Edwin Mellen Pr.
The Actors Studio and Hollywood in the 1950s; a history of theatrical realism.
Beguiristain (film, Miami Dade College, Florida) presents a critical theory to account for a series of films that are generally ignored completely or mentioned only briefly in passing, partly because of their dubious artistic merit, but also because there was no way to discuss them academically. He discusses the interaction of a particular set of social, political, and economic conditions at the time, and how the common personal attitudes and stances found their way into the work of artists who moved in the same circles. The term Theatrical Realism is his own. The representative films he looks at are The Rose Tattoo, The Bachelor party, Edge of the City, A Face in the Crowd, and The Pawnbroker. The iconic stills, however, come from many others as well. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Ancestral spirits embodied in Ekpu figurines of the Oron people; a study in Nigerian traditional art.
Onyile (art history and graphic design, Georgia Southern U.) examines the art history and history of Ekpu ancestral figures of the Oron people. He aims to reconstruct this history, as it exists mostly in oral accounts. Onyile grew up in the culture and also uses interviews with those in the community to make his argument. He describes the Oron people and the importance of the Ekpu figure in their society, its meaning and definition, analysis of their physical attributes, styles of carving, and visual symbolism. He also explores the roles of secret and political institutions in relation to Ekpu history, including the all-male Ekpe Association, the Inam institution, and the nka age. Oron religious and cultural values were taken over by the Primitive Methodist mission, he notes, and discusses the transformation of Ekpu ancestral figures from Oron ritual object to museum object to an icon of national unity. B&w photos are included. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Architecture and regional identity in the San Francisco Bay area, 1870-1970.
Some are Victorian painted ladies, still holding court on steep and narrow streets. Others blend organically into the hillsides or reflect the bay in their banks of windows. Bernard (history, Corinthian Colleges, Inc.) perceives these buildings as regional artifacts from their construction as early as the mid-1850s to the beginnings of the Bay Tradition from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. He also analyzes the modern pastoral of the Bay Tradition and the International style as expressed in the era of modernism, and the new artifacts that help define the old from the 1940s to the 1970s. One of the most interesting passages compares the Bay Tradition to forms of modernism expressed in other regions. Bernard supplies snapshots of archetypal buildings for each era. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Augustus Welby Pugin, designer of the British Houses of Parliament; the Victorian quest for a liturgical architecture.
Pugin greatly admired the work of Savonarola, perhaps because the famous Inquisitor sought out and corrected the encroachment of wrongful thoughts within faith while Pugin felt a compulsion to do the same for architecture. Pugin longed for the day when Anglicanism would return to the Roman Church, and his architectural work and writings reflected his increasing desire for orthodoxy and the powerful and beautiful place of worship. Powell (research fellow, Harris Manchester College, Oxford) casts her architect's eye upon the stones Pugin thereby had assembled and his literary works designed to re-establish architecture as an act of liturgy, a place created by man to reflect God's revelation. She closely analyzes Pugin's treatises and books, explaining how they fit within his life and his thought, shows how his themes grew and developed and how they were received by his peers, and offers an impressive bibliography. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Categorizing twentieth-century film using Northrop Frye's Anatomy of criticism; relating literature and film.
It took a nineteenth-century critic Hamilton (English and modern languages, Liberty U.) explains Frye's cyclical phases of comedy and irony, comedy and romance, romance and tragedy, romance and comedy, tragedy and romance, tragedy and irony, irony/satire and comedy and irony, satire and tragedy, using an elliptical schema invented by no less than Roger Ebert. As he works through dozens of films in all the phases and categories, Hamilton shows how each fits within the schema and relates to other examples located there, explaining the phase's characteristics against the framework set up by Frye's Anatomy of Criticism. The films, which range from military classics and Hollywood histories to classic and modern Westerns, film noir, romantic comedies, and even Revenge of the Nerds, serve to illustrate how Frye's unique approach to the written also applies so well to the filmed. The result, despite the complicated nature of Frye's work, is both agile and accessible. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The cinematic art of Eliseo Subiela, Argentine filmmaker.
In this collection of articles on one of the stars of the art house circuit, contributors examine Subiela's control of his themes, his innovations and unusual uses of characters, and his subtle but strong impact on Hispanic cinema. Subilea is himself a contributor with a modest piece on his life's work, and a range of academics critique his transnational appeal, use of meta-narrative and ideas about masculinity, disappearance, the meaning of the fantastic, rhetoric, journeys and arrivals, technology, nostalgia, false memory, the postmodern, and the subconscious. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Contemporary Mexican cinema, 1989-1999; history, space, and identity.
