The Re-enchantment of the World

The Re-enchantment of the World
Author: Gordon Graham
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2007-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0199265968

This is a philosophical exploration of the role of art and religion as sources of meaning in an increasingly material world dominated by science. Relating themes in the history of European philosophy to topics in contemporary philosophy, Gordon Graham investigates the idea that art has the potential to re-enchant an irreligious world.

Mad Enchantment

Mad Enchantment
Author: Ross King
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2016-09-08
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1408861968

Claude Monet's water lily paintings are among the most iconic and beloved works of art of the past century. Yet these entrancing images were created at a time of terrible private turmoil and sadness for the artist. The dramatic history behind these paintings is little known; Ross King's Mad Enchantment tells the full story for the first time and, in the process, presents a compelling and original portrait of one of our most popular and cherished artists. By the outbreak of war in 1914, Monet, then in his mid-seventies, was one of the world's most famous and successful painters, with a large house in the country, a fleet of automobiles and a colossal reputation. However, he had virtually given up painting following the death of his wife Alice in 1911 and the onset of blindness a year later. Nonetheless, it was during this period of sorrow, ill health and creative uncertainty that – as the guns roared on the Western Front – he began the most demanding and innovative paintings he had ever attempted. Encouraged by close friends such as Georges Clemenceau, France's dauntless prime minister, Monet would work on these magnificent paintings throughout the war years and then for the rest of his life. So obsessed with his monumental task that the village barber was summoned to clip his hair as he worked beside his pond, he covered hundreds of yards of canvas with shimmering layers of pigment. As his ambitions expanded with his paintings, he began planning what he intended to be his legacy to the world: the 'Musée Claude Monet' in the Orangerie in Paris. Drawing on letters and memoirs and focusing on this remarkable period in the artist's life, Mad Enchantment gives an intimate portrayal of Claude Monet in all his tumultuous complexity, and firmly places his water lily paintings among the greatest achievements in the history of art.

The Enchantments of Mammon

The Enchantments of Mammon
Author: Eugene McCarraher
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 817
Release: 2019-11-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674242777

“An extraordinary work of intellectual history as well as a scholarly tour de force, a bracing polemic, and a work of Christian prophecy...McCarraher challenges more than 200 years of post-Enlightenment assumptions about the way we live and work.” —The Observer At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the “disenchantment” of the world, stripping material objects and social relations of their mystery and magic. In this magisterial work, Eugene McCarraher challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether one is prepared to acknowledge it or not. First flowering in the fields and factories of England and brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals, whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit, capitalism has become so thoroughly enmeshed in the fabric of our society that our faith in “the market” has become sacrosanct. Informed by cultural history and theology as well as management theory, The Enchantments of Mammon looks to nineteenth-century Romantics, whose vision of labor combined reason, creativity, and mutual aid, for salvation. In this impassioned challenge to some of our most firmly held assumptions, McCarraher argues that capitalism has hijacked our intrinsic longing for divinity—and urges us to break its hold on our souls. “A majestic achievement...It is a work of great moral and spiritual intelligence, and one that invites contemplation about things we can’t afford not to care about deeply.” —Commonweal “More brilliant, more capacious, and more entertaining, page by page, than his most ardent fans dared hope. The magnitude of his accomplishment—an account of American capitalism as a religion...will stun even skeptical readers.” —Christian Century

Painting from the Source

Painting from the Source
Author: Aviva Gold
Publisher:
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2019-12-03
Genre:
ISBN: 9781706460664

NOW IN FULL COLOR! OVER 50 PAINTINGS TO VIEW WITH STEPS IN THE PAINTING PROCESS TO ENJOY AND LEARN FROM. Imagine yourself painting with no hesitations, no conflicts. Your brush dips into pots of vibrantly colored paint; inner inspiration guides your hand into lines and shapes that find their perfect places on the paper . . .Welcome! I'm Aviva Gold, your guide to the magic source. As children, all of us lived and painted intuitively. And as adults we can re-create the boundless joy of unselfconscious art by setting aside intellectual critique and self-doubt and reconnecting with the source. Remember standing at an easel as a child and painting in a trancelike state of wonder? Somewhere along the line this freedom gets trained out of us, and we are either categorized as artists or not.Paint and remember! Return to the easel with the same childlike sense of play. My program is not about regimentation. Learn to let go of inhibitions, relinquish control, and embrace the source. Using simple materials--tempera paints, newsprint--paint without worrying about the end product.Just let go, and begin! Every human being is an artist. In Bali, one word means both "human" and "artist." Just show up and face a blank piece of paper. Tap into the source. Revitalize! Transform! Now, imagine yourself painting . . .

An Enchantment of Ravens

An Enchantment of Ravens
Author: Margaret Rogerson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2017-09-26
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1481497588

A skilled painter must stand up to the ancient power of the faerie courts--even as she falls in love with a faerie prince--in this gorgeous debut novel. 6 x 9.

