18Visual Culture

Abstract

Abstract This chapter addresses books published in the field of visual culture in 2021 and is divided into four sections: 1. Edges of Europe; 2. Rethinking Art; 3. Art and the Anthropocene; and 4. Conclusion. The books under review cover a range of subjects within their specialities and reflect general trends in contemporary writing and study in the field of visual culture. The first section looks at publications concerning art at the edge of Europe: Marsha Morton and Barbara Larson’s edited volume Constructing Race on the Borders of Europe: Ethnography, Anthropology, and Visual Culture, 1850–1930 and Kerry Greaves’s collection Modern Women Artists in the Nordic Countries, 1900–1960. The second section reviews books that ask that we re-examine how we think about art, especially its political element: Jason Miller’s The Politics of Perception and the Aesthetics of Social Change and Sharon Irish’s Concerning Stephen Willats and the Social Function of Art. The third section examines publications about what it means to create art in the age of the Anthropocene: Susan Ballard’s Art and Nature in the Anthropocene, Gry Hedin and Ann-Sofie N. Gremaud’s Artistic Visions of the Anthropocene North: Climate Change and Nature in Art, and Jessica Morgan and Dorothea von Hantelmann’s Resource Hungry: Our Cultured Landscape and its Ecological Impact.