In Memory of Robert Venturi (1925-2018)

Book of the Day > Robert Venturi: Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture [SIGNED]. "First published in 1966, 'Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture' is the treatise printed as the first of "The Museum of Modern Art Papers on Architecture". Preceding "Learning from Las Vegas" by six years, it firmly solidified the then-forty year old Robert Venturi's place as one of the leading theoretical practitioners of the new wave of American architects. An exceptionally handsome example of the uncommon hardbound first edition bearing the BOLDLY SIGNED PRESENTATION "To Vaughan Cannon / from an admirer, / Bob Venturi / September 1968" in black ink on the front pastedown in a bright,white dust jacket showing a bit of brown spotting along the top edge of the textblock. The recipient, Vaughan Cannon Sr., was the longtime director of the Las Vegas office of the renowned Young Electric Sign Company - the firm responsible for designing and fabricating nearly all of the iconic neon hotel and casino signage from 'Vegas Vic' to 'Circus Circus' pictured in 'Learining From Las Vegas'. Foreword by Arthur Drexler. Introduction by Vincent Scully. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1966. First Edition. 8vo. Cloth in Printed Dust Jacket. Architecture Monograph. Near Fine/Fine. 224pp, profusely illustrated in color b&w. "- $1,500.

Book of the Day > Mario Sorrenti: Kate. Published by Phaidon Press. "This gorgeously produced book features intimate, never-before-published portraits of a young and undiscovered Kate Moss, taken in the early 1990s by her then-boyfriend, Italian photographer Mario Sorrenti. Seen by Calvin Klein, the photographs gave life to the famous Obsession campaign, which launched Moss to international superstardom.

Sumptuously reproduced in tritone and presented in a cloth-covered clamshell box, Kate is a stunning photographic portfolio of one of contemporary culture's most iconic figures. It includes tipped-on images on the book and clamshell box's covers, plus an introductory essay by Sorrenti, which puts the work in its uniquely personal context.

This book, which celebrates the dawn of two legendary careers, and the start of the highly influential aesthetic of 1990s fashion photography, is a must-have for Kate Moss's fans, for fashion devotees, and for lovers of traditional portraiture and fashion photography."

$100.00

Book of the Day > Judith F. Baca. Published by UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press. "Judith F. Baca is best known for the Great Wall of Los Angeles (1976–83), a vibrant 7,740-foot mural in Los Angeles that presents an alternative history of California—one that focuses on the contributions of marginalized and underrepresented communities. The mural is emblematic of Baca’s pioneering approach to creating public art, a process in which members of the community are essential contributors to the conception and realization of the work

Anna Indych-López explores Baca’s oeuvre, from early murals painted with local gang members in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles to more recently commissioned works. She looks in depth at the Great Wall and considers the artist’s ongoing work with the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California, a nonprofit group founded by Baca in 1976. Throughout, Indych-López assesses what she calls Baca’s “public art of contestation” and discusses how ideas of collaboration and authorship and issues of race, class, and gender have influenced and sustained Baca’s art practice."

Book of the Day > Chris Burden: Streetlamps. Published by Gagosian and Rizzoli. "Chris Burden: Streetlamps explores the artist’s work with antique streetlamps, which he began to amass in the early 2000s. Burden fully restored 202 streetlamps from the 1920s to create his renowned Urban Light, which was acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He realized four more major streetlamp sculptures in both public and private spaces, all of which are lavishly documented here from conception through installation."

Book of the Day > LEE MILLER and Surrealism in Britain. Published by Lund Humphries. "Lee Miller (1907-1977) attracts enduring fascination – a female pioneer who is often presented as a singular figure. However, she was also integrated within a creative network of artists that helped change the course of art history in the twentieth century.

Miller moved to London in the late 1930s, just as a rich strand of Surrealist practice was burgeoning in Britain. Part of this artistic hub, she captured productive collisions between the artists who found themselves in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s through her photographs. Additionally, she exhibited alongside British Surrealists such as Eileen Agar and Henry Moore in often overlooked London exhibitions, while also dispersing Surrealist imagery into the worlds of fashion, commercial photography and journalism via her interdisciplinary photographic practice.

Presenting for the first time Lee Miller’s photographs of, and collaborations with, important Surrealist artists working in Britain (alongside their artworks),

this important book tells the story of an exciting cultural moment. Essential for all students and enthusiasts of Surrealism and those enthralled by the striking photography of Lee Miller, this book reveals the social and cultural networks in which she was embedded, offering a holistic view of her work and the life of the Surrealist movement in Britain."

