Michael Archer

The definitive survey of Keith Tyson's thirty-year career. British Turner Prize-winning artist Keith Tyson is known for a distinctive and diverse body of work including drawing, painting, installation and sculpture. Showing a wide range of influences, from mathematics and science through to poetry and mythology, he is interested in how art emerges from the combination of information systems and physical processes that surround us every day. For over thirty years, Tyson has probed, dissected, explored and questioned reality. Not fixed to one artistic style, Tyson sets out to challenge himself and the audience, whilst working with diverse materials – paint, clay, metal, resin – to question our knowledge of the world we perceive as real, and art’s role in representing it. With newly commissioned texts from an internationally diverse array of writers, and including a previously unpublished interview with the artist, this is the definitive survey of one of the most restless and adventurous creators working today.

The rules of composition have changed. Discover the new ideas that shape the art we make today. Art has changed beyond recognition since the principles of harmonious composition were established in classical times. From the invention of photography to the digital revolution, technological and social advances have transformed the way we see the world. This new vision, influenced by changing attitudes not least towards gender roles and the West's colonial history, is reflected in the art we make.From the rejection of Western compositional orthodoxy by artists such as Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh and Mary Cassatt to the revolutionary practices of Jean- Michel Basquiat, Tania Bruguera, Meleko Mokgosi and many others, acclaimed art critic and writer Michael Archer reveals the ideas and intentions behind a thrillingly diverse selection of artworks, giving readers a new set of tools for understanding art today.

With stunning photography by Sonia Halliday and Laura Lushington, this Pitkin Guide tells you about the windows and the men who maade them. Look out for more Pitkin Guides on the very best of British and European art, history, heritage and travel

In the closing hours of the defense of Khe Sanh Combat Base, the longest and bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War, Tom Mahoney inexplicably walked away from his platoon, unarmed, and was shot to death by enemy soldiers hiding nearby. His fellow Marines made several desperate attempts to recover their well-liked comrade, but were finally forced to leave him behind--though never forgotten. In The Long Goodbye, author Michael Archer (a high school friend who joined the Marines together with Tom) chronicles his exhaustive search for answers to his friend's mysterious stroll into oblivion. This quest eventually leads to an improbable series of connections: from Tom's childhood friends, to fellow Marines, past the frustration of numerous ineffective, often inept, attempts by the U.S. government to locate his remains, and eventually teaming up with a Vietnamese psychic intent on communicating with Tom's "wandering soul." Along the way, we discover the unexpected compassion of several former mortal enemies from that battle, now wishing to help honor the memory of a lone American among the tens of thousands on both sides who were sacrificed in the great meat grinder of Khe Sanh. Swept up in this increasingly bizarre pursuit of clues, the author is soon "summoned" back to that infamous battleground and eventually tracks down the last remaining eyewitness to Tom Mahoney's death--one of those who killed him--and experiences an astonishing epiphany.

For most of the past 300 million years, the world's continents were interlinked as the supercontinents Pangaea and then Gondwana. Around 50 million years ago, Australia tore itself free from Antarctica to become the huge, splendidly isolated island it is today. Over time, its creatures began to evolve in ways not seen anywhere else on Earth, with tree-climbing crocodiles, gigantic venomous lizards, walking omnivorous bats and flesh-eating kangaroos roaming the continent. Prehistoric Australasia: Visions of Evolution and Extinction presents some of the most extraordinary creatures the world has ever seen – all unique to Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand and their surrounding islands.Over 100 meticulously painted panoramas by palaeoartist Peter Schouten are accompanied by descriptions of the unique environments and features of these animals, written by four of Australia's foremost palaeontologists. This book explores the nature and timing of extinction events in the Southern Hemisphere, considers whether some of these losses might be able to be reversed, and how we can use the fossil record to help save today's critically endangered species.Through stunning artwork and fascinating text, Prehistoric Australasia brings this globally unique transformation over time to glorious, colourful life.FeaturesOffers fascinating glimpses into the prehistoric past of Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea.More than 100 paintings showcasing the changing biotas of Australasia over the last 3.6 billion years.Reveals the unique features of prehistoric animals and the environments where they lived.

