First published in 1938, "The Theatre and Its Double" is a collection of essays detailing Antonin Artaud's radical theories on drama, which he saw as being stifled by conservatism and lack of experimentation. It contains the famous manifestos of the 'Theatre of Cruelty', analyses the underlying impulses of performance, provides some suggestions on a physical training method for actors and actresses, and features a long appreciation of the expressive values of Eastern dance drama. Also incl...

Antonin Artaud’s novelised biography of the 3rd-century Roman Emperor Heliogabalus is simultaneously his most accessible and his most extreme book. Written in 1933, at the time when Artaud was preparing to stage his legendary Theatre of Cruelty, HELIOGABALUS is a powerful concoction of sexual excess, self-deification and terminal violence. Reflecting its author’s preoccupations of the time with the occult, magic, Satan, and a range of esoteric religions, the book shows Artaud at his most l...

In The Theatre and Its Double, first published in 1938, Antonin Artaud puts forward his radical theories on drama and theatre, which he saw as being stifled by conservatism and a lack of experimentation.Containing the famous manifestos of the 'Theatre of Cruelty', this collection of essays analyses the underlying impulses of performance, provides suggestions on a physical-training method for actors, and features a long appreciation of the expressive values of Eastern dance...

Published here in its entirety in English, Artaud's Revolutionary Messages collects Antonin Artaud's political, aesthetic and philosophical writings during his travels to Mexico in 1936.Written around the same time as his seminal work The Theatre and its Double, it captures a crucial point in Artaud's life shortly before he was admitted to a mental asylum in which he was to spend a significant part of his later life.Revolutionary Messages contains...

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (1866 - 1944) was a fantastic Russian painter who is credited for painting the first modern abstract works. In this book, Kandinsky compares the spiritual life of humanity to a pyramid; and the artist has the mission of leading others to the top.Illustrated with 11 paintings.The spiritual life of human-kind follows the shape of a pyramid, occasionally rising to an apex of spiritual perception when an artist of genius comes forward to lead the ...

'Those who read or listen to our stories see everything as though through a lens. This lens is the secret of narration, and it is ground anew in every story, ground between the temporal and the timeless ... In our brief mortal lives, we are grinders of these lenses'.When John Berger wrote this apparently unclassifiable book, it was to become a sensation, translated into nine languages and indelible from the minds of those who read it. This stunning work is a shoebox filled with del...

Ideas in Profile: Small Introductions to Big TopicsArt has always been part of history. But we often think of it as outside history. When we look at a painting by Raphael, Rembrandt or Rubens it speaks to us directly, but it's also an historical document, part of a living world. Renowned art historian Martin Kemp takes the reader on an extraordinary trip through art, from devotional works to the revolutionary techniques of the Renaissance, from the courtly Masters ...

AMONG art historians of to-day there is hardly anyone who enjoys a position comparable to that of Dr. Max J. Friedländer. He is universally recognized as being probably the greatest living expert, notably, of course, on the early Netherlandish and German masters; and in normal times not a day passed on which pictures were not submitted to him for opinion from all parts of the world. But he is much more than the mere, if accomplished, expert, worried without respite by people eager for his ...

Sinister Resonance begins with the premise that sound is a haunting, a ghost, a presence whose location is ambiguous and whose existence is transitory. The intangibility of sound is uncanny – a phenomenal presence in the head, at its point of source and all around. The close listener is like a medium who draws out substance from that which is not entirely there.The history of listening must be constructed from the narratives of myth and fiction, 'silent' arts such as painting, the ...

Maniac Eyeball contains the frank and uncensored confessions of Salvador Dalí, from his childhood and first adolescent sexual experiences to his emergence as a painter, Surrealist, and eventually the most famous - and possibly richest -artist of modern times. These inspired tracts, covering art, love, money, sex and death, fame, philosophy, science, his famous friends and enemies, and his extraordinary creative genius, reveal the intricate workings of Dalí's mind to create not only an un...

What is art? Why do we value images of saints, kings, goddesses, battles, landscapes or cities in eras utterly remote from our own? 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 19th and 20th centuries, the artist has acted as a mirror to the ideals and conflicts of the human mind. He has always...

The origins and nature of architecture; The formative influence of architectural forms; The history of architecture in the light of mankind's spiritual evolution; A new architecture as a means of uniting with spiritual forces; Art and architecture as manifestations of spiritual realities; Metamorphosis in architecture; Aspects of a new architecture; Rudolf Steiner on the first Goetheanum building; The second Goetheanum building; The architecture of a community in Dornach; The temple is the...