Art : History

Rogues in the Gallery is a lively and informed account of the causes - and limited cures - of the epidemic of art thefts. It charts the classic outbreaks, portrays the rich gallery of protagonists, and defines what means there are to combat the disease. But even with sophisticated computers and Interpol, the total elimination of art theft is unlikely. As long as auction prices continue to rise and inflation devalues savings, the theft of precious objects will flourish. The lure of easy money is at the root. This is a serious book on an urgent problem, especially for those who collect art. more...

Price: $9.95

"Sacred gaze" denotes any way of seeing that invests its object - an image, a person, a time, a place - with spiritual significance. Drawing from many different fields, David Morgan investigates key aspects of vision and imagery in a variety of religious traditions. His lively, innovative book explores how viewers absorb and process religious imagery and how their experience contributes to the social, intellectual, and perceptual construction of reality. Ranging widely from thirteenth-century Japan and eighteenth-century Tibet to contemporary America, Thailand, and Africa, The Sacred Gaze discusses the religious functions of images and the tools viewers use to interpret them. Morgan questions how fear and disgust of images relate to one another and explains how scholars study the long and evolving histories of images as they pass from culture to culture. An intriguing strand of the narrative details how images have helped to shape popular conceptions of gender and masculinity. The opening chapter considers definitions of "visual culture" and how these relate to the traditional practice of art history. Amply illustrated with more than seventy images from diverse religious traditions, this masterful interdisciplinary study provides a comprehensive and accessible resource for everyone interested in how religious images and visual practice order space and time, communicate with the transcendent, and embody forms of communion with the divine. The Sacred Gaze is a vital introduction to the study of the visual culture of religions. more...

Price: $15.95

In The Scar of Visibility, Petra Kuppers examines the use of medical imagery practices in contemporary art, as well as different arts of everyday life. Among the works she investigates are the controversial Body Worlds exhibition of plastinized corpses, films like David Cronenbergs Crash that fetishize body wounds, representations of the AIDS virus on CSI: Crime Scene Investigations, and the paintings of outsider artist Martin Ram’rez. more...

Price: $90.00

Step inside Michael Bell's antiquarian bookshop, stocked with rare and fine collectibles of infinite variety, from Book of Blank Maps, With Instructions, to Autobiography of the Best Abused Man in the World. By perusing these curious works from bygone times, inquiring readers will be rewarded with instruction on such rarely understood pursuits as Single-Handed Cruising and Girls' Interests. A treasure trove of the best of bookmaking, here is a library of laughs. more...

Price: $11.99

Sight Unseen explores how racial identity guides the interpretation of the visual world. Through a nimble analysis of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century paintings, photographs, museums, and early motion pictures, Martin A. Berger illustrates how a shared investment in whiteness invisibly guides what European Americans see, what they accept as true, and, ultimately, what legal, social, and economic policies they enact. more...

Price: $15.95