Try an audiobook on us
Contemporary Art
People who bought this also bought...
-
Art History: A Very Short Introduction
- By: Dana Arnold
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This clear and concise new introduction examines all the major debates and issues using a wide range of well-known examples. It discusses the challenge of using verbal and written language to analyze a visual form. Dana Arnold also examines the many different ways of writing about art, and the changing boundaries of the subject of art history. Topics covered include the canon of Art History, the role of the gallery, 'blockbuster' exhibitions, and the emergence of social histories of art.
-
-
Dull
- By capuccino on 28-10-18
-
Playing to the Gallery
- Helping Contemporary Art in Its Struggle to Be Understood
- By: Grayson Perry
- Narrated by: Grayson Perry
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's easy to feel insecure around art and its appreciation, as though we cannot enjoy certain artworks if we don't have a lot of academic and historical knowledge. But if there's one message that I want you to take away it's that anybody can enjoy art and anybody can have a life in the arts - even me! For even I, an Essex transvestite potter, have been let in by the artworld mafia.
-
-
Grayson the legend
- By Amanda on 28-01-17
-
What Are You Looking At?
- 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye
- By: Will Gompertz
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of What Are You Looking At? by Will Gompertz, read by Roy McMilllan. What is modern art? Why do we either love it or loathe it? And why is it worth so much damn money? Join Will Gompertz on a dazzling tour that will change the way you look at modern art forever. From Monet's water lilies to Van Gogh's sunflowers, from Warhol's soup cans to Hirst's pickled shark, hear the stories behind the masterpieces, meet the artists as they really were, and discover the real point of modern art.
-
-
Its a great listen. Intelligent and engaging.
- By douglas on 16-09-16
-
The Contemporaries
- Travels in the 21st-Century Art World
- By: Roger White
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From young artists trying to elbow their way in to those working hard at dropping out, White's essential audiobook offers a once-in-a-generation glimpse of the inner workings of the American art world at a moment of unparalleled ambition, uncertainty, and creative exuberance.
-
Art & Fear
- Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
- By: David Bayles, Ted Orland
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. This is a book about what it feels like to sit in your studio or classroom, at your wheel or keyboard, easel or camera, trying to do the work you need to do. It is about committing your future to your own hands, placing free will above predestination, choice above chance. It is about finding your own work.
-
-
Valuable insight from experienced artists
- By Jane on 07-06-16
-
How to See
- Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art
- By: David Salle
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How does art work? How does it move us, inform us, challenge us? Internationally renowned painter David Salle's incisive essay collection illuminates the work of many of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Engaging with a wide range of Salle's friends and contemporaries - from painters to conceptual artists such as Jeff Koons, John Baldessari, Roy Lichtenstein, and Alex Katz, among others - How to See explores not only the multilayered personalities of the artists themselves but also the distinctive character of their oeuvres.
-
Art History: A Very Short Introduction
- By: Dana Arnold
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This clear and concise new introduction examines all the major debates and issues using a wide range of well-known examples. It discusses the challenge of using verbal and written language to analyze a visual form. Dana Arnold also examines the many different ways of writing about art, and the changing boundaries of the subject of art history. Topics covered include the canon of Art History, the role of the gallery, 'blockbuster' exhibitions, and the emergence of social histories of art.
-
-
Dull
- By capuccino on 28-10-18
-
Playing to the Gallery
- Helping Contemporary Art in Its Struggle to Be Understood
- By: Grayson Perry
- Narrated by: Grayson Perry
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's easy to feel insecure around art and its appreciation, as though we cannot enjoy certain artworks if we don't have a lot of academic and historical knowledge. But if there's one message that I want you to take away it's that anybody can enjoy art and anybody can have a life in the arts - even me! For even I, an Essex transvestite potter, have been let in by the artworld mafia.
-
-
Grayson the legend
- By Amanda on 28-01-17
-
What Are You Looking At?