Images at Work

Images at Work
Author: David Morgan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0190272112

Images can be studied in many ways--as symbols, displays of artistic genius, adjuncts to texts, or naturally occurring phenomena like reflections and dreams. Each of these approaches is justified by the nature of the image in question as well as the way viewers engage with it. But images are often something more when they perform in ways that exhibit a capacity to act independent of human will. Images come alive--they move us to action, calm us, reveal the power of the divine, change the world around us. In these instances, we need an alternative model for exploring what is at work, one that recognizes the presence of images as objects that act on us. Building on his previous innovative work in visual and religious studies, David Morgan creates a new framework for understanding how the human mind can be enchanted by images in Images at Work. In carefully crafted arguments, Morgan proposes that images are special kinds of objects, fashioned and recognized by human beings for their capacity to engage us. From there, he demonstrates that enchantment, as described, is not a violation of cosmic order, but a very natural way that the mind animates the world around it. His groundbreaking study outlines the deeply embodied process by which humans create culture by endowing places, things, and images with power and agency. These various agents--human and non-human, material, geographic, and spiritual--become nodes in the web of relationships, thus giving meaning to images and to human life. Marrying network theory with cutting-edge work in visual studies, and connecting the visual and bodily technologies employed by the ancient Greeks and Romans to secular icons like Che Guevara, Abraham Lincoln, and Mao, Images at Work will be transformative for those curious about why images seem to have a power of us in ways we can't always describe.

Enchanted Modernities

Enchanted Modernities
Author: Sarah Victoria Turner
Publisher: Fulgur Press
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2019-08-20
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781527228818

When the occult came to the American West: individualism and magic in the art of California, from Agnes Pelton to Jess "It is in America that the transformation will take place, and has already silently commenced." With these words, written in The Secret Doctrine in 1888, occultist philosopher Helena Blavatsky drew a direct connection between the Theosophical Society and the dynamic energy of 19th-century Americanism. Blavatsky and her successors identified the American West as the perfect site for a rebirth and re-enchantment of humanity, drawing those seeking spiritual fulfilment outside of organized religion to the dramatic landscapes of California, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico--places which have long beckoned searchers of all kinds. The syncretic nature of Theosophy allowed for and even encouraged individualism in belief, making Theosophy a good fit for the notions of freedom and personal agency that characterized the American West in the popular imaginary. Among those drawn to the American West seeking spiritual answers in the early 20th century were artists. In 2014, the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum at Utah State University staged the first exhibition to explore artistic responses to this confluence of enchanted thought and the American West. Building on this precedent, Enchanted Modernities: Theosophy, the Arts and the American West is the first publication devoted to studying these relationships in art and music. Through a series of color plates, contextual essays, interviews and interpretations of individual works by artists such as the Dynaton group (Wolfgang Paalen, Gordon Onslow Ford, Lee Mullican), Oskar Fischinger, Emil Bisttram, Lawren Harris, Raymond Jonson, Agnes Pelton, Wolfgang Paalen, Beatrice Wood, Dane Rudhyar and Jess, Enchanted Modernities explores the role of Theosophical thought in redefining the relationship between enchantment and modernism, and fostering lively cultural networks in a region that that has long captured the world's imagination.

Images of Enchantment

Images of Enchantment
Author: Sherifa Zuhur
Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1998
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9789774244674

This original and multidimensional book brings a refreshing new approach to the study of the arts of the Middle East. By dealing in one volume with dance, music, painting, and cinema, as experienced and practiced not only within the Middle East but also abroad, Images of Enchantment breaks down the artificial distinctions--of form, geography, 'high' and 'low' art, performer and artist--that are so often used to delineate the subjects and processes of Middle Eastern artistic culture. The eighteen essays in this book cover themes as diverse as Bedouin dance, the music of Arab Americans, cinema in Egypt and Iran, Hollywood representations of the Middle East, and contemporary Sudanese painting. The contributions come from scholars and critics and from the artists themselves. Together, they present a wide-ranging and holistic view of the arts in their social, political, anthropological, and gender contexts. Contributors: Walter Armbrust, Farida Ben Lyazid, Kay Hardy Campbell, Virginia Danielson, Marjorie Franken, Sondra Hale, Carolee Kent, Hamid Naficy, Salwa Mikdadi Nashashibi, Anne K. Rasmussen, Selim Sednaoui, Simon Shaheen, Rebecca Stone, Chaïbia Talal, Karin Van Nieuwkerk, William Young, Sherifa Zuhur.

The Art of Re-enchantment

The Art of Re-enchantment
Author: Nick Wilson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2014
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0199939934

Historically informed performance (HIP) has provoked heated debate amongst musicologists, performers and cultural sociologists. In The Art of Re-enchantment: Making Early Music in the Modern Age, author Nick Wilson answers many salient questions surrounding HIP through an in-depth analysis of the early music movement in Britain from the 1960s to the present day.

Forms of Enchantment

Forms of Enchantment
Author: Marina Warner
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-03-07
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780500295960

An anthology of compelling essays by Marina Warner, one of our pre-eminent writers and critics. Art-writing at its most useful should share the dynamism, fluidity and passions of the objects of its enquiry, argues Marina Warner. In this new anthology of some of her most compelling work, she captures the visual experience of the work of several artists - with a notable focus on the inner lives of women - through an exploration of the range of stories and symbols to which they allude. Metamorphosis features vividly in the imagery, stories and media of the art that Warner has chosen to write about: in connection with animals in the work of Louise Bourgeois, for instance; with the Catholicism of Damien Hirst; and with performance as a medium of memory and resistance in the installations of Joan Jonas. Rather than drawing on connoisseurship, the author's approach grows principally out of anthropology and mythology. She argues that art and aesthetics increasingly fulfil a magical social function - a principle that runs through these writings to give the collection a quality that is polemical as well as coherent. With an introductory essay and illustrations throughout, Marina Warner investigates how artists noted for their treatment of disturbing, uncanny material have reached beyond the visible, to express interior states. Truly inspiring, her writing unites the imagination of artist, writer and reader, creating a reading experience parallel to the intrinsic pleasure of looking at art.