Oscillating between depiction and description, Object of A Life addresses Georges Perec's question: How are we to speak of common things? Making an inventory of things that come to hand in the course of daily life, playing with ideas of contradiction, categorisation, improbability and speculation, this book offers an articulation of the space produced between language and drawing.

Our lives are filled with objects—ones that we carry with us, that define our homes, that serve practical purposes, and that hold sentimental value. When they are broken, lost, left behind, or removed from their context, they can feel alien, take on a different use, or become trash. The lives of objects change when our relationships to them change. Maia Kotrosits offers a fresh perspective on objects, looking beyond physical material to consider how collective imagination shapes the formation of objects and the experience of reality. Bringing a psychoanalytic approach to the analysis of material culture, she examines objects of attachment—relationships, ideas, and beliefs that live on in the psyche—and illustrates how people across time have anchored value systems to the materiality of life. Engaging with classical studies, history, anthropology, and literary, gender, and queer studies, Kotrosits shows how these disciplines address historical knowledge and how an expanded definition of materiality can help us make connections between antiquity and the contemporary world.

With contributions from Cheryl Strayed, Mark Cuban, Ta-Nahesi Coates, Melinda Gates, Joss Whedon, James Patterson, and many more -- this fascinating collection gives us a peek into 150 personal treasures and the secret histories behind them. All of us have that one object that holds deep meaning--something that speaks to our past, that carries a remarkable story. Bestselling author Bill Shapiro collected this sweeping range of stories--he talked to everyone from renowned writers to Shark Tank hosts, from blackjack dealers to teachers, truckers, and nuns, even a reformed counterfeiter--to reveal the often hidden, always surprising lives of objects.

The purpose of these essays is to mine the complexity and expressive richness of still life, traditionally considered one of the lesser genres. Though theorists have commented on its appeal since antiquity, the status of still life has risen significantly only recently, as the priorities of art history and criticism have been reordered to validate areas outside the canon of traditional inquiry. Here six distinguished scholars interpret a wide range of still lifes, using diverse current methods, including paleoethnobotanical research (which makes it possible to reconstruct diets), social history, technical examinations, and material culture studies. The introduction provides a historiography of still life with an emphasis on the twentieth century. Reindert Falkenburg's essay is "Matters of Taste: Pieter Aertsen's Market Scenes, Eating Habits, and Pictorial Rhetoric in the Sixteenth Century," Anne Lowenthal's, "Contemplating Kalf," Julia Ballerini's "Recasting Ancestry: Statuettes as Imaged by Three Inventors of Photography," and Doreen Bolger's "The Early Rack Paintings of John F. Peto: Beneath the Nose of the Whole World.'" Petra ten-Doesschate Chu writes on Vincent van Gogh's still lifes and the nineteenth-century vignette tradition; and Nan Freeman, on Tom Wesselmann and still-life painting and American culture, circa 1962. In view of the current interest in still life, the publication of this book is ideally timed. Cumulatively, the six essays alert the reader to the myriad meanings carried by still lifes and the diverse ways in which those meanings can be studied.

A major survey of Pop Art from private collections. Published on the occasion of an exhibition of the same title, The Pop Object is the most comprehensive survey of Pop Art to be organized by theme and historical precedents, with such classic works as Andy Warhol’s Brillo Soap Pads, Robert Arneson’s Oreo Cookie Jar, Claes Oldenburg’s Pie à la Mode, Roy Lichtenstein’s Black Flowers, and Wayne Thiebaud’s Gumball Machine. With more than ninety color illustrations, this large-format book brings together the most important examples of works by artists Jasper Johns, Jim Dine, Marisol, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Wayne Thiebaud, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and many others, from the 1960s to the present. The still life has often been the stepchild to landscape, history, and figurative painting. By examining themes like food and drink, household objects, flowers, and body parts, noted art historian John Wilmerding emphasizes Pop’s playfulness and brings the history of the movement right up to date.

A companion book to Mellor and Shlaer's Object-Oriented Systems Analysis which covers the Information Modeling step, this book details in three step s a systematic method for investigating and defining real-time, scientific, and business-oriented systems. It explains the State Modeling step, the Process Modeling step, and the External Specifications step.

In this important prose work, one of our major poets explores, through autobiography and argument, a woman's life in Ireland together with a poet's work. Eavan Boland beautifully uncovers the powerful drama of how these lives affect one another; how the tradition of womanhood and the historic vocation of the poet act as revealing illuminations of the other.

Definitions and Methodology; Constitution of the libidinal object; the cradle of perception; the precursor of the object; the plasticity of the infantile pysche; role of mother-child relations; establishment of the libidinal object; role and evolution of the instinctual drives; further development; the origins and beginnings of human communication; deviant and disturbed object relations; psychotoxic disturbances; emotional deficiency diseases of the infant; the effects of object loss; conclusion.

From the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, a timely and passionate case for the role of the well-designed object in the digital age. Curator and scholar Glenn Adamson opens Fewer, Better Things by contrasting his beloved childhood teddy bear to the smartphones and digital tablets children have today. He laments that many children and adults are losing touch with the material objects that have nurtured human development for thousands of years. The objects are still here, but we seem to care less and know less about them. In his presentations to groups, he often asks an audience member what he or she knows about the chair the person is sitting in. Few people know much more than whether it's made of wood, plastic, or metal. If we know little about how things are made, it's hard to remain connected to the world around us. Fewer, Better Things explores the history of craft in its many forms, explaining how raw materials, tools, design, and technique come together to produce beauty and utility in handmade or manufactured items. Whether describing the implements used in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, the use of woodworking tools, or the use of new fabrication technologies, Adamson writes expertly and lovingly about the aesthetics of objects, and the care and attention that goes into producing them. Reading this wise and elegant book is a truly transformative experience.

"It's always been golden for you, Danny. You've always been the golden boy." Danny Fortunato seemed to have it all. He was cute, funny, sexy, smart--the hottest go-go boy in West Hollywood. When he danced on stage, all eyes were upon him and all men desired him. But something always kept Danny from ever really believing he was the golden boy that others said he was. . . Twenty years later, living in Palm Springs, Danny is celebrating his 41st birthday--although "celebrating" might not be the right word for how he feels about his life today. To the outside world, he's still golden: he still has his looks, and he still loves Frank, his boyfriend of nearly two decades. But something is missing in his life. Passion. Romance. Adventure. The same something that's been missing ever since that day when he turned fourteen, when his sister Becky disappeared and his whole world flipped upside-down. . . Filled with unforgettable warmth, incorrigible humor, and irresistible charm, Object of Desire takes readers through three milestone eras in one man's life--his youth in the 1970s, his days of abandon in the 1980s, and his more sober, reflective existence today--and reaffirms William J. Mann's reputation as one of gay fiction's major narrative powers. "Mann's vivid style is a treat." --Publishers Weekly "Mann's writing is smart, aware and cognizant enough to take a well-practiced theme and give it a shot in the arm." --Instinct