- 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye
- By: Will Gompertz
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of What Are You Looking At? by Will Gompertz, read by Roy McMilllan. What is modern art? Why do we either love it or loathe it? And why is it worth so much damn money? Join Will Gompertz on a dazzling tour that will change the way you look at modern art forever. From Monet's water lilies to Van Gogh's sunflowers, from Warhol's soup cans to Hirst's pickled shark, hear the stories behind the masterpieces, meet the artists as they really were, and discover the real point of modern art.
-
-
Its a great listen. Intelligent and engaging.
- By douglas on 16-09-16
-
The Contemporaries
- Travels in the 21st-Century Art World
- By: Roger White
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From young artists trying to elbow their way in to those working hard at dropping out, White's essential audiobook offers a once-in-a-generation glimpse of the inner workings of the American art world at a moment of unparalleled ambition, uncertainty, and creative exuberance.
-
Art & Fear
- Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
- By: David Bayles, Ted Orland
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. This is a book about what it feels like to sit in your studio or classroom, at your wheel or keyboard, easel or camera, trying to do the work you need to do. It is about committing your future to your own hands, placing free will above predestination, choice above chance. It is about finding your own work.
-
-
Valuable insight from experienced artists
- By Jane on 07-06-16
-
How to See
- Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art
- By: David Salle
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How does art work? How does it move us, inform us, challenge us? Internationally renowned painter David Salle's incisive essay collection illuminates the work of many of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Engaging with a wide range of Salle's friends and contemporaries - from painters to conceptual artists such as Jeff Koons, John Baldessari, Roy Lichtenstein, and Alex Katz, among others - How to See explores not only the multilayered personalities of the artists themselves but also the distinctive character of their oeuvres.
-
On Photography
- By: Susan Sontag
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1973, this is a study of the force of photographic images, which are continually inserted between experience and reality. When anything can be photographed, and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photograph freely, with no expectations of discovering what it means. This collection of six lucid and invigorating essays, with the most famous being "In Plato's Cave", make up a deep exploration of how the image has affected society.
-
-
An excellent essay on photography
- By Graham on 12-09-15
-
Keeping an Eye Open
- Essays on Art
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Flaubert believed that it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another, and that great paintings required no words of explanation. Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when we said nothing at all in front of a painting. But we are very far from reaching that state. We remain incorrigibly verbal creatures who love to explain things, to form opinions, to argue.... It is a rare picture which stuns, or argues, us into silence."
-
-
'allo 'allo
- By Matthew on 26-08-15
-
The History of Western Art
- By: Peter Whitfield
- Narrated by: Sebastian Comberti
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is art? Why do we value images of saints, kings, goddesses, battles, landscapes or cities from eras of history utterly remote from ourselves? This history of art shows how painters, sculptors and architects have expressed the belief systems of their age: religious, political and aesthetic. From the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, to the revolutionary years of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the artist has acted as a mirror to the ideals and conflicts of the human mind.
-
-
Not entirely what was expected
- By Crocker on 28-01-12
-
Postmodernism
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Christopher Butler
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 4 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this Very Short Introduction Christopher Butler challenges and explores the key ideas of postmodernists, and their engagement with theory, literature, the visual arts, film, architecture, and music. He treats artists, intellectuals, critics, and social scientists 'as if they were all members of a loosely constituted and quarrelsome political party' - a party which includes such members as Cindy Sherman, Salman Rushdie, Jacques Derrida, Walter Abish, and Richard Rorty - creating a vastly entertaining framework in which to unravel the mysteries of the 'postmodern condition', from the politicizing of museum culture to the cult of the politically correct.
-
-
useful
- By Mr. L. Bower on 31-12-18
-
How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy
- By: Julian Baggini
- Narrated by: Julian Baggini
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In How the World Thinks, Julian Baggini travels the globe to provide a hugely wide-ranging map of human thought. He shows us how distinct branches of philosophy flowered simultaneously in China, India and Ancient Greece, growing from local myths and stories - and how contemporary cultural attitudes, with particular attention to the West, East Asia, the Muslim World and Africa, have developed out of the philosophical histories of their regions.
-
The Lives of the Artists
- By: Giorgio Vasari
- Narrated by: Neville Jason
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An Italian Mannerist architect and painter, Giorgio Vasari was acquainted with many of the most famous artists of his day. He is best-known today for his biographies of artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian and Giotto. This recording is read with clarity and authority by Neville Jason.
