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110 books
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8 voters
Art Theory Books
Showing 1-50 of 3,882
Ways of Seeing (Paperback)
by (shelved 105 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.94 — 426,787 ratings — published 1972
On Photography (Paperback)
by (shelved 50 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.87 — 55,471 ratings — published 1973
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media (Paperback)
by (shelved 48 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.08 — 24,157 ratings — published 1936
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (Paperback)
by (shelved 46 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.99 — 76,905 ratings — published 1980
Interaction of Color (Paperback)
by (shelved 35 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.93 — 14,643 ratings — published 1971
Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Paperback)
by (shelved 34 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.83 — 91,839 ratings — published 1912
About Looking (Paperback)
by (shelved 26 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.09 — 9,179 ratings — published 1980
Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Paperback)
by (shelved 26 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.04 — 6,093 ratings — published 1960
Relational Aesthetics (Paperback)
by (shelved 24 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.69 — 1,244 ratings — published 1998
Art and Fear (Paperback)
by (shelved 24 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.77 — 102,433 ratings — published 1994
After the End of Art (Paperback)
by (shelved 23 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.03 — 1,047 ratings — published 1997
The Society of the Spectacle (Paperback)
by (shelved 23 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.03 — 22,979 ratings — published 1967
The Story of Art (Hardcover)
by (shelved 22 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.97 — 455,479 ratings — published 1950
The Return of the Real: Art and Theory at the End of the Century (Paperback)
by (shelved 20 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.05 — 530 ratings — published 1996
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (Paperback)
by (shelved 20 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.29 — 12,368 ratings — published 1955
Art in Theory, 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Paperback)
by (shelved 19 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.97 — 10,233 ratings — published 2002
Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War (Hardcover)
by (shelved 17 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.12 — 790 ratings — published 2017
Against Interpretation and Other Essays (Paperback)
by (shelved 17 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.14 — 10,180 ratings — published 1966
Art as Experience (Paperback)
by (shelved 16 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.94 — 5,783 ratings — published 1934
The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Paperback)
by (shelved 16 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.08 — 772 ratings — published 1985
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (Paperback)
by (shelved 16 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.00 — 130,492 ratings — published 1993
The Shock of the New (Paperback)
by (shelved 15 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.74 — 36,295 ratings — published 1980
The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Paperback)
by (shelved 15 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.97 — 1,278 ratings — published 1983
Aesthetic Theory (Paperback)
by (shelved 15 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.14 — 2,587 ratings — published 1970
The Art Spirit (Paperback)
by (shelved 14 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.88 — 26,292 ratings — published 1929
Regarding the Pain of Others (Paperback)
by (shelved 14 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.10 — 21,601 ratings — published 2003
The Theater and Its Double (Paperback)
by (shelved 14 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.14 — 4,742 ratings — published 1938
Art and Culture: Critical Essays (Paperback)
by (shelved 14 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.87 — 570 ratings — published 1961
Design as Art (Paperback)
by (shelved 13 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.98 — 4,855 ratings — published 1966
Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (Paperback)
by (shelved 13 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.07 — 3,970 ratings — published 1954
Notes on ‘Camp’ (Paperback)
by (shelved 12 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.97 — 9,185 ratings — published 1964
The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (Paperback)
by (shelved 12 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.96 — 118,226 ratings — published 2002
Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Paperback)
by (shelved 12 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.96 — 604 ratings — published 1985
In Praise of Shadows (Paperback)
by (shelved 12 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.01 — 29,364 ratings — published 1933
On Painting (Paperback)
by (shelved 11 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.88 — 1,290 ratings — published 1435
The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Paperback)
by (shelved 11 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.87 — 376,307 ratings — published 1979
Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Paperback)
by (shelved 11 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.60 — 588 ratings — published 2003
Mythologies (Paperback)
by (shelved 11 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.08 — 16,972 ratings — published 1957
Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (Volume 2) (James Gurney Art)
by (shelved 10 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.09 — 18,362 ratings — published 2010
Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative (Paperback)
by (shelved 10 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.96 — 330,353 ratings — published 2012
On Ugliness (Hardcover)
by (shelved 10 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.88 — 19,048 ratings — published 2007
History of Beauty (Paperback)
by (shelved 10 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.82 — 66,590 ratings — published 2004
The Poetics of Space (Paperback)
by (shelved 10 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.18 — 11,024 ratings — published 1957
Installation Art (Paperback)
by (shelved 10 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.10 — 223 ratings — published 2005
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)
by (shelved 10 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.84 — 48,342 ratings — published 1975
Participation (Documents of Contemporary Art)
by (shelved 10 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.95 — 353 ratings — published 2006
What Art Is (Hardcover)
by (shelved 9 times as art-theory)
avg rating 3.69 — 904 ratings — published 2013
The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (Hardcover)
by (shelved 9 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.22 — 3,705 ratings — published 2011
Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Paperback)
by (shelved 9 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.16 — 593 ratings — published 2012
Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and Histories of Art (Paperback)
by (shelved 9 times as art-theory)
avg rating 4.15 — 391 ratings — published 1988
“Magritte’s variations on the same theme invite us to rethink conventional notions of originality, to look more carefully at the details and contrasts between different versions of the painting: we observe the architectural variations of the Belgian houses, the varieties of trees in the foreground, of the streetlamps and their shadows, and of the skyscapes.
Some of these paintings are in portrait format, others in landscape; some, like the 1961 version, give the viewer a deeper sense of proximity to, or immersion in, the scene while in others the depicted world is more distant. Together, these variant paintings form an internal system of poetic rhythms and patterns in which cross-references abound, alongside allusions to older Belgian art, most notably La Maison rose (1892) by the symbolist William Degouve de Nuncques.”
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Some of these paintings are in portrait format, others in landscape; some, like the 1961 version, give the viewer a deeper sense of proximity to, or immersion in, the scene while in others the depicted world is more distant. Together, these variant paintings form an internal system of poetic rhythms and patterns in which cross-references abound, alongside allusions to older Belgian art, most notably La Maison rose (1892) by the symbolist William Degouve de Nuncques.”
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“Spontaneity, intuition, happenstance, instinct, and even occasional dumb luck are often valued highly by artists, but only insofar as these things can be utilized to serve a larger, deliberative vision. All art is intentional, not incidental, and therefore art does not happen by accident, even if artists are willing to exploit accidents.”
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