"Brilliant and very well illustrated."―The Art Quarterly There are some great painters whose influence is confined to the world of painting―others whose impact is felt more widely, who through their art are effectively moral critics, challenging the society in which they live. Manet was one of these. Rejecting the traditional ‘histories’ and ‘mythologies’ that won official acclaim, he turned instead to the life of his own time. Yet he did not ally himself with the other painters of contemporary life, the Impressionists, preferring to engage with a Realist tradition, and at the same time drawing on the art of the past―Raphael, Titian, Velazquez, Goya – to confront his own age. It was a provocative program and one which baffled the establishment. In this freshly researched study Dr Alan Krell examines the artist’s known intentions and the critical, sometimes bitterly hostile reception that he encountered. He sets Manet against Impressionists like Monet, Degas and Morisot, and shows how the artist’s progressive social views – on sexuality, on the position of women, on the family―were expressed through a style equally ‘modern’, yet rooted in the European artistic tradition. 185 illustrations, 30 in color

Manet (World of Art)

Arts & Photography

Krell, Alan

Individual Artists

Thames&Hudson

Fred Cress: Stages

Wild & Woolley

Barbed wire cuts across more than just property, war and politics. This most vicious tool of control has played a critical role in the modern experience, be it territorial expansion or the settlement of local and international conflicts. However, it has other histories: those constructed through image and text in the arts, media and popular culture. These representations – in painting, photography, poetry, personal memoirs, cartoons, novels, advertisements and film – have never before been critically examined. In this book, Alan Krell investigates the place barbed wire holds in the social imagination. Invented in France in 1860, barbed wire was developed independently in the USA, where it was used to control livestock on the Great Plains, both to "keep out" and "keep in". Promoted as the Ideal Fence, barbed wire’s menacing qualities were soon made manifest. The epithet, "The Devil’s Rope", anticipated its transformation into a tool of war in the late 19th and early 20th century. Henceforth, it would become synonymous with repression. Barbed wire’s conflicting character makes it an appropriate symbol of modernity, and Krell shows how the use of this symbolism in contemporary art has given barbed wire meanings beyond the historical and political realms.

The Devil's Rope: A Cultural History of Barbed Wire

Reaktion Books

In the Greek myth, Prometheus steals fire from Zeus and gives it as a gift to mankind. Fire, once possessed only by the gods, can now be used by lowly man. Like knowledge in the Garden of Eden, fire is at once essential to living and a dangerous threat to life. This dual nature of fire—that it is something that leads us to think we can command it until it rages beyond our control—has inspired many legends around the world. We are fascinated and comforted by the fire that warms us and cooks our food and frightened and horrified by the fire that destroys our home and environment. Its power is an unavoidable presence in our lives. In Burning Issues Alan Krell reflects on fire’s paradox through a highly personal examination of fascinating myths and biblical tales of fire, children’s stories, newspaper reports, diaries, paintings, photography, and film. Krell specifically examines representations of fire in word and image, looking at the work of painters, including Bosch, Arcimboldo, Goya, Dalí , Miró, and Tinguely, as well as contemporary figures who use fire as a theme in their work and performance. Questions concerning the private and the public, the intimate and the invasive, the destructive and the redemptive, weave through this generously illustrated book. A captivating history of an element we take for granted in our daily lives until it threatens us, Burning Issues celebrates the magical discovery that took place when man thought to rub two sticks together until they sparked.

Burning Issues: Fire in Art and the Social Imagination

History & Criticism

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Books by Krell, Alan