-
-
Tech issues
- By Anonymous User on 21-05-18
-
The Art of Creative Thinking
- By: Rod Judkins
- Narrated by: Phil Fox
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The secrets of creative thinking by a lecturer at the world famous St. Martin's College of Art who has spent a lifetime researching innovative thinkers. A scuba-diving company faces bankruptcy because sharks have infested the area. Solution? Open the world's first extreme diving school. The Art of Creative Thinking reveals how we can transform ourselves, our businesses, and our society through a deeper understanding of human creativity.
-
-
Intelligent, thought provoking fun.
- By D. Oliver on 15-04-15
-
Broad Strokes
- 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order)
- By: Bridget Quinn
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Historically, major women artists have been excluded from the mainstream art canon. Aligned with the resurgence of feminism in pop culture, Broad Strokes offers an entertaining corrective to that omission. Art historian Bridget Quinn delves into the lives and careers of 15 brilliant female artists in this smart, feisty, educational, and enjoyable book.
-
-
A great and engaging listen
- By Franklymydarling on 08-06-18
-
Titian
- The Last Days
- By: Mark Hudson
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Toward the end of his long life, Tiziano Vecelli - known to the world ever since as Titian (circa 1488-1576) - was at work on a number of paintings that he kept in his studio, never quite completing them, as though wanting to endlessly postpone the moment of closure. Produced with his fingers as much as with the brush, Titian’s last paintings are imbued with a unique rawness and immediacy without precedent in the history of Western art.
-
-
Love Titian with a mystery twist
- By dmcd on 28-07-15
-
In Montmartre
- Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris, 1900-1910
- By: Sue Roe
- Narrated by: Emma Bering
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The real revolution in the arts first took place not, as is commonly supposed, in the 1920s to the accompaniment of the Charleston, black jazz and mint juleps but more quietly and intimately, in the shadow of the windmills - artificial and real - and in the cafés and cabarets of Montmartre during the first decade of the century.
-
Making It in the Art World
- New Approaches to Galleries, Shows, and Raising Money
- By: Brainard Carey
- Narrated by: Peter Drew
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Learn how today’s artists survive, exhibit, and earn money, without selling out! This book explains how to be a professional artist and new methods to define and realize what success means. Whether you’re a beginner, a student, or a career artist looking to be in the best museum shows, this book provides ways of advancing your plans on any level. Making It in the Art World is an invaluable resource for artists at every stage, offering readers a plethora of strategies and helpful tips to plan and execute a successful artistic career.
-
Francis Bacon in Your Blood
- By: Michael Peppiatt
- Narrated by: Michael Peppiatt
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon in June 1963 in Soho's French House to request an interview for a student magazine he was editing. Bacon invited him to lunch, and over oysters and Chablis they began a friendship and a no-holds-barred conversation that would continue until Bacon's death 30 years later. Fascinated by the artist's brilliance and charisma, Peppiatt accompanied him on his nightly round of prodigious drinking from grand hotel to louche club and casino, seeing all aspects of Bacon's 'gilded gutter life' and meeting everybody around him.
-
-
Riveting!
- By Mr. B. Martin on 05-01-18
Summary
Contemporary art has never been so popular - but what is 'contemporary' about contemporary art? What is its role today, and who is controlling its future? Bloody toy soldiers, gilded shopping carts, and embroidered tents. Contemporary art is supposed to be a realm of freedom where artists shock, break taboos, flout generally received ideas, and switch between confronting viewers with works of great emotional profundity and jaw-dropping triviality. But away from shock tactics in the gallery, there are many unanswered questions. Who is really running the art world? What effect has America's growing political and cultural dominance had on art?
Julian Stallabrass takes us inside the international art world to answer these and other controversial questions, and to argue that behind contemporary art's variety and apparent unpredictability lies a grim uniformity. Its mysteries are all too easily explained, its depths much shallower than they seem. Contemporary art seeks to bamboozle its viewers while being the willing slave of business and government. This audiobook is your antidote and will change the way you see contemporary art.
ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These audiobooks are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly listenable.
