Book of the day > Agnes Martin. D.A.P. / Tate. “Agnes Martin was one of the preeminent painters of the twentieth century, whose work has had a significant influence both on artists of her own time and for subsequent generations. A contemporary of the Abstract Expressionists though often identified with Minimalism, Martin was one of the few women artists who came to prominence in the predominately masculine art world of the late 1950s and 1960s, and she became a particularly important role model for younger women artists. This groundbreaking survey provides an overview of Martin's career, from lesser-known early experimental works through her striped and gridded grey paintings and use of color in various formats, to a group of her final pieces that reintroduce bold forms. A selection of drawings and watercolors is also included. With essays by leading scholars that give a context for Martin's work—her life, relationship with other artists, the influence of South-Asian philosophy—alongside focused shorter pieces on particular paintings, this beautifully designed volume is the definitive publication on her oeuvre.”

Book of the day > Marc Ferrez & Robert Polidori: Rio. Steidl. “Housed in a slipcase, Rio contains the work of two photographers who portray Rio de Janeiro in a visual dialogue spanning the centuries. Book One showcases nineteenth-century photographer Marc Ferrez's classical work on the city where he spent his five-decade career, from the mid-1860s to the early 1910s, while Book Two presents a project of Robert Polidori's from the past five years, in which he photographed Rio, emphasizing its contemporary dynamic and dense urban configuration. Polidori contextualizes today's Rio within the natural settings from which the city grew, and which have defined its iconic international profile throughout history. This tension between the natural and built environments, also significant in Ferrez's work, is a defining reference for Rio's inhabitants and is here beautifully documented in its historic and present variations.”

Book of the day > The Minaj Book. Woodpecker Projects, Malmö. “The Minaj Book is about the American rapper Nicki Minaj. In a new body of work presented in this book Ditte Ejlerskov investigates feminism and the gaze of the white middle-class pop consumer, with American rapper Nicki Minaj as the focal point. Minaj has climbed to the top of a male-dominated business and, in the artist’s view, critiques sexuality, power relations, racial stereotypes and patriarchal hierarchies through her acts and lyrics. In order to convey a deeper understanding of Minaj’s unconventional feminist methods, THE MINAJ BOOK unpacks the contemporary mainstream through a body of work which appropriates the rapper’s aesthetics and lyrics.

The book endeavors to highlight the gap between pop culture’s feminist efforts and an academic feminism. Primarily via the act of painting, Ejlerskov aims to support the rapper in the mission of spelling out, enhancing and superimposing loaded images. She reuses Minaj’s method of challenging race and gender stereotypes. But since the artist is a white European middle-class consumer and not the Afro-American producer of the material, the focus of the show is twisted. As well as exploring elements of Minaj’s logic, Ejlerskov also explores her own consumption, her gaze, her body, her appropriation, and even her own role as an art practitioner.”

Save the date: July 25^th (4-6) for a book signing with Tom Adler and special guests C. R. Stecyk III and Jeff Divine!

Book of the day > An Uncommon Archive: Collected Images from Projects, Books and Saved References by Tom Adler. T. Adler Books.

“This unusual volume is a selection of images from the projects, books and saved references found in the hard drives, stored files and archives of T. Adler Books. The collection draws from the seemingly disparate worlds of surfing, fashion and style, fishing, music, fine art, rock climbing, travel and adventure. The photographs, paintings, ephemera, illustrations and contact sheets are arranged in pairs and sequences suggesting subtle connections and parallels. Iconic historical images, works by well-known contemporary artists and photographers, and beautiful outdoor photographs blend and share page space with found paintings, incidental vacation snapshots and NASA imagery; works by classic photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Jacques Henri Lartigue share space with contemporary photographers Craig Stecyk, Ed Templeton, Tim Barber, Dewey Nicks and Thomas Campbell; a portrait of JFK seated in a sailboat eating an ice cream cone is paired with a 1905 photograph of the launch of the steamer Frank J. Hecker; formal portraits of John Muir and Duke Kahanamoku and open ocean photos (above and below the surface) by Wayne Levin and Corey Arnold are scattered throughout the volume, alongside paintings by Maynard Dixon and Robert Overby, nineteenth-century Cyanotypes by Anna Atkins and a handpainted sign by Stephen Powers. Iconic surfing photographs by Don James, Ron Church, Steve Wilkings, Leo Hetzel, Jeff Hornbaker, Art Brewer, Jim Russi, Jeff Divine and Jim Driver are mixed with dramatic climbing images from Glen Denny, Mike Graham, Allen Steck, Johannes Mair and Jeff Johnson. But it is the editor's imaginative sequencing and pairing of these photographs that provides the unique pleasure of this book. A fresh, blue-sky and water-drenched elegance carries the volume along, resulting in a melding of tone and composition, gestures and cultures, associations and connections that reinforce the individual images.”

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Happy birthday week to the Dalai Lama! Book of the day > Infinite Light: A Photographic Meditation on Tibet by Marissa Roth with a Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Marquand Books. "A visual poem of seventy-two color photographs of her impressions of Tibet, arranged in a continuous sequence reflecting the colors of Tibetan prayer flags. The photographs were shot with some of the last available Kodachrome film, producing deep saturated color. Limited to an edition of 400, each slipcased book is signed and numbered by the artist. Says Roth, ‘This project is my love letter to Tibet. It is the reflection of my inner and outer journeys to this land and a very personal impressionistic view of what it feels like to be in Tibet. It is also a social and political statement and another cry for awareness about what is being irrevocably lost.’”

