Library Resources-General References
Welcome
This guide will introduce you to some of the resources available for you at the Vanderbilt Libraries.
Please let me know if you need help at any point in your research process.
Stephanie
Sometimes the best place to start is a subject specific dictionary or encyclopedia.
Below is a selected list of online reference resources.
- Art and Globalization"Brings together historians, philosophers, critics, postcolonial theorists, and curators to ask how contemporary global art is conceptualized. Issues discussed include globalism and globalization, internationalism and nationality, empire and capitalism"
- The Avant-Garde: a very short introductionFor over a hundred years 'the avant-garde' has been the most influential concept in modern art; its impact on the history of modern culture has been profound. In this book, David Cottington explores why the avant-garde carries so much authority, and places it within the context of western modernity and capitalist culture.
- Britannica OnlineBritannica Academic delivers fast and easy access to high-quality, comprehensive information. The rich combination of the venerable Encyclopædia Britannica plus Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, magazines and periodicals, and many other research tools provides the variety of reliable sources that students need to consult when conducting thorough research—all from one resource.
- Cambridge Companion to Modernism, Edited by Michael Levenson."..addresses the key themes being researched, taught and studied in modernism today. Its interdisciplinary approach is central to its success as it brings together readings of the many varieties of modernism."
- Contemporary Art a very short introductionThis controversial and witty exploration of the dramatic changes that have taken place since the fall of the Berlin Wall provides a critical look at the reasons for the current art boom and reveals the politics behind the business.
- Dada culture : critical texts on the avant-gardeHow Dada is to break its cultural accommodation and containment today necessitates thinking the historical instances through revised application of critical and theoretical models. The volume Dada Culture: Critical Texts on the Avant-Garde moves precisely by this motive, bringing together writings which insist upon the continuity of the early twentieth-century moment now at the start of the twenty-first.
- Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary ArtContains around 2,000 clear and concise entries on all aspects of modern and contemporary art. Its impressive range of terms includes movements, styles, techniques, artists, critics, dealers, schools, and galleries.
- A Dictionary of PostmodernismPreface -- Notes on contributors -- Description -- Introduction -- Dictionary: Barthes / Tony Thwaites -- Baudrillard / Niall Lucy -- Cultural studies / John Hartley -- Culture / Niall Lucy -- Deconstruction / Claire Colebrook -- Deleuze, Guattari / Claire Colebrook -- Derrida / Tony Thwaites -- Dialogue / John Hartley -- Differend / Niall Lucy -- Discourse / Robert Briggs -- Eco / John Hartley -- Essence / Robert Briggs -- Foucault / Robert Briggs -- Globalization / John Hartley -- Habermas / Claire Colebrook -- Hassan / Darren Tofts -- Hyperreality / Robert Briggs -- Jameson / Niall Lucy -- Jencks / John Hartley -- Lacan / Tony Thwaites -- Lyotard / Niall Lucy -- Metanarrative / Niall Lucy -- Minor/itarian / Niall Lucy -- Modernism / Niall Lucy -- Modernity Niall Lucy -- New media / McKenzie Wark -- Paraliterature / Darren Tofts -- Phrase Claire Colebrook -- Poststructuralism / Tony Thwaites -- Punk / McKenzie Wark -- Remix / Darren Tofts -- Representation / Darren Tofts -- Ronell / Claire Colebrook -- Semiotics / Niall Lucy and John Hartley -- Simulation / Niall Lucy -- Situationism / McKenzie Wark -- Sokal affair / McKenzie Wark -- Transcendental signified / Robert Briggs -- Truth / Tony Thwaites -- �Zi�zek / Tony Thwaites.
- Edinburgh Dictionary of ModernismMuch of the literary and cultural theory developed throughout the twentieth century relied on modernist texts and artefacts as both example and paradigm. This Dictionary collects, categorises and intersects literary, aesthetic, political and cultural terms that in one way or another came into being through the debates, conflicts, co-operations, experiments – individual and collective – that characterised modernism. In concise entries from international experts, it presents the terms, categories, concepts, tropes, movements, forged through the modernist upheavals (at once aesthetic and political), highlighting their genealogy, their modernist ‘newness’, and their historical longevity.
- Historical Dictionary of SurrealismThe Historical Dictionary of Surrealism relates the history of this movement through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 600 cross-referenced dictionary entries on persons, circles, and groups who participated in the movement; a global entry on some of the journals and reviews they produced; and a sampling of major works of art, cinema, and literature.
