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Matthew Barney: Redoubt is a comprehensive catalogue of the artist's newest project, which centers on a two-hour film that creates a complex portrait of the American landscape by layering classical, cosmological, and American myths about humanity's place in the natural world. In the film, the goddess Diana and her two attendants traverse the rugged terrain of Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains in pursuit of the elusive wolf, while an Engraver (played by Barney, b. 1967) furtively documents their actions in copper engravings and provokes a series of confrontations. The publication comprises hundreds of stills that track the film's narrative, as well as essays-some lyrical, others more objective-that approach Redoubt through disciplines such as ecology, art history, and dance. Also featured are the artworks made by Barney in conjunction with the film: electroplated copper engravings based on those his character makes and sculptures created by pouring molten metal through hollo...

In a world where the making and consumption of art is constantly changing, the term "Islamic art" can be hard to define. Through the exploration of a wide array of media-from painting, sculpture, and photography to video and multimedia-an internationally renowned group of scholars, collectors, artists, and curators tackles questions such as whether the art has to come from the Middle East, whether it must have a religious component, and, indeed, whether the work of art must be made by a Muslim. Based on a series of papers presented at the 7th Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art in 2017, the essays in this volume grapple with these questions from a range of viewpoints. These texts-including beautiful illustrations of major works by contemporary artists from the Muslim world, including Newsha Tavakolian, Shahzia Sikander, Hassan Hajjaj and Lalla Essaydi-invoke a lively discussion of how the arts of the Islamic lands link the past with the present and the future....

A thought-provoking reflection on why secular national liberation movements are so often challenged by militant religious revivals Many of the successful campaigns for national liberation in the years following World War II were initially based on democratic and secular ideals. Once established, however, the newly independent nations had to deal with entirely unexpected religious fierceness. Michael Walzer, one of America's foremost political thinkers, examines this perplexing trend by studying India, Israel, and Algeria, three nations whose founding principles and institutions have been sharply attacked by three completely different groups of religious revivalists: Hindu militants, ultra-Orthodox Jews and messianic Zionists, and Islamic radicals. In his provocative, well-reasoned discussion, Walzer asks, Why have these secular democratic movements been unable to reproduce their political culture beyond one or two generations? In a postscript, he compares the difficulties of contem...