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
"A hugely ambitious mapping of the complex intertwinings of film, architecture, and the body. This adventurous book will be of interest to anyone concerned with what we might call 'mobility studies': the attempt to understand cultural performances not as the manifestation of fixed structures but as the expression of restless energies." Marina Warner Guardian - Book of the Year
Review
"In this astonishingly provocative, captivating, tender, elegant, and passionate nonchronological, interdisciplinary book, Bruno connects splendidly a psychogeography of cultural life. . . She takes the readers through a poetico-scholarly and picturesque journey--a visual travelogue, based both on philosophical theories and erudite conjectures. . . . Bruno writes like an expressionist painter, who deeply captures the invisible and the instantaneous." Choice
Review
"One of those critical works packed with learning and insights that at the same time takes you on an exhilarating ride through its author's imagination." Outstanding Academic Title of the Year
Review
"In an exhilarating ride, the reader is transported across this vast hidden landscape to reach a whole new understanding of spatial experience." Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University
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
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
Named a 2003 Book of the Year by The Guardian [London], winner of the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award in Culture and History (honoring "the world's best book on the moving images") and honored as an "Outstanding Academic Title" in Choice, the publication of the American Library Association.With forays into the fields of geography, art, architecture, design, cartography, and film, Giuliana Bruno's Atlas of Emotion is a highly original endeavor to map a cultural history of the visual arts. She insists throughout on the inseparability of seeing and travelling. In so doing, she touches on the art of Gerhard Richter and Annette Messager; the filmmaking of Peter Greenaway and Michelangelo Antonioni; the architecture of cinema and its precursors. Visually luscious and daring in conception, the voyage opens new vistas and understandings at every turn.
Synopsis
Traversing a varied and enchanting landscape with forays into the fields of geography, art, architecture, design, cartography and film, Giuliana Bruno's Atlas of Emotion, winner of the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz award for "the world's best book on the moving image", is a highly original endeavor to map a cultural history of spatio-visual arts. In an evocative montage of words and pictures she emphasizes that "sight" and "site" but also "motion" and "emotion" are irrevocably connected. In so doing, she touches on the art of Gerhard Richter and Annette Messagem: the film-making of Peter Greenaway and Michaelangelo Antonioni; the origins of the movie palace and its precursors, and on her own journeys to her native Naples. Visually luscious and daring in conception, Bruno opens new vistas and understandings at every turn.
Synopsis
An award-winning and highly original endeavor to map a cultural history of spatio-visual art.
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 Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts, and Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, winner of the 1993 Katherine Kovacs prize for the best book in film studies.
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