Here are 100 books that Black is Beautiful fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a child, I spent hours marveling at my father’s collection of ties. In love with tailoring, he taught me the meaning of “sprezzatura” and the joys that come from thinking of clothes as a part of yourself. Fashion returned to me as I studied philosophy, art history, and film. It took a few years, but then it just became clear to me that I had to talk about it. So I started writing, curating, and experimenting a bit more. I always say that fashion is a verb: my work is to explore what It can do, whether by curating a show, writing articles, or perusing local boutiques in my travels.
Before Instagram, we read about fashion. Well, we still do. At least, I do.
Francesca Granata has selected a series of fashion articles that are not only fun to read but are lynchpins to an understanding of the history of fashion, its quirks, and why we care so much about it.
You’ll find articles on military fashions, minis for men, and all the designers you should be curious about.
This is the first anthology of fashion criticism, a growing field that has been too long overlooked. Fashion Criticism aims to redress the balance, claiming a place for writing on fashion alongside other more well-established areas of criticism.
Exploring the history of fashion criticism in the English language, this essential work takes readers from the writing published in avant-garde modernist magazines at the beginning of the twentieth century to the fashion criticism of Robin Givhan-the first fashion critic to win a Pulitzer Prize-and of Judith Thurman, a National Book Award winner. It covers the shift in newspapers from the so-called…
As a child, I spent hours marveling at my father’s collection of ties. In love with tailoring, he taught me the meaning of “sprezzatura” and the joys that come from thinking of clothes as a part of yourself. Fashion returned to me as I studied philosophy, art history, and film. It took a few years, but then it just became clear to me that I had to talk about it. So I started writing, curating, and experimenting a bit more. I always say that fashion is a verb: my work is to explore what It can do, whether by curating a show, writing articles, or perusing local boutiques in my travels.
I love Dorothy Arzner’s films. And if you think you can’t deal with movies from the 1930s, think twice. Arzner was the only woman director in Hollywood; she was insanely popular and outrageously cool. Mayne’s book is about her coolness.
It’s an overture into an archive of pictures, tabloids, Hollywood gossip, and some of the best costumes around. Catherine Hepburn looked great in a silver moth costume (Christopher Strong, 1933), and Joan Crawford stunned in red (The Bride Wore Red, 1937). Mayne knows a thing or two about why we need more women directors.
Dorothy Arzner was the exception in Hollywood film history-the one woman who succeeded as a director, in a career that spanned three decades. In Part One, Dorothy Arzner's film career-her work as a film editor to her directorial debut, to her departure from Hollywood in 1943-is documented, with particular attention to Arzner's roles as "star-maker" and "woman's director." In Part Two, Mayne analyzes a number of Arzner's films and discusses how feminist preoccupations shape them, from the women's communities central to Dance, Girl, Dance and The Wild Party to critiques of the heterosexual couple in Christopher Strong and Craig's Wife.…
As a child, I spent hours marveling at my father’s collection of ties. In love with tailoring, he taught me the meaning of “sprezzatura” and the joys that come from thinking of clothes as a part of yourself. Fashion returned to me as I studied philosophy, art history, and film. It took a few years, but then it just became clear to me that I had to talk about it. So I started writing, curating, and experimenting a bit more. I always say that fashion is a verb: my work is to explore what It can do, whether by curating a show, writing articles, or perusing local boutiques in my travels.
In 2015, Shantrelle P. Lewis curated Dandy Lion at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. This book is about that exhibition, the photographs displayed, and the stories of the people photographed.
It is, for me, a gorgeous example of fashion’s relation to our individual and social identities. It is a way of touring the intimate as well as the political through images of the Black Dandy. Colors, cuts, sartorial details, and poses all come together in a book that is as informative to read as it is a pleasure to look at.
Suits that pop with loud colors and dazzling patterns, complete with a nearly ubiquitous bowtie, define the style of the new "dandy." Described as "high-styled rebels" by author Shantrelle P. Lewis, black men with a penchant for color and refined fashion, both new and vintage, have gained popular attention in recent years, influencing mainstream fashion. But black dandyism itself is not new; originating in Enlightenment England's slave culture, it has continued for generations in black cultures around the world. Now, set against the backdrop of hip-hop culture, this iteration of dandies is redefining what it means to be black, masculine,…
As a child, I spent hours marveling at my father’s collection of ties. In love with tailoring, he taught me the meaning of “sprezzatura” and the joys that come from thinking of clothes as a part of yourself. Fashion returned to me as I studied philosophy, art history, and film. It took a few years, but then it just became clear to me that I had to talk about it. So I started writing, curating, and experimenting a bit more. I always say that fashion is a verb: my work is to explore what It can do, whether by curating a show, writing articles, or perusing local boutiques in my travels.
I have a weakness for shoes, and I am happy to admit it. Shoes is a tiny but mighty book you’ll want to gift to everyone. Bretaña traces the history of shoes from chopines to Balenciaga’s platform Crocs. It’s just impossible not to flip through the pages–and you are sure to find yourself browsing the web in search of yet another coveted pair. An aside: your toddler might ask you for a pair of Katharina Denziger’s Racing Shoes (1965)–mine did.
Christian Dior famously noted that "the real proof of an elegant woman is what is on her feet." From the surprisingly sexy boots hiding under Victorian crinolines to the glittering T-strap heels worn by flappers dancing the Charleston, a woman's shoe choice has long been far more than a mundane practicality. Indeed, a beautifully shaped shoe can be a statement of wealth, style, or sexuality - and often all at once.
