ANDY GOLDSWORTHY: TOUCHING NATURE DESCRIPTION 
 A new and revised edition of our best-selling book on Andy Goldsworthy. A completely rewritten exploration of the sculptor, updated to include recent works such as Night Path (2002) and Chalk Stones (2003) in Sussex, Three Cairns (2002) on the American East and West coasts, Stone Houses (2004) and Garden of Stones (2003) in Gotham, Passage (2005) in London, and Slate Domes (2005) in Washington, DC. Known as a ‘land’, ‘earth’, ‘nature’ or ‘environmental’ artist, Andy Goldsworthy works with(in) nature. He uses natural materials in natural shapes and forms often set in natural contexts (but also in cities, towns, parks, sculpture parks, and many spaces created or adapted by people). FROM THE INTRODUCTION In the 1990s, Andy Goldsworthy’s art began to rise in popularity: the glossy coffee table book Stone became a bestseller (bear in mind it was then priced at $55). In 1994 Goldsworthy took over some West End galleries with a large one-man show. In 1995 he was part of an intriguing group show at the British Museum (Time Machine), creating sculptures, along with Richard Deacon, Peter Randall-Page and others, in amongst the monumental statuary of the famous Egyptian Hall. Also in 1995, Goldsworthy designed a set of Royal Mail stamps (and again in 2003). Digne in France became an increasingly important Goldsworthy location, with shows in 1995, 1997 and 2000). Prestigious commissions occurred in the US from the mid-1990s onwards. For instance: the giant Wall at Storm King Art Center in 1998; the Three Cairns on the East and West Coasts and Iowa in 2001-02; the ‘stone houses’ at the Metropolitan Museum in Gotham in 2004; the monument to the Holocaust (also in New York) in 2003; and the slate domes in Washington, DC in 2005. Goldsworthy continues to work in countries such as Japan, Australia, Holland, Canada, North America and France (with France and the US becoming primary centres of Goldsworthy activity), but his home ground of Dumfriesshire in Scotland remains (at) the heart of his work. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY William Malpas has written books on Richard Long and land art, as well as three books on Andy Goldsworthy, including the forthcoming Andy Goldsworthy In America. Malpas’s books on Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy are the only full-length studies of these artists available.

Andy Goldsworthy: Touching Nature (Sculptors)

Arts & Photography

Malpas, William

Sculpture

Crescent Moon Pub

DESCRIPTION A book exploring the world of J.R.R. Tolkien in over 800 pages. Part one of this book focusses on J.R.R. Tolkien’s texts, principally those dealing with his ‘secondary world’ of Middle-earth. Part two explores the 2001-03 Hollywood movies of The Lord of the Rings, with a scene-by-scene analysis of the three films. Part of this book explores the influence of the Tolkien industry, in areas like computer gaming, merchandizing and cinema. EXTRACT FROM THE INTRODUCTION Philip Toynbee declared, in 1961, that Tolkien’s ‘childish books had passed into a merciful oblivion’, a wonderful statement, just a tad inaccurate. In 1997, The Lord of the Rings was voted the top book of the 20th century by readers in a British bookstore’s poll (Waterstone’s). 104 out of 105 stores and 25,000 readers put The Lord of the Rings at the (1984 was second). Around 100 million copies of The Lord of the Rings had been sold by the end of the twentieth century, and 60 million copies of The Hobbit, with sales of around 3 million per year of the two books combined. Readers just love reading Tolkien’s books. It’s that simple. You can’t force people to buy books or go see movies; there’s isn’t a magic formula (or ruling ring) to hypnotize readers and consumers (if there was, it’d be worth billions). And the Tolkien phenomenon began with readers. Back in 1937, 1954 and 1955, the publishers Allen &amp; Unwin did their bit, of course, with reviews, blurbs, advertizing and so on, promoting The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but it was readers who first started the phenomenon that has become truly global. Tolkien’s influence on literature has been considerable, too, and not just in the realm of fantasy, sci-fi, fairy tales and related genres. As fantasy author Terry Brooks said, Tolkien ‘was the premier fantasy writer of the last century, and all of us writing today owe him a huge debt.’ No other writer W.H. Auden reckoned had ‘created an imaginary world and a history in such detail’. Colin Wilson agreed that only a few writers have concocted a total universe, and that Tolkien’s was very impressive. Tolkien’s mythological writings may be the ‘largest body of invented mythology in the history of literature’, according to David Day (12). Invented, that is, by one person. It’s also ‘certainly the most complex and detailed invented world in all literature’ (13). JEREMY MARK ROBINSON Jeremy Robinson has written many critical studies, including Steven Spielberg, Arthur Rimbaud, Jean-Luc Godard, and The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, plus literary monographs on: J.R.R. Tolkien; Samuel Beckett; Thomas Hardy; André Gide; Robert Graves; and Lawrence Durrell.

