Siegfried Kracauer: The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (1963/1995)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1920s, 1930s, cinema, cultural criticism, cultural politics, dance, everyday, film theory, germany, literature, photography, weimar republic
“Siegfried Kracauer was one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant cultural critics, a daring and prolific scholar, and an incisive theorist of film. In this volume his finest writings on modern society make their long-awaited appearance in English.
This book is a celebration of the masses–their tastes, amusements, and everyday lives. Taking up themes of modernity, such as isolation and alienation, urban culture, and the relation between the group and the individual, Kracauer explores a kaleidoscope of topics: shopping arcades, the cinema, bestsellers and their readers, photography, dance, hotel lobbies, Kafka, the Bible, and boredom. For Kracauer, the most revelatory facets of modern life in the West lie on the surface, in the ephemeral and the marginal. Of special fascination to him is the United States, where he eventually settled after fleeing Germany and whose culture he sees as defined almost exclusively by “the ostentatious display of surface.”
With these essays, written in the 1920s and early 1930s and edited by the author in 1963, Kracauer was the first to demonstrate that studying the everyday world of the masses can bring great rewards. The Mass Ornament today remains a refreshing tribute to popular culture, and its impressively interdisciplinary essays continue to shed light not only on Kracauer’s later work but also on the ideas of the Frankfurt School, the genealogy of film theory and cultural studies, Weimar cultural politics, and, not least, the exigencies of intellectual exile.
In his introduction, Thomas Levin situates Kracauer in a turbulent age, illuminates the forces that influenced him–including his friendships with Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and other Weimar intellectuals–and provides the context necessary for understanding his ideas. Until now, Kracauer has been known primarily for his writings on the cinema. This volume brings us the full scope of his gifts as one of the most wide-ranging and penetrating interpreters of modern life.”
Originally published in German as Das Ornament der Masse: Essays, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1963
Translated, Edited, and with an Introduction by Thomas Y. Levin
Publisher Harvard University Press, 1995
ISBN 0674551621
416 pages
Mary Jane Jacob, Michelle Grabner (eds.): The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, painting, photography, sculpture
The image of a tortured genius working in near isolation has long dominated our conceptions of the artist’s studio. Examples abound: think Jackson Pollock dripping resin on a cicada carcass in his shed in the Hamptons. But times have changed; ever since Andy Warhol declared his art space a “factory,” artists have begun to envision themselves as the leaders of production teams, and their sense of what it means to be in the studio has altered just as dramatically as their practices.
The Studio Reader pulls back the curtain from the art world to reveal the real activities behind artistic production. What does it mean to be in the studio? What is the space of the studio in the artist’s practice? How do studios help artists envision their agency and, beyond that, their own lives? This forward-thinking anthology features an all-star array of contributors, ranging from Svetlana Alpers, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Storr to Daniel Buren, Carolee Schneemann, and Buzz Spector, each of whom locates the studio both spatially and conceptually—at the center of an art world that careens across institutions, markets, and disciplines. A companion for anyone engaged with the spectacular sites of art at its making, The Studio Reader reconsiders this crucial space as an actual way of being that illuminates our understanding of both artists and the world they inhabit.
Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2010
ISBN 0226389618, 9780226389615
390 pages
Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1980-) [FR, EN, PT, GR, HU, ES, IT, CZ, RU, PL]
Filed under book | Tags: · image, photography, theory
A graceful, contemplative volume, Camera Lucida was first published in 1980. Commenting on artists such as Avedon, Clifford, Mapplethorpe, and Nadar, Roland Barthes presents photography as being outside the codes of language or culture, acting on the body as much as on the mind, and rendering death and loss more acutely than any other medium. This groundbreaking approach established Camera Lucida as one of the most important books of theory on the subject, along with Susan Sontag’s On Photography.
French edition
Publisher Gallimard/Seuil/Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris, 1980
194 pages
English edition
Translated by Richard Howard
Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982
ISBN 0374521344, 9780374521349
119 pages
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La chambre claire: Note sur la photographie (French, 1980, no OCR)
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (English, trans. Richard Howard, 1982)
A câmara clara: Nota sobre a fotografia (Portuguese, trans. Júlio Castañon Guimarães, 1984, no OCR)
Ο φωτεινός θάλαμος: Σημειώσεις για τη φωτογραφία (Greek, trans. Γιάννης Κρητικός, 1984, no OCR)
Világoskamra: Jegyzetek a fotográfiáról (Hungarian, trans. Ferch Magda, 1985, no OCR)
La cámara lúcida: Nota sobre la fotografía (Spanish, trans. Joaquim Sala-Sanahuja, 1990)
La camera chiara: Nota sulla fotografia (Italian, trans. Renzo Guidieri, 1992, no OCR)
Světlá komora: Vysvětlivka k fotografii (Czech, trans. Miroslav Petříček jr., 1994, no OCR)
Camera Lucida: Комментарий_к_фотографии (Russian, trans. Михаил Рыклин, 1997)
Światło obrazu: Uwagi o fotografii (Polish, trans. Jacek Trznadel, 2008)