Synopses & Reviews
What is the place of materialityand#8212;the expression or condition of physical substanceand#8212;in our visual age of rapidly changing materials and media? How is it fashioned in the arts or manifested in virtual forms? In
Surface, cultural critic and theorist Giuliana Bruno deftly explores these questions, seeking to understand materiality in the contemporary world.
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Arguing that materiality is not a question of the materials themselves but rather the substance of material relations, Bruno investigates the space of those relations, examining how they appear on the surface of different mediaand#8212;on film and video screens, in gallery installations, or on the skins of buildings and people. The object of visual studies, she contends, goes well beyond the image and engages the surface as a place of contact between people and art objects. As Bruno threads through these surface encounters, she unveils the fabrics of the visualand#8212;the textural qualities of works of art, whether manifested on canvas, wall, or screen. Illuminating the modern surface condition, she notes how faand#231;ades are becoming virtual screens and the art of projection is reinvented on gallery walls. She traverses the light spaces of artists Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Tacita Dean, and Anthony McCall; touches on the textured surfaces of Isaac Julienand#8217;s and Wong Kar-waiand#8217;s filmic screens; and travels across the surface materiality in the architectural practices of Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Herzog and de Meuron to the art of Doris Salcedo and Rachel Whiteread, where the surface tension of media becomes concrete. In performing these critical operations on the surface, she articulates it as a site in which different forms of mediation, memory, and transformation can take place.
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Surveying object relations across art, architecture, fashion, design, film, and new media, Surface is a magisterial account of contemporary visual culture.
Review
As this lucid and important new book makes clear, Giuliana Bruno is one of the very few cultural theorists with the intellectual originality and breadth of knowledge to evaluate meaningfully the ongoing reconfiguration of relations between architecture, cinema, and the visual arts. Yasmeen M. Siddiqui - - < -="" i="" -=""> - Modern Painters - < -="" -="">
Review
andquot;As this lucid and important new book makes clear, Giuliana Bruno is one of the very few cultural theorists with the intellectual originality and breadth of knowledge to evaluate meaningfully the ongoing reconfiguration of relations between architecture, cinema, and the visual arts.andquot;
--Jonathan Crary, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory, Columbia University
Review
Bruno's command of theory helps her unravel what is meaningful in kinds of art that have become pervasive: rambling installation and artwork that takes on architecture. Her writing is distinguished from that of, for instance, John Rajchman or Anthony Vidler by her signature personal texture and inventive wordplay. The MIT Press
Review
Branden Joseph's strikingly original study of Robert Rauschenberg will also be influential as a remarkable cultural history of the intersection of art, media, and technology in the 1960s. Among the book's great merits are its stunning de-familiarization of a well known artist's work and its impressive reconsideration of the political stakes in the aesthetic practices of the period. The MIT Press
Review
andlt;Pandgt;"Branden Joseph's strikingly original study of Robert Rauschenberg will also be influential as a remarkable cultural history of the intersection of art, media, and technology in the 1960s. Among the book's great merits are its stunning de-familiarization of a well known artist's work and its impressive reconsideration of the political stakes in the aesthetic practices of the period."--Jonathan Crary, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory, Columbia Universityandlt;/Pandgt; The MIT Press
Review
andlt;Pandgt;"As this lucid and important new book makes clear, Giuliana Bruno is one of the very few cultural theorists with the intellectual originality and breadth of knowledge to evaluate meaningfully the ongoing reconfiguration of relations between architecture, cinema, and the visual arts." andlt;Bandgt;Jonathan Crary andlt;/Bandgt;, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory, Columbia Universityandlt;/Pandgt; The MIT Press The MIT Press
Review
andlt;Pandgt;"Bruno's command of theory helps her unravel what is meaningful in kinds of art that have become pervasive: rambling installation and artwork that takes on architecture. Her writing is distinguished from that of, for instance, ohn Rajchman or Anthony Vidler by her signature personal texture and inventive wordplay." andlt;Bandgt;Yasmeen M. Siddiqui andlt;/Bandgt; andlt;Iandgt;Modern Paintersandlt;/Iandgt;andlt;/Pandgt; The MIT Press
Review