J.r.r. Tolkien: The Books, the Films, the Whole Cultural Phenomenon, Including a Scene by Scene Analysis of the 2001-2003 Lord of the Rings Films

Literature & Fiction

ROBINSON, JEREMY MARK

History & Criticism

FRANK STELLA  A study of the American abstract artist Frank Stella (b. 1936), surveying his career from the famous Black Paintings of the late 1950s up to the present.  Stella has become become among America’s premier contemporary artists. Unlike many 20th century artists, Stella has always worked in abstraction. His art is irrepressible, daring, hugely enjoyable, and refreshingly angst-free. This book begins with the celebrated Black Paintings of 1959, moves on through the Minimalist Copper and Aluminium paintings of the early Sixties, to the exuberant Protractor series, the expansion into three dimensions in the 1970s, and closing with the 3-dimensional Polish Village, Exotic Birds and Brazilian ‘maximalist’ works of the 1980s and 1990s. Employing the most up-to-date art criticism of Frank Stella, James Pearson also looks at Stella’s contemporaries: Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Morris Louis, Robert Ryman, Brice Marden, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman among others. ? ? EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER 5  There does not seem to be much going on in some of Frank Stella’s 1960s Minimal paintings. But there is, in fact, a lot going on. Stella limits himself to a narrow set of rules. Like Brice Marden, Barnett Newman, Morris Louis and Mark Rothko, Stella sets himself to explore a few configurations of painting. But these things – the shape of the canvas, internal organization of the stripes, colour of the bands – offer up endless permutations.   Frank Stella’s paintings are lean, but leanness does not necessarily mean unfeelingness. This is the problem that monochrome painting creates, and Minimal art in general. Certainly Stella is intense: his Black Stripe Paintings, his Protractor series, his copper paintings, his India Birds, are intense works of art.   The Stella exhibitions of the late 1980s and early 1990s were affairs, in which one was impressed by a sense of colour and light, a spaciousness to the works, and a huge scale, so that each work dominated the gallery rooms. Stella is in no way a quiet, unobtrusive artist: his paintings are domineering, self-confident, assured of their own effects. Stella has always been an artist who knows what he’s doing. His paintings do not lurk in gallery corners, shyly. His paintings announce themselves instantly and powerfully. Stella’s June-July 1985 show at the ICA in London was typical: massive multi-media works were squeezed into the ubiquitous sparse white rooms, completely taking over the sedate spaces.

