Book of the day > The Decorators of the 1960s and 1970s. Editions Norma. “The 1960s and 1970s marked a sharp turning point in the history of decoration and furniture. Until that point, the world was confined to national and elitist forms of expression. At the beginning of the 1960s, the sector took its inspiration from Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Italian and French decoration. Genres were combined in a frenzied desire to live in symbiosis with one's time. The progress of technology strengthened the conviction that the individual had unlimited freedom and aroused the desire to inhabit in a new manner. Forms became rounder, furniture was in sync with a warm, playful, and anti-conformist universe. Colors and decorative motifs took on the brilliance and fantasies of Pop Art and psychedelia. The living environment was transformed into a waking dream in which luxurious furniture in original materials and surprising objects were mixed, associated, for the first time, with early furniture. The end of the 1970s marked the advent of a period in which beauty and classic elegance gave way to a host of expressions that were unclassifiable and rejected any hierarchy. The postmodern period had arrived. Composed of a long introduction that provides a synoptic view and 32 monographs that describe its many faces, this book invites the reader to discover an exceptionally creative period and revels through an abundant iconography.” $ 75.00

Book of the day > Daido Tokyo. Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. “Daido Moriyama invented a new visual language with his work beginning in the mid-1960s. Frenetic and tormented, it depicted a reality that was grainy, blurry, and out-of-focus. Witness to the spectacular changes that trans-formed postwar Japan, his photographs express the contradictions in a country where age-old traditions persist within a modern society. Often blurred, taken from vertiginous angles, or overwhelmed by close-ups, they show a proximity to and a particular relationship with the subject. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Fondation Cartier, Daido Tokyo includes many previously unpublished photographs (as well as those featured in the exhibition), and an interview with the artist. The catalogue published in conjunction with the exhibition provides a unique occasion to discover Daido Moriyama’s recent work and to rediscover the subjects that are omnipresent in the artist’s work and his penchant for textures and shaky compositions.”

Book of the day > Shore Leave. Edited Ryan Mungia, Essay by Jim Heimann. BOYO Press. “For the thousands of US sailors bound for the Pacific theatre of World War II, the Hawaiian Islands were the staging ground for an unknown fate. Their perception of Honolulu as a tropical paradise quickly deflated upon their arrival. The anticipation of a moonlit Diamond Head, available hula girls and free-flowing and affordable rum quickly materialized into crowded streets, beaches cordoned off with barbed wire and endless lines to nowhere. Still, as with many ports of call, diversions were plentiful, and set against the warm trade winds, sailors took advantage of them on their last stop to hell. Shore Leave is the first photobook to capture the Honolulu of this time and place. It is a one-of-a-kind visual document of a port that, for many sailors who passed through, was their initiation into manhood. Classic 1940s images of Hawaiian hula girls complement scrapbook photos of jaunty, uniformed sailors touring the island on a motorcycle or playing pool. Young women masquerading as bonafide hula girls pose with sailors in photobooth arcades, a ritual that for many would be the last human embrace before being deposited onto the battefield. Whether on the crowded streets of Waikiki or in line at the famed Black Cat Cafe, the young American men appear content for the moment with the liberties that their 48 hours away from the ship afforded. Meticulously culled from a 30-year collection of scrapbooks, photo albums and ephemera, Shore Leave―beautifully packaged with its clothbound, tipped-on cover―presents the dreams and realities of young men on their way to war in a Honolulu as exotic and forbidden as it was banal and lonely.” $ 40.00

Book of the day > Paul Bulteel: Cycle & Recycle. Hatje Cantz. “Fascinated by the discarding and recycling of consumer and industry goods, Belgian photographer Paul Bulteel visited more than 50 recycling facilities in Europe, creating images of the processes undergone by tons of materials, from paper, metal, glass or plastic products to complex appliances and all kinds of manufacturing, construction or consumer leftovers.” $ 70.00

Book of the day > Louise Dahl-Wolfe. Aperture “Louise Dahl-Wolfe opens a window onto the work of one of the most influential fashion photographers of the twentieth century. After being discovered by Edward Steichen and having her work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1937, Louise Dahl-Wolfe went on to revitalize the Hollywood portrait and invigorate the fashion photography of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. During her tenure at Harper’s Bazaar—which lasted over two decades—Dahl-Wolfe pioneered the use of natural lighting in fashion photography, shooting on location and outdoors. Her modernist outlook changed American visual culture, influencing a school of artists—namely Richard Avedon, Horst P. Horst, and Irving Penn. Spanning over thirty years, this survey takes into account Dahl-Wolfe’s work not just in fashion, but also in portraiture and nude photography. Today, she stands among some of the most prestigious photographers of her time, including Steichen, George Hoyningen-Huene, Erwin Blumenfeld, and Martin Munkácsi, with a mastery of the genre that still resonates with fashion and portraiture lovers alike. Louise Dahl-Wolfe (born in San Francisco, 1895; died New Jersey, 1989) began her career making pictures in 1923. After studying at the San Francisco Institute of Art, she moved to New York and opened a photography studio, which she maintained until 1960. In 1936 she was hired as a staff photographer at Harper’s Bazaar, and over the next thirty years revolutionized fashion photography through her editorial and personal work. Her work has been exhibited at the Grey Gallery at New York University; International Museum of Photography, Rochester, New York; Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson; and Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, among others.” $ 60.00

