Book of the Day Posted Apr 21, 2019

Book of the Day > Corine Vermuelen: Your Town Tomorrow

Book of the Day > Corine Vermeulen: Your Town Tomorrow. Self Published, 2019. "Your Town Tomorrow (2007 - 2017) acknowledges a resilient community in the midst of challenging transitions. Although documentary in format, it is also a very personal series as it chronicles my life and work in Detroit, the communities where I have lived, and my friends and neighbors. Detroit has been the site of complicated change since I moved here thirteen years ago. Real estate developers and corporate investors have altered the character of the city. The national media claims Detroit is a “new” city of great economic opportunity, but it hardly recognizes the people who have lived here throughout the changes. A city’s residents define its identity; the people of Detroit are essential to its culture and vitality."
Book of the Day Posted Apr 20, 2019

Book of the Day > Human Zoo

Book of the day > Human Zoo. Published by @Kesselskramer. " Erik Kessels delves into the zoological collection of the Museum of the University of Latvia, Riga, purportedly to remind us that we, as humans, are also predators. Humans collect and catalogue examples of their animal counterparts, immortalising them in death for the education and enjoyment of human generations to come. In an abrupt switch, Kessels gives human animals “a taste of their own medicine” by juxtaposing found examples of our species with those from other animal categories: arthropods, birds, butterflies, coral, fish, insects, invertebrates, mammals, and reptiles. ‘Human Zoo’ was commissioned by the 1st Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art."
Book of the Day Posted Apr 19, 2019

Book of the day > Geta Bratescu: Game of Forms

Book of the day > Geta Bratescu: Game of Forms. Exploring themes of bodiliness, self and family in mediums such as paper, video and photography for more than 40 years, Romanian artist Geta Bratescu (1926–2018) has recently been the subject of much critical attention in the US and in Europe, representing Romania at the 2017 Venice Biennale and being the subject of recent features in the New York Times and the Brooklyn Rail.
Game of Forms focuses on Bratescu’s dynamic late work, which is reproduced alongside a selection of her diaries from 2008 through 2011, that reflects on her work and the work of other artists. She writes, “more than ever I embrace the infinite spaces of the spirit with so much joy, when even my body has youthful upsurges; an ideal Eros animates it, it rustles to the touch of the wing with which the hypothetical angel causes the strings of the imagination to vibrate. I am mad.”
 
Book of the Day Posted Apr 17, 2019

Book of the day > Francois-Xavier and Claude Lalanne: In the Domain of Dreams

Book of the day > Francois-Xavier and Claude Lalanne: In the Domain of Dreams. Published by @RizzoliBooks. "The Lalannes' charming, dreamy, and surrealistic body of functional sculptures, once a guarded secret for exclusive collectors such as Yves Saint Laurent and the Agnellis, is celebrated in full in this stunning new book. The legendary husband-and-wife artist team has been the inspiration for high-society collectors and decorators, such as Pierre Bergé, Serge Gainsbourg, Peter Marino, Jane Holzer, and Reed Krakoff for over five decades. Crossing over many audiences - from interior design to fine art to high society, the works of the Lalannes have aspirational yet broad appeal. Their surreal flock of sheep sculpture is now de rigeur for any important collection, while their functional hippopotamus wet bar sells for millions of dollars at auction. Highly collected and promoted by an important group of art insiders, Lalanne works are often the focus of the well-curated room, as seen in many magazine covers. This book on their work will appeal to decorators, designers, artists, and all those who love beautiful art objects." R.I.P. Claude Lalanne, 1924-2018.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 16, 2019

Book of the Day > New Architecture Los Angeles

Book of the Day > New Architecture Los Angeles. Published by Prestel. "This exhilarating and richly illustrated guide to Los Angeles’s most exciting new buildings establishes the city as a mecca for forward-thinking and environmentally conscious architecture.
Some of the world’s leading architects are making their mark on Los Angeles’s cityscape with exciting and innovative projects. Fifty of the most striking buildings are profiled in this book that features every type of architecture—houses, municipal structures, art museums, office buildings, performance spaces, and houses of worship. Some of the world’s leading design firms, including Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Eric Owen Moss Architects, Selldorf Architects, and wHY Architecture, have contributed to the city’s structural vernacular. While the projects here are as varied as the luminous Walt Disney Concert Hall by Gehry Partners and Bestor Architecture’s compact housing development named “Blackbirds,” each building embraces an unmistakably Californian aesthetic reimagined for a new century. With original photography, this is the first book to focus on the surge of creative building that has taken place in Los Angeles in the new millennium."
 
