Art Was Their Weapon

The politics, art and culture of Perth's Workers Art Guildare detailed in this comprehensive history, as well as the personal andprofessional lives of some of the movement's key figures.The Workers' Art Guild was a left-leaning political force andinfluential cultural movement of the 1930s and 1940s in Perth. Policeand intelligence arms kept close tabs on the Guild and its members,jailing some and intimidating many others prior to and during theperiod of the banning of the Communist Party in Australia.The book covers the personal and professional lives of key figuressuch as writer Katharine Susannah Prichard and theatre maverickKeith George, while charting the influence of the Communist Party onWestern Australian artists.

One of the country's leading activist curators explores how corporations and governments have used art and culture to mystify and manipulate us. The production of culture was once the domain of artists, but beginning in the early 1900s, the emerging fields of public relations, advertising and marketing transformed the way the powerful communicate with the rest of us. A century later, the tools are more sophisticated than ever, the onslaught more relentless. In Culture as Weapon, acclaimed curator and critic Nato Thompson reveals how institutions use art and culture to ensure profits and constrain dissent--and shows us that there are alternatives. An eye-opening account of the way advertising, media, and politics work today, Culture as Weapon offers a radically new way of looking at our world.

"The history of political graphics is really the history of mass graphic reproduction. The whole course of its development is traced here though a vast number of engravings, prints, leaflets, posters, caricatures, and periodical illustrations. The book also examines the changing modes of political graphics over the last five hundred years ... through an analysis of more than four hundred significant examples arranged according to both chronology and theme"--Dustjacket.

The Indonesian talent for harmoniously blending indigenous styles with the arts of the Asian mainland has given rise to fighting arts that are among the most fascinating in the world. Preserved in music, dance, and art as—well as in ritual, tribal law, and mythology—the fighting arts of Indonesian archipelago play a central role in Indonesian culture. Weapons and Fighting Arts of Indonesia — a profusely illustrated and well researched work from renowned scholar and martial arts teacher Donn F. Draeger — provides a comprehensive introduction to the sophisticated forms of empty-hand combat and myriad unique weapons that characterize Indonesian fighting styles like Pentjak-silat and Kuntao. Draeger shows how the forms are related to their mainland cousins, provides a historical context for their development, and describes the combat methods of Menangkabau warriors, Alefuru headhunters and the Celates pirates. With over 400 illustrations, Weapons and Fighting Arts of Indonesia is an indispensable addition to any martial artist's library.

In an introductory essay, David Shapiro appraises the roots and achievements of Social Realism, providing an overall framework within which the source material that follows can be understood. Was Social Realism only a response to the economic collapse of the 1930s, or was it part of a continuing American art tradition? A primary selection of documents -- ranging from Hugo Gellert's exultant" We Capture the Walls" (1932) to Oliver Larkin's retrospective "Common Cause" (1949) -- fixes the period's social and aesthetic background. It includes spirited contributions by Diego Rivera, Meyer Schapiro, Stuart Davis, and others. A second selection of documents focuses on five major Social Realists -- Philip Evergood, William Gropper, Jacob Lawrence, Jack Levine, and Ben Shahn -- for closer study. This section includes individual biographical outlines, personal statements by the artists, and representative critical analyses of their work. The book concludes with an especially compiled list of major Social Realists, an extended bibliography, and a detailed index. Includes ten reproductions. --! From book jacket.