Book of the Day > Ben Hassett: Color. Published by Damiani. "Printed with ultraviolet ink in a hand-numbered, slipcased edition of 1,000 copies, Color is the first monograph by British photographer Ben Hassett. In keeping with his acute sense of the powerful language of color photography, Hassett invites us into his world of photographic experimentation to experience the possibilities of this chromatic medium. Color draws together Hassett’s iconic fashion and beauty images, studio still lifes, abstract in-camera works and landscape photographs to present his unique lexicon of color photography. Putting aside the conventions of chronological and project-by-project sequencing, the book instead pursues a dynamic reading that surveys the past ten years of Hassett’s standing as an influential image-maker. Color is designed by veteran art and creative director Fabien Baron (known for his innovative art direction of Harper's Bazaar, Interview and Madonna’s infamous 1992 book Sex) and includes an essay about Ben Hassett’s photographic approach and effect by renowned curator and writer Charlotte Cotton."

 

Book of the Day > Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924-Today. Published by Vitra Design Museum. "One of the most influential art movements of the 20th century, surrealism expanded our artistic and quotidian reality by drawing upon myths, dreams and the subconscious as sources of artistic inspiration. The movement began in literature and art, but by the 1930s it was beginning to have an impact on design—an influence that continues to this day. The fascination was often mutual: surrealism opened design up to the realm of dreams, and design could introduce surrealism to the wider world. “I try to create fantastic things, magical things, things like in a dream,” Salvador Dalí said of his work. “The world needs more fantasy.” Designers in fashion, furniture design, advertising, theater, film and architecture took up the call. Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design is the first book to document this fascinating conversation. The publication includes numerous essays and a comprehensive selection of images which trace the reciprocal exchanges between surrealism and design by juxtaposing exemplary artworks and design objects. Among the artists and designers featured in this volume are Gae Aulenti, Louise Bourgeois, Umberto and Fernando Campana, Achille Castiglioni, Giorgio de Chirico, Le Corbusier, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Frederick Kiesler, René Magritte, Carlo Mollino, Meret Oppenheim, Jerszy Seymour, and many others. Historical texts and short commentaries by contemporary designers round out the publication, putting the extravagant objects in context. In-depth yet appropriately fantastical, Objects of Desire makes one thing abundantly clear: form does not always follow function in design—it can also follow our obsessions, fantasies and hidden desires."

Book of the Day > Vernacular Architecture; Atlas For Living Throughout the World.  Published by Birkhauser.  "Traditional building methods – such as those used in pueblos, timbered houses, or the Japanese minka – exist in fascinating diversity and create the face of a region. However, as a result of globalization they have been marginalized in many places. In the fastest developing countries in particular, a wealth of experience that goes back hundreds of years is being irretrievably lost, even though valuable insights can be gained for modern building.

Using the examples of selected domestic buildings from all continents, 30 international experts demonstrate why we can still learn from vernacular architecture; they analyze the cultural context and the adaptation to topographic/climactic conditions, and focus on the local materials used as well as on the construction, the building process, and the necessary maintenance."

Book of the day and must-come book signing with Hugh Holland tomorrow! (Sat. 11/23, 4-6) >  Silver. Skate. Seventies. By Hugh Holland. Published by Chronicle Chroma. Please join us tomorrow at Arcana to meet the fabulous Hugh Holland and toast to his documentation of a not-so-distant yet kinder and gentler Southern California. And as a bonus, we'll be debuting the release of two brand new images from WAX Poster featuring his iconic images of youthful four-wheeled abandon. If you cannot attend but wish to purchase any of the WAX posters, a signed copy of the book, or a signed copy of the super-deluxe edition of Silver.Skate.Seventies you can do it on our website or by phone.

"In the 1970s, photographer Hugh Holland masterfully captured the burgeoning culture of skateboarding against a sometimes harsh but always sunny Southern California landscape. This never-before-published collection showcases his black-and-white photographs that document young skateboarders sidewalk surfing off Mulholland Drive in concrete drainage ditches and empty swimming pools in a drought-ridden Southern California. From suburban backyard haunts to the asphalt streets that connected them, this was the place that inspired the legendary Dogtown and Z-Boys skateboarders. With their requisite bleached-blond hair, tanned bodies, tube socks and Vans, these young outsiders evoke the sometimes reckless but always exhilarating origins of skateboarding lifestyle and culture."

