Isabelle's Holiday Gift Picks!
Doug Meyer: Heroes: A Tribute, Pink Art Edition." Heroes: A Tribute celebrates the lives and contributions of 49 brilliant, creative figures who were early victims of HIV/AIDS—unique portraits by artist Doug Meyer reflect the core of each individual and are paired with insightful obituaries. In Heroes: A Tribute artist Doug Meyer celebrates the lives and accomplishments of creative pioneers who were victims of HIV/AIDS in the early years of the epidemic. Brilliant figures from the worlds of art, design, film, and dance are honored here—people such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring, Rudolph Nureyev, Freddie Mercury, Rock Hudson, John Duka, Tina Chow, Klaus Nomi, Halston, and Angelo Donghia. The Art Editions of Heroes are stamped, signed, and numbered by Doug Meyer and include a print of the 49th hero. The Pink Art Edition includes a pink version of the print in the back of each copy. Heroes began as an installation at a Design Industry Foundation to Fight AIDS event and grew into a traveling exhibition. The portraits vary in form, material, and style, and incorporate drawing, painting, sculpture, and photography. In his multi-dimensional artwork, Meyer blends techniques and media, such as terracotta, églomisé, papier-mâché, and computer-generated collage. The text includes essays by Meyer and writer Beth Dunlop as well as brief biographies of each hero that highlight the contributions these figures made to the worlds of art, design, and culture. This beautifully designed book features sophisticated graphic design and includes pages from Doug Meyer’s sketchbooks showing his artistic process. A true celebration, Heroes: A Tribute both pays homage to these visionary creatives who died too soon, and it teaches younger generations about these important figures. This book will appeal to all who have an interest in art, design, fashion, creativity, gay and LGBTQ issues and history, and more." Published by Tra Publishing, $95.00
The New Woman's Survival Catalog. "Originally published in 1973, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog is a seminal survey of the second-wave feminist effort across the US. Edited by Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie in just five months, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog makes a nod to Stewart Brand’s influential Whole Earth Catalog, mapping a vast network of feminist alternative cultural activity in the 1970s. Grimstad and Rennie set out on a two-month road trip in the summer of 1973, meeting and interviewing a range of organizations and individuals, and gathering vital information on everything from arts groups to bookstores and independent presses, health, parenting and rape crisis centers and educational, legal and financial resources. 'These projects express a rejection of the values of existing institutional structures,” Grimstad and Rennie wrote, “and, unlike the hip male counterculture, represent an active attempt to reshape culture through changing values and consciousness.' Arranged in themed sections on art, communications, work and money, child care, self-help, self-defense and activism, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog provides crucial insight into feminist initiatives and activism nationwide during the Women’s Movement. It includes a “Making the Book” section that details the publication’s production." Published by Primary Information. $30.00
Becoming Invisible. "Both an artist's book and a would-be practical guide, this beautiful little book offers occult instructions for becoming invisible by meditating on the color spectrum. It draws on the literature of Rosicrucianism, theosophy and esoteric yoga to demonstrate how, through breathing exercises and visualization, the reader can learn to split light into its constituent parts, then recombine the seven colours of the spectrum to form a glowing white cloud that envelops its creator, rendering him or her invisible. Its author, London-based artist Ian Whittlesea—well known for his book works based on spiritual-physical exercises, such as Yves Klein: The Foundations of Judo and Mazdaznan Health & Breath Culture—notes in the preface: "These exercises are intended to allow you to become invisible. This does not, however, mean that you will physically disappear or dematerialize. Instead you will be hidden from view, concealed within a cloud of your own creation."Gorgeous colour abstractions by Whittlesea illustrate the book throughout." Published by The Everyday Press. $25.00
Art-Rite. "The New York proto-punk zine that defined postconceptualism, now in a facsimile edition. Edited by Walter Robinson, Edit DeAk and Joshua Cohn, Art-Rite was published in New York City between 1973 and 1978. The periodical has long been celebrated for its underground/overground position and its cutting, humorous, on-the-streets coverage and critique of the art world. Art-Rite moved easily through the expansive community it mapped out, paying homage to an emergent generation of artists, including many who were—or would soon become—the defining voices of the era. Through hundreds of interviews, reviews, statements and projects for the page—as well as artist-focused and thematic issues on video, painting, performance and artists' books—Art-Rite's sharp editorial vision and commitment to holding up the work of artists stands as a meaningful and lasting contribution to the art history of New York and beyond. All issues of Art-Rite are collected in this volume. Artists include: Vito Acconci, Kathy Acker, Bas Jan Ader, Laurie Anderson, John Baldessari, Gregory Battcock, Lynda Benglis, Mel Bochner, Marcel Broodthaers, Trisha Brown, Chris Burden, Scott Burton, Ulises Carrión, Judy Chicago, Lucinda Childs, Christo, Diego Cortez, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Ralston Farina, Richard Foreman, Peggy Gale, Gilbert & George, John Giorno, Philip Glass, Leon Golub, Peter Grass, Julia Heyward, Nancy Holt, Ray Johnson, Joan Jonas, Richard Kern, Lee Krasner, Shigeko Kubota, Les Levine, Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Babette Mangolte, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Gordon Matta-Clark, Rosemary Mayer, Annette Messager, Elizabeth Murray, Alice Neel, Brian O'Doherty, Genesis P-Orridge, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, Judy Pfaff, Lil Picard, Yvonne Rainer, Dorothea Rockburne, Ed Ruscha, Robert Ryman, David Salle, Carolee Schneemann, Richard Serra, Jack Smith, Patti Smith, Robert Smithson, Holly Solomon, Naomi Spector, Nancy Spero, Pat Steir, Frank Stella, Alan Suicide (Vega), David Tremlett, Richard Tuttle, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, Hannah Wilke, Robert Wilson, Yuri and Irene von Zahn." Published by Primary Information. $40.00
