Originally published in 1937, this volume contains the text of the Rede Lecture for that year, delivered by Vita Sackville-West's ex-husband Harold Nicolson. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of British diplomacy and British nationalism.

In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in a darkened salon during the course of a fraudulent séance, and from this moment they try to expose and outwit each other at every turn.

Why does the artworld often privilege one cultural form over another? Why does it grant more attention to reviews in, say, Artforum over ARTnews? And how can an artist once hailed as visionary be dismissed as derivative just a few years later? Exploring the ever-shifting estimations of value that make up the confluence of artists, critics, patrons, and gallery owners known as the artworld, Timothy van Laar and Leonard Diepeveen argue that prestige, a matter of socially constructed deference and conferral, plays an indispensable role in the attention and reception given to modern and contemporary art. After an initial chapter that develops a theory of prestige and the poignancy of its loss, the book looks at how arguments of prestige function in systems of representation, various media, and art's relationship to affect. It considers twentieth-century artists who moved not away from, but toward figuration; looks at what is at stake in the recurrent argument about the death of painting; examines the decline and an apparent return of sensual pleasure as a central attribute of visual art; and concludes with a look at the peculiar function of prestige in outsider art. Illustrated with artwork by David Park, Jorge Pardo, Gerhard Richter, Anish Kapoor, Cecily Brown, Howard Finster, and others, Artworld Prestige provides an engaging guide to the changes, debates, and shifts that animate aesthetic judgments.

This is a book about one of the great untold stories of modern cultural life: the remarkable ascendancy of prizes in literature and the arts. Such prizes and the competitions they crown are almost as old as the arts themselves, but their number and power--and their consequences for society and culture at large--have expanded to an unprecedented degree in our day. In a wide-ranging overview of this phenomenon, James F. English documents the dramatic rise of the awards industry and its complex role within what he describes as an economy of cultural prestige. Observing that cultural prizes in their modern form originate at the turn of the twentieth century with the institutional convergence of art and competitive spectator sports, English argues that they have in recent decades undergone an important shift--a more genuine and far-reaching globalization than what has occurred in the economy of material goods. Focusing on the cultural prize in its contemporary form, his book addresses itself broadly to the economic dimensions of culture, to the rules or logic of exchange in the market for what has come to be called "cultural capital." In the wild proliferation of prizes, English finds a key to transformations in the cultural field as a whole. And in the specific workings of prizes, their elaborate mechanics of nomination and election, presentation and acceptance, sponsorship, publicity, and scandal, he uncovers evidence of the new arrangements and relationships that have refigured that field.

What makes someone covet a Kelly bag? Why are Cirque Du Soleil or Grey Goose so successful despite breaking all the conventions of their categories? What does Gucci's approach to marketing have in common with Nespresso's? And why do some people pay a relative fortune for Renova toilet paper or Aesop detergent even though they hardly ever 'advertise' and seem to have none of the 'functional performance advantages' conventional marketers would seek to demonstrate? Prestige brand experts JP Kuehlwein and Wolfgang Schaefer have dedicated themselves to studying what drives the success of prestige brands. Rethinking Prestige Branding collects their insights. Uncovering the secrets of why and how some brands are created more equal than others, Rethinking Prestige Branding includes over 100 case studies from Apple and Abercrombie & Fitch to Tate Modern and Tesla. Rather than re-telling brand success stories or re-hashing long-standing marketing principles, it takes readers on a colourful journey behind the scenes of today's marketing pros. This book will fascinate marketing professional just as much as those who are simply curious as to how premium brands tick.

A fresh look at the many meanings and forms of the club across two centuries of Oceanic culture Featuring more than 150 clubs made in the 18th and 19th centuries from across a vast geographical and cultural span, Power and Prestige explores a fascinating Oceanic object form that has long been misunderstood by Western scholars. From Australia, Polynesia, Melanesia and New Zealand to Hawaii, Easter Island and the Marquesas Islands, carved clubs have played many roles beyond combat in Oceanic cultures. The range in the size of works presented here--from 15 inches to more than six feet, and made in materials ranging from nephrite and wood to whalebone--points to this diversity of utility and form. In this abundantly illustrated volume, essays detail the clubs' use as ritual and religious objects, mediums of exchange, status symbols and more. Other texts break down the specific function clubs performed within each culture, as well as the symbolic meaning of the beautiful images and patterns inscribed on them.