Frank Stella: American Abstract Artist

Pearson, James

KURT JACKSON  A new book about the British landscape painter Kurt Jackson (b. 1961).   The text has been completely updated.   EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER 4:   One of Kurt Jackson’s appealing concepts is that the ocean is one of the last true wildernesses left on the planet. It’s an idea that I found very interesting when he explained it to me when we first met in St Just. I took it that he meant a spiritual as well as an ecological or natural wilderness. Jackson’s art can thus be seen as an art that is the border region between humanity and nature, between culture and nature, as well as literally tackling that area – the coast – which is neither land nor sea.   Note that Kurt Jackson is always facing outwards from the land, and looking towards the ocean, not painting with his back to the sea, and looking towards the land (and notice that the many boats and ships and helicopters and such in this area are left out of the paintings, too).   So Jackson’s Porth series, about Priest Cove, and all of his sea paintings, are very important in his art in articulating this idea of the ocean as the last wilderness. ‘Have you ever wondered what’s out there?’ is a question that Kurt Jackson asks (it’s the title of one of his major paintings, too – the centrepiece of the Porth series).   Jackson has repeated the question over a number of related works: the title of two 2004 pieces is The Last Wilderness In Western Europe? This was painted on Jura (in Scotland), and both pictures are consciously emptied of human marks – just empty moorland and a delicate blue sky. An earlier picture, part of the Cape series, was entitled Do You Ever Wonder What’s Out There? (1999) – an unusual composition in the Jackson oeuvre which puts the horizon very high, and focusses on the dark blue ocean flecked with white spray.   Kurt Jackson isn’t that interested in many of the connotations of the ocean – the moon, time, goddesses, rebirth (though moons do appear in his art from time to time). He’s not really interested in religious or pagan or magical symbols in that way. And he’s not that interested in shipping, fishing, and all things maritime, like J.M.W. Turner was.   But when Jackson asks a question like ‘have you ever wondered what’s out there?’, and considers the sea as one of the last wildernesses, that alters the interpretation of his sea paintings. It doesn’t apply to all of them, though: in plenty of paintings (and not only the smaller or more modest ones), Jackson is not thinking in terms of big themes. But when he titles a painting Have You Ever Wondered What’s Out There? (and writes the title in big letters across the painting), it’s clearly intended to resonate in the viewer at a deeper level.

Kurt Jackson: Painting-Sea-Sky-Light-Land-Cornwall

THE ART OF ANDY GOLDSWORTHY 
 This is the most comprehensive and detailed study of British artist Andy Goldsworthy, and is the only full-length exploration of Goldsworthy and his art available anywhere. Fully illustrated, with a revised text. Bibliography and notes. EXTRACT FROM THE CHAPTER ON GOLDSWORTHY’S LEAFWORKS It is the leafworks that are the most colourful of Andy Goldsworthy’s sculptures. What the leaf sculptures show is how beautiful the colours of nature are: Goldsworthy shows the viewer these subtle colours by contrasting one leaf with another. Maple patch grouped the red/ orange/ yellow of Japanese maple leaves together; Poppy leaves contrasted the red poppy leaves against the mid-green of an elderberry bush; a Stone Wood sculpture of 1992 consisted of poppy leaves wrapped around a hazel branch, the red constrasting vividly with the wet green leaves; Dock Leaves interwove red leaves in green grass stalks. Two sycamore leafworks of 1980 and 1981 are very simple: a leaf black from cow shit is placed against pale Autumn leaves; another leaf, bleached white, is set down on a bed of dark leaves. He pins together two colours of sycamore leaves (sycamore is a favourite Goldsworthy medium) in Sycamore leaf sections (1988), and hangs the line of leaves from a tree. Shot with the sun behind them, the photograph of the leaves shows them glowing green and gold, the two classic colours of poetry and alchemy. The Autumnal colours of course connote nostalgia, decadence, sensuality, Romanticism, time passing, the decay of the year, and so on, all those things John Keats wrote about in his ‘Ode: To Autumn’, and in a billion other poets’ art. Goldsworthy’s aim in the leaf pieces, though, draws attention to the fragility and delicacy of leaves, as well as their strength and function. A leaf, after all, is a complex biological factory, so the natural scientists say. ‘There is a whole world in a single leaf’, remarked Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy’s leafworks do not have a scientific agenda. Rather, they celebrate the presence of leaves, the being-in-the-world of leaves, so to speak. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY William Malpas has written books on Richard Long and land art, as well as three books on Andy Goldsworthy, including the forthcoming Andy Goldsworthy In America. Malpas’s books on Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy are the only full-length studies of these artists available.

The Art of Andy Goldsworthy: Complete Works (Sculptors)

