Overview

Art as worldmaking is a response to Alex Potts's provocative 2013 book Experiments in modern realism. Twenty essays by leading scholars test Potts's recasting of realism through examinations of art produced in different media and periods, ranging from eighth-century Chinese garden aesthetics to video work by the contemporary Russian collective Radek Community. While the book does not neglect avatars of pictorial realism such as Menzel and Eakins, or the question of nineteenth-century realism's historical antecedents, it is contemporary in orientation in that many contributors are particularly concerned with the questions that sculpture, photography and non-traditional media pose for realism as an aesthetic norm. It will be essential reading for students of art history concerned with art's truth value or more broadly with conceptual problems of representation and the intersections of art and politics.

Full Product Details

Author:   Malcolm Baker (Distinguished Professor) ,  Andrew Hemingway (Emeritus Professor)
Publisher:   Manchester University Press
Imprint:   Manchester University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 17.00cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 24.00cm
Weight:   0.789kg
ISBN:  

9781526114914

ISBN 10:   1526114917
Pages:   368
Publication Date:   20 January 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available, will be POD  
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Table of Contents

Introduction : Realism and its others in the 21st century: Why Realism won't go away - Andrew Hemingway Part I: Theory 1. The figure as double agent: realism and abstraction in European post-war art - Briony Fer 2. Realism's Credibility Problem - Joshua Shannon 3. If only; only if ... - Adrian Rifkin Part II: Sculpture 4. Confronting the Veristic Sculptural Portrait - Malcolm Baker 5. Sculpture, Realism and the Neo-classical Ideal - Martina Droth 6. Elasticity and Victorian Sculptural Form - Caroline Arscott 7. Image of the People: Charles Ray's Recent Work - Anne M. Wagner Part III: Garden Design 8. Of Gardens and Persons: the English Engagement with China's Garden Design - Martin Powers 9. Traditional Views. Conservative Anti-Naturalism and Landscape Aesthetics in France around 1900 - Neil McWilliam Part IV: Painting and Photography 10. Willem Kalf on Reflexykonst and the Aesthetics of Transformation in Still Life - Celeste Brusati 11. Democratic light: phenomenology and the worldliness of painting - Brendan Prendeville 12. The Visibility of Labor - T.J. Clark 13. Body and Soul in the work of Thomas Eakins and F. Holland Day - Rebecca Zurier Part V: Photography and Conema 14. Photography as counter forensics - Steve Edwards 15. Woman, War and Social Documentary Photography in South Africa - Tamar Garb 16. Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966): photography and film - Lisa Tickner Part VI: Post-Media / Contemporary Practice 17. Peter Dreher's Everyday Realism - Alistair Rider 18. From grey and rainy Vermont - Thomas Crow 19. 'Every day, something happens to us': Realism at the crossroads - Gail Day Index -- .

Reviews

‘Art as Worldmaking is a game changer. The essays within cast new light on a striking range of subjects, and the collection as whole completely reframes our current understanding of artistic realism.’ Marnin Young, Associate Professor and Chair of Art History, Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University -- .

Author Information

Malcolm Baker is Distinguished Professor in the History of Art at the University of California, Riverside Andrew Hemingway is Professor Emeritus in the History of Art at University College London

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