Leon Battista Alberti (15th century) wrote extensively on painting and sculpture: De pictura and De Statua were translated by Cecil Grayson (London: Phaidon, 1972). Alberti's writings on the art of building, De re aedificatoria, was translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (10 volumes, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1988).
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). Intently against those who were "intoxicated by turpentine," he pursued a "dry art." From the Nu descendant un escalier, considered "an explosion in a fireworks factory" to his celebrated ready-mades, Duchamp pursued the call to "de-artify" art. Selection became the major operation in offering objects taken out of context and appropriating them as aesthetic icons. He argued that "Art is a path to regions where neither time nor space dominate."
Happening: An artistic movement based on the interaction among different forms of expression. Allan Kaprow (at Douglas College in 1958) and the group associated with the Reuben gallery in New York (Kaprow, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Whitman, Hausen) brought the movement to the borderline where distinctions between the artist and the public are erased. Later, the movement expanded to Europe.
Andy Warhol. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: from A to B and Back
Again. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
-. Strong Opinions. New York: McGraw Hill, 1973.
Andy Warhol is remembered for saying that in the future, everyone will be a celebrity for 15 minutes.
Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov. Lectures on Literature. Edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction by John Updike. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980-1981.
"A rose is a rose is a rose…," now quite an illustrious (if not
trite) line, originated in Gertrude Stein's poem Sacred Emily.
But "…A rose by any other name/would smell as sweet." from
Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet can be seen as a precursor.
Symbolism is a neo-romantic art movement of the end of the 19th century, in reaction to the Industrial Revolution and positivist attitudes permeating art and existence. Writers such as Beaudelaire, Rimbaud, Maeterlinck, Huysmans, composers (Wagner, in the first place), painters such as Gauguin, Ensor, Puvis de Chavannes, Moreau, and Odilon Redon created in the spirit of symbolism. At the beginning of the 20th century, symbolism attempted to submit a unified alphabet of images. Jung went so far as to identify its psychological basis.
James Joyce (1882-1941). Ulysses. A critical and synoptic (though very controviersial) edition, prepared by Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfgang Steppe and Claus Melchior. New York: Garland Publishers, 1984.