Bøker av Amy Dempsey

An affordable, accessible introduction to artworks in the global landscape, including land art, site-specific art and sculpture parks.

Small, smart, essential - an incisive overview of Surrealism, introducing the movement's key artists and capturing its essential and enduring concepts.

Amy Dempsey unravels the all-too-often daunting language of modern art by mapping the styles, schools and movements that help us understand modern and contemporary art, from Impressionism in the 19th century to Destination Art in the 21st. Using a practical and easy-to-navigate structure, Dempsey's lucid writing and carefully selected artworks define sixty-eight essential groupings in western modern art. Each feature presents a succinct explanation, characteristic works and a relevant list of key artists, attributes, media and collections. A reference section provides an indispensable glossary of modern art terms and an index of artists.

'It seems that making art is chasing after an elusive dream of perfection that sits somewhere in my head. It will not go away, even after fifty years of trying. After all this time the process of holding materials, rubbing, crushing, cradling or just placing them violently or tenderly, is what it's about. Every action is a stream of discovery of something that hasn't existed before - it's a miracle and a bloody disaster. And so every sculpture leads to the next piece in the great puzzle. Much of this work is initiated in the subconscious. The different processes connect me with something physical or metaphysical that needs to be understood. In this way I discovered and dealt with past trauma. Things that didn't make sense but once transposed into clay became obvious. In this way personal experiences were opened out into universal experiences.'