An indispensable and inspiring guide to creativity in the workplace and beyond, drawing on art, psychology, science, sports, law, business, and technology to help you land big ideas in the practical world. Anyone from CEO to freelancer knows how hard it is to think big, let alone follow up, while under pressure to get things done. Art Thinking offers practical principles, inspiration, and a healthy dose of pragmatism to help you navigate the difficulties of balancing creative thinking with driving toward results. With an MBA and an MFA, Amy Whitaker, an entrepreneur-in-residence at the New Museum Incubator, draws on stories of athletes, managers, writers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and even artists to engage you in the process of “art thinking.” If you are making a work of art in any field, you aren’t going from point A to point B. You are inventing point B. Art Thinking combines the mind-sets of art and the tools of business to protect space for open-ended exploration and manage risks on your way to success. Art Thinking takes you from “Wouldn’t it be cool if . . . ?” to realizing your highest aims, helping you build creative skills you can apply across all facets of business and life. Warm, honest, and unexpected, Art Thinking will help you reimagine your work and life—and even change the world—while enjoying the journey from point A. Art Thinking features 60 line drawings throughout.

In an attempt to subject representative texts of a dozen ancient authors to a more or less Socratic inquiry, the noted scholar George Anastaplo suggests in The Thinker as Artist how one might usefully read as well as enjoy such texts, which illustrate the thinking done by the greatest artists and how they "talk" among themselves across the centuries. In doing so, he does not presume to repeat the many fine things said about these and like authors, but rather he discusses what he himself has noticed about them, text by text. Drawing upon a series of classical authors ranging from Homer and Sappho to Plato and Aristotle, Anastaplo examines issues relating to chance, art, nature, and divinity present in the artful works of philosophers and other thinkers. As he has done in his earlier work, Anastaplo mines the great texts to help us discover who we are and what we should be. Some of the works used are familiar, while others were once better known than they are now. The approach to all of them is fresh and provocative, demonstrating the value of such texts in showing the reader what to look for and how to talk about matters that have always engaged thoughtful human beings. These imaginative yet disciplined discussions of important texts of ancient Greek thought and of Raphael's The School of Athens should appeal to both the specialist and the general reader.

In the twentieth century, avant-garde movements have pushed the concept of art far beyond its traditional boundaries. In this dynamical process of constant renewal the prestige of thinking about art as a legitimizing practice has come to the fore. So it is hardly surprising that the past decades have been characterized by a revival or even breakthrough of philosophy of art as a discipline. However, the majority of books on aesthetics fail to combine a systematical philosophical discourse with a real exploration of art practice. Thinking Art attempts to deal with this traditional shortcoming. It is indeed not only an easily accessible and systematic account of the classical, modern and postmodern theories of art, but also concludes each chapter with an artist’s studio in which the practical relevance of the discussed theory is amply demonstrated by concrete examples. Moreover, each chapter ends with a section on further reading, in which all relevant literature is discussed in detail. Thinking Art provides its readers with a theoretical framework that can be used to think about art from a variety of perspectives. More particularly it shows how a fruitful cross-fertilization between theory and practice can be created. This book can be used as a handbook within departments of philosophy, history of art, media and cultural studies, cultural history and, of course, within art academies. Though the book explores theories of art from Plato to Derrida it does not presuppose any acquaintance with philosophy from its readers. It can thus be read also by artists, art critics, museum directors and anyone interested in the meaning of art.

Best Book of the Year – Kirkus Reviews A spirited biography of the prophetic and sympathetic philosopher who helped build the foundations of the modern world. Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world’s first comprehensive Encyclopédie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity–for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality. One of Diderot’s most attentive readers during his lifetime was Catherine the Great, who not only supported him financially, but invited him to St. Petersburg to talk about the possibility of democratizing the Russian empire. In this thematically organized biography, Andrew S. Curran vividly describes Diderot’s tormented relationship with Rousseau, his curious correspondence with Voltaire, his passionate affairs, and his often iconoclastic stands on art, theater, morality, politics, and religion. But what this book brings out most brilliantly is how the writer's personal turmoil was an essential part of his genius and his ability to flout taboos, dogma, and convention.

