The Modern Ideal

The Modern Ideal PDF Author: Paul Greenhalgh
Publisher: Victoria & Albert Museum
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
Over the last three centuries the world has been modernized. From the first stirrings of industrialism to the definitive arrival of globalization, artists, craftspeople and designers have engaged with modernization in order to make sense of the transformations it continually imposes. They have been, by turns, brutally critical and profoundly idealistic about the ongoing state of things. The Modern Ideal explores the idea of modernity, returning it to its historical context and showing how theory and practice in the modern visual arts emerged over three centuries. Concepts which are central to the meaning of modernity are explained, including style, modernization, progress, ideology and universality, and movements across all disciplines are discussed, from neoclassicism to postmodernism. The rise of idealism in the modern visual arts is also explored- the attempt to create a definitive, positive style that was capable of transforming not only art but society as a whole, became the obsessive quest of succeeding generations of artists, architects and designers. By dealing with issues at large in the contemporary art and design scene, and by speculating about the next phase of modern practice, the book identifies the collapse of idealism in the modern arts as being of central concern today.

The Modern Ideal

The Modern Ideal PDF Author: Paul Greenhalgh
Publisher: Victoria & Albert Museum
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
Over the last three centuries the world has been modernized. From the first stirrings of industrialism to the definitive arrival of globalization, artists, craftspeople and designers have engaged with modernization in order to make sense of the transformations it continually imposes. They have been, by turns, brutally critical and profoundly idealistic about the ongoing state of things. The Modern Ideal explores the idea of modernity, returning it to its historical context and showing how theory and practice in the modern visual arts emerged over three centuries. Concepts which are central to the meaning of modernity are explained, including style, modernization, progress, ideology and universality, and movements across all disciplines are discussed, from neoclassicism to postmodernism. The rise of idealism in the modern visual arts is also explored- the attempt to create a definitive, positive style that was capable of transforming not only art but society as a whole, became the obsessive quest of succeeding generations of artists, architects and designers. By dealing with issues at large in the contemporary art and design scene, and by speculating about the next phase of modern practice, the book identifies the collapse of idealism in the modern arts as being of central concern today.

The Ideal Book

The Ideal Book PDF Author: William Morris
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520345223
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

Perfect Me

Perfect Me PDF Author: Heather Widdows
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691197148
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book Here

Book Description
How looking beautiful has become a moral imperative in today's worldThe demand to be beautiful is increasingly important in today's visual and virtual culture. Rightly or wrongly, being perfect has become an ethical ideal to live by, and according to which we judge ourselves good or bad, a success or a failure. Perfect Me explores the changing nature of the beauty ideal, showing how it is more dominant, more demanding, and more global than ever before.Heather Widdows argues that our perception of the self is changing. More and more, we locate the self in the body--not just our actual, flawed bodies but our transforming and imagined ones. As this happens, we further embrace the beauty ideal. Nobody is firm enough, thin enough, smooth enough, or buff enough-not without significant effort and cosmetic intervention. And as more demanding practices become the norm, more will be required of us, and the beauty ideal will be harder and harder to resist.If you have ever felt the urge to "make the best of yourself" or worried that you were "letting yourself go," this book explains why. Perfect Me examines how the beauty ideal has come to define how we see ourselves and others and how we structure our daily practices-and how it enthralls us with promises of the good life that are dubious at best. Perfect Me demonstrates that we must first recognize the ethical nature of the beauty ideal if we are ever to address its harms.

The Bauhaus Ideal Then and Now

The Bauhaus Ideal Then and Now PDF Author: William Smock
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 0897335902
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Bauhaus Ideal is both a picture book and a guidebook to the fascinating and enduring legacy of modernist design, and to the continuing influence of Bauhaus on interior design—not just on architecture, but also on furniture, glassware, tableware, and kitchen utensils: the whole range of domestic arts. This unique volume introduces modern design principles and examines them from an historically critical perspective. It concludes with some ideas for melding modern solemnity with postmodern irony. And in each phase the illustrations speak as eloquently as the text—the whole serves as a beautifully illustrated design memo.

