The Art Of The Real

Art of the Real is devoted to registering the materialist turn of contemporary theory in visual studies. For many years, visual studies was dominated by post-structuralist theory and its attendant nominalism. More recently, however, the materialism of Slavoj Žižek, the realism of Gilles Deleuze, especially as imputed by Manuel de Landa, and Alain Badiou has disrupted this status quo. Today, we are more likely to take for granted the relevance of biology and the natural sciences, while the return of Marx has been more serious than countenanced by Derrida or Foucault. This book considers visual studies and the questions that have led to the new materialism, its ontology and its relation to contemporary politics. While a good deal of work has promoted a materialist agenda at the same time that scholars in art history and visual studies have felt liberated by the call to attend to objects, materials and “materiality,” no publication has yet treated this move for its meta-theoretical commitments. This volume does this by addressing the conditions that have brought about the turn to materiality, the ontological commitments that follow on from new materialist metaphysics, and the political implications wrought by these commitments.

In The Return of the Real Hal Foster discusses the development of art and theory since 1960, and reorders the relation between prewar and postwar avant-gardes. Opposed to the assumption that contemporary art is somehow belated, he argues that the avant-garde returns to us from the future, repositioned by innovative practice in the present. And he poses this retroactive model of art and theory against the reactionary undoing of progressive culture that is pervasive today. After the models of art-as-text in the 1970s and art-as-simulacrum in the 1980s, Foster suggests that we are now witness to a return to the real—to art and theory grounded in the materiality of actual bodies and social sites. If The Return of the Real begins with a new narrative of the historical avant-gard, it concludes with an original reading of this contemporary situation—and what it portends for future practices of art and theory, culture and politics.

Before co-founding BH3 Management, a real estate company that has invested in more than $1.5 billion in commercial debt and equity, Daniel Lebensohn was a Jewish boy in 1970s Long Island interested in going on joy rides with his friends, getting into fist fights and chasing girls. After seeing his father's business savvy with rental properties, Lebensohn developed a new mission: to embrace a winning real estate mindset and become a world-class investor. From there, his dreams of writing the next Great American Novel gave way to legal and financial ambitions as he transformed from rebellious teenager to real estate success story. After bouncing back from an imploded startup during the dot-com bust and learning from one of the tri-state area's most prominent real estate dynasties, Lebensohn began using deal making as a creative outlet by artfully syndicating his own real estate deals and investing in distressed debt with his lifelong friends. Still, despite his success, a deeper artistic streak tugged at him. After relocating to Florida, Lebensohn and his business partners found the deal of a lifetime: an undeveloped island in the bay of Miami that their firm had carte blanche to build on. Bursting with ideas, he befriended muralists and commissioned local architects to bring his ultimate creative statement to life-until a multi-year lawsuit halted construction riled the entire city and threatened to destroy everything he and his partners had worked for. Authentic yet practical, The Art of the Real is a treasure trove of hard-earned wisdom about competing in the most cutthroat markets in the world without losing a sense of joy-or your childhood best friends. A real estate memoir like no other, Lebensohn takes readers on a fast-paced ride which proves that when it comes to business, nurturing lifelong relationships offers the greatest possible returns on sweat equity.

Focusing on intermediality, The Material Image situates film within questions of representation familiar from the other arts: What is meant by figuring the real? How is the real suggested by visual metaphors, and what is its relation to illusion? How is the spectator figured as entering the text, and how does the image enter our world? The film's spectator is integral to these concerns. Cognitive and phenomenological approaches to perception alike claim that spectatorial affect is "real" even when it is film that produces it. Central to the staging of intermediality in film, tableaux moments in film also figure prominently in the book. Films by Scorsese, Greenaway, Wenders, and Kubrick are seen to address painterly, photographic, and digital images in relation to effects of the real. Hitchcock's films are examined with regard to modernist and realist effects in painting. Chapters on Fassbinder and Haneke analyze the significance of tableau for the body in pain, while a final chapter on horror film explores the literalism of psychopathic tableau. Here, too, art and the body—images and the real—are juxtaposed and entwined in a set of relations.

