New Releases by Kenneth Clark

Are there huge differences in the ways in which we, the human race, go about living our lives? How is it the Warrior, whose profession is killing others, can say, "I shall dance"? Although we love life, we constantly and systematically end the lives of others through War or less-organized means. War is grandiose, yet horrible for its participants. Killing of others continues, independent of War. Perhaps the most prized of all human emotions is Love. We can use endearing terms such as "When God released Love, it was you." But do we nurture and care for Love as it deserves? While Love can be the highest experience of living, we steadily end the lives of others while clinging to life ourselves. Why? Perhaps this terrible knowledge is best expressed by the most beautiful language we have - that of poetry.

What is it like to dive in the murky depths of the ocean?How do you raise the wreck of a ship or aircraft?Here, Kenneth Clark relives his diving experiences from training in the 1950s, to being awarded the Gold Sub Aqua Medal by the Duke of Edinburgh.His achievements include helping raise the Gitana from Loch Rannoch in 1978. At the time, it was the heaviest wreck ever salvaged by amateur divers.

From the art of the Greeks to that of Renoir and Moore, this work surveys the ever-changing fashions in what has constituted the ideal nude as a basis of humanist form.

Many people think that greedy lenders intent on victimizing unsuspecting borrowers caused the mortgage crisis, saddling them with loans they couldn''t afford and taking their houses through foreclosure for later sale at a profit. If that''s what you think, you''re dead wrong. It was a complex melding of events and opportunities, an economic "perfect storm" that came within a hair''s breadth of toppling the American financial system and the economies of numerous other countries. And it didn''t have to happen. In this book, Kenneth Clark, a longtime mortgage banker and financial industry insider, talks about the real root causes of the mortgage and housing meltdown and how the government''s failures and Wall Street''s greed enabled the collapse. But they were by no means alone. The seeds of destruction were sown decades ago by individuals and entities that had no idea of what they would ultimately be helping to bring about.

Abstract: In a laboratory setting, people viewed simple visual stimuli and chose the categories to which they belonged. A computer tracked people''s choices, confidence ratings, and response times (RTs) when either all alternatives available for a choice were reasonable or one alternative was very unlikely. While the objective probability of an alternative in a set being correct decreases with the introduction of another alternative, I expected that inclusion of an implausible alternative would increase confidence that the alternative chosen was correct. I further suspected that RT would be constant despite changes in the types of alternatives available. Accuracy, confidence, and RT were predominantly unchanged by manipulating alternatives in the choice set. This contradicted two of my hypotheses and the hypotheses of other investigators in this area of research. A final experiment focusing just on confidence obtained more contradictory results, suggesting that people process all combinations of alternatives in a set similarly.

Kenneth Clark nous propose ici une histoire de la représentation du paysage et des phénomènes naturels : les flammes et les flots, la lumière orageuse, le traitement du ciel, l''emplacement de la ligne d''horizon, les couleurs du crépuscule, le clair de lune, etc. L''auteur aborde tour à tour quatre types de paysages les paysages symboliques, par exemple les jardins clos dans la tapisserie de la Dame à la licorne; les paysages réalistes, comme ceux créés à l''aide de la camera obscura par Alberti ; les paysages fantastiques - pensons à ceux de Jérôme Bosch ; puis les paysages idéalisés comme ceux de Nicolas Poussin. La deuxième partie du livre envisage la peinture du XIXe siècle, quelques artistes sont alors traités plus en détail : Constable, Courbet, Turner, Van Gogh, Seurat, Pissarro et d''autres. En étudiant le contenu intellectuel des paysages, l''auteur esquisse une histoire de la reconnaissance de cette peinture : reléguée d''abord à l''arrière-plan, elle s''affirme en effet comme un lieu de recherche déterminant au XIXe siècle. Dans la préface à la première édition (1949), l''auteur précise que ce livre ne se veut en aucun cas un traité théorique de la peinture de paysage ; il s''agit à l''origine d''une série de conférences données à Oxford et s''adressant à un jeune public dans le but de l''introduire au domaine de l''art : " Ces cours visaient à faire réfléchir plutôt qu''à informer", écrit-il dans la préface à la première édition française (1962). Les grands talents de l''auteur lui permettent de s''adresser à un vaste public sans exclure l''historien de l''art. Ainsi, des feuillages qui courent le long des manuscrits du Moyen Age jusqu''aux représentations de la Montagne Sainte-Victoire par Cézanne, en passant par les recherches sur la perspective et les théories de la couleur, le lecteur réalise que le rapport à la nature est une composante intrinsèque de l''histoire de l''art. Après un voyage à Florence où il a rencontré Bernard Berenson, Kenneth Clark (1903-1983) devient directeur du département des Beaux-Arts de l''Ashmolean Museum d''Oxford (1931), puis directeur de la National Gallery de Londres (1934). Inspecteur des peintures de la famille royale de GrandeBretagne et président du Art Council (1953), il fut encore membre de nombreux conseils et académies. Mais, d''autre part, soucieux d''atteindre un large public, il a organisé une série d''émissions pour la télévision dont les textes remaniés ont paru sous les titres suivants : Civilisation (1969, traduit en 1974), Looking at Pictures (1972) et The Romantic Rebellion (1973). Parmi ses autres livres, mentionnons : The Gothic Revival (1929), Leonardo da Vinci (1938, traduit en 1967), Piero della Francesca (1949), The Nude (1955, traduit en 1969), Rembrandt and the Italian Renaissance (1966), Henry Moore Drawings (1974) et Moments of Vision (1981).