Le Corbuffet: Edible Art and Design Classics. "Esther Choi: Le Corbuffet. "Home-cooking meets highbrow art in this one-of-a-kind cookbook that uses food to create edible interpretations of modern and contemporary sculptures, paintings, architecture, and design. It started as a series of dinner parties that Esther Choi—artist, architectural historian, and self-taught cook—hosted for friends after she stumbled across an elaborate menu crafted for Walter Gropius in 1937. Combining a curiosity about art and design with a deeply felt love of cooking, Choi has assembled a playful collection of recipes that are sure to spark conversation over the dinner table. Featuring Choi’s own spectacular photography, these sixty recipes riff off famous artists or architects and the works they are known for. Try Quiche Haring with the Frida Kale-o Salad, or the Robert Rauschenburger followed by Flan Flavin. This cookbook is strikingly beautiful and provocative as it blurs the boundaries between art and everyday life and celebrates food in an engaging and imaginative way." Published by Prestel. $40.00
Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924-Today. "One of the most influential art movements of the 20th century, surrealism expanded our artistic and quotidian reality by drawing upon myths, dreams and the subconscious as sources of artistic inspiration. The movement began in literature and art, but by the 1930s it was beginning to have an impact on design—an influence that continues to this day. The fascination was often mutual: surrealism opened design up to the realm of dreams, and design could introduce surrealism to the wider world. “I try to create fantastic things, magical things, things like in a dream,” Salvador Dalí said of his work. “The world needs more fantasy.” Designers in fashion, furniture design, advertising, theater, film and architecture took up the call. Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design is the first book to document this fascinating conversation. The publication includes numerous essays and a comprehensive selection of images which trace the reciprocal exchanges between surrealism and design by juxtaposing exemplary artworks and design objects. Among the artists and designers featured in this volume are Gae Aulenti, Louise Bourgeois, Umberto and Fernando Campana, Achille Castiglioni, Giorgio de Chirico, Le Corbusier, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Frederick Kiesler, René Magritte, Carlo Mollino, Meret Oppenheim, Jerszy Seymour, and many others. Historical texts and short commentaries by contemporary designers round out the publication, putting the extravagant objects in context. In-depth yet appropriately fantastical, Objects of Desire makes one thing abundantly clear: form does not always follow function in design—it can also follow our obsessions, fantasies and hidden desires." Published by Vitra Design Museum. $90.00
Peter Berlin: Icon, Artist, Photosexual. "Peter Berlin was a self-created icon. With his trademark pageboy haircut and his skin-tight costumes that put every detail of his anatomy on display (designed and tailored by Berlin himself to accentuate his already naturally defined physique), he became a gay sex symbol and a walking work of art. Cruising was his career, and with a background in photography, Berlin began taking thousands of erotic self-portraits in the parks, train stations and streets of Berlin, Rome, Paris, New York and San Francisco, where he settled in the early 1970s. As Berlin put it, 'One day I looked at a camera and said, ‘I have found my dream lover.’ Berlin’s ’70s and ’80s self-portrait photography graced the covers of gay magazines, defining a look and a reimagined masculinity in a changing gay male culture. Spotlighting Berlin’s significant body of work, Peter Berlin: Icon, Artist, Photosexual pays tribute to the man who revolutionized the landscape of gay male eroticism and became an international sensation. The book is designed by Omar Sosa, Creative Director of Apartamento magazine, and is edited by Michael Bullock, writer and publisher of BUTT, Pin-Up, Fantastic Man and Gentlewoman magazines. In addition to essays by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jonathan David Katz, Ted Stansfield and Evan Moffitt, the book includes original quotes about Berlin by Jeremy O Harris, Kembra Pfahler, Andre Leon Talley, Armistead Maupin, John Waters, Arca, Silvia Prada, AA Bronson, Jack Pierson, Simon Foxton, Chris Moukarbel, Telfar Clemens, Paul Sepuya, Tim Blanks, Mariah Garnett and Rick Castro. Artist, model and filmmaker Peter Berlin, nee Armin Hagen Freiherr von Hoyningen Huene (born 1942), created some of the most legendary erotic imagery of his day. What began as studies in self-portraiture and fashion design in the name of cruising, by the early 1970s had turned into a robust artistic practice that included the creation of two films―Nights in Black Leather (1973) and That Boy (1974)―and innumerable photographs, paintings and illustrations." Published by Damiani. $ 50.00