RAINER MARIA RILKE: Dance the Orange: Selected Poems   translated by Michael Hamburger and edited by Jeremy Mark Robinson   This new collection includes poems taken from the time of the great German poet's New Poems through the Duino Elegies to the last pieces. These are some of Rainer Maria Rilke's best works; they are intense, compact, lyrical and lucid, by turns erotic, heartfelt and mystical. Hamburger's excellent translations have the German original facing each poem.     Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of the greatest of all lyrical poets. Rilke is part of that group of European poets and writers which includes Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Rimbaud, Georg Trakl, Marina Tsvetajeva, and friends such as Andre Gide, Lou Andreas-Salome and Paul Valery.     Rilke was an incredibly inventive creator of poetry, who could forge the myriad states and images of love, from the delicate, detailed and subtle, to the passionate, illuminating and ecstatic.     Rilke was adept at inflecting language with blissful tones: while he could describe the many experiences of love, he found it difficult to turn them into realities, to act on his words. For him love could be a transitory, fragile state between two people. 'Why do people who love each other separate before there is any need? Because it is after all so very temporary a thing, to be together and to love one another'. Rilke saw life as a 'continuous flow of vicissitudes', change following change, so that parting was inevitable, and people should become used to it ('at any moment be ready to give each other up, let be and not hold each other back'. 

Dance the Orange: Selected Poems

RILKE, RAINER MARIA

Poetry

Critical study of Thomas Hardy 's novel Judge the Obscure with up-to-date literary and feminist theory.

Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure: A Critical Study (Media, Feminism, Cultural Studies)

Elvy, Margaret

COSMO WOMAN    This is one of the few full-length explorations of the ‘women’s magazine’ market. Focussing on Cosmopolitan magazine, Oliver Whitehorne considers every aspect of the women’s magazine, from themes and issues to images and style. The feminism in women’s magazines is discussed in detail, and is related to second wave feminism and third wave or ‘postmodern’ feminism.     As well as Cosmopolitan, the author also studies many other magazines in the women’s magazine market, and related magazines, such as lifestyle magazines and men’s magazines.     The author looks at the use of advertizing and consumerism in women’s magazines and other lifestyle and consumer magazines, drawing on many examples of ads which are deconstructed in detail.      EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER TWO, “THE COSMO WOMAN”    Let’s start with the typical front page of Cosmopolitan. As with most other women’s magazines, Cosmopolitan features a woman, a model, smiling. It’s not a movie star, or someone with a name (the model, we see inside, is called ‘Rohini’. Models/ supermodels are known by their first names: Naomi, Claudia, Kate). The imagery of the woman is ‘positive’, ‘exuberant’, ‘young’, ‘tanned’, ‘smart’, ‘in control’, ‘self-confident’. The photographs on the covers of women’s magazines speak of healthy living, clean-washed clothes, where white is truly sparkling white. Teeth are perfect. There are no wrinkles or unsightly flabby bits of skin. The models’ skin is blemishless. Jewellery is perfect and there are no ‘bad hair’ days for cover stars. This woman is nameless but she is also ‘Cosmo woman’, centrepiece of the image chosen to sell this month’s issue of the magazine. The model is selected to portray the mood and aims of the magazine, and to leap out of the other magazines on the racks. She is, of course, also the mirror of the audience, but a stylized, idealized mirror. The cover of Cosmo shows the would-be buyer and audience what they could be like. It is a piece of advertizing, the magazine cover. It invites the browser into the world of the magazine. It has to make a direct and instantaneous appeal to the potential buyer. Booksellers know that the most important aspect of a book’s sales potential is its cover. Magazines have developed cover design to a refined artform, and each magazine has its house style, its code of subtle laws that consumers read in a very sophisticated manner. There may not be much to read on the cover, but it takes a while to really explain and understand the significance of every aspect of a cover. Like a movie poster or a burger bar menu, a magazine cover is a highly stylized product (physical details of the magazine cover include type size, shape and colour; size and texture of paper; the sell-lines; the lay-out; it’s also crucial where the magazine is displayed – high or low, or next to particular magazines). 

