Visual Arts

Offering historical and theoretical positions from a variety of art historians, artists, curators, and writers, this groundbreaking collection is the first substantive sourcebook on abstraction in moving-image media. With a particular focus on art since 2000, Abstract Video addresses a longer history of experimentation in video, net art, installation, new media, expanded cinema, visual music, and experimental film. Editor Gabrielle Jennings--a video artist herself--reveals as never before how works of abstract video are not merely, as the renowned curator Kirk Varnedoe once put it, "pictures of nothing," but rather amorphous, ungovernable spaces that encourage contemplation and innovation. In explorations of the work of celebrated artists such as Jeremy Blake, Mona Hatoum, Pierre Huyghe, Ryoji Ikeda, Takeshi Murata, Diana Thater, and Jennifer West, alongside emerging artists, this volume presents fresh and vigorous perspectives on a burgeoning and ever-changing arena of contemporary art.

A History of Video Art is a revised and expanded edition of the 2006 original, which extends the scope of the first edition, incorporating a wider range of artists and works from across the globe and explores and examines developments in the genre of artists' video from the mid 1990s up to the present day. In addition, the new edition expands and updates the discussion of theoretical concepts and ideas which underpin contemporary artists' video. Tracking the changing forms of video art in relation to the revolution in electronic and digital imaging that has taken place during the last 50 years, A History of Video Art orients video art in the wider art historical context, with particular reference to the shift from the structuralism of the late 1960s and early 1970s to the post-modernist concerns of the 1980s and early 1990s. The new edition also explores the implications of the internationalisation of artists' video in the period leading up to the new millennium and its concerns and preoccupations including post-colonialism, the post-medium condition and the impact and influence of the internet.

"Installation Art provides both a history and a full critical examination of this challenging area of contemporary art, from 1950 to the present day. Using case studies of significant artists and individual works. Claire Bishop argues that, as installation art requires its audience to physically enter the artwork in order to experience it, installation pieces can be categorised by the type of experience they provide for the viewing subject. As well as exploring the methodologies of the artists examined, Bishop also explains the critical theory that informed their work. While revising and in some cases, re-assessing many well-known names, this fully illustrated book will introduce the reader to a wide spectrum of younger artists, some yet to receive critical attention."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This provocative and highly original examination of installation art demystifies and deconstructs the artistic medium most likely to induce the question, But is it Art?When we think of installation art we imagine enormous, perhaps bewildering, multi-media environments. But the world's earliest known installation projects were created millennia ago on the walls of caves in Lascaux, France. Although the genre has been evolving ever since, its primary impulse'a dialogue between artist and space'remains the same. In Understanding Installation Art, Mark Rosenthal offers an historical interpretation and concise critical analyses that will help deepen readers? appreciation of this often confusing medium.Citing examples as diverse as the Sistine Chapel, Colonial Williamsburg, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, and Vito Acconti's Seedbed as well as works by Richard Serra, Rebecca Horn, Claes Oldenburg, Jenny Holzer and Bruce Nauman, the author defines installation art as a medium with broad possibilities for expression, universal appreciation, and democratization. He creates a new taxonomy of his subject, identifying four specific forms'enchantments, impersonations, interventions, and rapprochements'and shows how installation art is steering the concept of museums and galleries in new and exciting directions. Most importantly he helps readers feel more comfortable with site-specific art, a genre that dates back to man's earliest artistic expression.