- Oxford Art OnlineThe online version of the 34 printed volumes devoted to the visual arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, drawing, and printmaking, as well as decorative arts. Its multicultural approach offers detailed analyses of civilizations from Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and the Pacific, including art forms, cultures, and artists that have previously been neglected. It is full-text with links to color images.
- Oxford Companion to Western ArtWritten by over 100 distinguished art historians and specialists, provides in-depth coverage of Western Art with entries on artists and their works, styles and movements, art forms and art terms, combined with more modern methodologies, focused on patronage, taste, theory, and criticism, and the scientific examination of materials and techniques.
- Oxford Reference Online PremiumGood source for begining your research on many different topics. Brief articles with recommended books and articles.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art HistoryOnline database that pairs essays and works of art with chronologies,telling the story of art and global culture through the Museum’s collection.
Aesthetics and Radical Politics by The essays collected here seek to engage with past and present convergences between the theories and practices of artists and writers and the theories and practices of movements for radical social change. There is already a massive amount of literature on Marxist approaches to aesthetics, art and literature, and whilst recognising the usefulness of such approaches, the essays collected here attempt to engage with culture from other radical critical positions - whether they be anarchist, autonomist, ecological or otherwise.
After the Avant-Gardes: reflections on the future of the fine arts by A rallying call for all those who have been disquieted or disgusted by the excesses of artistic modernism. This is a collection of ten provocative essays on the arts, by writers of varied orientations who share a skepticism about the exaggerated role of modernism and the successive avant-gardes in shaping what is accepted as valid contemporary art.
Contemporary Art: 1989 to the present by Features a collection of all-new essays, organized around fourteen specific themes, chosen to reflect the latest debates in contemporary art since 1989.
Destruction Rites: ephemerality and demolition in postwar visual culture by Destruction, in both its playful and fearsome aspects, was ubiquitous in the new Atomic Age. This complicated subjectivity was not just a way for people to find catharsis amid the fears of annihilation and postwar trauma, but also a complex instantiation of ideological crisis-in a time with some seriously conflicted political myths.
Extra/Ordinary: craft and contemporary art by Reflecting on what craft has come to mean in recent decades, artists, critics, curators, and scholars develop theories of craft in relation to art, chronicle how fine-art institutions understand and exhibit craft media, and offer accounts of activist crafting, or craftivism.
Globalizing the Art World: the art world's new internationalism by How contemporary art is made 'international' is the subject of this book, tracing as it does developments during the past two decades, while focusing particularly on the mechanisms of 'globality' which are at work in the art world today. The book critically investigates fundamental questions like: What is 'New Internationalism' in contemporary art, and how it affected the art world?
The Unmaking of Home in Contemporary Art by Building on the scholarship of key art historians and theorists such as Judith Butler and Mieke Bal, Claudette Lauzon embarks upon a transnational analysis of contemporary artists who challenge the assumption that 'home' is a stable site of belonging.
Re-Collection: art, new media, and social memory by The first book on the philosophy and aesthetics of digital preservation examines the challenge posed by new media to our long-term social memory. How will our increasingly digital civilization persist beyond our lifetimes? Audio and videotapes demagnetize; CDs delaminate; Internet art links to websites that no longer exist; Amiga software doesn't run on iMacs.
Searching for Art's New Publics by Drawing on contributions from practicing artists, writers, curators, and academics, Searching for Art's New Publics explores the ways in which artists seek to involve, create and engage with new and diverse audiences--from passers-by encountering and participating in the work unexpectedly, to professionals from other disciplines and members of particular communities who bring their own agendas to the work.
Situating Global Art: Topologies - Temporalities - Trajectories by Focusing on diverse examples of art, curating, historiography and criticism, the contributions not only take into account (new) hegemonies and exclusions but also the shifting conditions of transcultural art production, circulation and reception.
The Utopian Globalists: artists of worldwide revolution, 1919-2009 by An innovative history and critical account mapping the ways artists and their works have engaged with, and offered commentary on, modern spectacle in both capitalist and socialist modernism over the past ninety years. Features a cogent and innovative critique of contemporary art and institutions Covers 100 years of art from Vladimir Tatlin's constructivist 'Monument to the Third International', to Picasso's late 1940s commitment to Communism, to the Unilever Series sponsored Large Artworks installed at London's Tate Modern since 2000.
