The world of the image has traditionally been considered as different and separate from the real world. This separation has been ensured by some kind of framing device, be it the pedestal of a statue, the frame of a painting, or the cinema screen. However, recent developments in image-making techniques have resulted in the production of hyper-realistic, immersive, and interactive virtual environments that make the threshold between image and reality blur, thus eliciting in the experiencer a strong feeling of being incorporated into a quasi-real world. This book introduces the concept of "un-framing" as a key to understanding this radically new iconoscape.

The frames of classical art are often seen as marginal to the images that they surround. Traditional art history has tended to view framing devices as supplementary 'ornaments'. Likewise, classical archaeologists have often treated them as tools for taxonomic analysis. This book not only argues for the integral role of framing within Graeco-Roman art, but also explores the relationship between the frames of classical antiquity and those of more modern art and aesthetics. Contributors combine close formal analysis with more theoretical approaches: chapters examine framing devices across multiple media (including vase and fresco painting, relief and free-standing sculpture, mosaics, manuscripts and inscriptions), structuring analysis around the themes of 'framing pictorial space', 'framing bodies', 'framing the sacred' and 'framing texts'. The result is a new cultural history of framing - one that probes the sophisticated and playful ways in which frames could support, delimit, shape and even interrogate the images contained within.

One of America's leading interpreters of the Chicana experience dismantles the discourses that "frame" women who rebel against patriarchal strictures as "bad women" and offers empowering models of struggle, resistance, and rebirth.

Women's painting is undergoing a vibrant revival, yet has been little explored in writing or modern visual culture. "Unframed" is an examination of women's contemporary painting. It presents writing with practitioners who engage with theory and critical theorists who deal directly with contemporary practice. All contributors reflect on their own practice and that of other women painters and theorists, whose common aim is to develop innovative ways of thinking about, and through, painting by women. The book focuses on current debates on gender, subjectivity, spectatorship and painting, and moves them forward into the second millennium. It should appeal to a range of readers, including scholars, students, artists and gallery visitors.

Reconsidering the Mediterranean, appreciating and demarginalizing the peoples and cultures of this vast region, while considering the affinities and differences, is a valuable part of the process of unframing and reframing the concept of the Mediterranean. The authors of this volume follow Franco Cassano’s refusal of a sort of prêt-à-porter reality of cohabitation of cultures, introducing instead un’alternativa mediterranea, a world of multiple cultures that entails an ongoing learning and experiencing. The volume’s contributors use an interdisciplinary approach that mirrors the hybridity of the area and of the discipline, that is much more introspective and humanistic, more contemporary and inclusive.

Is there a sublime beauty in the commonplace? How do we know it? How do we see it? How do we learn to taste, touch, feel, and see all the joys of creation in a more meaningful way? "Unframed Beauty" is a book about the commonplace. Elizabeth Elmers creatively sets out new ideas for observing the world more thoughtfully in order to find joy in everyday living. It's precisely because we fail to appreciate enough of the miracles around us that we need a book like this to remind us of all the amazing treasures of life right at our fingertips. T. DAVID GORDON writes: ""Beauty Unframed" is that extremely rare book that is hard to put down, though not narrative. There is probably an argument in it, but it does not feel like an argument; it feels like an invitation. It is an invitation--to look longer, smell longer, taste, hear, and feel longer, and more thoughtfully--at things that are well crafted. Whether at God's crafts or our own, this wonderful volume invites us, chapter by chapter, to notice what is worthy of our notice. I found it very hard to put down, and you will too."

A Companion to Public Art is the only scholarly volume to examine the main issues, theories, and practices of public art on a comprehensive scale. Edited by two distinguished scholars with contributions from art historians, critics, curators, and art administrators, as well as artists themselves Includes 19 essays in four sections: tradition, site, audience, and critical frameworks Covers important topics in the field, including valorizing victims, public art in urban landscapes and on university campuses, the role of digital technologies, jury selection committees, and the intersection of public art and mass media Contains “artist’s philosophy” essays, which address larger questions about an artist’s body of work and the field of public art, by Julian Bonder, eteam (Hajoe Moderegger and Franziska Lamprecht), John Craig Freeman, Antony Gormley, Suzanne Lacy, Caleb Neelon, Tatzu Nishi, Greg Sholette, and Alan Sonfist.