Cosmo Woman: The World of Women's Magazines

Politics & Social Sciences

Whitehorne, Oliver

Social Sciences

FRA ANGELICO     FRA ANGELICO, known by various names, including Fra Giovanni Beato Angelico da Fiesole (1399?-1455), is one of the very few painters of the Italian Renaissance who painted religious pictures exclusively. Almost all Angelico’s paintings are religious – he did not paint secular portraits, like, say, Giovanni Bellini or Ghirlandaio. It was Vasari who stressed Angelico’s purity, holiness, faith, humility and devout nature, and this description of Angelico as a holy monk-like painter persists throughout the centuries. John Ruskin called Angelico ‘an inspired saint’.        It is in San Marco in Florence that Angelico’s ‘saintly’ reputation was forged. He (with assistants) painted fifty frescoes at San Marco. The paintings reveal a traditional form of Christian worship: Angelico’s is a conventional kind of Christian theology and devotion. Some critics emphasize Angelico as a stylist. Of course, Angelico did not separate style from content in the way modern critics do. Clearly, they are part of the same thing. For the Renaissance religious painter, the aim is to come up with a style, colouration and technique which accords with one’s beliefs, as well as flattering the faith of one’s patrons. So Angelico’s ‘sweet style’ stems from his blending of painterly technique with religious understanding.       Fra Angelico stands at the transition between the mediæval and Renaissance worlds. Angelico’s ‘feelings are in the Middle Ages’, Bernard Berenson wrote, yet he was distinctly a Quattrocento, Renaissance painter. His art combines the timelessness and rigidity of icon painting, where figures are caught in bright, static, hieratic motions, with the new painterly explorations (in form, style and space) of the Quattrocento period.       Fra Angelico’s paintings seem simple, but their simplicity is deceptive: they are the products of training and skill. Giulio Carlo Argan reminds us that ‘[e]verything points to Fra Angelico’s being in touch with the most advanced artists of his early day’. The deep spiritual feeling and tenderness of Fra Angelico’s art seems ‘simple’ or ‘innocent’. It does not seem cynical and world-weary. Yes, but the simplicity is not so much childish as child-like, as a regaining of the freshness of the spirit of childhood. A reactivation of the maternal realm, perhaps, which Fra Angelico manages to accomplish with a directness most other painters are incapable of reproducing.

Fra Angelico: Art and Religion in the Renaissance (Painters)

Mutter, Rosalind

Early Netherlandish Painting (Painters)

EARLY NETHERLANDISH PAINTING 
 A fully illustrated survey of Early Netherlandish painting, featuring all of the major artists, and many lesser-known painters. Early Netherlandish painting, also known as Flemish painting, is characterized by figurative realism, its incredible sense of domestic interiors and details, luminous light, its ‘realist’ faces, and its fusions of a micro- and macro- cosmic vision. We concentrate here on painters such as Rogier van der Weyden (1400-1464), Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441, commonly described as the founder of modern oil painting), Gerard David (c. 1460-1523), Hugo van der Goes (1440-1482), Hans Memling (1433-1494), Joos van Cleve (c. 1485-1540), Jan Gossaert, also called Mabuse (c. 1475/8-1532), Geertgen tot Sint Jans (fl. late 15th 1485/ 95), Quentin Massys (c. 1465-1530), Joachim Patinir (c. 1485-1524), Dieric Bouts (c. 1415-1475), Petrus Christus (fl. 1442-1473) and Bernard van Orley (c. 1488-1541). One of the most celebrated aspects of Early Netherlandish or Flemish painting is its heartfelt, intense religious emotion. It is this aspect that interests us in this book. The new aesthetic vision of Early Netherlandish art was later applied to still life paintings, satires, landscapes, and portraits, but it is the religious works with which we are concentrating on here. Michelangelo’s famous statement about Early Netherlandish art pinpoints the depth of devout feeling found in so much of Northern European art: Flemish painting will, generally speaking, please the devout better than any painting in Italy, which will never cause him to shed a tear, whereas that of Flanders will cause him to shed many... The new vision of Northern European painting which flourished in the 15th century was a combination of a new aesthetic approach to reality, and an intensifying of religious fervour. The new vision aimed at sculptural accuracy, a naturalistic use of lighting, and three-dimensionality. Mixed with the new use of oil paint, the new vision gave the art of Philip the Good’s reign a special flavour and style well suited to the circumscription of devout religious truths. The new painting inherited its jewel-like brilliancy partly because many painters were trained as goldsmiths. This skilled handling of metalwork and miniature illustration shows in Early Netherlandish art. All Early Netherlandish paintings were made on wood panels, and painted from light to dark in thin glazes. It is partly this subtle glazing which gives Early Netherlandish painting its glorious luminescence. The Early Netherlandish artists exploited the effects of different hues and thicknesses of glazes of oil paint, controlling how the glazes reflected light.

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