Charles Harrison

Arguing that the representation of women in art was crucial to the character of modernity, the author traces the history of female subjects as they began to gaze out of the picture to confront and engage their viewers.

Charles Harrison was the first African-American industrial design manager of a major corporation in the world. His talent and skill helped to improve the quality of life for millions of Americans. The range of design projects that Harrison completed in his career was quite remarkable. A Life's Design gives us insight into a world that few others have seen.

"Since it was first published in 1992, this book has become one of the leading anthologies of art theoretical texts in the English-speaking world. This expanded edition includes the fruit of recent research, involving a considerable amount of newly translated material from the entire period, together with additional texts from the last decades of the twentieth century"--Back cover.

A documentary that looks at women as artists, as subjects of paintings by both male and female artists, and the roles of and discrimination against women artists historically. Charles Harrison and Trish Evans analyze female subjects painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, and others to explore male and female points of view as represented by the artists. Only one per cent of the paintings in the National Gallery's historical collection are by women artists. This programme offers two ways of explaining this statistic -- firstly that women in the past were deprived of the opportunity to become artists; and secondly, that the artistic vision and legacy of women is still being discriminated against.

These essays by art historian and critic Charles Harrison are based on the premise that making art and talking about art are related enterprises. They are written from the point of view of Art & Language, the artistic movement based in England -- and briefly in the United States -- with which Harrison has been associated for thirty years. Harrison uses the work of Art & Language as a central case study to discuss developments in art from the 1950s through the 1980s. According to Harrison, the strongest motivation for writing about art is that it brings us closer to that which is other than ourselves. In seeing how a work is done, we learn about its achieved identity: we see, for example, that a drip on a Pollock is integral to its technical character, whereas a drip on a Mondrian would not be. Throughout the book, Harrison uses specific examples to address a range of questions about the history, theory, and making of modern art -- questions about the conditions of its making and the nature of its public, about the problems and priorities of criticism, and about the relations between interpretation and judgment.

Art in Theory 1815-1900 is the most wide-ranging and comprehensive collection of documents ever assembled on 19th century theories of art. Like its highly successful companion volume, Art in Theory 1900-1990, this indispensable volume provides the documentary material for informed and up-to-date study. Its 236 texts, clear organization, and considerable editorial content help to create the essential guide to art theory of the period. The anthology also provides a view of the wider cultural debates of the 19th century, and the development of modern aesthetic theories.Art in Theory combines writings by artists, critics, philosophers, and literary figures — some reprinted in their entirety, others excerpted from longer works. About 1/3 of the material is composed of new translations, with texts drawn from French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Russian sources. It examines a broad range of themes including concepts of genius and originality, modes of landscape painting, approaches to Realism, the question of Modernity and debates over Impressionism, theories of optics and color, the aesthetics of photography, and the rise of photography. Each section is prefaced by an essay that situates the ideas of the period in their historical context, while relating theoretical concerns and debates to developments in the practice of art. Each text is briefly introduced by an outline giving the circumstances of its original appearance and indicating its relevance to the development of modern artistic theory. An extensive bibliography is also provided.

"Art in Theory 1815-1900 provides the most wide-ranging and comprehensive collection of documents ever assembled on nineteenth-century theories of art."--Amazon.com.