Author: Gordon d'Venables
Publisher: Vanguard Press
ISBN: 9781784658939
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
Rhys Curtis is a decorated soldier and part of a special operations unit in the defence force; as far as he is concerned, the unit has a membership of one. Curtis has recurring nightmares of his father physically assaulting his mother. Whilst on holiday in Thailand, Curtis is instructed to join with an MI6 agent known as 'The Rat'. Their immediate task is to protect a woman aspiring to the Thai prime ministership, to thwart an attempted assassination. The impact of his childhood experiences make this mission personal. Are there targets in more than one country, an international network of fanatics? Another image haunts him: an image crossing several countries that appears to be a symbol of aggression, a symbol worshipped by misogynists. The mystery behind the image may be revealed at the Roman baths in the city of Bath, England. Can Curtis solve the puzzle and prevent the assassination?
Author: Jennifer Dasal
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143134590
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
A wildly entertaining and surprisingly educational dive into art history as you've never seen it before, from the host of the beloved ArtCurious podcast We're all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you also know that Monet and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? And while you probably know the tale of Vincent van Gogh's suicide, you may not be aware that there's pretty compelling evidence that the artist didn't die by his own hand but was accidentally killed--or even murdered. Or how about the fact that one of Andy Warhol's most enduring legacies involves Caroline Kennedy's moldy birthday cake and a collection of toenail clippings? ArtCurious is a colorful look at the world of art history, revealing some of the strangest, funniest, and most fascinating stories behind the world's great artists and masterpieces. Through these and other incredible, weird, and wonderful tales, ArtCurious presents an engaging look at why art history is, and continues to be, a riveting and relevant world to explore.
Author: Jonathan Miles
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 1555848672
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
A “thrilling . . . captivating” account of the most famous shipwreck before the Titanic—a tragedy that inspired an unforgettable masterpiece of Western art (The Boston Globe). In June 1816, the Medusa set sail. Commanded by an incompetent captain, the frigate ran aground off the desolate West African coast. During the chaotic evacuation a privileged few claimed the lifeboats, while 147 men and one woman were herded aboard a makeshift raft that was soon cut loose by the boats that had pledged to tow it to safety. Those on the boats made it ashore and undertook a two-hundred-mile trek through the sweltering Sahara, but conditions were far worse on the drifting raft. Crazed, parched, and starving, the diminishing band fell into mayhem. When rescue arrived thirteen days later, only fifteen were alive. Among the handful of survivors were two men whose bestselling account of the maritime disaster scandalized Europe and inspired promising artist Théodore Géricault, who threw himself into a study of the Medusa tragedy, turning it into a vast canvas in his painting, The Raft of the Medusa. Drawing on contemporaneously published accounts and journals of survivors, The Wreck of the Medusa is “a captivating gem about art’s relation to history” (Booklist) and ultimately “a thrilling read” (The Guardian).
Author: Rosie Hewlett
Publisher: Silverwood Books
ISBN: 9781800420663
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
Gorgon. Killer. Monster. Victim. Survivor. Protector. Medusa breathes new life into an ancient story and echoes the battle that women throughout millennia have continued to wage.
Author: David Leeming
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780231334
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 130
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Book Description
With her repulsive face and head full of living, venomous snakes, Medusa is petrifying—quite literally, since looking directly at her turned people to stone. Ever since Perseus cut off her head and presented it to Athena, she has been a woman of many forms: a dangerous female monster that had to be destroyed, an erotic power that could annihilate men, and, thanks to Freud, a woman whose hair was a nest of terrifying penises that signaled castration. She has been immortalized by artists from Leonardo da Vinci to Salvador Dalí and was the emblem of the Jacobins after the French Revolution. Today, she’s viewed by feminists as a noble victim of patriarchy and used by Versace in the designer’s logo for men’s underwear, haute couture, and exotic dinnerware. She even gives her name to a sushi roll on a Disney resort menu. Why does Medusa continue to have this power to transfix us? David Leeming seeks to answer this question in Medusa, a biography of the mythical creature. Searching for the origins of Medusa’s myth in cultures that predate ancient Greece, Leeming explores how and why the mythical figure of the gorgon has become one of the most important and enduring ideas in human history. From an oil painting by Caravaggio to Clash of the Titans and Dungeons and Dragons, he delves into the many depictions of Medusa, ultimately revealing that her story is a cultural dream that continues to change and develop with each new era. Asking what the evolution of the Medusa myth discloses about our culture and ourselves, this book paints an illuminating portrait of a woman who has never ceased to enthrall.
Author: Jennifer Hedgecock
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429590482
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
This project studies the patterns in which the Medusa myth shapes, constructs, and transforms new meanings of women today, correlating portrayals in ancient Greek myth, nineteenth- century Symbolist painting, and new, controversial, visions of women in contemporary art. The myth of the Medusa has long been the ultimate symbol of woman as monster. With her roots in classical mythology, Medusa has appeared time and again throughout history and culture and this book studies the patterns in which the Medusa myth shapes, constructs, and transforms new meanings of women today. Hedgecock presents an interdisciplinary and broad historical “cultural reflections” of the modern Medusa, including the work of Maria Callas, Nan Goldin, the Symbolist painters and twentieth-century poets. This timely and necessary work will be key reading for students and researchers specializing in mythology or gender studies across a variety of fields, touching on interdisciplinary research in feminist theory, art history and theory, cultural studies, and psychology.
Author: Joan Holub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1442485957
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Seeking to become immortal like the other Goddess Girls, Medusa searches for a magical necklace, an effort that is compromised by her mean reputation, her snaky hair, and unexpected consequences.
Author: Marjorie Garber
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136635416
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
Ranging from classical times to pop culture, this collection will appeal to art historians, feminists, classicists, cultural critics, and anyone interested in mythology.
Author: Albert Alhadeff
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
Author: Thomas Albrecht
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438428693
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 179
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Book Description
Examines images of horror in Victorian fiction, criticism, and philosophy. Focusing on the recurring metaphor of Medusas head, The Medusa Effect examines images of horror in texts by Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and a series of Victorian artists and critics writing about aesthetics. Through nuanced and innovative readings of canonical works by Freud, Nietzsche, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater, A. C. Swinburne, and George Eliot, Thomas Albrecht demonstrates the twofold nature of these writers images of horror. On the one hand, the analysis illuminates how the representation of something seen as horrifyingfor instance, a disturbing work of art, an existential insight, or a recognition of the fundamental inaccessibility of another persons consciousnesscan serve a protective purpose, to defend the writer in some way against the horror he or she encounters. On the other hand, the representations themselves can be a potential threatepistemologically unreliable, for instance, or illusory, deceptive, fundamentally unstable, and potentially dangerous to the writers. Through a psychoanalytically informed literary analysis, The Medusa Effect explores crucial ethical and epistemological questions of Victorian aesthetics, as well as underexamined complexities of the mechanisms of Victorian literary representation. an elegant study in rhetorical analysis. Victorian Studies Thomas Albrecht brings a radically different approach to aestheticspsychoanalytic and poststructuralist rather than historicistin The Medusa Effect. Studies in English Literature
