Book of the Day Posted Nov 29, 2019

Book of the Day > Vernacular Architecture; Atlas For Living Throughout the World

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 Posted Nov 24, 2019

Book of the Day > Supreme Volume 2

Book of the Day > Supreme: Volume 2. Published by Phaidon. “The 351-page hardcover book documents the brand’s visual history from 2010-2018, stemming from products, collaborations, and game-changing events the brand has been a part of. The likes of Nobuyoshi Araki, David Sims, Kate Moss, and Dash Snow will be featured amongst the number of past collabs highlighted. The book will lead with a poem by Harmony Korine and an essay by Carlo McCormick.”

Book of the Day Posted Nov 22, 2019

Book of the Day > Hugh Holland: Silver. Skate. Seventies.

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 Posted Nov 21, 2019

Book of the Day > Dennis Hopper: In Dreams

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 Posted Nov 20, 2019

Book of the Day > Hal Fischer: The Gay Seventies

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 Posted Nov 19, 2019

Book of the Day > Gaechter + Clahsen: Fünf Finger Föhn Frisur

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 Posted Nov 14, 2019

Book of the Day > David King Stencils: Past, Present, and Crass

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."
Book of the Day Posted Nov 13, 2019

Book of the Day > Bedtime: Inspirational Beds, Bedrooms and Boudoirs

Book of the Day > Bedtime: Inspirational Beds, Bedrooms and Boudoirs. Published by Vendome. "In our bedrooms, we take leave of our daily woes. Far from the bustle of the kitchen, the sociability of the living room or the indulgence of the dining room, this part of the home is reserved for intimacy, romance, and dreaming. Bedtime: Inspirational Beds, Bedrooms and Boudoirs is an inspiring, visual journey into the sleepiest, yet most salacious, room of the house. Celia Forner whisks you through the bedrooms of queens and emperors, designers and decorators, today’s most exclusive hotels, and even the most evocative fictional boudoirs from stage and screen. Taking us from Marie Antoinette to the Maharaja of Indore; from Tony Duquette to Peter Marino; from Mae West and Peggy Guggenheim to Rudolph Nureyev; from Gone with the Wind to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bedtime is a must have for anyone who dreams of sleeping like a king or queen. Designers and clients alike will find fresh inspiration in this king-size source book, which shows astonishing breadth of vision in collating more beds and bedrooms than one could possibly dream of, and is an invaluable addition to any design collection."
Book of the Day Posted Nov 10, 2019

Book of the Day > Mitch Epstein: Sunshine Hotel

Book of the Day > Mitch Epstein: Sunshine Hotel. Published by Steidl/PPP Editions. "America, as a place and an idea, has occupied Mitch Epstein’s art for the past five decades. With the first photographs he made in 1969 at the age of 16, Epstein began confronting the cultural psychology of the United States. Although he started working in an era defined by the Vietnam War, civil rights, rock and roll, and free love, he responded hardily to each radically different era that followed—from Reaganomics to surveillance after 9/11, to the current climate crisis and resurgence of white supremacy. More than a single era or issue, it is the living organism of American culture that engages Epstein; no matter how much the country changes, he describes something mysteriously and persistently American. Conceived of and sequenced by Andrew Roth, Sunshine Hotel assembles 175 photos made between 1969 and 2018—more than half of them previously unpublished. Yet the book is not simply a retrospective. It traces both the evolution of an artist and the development of a country, revealing Epstein’s formal and thematic shifts in tandem with America’s changing zeitgeist and landscape. Sunshine Hotel is a visual immersion that forgoes linearity and a classical layout, as it sets forth Epstein’s evolving understanding of his country’s pathologies and promise."
Book of the Day Posted Nov 08, 2019

Book of the day and book signing/discussion tomorrow (11/9, 4-6 ) > SITE: MARMOL RADZINER IN THE LANDSCAPE

Book of the day and book signing/discussion tomorrow (11/9, 4-6 -- Event Details HERE) > SITE: MARMOL RADZINER IN THE LANDSCAPE. Published by Princeton Architectural Press. Site: Marmol Radziner in the Landscape is the brand new survey of the residential projects of one of Southern California's most creative architectural firms. Combining style with substance, this lavish monograph from Princeton Architectural Press is an engaging document of nineteen homes drawn from twenty years of work. For the event principal partners Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner - who maintain an envious reference library, even by our standards - will discuss the firm's history and projects, and the making of their new book with the West Coast editor of AD, critic and historian Mayer Rus. Come celebrate the publication of Site: Marmol Radziner in the Landscape with Leo, Ron, Mayer, and Arcana on November 9th. If you cannot attend but wish to purchase a signed copy, please place your order here, or call us at 310-458-1499.

"The spectacular houses of Marmol Radziner merge interior and exterior life as they engage the built and natural environment. With lush photography and an expansive format, Site: Marmol Radziner in the Landscape focuses on the evolving relationship between house and landscape, revealing what the architects describe as "the gradual erasure of boundaries between indoor and outdoor" spaces. This collection of nineteen houses, shown in over two-hundred full-color photographs that will make readers swoon, is organized by habitat - desert, urban, canyon, and woodland - and includes projects in Southern California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and The Netherlands. A foreword by novelist Mona Simpson provides a personal reflection on her experiences in a Marmol Radziner house, while an interview with partners Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner and detailed descriptions of their projects offer insights into the architects' philosophy and process."

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