Book of the Day Posted Apr 09, 2021

Book of the Day > Joseph Rodriguez LAPD 1994

● Purchase ● In the mid-nineties, the LAPD was in search of a public image make-over after the Rodney King uprisings. The City Charter was reformed by increasing civilian oversight of the LAPD, the militant police chief of the moment, Daryl Gates, was forced to resign and Willie Williams became the first African-American chief of the department. I was no stranger to this type of assignment. At that time I had already published two books, Spanish Harlem and East Side Stories, which depicted life in impoverished neighborhoods. Covering LAPD gave me a chance to show how police operated in marginalized communities, and how those communities were affected by individual cops and the department as a whole.
 
As part of these efforts, the LAPD gave photographer Joseph Rodriguez unprecedented access to document the officers in the field for The New York Times, hoping to give the public an image of a “kinder, gentler cop”, as the headline put it. For weeks, he immersed himself in the daily workings of the 77th Street, Pacific and Rampart Divisions. Four years after Rodriguez rode along with Rampart officers, the station became notorious when the biggest scandal in LAPD history erupted in an astonishing spectacle of officer corruption that included the murder of a fellow cop, a bank robbery, unprovoked shootings of alleged gang members, drugs stolen from the evidence room, and other crimes.
 
In 2020, the year of Black Lives Matter, a generation after these photos were taken, new uprisings demand reform yet again and the same questions about policing – what are they for, who do they serve, and who do they protect – shape the public discussion.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 08, 2021

Book of the Day > Kristin Bedford: Cruise Night

● Purchase ● Scenes from the Mexican American lowrider life: a clothbound photobook documenting a vibrant LA car culture
 
Known for her quiet portraits of American cultural movements, Los Angeles–based photographer Kristin Bedford’s new work, Cruise Night, is an intimate and unstaged exploration of Los Angeles’ Mexican American lowrider car culture.
 
From 2014 to 2019 Bedford attended hundreds of lowrider cruise nights, car shows, quinceañeras, weddings and funerals. Her images offer a new visual narrative around the lowrider tradition and invite outsiders to question prevalent societal stereotypes surrounding this urban Mexican American culture. Bedford’s photos explore the nuances of cars as mobile canvases and the legendary community that creates them.
 
With bright color photography and a unique female vantage point, Cruise Night is an original look at a prolific American movement set against the Los Angeles cityscape.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 07, 2021

Book of the Day > Age Of Collage 3: Contemporary Collage In Modern Art

● Purchase ● Dive into an art form existing at the intersection of design, commerce, and abstract expression.
 
Cut, paste, create: while collage was conceived in the early 1900's, it seems to be the perfect form of expression for the 21st-century, with all its juxtapositions, eclecticism, and strange bedfellows. In our present age of collage, the simple act of mixing together different elements allows us to question our reality and make new worlds.
 
The Age of Collage showcases a new crop of artistic vanguards advancing the medium’s possibilities, piece-by-piece. Equipped with a craft knife, paintbrush, stylus, scissors, or tablet, a collage artist’s toolkit is as varied as their creations and this book brings their work back to the paper page.
 
From the poignant and provocative to the comic and curious, The Age of Collage features the creations of more than 60 artists. Packed with visuals and a number of in-depth profiles revealing what drives the hands behind the pieces, this comprehensive volume is a celebration of the enduring power of collage.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 06, 2021

Book of the Day > The Spanish Style House: From Enchanted Andalusia to the California Dream

● Purchase ● Luminous new photography showcases contemporary and historic homes in the beloved Spanish Style in Southern California, while offering, as well, a rare look at the original inspirations to the style, born in Andalusia, Spain.
 
The great appeal of Spanish Style homes lies in their aura of romance and drama, a sense of story, of magic, as well as in their very comfortable and engaging proportions and the great livability of the interior spaces. Deep shadow, arched doorways, trickling courtyard fountains, climbing bougainvillea on wrought-iron window grilles, wood-beamed ceilings, and white plaster walls are all hallmarks of the style. Here, through a celebration of contemporary and historic homes in Southern California, as well as existing historic precedents in Andalusia, Spain--most notably the intricately detailed Casa de Pilatos in Seville and the Alhambra of Granada--The Spanish Style House presents the definitive picture of the style as it exists today.
 
Featured homes include the George Washington Smith-designed Casa Blanca (1928)--a fantasy made real in stone and stucco replete with the romance of old Morocco in its horseshoe arches, domes, and evocative tile murals--and a Marc Appleton-designed beach house (2007) in Del Mar, California, which is a dream on the sea and an eloquent testament to the virtues of the style for today.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 02, 2021

Book of the Day > Alice Neel: People Come First

● Purchase ● "For me, people come first," Alice Neel (1900–1984) declared in 1950. "I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being." This ambitious publication surveys Neel's nearly 70-year career through the lens of her radical humanism. Remarkable portraits of victims of the Great Depression, fellow residents of Spanish Harlem, leaders of political organizations, queer artists, visibly pregnant women, and members of New York's global diaspora reveal that Neel viewed humanism as both a political and philosophical ideal. In addition to these paintings of famous and unknown sitters, the more than 100 works highlighted include Neel's emotionally charged cityscapes and still lifes as well as the artist's erotic pastels and watercolors. Essays tackle Neel's portrayal of LGBTQ subjects; her unique aesthetic language, which merged abstraction and figuration; and her commitment to progressive politics, civil rights, feminism, and racial diversity. The authors also explore Neel's highly personal preoccupations with death, illness, and motherhood while reasserting her place in the broader cultural history of the 20th century.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 01, 2021

Book of the Day > The Chemarts Cookbook

● Purchase ● Inspiration for Material Enthusiasts
 
How can we make flexible, transparent wood-based materials? What kinds of materials can we derive from trees, while still respecting the preciousness of nature? Could the innovative use of renewable cellulosic materials change our material world?
 