A world-class thinker counts the 100 ways in which humans behave irrationally, showing us what we can do to recognize and minimize these “thinking errors” to make better decisions and have a better life Despite the best of intentions, humans are notoriously bad—that is, irrational—when it comes to making decisions and assessing risks and tradeoffs. Psychologists and neuroscientists refer to these distinctly human foibles, biases, and thinking traps as “cognitive errors.” Cognitive errors are systematic deviances from rationality, from optimized, logical, rational thinking and behavior. We make these errors all the time, in all sorts of situations, for problems big and small: whether to choose the apple or the cupcake; whether to keep retirement funds in the stock market when the Dow tanks, or whether to take the advice of a friend over a stranger. The “behavioral turn” in neuroscience and economics in the past twenty years has increased our understanding of how we think and how we make decisions. It shows how systematic errors mar our thinking and under which conditions our thought processes work best and worst. Evolutionary psychology delivers convincing theories about why our thinking is, in fact, marred. The neurosciences can pinpoint with increasing precision what exactly happens when we think clearly and when we don’t. Drawing on this wide body of research, The Art of Thinking Clearly is an entertaining presentation of these known systematic thinking errors--offering guidance and insight into everything why you shouldn’t accept a free drink to why you SHOULD walk out of a movie you don’t like it to why it’s so hard to predict the future to why shouldn’t watch the news. The book is organized into 100 short chapters, each covering a single cognitive error, bias, or heuristic. Examples of these concepts include: Reciprocity, Confirmation Bias, The It-Gets-Better-Before-It-Gets-Worse Trap, and the Man-With-A-Hammer Tendency. In engaging prose and with real-world examples and anecdotes, The Art of Thinking Clearly helps solve the puzzle of human reasoning.

“If John Berger’s Ways of Seeing is a classic of art criticism, looking at the ‘what’ of art, then David Salle’s How to See is the artist’s reply, a brilliant series of reflections on how artists think when they make their work. The ‘how’ of art has perhaps never been better explored.” —Salman Rushdie How does art work? How does it move us, inform us, challenge us? Internationally renowned painter David Salle’s incisive essay collection illuminates these questions by exploring the work of influential twentieth-century artists. Engaging with a wide range of Salle’s friends and contemporaries—from painters to conceptual artists such as Jeff Koons, John Baldessari, Roy Lichtenstein, and Alex Katz, among others—How to See explores not only the multilayered personalities of the artists themselves but also the distinctive character of their oeuvres. Salle writes with humor and verve, replacing the jargon of art theory with precise and evocative descriptions that help the reader develop a personal and intuitive engagement with art. The result: a master class on how to see with an artist’s eye.

Socially, economically, politically, and technologically our world is evolving in ways we could scarcely imagine even a few years ago. Now, more than ever, we need to close the gap between our professional and personal lives, bridge commerce to compassion, sustainability to profitability, and move from insight to action. This book is a brilliant guide to original thinking, inspired living, and visionary leadership - a hands-on guide to becoming a thought leader. Phillips challenges us to question assumptions, free ourselves from illusions, dispel myths, and question the origins of our thoughts. Phillips' artful blend of storytelling, real-world examples, insightful interviews, and research sheds light on people, groups, and businesses around the world that are profiting exponentially through conscious choices and creative collaborations.

Thinking about Art explores some of the greatest works of art and architecture in the world through the prism of themes, instead of chronology, to offer intriguing juxtapositions of art and history. The book ranges across time and topics, from the Parthenon to the present day and from patronage to ethnicity, to reveal art history in new and varied lights. With over 200 colour illustrations and a wealth of formal and contextual analysis, Thinking about Art is a companion guide for art lovers, students and the general reader, and is also the first A-level Art History textbook, written by a skilled and experienced teacher of art history, Penny Huntsman. The book is accompanied by a companion website at www.wiley.com/go/thinkingaboutart.

For over 30 years Dr. Hardt has been studying the electrophysiological basis of spiritual states. He has developed a technology based on electroencephalographic (EEG) measurement and feedback, combined, in a highly optimized methodology, with computerized measures of subjective states, depth interviews, and extensive coaching in forgiveness and non-attachment. This technology has demonstrated significant effectiveness in healing and transforming core dimensions of personality, reducing stress and anxiety, reversing key aspects of the brain's aging process, increasing creativity by 50% and boosting IQ by nearly 12 points on average, enhancing peak performance, facilitating conflict resolution, and in expanding spiritual awareness and increasing access to advanced spiritual states.