The Pursuit of the Ideal

The Pursuit of the Ideal PDF Author: Menachem Kellner
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438408684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Get Book Here

Book Description
Steven Schwarzschild—rabbi, socialist, pacifist, theologian, and philosopher—is both the last of the major medieval Jewish philosophers and the most modern. He is in the tradition of the Jewish thinking that began with Sa'adia Gaon and reached its highest expression in Maimonides. These thinkers believed that Judaism must confront some systematic view of the universe. Sa'adia did this with Kalam, ibn Gabirol with Neo-Platonism, and Maimonides with Aristotelianism. Schwarzschild does it with Neo-Kantianism. From this confrontation, Schwarzschild derives important insights into the nature and structure of contemporary Judaism and Jewish existence in the post-modern world. Menachem Kellner brings together thirteen of Schwarzschild's Jewish (as opposed to straightforwardly philosophical) writings. Included are important discussions of messianism, death of God theology, ethics, aesthetics, and politics. The common concerns underlying these essays are Neo-Kantian idealism and messianism. In an afterword written especially for this book, Schwarzschild shows that these two foci are really one. In an introductory essay, Menachem Kellner explores the philosophic underpinning of Schwarzschild's non-Marxist socialism, pacifism, and messianism; and of his critiques of Christianity, political conservatism, and Zionism.

The Brahmavâdin

The Brahmavâdin PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Hinduism
Languages : en
Pages : 798

Get Book Here

Book Description


Women and the Ideal Society

Women and the Ideal Society PDF Author: Natalie Harris Bluestone
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Book V of Plato's Republic, Socrates proposed that in an ideal society the most capable men and women must rule together equally. But as Natalie Harris Bluestone demonstrates in this cogent study, for generations the most influential classicists, historians of philosophy, and political theorists have ignored or rejected the idea of Philosopher Queens--of women serving as equal partners in the guiding of a just society. She also argues that in recent years many feminist writers, while correcting previous misconceptions, have allowed their sexual politics to distort their discussion of Plato's text. In confronting both male and female biases, Bluestone addresses some of the most debated issues of our time. She questions whether women have special qualities that make them naturally better or worse equipped for leadership than men, arguing convincingly against sociobiological views of gender differences. In defending the predominance of reason as the arbiter of excellence and the key to justice, she offers a spirited critique of current feminist theory. Her writing is personal, sometimes humorous, and yet rigorously analytic, as she reveals the difficulties inherent in philosophical discussions involving gender, the prevalence in the academy of discrimination against women, and the continuing importance of the issues Plato raised in the Republic.

Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman

Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman PDF Author: Tabitha Kenlon
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 1785273159
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
The longest-running war is the battle over how women should behave. “Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman” examines six centuries of advice literature, analyzing the print origins of gendered expectations that continue to inform our thinking about women’s roles and abilities. Close readings of numerous conduct manuals from Britain and America, written by men and women, explain and contextualize the legacy of sexism as represented in prescriptive writing for women from 1372 to the present. While existing period-specific studies of conduct manuals consider advice literature within the society that wrote and read them, “Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman” provides the only analysis of both the volumes themselves and the larger debates taking place within their pages across the centuries. Combining textual literary analysis with a social history sensibility while remaining accessible to expert and novice, this book will help readers understand the on-going debate about the often-contradictory guidelines for female behavior.

The Perfect Nine

The Perfect Nine PDF Author: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620975262
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book Here

Book Description
A dazzling, genre-defying novel in verse from the author Delia Owens says “tackles the absurdities, injustices, and corruption of a continent” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s novels and memoirs have received glowing praise from the likes of President Barack Obama, the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, and NPR; he has been a finalist for the Man International Booker Prize and is annually tipped to win the Nobel Prize for Literature; and his books have sold tens of thousands of copies around the world. In his first attempt at the epic form, Ngũgĩ tells the story of the founding of the Gĩkũyũ people of Kenya, from a strongly feminist perspective. A verse narrative, blending folklore, mythology, adventure, and allegory, The Perfect Nine chronicles the efforts the Gĩkũyũ founders make to find partners for their ten beautiful daughters—called “The Perfect Nine” —and the challenges they set for the 99 suitors who seek their hands in marriage. The epic has all the elements of adventure, with suspense, danger, humor, and sacrifice. Ngũgĩ’s epic is a quest for the beautiful as an ideal of living, as the motive force behind migrations of African peoples. He notes, “The epic came to me one night as a revelation of ideals of quest, courage, perseverance, unity, family; and the sense of the divine, in human struggles with nature and nurture.”

Tree of Smoke

Tree of Smoke PDF Author: Denis Johnson
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374279127
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 638

Get Book Here

Book Description
Once upon a time there was a war . . . and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American. That’s me. This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong—and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by the grace of God, this is a story like nothing in our literature. Tree of Smoke is Denis Johnson’s first full-length novel in nine years, and his most gripping, beautiful, and powerful work to date. Tree of Smoke is the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Fiction.