Haddu (Latin American studies, U. of London, UK) presents a study of the Mexican "new cinema" of the 1990s. She first examines historical narratives in close analyses of such films as Rojo amanecer, El bulto, La ley de Herodes, Cabeza de Vaca, and La otra conquista. She then discusses the new visibility of women in Mexican cinema, as demonstrated by the works of directors María Novaro, Marya Sistach, Dana Rotberg, Geita Schyfter, and Busi Cortés. Finally, she explores representations of space and location in the border cinema of El jardín del edén, the urban cinema of Sólo con tu pareja, and the rural cinema of La mujer de Benjamin. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Explaining imagism; the imagist movement in poetry and art.
Wacior (English and Commonwealth literature, John Paul II Catholic U., Lublin) begins by exploring the modernist mutations and context that informed the imagist movement in both poetry and art. Then he looks at imagist poets in each year between 1914 and 1917. A final chapter looks at hybrids and intertext involving photography and cinema, painting, sculpture, and music. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
How East Asian films are reshaping national identities; essays on the cinemas of China, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong.
In presenting this collection of 13 essays exploring East Asian cinema, editors Jackson (a student of Korean history at London U., UK), Gibb (East Asian Cinema, City U. of Hong Kong, China), and White (Tokai Gakuen U., Japan) de-emphasize the recent focus on Western globalization and modernization as shapers of Asian identity and instead focus issues of national and regional identity and history and trans-regional cultural flows since 1945. Topics discussed include thematic concerns of natural culturalism in Shohei Imamura's Narayamabushi-kô (The Ballad of Narayama); history and national myth in filmic portrayals of China's Opium War; cinematic representations of the Chinese Cultural Revolution; responses to modernity in South Korean film; portrayals of the Mainland Chinese "Other" in Hong Kong commercial film; representations of Japanese minorities in recent Japanese film; cinematic cooperation between China and Hong Kong, and discourse of regionalism in Dong fang bu bai 2: zhi feng yun zai qi (The East is Red) and Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
How to respond to strangeness in art; four studies in the unfamiliar.
Greene (art, North Carolina State U.) grapples with issues regarding works of art that depict an engagement between two elements or cultures that are significantly different. His case studies are Mahler's music and neo-Daoist poetry; Ming landscape paintings; the Iranian rug in European interior design; and textiles, architecture, and narratives from Guatemala. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A life of Frederick, Prince of Wales, 1707-1751; a connoisseur of the arts.
The late art historian Vivian was undoubtedly motivated to research the life of Frederick, Prince of Wales, because of his reputation as a patron of the arts who sponsored artists who had immigrated to England, including Amigoni and Jean Baptiste Vanloo, and such important figures of English Rococo as John Wootton, Philip Mercier, and Joseph Goupy, but her biography of the son of King George the II and father of King George III also explores other aspects of his life, including his contentious relationship with his parents, his political activities, and his personal relationships. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Manet, Baudelaire and photography; v.2.
In this 2-volume analysis (the volumes are sold separately), Ligo (Davidson College, North Carolina) argues that Manet's approach was mainly influenced by the aesthetic theory of Charles Baudelaire, which argued for the use of non-art to present art, achieved by Manet with techniques garnered from the new medium of photography. Using an exhaustive analysis of Manet's iconography to support this thesis, Ligo presents a novel and detailed chronological discussion of the artist's career. There are copious b&w illustrations, but of indifferent quality. Oversized: 9x11.25 inches. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Manet, Baudelaire and photography; v.1.
In this 2-volume analysis (the volumes are sold separately), Ligo (Davidson College, North Carolina) argues that Manet's approach was mainly influenced by the aesthetic theory of Charles Baudelaire, which argued for the use of non-art to present art, achieved by Manet with techniques garnered from the new medium of photography. Using an exhaustive analysis of Manet's iconography to support this thesis, Ligo presents a novel and detailed chronological discussion of the artist's career. There are copious b&w illustrations, but of indifferent quality. The index and bibliography are in Volume 2. Oversized: 9x11.25 inches. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The miniature and the gigantic in Philadelphia architecture; essays on designing the city to human scale.
Read (architecture, Florida International U.) considers scale and measure in the architectural traditions of Philadelphia, focusing on instances when architects manipulated urban scale to engage a "larger mythic narrative." She posits that architecture defines the city spatially and rhetorically and traces four traditions of its poetic, or symbolic, scale: traditions of dimension and proportion, miniature architecture in the skyline, and architectural framing. The book is aimed at architects and social urban historians. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The modernist-utopian art of Karl Momen, b. 1934; a Persian-Russian-American life.
Momen's work extends from his roots in Iran and his secular life, with acknowledgment of his experience among third-wave modernists in Russia, Europe and the US. Du Toit (research, Brigham Young U. of Art) includes 40 illustrations in his account of Momen's passage, including his association with Utopianism and constructivism, his life as a secular Iranian, his search for the modernist influence in Russia, Europe and the US, his development of a personal iconography, his close association with Utah, and the consequences of a life lived wholly for art. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Museum, gallery and cultural architecture in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific region; essays in Antipodean identity.
