Edgar Degas

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[textos de] Alfredo Bryce Echenique ... [et al

Ciclo de conferencias sobre el fotógrafo peruano Martín Chambi (1891-1973). Del editor: "Martín Chambi es uno de los máximos exponentes de la fotografía mundial. Con su depurado estilo retrató a la sociedad peruana de las primeras décadas del siglo XX y el paisaje tópico y utópico de este país a caballo entre las tradiciones ancestrales y el deseo de modernización. Este libro de la Fundación Telefónica rinde un homenaje a Chambi con este ciclo de conferencias en el que Carlos Gollonet, comisario de la muestra expuesta en 2006 y director del ciclo, reúne a los más destacados estudiosos de la vida y obra del fotógrafo peruano."

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essay by Nicholas Capasso

"Bones of the Earth, Spirit of the Land, spans the twenty-five year career of the internationally recognized sculptor John Van Alstine. Beginning with early stone carvings reminiscent of Modernists such as Hans Arp and Constantin Brancusi, this book traces the rapid development of a style and themes centered on combining roughly hewn stone and metal. Van Alstine has an abiding concern for the land resulting in sculptures that "elicit meaning through their juxtapositions with existing landscapes, and also transform places from the mundane to the magical," according to Nicholas Capasso in his introductory essay. Also featured in this book are many of Van Alstine's drawings and early "easel paintings.""--BOOK JACKET.

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Jerome Silbergeld and Dora C.Y. Ching

The calligrapher and book artist Xu Bing has been called the most innovative Chinese artist of our time. As a citizen of both China and the United States and the first Asian-American artist to win the prestigious MacArthur Foundation "genius award," Xu Bing has fascinated and challenged audiences around the world with his imaginative textual art. From his 4,000 unreadable Chinese-looking characters, which unite Asian and Western audiences alike in an egalitarianism of induced illiteracy, to his invention of a "square words" language that makes "Chinese" readable by anyone at all, Xu Bing's use of language is at once artistically brilliant, highly entertaining, and profoundly subversive--a sharp-witted, masterly word-play that, in his own words, "strikes at the very essence of culture."In exhibitions on four continents, Xu Bing's printed art, mixed-media installations, and performance pieces--from books and calligraphic sculptures to inscribed pigs--have fascinated specialists and general audiences alike and generated a growing body of literature. This volume presents the first multidisciplinary study of Xu Bing's art and its intellectual implications. Included is an illuminating account by Xu Bing of his own work, as well as essays by leading scholars in a number of different fields.The essays address the place of this work within the long history of Chinese calligraphic practice, examine it in the context of Chinese intellectual dissidence, discuss Japanese avant-garde parallels, and judge it from a Western art-historical viewpoint.

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Tzvetan Todorov

Le discours soviétique officiel décrit progressivement la réalité du pays en termes qui ne correspondent pas à l'expérience commune, comme si les mots pouvaient créer les choses. L'importance de cette doctrine dépasse de loin le domaine esthétique, elle représente à l'état pur l'un des traits dominants de la société soviétique sous Staline car elle consacre le règne universel du mensonge". A la fois connaisseur de l'Union soviétique et grand penseur des oeuvres d'art, Tzvetan Todorov a souhaité éclairer les rapports idéologiques entre ceux qu'il nomme les "artistes créateurs" et le pouvoir politique à partir de la révolution d'Octobre.0Comment les artistes ont-ils annoncé la révolution ? Comment ont-ils ensuite obéi ou échappé au réalisme socialiste désireux d'annihiler toute création ? Todorov explore le destin d'artistes phares, Maïakovski, Pasternak, Boulgakov ou Mandelstam, et s'attarde sur le parcours singulier du peintre Kasimir Malevitch, dont la pluralité des voies artistiques fait écho à l'intensité de son engagement. Le Triomphe de l'artiste, c'est finalement le pouvoir de l'art sur celui qui veut sa mort.