Visual Metaphor and the Contemporary Artist: Ways of Thinking and Making by Daniel Serig

Visual Metaphor and the Contemporary Artist: Ways of Thinking and Making by Daniel SerigVisual Metaphor and the Contemporary Artist: Ways of Thinking and Making by Daniel Serig

Visual Metaphor and the Contemporary Artist: Ways of Thinking and Making investigates the practices and exhibition of contemporary artists to understand how they create meaning. Inquiry into metaphor arose from the field of rhetoric and has a tradition of study in linguistics. How, then, does metaphor become visual? And how do artists use them? Theories of visual metaphor often align with theories of linguistic metaphor. Yet cognitive views of metaphor suggest linguistic media may not be the only or best starting point for understanding visual metaphor. This study determines a conceptual structure to the creation of visual metaphors by these artists that closely aligns with the cognitive view of metaphor. This study also questions the role of metaphor in art education. This qualitative study includes art-based research methods in developing a conceptual structure of visual metaphor creation. Dan Serig takes an in-depth look at one aspect of artists'' work in a way that will be of interest to people seeking an example of alternative approaches to empirical research that includes studio practices, as well as those interested in the intersection of cognition and art.

Visual Metaphor and the Contemporary Artist: Ways of Thinking and Making by Daniel Serig

The Artists of Nathadwara: The Practice of Painting in Rajasthan by Tryna Lyons

The Artists of Nathadwara: The Practice of Painting in Rajasthan by Tryna LyonsThe Artists of Nathadwara: The Practice of Painting in Rajasthan by Tryna Lyons

In this beautifully illustrated study, Tryna Lyons combines ethnographic and art historical methods to examine the work and careers of artists in Nathadwara, Rajasthan, India. The religious pilgrimage center of Nathadwara is home to a large community of traditional artists, who retain sketchbooks and other materials handed down in their families for generations. The old sketchbooks, still used to teach younger generations and to provide established artists with ideas, reveal the connection between contemporary practice and the historical antecedents of the Nathadwara school of painting. Lyons's innovative approach focuses on analysis of the sketchbooks of five artists active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reproduced here in detail alongside full-color reproductions of their work and related images. The sketchbooks reveal personal style and innovation, demonstrating the array of choices open to artists in a time of cultural ferment and excitement. A section on women artists documents the careers of successful female exponents of the Nathadwara style. Appendixes include a glossary and a collection of artists' genealogies, some stretching back 17 generations, recording significant information on artistic activities, commissions, and patronage. The Artists of Nathadwara should make us question Orientalist assumptions about tradition and the anonymity of South Asian artisans.

The Artists of Nathadwara: The Practice of Painting in Rajasthan by Tryna Lyons