Robert J. Richards: The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, biography, biology, darwinism, ecology, evolution, history of science, materialism, monism, science
“Prior to the First World War, more people learned of evolutionary theory from the voluminous writings of Charles Darwin’s foremost champion in Germany, Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), than from any other source, including the writings of Darwin himself. But, with detractors ranging from paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould to modern-day creationists and advocates of intelligent design, Haeckel is better known as a divisive figure than as a pioneering biologist. Robert J. Richards’s intellectual biography rehabilitates Haeckel, providing the most accurate measure of his science and art yet written, as well as a moving account of Haeckel’s eventful life.”
Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2008
ISBN 0226712192, 9780226712192
512 pages
Nikolaus Gansterer (ed.): Drawing A Hypothesis: Figures of Thought (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · abstraction, art, contemporary art, data visualisation, diagram, drawing, image, knowledge, perception, representation, research, science, theory
“Drawing a Hypothesis is a reader on the ontology of forms of visualizations and on the development of the diagrammatic view and its use in contemporary art, science and theory. In a process of exchange with artists and scientists, Nikolaus Gansterer reveals drawing as a media of research enabling the emergence of new narratives and ideas by tracing the speculative potential of diagrams. Based on a discursive analysis of found figures with the artists’ own diagrammatic maps and models, the invited authors create unique correlations between thinking and drawing. Due to its ability to mediate between perception and reflection, drawing proves to be one of the most basic instruments of scientific and artistic practice, and plays an essential role in the production and communication of knowledge. The book is a rich compendium of figures of thought, which moves from scientific representation through artistic interpretation and vice versa.”
Translation: Veronica Buckley, Aileen Derieg
Publisher Springer, 2011
Edition Angewandte
ISBN 3709108020, 9783709108024
352 pages
Review: Mark Robert Doyle, Gert Hasenhuetl (in German).
PDF (updated on 2021-12-17)
Comments (4)Beaumont Newhall: The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present Day (1949–) [EN, ES]
Filed under book | Tags: · art, art history, history of photography, photography
Since its publication in 1937 as an illustrated exhibition catalog, this scholarly chronicle of the history of photography has been hailed as a classic work on the subject.
Beaumont Newhall relates the aesthetic evolution of the art of photography to its technical innovations and presents a study of the significant trends and developments in the medium since 1839. The book features more than 300 works by such photographers as William Henry Fox Talbot, Timothy O’Sullivan, Julia Margaret Cameron, Eugene Atget, Peter Henry Emerson, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Man Ray, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, Brassai, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Harry Callahan, Minor White, Robert Frank and Diane Arbus.
In 1938 the text and illustrations were reprinted, with minor revisions, as Photography: A Short Critical History. For the present volume the text was entirely rewritten and a new selection of illustrations made.
Publisher Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1949
256 pages
The History of Photography (English, 130 MB, no OCR)
Historia de la fotografia (Spanish, trans. Homero Alsina Thevenet, 2002, 80 MB, added on 2014-11-22)