More from the same
What members say
Average customer ratings
Overall
-
-
5 Stars3
-
4 Stars2
-
3 Stars3
-
2 Stars0
-
1 Stars0
Performance
-
-
5 Stars2
-
4 Stars2
-
3 Stars4
-
2 Stars0
-
1 Stars0
Story
-
-
5 Stars3
-
4 Stars3
-
3 Stars2
-
2 Stars0
-
1 Stars0
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- John W
- UK
- 06-05-18
Interesting, brief, but bland recitation
Quite a good listen, with dense subject matter being well explained, only brought low by a monotone narrator who pushed too quickly through every line, with little interest in how characterless he sounded. You end up having to relisten to whole sections because it was so quickly and summarily skimmed through.
I couldn't help feeling that Stallabrass has something of a weakness for utopian liberalism as he tends to associate everything in the art world with it. He recognises that it is trendy to make art that promotes liberal agendas, but stops coyly short of actually confirming that this is generally to guarantee financial return, not out of any ideological allegiance.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jaded Buddha
- 12-11-13
art historical Marxist criticism
Perhaps it is fitting that Stallabrass's book Art Incorporated is here rebranded and retitled for the Short Introduction series.
I'm not sure this approach is what people will expect who are looking for an intro to contemporary art, but it actually makes a lot of sense because as disparate as 'contemporary art' is, there is a common thread running throughout: the relation of art to capital. The essays in this book are brilliantly written and insightful on this point.
Regarding the reading - it's professional but uninterested. Not bad.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jean Payens
- 30-07-17
Would not waste your money
Was expecting a focus on contemporary art what it is and what it isn't; in a little bit of the history behind it but way too much of this book is simply on the historicity and politics of selling artwork, how today's politics have affected these poor artist, etc. etc. very disappointed because most of these Oxford sure histories are pretty good this one is not one of them.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Maxwell
- 18-01-14
Marxist critique of the power elites not much art.
What did you like best about Contemporary Art? What did you like least?
Not much on the vast range of emerging new and original ways and means that contemporary art encompasses, unless it fits the authors speciality- wherein he focuses on 'injustice' which is what the author was no doubt taught to do in the leftist halls of the institutions where he got the gig.... Hardcore Leftist 'visionaries' believe that man needs bread alone, never mind the wine...ie the spirit. Which means that Julian isn't going to discuss what to my mind are the most relevant and hopeful artists. On the other hand, his critique of the worst art and the corrupt institutions that support it, is pretty on the money and if you too are interested in justice and unfairness and want to be able to blame someone other than the artists for buying into the decadent, irresponsible materialist/theory crap this is for you.
What was most disappointing about Julian Stallabrass’s story?
This tendentious Marxist view focuses on art makings context (it was fashionable for a while especially in the eighties in art schools/universities and did wonders to curb any individuality in the ambitious students) and a way of getting away from the idea of an original individual 'genius'. So there is very little on individual artists or art works or issues besides power and politics.But if you want to feel morally satisfied having been present as the finger was pointed and nothing changed this could suit. Ironically all the worst art from Marxist and Fascist periods regimes was all geared away from the individual toward the states political ideologies. Castro and Mao somehow spend a lot of time herein...thats Julians special interest.
What does James Conlan bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
He is pretty good considering the mono-dimensional approach relentlessly taken to the topic.
Do you think Contemporary Art needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?
This view is seriously tired and can only really exist in institutional halls. I know, I am a trained art historian and an artist who lectured for 25 years, and worked with a number of the marxist theorists Julian mentions herein and eventually found myself unable to bare the suppression of alternate views in the 'system'. Ironically the best artists do not approach political power literally/directly. Oh how angry we were when Bob Dylan would not stand for a specific ideology! The only artist to be commissioned to do a work for the Louvre Anselm Kiefer is one of the myriad geniuses who created original deeply spiritual ways of addressing the modern political nightmare but who like so many others wont be mentioned herein- they don't suit the 'argument'.
Any additional comments?
I remember the director of the National School of Art in Dublin saying to the incoming artists among other things: If you want to save whales...go and do that don't bring it to art, its not what art is for or about.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful