Book of the Day Posted Jun 26, 2019

Book of the day > Bertoia: The Metal Worker

Book of the day > Bertoia: The Metal Worker. Published by Phaidon.
 
"A celebration of the rich and varied work of Italian-born American artist, designer, and master of metal, Harry Bertoia From chapel altarpieces and bronze fountains, to wire chairs and silver brooches, Harry Bertoia's creative output was varied in the extreme. This book explores all aspects of the artist's incredible creative output, from his jewelry and iconic furniture to his monoprints, architectural sculptures, and "sonambients" - clusters of metal rods that ring with hauntingly beautiful sound. It also includes previously unpublished material of Bertoia and his works. Bertoia also explores his life story: his move from Italy to Detroit at 15; his formative years at Cranbrook; his work with Charles Eames and Knoll; through to his fascinating sound sculptures. In doing so, the book demonstrates how seemingly disparate works are in fact united in being reflections of nature, and places Bertoia's art squarely at the heart of American modernism."
 
Book of the Day Posted Jun 25, 2019

Book of the Day > Jeff Mermelstein: Arena

Book of the Day > Jeff Mermelstein: Arena. Published by TBW Books.
 
"Arena was shot during a four year tenure that began in 2012 on the day Barclays Center in Brooklyn first opened its doors to the public. Charged with the extraordinary commission to photograph over 350 events held in Barclays’ first years, Arena marks a particularly prolific period of Jeff Mermelstein’s career. 
Though known for works created against the backdrop of the streets of NYC, Mermelstein here moves inward through the lobbies, hallways, and snaking corridors that funnel spectator and staff alike toward the center’s hallowed stage.
He maneuvers through the shuffling crowds, slowing down, crouching low, casting his gaze toward the pedestrian and discarded to illuminate a new path: a vision leading away from the main attraction, back towards the uncommon-common. Mermelstein revels in the vibrant-uncanny embedded in the overlooked and mundane. 
This interzone, teeming with compelling denizens and mystical happenstance is the crux of Mermelstein’s Arena, a deeply sensitive and loving observation of the eccentricities of human behavior condensed within a corten-steel terrarium; a photographic opus in 71 vivid, flash-fried images."
 

 

Book of the Day Posted Jun 23, 2019

Book of the Day > Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist

Book of the Day > Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist. Published by Phoenix Art Museum & Hirmer.

"Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist will be the first survey of this under recognized American painter in over 22 years. Her distinctive paintings could be described as metaphysical landscapes rooted in the California desert near Cathedral City. Pelton chiefly drew on her own inspirations, superstitions, and beliefs to exemplify emotional states. The publication seeks to clarify the artist’s significance and role within the cannon of American Modernism but also against the legacy of European abstraction. It contextualizes her work against her contemporaries, Marsden Hartley and Georgia O’Keeffe, and their distinct versions of American spiritual modernism. Pelton’s highly symbolic paintings were inspired by religious sources ranging from Theosophy and Agni Yoga to the spiritual teachings of Dane Rudhyar and Will Levington Comfort. Over three decades she devoted herself to painting spiritual abstractions, which conveyed her “light message to the world.” 

Book of the Day Posted Jun 18, 2019

Book of the Day > Matthew Brannon: Concerning Vietnam

Book of the Day > Matthew Brannon: Concerning Vietnam. Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co. "New York–based artist Matthew Brannon (born 1971) has spent the past five years exhaustively researching the Vietnam/American War, seeking his own understanding of one of the most pivotal confrontations of the 20th century and translating that research into intricate silkscreen works that collage military documents, maps, logos, memoranda and contemporaneous ephemera. Concerning Vietnam distills a picture of the war and its ongoing effects in vivid, densely packed images that employ the bold graphic design for which the artist is known. Alongside these works are Brannon’s notes on the objects and situations they depict, constructing a detailed chronology of the war and a complex overview of the consequences of US intervention in Southeast Asia. Designed by Studio LHOOQ in close collaboration with the artist, Concerning Vietnam collects the entire series of prints and texts, with a new essay on the work by curator Veronica Roberts and a conversation between the artist and Vietnam historian Mark Atwood Lawrence."
Book of the Day Posted Jun 12, 2019

Book of the day > Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech

Book of the day > Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech. Published by MCA Chicago, Delmonico | Prestel. Michael Darling, Editor. “From street fashion to high culture, the work of Virgil Abloh, a celebrated multihyphenate artist, is showcased in this book. For Abloh, the museum catalogue is another opportunity to "question everything." This monograph, produced in close collaboration with the artist himself, explores his creative output in a three-books-in-one format. The catalogue section offers an overview of Abloh's interdisciplinary practice by Michael Darling and features essays and interviews with key voices in art, fashion, design, and architecture, including Taiye Selasi, Lou Stoppard, Michael Rock, Samir Bantal, Rem Koolhaas, and Anja Aronowsky Cronberg. In the archives section, more than 1,800 never-before-seen images pulled from the artist's personal files reveal the remarkable breadth of his influences and collaborations. And the index cross references the catalogue plates--Abloh's works--with his projects and process, using a vocabulary of themes developed by Abloh. The binding also intentionally exposes the spine of the bound book and the raw boards used for the case.”
Book of the Day Posted Jun 11, 2019

