Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: sparkplug

• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  The War of Art

  Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

  by Steven Pressfield

  DO YOU: · dream about writing the Great American Novel? · regret not finishing your paintings, poems, or screenplays? · want to start a business or charity? · wish you could start dieting or exercising today? · hope to run a marathon someday? If "yes," then you need…THE WAR OF ART Now, in this powerful, straight-from-the-hip examination of the internal obstacles to success,... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  The Judgment of Paris

  The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism

  by Ross King

  While the Civil War raged in America, another revolution took shape across the Atlantic, in the studios of Paris: The artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showing their first paintings amidst scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment. Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been quite so controversial. The drama of its birth, played out on canvas and against... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Night Studio : A Memoir of Philip Guston

  by Musa Mayer

  Philip Guston (1913–1980) was driven, sustained, and consumed by art. His style ranged from the social realism of his WPA murals through his abstract expressionist canvasses of the 1950s and 1960s (when he counted Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, and Kline among his friends) to his cartoonlike paintings of Klansmen, disembodied heads, and tangled piles of everyday objects. Critics and public alike savaged Guston for... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  The Tipping Point

  How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

  by Malcolm Gladwell

  This celebrated New York Times bestseller now poised to reach an even wider audience in paperback is a book that is changing the way North Americans think about selling products and disseminating ideas. Gladwell's new afterword to this edition describes how readers can constructively apply the tipping point principle in their own lives and work. Widely hailed as an important work that offers not only a road map to... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Blink

  The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

  by Malcolm Gladwell

  How do we make decisions--good and bad--and why are some people so much better at it than others? That's the question Malcolm Gladwell asks and answers in the follow-up to his huge bestseller, The Tipping Point. Utilizing case studies as diverse as speed dating, pop music, and the shooting of Amadou Diallo, Gladwell reveals that what we think of as decisions made in the blink of an eye are much more complicated... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Regarding the Pain of Others

  by Susan Sontag

  One of the distinguishing features of modern life is that it supplies countless opportunities for regarding (at a distance, through the medium of photography) horrors taking place throughout the world. Images of atrocities have become, via the little screens of the television and the computer, something of a commonplace. But are viewers inured -- or incited -- to violence by the depiction of cruelty? Is the... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Taking the Leap: Building a Career as a Visual Artist

  by Cay Lang

  Cay Lang's Taking the Leap has helped thousands of artists jumpstart their careers and make real the dream of exhibiting and selling their work. An internationally exhibited photographer and teacher, Lang offers the wisdom of experience, combined with enthusiasm and gentle humor, to guide artists through the ins and outs of the art business. Practical and inspiring, this revised and updated edition offers two new... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Laboratory Life

  by Bruno Latour

  The pioneering 'laboratory study' in the sociology of scientific knowledge. . . . The first and, deservedly, the most influential book-length account of day-to-day work in a single laboratory setting. -- Review
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques: Fifth Edition, Revised and Updated (Artists' Handbook of Materials and Techniques)

  by Ralph Mayer

  Since 1940, when it was originally published, The Artist's Handbook has become indispensable for thousands of practicing artists and art students. The book has remained continually in print through many editions and has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. A detailed index makes a wealth of information readily available. Charts and line drawings throughout.
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Pictures and Tears

  by James Elkins

  Pictures and Tears is a strange and wonderful investigation into paintings and the emotions they evoke. In past centuries, viewers were often moved by paintings. Fourth-century Greek painting depicted people in states of extreme grief, so that the viewer might respond in kind. Crying in front of paintings was commonplace in the Middle Ages. There were more tears in the eighteenth century, and then again in the... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  What Painting Is

  by James Elkins

  What is painting really? Daubs of sticky oils and crushed rock, blobs that form and reform, colors that look one way on a palette, another way on canvas, a different way still in relation to other bits of color beside them. Books on painting usually talk about Art, or about painters. But in this compelling and original work, art historian James Elkins turns to alchemy, for like the alchemist, the painter seeks... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Collectivism after Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945

  Spanning the globe from Europe, Japan, and the United States to Africa, Cuba, and Mexico, Collectivism after Modernism explores the ways in which collectives function within cultural norms, social conventions, and corporate or state-sanctioned art. Together, these essays demonstrate that collectivism survives as an influential artistic practice despite the art world's star system of individuality. Collectivism... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Do It

  by Harold Garfinkel, Daniel Birnbaum, Lee Lozano, Marina Abramovic, John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Christian Boltanski, Louise Bourgeois, Liam Gillick, Leon Golub, Mona Hatoum, Joan Jonas, Mike Kelley, Yoko Ono, Alison Knowles, Tacita Dean

  The Do It book contains artworks by more than 100 international artists in the form of do-it-yourself text instructions to be completed by the reader. Based on the traveling exhibition and e-flux online project curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, the book also includes a selection of essays and interviews, and offers comprehensive material on the groundbreaking show. Do It began in 1993 with a discussion among... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  The Shape of Content (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)

  by Ben Shahn

  The book is the clearest, most forceful statement on art by an artist of our time that I have read. --Frank Getletin ( New Republic ) To find a lucid painter speaking lucidly of art is a thrilling discovery...<He traces> the formation of painting from idea to completion, both generally and specifically with a clarity of thought and a precise use of language which should be a very archetypal model for all... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Proust Was a Neuroscientist

  by Jonah Lehrer

  In this technology-driven age, it’s tempting to believe that science can solve every mystery. After all, science has cured countless diseases and even sent humans into space. But as Jonah Lehrer argues in this sparkling debut, science is not the only path to knowledge. In fact, when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first. Taking a group of artists — a painter, a poet, a chef, a composer, and a... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Outliers

  The Story of Success

  by Malcolm Gladwell

  In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  How We Decide

  by Jonah Lehrer

  The first book to use the unexpected discoveries of neuroscience to help us make the best decisions. Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate, or we blink and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the mind's black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, they re discovering that this is not how the mind works. Our best... (more)
• 

  

  • plan to read
  • reading now
  • I’ve read it
  • favorite
  • want to own
  • own it
  • remove book

  Art Work: Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career

  by Heather Darcy Bhandari

  Find Out What They Didn't Teach You in Art School The most comprehensive guide of its kind, Art/Work gives artists of every level the tools they need to make it in an art world so competitive one dealer likens it to "The Sopranos, except nobody gets killed." Whether you're an art school grad looking for a gallery, a mid-career artist managing a busy studio, or someone just thinking about becoming a professional... (more)