The CHEMARTS Cookbook offers both simple and more advanced ideas and recipes for hands-on experiments with wood-based materials. The book showcases interesting results, focusing on raw materials that are processed either chemically or mechanically from trees or other plants: cellulose fibres, micro- or nano-structured fibrils, cellulose derivatives, lignin, bark, and wood extractives.
 
Find inspiration, test our recipes at home, in workshops or chemistry labs, and develop your own experiments! Have fun!
Book of the Day Posted Mar 30, 2021

Book of the Day > Frank Horvat: Side Walk

● Purchase ● The legendary photojournalist’s early ’80s New York photographs, published alongside his autobiographical musings in an elegant clothbound edition
 
From 1979 to 1986, the city of New York functioned as a kind of refuge for photographer Frank Horvat (born 1928). Born in present-day Croatia, for years Horvat lived and worked rather nomadically, traveling extensively through Asia and Europe on photojournalist excursions with a brief stopover in Paris where he shot fashion photography for Jardins de Mode and Elle. Eventually he found himself in New York; during this period, he allowed himself to surrender to the daily hustle and bustle of the city streets. In between commissions, Horvat created a prolific series of photography and writing that was not intended for public consumption, instead functioning as a reflection upon his own craft as well as the significance of photography itself.
 
Frank Horvat: Side Walk publishes many of these photographs for the first time alongside the photographer’s writing. The elegant presentation of this clothbound volume is representative of the great pride that Horvat took in the creation of his personal projects as well as his professional pursuits: the photojournalist's texts are published on thin Munken offset paper and his photographs are printed on deep matte photo paper. This publication is both a compelling depiction of a beloved city and a portrait of the sensitive man behind the camera.
Book of the Day Posted Mar 27, 2021

Book of the Day > Dear Elio: A Marvelous Journey into the World of Fiorucci

● Purchase ● The world and creativity of Elio Fiorucci seen from the inside and recounted by those who took part in his fashion adventure.
 
The fashion and stores created by Elio Fiorucci in the late 1960s were a great creative hotbed for the following decades, anticipating many of the trends that emerged later and the ideas of the next generation of designers.
 
Elio Fiorucci's innate curiosity led him to explore the unknown, to broaden his vision towards new currents of freedom of expression, beyond the borders of his country, in search of other energies.
 
This book recalls his new, joyful, mocking, free realm, and the conception of unconventional clothing that upset the rules of the bourgeois, conformist world of the 1960s. It is a choral fresco, told through the letters of those who worked with him, including absolute beginners, professionals who knew him and shared his passions, family, and friends: architects such as Antonio Citterio and Michele De Lucchi, photographers, artists (Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, who decorated the entire Milan store in 1983), singers, and actors who attended his stores and parties. Direct testimonials come from the likes of Biba (Barbara Hulanicki), Oliviero Toscani, Donna Jordan, Terry Jones, Italo Lupi, Alessandro Mendini, Paul Caranicas and Joey Arias. The book also features a preface by Janie and Stephen Schaeffer, the current brand owners.
Book of the Day Posted Mar 26, 2021

Book of the Day > Mark Templeton: Ocean Front Property

● Purchase ● “I was in search of water and the effect its absence had on me,” writes Canadian sound artist and photographer Mark Templeton about his second photobook, Ocean Front Property. From this sense of absence and geographic isolation grew a new body of work with two components: A book of color photographs, made entirely in the landlocked province of Alberta (“where the nearest ocean is a thousand kilometers away”), and an Audio Experience (a ‘soundtrack’ to the book, included as a digital download or available on a limited edition cassette). Rooted in the same sense of longing — for the imagined comfort of warm blue water and an escape from one’s familiar surroundings — these complementary sensory worlds form a kind of mirage: a prism of banal surfaces, spaces, and sonic textures through which the fragments of an intangible fantasy can be glimpsed, a circular psychic journey from the desolate to the sublime. The photobook also contains an 8-page supplement, compiling selections by eight artists whom Templeton invited to choose pairings of sound and image, suggesting possible feedback loops and alternative readings between the eight audio tracks and his photographs.
Book of the Day Posted Mar 25, 2021

Book of the Day > Shapes From Out of Nowhere

● Purchase ● Adventures in abstract ceramics, from George E. Ohr and Ken Price to Kathy Butterly
 
A comprehensive overview of 20th-century non-representational ceramics from the earliest years of the modernist revolution to the postwar period through to the present, Shapes From Out of Nowhere features an unparalleled gathering of over 150 works from New York City-based collector Robert Ellison. It explores the featured artists’ rejection of symmetrical, utilitarian forms in clay in favor of the sculptural and abstract, and challenges the boundaries between function, non-function, design, drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture. Built over a period of 40 years, this singular collection reflects the personal and discerning eye of a collector focused on the exploration of shape and form.
 
Ellison’s introduction to abstraction in clay was the work of George E. Ohr, whose late 19th-century creations represent the first seismic shift in a challenge to form itself. Ohr was the catalyst for this new direction in clay, and his vision foreshadows 20th-century postwar experimentation in fine art. The book showcases the sculptures by Ohr along with artists from the second half of the 20th century to the present, including seminal works by Axel Salto, Ken Price and Peter Voulkos, the progenitor of the American studio movement.
 
Shapes From Out of Nowhere tells this important story through the work of these key figures, but also introduces lesser known artists who transformed—and continue to push—the possibilities of the medium, including Kathy Butterly, Elisa D’Arrigo, Anne Marie Laureys and Aneta Regel.
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