Book of the Day > Dennis Hopper: In Dreams. Published by Damiani. "Dennis Hopper: In Dreams connects Dennis Hopper’s roles as an actor, husband, father and photographer. Editor and designer Michael Schmelling has selected more than 100 photographs from Hopper’s archive (most of them unpublished) for this intimate book, and together they reveal the restless energy and curiosity of Hopper’s eye, as well as his unique place in the culture of 1960s America. An essayistic photobook, In Dreams mostly eschews Hopper’s iconic stand-alone images and instead looks to distill his archive into a connected set of photographs that offer new impressions and stories. Referencing Roy Orbison’s song by the same name, famously featured in Blue Velvet, In Dreams includes appearances by famous faces such as John Wayne, Peter Fonda and Wallace Berman, which are intimately intertwined with Hopper’s peripatetic life and his daily use of the camera. Hopper was very much an insider—at ease with the celebrities and artists of his day—but this new engagement with his archive shows that, like many photographers, Hopper was also in some ways an outsider, an observer."

Book of the Day > Hal Fischer: The Gay Seventies. Published by Gallery 16 Editions. "Hal Fischer: The Gay Seventies is the first monograph to feature the complete set of photo-text works that Hal Fischer produced between 1977 and 1979 in San Francisco’s Haight and Castro neighborhoods. In addition to Gay Semiotics, Fischer’s best-known work (its recent facsimile edition now out of print), Hal Fischer: The Gay Seventies includes 18th Near Castro Street x 24, which was published as an artist’s book, Boy-Friends, A Salesman and two other series—Civic Center and Cheap Chic Homo. Hal Fischer: The Gay Seventies brings together, for the first time in nearly four decades, Fischer’s major photo-text investigations of gay life in late 1970s San Francisco. Unapologetic, humorous, periodically subversive and conceptually driven, Fischer’s photo-text investigations continue to engage and amuse audiences. As the work demonstrates, the late 1970s—after Stonewall and before AIDS—was a magical moment to be young and gay in San Francisco."

Book of the Day > Gaechter + Clahsen: Fünf Finger Föhn Frisur. Published by Edition Patrick Frey. "A person’s hair may be likened to the top of a mountain. But while mountaintops are often shrouded from our eyes by clouds around them, a person’s top is almost always visible—especially in latitudes that have given up the daily use of bonnets, hats and headscarves. Hence the understandably heavy pressure on people’s heads—to get the hair just right. Over the course of several decades, photographer Peter Gaechter shot a wide array of hairdos for Zürich hairdresser Elsässer Pour Dames, tracking the changes in—and revivals of —hairstyles in late 20th-century Switzerland. The present publication brings together a selection of his photographs from the catalogues on display at these upmarket salons, showing the latest hairstyle trends from the 1970s to the 1990s. These sculpturesque cuts and coiffures, which were to be reproduced à l’identique on the customers’ heads, were also telltale signs of the times. Whether a punk or “Cold War Kids” cut, a “five-finger” blow-dry, feathery “Charlie’s Angels” wings or “Old Hollywood” coiffure—the multifarious hairstyles of local beauties, “It girls” and actresses featured in this book reflect the “why not?” whateverism of liberal consumer culture as well as concrete changes in society, e.g. in the sudden apparition of a clunky cell phone included in the picture frame as a pixie cut accessory. Gaechter’s photographs also hark back to an age in which photography was still infused with a spirit of professionalism. There are no snapshots here, no affectations of an amateur aesthetic, no strategically trashy elements—Gaechter's pictures target a clientele aspiring to distinction, as could once be said of the photographer’s craft as well."

Book of the Day > David King Stencils: Past, Present, and Crass. Published by Gingko Press. "This long-overdue monograph features David King’s iconic stencil-only designs, starting with his legendary logo for the UK band Crass and continuing to the present day. Both the artist’s process and finished output are on display in this revealing collection, from the covered-in-layers-of-paint stencils themselves to the drawings and designs outlining the thought process and ultimately the final art. Many of these works used multiple stencils and colors to create one-off finished pieces that you’re likely to find only within the pages of this book. Includes essays by: Steven Heller, Matt Borruso, Barry McGee and Howard A. Rodman."