andldquo;This is a unique book, in both form and content. Ranging from essay to diary to the epistolary, and from the work of Wong Kar-Wai to Walead Beshty, architects Herzog and de Meuron, Sally Potter, and Issey Miyake, Bruno traces a cultural about-face regarding our tendency to denigrate surfaces as superficial. Surfaces here are instead meeting-places, zones of encounter and admixtureandmdash;the precise site that painting, cinema, architecture, fashion, or even the body all share, and where increasingly today they are transformed.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;In this finely crafted and evocative book, Bruno weaves a deep archaeology of the screen. Architecture, art, fashion, film, and philosophy find themselves embedded in the folds of a single sensuous fabric. Vision itself becomes tactile, and we begin to grasp the digital.andrdquo;
Review
Jonathan Crary, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory, Columbia University
Review
< b=""> Yasmeen M. Siddiqui <> - - < -="" i="" -=""> - Modern Painters - < -="" -="">
Review
and#8220;Screen theoryand#8212;the use of screens specifically in technology-rich applications such as personal computingand#8212;has been the primary domain of new media scholars. Bruno extends and enriches the discourse by both carefully considering the material qualities of digital manifestations of the screen and integrating discussion of nondigital equivalents.and#8221;
Review
andquot;Weaving together intricate material relations between art and architecture, film and fashion, design and new media renderedwithin contemporary visual culture, Bruno constructs a surface equally adept at providing space for leaping from or, for that matter, diving deeper within.andquot;
Review
andldquo;Beautiful and complex. . . . The readings in the book become a way of revealing hidden relationships between different forms of media, relationships that currently shift and that negotiate the question of the dividing line between work, world and viewer in ways that prompt us to re-consider the nature of those very divisions. . . . Hugely impressive.andrdquo;
Synopsis
In this thoughtful collection of essays on the relationship of architecture and the arts, Giuliana Bruno addresses the crucial role that architecture plays in the production of art and the making of public intimacy. As art melts into spatial construction and architecture mobilizes artistic vision, Bruno argues, a new moving space -- a screen of vital cultural memory -- has come to shape our visual culture. Taking on the central topic of museum culture, Bruno leads the reader on a series of architectural promenades from modernity to our times. Through these "museum walks," she demonstrates how artistic collection has become a culture of recollection, and examines the public space of the pavilion as reinvented in the moving-image art installation of Turner Prize nominees Jane and Louise Wilson. Investigating the intersection of science and art, Bruno looks at our cultural obsession with techniques of imaging and its effect on the privacy of bodies and space. She finds in the work of artist Rebecca Horn a notable combination of the artistic and the scientific that creates an architecture of public intimacy. Considering the role of architecture in contemporary art that refashions our "lived space" -- and the work of contemporary artists including Rachel Whiteread, Mona Hatoum, and Guillermo Kuitca -- Bruno argues that architecture is used to define the frame of memory, the border of public and private space, and the permeability of exterior and interior space. Architecture, Bruno contends, is not merely a matter of space, but an art of time.
Synopsis
An examination of architecture and art as a screen of vital cultural memory that considers museum culture, visual technology, and the border of public and private space.
In this thoughtful collection of essays on the relationship of architecture and the arts, Giuliana Bruno addresses the crucial role that architecture plays in the production of art and the making of public intimacy. As art melts into spatial construction and architecture mobilizes artistic vision, Bruno argues, a new moving space -- a screen of vital cultural memory -- has come to shape our visual culture. Taking on the central topic of museum culture, Bruno leads the reader on a series of architectural promenades from modernity to our times. Through these "museum walks," she demonstrates how artistic collection has become a culture of recollection, and examines the public space of the pavilion as reinvented in the moving-image art installation of Turner Prize nominees Jane and Louise Wilson. Investigating the intersection of science and art, Bruno looks at our cultural obsession with techniques of imaging and its effect on the privacy of bodies and space. She finds in the work of artist Rebecca Horn a notable combination of the artistic and the scientific that creates an architecture of public intimacy. Considering the role of architecture in contemporary art that refashions our "lived space" -- and the work of contemporary artists including Rachel Whiteread, Mona Hatoum, and Guillermo Kuitca -- Bruno argues that architecture is used to define the frame of memory, the border of public and private space, and the permeability of exterior and interior space. Architecture, Bruno contends, is not merely a matter of space, but an art of time.