Recipient of the MARINE CORPS HERITAGE FOUNDATION'S 2019 COLONEL JOSEPH ALEXANDER AWARD for a distinguished book of biographical literature about a Marine "recognizing exemplary work that furthers the understanding of Marine Corps history, traditions, culture and service.IN THE EARLY MONTHS OF 1968, U.S. forces were tenaciously fighting, often in mortal, hand-to-hand combat in the dead of night, to hold on to Khe Sanh Combat Base, and its scattered outposts, against equally tenacious soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army, who outnumbered the Americans 5 to 1, and were determined to destroy them. With a few grim exceptions, the Americans successfully held their positions. But, what few know, even to this day, is the end result would have been far more disastrous had it not been for as small band of resourceful officers in the Khe Sanh command bunker, responsible for gauging what this overwhelming attack force of North Vietnamese infantry, tanks and artillery was going to do next, then hastily devising imaginative schemes to stop them--with no room for error. Prominent among them was thirty-six-year-old, Marine Corps Captain Mirza Munir Baig, a scholarly, Cambridge-educated, immigrant from India. His unique combination of classical education, years of counterintelligence work in helping develop spy networks deep into North Vietnam, and an incomparable expertise in the use of field artillery, enabled the enigmatic Baig--like a chess grand master--to "get into the heads" of enemy tacticians, including the legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap, and anticipate their every move. Author Michael Archer worked alongside this remarkable, eccentric officer throughout that bitter ten-week siege, and, with the help of later-declassified American and Vietnamese military records and memoirs, leaves little doubt that Captain Baig's presence at Khe Sanh was critical to saving thousands of his fellow defenders from death or captivity--and averting one of the gravest military defeats in American history. This accomplishment was largely the result of Captain Baig's early recognition that, contrary to what many still believe today, North Vietnamese forces arrayed against Khe Sanh were not an elaborate deception to divert American troops away from fighting elsewhere; rather, the result of a ruinous obsession by leaders in Hanoi, in which they would sacrifice thousands of their finest soldiers, to replicate the stunning victory they had achieved against the French combat base at Dien Bien Phu fourteen years earlier. As he went about his deadly work, Baig also had a personal agenda, driven by his need to erase the only stain on an otherwise celebrated family military tradition dating back centuries to the Mongol conquest of the Western Himalayas. In that sense, Mirza Munir Baig had been rehearsing his entire life to step on to a stage like Khe Sanh and influence the course of history.

A revised and expanded edition of one the most popular titles in the Contemporary Artists Series Born in Lebanon, Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum was exiled to London, where she has lived and worked since the mid-1970s. Through performance, video, sculpture, and installation, she creates architectonic spaces that relate to the body, language, and the condition of exile as well as transforming everyday, domestic objects into things foreign, threatening, and dangerous. Often exquisitely beautiful, Hatoum’s works combine states of emotion and longing with the formal simplicity of Minimalism, creating powerful evocations of displacement, denial, and otherness.

This accessible overview is invaluable for the way in which it makes coherent sense of the often-bewildering diversity of styles, forms, media, techniques, and agendas that proliferate in contemporary art. Extensively revised and expanded since it was first published, Michael Archer’s acclaimed book is brought fully up to date in this new edition through the addition of a new chapter on developments in contemporary art since 2000. Art Since 1960 remains an indispensable source of information on the evolution of art over the past five-and-a-half decades.

Adelmo is tormented by nightmares and terrifying visions that plague his mind. Determined to unravel the hidden truths concealed by his family during his childhood, he embarks on an investigation into his own past. As he stumbles upon ancient journals belonging to his ancestors, Adelmo's quest leads him back to his homeland of Romania, where his grandfather holds the key to the answers he seeks. With his survival at stake, Adelmo is prepared to go to any lengths necessary.

From kangaroos and koalas to the giant Diprotodon and bizarre "thingodontans," prehistoric mammals evolved within the changing and sometimes harsh environments of Australia. As part of Gondwana, Australia was the first landmass to be isolated from the supercontinent Pangaea. In Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea, four respected paleontologists present a history of the development of modern mammals from the unique evolutionary environment of Australia and New Guinea. The authors describe both what is known about prehistoric Australian mammals and what can be reconstructed from the fossil evidence about their appearance and behaviors. This accessible reference work offers facts about how each mammal got its name and provides a description of how the fossil mammal resembles its modern descendants. Over 200 four-color illustrations enhance the text, which describes the age, diet, and habitat of these extinct mammals. The authors also detail how each mammal evolved and is now classified. Diagrams showing skeletal features and tooth structure and a glossary of technical terms are also included.

Mona Hatoum creates events, videos, sculptures and installations that relate to the body, to language and to the condition of exile. Her most famous work Corps Etranger, first shown at the Tate Gallery when she was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, takes the viewer on a journey through the inner passages of the artist's body.Her audience is thrown into a dimension in which anything is possible, as in The Light at the End, which lures viewers down a long tunnel towards a light that will literally burn them. While her video work is often visceral and emotive, her sculptures and environments are ultra cool and minimal in their aesthetic. They often mimic domestic or institutional furniture, yet their designs and materials have a threatening edge. Exquisitely beautiful, Hatoum's works are at the same time powerful evocations of statelessness, anxiety, denial and otherness.Since Hatoum was exiled to London, where she has lived and worked since the 1970s, she has exhibited her work around the world, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Venice Biennale. This book surveys all her work, ranging from early performances, through to her videos, objects and full-scale environments.The distinguished art critic Guy Brett, author of Through Our Own Eyes: Popular Art and Modern History (1986), explores key themes around a sense of place, the body and communication that emerge from Hatoum's range of work. The artist describes a chronology of practice in conversation with Michael Archer, writer, curator and co-founder of London's Audio Arts sound archive. Director of the Kanaal Art Foundation Catherine de Zegher makes a complex and provocative analysis of Recollection, a work she commissioned for a sixteenth-century beguinage. Hatoum has chosen a text by the influential Palestinian author Edward Said as well as a statement from the noted Italian post-war sculptor and performance artist Piero Manzoni. The book also includes Hatoum's own notes, statements and interviews.