Harvard University Press Publicity Blog

"A shattering of tradition"

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (2nd version)" (1935-36, unpublished in this form during Benjamin's lifetime):

"One might focus these aspects of the artwork in the concept of the aura, and go on to say: what withers in the age of the technological reproducibility of the work of art is the latter’s aura. This process is symptomatic; its significance extends far beyond the realm of art. It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced. These two processes lead to a massive upheaval in the domain of objects handed down from the past—a shattering of tradition which is the reverse side of the present crisis and renewal of humanity. Both processes are intimately related to the mass movements of our day."

The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media is available now from HUP.

Above: Drawing of Benjamin by Ralph Steadman, 2006.

Felice Frankel--On the surface of things

Fascinating profile of photographer and HUP author Felice Frankel, whose On the Surface of Things: Images of the Extraordinary in Science, co-authored with George Whitesides, uses innovative photographic technology to find startling abstract beauty on the surfaces of objects all around us. Newsweek has called Frankel's work the kind that "makes you look, and look again."

The New Yorker on The Art of Small Things

The New Yorker takes on John Mack's The Art of Small Things in its "Briefly Noted" section. Previously, Jeremy Axelrod had the following to say about Mack's work in a review in the New York Sun:

The pleasure of this encyclopedic book lies in the resonances Mr. Mack finds between his many historical anecdotes. Mr. Mack's roving, capacious sections are not organized within an academic thesis so much as they are arranged like a bouquet of flowers, in evocative rather than linear groupings. The book itself enacts a kind of miniaturization by surveying so many artifacts in one volume.

||| Learn more about The Art of Small Things.

HUP authors named "most influential" Princeton alums

We see from Princeton Alumni Weekly that three HUP authors are mentioned in connection with their project to seek out the "most influential" Princeton alumni of all time. So congrats to John Rawls (six-time HUP author who likely needs no introduction--PAW calls him "the most articulate defender of liberalism since John Stuart Mill"), Gary Becker (a leading economist of our time), and world-renowned architect Robert Venturi. Hard to argue with choices like that.

And now, a greatest-hits selection from our three honorees:

John Rawls--Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

Gary Becker--Social Economics: Market Behavior in a Social Environment

Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown--Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time

BLDGBLOG interviews Mary Beard

A fantastic interview with Mary Beard, editor of the Wonders of the World series (published in the US by HUP) and author of the forthcoming The Roman Triumph, at BLDGBLOG, a site this blogger reads religiously. In another post, BLDGBLOG author Geoff Manaugh explains his enthusiasm for Cathy Gere's The Tomb of Agamemnon, one of the most stellar offerings in the Wonders of the World series.

The Wonders of the World series has a simple concept--pair a famous structure with someone who's qualified to write about it in an intriguing way that reveals not only the architectural, but also the cultural implications of the place. The books are aimed not at the specialist, but at the general inquisitive reader ("the intelligent ignorant," as Beard often refers to herself, although "ignorant" is not a word others would be likely to use in describing the Chair of Classics at Cambridge). We co-publish the series with Profile Books, a British imprint, and while the list of titles differs slightly between the two publishers, volumes that have been released in the US include:

* The Parthenon by Mary Beard

* The Alhambra by Robert Irwin

* Westminster Abbey by Richard Jenkyns

* The Temple of Jerusalem by Simon Goldhill

* The Colosseum by Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard

* The Tomb of Agamemnon by Cathy Gere

* The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt by John Ray

* St. Peter's by Keith Miller

* The Forbidden City by Geremie R. Barmé (forthcoming)

* various top-secret forthcoming volumes that will undoubtedly knock your socks off, so stay tuned...

Venice--the city as theme park

A post over at BLDGBLOG (one of my favorite sites) surmises what Venice will be like once the city is completely depopulated of actual residents, a phenomenon that some observers predict will occur within the next 30 years. From The Guardian, last year:

Depopulation is getting to the point of no return, the Venice council housing chief, Mara Rumiz, said following the publication this week of the latest figures. "Beyond then, Venice will never again be a normal city, but will become a mere tourist destination and lose its charm - even for the tourists themselves," she was quoted as telling the daily La Repubblica yesterday.

If you want to know what the streets of Venice were like in the pre-ghost town days, pick up a copy of James H. S. McGregor's Venice from the Ground Up, a lively tour through the streets and canals of the once-powerful city.

Previously on the blog--maps of Venice, past and present.

Documenting the children of the favelas

The New York Times reviews Paula Trope's new show, "Emancipatory Action," hosted at the Americas Society in New York:

A young woman travels to an impoverished district in a large, sprawling city where she distributes cameras among children and invites them to take photographs of themselves and their surroundings. The photographs are printed and make their way into galleries in other cities, on other continents.

This is the arc of "Born Into Brothels," the Oscar-winning documentary by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, which chronicles Ms. Briski’s involvement with children in a red-light district in Calcutta. It also describes Paula Trope’s work with the meninos, children who live in the favelas, or shantytowns, of Rio de Janeiro.

This September, HUP will distribute Emancipatory Action: Paula Trope And The Meninos, edited by José Luis Falconi and published by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Art as science, science as art

Felice Frankel is not your average photographer, although she does enjoy taking the occasional landscape shot. As described in this New York Times profile, Frankel is on a mission to take science and turn it into art. Frankel's meticulously-composed photographs of natural and scientific phenomena--an extreme close-up of yeast in a dish, say, or the surface of a compact disc--have caught the eye of many a scientist looking for a way to make science palatable to the general public. Frankel's pictures have graced everything from the covers of scientific journals to a poster produced by the National Science Foundation.

Ten years ago, Frankel and her colleague George M. Whitesides produced a book called On the Surface of Things: Images of the Extraordinary in Science, a book that collects some of Frankel's most striking images and presents them along with explanations of what they are and how Frankel managed to capture them. Sadly, the book has recently been out-of-print. Not to worry, though, because HUP is preparing a paperback reissue of this remarkable book, currently scheduled for publication in October 2007.

It's aliiiiive

The Chicago Tribune reports today on the burgeoning field of "bio-art," whose practictioners "use live tissues, bacteria, living organisms and life processes to create works of art that blur the traditional distinctions between science and art." Eduardo Kac, for example, took to the laboratory for a 2000 project that saw him inserting the fluorescent protein gene from a jellyfish into a fertilized rabbit egg cell, producing a rabbit (named "Alba") that actually glows under blue lights, prompting protests from animal rights groups who accused Kac of abusing animals in the process of creating his art.

Kac and other "bio-artists" should take a look at Aglow in the Dark: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence, Vincent Pieribone and David Gruber's 2005 book on the history of biofluorescence, or "living light." In this lavishly-illustrated book, Pieribone and Gruber convey the human fascination with bioluminescence and its little-known applications in war, forensic science, and molecular biology (and now art).

Feminist art revisited

HUP author Linda Nochlin quoted in today's New York Sun on the resurgence of critical interest in feminist art, which some feel peaked as a movement thirty years ago:

I think this is a kind of coming out period for a lot of artists," the art historian Linda Nochlin said. "A lot of women's art has been accepted, but an awareness of the feminist edge [has lagged behind]. For instance, our leading sculptor, male or female, in the United States today is by all odds Louise Bourgeois. And she is a feminist," Ms. Nochlin continued, "but a lot of people buy her work, praise her work without paying attention to the strong feminist component of it."

Nochlin is the author, most recently, of Bathers, Bodies, Beauty: The Visceral Eye, a book that takes Renoir’s Great Bathers as a starting point for an exploration of the issues posed in representations particularly of the female body in the art of impressionists, modern masters, and contemporary realists and post-modernists.