Under what social conditions do particular sorts of arts and aesthetics arise and flourish, and under what conditions do they decline and disappear? What types of artistic and aesthetic practices exist outside of museums, galleries, and other high-cultural institutions? In what ways are social relations and broader cultural forces embedded within particular artworks, or specific artistic genres and forms? What roles can - and do - aesthetic orientations and artistic processes and products play in social life? In what ways are arts and aesthetics socially organized, regulated, distributed, and utilized? How are 'art worlds' connected to other major social institutions, such as politics and the economy, and has art become just an offshoot of consumer and celebrity culture? Serious work on dizzying questions such as these has a long pedigree, stretching back at least to the writings of Giambattista Vico and Madame de Sta'l in the eighteenth century. Very simply put, both these authors were concerned with tracing the manifold relations that can pertain between the arts - and, more broadly, 'aesthetics' - on the one hand, and 'society' on the other. Since then, social scientists in many disciplines have had compelling things to say about art and aesthetics. In some disciplines - such as anthropology - this is a fact of long standing, while in others - like human geography - it is of more recent provenance. But the most striking recent surge of interest in the area has taken place in sociology, where never before have cultural forces and phenomena been so centrally on the research agenda. Addressing the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of this rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of scholarly literature, "Art and Aesthetics" is a new title in the Routledge series, "Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences". Edited by two leading scholars, this new Major Work from Routledge brings together in four volumes foundational and the very best cutting-edge scholarship to provide a synoptic view of all the key issues and current debates. In particular, this new collection brings together for the first time the most important research on how social relations are embodied in artistic and aesthetic products and processes, and how these in turn can affect social life and societal organization. Rooted in sociology, but also embracing a broad range of diverse contributions from other disciplines - such as anthropology, philosophy, art history, cultural studies, media studies, film studies, gender studies, and postcolonial studies - "Art and Aesthetics" demonstrates the great vitality of this area of research and teaching. It highlights both how social scientists are increasingly developing sophisticated ways of understanding artistic and aesthetic issues, and also how scholars in the humanities are drawing upon social-scientific ideas and methods in order more fully to engage with such matters than hitherto was possible. [+]

Featuring a multi-disciplinary approach that reflects the growing importance of the concept of performance across a variety of disciplines, this collection is the first to bring together the key texts articulating perspectives on performance and performativity. The set includes an original introduction contextualizing the growth of this field, and a full index.

Catalog of exhibition "dedicated to the artists of the Ashcan tradition who were inspired by New York"

Richard Meier founded his office in 1962 and almost immediately established his presence as an architect of international stature. He was awarded a Pritzker Prize in 1984 and Gold Medal from the RIBA in 1989, and has won several honour awards from the American Institute of Architects, among other international honors. Meier was one of a group of young East Coast practitioners known in the early 1960s as the "New York Five" who returned - controversially at the time - to the formal and stylistic issues of modernism, in Meier's case with buildings influenced by the white forms and geometries of the International Style. (Others in the group were Charles Gwathmey, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, and Michael Graves) He began his professional career designing houses renowned for their simplicity and meticulous detail, like the Douglas House, built on a spectacular wooded site overlooking Lake Michigan in 1973 and recognized by its gleaming white finishes, tubular-steel balustrades, and large plate-glass windows. Meier's signature style crystallized with The Athenaeum in New Harmony, Indiana (1975-79), a visitor and community centre clad in bright white panels of enamelled steel. During the 1980s he further elaborated this style, characterized not only by white cladding but also by layers of wall and window planes, interpenetrating ramps, and clean, modern spaces filled with light. Meier's career continued to soar in the next decade, and he completed the High Museum in Atlanta and the Grotta House in New Jersey (1989) as well as a number of high-profile commissions in Europe, including the Canal+ Television Headquarters in Paris (1992), the Hypolux Bank Building in Luxembourg (1993), and the City Hall and Library in The Hague (1996). This book presents Meier's work up to his most recent projects, including the Department of Art History and Fine Arts Library at Yale University in Connecticut (in design), the Burda Collection Museum in Baden-Baden, Germany (under construction), and the Canon Headquarters, Tokyo (2002). In recent years Meier has incorporated new materials and techniques like curved, precast concrete for the Jubilee Church (Church of the Year 2000) in Rome, and for a private house in Katonah, New York, cladding of glass louvres and stainless-steel rods.