Kunst

1. Bell Hooks

Art On My Mind

1. Friedrich , Nietzsche

Ecce Homo

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksI am not a man, I am dynamiteWeeks before his final mental breakdown, Nietzsche set out to compose his autobiography, and Ecce Homo is the result. A summary of his life's work as a philosopher, with chapter headings including 'Why I Am So Wise' and 'Why I Write Such Good Books', it is part mocking self-judgement and part battle cry, and remains one of the most singular, strange examples of the genre ever written.

1. Oscar Wilde

A Poet Can Survive Everything But a Misprint

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He went to Trinity College, Dublin and then to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he began to propagandize the new Aesthetic (or 'Art for Art's Sake') Movement.Despite winning a first and the Newdigate Prize for Poetry, Wilde failed to obtain an Oxford scholarship, and was forced to earn a living by lecturing and writing for periodicals. After his marriage to Constance Lloyd in 1884, he tried to establish himself as a writer, but with little initial success. However, his three volumes of short fiction, The Happy Prince (1888), Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1891) and A House of Pomegranates (1891), together with his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), gradually won him a reputation as a modern writer with an original talent, a reputation confirmed and enhanced by the phenomenal success of his Society Comedies - Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, all performed on the West End stage between 1892 and 1895.Success, however, was short-lived. In 1891 Wilde had met and fallen extravagantly in love with Lord Alfred Douglas. In 1895, when his success as a dramatist was at its height, Wilde brought an unsuccessful libel action against Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde lost the case and two trials later was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for acts of gross indecency. As a result of this experience he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He was released from prison in 1897 and went into an immediate self-imposed exile on the Continent. He died in Paris in ignominy in 1900.

1. John Berger

Ways Of Seeing

Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But, there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. This is a book on art in various languages.

1. Marianne Eekhout
2. Ineke Huysman
3. Luc Panhuysen

De wereld van De Witt

Nieuw licht op een van de belangrijkste politici uit de Nederlandse geschiedenis Vierhonderd jaar geleden werd hij geboren: raadspensionaris Johan de Witt. In de kunst zag men De Witt als een zwaan die zijn nest beschermt. Maar hij was ook een levensgenieter, echtgenoot, vader, broer en zoon. En hoe zag zijn wereld eruit? De meeste mensen kennen Johan de Witt (1625-1672) als politicus, maar zijn persoonlijke leven is minder bekend. In De wereld van De Witt krijgen we een beter beeld van de mens achter de politicus, dankzij nieuwe inzichten van vooraanstaande experts. Zij belichten niet alleen zijn karakter en politieke strategieën, maar ook zijn persoonlijke relaties en de kunst uit de zeventiende eeuw die zijn leven beïnvloedde. Ontdek hoe vader Jacob de Witt het familiefortuin opbouwde en zijn zoon in de politiek introduceerde, hoe echtgenote Wendela Bicker Johan steunde tijdens crisissen, en hoe hij moest samenwerken met Amalia van Solms ondanks hun verschillende belangen. Ook zijn complexe relatie met koning Charles II van Engeland in tijden van oorlog komt aan bod. Hij leerde dansen in het Franse stadje Angers, moest omgaan met het verlies van zijn vrouw en kinderen, en overleefde een moordaanslag voordat hij in 1672 werd gelyncht in Den Haag. Dit rijk geïllustreerde boek verschijnt bij de tentoonstelling in het Dordrechts Museum en is een onmisbare gids voor wie de ware wereld van Johan de Witt wil ontdekken.

1. Walter Benjamin

The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction

Explores how the age of mass media means audiences can listen to or see a work of art repeatedly - and what the troubling social and political implications of this are.