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This volume presents some of the most original interpretations of art available. The selection represents the whole of Jean-Louis Schefer's career, from the 1960s, when he was influenced by structuralism, to his more lyrical and autobiographical essays of the 1990s, which meditate on the role of the spectator in relation to art practice.

In The Rhetoric of Purity, Mark Cheetham explores the historical and theoretical relations between early abstract painting in Europe and the notion of purity. For Gauguin, Serusier, Mondrian and Kandinsky - the pioneering abstractionists whose written and visual works Cheetham discusses in detail - purity is the crucial quality that painting must possess.

Bakhtin and the Visual Arts, first published in 1995, assesses the relevance of Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas as they relate to painting and sculpture. Deborah Haynes's in-depth study of Bakhtin's aesthetics, especially his theory of creativity, analyses its applicability to contemporary art theory and criticism

The Bayeux Tapestry is recognized as one of the most problematical historical documents of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. More than a reinterpretation of the historical evidence, this study explores the visual and textual strategies that have made the Bayeux Tapestry's narrative such a powerful experience for audiences over the centuries.

Visualizing Boccaccio represents an intriguing 1997 approach to the interpretation of Boccaccio's classic book of erotic tales, The Decameron. In a comparison of selected tales from The Decameron with painting and film, Ricketts demonstrates how the juxtaposition of verbal and visual renditions permits new interpretation of each of these works.

This book examines the evolution of architecture in Russia during the Stalinist period, demonstrating how the aesthetic choices of Stalin and his architects were conditioned by the cultural mechanisms of the 1930s and 1940s. Paperny presents the remarkable trajectory of architectural and cultural transformation that marked a pivotal moment of Russia's history.

A critical analysis of postmodernism in the visual arts since the 1960s, this focuses primarily on American texts that reference and construct Marcel Duchamp as the originator of postmodern art.