Bøger af Eleanor Heartney

Offering a radical rewriting of the history of contemporary art from a feminist perspective, four distinguished authors explore the lineages of performance, abstraction, craft and ecofeminism in ways that reveal the debt these important genres owe to the work of pioneering women artists. The painters, sculptors and performance artists featured here have shaped ideas now dominating the art world: the vulnerability of the environment, the rise of activist art, the challenge to the reign of high technology (including digital culture), and the development of a new language of abstraction. Having demolished the linear narrative of modernism, the privileging of a white male ethnocentric vision, the division of high and low art and the separation of art from larger social issues, feminist artists laid the groundwork for the globalised, multi-media, postmodern art world of today. Illustrated with a spread of work from the last sixty years (and including contextual discussion of earlier practitioners), this book makes a compelling case for placing feminist art and artists at the heart of contemporary art.

"Doomsday Dreams" uses international contemporary art as a lens to explore the allure, dangers and positive potential of present day apocalyptic thinking. Apocalypse is a double-edged concept, balanced between hope and despair, simultaneously encouraging the pursuit of justice and a starkly dualistic sense of good and evil. It underlies populist liberation movements and explains the attraction of authoritarian leaders. The artists discussed in "Doomsday Dreams" reflect on the ways that the modern world has been profoundly shaped by millennia-old conceptions of history as a struggle to the death between the forces of good and evil. These artists' draw on apocalyptic symbols grounded in religious conceptions of judgment, retribution, redemption and sin. They employ these ideas to ask: Why has Apocalypse become the fallback position when we are faced with calamity? How does it shape the way we deal with the world? When is Doomsday a useful metaphor and when does it foreclose more hopeful possibilities? These questions have profound implications for contemporary society. Ideas that originated in ancient Zoroastrianism and spread to the three monotheistic religions continue to define our reality today. The apocalyptic cults emerging within radical Islam are one manifestation, as are western obsessions with the "clash of civilizations." So is rhetoric of the Alt-Right that has gained currency since Donald Trump's election. Apocalyptic thinking impacts our debates over climate change, pandemics, immigration, and technology. It also underlies the popular fascination with Zombies, Armageddon and renewed fears of nuclear holocaust. The artists discussed in "Doomsday Dreams" come from diverse religious backgrounds. They employ many different media and exhibit varying degrees of religious belief. Together, they reveal how art can help us understand the complicated ideas and irresolvable contradictions that surround "Doomsday Dreams." This book brings together for the first time cultural studies, theology, world history, politics and philosophy. Heartney explores End Times symbolism, metaphor, irony and allegory in contemporary art and shows how artists are addressing the fearsome challenges that face us in a time of social, political and sectarian upheaval.

During the 1990s the United States was embroiled in deeply divisive Culture Wars. In this redesigned, re-edited, illustrated new edition of the classic study Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art, cultural commentator Eleanor Heartney offers a radically original interpretation of the extraordinary cultural and political battles that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Postmodern Heretics reexamines this period from the perspective of religion revealing how the most controversial artists of that time came almost without exception from Catholic backgrounds. This book clarifies for the first time how the culture of Catholicism shaped the 1990s Culture Wars. Postmodern Heretics also challenges conventional wisdom about the relationship between contemporary art and religion. By examining the myriad ways that Catholicism has worked its way into the creations of a wide swath of contemporary visual artists; this book undermines Modernist assumptions about the inherent antagonism between creativity and religious faith. A newly researched introduction brings this cultural history up-to-date for our current deeply conflicted times. The Culture Wars have flared up again, pitting Red against Blue, urban against rural, white against non-white and agnostic against believer. By revealing the Catholic roots of some of today's most important contemporary artists, "Postmodern Heretics" suggests how a more nuanced understanding of religion provides new insight into art while helping us heal our cultural divisions.

Internationally acclaimed artist Dale Chihuly¿s site-specific installations in the form of architectural commissions and exhibitionsForty years of Dale Chihuly¿s spectacular site-specific glass installations are captured in this large-format publication examining architectural commissions, temporary art installations, and museum exhibitions around the world. Chihuly¿s installations on walls, windows, ceilings, stairways, courtyards, and fountains are closely examined. Chihuly and Architecture explores entire rooms and galleries, glasshouses and castles, and travels from the canals of Venice to the Citadel in the Old City of Jerusalem, providing rare insight into Chihuly¿s inspiration and global footprint.

Amy Bennett: Small Changes Every Day is the first book on the work of US born artist Amy Bennett. Working with common themes such as transition, aging, isolation and loss, her work shows the fragility of relationships and people's awkwardness in trying to coexist and relate to one another.

War and disaster have shaped the first years of the twenty-first century, both in the United States and throughout the world. This title includes works that consider the ways in which war and conflict around the world affect - or fail to affect - our everyday life.

A long overdue broad-ranging study of one of Australia's leading contemporary artists, featuring works from over two decades.