"The Artist as Producer confronts the problem of making a politics with art. Gough's balanced rigor in mining obscure archives on the one hand, while performing brilliant readings of recalcitrant artworks on the other gives her account of Constructivism's utopian promise and less-than-utopian outcome great texture. She has produced something very rare: an art-historical study that not only adds to our knowledge but captures the intense poignancy of modern art's serious ambition to undertake a revolution of—and with—form."—David Joselit, Professor, History of Art, Yale University "To see a sculptor plunging into the politics and the cultural politics of the factory floor is a rare sight indeed in art history. It takes immense historical discipline to do it justice. Maria Gough takes the 'author as producer' question dear to Marxist aesthetics (think of Walter Benjamin, but think also of Trotsky, of Gramsci) and raises it into new relevance. The question always was and is a motor. This book shows us, beautifully, how and why."—Molly Nesbit, Professor of Art, Vassar College "The Artist as Producer is a remarkable and impressive piece of scholarship, which challenges existing assumptions about Soviet Constructivism and demands that we rethink the movement in its entirety."—Christina Lodder, author of Russian Constructivism

When 'Living and Sustaining a Creative Life' was published in 2013, it became an immediate sensation. Edited by Sharon Louden, the book brought together forty essays by working artists, each sharing their own story of how to sustain a creative practice that contributes to the ongoing dialogue in contemporary art. The book struck a nerve how do artists really make it in the world today? Louden took the book on a sixty-two-stop book tour, selling thousands of copies, and building a movement along the way. Now, Louden returns with a sequel: forty more essays from artists who have successfully expanded their practice beyond the studio and become change agents in their communities. There is a misconception that artists are invisible and hidden, but the essays here demonstrate the truth artists make a measurable and innovative economic impact in the non-profit sector, in education, and in corporate environments. The Artist as Culture Producer illustrates how today's contemporary artists add to creative economies through out-of-the-box thinking while also generously contributing to the well-being of others. By turns humorous, heartbreaking, and instructive, the testimonies of these forty diverse working artists will inspire and encourage every reader from the art student to the established artist.

The evolution of the record producer from organizer to auteur, from Phil Spector and George Martin to the rise of hip-hop and remixing. In the 1960s, rock and pop music recording questioned the convention that recordings should recreate the illusion of a concert hall setting. The Wall of Sound that Phil Spector built behind various artists and the intricate eclecticism of George Martin's recordings of the Beatles did not resemble live performances—in the Albert Hall or elsewhere—but instead created a new sonic world. The role of the record producer, writes Virgil Moorefield in The Producer as Composer, was evolving from that of organizer to auteur; band members became actors in what Frank Zappa called a "movie for your ears." In rock and pop, in the absence of a notated score, the recorded version of a song—created by the producer in collaboration with the musicians—became the definitive version. Moorefield, a musician and producer himself, traces this evolution with detailed discussions of works by producers and producer-musicians including Spector and Martin, Brian Eno, Bill Laswell, Trent Reznor, Quincy Jones, and the Chemical Brothers. Underlying the transformation, Moorefield writes, is technological development: new techniques—tape editing, overdubbing, compression—and, in the last ten years, inexpensive digital recording equipment that allows artists to become their own producers. What began when rock and pop producers reinvented themselves in the 1960s has continued; Moorefield describes the importance of disco, hip-hop, remixing, and other forms of electronic music production in shaping the sound of contemporary pop. He discusses the making of Pet Sounds and the production of tracks by Public Enemy with equal discernment, drawing on his own years of studio experience. Much has been written about rock and pop in the last 35 years, but hardly any of it deals with what is actually heard in a given pop song. The Producer as Composer tries to unravel the mystery of good pop: why does it sound the way it does?

Guide lines on choosing stories and rendering stories into screenplays are valuable, as are his insights into the whole of maviemaking process-preproduction, production, and postproduction. the nuts-and bolts issues that must be understood.

The relationship between philosopher-critic Walter Benjamin and playwright-poet Bertolt Brecht was both a lasting friendship and a powerful intellectual partnership. Having met in the late 1920s in Germany, Benjamin and Brecht both independently minded Marxists with a deep understanding of and passionate commitment to the emancipatory potential of cultural practices continued to discuss, argue and correspond on topics as varied as Fascism and the work of Franz Kafka. Faced by the onset of the 'midnight of the century', with the Nazi subversion of the Weimar Republic in Germany and the Stalinist degeneration of the revolution in Russia, both men, in their own way, strove to keep alive the tradition of dialectical critique of the existing order and radical intervention in the world to transform it. In Understanding Brecht we find collected together Benjamin's most sensitive and probing writing on the dramatic and poetic work of his friend and tutor. Stimulated by Brecht's oeuvre and theorising his particular dramatic techniques-such as the famous 'estrangement effect'-Benjamin developed his own ideas about the role of art and the artist in crisis-ridden society. This volume contains Benjamin's introductions to Brecht's theory or epic theatre and close textual analyses of twelve poems by Brecht (printed in translation here) which exemplify Benjamin's insistence that literary form and content are indivisible. Elsewhere Benjamin discusses the plays The Mother, Terror and Misery of the Third Reich, and The Threepenny Opera, digressing for some general remarks on Marx and satire. Here we also find Benjamin's masterful essay "The Author as Producer" as well as an extract from his diaries that records the intense conversations held in the late 1930s in Denmark (Brecht's place of exile) between the two most important cultural theorists of this century. In these discussions, the two men talked of subjects as diverse as the work of Franz Kafka, the unfolding Soviet Trials, and the problems of literary work on the edge of international war.

A deeply researched warning about how the digital economy threatens artists' lives and work—the music, writing, and visual art that sustain our souls and societies—from an award-winning essayist and critic There are two stories you hear about earning a living as an artist in the digital age. One comes from Silicon Valley. There's never been a better time to be an artist, it goes. If you've got a laptop, you've got a recording studio. If you've got an iPhone, you've got a movie camera. And if production is cheap, distribution is free: it's called the Internet. Everyone's an artist; just tap your creativity and put your stuff out there. The other comes from artists themselves. Sure, it goes, you can put your stuff out there, but who's going to pay you for it? Everyone is not an artist. Making art takes years of dedication, and that requires a means of support. If things don't change, a lot of art will cease to be sustainable. So which account is true? Since people are still making a living as artists today, how are they managing to do it? William Deresiewicz, a leading critic of the arts and of contemporary culture, set out to answer those questions. Based on interviews with artists of all kinds, The Death of the Artist argues that we are in the midst of an epochal transformation. If artists were artisans in the Renaissance, bohemians in the nineteenth century, and professionals in the twentieth, a new paradigm is emerging in the digital age, one that is changing our fundamental ideas about the nature of art and the role of the artist in society.

In this book, veteran music producer Richard James Burgess gives readers the tools they need to understand the complex field of music production. He defines the many roles that fall to the music producer by focusing first on the underlying theory of music production, before offering a second section of practical aspects of the job.