Art and Design: Books and e-books
This guide brings together key Library resources to help you find information relating to Fine Art and Art and Design.
Image Credit: BCU Assets
Books are an excellent way to broaden your knowledge or start researching a subject. As well as searching for books and e-books directly in the Library Search, there are multiple ways to discover relevant books:
You can also suggest new books, if we don't have something you're looking for.
Reading Lists Online
Reading Lists Online provides access to reading lists for your modules. You can search for lists using the module code, name, or your lecturer's name.
Individual items on the lists will take you directly to Library Search or to the full text for e-books and e-journals.
If you can't find your reading list, talk to your module leader or contact us at Library Chat.
How to find a reading list (video)
Browsing Books
Looking for other books on the real or virtual shelves is another way to discover interesting titles. Look for the shelf marks corresponding to related topics. Online you can browse and search the e-book collections BCU has subscribed.
See the guide bellow for browsing books by subject:
Shelf Guide
Design 745
Drawing 741
Education & Art 707
Painting 750
Photography 770
Sculpture 730
Twentieth century art 709.04
Twenty-first century art 709.05
At the School of Art Library, books on artists & photographers can be found in the ARTISTS & PHOTO sections on the Ground Floor.
Please note that a shelfmark starting with Q (Quarto) or F (Folio) means that it is bigger than normal books. Qs are usually within the main collection but Fs are shelved separately.
New titles added to School of Art Library
Modern Sculpture by
This tapestry of primary sources is an essential primer on sculpture and its makers. Modern Sculpture presents a selection of manifestos, documents, statements, articles, and interviews from more than ninety sculptors, including a diverse selection of contemporary sculptors. With this book, editor Douglas Dreishpoon defers to artists, whose varied points of view illuminate sculpture's transformation--from object to action, concept to phenomenon--over the course of more than a century. Chapters arranged in chronological sequences highlight dominant stylistic, philosophical, and thematic threads uniting kindred groups. The result is an artist-centric history of sculpture as a medium of consequence and character.
ISBN: 9780520969827Publication Date: 2022-10-25
Atmospheres of projection : environmentality in art and screen mediaISBN: 9780226817477
Charting the Afrofuturist Imaginary in African American Art by
This book examines Afrofuturism in African American art, focusing specifically on images of black women and how those images expand the discourse of representation in visual culture of the United States. This volume defines a visual language of Afrofuturism that includes materiality, temporality, and black liberation. Elizabeth Hamilton discusses the visual progenitors of Afrofuturism. In the artworks of Pierre Bennu, Sanford Biggers, Alison Saar, Mequitta Ahuja, Robert Pruitt, Renee Cox, Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Alma Thomas, and Harriet Powers, the fantastic narratives of Afrofuturism are uncovered through in-depth case studies. These case studies engage with Afrofuturism as a black feminist visual theory that helps to unburden the images of black women from the stereotypical visual scripts that are so common in contemporary visual culture of the United States. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual studies, American literature, gender studies, popular culture, and African American studies.
ISBN: 9781000627084Publication Date: 2022-08-12
The color Pynk: Black Femme Art for SurvivalISBN: 9781477325636
The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art by
Since the global financial crash of 2008, artists have become increasingly engaged in a wide range of cultural activism targeted against capitalism, political authoritarianism, colonial legacies, gentrification, but also in opposition to their own exploitation. This book critiques, celebrates, and historicises activist art, exploring its current urgency alongside the processes which have given rise to activism by artists, and activist forms of art. Author Gregory Sholette approaches his subject from the unusual dual perspective of commentator (as scholar and writer) and insider (as activist artist). He describes a new wave of activist art taking place not only within community-based protest groups, as it has for decades, but also amongst professionally trained, MFA-bearing art practitioners, many of whom, by choice or by circumstance, refuse to respect the conventional borders separating painting from protest, or art from utility. The book explores the subtle distinction between activist forms of art and protest by artists, and proposes that contemporary activist art and art activism constitute a broader paradigm shift that reflects the crisis of contemporary capitalism.
ISBN: 9781848224414Publication Date: 2022-11-25
Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art by
Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art addresses how researchers can challenge stereotypical notions of Islam and Islamic art while avoiding the creation of new myths and the encouragement of nationalistic and ethnic attitudes. Despite its Orientalist origins, the field of Islamic art has continued to evolve and shape our understanding of the various civilizations of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Situated in this field, this book addresses how universities, museums, and other educational institutions can continue to challenge stereotypical or homogeneous notions of Islam and Islamic art. It reviews subtle and overt mythologies through scholarly research, museum collections and exhibitions, classroom perspectives, and artists' initiatives. This collaborative volume addresses a conspicuous and persistent gap in the literature, which can only be filled by recognizing and resolving persistent myths regarding Islamic art from diverse academic and professional perspectives. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, museum studies, visual culture, and Middle Eastern studies.
ISBN: 9781003170525Publication Date: 2022-03-20
Women Art Workers and the Arts and Crafts Movement by
This book constitutes the first comprehensive history of the network of women who worked at the heart of the English Arts and Crafts movement from the 1870s to the 1930s. Challenging the long-standing assumption that the Arts and Crafts simply revolved around celebrated male designers like William Morris, it instead offers a new social and cultural account of the movement, which simultaneously reveals the breadth of the imprint of women art workers upon the making of modern society. Thomas provides unprecedented insight into how women navigated authoritative roles as 'art workers' by asserting expertise across a range of interconnected cultures: from the artistic to the professional, intellectual, entrepreneurial and domestic. Through examination of newly discovered institutional archives and private papers, Thomas elucidates the critical importance of the spaces around which women conceptualised alternative creative and professional lifestyles.
ISBN: 9781526140432Publication Date: 2020-05-20
Art and Ecology Now by
'Eco' awareness has had an enormous impact, not least in the art world. This accessible and thought-provoking book is the first in-depth exploration of the ways in which contemporary artists are confronting nature, the environment, climate change and ecology. The book moves through the various levels of artists' engagement, from those who act as independent commentators, documenting and reflecting on nature, to those who use the physical environment as the raw material for their art, and those committed activists who set out to make art that transforms both our attitudes and our habits. More than 340 illustrations feature the work of 95 artists and art collectives from all over the world, including 'The Artist as Family', Nyaba Leon Ouedraogo, Yao Lu, Tue Greenfort, Eva Jospin, Ravi Agarwal, Nadav Kander, Naoya Hatakeyama, Tattfoo Tan, Berndnaut Smilde, Simon Starling, and Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla.
ISBN: 9780500239162Publication Date: 2014-05-20
Main e-book collections
If we don't have something?
When an item is not in stock
There are many options available to you when a book is not in stock:
- Reserve a book that is already loaned.
- If you found a book held by another library, you can request an inter-library loan.
- And finally, you may also suggest a book for purchase.