Cultural Arts Books

This books tidily fills a significant niche among books on Japan. In one volume is a selection of the best, current writing on Japanses culture from tea to flowers with an emphasis on literature. Especially laudable are the introductions to the pieces and the explanatory notes, so essential to arcane topics.

I bought this book about 1 year ago and it's still one of my favourate books in my collection.

The quality of the photography, the content and the way everything is presented makes this book a definate "must have" for anyone interested in Japan.

If you want an introduction to Japanese culture and society then i highly suggest to purhase this book.

Authentic traditional decor in calendar form is inspiring. Use it as a guide to Zen living in our home.

Wow! It took me six months to complete reading this book. Not because it is boring, but because there is so much information to just mentally digest! But what a fascinating journey. Our cultures are intrigued by each other and have affected each other for over 200 years. The book explores that intrigue, often fraught with misunderstandings, but infatuation is never far behind. Look at all the soldiers from WWII who came home with Japanese brides. Another interesting parallel is the nature of commerce between the East and the West. The Japanese and American businessmen have both much in common and widely different ways of commerce. The artistic fascination of both cultures for each other's is also covered and is enlightening to say the least. While post-war Japan sought the shiny cars, the Elvis hair and all that was coolly iconic American, we turned a wistful eye to the quickly disappearing 'old' Japan of pristine gardens, village basket makers, tea houses, the geisha life, the floating landscapes, calligraphy masters, a pond full of priceless koi simply valued for their serene beauty. Has it all been traded in for cars and high-rises? For cheap but fabulous electronics? For designer bags and pop music? Time will tell, but this wonderful book will give you true insight to the collective mind of both the East and West.

Ours is an age in which identity is constructed by and through texts. In this book we see the texts from which the Jewish people can construct their identity. Here is Dickens justifying his demonic portrayal of Fagin to a horrified British lady by saying that "Fagin in Oliver Twist is a Jew, because it was unfortunately true of the time in which the story refers, that the class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew." Or how about this quote from the famous novel "The Butterfl": "The language of the Jew reveals the Jew's hidden character, no matter what language the Jew tries to speak." And here too is the association of the Jewess with eroticism, with the orient; and of the male Jew with capitalism and with exploitation. Here also is the image of Proust: a Jew, a Catholic, a homosexual, and a Dreyfussard struggling to also be French; and here is Leopold Bloom in Joyce's Ulysses.

These identities, these portraits emerge in a collection of essays by some of the most notable writers of our time; they ask us to think what it means to be a Jew in an European society today-not merely to answer the question "Why do they hate us" but to try to answer the question: "With such a rich tradition of anti-Semitism (for anti-Semitism is woven into the very fabric of European tradition) how can a Jew in a European country have a positive image of him/herself?"

This book is an excellent source of reference about the culture and traditions of Jewish Kurds and would benefit any reader interested in the subject, albeit some figures about the population of Jewish Kurds and Kurds have been incorrectly stated in far smaller numbers than their real population/s.

This book is one that shows how Miro and maybye how people felt in that time period,which he lived so long.He made many beutyfull pictures and some that were just nonsense.I like his paintings so much i belive this book and him have inspiered me to be an artist one day.I am not very good but miro did not paint good but it was what he felt and that made him care and that is all that really matters.

This historical book was an excellent source of information, not only about Jose Clemente Orozco, the artist, but about 20th century Mexico and it's history. The illustrations are good and done in black and white. I would recommend this book for students from the 7th grade up, as well as teachers and parents.

A beautifully illustrated biography of the dancer José Limon, this book has proven to be quite timely in light of recent events surrounding immigration. It chronicles how young José fled Mexico for America and endured ridicule in elementary school for his poor English. Regardless, José's determination to succeed prevailed, and his story always receives cheers when I read it to various elementary classes. To view this and other cool short book recommendations for all ages.[...]

Everyone in the 1920s knew who Josephine Baker was, and the image of her from that time has stuck with us; if you have a mental picture of her, it is probably of her lovely svelte black body dressed in little more than a skirt made of bananas, performing in a Paris dance hall. The image is so strong that it unfairly eclipses the other roles she played, and not just roles as a performer (and those roles in many media), but as spy, humanitarian, utopian reformer, and civil rights activist. It was in this latter role that Bennetta Jules-Rosette saw her when Baker took part as a speaker in the March on Washington in 1963. Jules-Rosette is a fan, but since she is also a professor of sociology and an expert in semiotics, her tribute comes with lots of footnotes. _Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image_ (University of Illinois Press) is not strictly a biography. The life history is here, of course, but not necessarily chronologically. Instead, the themes of Baker's life and the art she used in making her many stage and real-life personas are examined, showing how she deliberately manipulated sex and race roles to form the themes of her life and performance.

Baker was born in 1903 and grew up in St. Louis, performing on the streets and moving to vaudeville. She became a cast member of reviews such as _Shuffle Along_ and _Chocolate Dandies_, playing to enthusiastic reviews in New York when she did her comic routines. Among the many pictures included in this volume are those of Baker in clown outfit, including enormous shoes, but also, strangely, in blackface. It was just the first of her manipulations of racial roles. In her first movie in 1927, she played a stowaway who "is chased by crew members and shocks society matrons by falling into a coal bin, turning black, and then into a flour bin, turning white." She headed to Paris in 1925, and was a sensation, admired by Picasso and Hemingway. Alexander Calder did wire sculptures of her. She was used to performing in front of primitive or surrealistic sets, and it was Jean Cocteau himself who designed the banana skirt. Her performances wowed Paris, but sometimes did not go well when Baker traveled. In Vienna in 1928, priests and politicians tried to ban her threat to public morality, and rang bells as a warning to clear the streets when she entered the city. Baker did stage performances all her life, but had more important things on her mind. During World War II, she helped the Red Cross and the French Resistance. After the war, she started adopting children, twelve of them of diverse ethnic and national backgrounds. This was her "Rainbow Tribe", installed in her chateau at Les Milandes. Because of overoptimistic finances, she lost the chateau (and she and the tribe were rescued by, among others, Princess Grace of Monaco). When Baker toured the US, she forced theater owners to desegregate when she performed. There was a famous incident in 1951 at the Stork Club which did not admit blacks, but Baker arranged an admission, only to be ignored by the waiters. Columnist Walter Winchell was present, and Baker called upon him to witness the incident, but instead he attacked her on his radio program and wrote to J. Edgar Hoover requesting an FBI investigation of Baker's political activities, and of course Hoover obliged.

Baker died in 1975, having just opened to glowing reviews of a retrospective show in Paris. Thousands watched the procession and Paris came to a standstill. Jules-Rosette analyzes her continuing influence on chameleons like Madonna, Grace Jones, and Michael Jackson. Baker was a real original, though, formed by her times but deliberately forming herself and taking roles to transform herself artistically, with the larger goal of transforming the world. It was a lifetime of brilliant performances on and off stage, and fully worthy of the intellectual dissections Jules-Rosette has brought together in a readable and entertaining volume.