Book of the day > Domestic Scenes: The Art of Ramiro Gomez. Abrams. “Award-winning author Lawrence Weschler’s book on the young Mexican American artist Ramiro Gomez explores questions of social equity and the chasms between cultures and classes in America.  Gomez, born in 1986 in San Bernardino, California, to undocumented Mexican immigrant parents, bridges the divide between the affluent wealthy and their usually invisible domestic help—the nannies, gardeners, housecleaners, and others who make their lifestyles possible—by inserting images of these workers into sly pastiches of iconic David Hockney paintings, subtly doctoring glossy magazine ads, and subversively slotting life-size painted cardboard cutouts into real-life situations.  Domestic Scenes engages with Gomez and his work, offering an inspiring vision of the purposes and possibilities of art.”

$ 35.00

In addition to it being World Book Day, today is St. George’s day. In Catalonia it is La Diada de Sant Jordi and tradition dictates that you present your loved ones with books or flowers. We think this is a beautiful practice. And recommend doing both a the same time.

Robert Mapplethorpe

 Victor Landweber.
 

18th Century Indian cotton.
 

Cy Twombly

Jan Davidsz de Heem.

Lanvin

Oscar de la Renta


Gerhard Richter

Thomas Struth

Book of the (earth) day > Patterns in Nature by Philip Ball. University of Chicago. “Though at first glance the natural world may appear overwhelming in its diversity and complexity, there are regularities running through it, from the hexagons of a honeycomb to the spirals of a seashell and the branching veins of a leaf. Revealing the order at the foundation of the seemingly chaotic natural world, Patterns in Nature explores not only the math and science but also the beauty and artistry behind nature’s awe-inspiring designs.

Unlike the patterns we create in technology, architecture, and art, natural patterns are formed spontaneously from the forces that act in the physical world. Very often the same types of pattern and form – spirals, stripes, branches, and fractals, say—recur in places that seem to have nothing in common, as when the markings of a zebra mimic the ripples in windblown sand. That’s because, as Patterns in Nature shows, at the most basic level these patterns can often be described using the same mathematical and physical principles: there is a surprising underlying unity in the kaleidoscope of the natural world. Richly illustrated with 250 color photographs and anchored by accessible and insightful chapters by esteemed science writer Philip Ball, Patterns in Nature reveals the organization at work in vast and ancient forests, powerful rivers, massing clouds, and coastlines carved out by the sea.

By exploring similarities such as those between a snail shell and the swirling stars of a galaxy, or the branches of a tree and those of a river network, this spectacular visual tour conveys the wonder, beauty, and richness of natural pattern formation.” $ 35.00

“Throwback” book of the day > Women Are Beautiful by Garry Winogrand. Garry Winogrand's sly photographic portraits of everyday public life in the third quarter of the twentieth century stand on a pedestal with those of Robert Frank and only a handful of others. Published in conjunction with a 1975 exhibition at New York's influential Light Gallery - one of the first galleries devoted exclusively to showing photography - this lovely catalogue celebrates Winogrand's eye for the innate allure of the seventies gal in the workplace, at the park, partying at night, and on the street. As the photographer is quoted here: "Whenever I've seen an attractive woman, I've done my best to photograph her. I don't know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs". A bright, most handsome example of the uncommon first hardbound edition (cited on pages 306-307 of The Hasselblad Center's "The Open Book") bearing two short closed tears to the edges of the dust jacket. New York: Light Gallery Books & Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975. First Edition. Oblong 8vo. Cloth in Pictorial Dust Jacket. Photography Monograph. Fine/Near Fine. np, profusely illustrated in b&w. $ 850.00 

Book of the day (4/20) > Grassland. Photographs by H. Lee. Kehrer. “The United States is seeing historic change regarding marijuana: A fundamental shift is in motion between those who seek to keep it illegal, and the overwhelming populist appeal for legal reform. For decades, farmers in Northern California have had to operate in secret, hiding their gardens from law enforcement. But as new legal markets have begun to emerge, marijuana agriculture is moving into plain view; the country, some are saying, is experiencing a »Green Rush.« Grassland offers a view of this world, peeking beneath the towering redwoods of Humboldt County, an epicenter of cannabis cultivation in California, where a sizable community is shaped by a plant regarded as both magical and medicinal; a plant whose cultivation holds the promise of profit, and, despite the changes in state policy, possible jail time.

This formerly-clandestine farming community is now boldly uncovering its greenhouses and growing giant plants in full sun, readying for what looks like the end of pot-prohibition.

New York-based photographer H. Lee (a pseudonym) spent a year documenting the culture of cannabis in Humboldt County, capturing intimate moments, as she lived among the growers.” $ 50.00