Book of the Day Posted Apr 28, 2021

Book of the Day > Ray Johnson c/o

● Purchase ● An engaging and scholarly introduction to the wide-ranging work of a pioneering 20th-century artist
 
Ray Johnson (1927–1995) was a renowned maker of meticulous collages whose works influenced movements including Pop Art, Fluxus, and Conceptual Art. Emerging from the interdisciplinary community of artists and poets at Black Mountain College, Johnson was extraordinarily adept at using social interaction as an artistic endeavor and founded a mail art network known as the New York Correspondence School.
 
Drawing on the vast collection of Johnson’s work at the Art Institute of Chicago, this volume gives new shape to our understanding of his artistic practice and features hundreds of pieces that include artist’s books, collages, drawings, mail art, and performance documentation. In keeping with Johnson’s democratic, rhizomatic, and antihierarchical ethos, this indispensable resource on the artist’s oeuvre contains 700 illustrations, many of them never before published, and twenty-one short essays by various contributors that allow readers to dip into and out of the book in a nonlinear manner.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 27, 2021

Book of the Day > Print Punch: Artefacts from the Punch Card Computing Era

● Purchase ● Data used to be physical. In an era when 1s and 0s seem to hover above our heads, Print Punch returns to the heyday of the punch card—to a time when you could touch (and punch) data. The aesthetics of this early move towards automation represent a unique moment in our history, when we designed for machines instead of human beings. Rigorous constraints, inherent in punch card technology, unwittingly birthed a coherent design language: rhythm in grids, punched absences and presences, and the patterns in them dancing to their own machine logic. Now obsolete, punch cards were the primary method of data storage and processing from the 1890s until the late 1970s; spanning almost a century of ubiquitous utility, the artefacts of that era sit between these pages to be examined anew.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 23, 2021

Book of the Day > We Are Here: Visionaries Of Color Transforming The Art World

● Purchase ● Profiles and portraits of 50 artists and art entrepreneurs challenging the status quo in the art world
 
Confidently curated by Jasmin Hernandez, the dynamic founder of Gallery Gurls, We Are Here presents the bold and nuanced work of Black and Brown visionaries transforming the art world. Centering BIPOC, with a particular focus on queer, trans, nonbinary, and BIWOC, this collection features fifty of the most influential voices in New York, Los Angeles, and beyond. Striking photography of art, creative spaces, materials, and the subjects themselves is paired with intimate interviews that engage with each artist and influencer, delving into their creative process and unpacking how each subject actively works to create a more radically inclusive world across the entire art ecosystem. A celebration of compelling intergenerational creatives making their mark, We Are Here shows a path for all who seek to see themselves in art and culture.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 22, 2021

Book of the Day > Liquid Horizon: Meditations on the Surf and Sea

● Purchase ● Sensual, meditative, and powerfully evocative photographic studies of the ocean by professional surfer Danny Fuller.
 
Danny Fuller's work as a photographer and artist is best understood through his thirty years as a professional surfer. Fuller who is known for riding the waves of North Shore Oahu's famous Pipeline and Maui's treacherous Jaws sees and experiences the ocean in ways intimate and infinite.
 
Fuller's nocturnal seascapes of the worlds most savage and beautiful waves, all captured exclusively by moonlight with slow exposures, share the soulful beauty of the ocean, in meditative, painterly studies of subtle changes of light and color. In the tradition of artists drawn to the sea for inspiration, Fuller expresses a surfer's deep spiritual connection to the ocean and to the meaning of consequence in surfing. The sensual allure of blue mixed with the ominous presence of water, whose scale is epic, reminds us just how minuscule and insignificant we are relative to the powers of the sea.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 21, 2021

Book of the Day > Peter Schlesinger: Eight Days in Yemen

● Purchase ● An unprecedented document of one of the Middle East’s most extraordinary cultures
 
In 1976, Peter Schlesinger (born 1948) visited the Yemen Arab Republic (as the northern part of Yemen was then called). He was accompanying the photographer Eric Boman, who was on a fashion shoot assignment for a French magazine. Yemen had been closed to foreigners for many years and in the interest of encouraging more tourism the government decided to court media outlets. Over the course of his eight-day stay, Schlesinger took hundreds of photographs documenting what he saw as he traveled from the capital, Sanaa, and on through the northern city of Sa’da.
 
Forty-two years later, as he began making this book, Schlesinger shared these images with Bernard Haykel, a professor at Princeton University and an expert on the Middle East. He was taken aback at their existence, since documentation of Yemen in the ’70s is so rare. Haykel provides an enriching introduction that brings to life the world Schlesinger captured.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 20, 2021

Book of the Day > High On Design: The New Cannabis Culture

● Purchase ● The cannabis industry has become a thriving activity. Consuming the plant and using its derivatives have become legal in several countries and paved the way for a new generation of design-savvy and diverse consumers and entrepreneurs. High on Design showcases the new brands, designs, and creators behind this revolution. Meet the creative minds behind Gossamer, a biannual print magazine for casual weed smokers and curious mind. Learn everything you need to know about pot and weed as a medium for cultural understanding with Mia Park and Dae Lim, creators of Sundae School. Expand your culinary horizon with Michelin-Starred chef, Claus Henriksen who will give you an insight into his haute cannabis cuisine and gourmet herbs. Have a look inside Broccoli, a female-run magazine about cannabis culture and discover the most exciting cannabis businesses around the world from High Road, an award-winning dispensary design studio to Tokyo Smoke, a Canadian cannabis retailer.
 