This petite volume presents 250 eye-catching examples from the 17th century to the present, including many of today's top designers such as Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin, Roger Vivier, and…
I am a professor of philosophy, specializing in the philosophy of art at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. When I was a practicing critic, notably of cinema, I backed into philosophy insofar as being a practitioner forced me to ask abstract questions about what I was doing. I have written over fifteen books as well as five documentaries. I am also a former Guggenheim fellow.
This book was instrumental in introducing the English-speaking world to Modern Art. As criticism, it taught readers how to appreciate Neo-Impressionism. But it was also a seminal contribution to Anglo-American philosophy. By demanding an answer to the question “What is Art?” Bell set the agenda for subsequent philosophers who sought to develop a definition of art in response. Bell’s own answer is that something is art if and only if it possesses significant form which itself is the cause of aesthetic emotions. Bell’s emphasis on significant form earned him a reputation as one of the foremost Philosophical Formalists.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been…
I am a professor of philosophy, specializing in the philosophy of art at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. When I was a practicing critic, notably of cinema, I backed into philosophy insofar as being a practitioner forced me to ask abstract questions about what I was doing. I have written over fifteen books as well as five documentaries. I am also a former Guggenheim fellow.
Originally published in 1958 as a textbook, when Aesthetics was updated, it was recognized as the “summa” of the aesthetic theory of art. This is the view that something is art just in case it is made with the intention to afford a certain magnitude of aesthetic experience. Because of his emphasis on aesthetic experience, Beardsley defended the notion of the autonomy of art – the idea that art is essentially independent of all other social practices. Using this lens, Beardsley explores an impressive range of topics including literature, fiction, pictorial representation, criticism, and interpretation.
I am passionate about bringing back to life persons from the past who have been forgotten, misunderstood, or even deliberately mischaracterized. In order to get to the truth, there are a host of myths that must be shattered or discarded. Most of the histories that I have written have done precisely this–showing the fallacy of familiar myths and discovering the hidden truths about people and events that have been distorted, often by some of the most popular literature. In order to achieve these results, I have had to spend years in “boring” archives in order to reveal people and events that are never boring.
When I recommended this book to a petroleum geologist, he later told me that it was probably the best book he had ever read–and he understood for the first time what historians actually do (and parenthetically, why the closest field to history in methodology is, in fact, geology).
I’ve also seen undergraduate students come alive intellectually by reading these lectures, given at Oxford by Gaddis as a visiting professor. They are full of remarkable insights into everything from human psychology to fractal geometry. Every chapter is an intellectual feast, showing the vast variety of the historian’s sources and methods.
What is history and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft, as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today. Gaddis points out that while the historical method is more sophisticated than most historians realize, it doesn't require unintelligible prose to explain. Like cartographers mapping landscapes, historians…
I'm a designer, a teacher, a father, a husband, and a friend. I love beautiful things and personally want to know why I find certain things more beautiful than others. I love learning about the world and finding connections between everyday experience and art. When I say “art” I really am blending art, design, architecture, landscape architecture, product design, etc. I believe everything is connected in some way. If I were to pigeonhole myself in any way I would call myself a generalist design thinker. I draw, I write, I make little objects, I make big objects – I see very little difference in any of these things.
This book is essential to anyone who wants to come into the meaning of art, design, and architecture.
Give it time and it will undoubtedly change your life. Dewey’s central argument is that experience itself is aesthetic, that we need to pay deep attention to the quality inherent in every experience.
Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, Art as Experience has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.
Growing up in the 1970s, I loved my family’s cheap plastic Polaroid OneStep camera and the magic pictures that developed right before my eyes. Thirty years later, I was incredibly lucky to be the first researcher to get access to the Polaroid archive just as the company was going bust. For me, the key to Polaroid photography is that it is fun, and all the books on my list are, in one way or another, about the lighter, playful side of photography. I hope that they take you off the beaten track of the history of popular photography and into some quirky and interesting corners.
I wish I’d written this book. I’ve always been fascinated by instructional guides for amateur photographers and the rules they set out to get a ‘good picture.’ I’ve followed many of these rules myself over the years, but what this great book shows is that the rules are constantly changing.
What made a good picture in 1930 is not the same as in 1950 or 1970. This book tells this story in fifty short and punchy chapters, and it has great pictures on virtually every page.
A picture-rich field guide to American photography, from daguerreotype to digital.
We are all photographers now, with camera phones in hand and social media accounts at the ready. And we know which pictures we like. But what makes a "good picture"? And how could anyone think those old styles were actually good? Soft-focus yearbook photos from the '80s are now hopelessly-and happily-outdated, as are the low-angle portraits fashionable in the 1940s or the blank stares of the 1840s. From portraits to products, landscapes to food pics, Good Pictures proves that the history of photography is a history of changing styles.…
I am a professor of philosophy, specializing in the philosophy of art at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. When I was a practicing critic, notably of cinema, I backed into philosophy insofar as being a practitioner forced me to ask abstract questions about what I was doing. I have written over fifteen books as well as five documentaries. I am also a former Guggenheim fellow.
Because of his prior reputation as a metaphysician and epistemologist, when Nelson Goodman turned his attention to the philosophy of art, he lent unprecedented prestige to aesthetics. In his book, Goodman treats art as a matter of symbol systems whose major structures include representation, exemplification, and expression. Given his emphasis on symbolism, Goodman regarded artistic projects, like picturing, as conventional and he maintained that our conviction of the realism of pictorial representations was merely an affair of our habituation to various styles. Languages of Art is a book noteworthy for its bold and bracing literary style.
"Like Dewey, he has revolted against the empiricist dogma and the Kantian dualisms which have compartmentalized philosophical thought. . . . Unlike Dewey, he has provided detailed incisive argumentation, and has shown just where the dogmas and dualisms break down." --Richard Rorty, The Yale Review
