New Books In Art

Elizabeth A. Fraser's Mediterranean Encounters: Artists Between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, 1774–1839 (Penn State University Press, 2017) takes its readers on a journey through six illustrated travel albums covering territories held by the Ottomans in the Mediterranean basin and produced between 1774-1839. By decentring the importance of Europe, Elisabeth Fraser instead highlights the entangled histories and intercultural nature of the Ottoman Empire. Through six intertextual although very distinct travel albums, the book challenges its readers to look very closely at and engage with images in the works of Choiseul, Cassas, Mouradgea d’Ohsson, Melling, Louis Dupré and Delacroix, underscoring multidirectional viewing. In this podcast, we talk about the six travel albums and their imagery, about the markedness of translating ‘foreign’ images and about how viewing is culturally determined; we also discuss the notion of a single master author and the collaborative enterprise of producing travel books, as well

With Paris as the organizing locus of his new book, Du moyen âge à nos jours, expériences et représentations de la folie à Paris [From the Middle Ages to Today, Experiences and Representations of Madness in Paris], Benoît Majerus uses an impressively wide range of visual sources, from religious images and architectural photographs to neuroleptic advertisements and administrative maps. These images are integrated into the text and function not only as illustrations, but also as images with their own story to tell.  Majerus’ narrative arc follows the twists and turns of madness in a city long associated with mental pathogens and their cures and reveals how the history of psychiatry can be told differently through the lens of visual culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

New York City might have been the epicenter of the twentieth century American art scene, but Los Angeles was no slouch either, writes Kellie Jones in South of Pico: African American Artists in the 1960s and 1970s(Duke University Press, 2017). Dr. Jones, Professor of Art History at Columbia University and 2016 MacArthur Fellow, examines several African American artists and their work including Bettye Saar, Charles White, and John Outterbridge, and emphasizes the importance of migration, space, and interconnectivity in the LA art scene of mid-century. Watts, the site of a 1965 rebellion, was one particularly salient and vibrant part of the city’s African American art community. These artists used diverse media including performance and assemblage to comment on post-war American politics and society. The book appeals to experts and non-experts alike and is a strong example of how understanding art can help us to understand social movements and the interconnectivity of our world. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral ca

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century (Verso, 2017) introduce readers to important work in Anglophone cultural studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, media theory, speculative realism, science studies, Italian and French workerist and autonomist thought, two “imaginative readings of Marx,” and two “unique takes on the body politic.” There are significant implications of these ideas for how we live and work at the contemporary university, and we discussed some of those in our conversation. This is a great book to read and to teach with! Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm

In her book Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices (Duke University Press, 2018), Catherine Russell defines "archiveology" as “the reuse, recycling, appropriation and borrowing of archival sounds and images by filmmakers”. In her book, she reviews specific film examples. She also discusses the related work of German philosopher Walter Benjamin and how his ideas coincide with the examples she presents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

Sigmund Freud may have been the first to popularize the study of dreams, but several scholars since Freud have advanced our understanding of dreams in revolutionary ways. Among them is Mark Blechner, an interpersonal/relational psychoanalyst who first published his theories on dreams in his 2001 book The Dream Frontier. With his new book, The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation (Routledge, 2018), Blechner draws upon his clinical experience over the past 17 years to update and extend his already cutting-edge original ideas on dreams. In our interview, he explains why dreams, with their imagery and metaphors, may do a better job of expressing our deepest feelings and experiences compared to verbal communication, and why the mind and the brain should be thought of as one. He answers questions about how non-therapists can use their own dreams to understand themselves more meaningfully and how therapist can make use of dreams in clinical work in new and exciting ways.

Pillow of Dreams (Nivedita Lakhera, 2017) is an intensely emotional and inspirational collection of poetry and art by Dr. Nivedita Lakhera. She experienced a stroke, divorce, and then a heartbreak all at the young age of 27. She is a doctor of Internal Medicine and is serving as a Hospitalist in San Jose, California. Her career in medicine has inspired some of her greatest work, such as a poem written about the last moments of life of a cancer patient she treated. In this book, she opens each section with a letter written to the reader. In these sections you will meet: Saibo – the one who loves, Meera- the one who yearns, Anahita-the one who heals, and Mulan – the one who conquers. One hundred percent of the book sale profits go towards developing telemedicine software for Syrian refugee camps, developing countries, tribal / remote areas and acute disaster situations. Her work has inspired many and she is a keynote speaker at multiple conferences. Jeremy Corr is the co-host of the hit Fixing Healthcare pod