Ostwald (architecture, U. of Newcastle, Australia) and Fleming (history and theory of architecture, U. of Newcastle, Australia) bring together a collection of essays that analyze major pieces of architecture in Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific for the link between architectural expression and cultural identity. The nine studies are by contributors from that region and look at museums, galleries, and cultural centers — the Sydney Opera House, the Museum of New Zealand, the National Museum of Australia, the Eltham Library, Federation Square, and others — and how they express cultural and national identity. Most of the buildings have recently been completed. The volume is aimed at scholars of architectural studies, urban design, museology, and cultural theory. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Narrative voices in Russ Meyer's films; a cacophony of carnality.
Sevastakik (communication, College of Mount Saint Vincent, New York) looks at the narrative discourse — the place of expression as opposed to the plane of content — in Meyer's signature soft-porn films. He argues that the audiences of the films have a sense of an all-pervasive presence, a determinate intelligence and moral sensibility that has selected, ordered, rendered, and expressed the cinematic materials in a particular way. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Nationalism versus cosmopolitanism in German thought and culture, 1789-1914; essays on the emergence of Europe.
The anthology was inspired by a symposium held in conjunction with the March 2001 exhibit Spirit of an Age at the National Gallery in London. Looking at such cultural productions as poetry, music, and architecture, scholars examine the contrast between and surprising overlap between calls for a German nation state and a vibrant Europe during the long 19th century. Quotations are in German with English translation. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Renaissance in China; the culture and art of the Song dynasty.
Bao (communication, Sichuan Normal U., China), Liao (China Research Academy of Art, China), and Lane (a retired professor of English and art) have produced a straightforward account of the artistic productions of China's Song Dynasty (907-1279) that provides some historical and intellectual background and otherwise focuses on the works of the most prominent cultural producers of the 300-year period. Chapters examine accomplishments in landscape painting; religious, flower-bird, and figure paintings; calligraphy; architecture and sculpture; religious architectural and sculptural arts; and ceramics production and other crafts. There is also a pair of chapters that focuses specifically on Song Hui Zong and the Empire Academy of painting and Su Shi and the Literati-painting of the Song era. Brief discussion of the art preceding and subsequent to the Song dynasty is included, along with a chronology; an annotated guide to some of the art literature of the period; and biographical entries on artists, critics, and other important figures from the Song Dynasty. Also included are 50 plates illustrating representative paintings, calligraphy, architecture, and sculpture discussed in the text; unfortunately, although the illustrations themselves are quite nice, the quality of some of the reproductions is not great. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Representation of the cultural revolution in Chinese films by the Fifth Generation filmmakers; Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Tian Zhuangzhuang.
Chen (mass communication, Providence U., Taiwan) and Haque (mass communication and journalism, U. of Southern Mississippi, US) examine filmic portrayals of the Chinese Cultural Revolution by "fifth generation" filmmakers Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang, and Zhang Yimou in their respective films Farewell, My Concubine, The Blue Kite, and To Live. Close readings of these films are used to advance the argument that fictional narratives on the screen are able to accurately portray historic events, albeit in a different manner form documentary films. In advancing this argument, they also consider the differences between Chinese and Western depictions of the Cultural Revolution and put forth a theory about the connections between film and history. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The use of classical art and literature by Victorian painters, 1860-1912; creating continuity with the traditions of high art.
Just as Victorian art came to that certain age when it was sent piece by piece into obscurity in the less-prestigious museums and galleries, so did the knowledge behind many of their inspirations and themes based on classical references and allusions to archeological discoveries. Here Barrow (classical art and reception, Rochampton U.) resurrects that knowledge in her analysis of the Victorian artists neglected in the push to document everything even remotely Pre-Raphaelite. Using 15 well-chosen samples of line art and five color plates she analyzes the Victorian take on Roman history and the historical genre, including considerations of decadence, images ranging from the aforesaid archeological studies to sculpture and drapery and the nude, mythology in the form of Roman religion and Greek ritual, and the workings of new appreciation of Homer, Latin love poetry and contemporary verse in high art. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Using computers to create art; implications for artists and art educators.
As the century progresses and new technology becomes accessible to even the least technological, artists are learning to incorporate the digital into what had previous been their entirely hand-made work, either as elements within the composition as a theme or as the media itself. Writing for those who practice and teach visual arts, Bowen (communication, culture and information technology, U. of Toronto at Mississauga) thoughtfully describes the ways artists are creating art with computers. Drawing on case studies of visual artists, Bowen seeks connections between the work of art and the new media, the connections with culture and old and new modalities, the change of the studio space the pace of work, new attitudes of artists about uniqueness and communication, the emergence of the artist as cyborg hybrid, and new pedagogy among art educators. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