El presente libro tiene su semilla en la serie documental televisiva de extraordinario éxito en la que el eminente profesor, crítico e historiador del arte KENNETH CLARK expuso su visión de las grandes corrientes de avance de la conciencia europea y los momentos cruciales de su despliegue, desde la caída del Imperio Romano hasta la época contemporánea. El ensayo analiza los grandes logros de nuestra CIVILIZACIÓN en arquitectura, escultura y pintura, en filosofía, poesía y música, en ciencia y en ingeniería, a fin de subrayar sus nexos internos y su matriz común. En el prólogo especialmente escrito para esta edición española, el autor señala que su propósito no fue escribir una historia del arte en cuyo caso «España habría desempeñado un papel grande», sino esbozar una síntesis del nacimiento y desarrollo del espíritu europeo, en la que las referencias a las obras de arte, como materialización de los valores culturales y de las ideas y creencias de los hombres, resultan de todo punto imprescindibles.

Tiles are a beautiful form of ceramic that lend themselves to an extraordinary diversity of uses and treatments. In this outstanding overview, Kenneth Clark, a distinguished tile designer and maker, introduces readers to their creation, ornamentation, and use. Tile making using earthenware, stoneware, porcelain, and paper clay is fully described as are the decorative techniques, like painting, screen printing, and sgraffito. The work of leading tile designers is also examined, along with their approaches and applications. To complete the book, Clark offers practical information on the uses of tile, including floors, walls, roofs, fireplaces, murals, and swimming pools; details on how to repair tiles; and advice on how to protect and care for them. Written by an expert, and with 280 color photos, The Tile is sure to captivate anyone interested in learning or appreciating the skills of this age-old craft.

"First published in 1928 and written while the author was still at Oxford, this book has become a classic. It remains the best possible introduction to the most widespread and influential architectural and decorative arts movement England ever produced." "Though Gothic Revival buildings had changed the face of both town and country, they were hardly appreciated in the first half of this century. Architectural historians neglected them because so few were seen as great works of art; others averted their gaze, or laughed. That taste later changed was in many ways due to this book. Kenneth Clark''s exploration of the changes in ideals and sensibility that inspired the Revival made it possible to see again with the eyes of those for whom the buildings had been designed, and whose imaginations they had fired."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Clark''s study of Leonardo is generally considered the clearest introduction available to the work of the controversial genius. This edition contains 128 plates, integrated into the text; a revised list of dates; an updated bibliography; and a new introduction.

"Dr. Clark, social psychologist, college professor, a Black man who lived in Harlem for forty years and who has recently been associated with its problems from the top level of Haryou, takes the role of ''involved observer'' to approach the combined problems of the confined African American and the slum. The ghetto he analyzes here is the three-and-one-half square miles containing 232, 792 people that make up Harlem (excluding Spanish Harlem). He examines its social dynamics (unemployment and menial jobs result in family instability); psychology (the Black man has a difficult time asserting his manhood in face of white supremacy); pathology--chronic, self-perpetuating (as the influence of gangs has declined, that of drug addiction has increased); schools--separate but unequal (the ''cultural deprivation approach'' is seductive: if students were expected to learn and so taught they would progress); the power structure (the effective exercise of power is severely crippled by the inexperience of its own political leaders). The strategy for change must be based on the understanding that the Black America''s problems are essentially American and on the empathy of outsiders. Dr. Clark tempers his aims with the re-assurance that ''in contemporary society, no one [Black] or white can be totally free of prejudice''; yet each race needs the other. Most interesting here: the insight into the psycho-social dilemmas of African Americans, the Black response to the wide spectrum of leadership embodied in Adam Clayton Powell and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr."--Review in Kirkus, 1965 (lightly edited).

Discussion of five masters of humanistic architecture, painting and sculpture in fifteenth century Italy - Alberti, Donatello, Uccello, Mantegna and Botticelli.

In this comprehensive guide to pottery Kenneth Clark explains with the help of practical and informative text together with step-by-step illustrations and examples of finished work the various aspects of pottery. These include techniques of wedge making, pinching, coiling, slab building, throwing, joining, moulding and turning. In addition Clark gives full details on techniques of decoration, tools and equipment, kilns and firing, glazes, pigments and stains finishing with a full glossary. He also suggests ways in which potters can extend their techniques of production to meet the needs of changing markets and conditions, whilst trying to keep a balance between the work of the artist innovator and the production potter or ceramicist.

Rejecting the tenet of modern art asserting that masterpieces do not exist, Clark explores those qualities which combine with the indefinable touch of genius to produce a work of art that truly represents the human spirit

In this richly illustrated book, Lord Clark traces the changes in the western ideal of feminine beauty from Egyptian art of the second millennium BC down to the movie screens of the present day.

Numerous pen-and-ink drawings inspired by the sheep meadow just outside Moore''s studio and originally presented to the artist''s daughter are reproduced, portraying sheep in a natural environment with both charm and feeling

This study of a great artist is both a perceptive picture of the man and an acute analysis of some of his most famous works. It shows the human qualities united with the depth of mind that is revealed only after a long contemplation of his paintings, etchings, and drawings.

Contains primary source material.