Synopsis
In her thoughtful collection of essays on the relationship of architecture and the arts, Giuliana Bruno addresses the crucial role that architecture plays in the production of art and the making of public intimacy. As art melts into spatial construction and architecture mobilizes artistic vision, Bruno argues, a new moving space--a screen of vital cultural memory--has come to shape our visual culture.
Synopsis
An examination of architecture and art as a screen of vital cultural memory that considers museum culture, visual technology, and the border of public and private space.
Synopsis
andlt;Pandgt;An examination of architecture and art as a screen of vital cultural memory that considers museum culture, visual technology, and the border of public and private space.andlt;/Pandgt;
Synopsis
andlt;Pandgt;In this thoughtful collection of essays on the relationship of architecture and the arts, Giuliana Bruno addresses the crucial role that architecture plays in the production of art and the making of public intimacy. As art melts into spatial construction and architecture mobilizes artistic vision, Bruno argues, a new moving space--a screen of vital cultural memory--has come to shape our visual culture.Taking on the central topic of museum culture, Bruno leads the reader on a series of architectural promenades from modernity to our times. Through these "museum walks," she demonstrates how artistic collection has become a culture of recollection, and examines the public space of the pavilion as reinvented in the moving-image art installation of Turner Prize nominees Jane and Louise Wilson. Investigating the intersection of science and art, Bruno looks at our cultural obsession with techniques of imaging and its effect on the privacy of bodies and space. She finds in the work of artist Rebecca Horn a notable combination of the artistic and the scientific that creates an architecture of public intimacy. Considering the role of architecture in contemporary art that refashions our "lived space"--and the work of contemporary artists including Rachel Whiteread, Mona Hatoum, and Guillermo Kuitca--Bruno argues that architecture is used to define the frame of memory, the border of public and private space, and the permeability of exterior and interior space. Architecture, Bruno contends, is not merely a matter of space, but an art of time.andlt;/Pandgt;
Synopsis
This innovative book is concerned with theand#160;material realityand#160;of media in this virtual age.and#160; The book explores how visual objects appear on the surface of different mediaand#8212;on movie or television or computer screens, for example, or on the and#8220;skinand#8221; or and#8220;clothingand#8221; of buildings and people. It insists that the object of visual studies goes well beyond the image. The matter of Bruno's concern is not simply visual but, as she puts it, and#8220;tangible and material, spatial and environmental. I have long argued for a shift in our focus away from the optic and toward a haptic materiality. The reciprocal contactand#160;between us and objects or environments indeed occurs on theand#160;surface.and#160;It is by way of such tangible, and#8216;superficialand#8217; contact that we apprehend the art object and the space of art.and#8221;
About the Author
Giuliana Bruno is Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film, winner of the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz award for "the world's best book on the moving image," and Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, winner of the 1993 Kovacs prize for best book in film studies.Anthony Vidler is Dean and Professor of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union, New York. He is the author of Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture (2000), and The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely (1992), both published by The MIT Press, and other books.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introductionand#160;
Fabrics of the Visual
1and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; A Matter of Fabric: Pleats of Matter, Folds of the Soul
2and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Surface, Texture, Weave: The Fashioned World of Wong Kar-wai
Surfaces of Light
3and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Light Spaces, Screen Surfaces: On the Fabric of Projection
4and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The Surface Tension of Media: Texture, Canvas, Screenand#160;
5and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Depth of Surface, Screen Fabrics: Stains, Coatings, and and#147;Filmsand#8221;
Screens of Projection
6and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Sites of Screening: Cinema, Museum, and the Art of Projection
7and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The Architectand#8217;s Museum: Isaac Julienand#8217;s Double-Screen Projections
Matters of the Imagination
8and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Projections: The Architectural Imaginary in Artand#160;
9and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Textures in Havana: Memoirs of Material Culture
10and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; On Dust, Blur, and the Stains of Time: A and#147;Virtualand#8221; Letter to Sally Potter
Notesand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
Index