Book of the Day > Seeing Science; How Photography Reveals the Universe

Book of the Day > Seeing Science; How Photography Reveals the Universe. Published by Aperture. "Photography and science have long been intertwined, helping to shape the way we look at the world. Scientists use photography as a way to gather information, explore, and learn, but just as important, photography is also used to promote scientific advances and has long served as an interface between the sciences and the public.
Science is less an edifice of facts than a process of discovery and inquiry. In this way, it is not dissimilar to art; artists have engaged with some of the same scientific principles, using photography to imagine the world differently and present us with new experiences and ways of seeing. This volume presents both perspectives, exploring how science is made perceptible, featuring over three hundred images and sixty short texts."
Book of the Day Posted Jun 09, 2019

Book of the Day > Roger Herman: Ceramics 1997-2018

Book of the Day > Roger Herman: Ceramics 1997-2018. Signed edition of 250. A gorgeous collection of artist Roger Herman's ceramics!

 

Book of the Day Posted Jun 06, 2019

Book of the day > The Castle On Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont by Shawn Levy

Book of the day > The Castle On Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont by Shawn Levy. Published by Doubleday. “For ninety years, Hollywood's brightest stars have favored the Chateau Marmont as a home away from home. An apartment house-turned-hotel, it has been the backdrop for generations of gossip and folklore: 1930s bombshell Jean Harlow took lovers during her third honeymoon there; director Nicholas Ray slept with his sixteen-year-old Rebel Without a Cause star Natalie Wood; Anthony Perkins and Tab Hunter met poolside and began a secret affair; Jim Morrison swung from the balconies, once falling nearly to his death; John Belushi suffered a fatal overdose in a private bungalow; Lindsay Lohan got the boot after racking up nearly $50,000 in charges in less than two months. Perched above the Sunset Strip like a fairytale castle, the Chateau seems to come from another world entirely. Its singular appearance houses an equally singular history. While a city, an industry, and a culture have changed around it, Chateau Marmont has welcomed the most iconic and iconoclastic personalities in film, music, and media. It appeals to the rich and famous not just for its European ambiance but for its seclusion: Much of what's happened inside the Chateau's walls has eluded the public eye. Until now. With wit and insight, Shawn Levy recounts the wild revelries and scandalous liaisons, the creative breakthroughs and marital breakdowns, the births and deaths that the Chateau has been a party to. Vivid, salacious, and richly informed, Levy's book is a glittering tribute to Hollywood as seen from inside the walls of its most hallowed hotel.”
Book of the Day Posted May 31, 2019

Book of the Day > Mrinalini Mukherjee

Book of the Day > Mrinalini Mukherjee. Published by The Shoestring Publisher. "This revelatory monograph explores the work of Indian sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee (1949–2015). Committed to sculpture, Mukherjee worked most intensively with fiber, making significant forays into ceramic and bronze toward the middle and latter half of her career.
Within her immediate artistic milieu in post-independent India, Mukherjee was one of the outlier artists whose art remained untethered to the dominant commitments of painting and figural storytelling. Her sculpture was sustained by a knowledge of traditional Indian and historic European sculpture, folk art, modern design, local crafts and textiles. Knotting was the principal gesture of Mukherjee's technique, evident from the very start of her practice. Working intuitively, she never resorted to a sketch, model or preparatory drawing. Probing the divide between figuration and abstraction, Mukherjee would fashion unusual, mysterious, sensual and, at times, unsettlingly grotesque forms, commanding in their presence and scale.
In retrospect, Mukherjee's artistic output appears iconoclastic, singular, calling out for assessment and analysis across multiple registers, as well as for an account of why, in hindsight, it was relegated to the margins. Within these pages are deliberations on Mukherjee's place within both an Indian and a more international art history, and her work's relationship to other fiber-art practices from the mid to late 20th century. This book will introduce Mukherjee to a new generation of scholars, art historians and artists."
Book of the Day Posted May 30, 2019

Book of the day > August Sander Masterpieces

Book of the day > August Sander Masterpieces. Published by Prestel. “August Sander is one of the greatest photographers in international photographic history. With his seminal book ‘People of the 20th Century,’ he set new standards in portrait photography. Sander's aspiration was to create a typological ‘composite image’ of his time. The ambitious project began in the 1910s and was to occupy him through the 1950s. A novel feature of this book is that all the reproductions are based on vintage prints produced and authorized by August Sander himself. The croppings and the desired tonal values are authentically rendered here for the first time in the long publication history of Sander's brilliant portrait work. The originals are from the rich holdings of the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne and from additional major collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.“
more