Over 200 paintings, sculptures, photographs, and conceptual pieces trace the story of modern art's innovation and adventure. With explanatory texts for each work, and essays introducing each of the major modern movements, this is an authoritative overview of the ideas and the artworks that shook up standards, assaulted the establishment, and...

How artists at the turn of the twentieth century broke with traditional ways of posing the bodies of human figures to reflect modern understandings of human consciousness. With this book, Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen brings a new formal and conceptual rubric to the study of turn-of-the-century modernism, transforming our understanding of the era’s canonical works. Butterfield-Rosen analyzes a hitherto unexamined formal phenomenon in European art: how artists departed from conventions for posing the human figure that had long been standard. In the decades around 1900, artists working in different countries and across different media began to present human figures in strictly frontal, lateral, and dorsal postures. The effect, both archaic and modern, broke with the centuries-old tradition of rendering bodies in torsion, with poses designed to simulate the human being’s physical volume and capacity for autonomous thought and movement. This formal departure destabilized prevailing visual codes for signifying the existence of the inner life of the human subject. Exploring major works by Georges Seurat, Gustav Klimt, and the dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky— replete with new archival discoveries—Modern Art and the Remaking of Human Disposition combines intensive formal analysis with inquiries into the history of psychology and evolutionary biology. In doing so, it shows how modern understandings of human consciousness and the relation of mind to body were materialized in art through a new vocabulary of postures and poses.

Taking cues from works by Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, and Matisse, pastry chef Caitlin Freeman, of Miette bakery and Blue Bottle Coffee fame, creates a collection of uniquely delicious dessert recipes (with step-by-step assembly guides) that give readers all they need to make their own edible masterpieces. From a fudge pop based on an Ellsworth Kelly sculpture to a pristinely segmented cake fashioned after Mondrian’s well-known composition, this collection of uniquely delicious recipes for cookies, parfait, gelées, ice pops, ice cream, cakes, and inventive drinks has everything you need to astound friends, family, and guests with your own edible masterpieces. Taking cues from modern art’s most revered artists, these twenty-seven showstopping desserts exhibit the charm and sophistication of works by Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Henri Matisse, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Avedon, Wayne Thiebaud, and more. Featuring an image of the original artwork alongside a museum curator’s perspective on the original piece and detailed, easy-to-follow directions (with step-by-step assembly guides adapted for home bakers), Modern Art Desserts will inspire a kitchen gallery of stunning treats.

Translated into English for the first time, On Contemporary Art, a speech by the renowned novelist César Aira, was delivered at a 2010 colloquium in Madrid dedicated to bridging the gap between writing and the visual arts. On Aira’s dizzying and dazzling path, everything comes under question—from reproducibility of artworks to the value of the written word itself. In the end, Aira leaves us stranded on the bridge between writing and art that he set out to construct in the first place, flailing as we try to make sense of where we stand. Aira’s On Contemporary Art exemplifies what the ekphrasis series is dedicated to doing—exploring the space in which words give meaning to objects, and objects shape our words. Like the great writers Walter Benjamin and Hermann Broch before him, Aira operates in the space between fiction and essay writing, art and analysis. Pursuing questions about reproducibility, art making, and limits of language, Aira’s unique voice adds new insights to the essential conversations that continue to inform our understanding of art.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name held at the Yale University Art Gallery, September 4, 2015-January 3, 2016.

As public interest in modern art continues to grow, as witnessed by the spectacular success of Tate Modern and the Bilbao Guggenheim, there is a real need for a book that will engage general readers, offering them not only information and ideas about modern art, but also explaining its contemporary relevance and history. This book achieves all this and focuses on interrogating the idea of 'modern' art by asking such questions as: What has made a work of art qualify as modern (or fail to)? How has this selection been made? What is the relationship between modern and contemporary art? Is 'postmodernist' art no longer modern, or just no longer modernist - in either case, why, and what does this claim mean, both for art and the idea of 'the modern'? Cottington examines many key aspects of this subject, including the issue of controversy in modern art, from Manet's Dejeuner sur L'Herbe (1863) to Picasso's Les Demoiselles, and Tracey Emin's Bed, (1999); and the role of the dealer from the main Cubist art dealer Kahnweiler to Charles Saatchi. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

An engaging and informative guide to all the significant "isms"—schools and movements—that have shaped modern and contemporary art from Impressionism to the present. Following on the heels of the bestselling Isms: Understanding Modern Art comes this handy small-format guide to the history and development of modern art since the Impressionist era. Loaded with reproductions of key artworks and rounded out with a glossary and index of names, this guide is the best single-volume concise introduction to modern art for beginners, as well as an engaging new way of conceptualizing modern art for aficionados and collectors. ...isms: Understanding Modern Art sorts art into a chronological sequence of more than 55 movements and schools, or "isms." Beginning with Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and Symbolism, it progresses through all the major and minor art movements of the twentieth century (Fauvism, German Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Social Realism among others) through the postwar era up to the present. Featuring 110 beautiful full-color reproductions of key artworks illustrating the important concepts of each artistic movement, ...isms: Understanding Modern Art is like a virtual gallery of the finest modern masters. Included are a glossary, a list of principal names (artists, collectors, patrons), a gazetteer, and a chronology, making this the best single-volume guide to modern art for beginners while also offering cognoscenti an intriguing new way of conceptualizing the visual arts of the modern era.

Intended to encourage a greater understanding of modern art by putting it in a wider context. Compares and contrasts different works under chapter readings such as 'Emotions', 'War', 'City life', showing how art can relate to people's everyday lives. Suggested level: secondary.