{"title":"Michael Paraskos","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"four-essays-on-art-and-anarchism-book-michael-paraskos-9780992924799","title":"Four Essays on Art and Anarchism","description":"The relationship between art and anarchism has a long but often hidden history. Artists as diverse as Courbet, Pissarro, Signac, van Gogh, Kandinsky, Tatlin, Gris, and many others, have been positively identified as being anarchist, or having sympathies with anarchist ideas. But, as Michael Paraskos suggests in the course of these essays, there is an argument to be made that anarchist ideas are at the heart of all acts of artistic creation. From this Paraskos argues that we need to reconsider what it means to educate artists. He questions the usefulness of putting art students through an inherently uncreative university art education system and advocates instead an organic and open-ended network of 'table-top art schools'. Each of theses, he suggests, would be centred on small groups of practising artists and have its own identity and interests. After considering the often controversial work of the Savoy Press, Paraskos ends with a discussion on a small group of collaborative artists in Cyprus, which included his father, Stass Paraskos, who decided to re-conceptualise their painted canvases as shared anarchist communes. The result was a radical new form collaborative painting. Although dealing with the serious matters of art and political anarchism in the cultural sphere, Paraskos's light touch and generous writing style is filled with humour and personal anecdote, and is a pleasure to read.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49899963384081,"sku":"NGR9780992924799","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51011363111185,"sku":"NIN9780992924799","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52121238143249,"sku":"NLS9780992924799","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0992924790.jpg?v=1751331456"},{"product_id":"rereading-read-book-michael-paraskos-9781904491088","title":"Rereading Read","description":"From poverty and a Yorkshire orphanage, Herbert Read went on to become the most significant cultural critic to come out of England in the twentieth century. \u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBetween 1940 and 1960 he was the most well-respected writer on modernist art in the English language, effectively defining the movement during that period. He was a major art theorist and writer on literature, and a key figure in anarchist politics. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe was a leading figure in many Eureopan art movements, including Constructivism and Surrealism, and was one of the first English writers to embrace the Existentialist theories of Jean-Paul Sartre. Remarkably Read was once accused by the leading English modernist, Percy Wyndham Lewis, of being too radical in his artistic tastes. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRead was also a notable poet of the First World War, and in later years helped to found numerous art organisations, including the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. 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He is frequently credited with bringing modern art and modernism to a wide public and was dubbed by friends and foes alike as the 'Pope of Modern Art.' As a broadcaster on the BC and a prolific writer Read was a well known public figure, but his understanding of art, literature and society was built on sometimes recondite forms of Continental Philosophy, particularly idealist philosophy. That he was able to turn these into a theory of culture admired not only by artists, writers and political activists but the wider public is a measure of his skill as a thinker and writer. In this highly readable text Dr Michael Paraskos explains how Read understood idealist theories and how he hybridised them with his anarchist political beliefs to create a uniquely Readian form of anarchist cultural theory.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51011185836305,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51011189440785,"sku":"NIN9780992924720","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51907496116497,"sku":"GOR009045036","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52662516842769,"sku":"NLS9780992924720","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0992924723.jpg?v=1750852390"},{"product_id":"rabbitman-book-michael-paraskos-9780995713000","title":"Rabbitman","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51136832962833,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51136835059985,"sku":"GOR012894816","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52411806744849,"sku":"GOR008161103","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0995713006.jpg?v=1750917139"},{"product_id":"scarborough-realists-now-book-michael-paraskos-9780956580245","title":"Scarborough Realists Now","description":"In 2008 four artists and an art critic gathered together in the northern English seaside town of Scarborough to stage an exhibition that would challenge the dominant mainstream British art world. Entitled 'scarborough realists now' (note the lower case) the exhibition was a deliberate attack on the mainstream metropolitan art world, dominated at the time by neo-conceptual artists and critics who were actively hostile to painting. Against this they succeeded in staging a seminal exhibition of radical contemporary realist painting. As the critic Michael Paraskos argues in a new essay, written to accompany this reissue of the original catalogue, the Scarborough exhibition was intended to celebrate realist painting: but the artists were also looking beyond the realist agenda, foreseeing a time when realist painting itself, and particularly Photorealist painting, would also seem dull, mainstream and in need of revitalisation. Drawing on anarchist art theory, Paraskos explains that whilst each of the artists was producing realist art at the time of the show as a necessary act of resistance against conceptualism, realism and Photorealism were never seen as the ultimate goal. 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Originally intended for private distribution only to trusted friends in the art world, Regeneration offers a rare glimpse into the experiences that lead art theorists and critics to think, say and do the things they do.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51281739415825,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51281740988689,"sku":"NIN9780956580207","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52429931544849,"sku":"NLS9780956580207","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0956580203.jpg?v=1751172509"},{"product_id":"barfrestone-book-michael-paraskos-9781999368067","title":"Barfrestone","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51313728815377,"sku":"GOR013834955","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52589730857233,"sku":"NLS9781999368067","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52849928405265,"sku":"NIN9781999368067","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1999368061.jpg?v=1750998792"},{"product_id":"pygmalion-1-book-michael-paraskos-9781999368081","title":"Pygmalion 1","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52136924741905,"sku":"NLS9781999368081","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52758831104273,"sku":"NIN9781999368081","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781999368081.jpg?v=1757555742"},{"product_id":"mirror-in-the-bathroom-book-michael-paraskos-9780992924751","title":"Mirror in the Bathroom","description":"Clive Head is the leading figurative painter of his generation working in Britain today. 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He has achieved a worldwide reputation and his work is held in private and public collections internationally.  Although there is a clear link between Head's work and the traditions of American Photorealism, the paintings extend that tradition by drawing on a European history of art, with the result that Head's work is as much a descendant of Canaletto, Constable and Ginner as Estes, Bectel and Goings.  In his working method, Head seeks to embody a strong sense of place, not simply as a record of the look of a place, but as the expression of a place by a particular person. This is the first full-length monograph on his work and sets out to introduce it to a wider audience.  It incorporates a short history of Clive Head's work to date, examining a number of his paintings in detail in order to illuminate his working processes. 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