The Art of Poverty is the first book in English to analyze depictions of beggars in 16th-century European art. Featuring works from Germany, the Low Countries, Britain, France, and Italy, it discusses a diverse body of imagery from crude woodcuts to monumental church altarpieces. It argues that these works largely conformed to two paradoxical, though mutually supportive, representational approaches. The book tracks the emergence of a trenchantly negative approach in Northern art, in which beggars are shown as vagabonds, alongside the other predominant visual mode, where beggars are exalted as examples of sacred purity. The Art of Poverty's progressive approach and cross-disciplinary theme makes it vital reading for those concerned with the development of early modern European culture.

An unconventional socio-economic analysis of the economic position of the arts and artists

Eleven-year-old Lisa becomes her mother’s primary support when they face the prospect of homelessness. As Dee, a single mother, struggles with the demons of her own childhood of neglect and abuse, Lisa has to quickly assume the role of an adult in an attempt to keep some stability in their lives. “Dee and Tiny” ultimately become underground celebrities in San Francisco, squatting in storefronts and performing the “art of homelessness.” Their story, filled with black humor and incisive analysis, illuminates the roots of poverty, the criminalization of poor families, and their struggle for survival.

The Art Of Poverty discusses and breaks down the cause of the worst and longest pandemic that the world has ever faced. That plague and pandemic is poverty because, indeed, poverty is a disease. It is the underlying cause of most of the crimes, suffering, and separation that exist, the root and the operator of oppression. This book exposes the creators of this centuries-old pandemic with historical facts and proven effects. The Art Of Poverty is also a call to action for the masses and the elite to no longer ignore this cancerous reality but to make significant alterations so that we may all move forward with contentment.

Have we become beauty-blind? For two decades or more in the humanities, various political arguments have been put forward against beauty: that it distracts us from more important issues; that it is the handmaiden of privilege; and that it masks political interests. In On Beauty and Being Just Elaine Scarry not only defends beauty from the political arguments against it but also argues that beauty does indeed press us toward a greater concern for justice. Taking inspiration from writers and thinkers as diverse as Homer, Plato, Marcel Proust, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch as well as her own experiences, Scarry offers up an elegant, passionate manifesto for the revival of beauty in our intellectual work as well as our homes, museums, and classrooms. Scarry argues that our responses to beauty are perceptual events of profound significance for the individual and for society. Presenting us with a rare and exceptional opportunity to witness fairness, beauty assists us in our attention to justice. The beautiful object renders fairness, an abstract concept, concrete by making it directly available to our sensory perceptions. With its direct appeal to the senses, beauty stops us, transfixes us, fills us with a "surfeit of aliveness." In so doing, it takes the individual away from the center of his or her self-preoccupation and thus prompts a distribution of attention outward toward others and, ultimately, she contends, toward ethical fairness. Scarry, author of the landmark The Body in Pain and one of our bravest and most creative thinkers, offers us here philosophical critique written with clarity and conviction as well as a passionate plea that we change the way we think about beauty.

How the poor eat: an ambitious visual anthropology of diet and poverty in 36 case studies across the world To demonstrate what it means to live at the poverty line, Beijing-based artist duo Stefen Chow and Huiyi Lin visited 36 countries and territories on six continents--from Germany and China to New York and London--examining poverty with regard to food. From local markets, they bought vegetables, fruits, cereal products, proteins and snacks, basing the amount of food they could afford per day on the respective poverty-line definition set by each government. The duo photographed the resulting food, placed on a page of a local newspaper bought that day, calibrating lighting and shooting distance to ensure uniformity and comparability. In addition, the duo selected nine foods available in most of the economies observed to illustrate the globalization of production and the variations in prices and consumption. With this brilliantly conceived project, Chow and Lin render the problem of poverty visible and comprehensible to all.

A conversation in a prison cell sparks an ambitious undertaking to attack the roots of long-term poverty. Seeking answers to the toughest questions about poverty in the United States, Earl Shorris had looked everywhere. At last, one resounding answer came from a conversation with a woman in a maximum-security prison: the difference between rich and poor is the humanities. Shorris took that idea and started a course at the Clemente Family Guidance Center in New York. With a faculty of friends, he began teaching the great works of literature and philosophy—from Plato to Kant, from Cervantes to Garcia Marquez—at the college level to dropouts, immigrants, and ex-prisoners. From that first class came two dentists, a nurse, two PhDs, a fashion designer, a drug counselor, and other successes. Over the course of seventeen years the course expanded to many U.S. cities and foreign countries. Now Earl Shorris has written the stories of those who teach and those who study the humanities—a tribute to the courage of people rising from unspeakable poverty to engage in dialogue with professors from great universities around the world. This year, in a high school on the South Side of Chicago, a Clemente Course has begun that may change the character of public education in America and perhaps the world.