{"title":"Svetlana Alpers","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSvetlana Alpers\u003c\/strong\u003e offers insightful explorations into art history and cultural analysis, blending rigorous scholarship with a richly descriptive style. Her works investigate not only the visual arts but also the ways in which artworks engage with their viewers and contexts.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eReaders can expect thoughtful studies such as \u003cem\u003eThe Art of Describing\u003c\/em\u003e and focused examinations of influential figures like Walker Evans, all grounded in a deep understanding of the interplay between image, interpretation, and meaning.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"walker-evans-by-svetlana-alpers-9780691195872","title":"Walker Evans","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eArtforum\u003c\/em\u003e Best Books of 2020\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAntiques \u0026amp; Arts Weekly\u003c\/em\u003e Holiday Books Round-up 2020\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFiveBooks\u003c\/em\u003e The Best Art Books of 2020\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAnchorage Press\u003c\/em\u003e Top 10 for 2020\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA magisterial study of celebrated photographer Walker Evans. Walker Evans (1903-75) was a great American artist photographing people and places in the United States in unforgettable ways. He is known for his work for the Farm Security Administration, addressing the Great Depression, but what he actually saw was the diversity of people and the damage of the long Civil War. In \u003cem\u003eWalker Evans\u003c\/em\u003e, art historian Svetlana Alpers explores how Evans made his distinctive photographs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDelving into a lavish selection of Evans's work, Alpers uncovers rich parallels between his creative approach and those of numerous literary and cultural figures, locating Evans within the wide context of a truly international circle. Alpers demonstrates that Evans's practice relied on his camera choices and willingness to edit multiple versions of a shot, as well as his keen eye and his distant straight-on view of visual objects. Illustrating the vital role of Evans's dual love of text and images, Alpers cannily places his writings in conversation with his photographs. She brings his techniques into dialogue with the work of a global cast of important artists—from Flaubert and Baudelaire to Elizabeth Bishop and William Faulkner—underscoring how Evans's travels abroad, in such places as France and Cuba, and his expansive literary and artistic tastes, informed his quintessentially American photographic style.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA magisterial account of a great twentieth-century artist, \u003cem\u003eWalker Evans\u003c\/em\u003e urges us to look anew at the act of seeing the world—to reconsider how Evans saw his subjects, how he saw his photographs, and how we can see his images as if for the first time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47464765817068,"sku":"9780691195872","price":120.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780691195872-walker-evans.jpg?v=1775053906"},{"product_id":"the-art-of-describing-by-svetlana-alpers-9780226015132","title":"The Art of Describing","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe art historian after Erwin Panofsky and Ernst Gombrich is not only participating in an activity of great intellectual excitement; he is raising and exploring issues which lie very much at the centre of psychology, of the sciences and of history itself. Svetlana Alpers's study of 17th-century Dutch painting is a splendid example of this excitement and of the centrality of art history among current disciples.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eProfessor Alpers puts forward a vividly argued thesis. There is, she says, a truly fundamental dichotomy between the art of the Italian Renaissance and that of the Dutch masters. Italian art is the primary expression of a 'textual culture', this is to say of a culture which seeks emblematic, allegorical or philosophical meanings in a serious painting. Alberti, Vasari and the many other theoreticians of the Italian Renaissance teach us to 'read' a painting, and to read it in depth so as to elicit and construe its several levels of signification.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe world of Dutch art, by contrast, arises from and enacts a truly 'visual culture.' It serves and energises a system of values in which meaning is not 'read' but 'seen', in which new knowledge is visually recorded.\"—George Steiner, \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\"There is no doubt that thanks to Alpers's highly original book \u003cem\u003eThe Art of Describing\u003c\/em\u003e the study of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century will be thoroughly reformed and rejuvenated. She herself has the verve, the knowledge, and the sensitivity to make us see familiar sights in a new light.\"—E. H. Gombrich, \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47603198001388,"sku":"9780226015132","price":83.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780226015132-the-art-of-describing.jpg?v=1778057325"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/svetlana-alpers.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}