While reflecting on the novel aesthetics and trends of contemporary cannabis culture, High on Design also gives a profound view of the phenomenon regarding politics, history, legalization, and society. This is your guide to the best brands, the most stylish dispensaries, the slickest products, and the most creative entrepreneurs.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 17, 2021

Book of the Day > For Cats Only

● Purchase ● Feline architectures: a fun and affordable picture-book of cats with their cat trees
 
Every cat owner knows the frustration of shelling out a considerable amount of money for a cat tree or scratching post only to find that their feline family member prefers to sleep in the box the item came in. Some lucky cat owners also know the unexpected delight that comes from seeing cats use the accessories made just for them, the strange satisfaction of catching their kitty relaxing on their kitty-sized furniture.
 
Against stylish pastel backdrops, Swiss photographer Pascale Weber poses her feline subjects on a variety of different cat-specific pieces, lounging on the roof of a fuzzy ice cream truck and balancing atop a three-pronged scratching post that resembles a cactus. Her photography series captures the undeniable charm of cats on their best behavior while also providing a tongue-in-check echo of more serious forms of design. The artfulness of each cat tree mirrors the contemporary aesthetic trends of human-sized architecture and sculpture: multifaceted, functional and ultimately representative of those who utilize such structures. Each cat presents their home just as proudly as a person might in this surprising combination of art and animal photography, perfect for cat lovers and art enthusiasts alike.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 16, 2021

Book of the Day > The Essential Louis Kahn

● Purchase ● This photographic tour of every one of the buildings designed solely by Louis Kahn represents the architect’s greatest accomplishments.
 
This book focuses on over twenty buildings that were designed solely by Louis Kahn. From his native city of Philadelphia to the heart of Bangladesh, Kahn’s architecture reflected his fascination with science, mathematics, history, and nature. Striking new interior and exterior photographs by esteemed architectural photographer Cemal Emden reveal the characteristic features of Kahn’s aesthetic: juxtaposed materials, repetition of line and shape and geometric precision. Also evident is the way Kahn’s designs flourish in a variety of settings–religious, governmental, educational, and residential. The book gives close attention to Kahn’s most iconic buildings, including Erdman Hall at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania; the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad; the Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka, Bangladesh; and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, as well as a cluster of residences he designed in the Philadelphia area. Chapter openers written by architecture professor Caroline Maniaque, an introduction by academic Jale Erzen and an extensive chronology by academic Zekiye Abali, as well as a selection of Kahn’s most insightful statements complete this book, which allows for a rich understanding of Kahn’s architectural ingenuity.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 14, 2021

Book of the Day > A Time of Youth: San Francisco, 1966–1967

● Purchase ● A year before 1967's famed Summer of Love, documentary photographer William Gedney set out for San Francisco on a Guggenheim Fellowship to record “aspects of our culture which I believe significant and which I hope will become, in time, part of the visual record of American history.” A Time of Youth brings together eighty-seven of the more than two thousand photographs Gedney took in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood between October 1966 and January 1967. In these photographs Gedney documents the restless and intertwined lives of the disenchanted youth who flocked to what became the epicenter of 1960s counterculture. Gedney lived among these young people in their communal homes, where he captured the intimate and varied contours of everyday life: solitude and companionship, joyous celebration and somber quiet, cramped rooms and spacious parks, recreation and contemplation. In these images Gedney presents a portrait of a San Francisco counterculture that complicates popular depictions of late 1960s youth as carefree flower children. The book also includes facsimiles of handwritten descriptions of the scenes Gedney photographed, his thoughts on organizing the book, and other ephemera.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 13, 2021

Book of the Day > Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And

● Purchase ● Four decades of multimedia exploits in race, art politics and subjectivity: a long-overdue survey on conceptual performance artist Lorraine O’Grady
 
Conceptual performance artist Lorraine O'Grady burst into the contemporary art world in 1980 dressed in a gown made of 180 pairs of white gloves and wielding a chrysanthemum-studded whip. For the next three years, O’Grady documented her exploits as this incendiary fictional persona, visiting gallery openings and providing critiques of the racial politics at play in the New York art scene. The resulting series, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, was merely the beginning of a long career of avant-garde work that would continue to build upon O’Grady’s conceptions of self and subjectivity as seen from the perspective of a Black woman artist. This survey of O’Grady’s work spans four decades of her career and features nearly all of her major projects, as well as Announcement, the opening series of a new performance piece seven years in the making. Contextualized by an extensive timeline with letters, journal entries and interviews, Both/And provides a long-overdue close examination of O’Grady’s artistic and intellectual ambitions.
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