches for learning about vernacular architecture.
Average customer rating:
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The Best of Audio/Video Interiors: Twenty-One Showcases of Style and Technology
Roman Beyer , and
Chirs Esse
Manufacturer: Books Nippan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
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Residential
| Building Types & Styles
| Architecture
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ASIN: 0962792209 |
Book Description
Although a few among us are intrepid architectural tourists, visiting buildings and landscapes our cameras at the ready, most of us experience architecture through the windshield of a moving vehicle, the architectural experience reduced to a blurry and momentary drive-by. And the rest of our architectural "tourism" is through the images of cameras, movies, and television programs -- that is, through the lens of another's eye.
Architectural hisotrian Mitchell Schwarzer calls this new mediated architectural experience the "zoomscape." In this thought-provoking book, he argues that the perception of architecture has been fundamentally altered by the technologies of transportation and the camera -- we now look at buildings, neighborhoods, cities, and even entire continents as we ride in trains, cars, and planes, and/or as we view photographs, movies, and television.
Zoomscape shows how we now perceive buildings and places at high speeds, across great distances, through edited and multiple reproductions. Nowadays, our views of the architectural landscape are modulated by the accelerator pedal and the remote control, by studio production techniques and airplane flight paths. Using examples from high art and popular culture -- from the novels of Don Delillo to the opening credits of The Sopranos -- Mitchell Schwarzer shows that the zoomscape has brought about unprecedented and often marvelous new ways of perceiving the built environment.
Average customer rating:
- Empowering Your Perceptive Ideas
- Empowering Your Perceptive Ideas
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Varieties of Visual Experience (Trade Version) (4th Edition)
Edmund Feldman
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
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History & Criticism
| Arts & Photography
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| Criticism
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| Themes
| Women in Art
Study & Teaching
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ASIN: 0810939223 |
Customer Reviews:
Empowering Your Perceptive Ideas.......1999-12-22
Feldman has made art criticism easy to understand for the student and non-student layperson alike. Throughout the book he uses clear examples from established art works to ilustrate the ideas used in identifying what is art through the use of one's perception. The book is clearly divided into logically linked chapters. The last half of the book can be used as an outline to clearly write one's own criticism, and, with a little work, construct a criticism comparing any two artworks from any media. This is a "must have" book for any graphic or performing artist.
Empowering Your Perceptive Ideas.......1999-12-22
Feldman has made art criticism easy to understand for the student and non-student layperson alike. Throughout the book he uses clear examples from established art works to ilustrate the ideas used in identifying what is art through the use of one's perception. The book is clearly divided into logically linked chapters. The last half of the book can be used as an outline to clearly write one's own criticism, and, with a little work, construct a criticism comparing any two artworks from any media. This is a "must have" book for any graphic or performing artist.
Average customer rating:
- I liked learning the history of painting, and the stickers.
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Paint and Painting: The Colors, the Techniques, the Surfaces : A History of Artists' Tools (Scholastic Voyages of Discovery : Visual Arts)
Scholastic Books
Manufacturer: Scholastic Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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The Art of Sculpture: Visual Arts (Voyages of Discovery No 7)
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Architecture and Construction: Building Pyramids, Log Cabins, Castles, Igloos, Bridges, and Skyscrapers (Scholastic Voyages of Discovery. Visual)
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Musical Instruments: From Flutes Carved of Bone, to Lutes, to Modern Electric Guitars (Scholastic Voyages of Discovery : Music and Performing Arts)
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What the Painter Sees (Voyages of Discovery)
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The History of Printmaking (Voyages of Discovery)
ASIN: 059047636X |
Customer Reviews:
I liked learning the history of painting, and the stickers........1998-11-05
Paint and Painting, is good because there is a lot to do in it. You can pop things up, put in stickers and learn about the different stages of painting.
The section on Giotto, and how he prepared frescos for the Scrovegni Chapel, is amazing.
I have an old edition. Be sure to buy it when it is back in print.
Average customer rating:
- The Great Mosque of Damascus
- Exquisite! Scholarship at its best.
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The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Ummayad Visual Culture (Islamic History and Civilization)
Finbarr Barry Flood
Manufacturer: Brill Academic Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 9004116389 |
Customer Reviews:
The Great Mosque of Damascus.......2007-05-13
Flood's book is THE standard book on this, one of the only remaining examples of Ummayid religious architecture and practically the only intact mosque from the formative years of Islam. The only way it could be improved would be to have a large portfolio of color illustrations of the mosaic decoration, the work of Byzantine artists brought directly form Constantinople.
Exquisite! Scholarship at its best........2001-02-26
This book presents a truly comprehensive account of the Great Mosque of Damascus; from a consideration of both ornament and structure, the author traces the formations of an Umayyad visual culture in an innovative and most illuminating way. The links the author makes between Umayyad caliphate and Byzantium are truly ingenious in their setting of not only the historical context, but also through a reading of the formal and "archival" evidence within the very architecture. In the field of Art History, and specifically, Islamic Art History, this work is destined to be revolutionary and classic all at once.
Books:
- Sacred Connections: Stories of Adoption
- Scalar Diffraction from a Circular Aperture (The Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science)
- Structure and Transport Properties in Organized Polymeric Materials (Series in Contemporary Chemical Physics)
- Synthetic and Natural Phenols (Studies in Organic Chemistry)
- Textiles of Wiener Werk: 1910-1932
- The Architecture of James Means
- The Art Of Fullmetal Alchemist
- The Art of Writing Reasonable Organic Reaction Mechanisms
- The Ecological Design Handbook
- The Essential Kitchen Design Guide
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