Praneet Soi

The first university-level textbook on the power, condition, and expanse of contemporary fine art drawing A Companion to Contemporary Drawing explores how 20th and 21st century artists have used drawing to understand and comment on the world. Presenting contributions by both theorists and practitioners, this unique textbook considers the place, space, and history of drawing and explores shifts in attitudes towards its practice over the years. Twenty-seven essays discuss how drawing emerges from the mind of the artist to question and reflect upon what they see, feel, and experience. This book discusses key themes in contemporary drawing practice, addresses the working conditions and context of artists, and considers a wide range of personal, social, and political considerations that influence artistic choices. Topics include the politics of eroticism in South American drawing, anti-capitalist drawing from Eastern Europe, drawing and conceptual art, feminist drawing, and exhibitions that have put drawing practices at the centre of contemporary art. This textbook: Demonstrates ways contemporary issues and concerns are addressed through drawing Reveals how drawing is used to make powerful social and political statements Situates works by contemporary practitioners within the context of their historical moment Explores how contemporary art practices utilize drawing as both process and finished artifact Shows how concepts of observation, representation, and audience have changed dramatically in the digital era Establishes drawing as a mode of thought Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series, A Companion to Contemporary Drawing is a valuable text for students of fine art, art history, and curating, and for practitioners working within contemporary fine art practice.

Visual artist' is a term with untold interpretations, nuances, variations and meanings. But how, as an artist (or designer, photographer, or other ?independent creator?), do you become who you are and who you would like to be?0What fundamental questions, characteristics, dilemmas, ambitions, restrictions and realities play a part? How, as an artist, can you guide your artistic practice, the main criterion being to answer the question: "where do I stand and what do I stand for?"0'Plan and Play, Play and Plan: Positioning by Artists' targets the artist, inviting him or her to reach considerations, often based on analytical models, that will help to determine his position.0The author knows from practical experience the complexity of the artist?s questions and dilemmas, the many areas in which the artist involved and how important self-reflection and self-determination are for artistic practice, without losing sight of the broader social context. He has scrutinized his considerations, assembled notes and pointers ? based on many interviews with a wide variety of artists, from beginners to old hands, from unknown to internationally celebrated ? assimilating them into an appealing book in which terminology, background, components and questions requiring reflection form a cohesive whole.

Like many of Shklovsky's works, Third Factory is not easily classified. In part it is a memoir of the three "Factories" that influenced his development as a human being and as a writer, yet the events depicted within the book are fictionalised and conveyed with the poetic verve and playfulness of form that have made Shklovsky a major figure in twentieth-century world literature. In addition to its fictional and biographical elements, Third Factory includes anecdotes, rants, social satire, literary theory, and anything else that Shklovsky, with an artist's unerring confidence, chooses to include.

Feminist networks, new biennials, and performance -- Painting and the image condition at the millennium -- Materiality, ephemerality, and haptics -- Language, the documentary, and art in a discursive mode -- Infrastructure, collaboration, and the cut -- Conclusion : Infrastructure is not (only) a metaphor.

In Central Time, Ranjit Hoskote becomes the storyteller of a turbulent epoch. We meet Ovid and Ghalib, poets in exile or eclipse, in these poems, which are by turns elliptical, conversational and narrative. We meet painters who betray their art, and sculptors who are betrayed by theirs. Fascinated by the enigmas of time, memory and evanescence that art invokes, Hoskote addresses a range of artists including Bihzad, Magritte, Masaki Fujihata and Ranbir Kaleka. At the same time, he retains his affection for the natural world, celebrating the textures and intensities of sensuous experience: the roughness of stone, the dance of light, the flowering of touch and the taste of salt and cinnamon. A testament to a present shimmering like a mirage between contested pasts and vexed futures, this book pivots around moments of encounter: a defiant squirrel in Anuradhapura, an enigmatic collection of objects in a Berlin museum or a man discovering a mass grave near Kabul. Written between 2006 and 2014, the hundred poems that form Central Time resonate with the crises of war, genocide, terror, forced migration and the precariousness of belonging.

The country's first and only publication devoted to narrative journalism, The Caravan occupies a singular position among Indian magazines. It is a new kind of magazine for a new kind of reader, one who demands both style and substance. Since its relaunch in January 2010, the magazine has earned a reputation as one of the country's most sophisticated publications-a showcase for the region's finest writers and a distinctive blend of rigorous reporting, incisive criticism and commentary, stunning photo essays, and gripping new fiction and poetry. Its commitment to great storytelling has earned it the respect of readers from around the world.  "India's best English language magazine", The Guardian, London  "For those with an interest in India, it has become an absolute must-read", The New Republic, Washington The Caravan fills a niche in the Indian media that has remained vacant for far too long, catering to the intellectually curious and aesthetically refined reader, who seeks a magazine of exceptional quality.