Art in the Primary School is an introductory textbook, and a second edition to Teaching Primary Art, exploring the underpinning philosophy and pedagogy of teaching and learning art, including how and why digital tools and technologies can be integrated. This book considers practical aspects of teaching art, focusing on key processes of art making that children might experience in primary schools. It is based around the idea that digital tools and technologies can and should be integrated into the learning and teaching of art, exploring: What art is like in the primary school, why it should be taught and what is included in the curriculum How learning is planned, assessed, taught and supported in the classroom Learning about and from artists and how digital technology can be part of the art curriculum Key processes such as drawing, painting, printmaking, collage and textiles, working in three dimensions and making digital art Uniquely incorporating the use of digital devices, tools and technologies into the subject of art, this book will be essential reading for those training to teach and support learning in art in the primary school.

Yes you can! Give the gift of art. Give the gift of creativity. Give the gift of fun. Because now we can all paint with the best of them. Drawn from the annals of America's fondly remembered pastimes, Real Art! is an all-new, cleverly designed paint by number kit and the coolest gift of the season. Open the box and discover everything an artist needs to create a gallery of paintings suitable for framing--ten white "canvas" boards, 18 oversized pots of acrylic paint, and two brushes, one narrow and one medium. The images, newly created by artist Nancy Stahl, are iconic: a still life of luscious pears. A clipper ship in full sail. Tropical parrots in a study of exuberant hue. The geisha. The bustling street scene. And two bona fide masterpieces: van Gogh's Sunflowers and, yes, the Mona Lisa. Plus, pulling the full experience together is a 64-page full-color book of history, appreciation, and instruction. Illustrated throughout, it traces the canon of PBN subjects and artists, including the original brouhaha over its place in the culture; and provides a how-to-paint primer--including how to improvise, from choosing a varied color palette to leaving parts of the canvas blank, à la Warhol; plus tips on displaying your work and, ultimately, becoming a PBN collector.

Artists and critics explore the concept of Real Abstraction to help understand contemporary cultural production In the Mind, But Not From There: Real Abstraction and Contemporary Art considers how the Marxian concept of Real Abstraction--originally developed by Alfred Sohn Rethel, and recently updated by Alberto Toscano--might help to define the economic, social, political, and cultural complexities of our contemporary moment. In doing so, this volume brings together noted contemporary artists, literary critics, curators, historians, and social theorists who connect the concept of Real Abstraction with contemporary cultural production. Theoretical and artistic contributions from Benjamin Noys, Paul Chan, Joao Enxuto and Erica Love, Marina Vishmidt, Sven Lütticken, and many others help to map out the relationship between political economy and artistic production in the realm of contemporary, globalized cultural exchange. This anthology places economic and social analyses alongside creative projects and visual essays to consider the many angles of contemporary art, and how inquiry into the the production of abstraction through material and social processes can be used to better understand, and hopefully change, the conditions under which art is made, seen, and circulated today. Published in collaboration with [NAME] publications.

The Colors covers the past three decades of the American art scene, a period during which the prevailing artistic fashion has shifted as often as the focus of the Whitney Biennial, when art and money, talent and celebrity have often been confused. During this period, figures such as Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, and Keith Haring have crossed over from the rarefied world of high art into popular culture, and art dealers, like Hollywood power agents, have often claimed as much attention as those they represented. Anthony Haden-Guest has moved within this world, known the players, and delivers here an authoritative and deliciously inside account.Focusing on the lives and personalities of the art world's main players, and with a sure critical component, Haden-Guest gives us vivid portraits of the period's key artists as they strive to fulfill their ambitions. He does justice as well to the machinations of those who have come to control the larger drama -- the dealers, collectors, and museum curators. Filled with incredible anecdotes, dramatically told stories, and subtle critical assessments, True Colors tells the story of the art world that we have never heard before.