In this lucid and insightful essay, renowned linguist Roy Harris reflects on the early nineteenth-century doctrine of "art for art's sake". This was attacked by Proudhon and Nietzsche, but defended by Theophile Gautier and E. M. Forster. It influence...

"Galleries of Friendship and Fame" is the first comprehensive investigation of the origin, development, and practices of 19th-century American photograph albums. In this fascinating book, the author argues that the album – whether functioning as fami...

Not for sale in Estonia! Originally developed as an aid to professional herbalists, botanical illustration quickly blossomed into an art form in its own right. The first flower books were intended as medicinal guides, or else illustrated volumes th...

The smell of naphtha fuel in the air, nostalgia clenched to the banister - the ship Grande Atlantico smokes under immense skies, which clear up and cloud over as she voyages from Buenos Aires to Hamburg, stops at Paranagua, Santos and Rio. Crossing t...

The appearance during the first millennium A.D. of small, exquisitely carved artefacts of walrus ivory in the Bering Strait region marks the beginning of an extraordinary florescence in the art and culture of North America. The discovery in the 1930s...

Masks are an ancient tradition of the Alutiiq people on the southern coast of Alaska. Alutiiq artists carved the masks from wood or bark into images of ancestors, animal spirits, and other mythological forces; these extraordinary creations have been...

Gustav Klimt's decorative, seductive style, jewel-like colours, use of gold, patterns and sensuous lines, continue to captivate art lovers today. This lushly illustrated volume explores his fascinating artistic career, covering Vienna at the time of...

Here is a set of essays on Historia general del Piru that discuss not only the manuscript's physical components – quires and watermarks, scripts and pigments – but also its relation to other Andean manuscripts, Inca textiles, European portraits, and...

"Grand Scale" brings to light rare surviving examples of mural-size prints – a Renaissance art form nearly lost from historical record. The most famous sixteenth-century woodcuts, engravings, and etchings were those done on an intimate scale. Yet art...

Between 1979 and 1988, celebrated photographer Graciela Iturbide made a series of visits to Juchitan, Mexico, where – in her own words – she photographed the community and their way of life "in complicity with the people". Located in the state of Oax...