Harold Rosenberg was undoubtedly the most important American art critic of the twentieth century. It was he who first coined the term "Action Painters" to refer to the American Abstract Expressionists such as Pollock, Kline, and de Kooning. Rosenberg's seminal writings on this movement, as well as on other artists such as Newman and Rothko, appear in The Tradition of the New (1959), his first and most influential book; its effects on subsequent art criticism, and the practice of art itself, are still felt today. The essays in this book are not limited to the art world, however: He also discusses poetry, political and cultural theory, and popular culture. As wide-ranging, independent, and deeply probing as the essays of Walter Benjamin, Harold Rosenberg's The Tradition of the New is a true classic of twentieth-century criticism.

This book is the first attempt to provide a basis for the interaction of the brain and nervous system with painting, music and literature. The introduction deals with the problems of creativity and which parts of the brain are involved. Then an overview of art presents the multiple facets, such as anatomy, and the myths appearing in ancient descriptions of conditions such as polio and migraine. The neurological basis of painters like Goya and van Gogh is analysed. Other chapters in the section on art cover da Vinci's mechanics and the portrayal of epilepsy. The section on music concerns the parts of the brain linked to perception and memory, as well as people who cannot appreciate music, and the effect of music on intelligence and learning (the Mozart effect). The section on literature relates to Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Conan Doyle, James Joyce and the poetry of one of England's most famous neurologists, Henry Head.

"In 1996, during the relatively early days of the web, Kenneth Goldsmith created UbuWeb to post hard-to-find works of concrete poetry. What started out as a site to share works from a relatively obscure literary movement grew into an essential archive of twentieth- and twenty-first-century avant-garde and experimental literature, film, and music. Visitors around the world now have access to both obscure and canonical works, from artists such as Kara Walker, Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Duchamp, Cecil Taylor, Glenn Ligon, William Burroughs, and Jean-Luc Godard. In Duchamp Is My Lawyer, Goldsmith tells the history of UbuWeb, explaining the motivations behind its creation and how artistic works are archived, consumed, and distributed online. Based on his own experiences and interviews with a variety of experts, Goldsmith describes how the site navigates issues of copyright and the ways that UbuWeb challenges familiar configurations and histories of the avant-garde. The book also portrays the growth of other "shadow libraries" and includes a section on the artists whose works reflect the aims, aesthetics, and ethos of UbuWeb. Goldsmith concludes by contrasting UbuWeb's commitment to the free-culture movement and giving access to a wide range of artistic works with today's gatekeepers of algorithmic culture, such as Netflix, Amazon, and Spotify"--