What can the Weimar Republic teach us about how democracies fail? How could the same vibrancy that gave us cultural touchstones spawn Nazism? In his new book Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton University Press, 2018), Eric D. Weitz challenges the belief that the fledgling democracy was doomed to fail. In an encompassing examination of the short-lived republic’s political, economic, intellectual, and cultural life, Eric skillfully weaves vivid stories into a overarching narrative. History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and Weimar Germany has much to say that echoes in the here and now. Eric D. Weitz is Distinguished Professor of History and the former Dean of Humanities and Arts at the City College of New York (CCNY). He has been the recipient of many fellowships and awards including the German Academic Exchange Service, the Guggenheim Foundation, and National Endowment for the Humanities. Weitz’s academic work and public engagement covers the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and the

The Making of a Modern Art World: Institutionalization and Legitimization of Gouhua in Republican Shanghai (Brill, 2017) investigates the production and consumption of guohua (“national painting”) in Shanghai between 1929 and the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese war in 1937. Defining the art world as sociologically constructed, Pedith Chan’s systematically researched book focuses on collective practices of artists and art associations, periodicals, art colleges, exhibitions, and the art market, all of which contributed to the institutionalisation and legitimisation of guohua in Republican Shanghai. Based on extensive primary source material, Chan lays bare the modus operandi of a modern art world in Republican Shanghai. The book is an indispensable resource for anybody working in the field of 20th century Chinese painting, highlighting the changing hierarchies, networks and discursive practices that constituted Republican Shanghai guohua. Ricarda Brosch is a curatorial assistant at the Asian Art Muse

With the passage of the Secure Fence Act in 2006, the U.S. Congress authorized funding for what has become the largest domestic construction project in twenty-first century America. The result? Approximately 700 miles of fencing, barricades, and walls comprised of newly built and repurposed materials, strategically placed along the 1,954-mile international border between the United Mexican States and the United States of America. At an initial cost of $3.4 billion, the most current estimates predict that the expense of maintaining the existing wall will exceed $49 billion by 2032. Envisioned solely as a piece of security infrastructure—with minimal input from architects and designers—the existing barrier has also levied a heavy toll on the lives of individuals, communities, municipalities, and the surrounding environment. In Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (UC Press, 2017), Professor Ronald Rael proposes a series of architectural designs that advocate for the transformatio

If you open Dustin Parsons’ new book, you’ll find maps, figures, footprints, a floor plan, silhouettes of roadside birds, charts of riverbed topography, origami directions for an owl in twenty-six folds, and an anatomized dog. What might surprise you—that is, what might surprise you in addition to finding all of these illustrations in a single book—is that Parsons uses them to illustrate his experience of fatherhood, not only that of being a father to two sons, but also of being the son of a father who used similar illustrations in his own work as an oilfield mechanic, a welder, an auto mechanic, a woodworker, and a host of other trades. It’s called Exploded View: Essays on Fatherhood, with Diagrams (University of Georgia Press, 2018). From this fascinating view, Parsons gives us a highly unusual and highly moving memoir about what it means to be a father. He writes with the precision of an engineer and the lyrical sensibility of a poet, and this combination marks his keen viewpoint, one that allows him to br

Most people have heard of the Masters of Fine Arts–“MFA”–degree, but few know about the grueling process one must undergo to complete one. In Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice of Culture in MFA Education (University of Chicago Press, 2018), sociologist and ethnographer Dr. Gary Alan Fine asks how MFA students learn to make art and to speak intelligently about their work, how they become “artists” and what what it means to be an “MFA.” Gary Alan Fine is the James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. Fine has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Center for Advancement Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Institute for Advanced Study. Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

In Portraits in the Andes: Photography and Agency, 1900-1950 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), Jorge Coronado, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University, examines photography to further the argument that intellectuals grafted their own notions of indigeneity onto their subjects. He looks specifically at the Cuzco School of Photography (active in the southern Andes) to argue that photography, in its capacity as a visual and technological practice, can be a powerful tool for understanding and shaping what modernity meant in the region. Ryan Tripp teaches a variety of History courses at Los Medanos Community College. He also teaches History courses for two universities. He has a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Davis, with a double minor that includes Native American Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

“In Mao’s China, to curate revolution was to make it material.” Denise Y. Ho’s new book explores this premise in a masterful account of exhibitionary culture in the Mao period (1949-1976) and beyond. Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China (Cambridge University Press, 2017) argues that “curating revolution taught people how to take part in revolution,” and it develops that argument in a series of case studies that take readers into the local context of museums, revolutionary monuments, model neighborhoods, and more in Shanghai, while paying careful attention to the ways that the Shanghai case resonates with the larger scope of Maoist China as a whole. It’s a study that will be of interest to readers of Chinese history, museum studies, material cultures, and more. Enjoy! Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support