Book of the day > Lorenzo Vitturi: Money Must Be Made. Published by @selfpublishbehappy . Published in 2017 (see Dario's staff pick for 2017 holidays!) but we're excited that  this and @selfpublishbehappy 's other excellent publications are now distributed in the U.S. by @artbook !. "Money Must Be Made, London-based Italian photographer Lorenzo Vitturi's (born 1980) highly anticipated second photobook, takes us to the heart of the Balogun Market in Lagos, Nigeria. The many streets that host the Balogun market sprawl under the shadow of the Financial Trust House. For a long time this building was the tallest on the island, housing western corporations and banks in its heyday; today it is unoccupied, while the market has swallowed up the area. Returning to Lagos over many trips, Vitturi immersed himself in the market's life, photographing the products, shoppers and vendors. Most of the items on sale were imported from China, and Vitturi notes China's economic hold on Africa. Sending materials back to his London studio, he worked to layer painting, fabrics and objects into collages and sculptures that mimicked the arrangements he encountered in the market. Money Must Be Made is a love letter from Vitturi to Lagos, its spirit and its people."

Book of the day > Anni Albers. Published by Yale. "A long-overdue reassessment of one of the most important and influential woman artists working at midcentury. Anni Albers was a German textile designer, weaver, and printmaker, and among the leading pioneers of 20th-century modernism. Although she has heavily influenced generations of artists and designers, her contribution to modernist art history has been comparatively overlooked, especially in relation to that of her husband, Josef. In this groundbreaking and beautifully illustrated volume, Albers’s most important works are examined to fully explore and redefine her contribution to 20th-century art and design and highlight her significance as an artist in her own right.

Featured works—from her early activity at the Bauhaus as well as from her time at Black Mountain College, and spanning her entire fruitful career—include wall hangings, designs for commercial use, drawings and studies, jewelry, and prints. Essays by international experts focus on key works and themes, relate aspects of Albers’s practice to her seminal texts On Designing and On Weaving, and identify broader contextual material, including examples of the Andean textiles that Albers collected and in which she found inspiration for her understanding of woven thread as a form of language. Illuminating Albers’s skill as a weaver, her material awareness, and her deep understanding of art and design, this publication celebrates an artist of enormous importance and showcases the timeless nature of her creativity."

Book of the day > Paradise Is Now: Palm Trees in Art. Published by Hatje Cantz @hatjecantzverlag. "For more than two thousand years palm trees have been extraordinarily popular in both the East and the West. Regardless of continent, religion, or culture, palms tell stories of wealth, peace, and salvation. No other motif conveys this promise of good fortune and happiness as convincingly as the palm tree does. Omnipresent in advertising and social media, it conjures up notions of luxury, the jet set, and eternal sunshine in the secular world, representing a modern Garden of Eden. Nor are visual arts resistant to its visual allure and metaphorical power. Keeping this rich cultural heritage in mind, the companion catalogue to the exhibition Paradise is Now shows the many ways that palm trees are depicted in contemporary art. But what is behind the popularity of this emblem? Which layers of meaning and what kinds of contradictions are revealed in the wake of this artistic exploration? Featuring texts by Bret Easton Ellis, Robert Grunenberg, Leif Randt, and Norman Rosenthal, and art works by John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Rodney Graham, Secundino Hernández, David Hockney, Alicja Kwade, Sigmar Polke, Ed Ruscha, and Rirkrit Tiravanija."

Book of the day > Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness. Published by Aperture. "Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness includes one hundred self-portraits created by one of the most powerful visual activists of our time. In each of the images, Muholi drafts material props from her immediate environment in an effort to reflect her journey, explore her own image and possibilities as a black woman in today’s global society, and—most important—to speak emphatically in response to contemporary and historical racisms. As she states, 'I am producing this photographic document to encourage people to be brave enough to occupy spaces, brave enough to create without fear of being vilified. . . . To teach people about our history, to re-think what history is all about, to re-claim it for ourselves, to encourage people to use artistic tools such as cameras as weapons to fight back.' More than twenty curators, poets, and authors offer written contributions that draw out the layers of meaning and possible readings to accompany select images. Powerfully arresting, this collection is as much a manifesto of resistance as it is an autobiographical, artistic statement."