Book of the Day Posted Apr 14, 2019

Book of the Day > Matthew Craven: Primer

Book of the Day > Matthew Craven: Primer. Published by Anthology Editions. "Utilizing found images from textbooks along with his own geometric patterns, Matthew Craven’s collages and illustrations seek to create a new handmade universe, juxtaposing imagery from different cultures and time periods to celebrate commonalities. Photographs of archaeological remains and the natural world are overlaid on colorful textiles drawn on the back of vintage movie posters, to create a hypnotic and mesmerizing vernacular of symbols and designs. Featuring an introduction by LACMA curator Leslie Jones, PRIMER is the first publication of Craven’s art and a reconfiguration of traditional historical narratives inspired by obsessive formations."
Book of the Day Posted Apr 11, 2019

Book of the Day > Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence

Book of the Day > Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence. Published by Princeton University Press. "Marking the centenary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Votes for Women is the first richly illustrated book to reveal the history and complexity of the national suffrage movement. For nearly a hundred years, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, countless American women fought for the right to vote. While some of the leading figures of the suffrage movement have received deserved appreciation, the crusade for women’s enfranchisement involved many individuals, each with a unique story to be told. Weaving together a diverse collection of portraits and other visual materials—including photographs, drawings, paintings, prints, textiles, and mixed media—along with biographical narratives and trenchant essays, this comprehensive book presents fresh perspectives on the history of the movement. Bringing attention to underrecognized individuals and groups, the leading historians featured here look at how suffragists used portraiture to promote gender equality and other feminist ideals, and how photographic portraits in particular proved to be a crucial element of women’s activism and recruitment. The contributors also explore the reasons why certain events and leaders of the suffrage movement have been remembered over others, the obstacles that black women faced when organizing with white suffragists and the subsequent founding of black women’s suffrage groups, the foundations of the violent antisuffrage movement, and the ways suffragists held up American women physicians who served in France during World War I as exemplary citizens, deserving the right to vote. With nearly 200 color illustrations, Votes for Women offers a more complete picture of American women’s suffrage, one that sheds new light on the movement’s relevance for our own time."
 
Book of the Day Posted Apr 10, 2019

Book of the Day > Martin Parr: Beach Therapy

Book of the Day > Martin Parr: Beach Therapy. Published by Damiani. "During his long career as a photographer, Martin Parr has always photographed beaches, particularly in the UK. The beach is more than just a common subject for Parr; he has often used the beach as a laboratory to experiment with new cameras and techniques. For example, when Parr switched from working with black-and-white film to medium-format color in the early 1980s, he tested out his new approach on the beaches of New Brighton, a run-down seaside resort near Liverpool. In recent years Parr has started exploring the beach with the aid of a telephoto lens. This lens is rarely used in the world of art and documentary photography, and Parr has experimented to find new ways to use its unique visual qualities, for example by incorporating the vegetation on the perimeter with the beach as a backdrop, both in and out of focus. Martin Parr: Beach Therapy focuses on this new body of work, the latest in his long experimental engagement with beaches and their users. "
 
Book of the Day Posted Apr 06, 2019

Book of the Day > Extraordinary! Unknown Works From Swiss Psychiatric Institutions Around 1900

Book of the Day > Extraordinary! Unknown Works from Swiss Psychiatric Institutions Around 1900. Published by Scheidegger & Spiess.
"There has been a rapid rise in interest in recent years in art created by people suffering from mental illness, with new museums dedicated to it, major surveys, and attention from the media and public. Yet there has been little research undertaken to systematically examine this body of art.
Extraordinary! presents the results of an exceptional research project undertaken at the Zurich University of the Arts that documented and examined art produced in asylums and mental hospitals throughout Switzerland around 1900. Varied in style and media, the works often mark long periods of dedicated and passionate work and reveal remarkable technical and artistic prowess. They serve, the editors show, as both an expression of their creators’ ideas and an act of compensation for, and their own ciriticism of, the dull and often hard life at the institutions they treaded.
Featuring a diverse selection of previously unpublished works, Extraordinary! questions our contemporary understanding of art, encouraging the reader to engage with these artists and their work and thereby revisit the very idea of what constitutes art."
Book of the Day Posted Apr 05, 2019

Book of the Day > Kenzo Takada

Book of the Day > Kenzo Takada. Published by ACC Art Books.
"In 1970, the young Japanese designer Kenzo Takada opened his first boutique, Jungle Jap, in Paris and revolutionized the fashion world. His colorful, ethnic, and nomadic- influenced collections, made with luxurious and vibrantly patterned textiles, tweaked the conventions of haute couture while maintaining the quality of traditional European clothing houses. He was influenced by Parisian fashion and Japanese kimonos, boldly mixing colours and prints, cuts and materials. His vibrant palette and pattern combinations were joyful and whimsical, and very different from the subtle tailoring of the traditional Paris couturier. In his inspired blend of the opulent and the exotic, he developed a signature style and found early success.
With stunning photography, and over 300 sketches from Kenzo's private collection, this book traces more than forty years of his creative output. It includes photographs from his high-energy runway shows, in addition to personal photographs, and a behind-the-scene look at the creation of a spectacular wedding dress, opening a window on the creative process and capturing Kenzo's energy, vision, and presence. Superbly illustrated throughout with pencilled and hand colored sketches, swatched drawings, and previously unpublished archival photographs, the authors explore Kenzo's career, tracing the evolution of his cult label in a look-book of visual exuberance."
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