Queering Contemporary Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2017), Laura Kina and Jan Christian Bernabe gather artists and scholars whose work disrupts, challenges, and reimagines ways of being Asian and Asian American. Through nine original artist interviews and seven critical essays, the editors showcase contemporary artists who queer our conceptions of surveillance, affect, mixed race, and Asian America itself. In doing so, the editors remain interested in the queer disturbances within artworks that respond to racism and state violence, while also forming solidarities based on critical understandings of shared oppression. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

Why is the artist’s voice missing from cultural policy? In Artists’ Voices in Cultural Policy: Careers, Myths and the Creative Profession after German Unification (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Dr. Simone Wesner, a lecturer in arts management at Birkbeck, University of London, explores this question in the context of post-war and post-unification Germany. The book offers a wealth of detail on the German context, comparing two cultural policy regimes across Saxony, through a longitudinal study of a cohort of artists. Published as part of Palgrave’s New Directions In Cultural Policy Research series, the book offers new theoretical insights to cultural policy, particularly working with the idea of memory to help understand artistic careers as well as national and regional cultural policy. A fascinating read, the book will be of interest across media and cultural studies, as well as for historians, along with anyone interested in understanding the artist’s career and the artists’ role in society. Learn more about yo

Reginald Jackson’s inspiring new book takes a transdisciplinary approach to rethinking how we read, how we pay attention, and why that matters deeply in shaping how we understand the past, live in the present, and imagine possible futures. Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and The Tale of Genji Scrolls (University of Michigan Press, 2018) explores the relationship between reading, dying, and mourning across three central texts: the Heian period The Tale of Genji; the twelfth century Illustrated Handscrolls of the Tale of Genji (or, Genji Scrolls); and the twenty-first century Resurrected Genji Scrolls exhibition. The book’s analysis pivots on some key questions, including: “How does the desire to observe dying bodies potentially damage them?”; and “how do these deteriorating bodies in turn alter the texture of linguistic and visual representation?” The book addresses these questions while helping readers understand and appreciate calligraphy as a “kinetic medium” through which we might “chart the

Leopard print has a long history, as Jo Weldon shares in her new book, Fierce: The History of Leopard Print (Harper Design, 2018). In her illustrated text, Weldon chronicles the history of leopard print, situating it throughout popular culture. Starting in the early 1900s, Weldon examines the mass production of textiles and changes in the fashion industry to bring about the use of prints, colors, and patterns giving women more opportunities to use daring styles. In addition to fashion, Weldon explores influential individuals who changed popular culture with their choices in couture. Weldon’s book combines historical information about fashion, distinguishing features of large cats and large cat prints, and full color images of the compelling textile and its wearers. She argues that leopard print has been a powerful statement for women throughout history, adapting and changing to different fashion trends and technological advancements. Weldon’s book is a vivid illustration of a fashion statement that has not go

In Quilts and Health (Indiana University Press, 2017), Marsha MacDowell and her colleagues examine the phenomenon of health-related quilts, of which there are millions around the world. In fact, and as this book documents, almost any illness, disease, or condition is likely to be associated in some way with quiltmaking. Quilts are made to support health education and patient advocacy, to raise funds, to memorialize those passed, to promote personal well-being, and to comfort others in distress. Some quilts even document medical history; for example, Ohio-based quilter Helen Murrell created a piece that serves as a statement of outrage for the unjust treatment of 600 African-American men who, without their knowledge or consent, were subjected to a forty-year medical experiment of the United States government.  During the experiment, 399 men were deliberately infected with syphilis and were allowed to go untreated, even after a cure was developed. Quilts and Health explores the myriad connections that are forg

Did you catch that look? The theory of fabulousness is on the move. In his new book, Fabulous: the Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric (Yale UP, 2018), madison moore explores some of the sites where fabulousness is highly valued, such as the street, the catwalk, the club (including the line to get in), and the body itself. Our hour-long conversation references many personal experiences that capture the ephemeral quality of fabulousness, which can appear in any place, at any time, through any body. madison also speaks of his participation in and organization of the worlds that his scholarship extends. A running theme of our conversation is that fabulousness is never without risk. As he writes, “You can’t understand fabulousness unless you get that it emerges from trauma, duress, exclusion, exhaustion, and depression, and that in some ways being fabulous is the only thing that can get us out of bed in the morning.” There are, of course, groups of people who actively police fabulousness. But its self-making potentia