Author: Sergiusz Michalski
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Keywords: art, books, essays, reaktion, culture, bondage, monuments, political, public
Number of Pages: 256
Published: 1998-12-01
List price: $24.95
ISBN-10: 1861890257
ISBN-13: 9781861890252

Public monuments to significant individuals or to political concepts are all too familiar. But the notions underlying them are not so obvious. Sergiusz Michalski traces the history of the public monument from the 1870s, when erecting them became an artistic, political and social pre-occupation, to today when the distinction between public monuments and public sculpture is increasingly blurred. The author shows how, in its golden age – up until 1914 – the public monument served the purpose of both education and legitimization. The French Third Republic, for example, envisaged the monument a

Author: Joachim Schlor
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Keywords: city, dream, aviv, tel
Number of Pages: 340
Published: 1999-06-15
List price: $34.00
ISBN-10: 1861890338
ISBN-13: 9781861890337

In Tel Aviv – From Dream to City Joachim Schlör brings the reader closer to this "most talked about city." The author interviewed numerous inhabitants and gathered information from books, travel accounts, newspaper articles and memoirs. He looks at the city from its origins right up to the present: Tel Aviv as a centre of immigration that contains reminders of each immigrant’s mother country; as a catalyst between East and West; and – not least – as a place of transformation for Jews who fled the Nazi terror.

Author: Marion Copeland
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Keywords: cockroach
Number of Pages: 208
Published: 2004-04-15
List price: $19.95
ISBN-10: 186189192X
ISBN-13: 9781861891921

In Cockroach we discover the extraordinary natural history, symbolism and cultural significance of a poorly understood and much-maligned insect. Traditionally a loathed pest, a food delicacy and a valued source for cures in folk and homeopathic medicine; nowadays, the cockroach has a much broader appeal-as evidenced by the annual World Championship Cockroach Races held in Brisbane, Australia, and the Cockroach Hall of Fame in Texas. In addition to the positive roles it has played in a number of recent works of fiction, the cockroach is also an inspiration for graphic artists, modelers and phot

Author: Craig Clunas
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Keywords: china, envisioning, asia, dynasty, ming, sites, garden, culture, fruitful
Number of Pages: 240
Published: 2004-04-15
List price: $18.00
ISBN-10: 0948462884
ISBN-13: 9780948462887

This innovative, beautifully illustrated book grounds the practices of garden-making in Ming Dynasty China (1368-1644) firmly in the social and cultural history of the day. Craig Clunas provides a rich picture of a complex cultural phenomenon, one that was of crucial importance to the self-fashioning of the Ming elite.Craig Clunas is the Percival David chair of Chinese art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and the author of Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China (Reaktion, 1997).

Author: Juan Ramirez
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Keywords: corbusier, gaudi, metaphor, beehive
Number of Pages: 224
Published: 2000-05-01
List price: $45.00
ISBN-10: 1861890567
ISBN-13: 9781861890566

Since time immemorial, bees have been associated with all manner of virtues. The beehive has served as the model for an ideal society, while honey and wax have provided the basis for countless positive metaphors of sweetness and productivity. The natural architecture created by bees in their hives can be said to approach perfection. In The Beehive Metaphor, Juan Antonio Ramírez shows how this lucid modular structure had a considerable influence on the architects and artists who founded the Modern movement. Models from both traditional and "modern" or "rational" apiculture were studied and rei

Author: Stephen Barber
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Keywords: space, locations, urban, cinema, cities, projected
Number of Pages: 224
Published: 2003-03-01
List price: $16.00
ISBN-10: 186189127X
ISBN-13: 9781861891273

In their depiction of the city, movies carry a multiplicity of means through which to reveal elements of culture, architecture, and history. Projected Cities surveys the connections between cinematic images and cities, with particular focus on the urban cinema cultures of Europe and Japan. It explores urban film imagery at moments of turmoil and experimentation, and assesses the impact of contemporary media culture on the movie. Projected Cities is an illuminating examination of urban and cinema history, and will appeal to all readers engaged with the city, film, and contemporary culture.The T

Author: Norman Bryson
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Keywords: essays, books, art, culture, reaktion, life, overlooked, four, looking, painting
Number of Pages: 168
Published: 2004-08-01
List price: $24.95
ISBN-10: 094846206X
ISBN-13: 9780948462061

In this, the only up-to-date critical work on still life in any language, Norman Bryson analyses the origins, history and logic of "still life," one of the most enduring forms of Western painting. The first essay is devoted to Roman wall painting while in the second the author surveys a major segment in the history of still life, from seventeenth-century Spanish painting to Cubism. The third essay tackles the controversial field of seventeenth-century Dutch still life. Bryson concludes in the final essay that the persisting tendency to downgrade the genre of still life is profoundly rooted in