 

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Book of the day + book signing tonight, 6-8! > Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka: Blackwelder. Gagosian/Rizzoli with Karma, NY. “A fully illustrated look into the world of artists Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka, published in conjunction with the artists’ debut exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong. Both Kusaka’s porcelain vessels and Wood’s drawn and painted interiors are depicted within this new book in vibrant color plates and photographs. Wood and Kusaka draw from each other’s work as painter and potter to probe the tensions between representation and expression, precision and chance, and  influences from art history and life.  
An insightful new text by art critic Chris Wiley accompanies color images of Wood and Kusaka at their shared studio on Blackwelder Street in Los Angeles, where they work alongside one another to create works that draw from personal memory and their shared existence as a married couple. 

Have a great 4th of July -- we're open until 3:00 on 7/4/15.

Book of the day > Mark Steinmetz: The Players. Nazraeli Press.  “This long-awaited publication presents 73 of Mark Steinmetz’s photographs of adolescent and teenaged baseball players, on the field and in the dugout, focused on the game and lost in their own worlds. Made between 1986 and 1990, the photographs are classic Steinmetz: tenderness, humor, and humanism are all present here, as is Steinmetz’s exquisite use of natural light and attention to poetic detail.

'The kids in Steinmetz’s photographs are ages 6 to 13, with a few older boys. Steinmetz must remember how awkward and uncoordinated bodies that age can be. His empathy is evident throughout the series. Most of these kids are too young to have the grace, skill or concentration required and are too green to experience the sheer pleasure of knowing they are good, maybe really good, ballplayers in an unforgiving sport. These kids run into each other in pursuit of a fly ball. Hope drives their swings more than their awareness of the art of hitting...Steinmetz concentrates less on the players in the field than those outside the base lines who are waiting to play, or cooling off. He observes the managers as well as the spectators who love the game or one of the players, or who just have a free afternoon. He sees “high fives” as well as the “what were you thinking” moments.  His photographs have all the skill and grace lacking in the players.” — from the Introduction by Anne Tucker.'

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Book of the day > Munari’s Books. Princeton Architectural Press. “One of the greatest graphic designers of the twentieth century—called by Picasso ‘the Leonardo of our time’--Italian artist and designer Bruno Munari considered the book the best medium to communicate his visual ideas, showcase his art, and convey his creative spirit. Primarily produced in large quantities for the general public, his more-than-sixty publications—from design manuals and manifestos to visionary tactile children's books—displayed all the beauty and technical ingenuity of works of art.
Munari's Books, the first English-language monograph to focus on his remarkable achievements in publishing, examines in detail his seventy-year legacy in print, from his pioneering work as a graphic designer and collaborations with major publishers to his experimental visual projects and innovative contributions to the fields of painting, sculpture, design, photography, and teaching. Featuring critical essays and a wealth of color illustrations, this long-overdue monograph is a visually rich introduction to Munari's remarkably multifaceted career.”

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Book of the day > Making Africa - A Continent of Contemporary Design. Vitra Design Museum.

“Making Africa takes a fresh look at African design. For the first time, we have a book that focuses on creative accomplishments on the continent, without being obsessed with the usual tropes of recycling, humanitarian design or traditional crafts. Instead, Making Africa shows a new generation of designers who use their work as a tool for economic, political and social change and therefore also to create a new future for the continent. Their creative output defies all definitions of genres – crossing over classical fields such as furniture design, product design and typography to encompass digital media, art, photography, architecture and film. A large section of the catalogue is dedicated to documenting work by over 120 protagonists of Africa’s new creative epoch – including Cyrus Kabiru, Cheick Diallo, Mário Macilau, Francis Kéré, David Adjaye, Kunlé Adeyemi, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Robin Rhode, Alaforu Sikoki, Selly Raby Kan and many more. The historical and theoretical background is explored in essays and discussions with Okwui Enwezor, Koyo Kouoh, Edgar Pieterse and Amelie Klein, among others. These are complemented by statements from around 70 other experts from Africa, who met at interviews and think tanks in cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lagos, Dakar, Nairobi and Cairo. This is a book about the future of Africa and about a new, more open way of understanding design – which means it is also a book about what design can achieve in the 21st century.”

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Book of the day > Richard Misrach: The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings. Aperture. “Since the publication of Richard Misrach's bestselling and critically acclaimed publication On the Beach, he has continued to photograph at the same location, building a body of work that has been exhibited as On the Beach 2.0—a reference to the technological and optical developments that have made the intensely detailed, exquisitely rendered depictions possible. The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings focuses less on the abstraction of water, sand and mote-sized figures, instead honing in on the gestures and expressions of bathers adrift in the ocean. Misrach has rarely ventured into portraiture; this work is his first to focus exclusively on the human figure. Each photograph features one or more individuals crisply rendered from a distance, as they seem to levitate among turquoise waves, isolated from everything save the shifting patterns of the ocean. There is ambiguity and a sense of the uncanny in the figures suspended in the water: are they approaching the shore or moving away from it? Each image is presented both as full frame and as a series of enlarged details that enable the viewer to linger on each individual's surrender of their body to the sea.”

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