Book of the Day Posted Sep 20, 2022

Book of the Day > Mark Neville: Stop Tanks With Books (Second Edition)

● Purchase ● British artist Mark Neville moved home and studio from London to live in Kyiv, Ukraine, last year. With 100,000 Russian troops amassed on the Ukrainian border and the whole country on the cusp of war, Neville’s book project, Stop Tanks With Books, calls on the international community to urgently support Ukraine and help deter further Russian invasion.

Since 2015 Neville has been documenting life in Ukraine, with subjects ranging from holidaymakers on the beaches of Odessa, to the Roma communities on the Hungarian border, the churchgoers and nightclubbers of Kyiv, to both civilians and soldiers living on the frontline in Eastern Ukraine. Eighty of Neville’s photographs are brought together in this book, edited by David Campany, together with short stories about the conflict from Ukrainian novelist Lyuba Yakimchuk; research from the Centre of Eastern European Studies in Berlin about the 2.5 million Ukrainians already displaced by the war; and a call to action for the international community.

Employing his unique, activist strategy of a targeted book dissemination, Neville sent out 750 complimentary copies of the book’s first edition to key policymakers, opinion-makers, ambassadors, members of parliament, members of the international community and its media, as well as those involved directly in peace talks. The aim is for recipients of this book to be prompted into real action which will result in an end to the war, an end to the killing in Eastern Ukraine, and the withdrawal of Russian forces from occupied territories in Donbas and Crimea. An additional 750 copies were also available through Nazraeli Press for general distribution internationally, and quickly sold out.

Neville wrote in the first edition: “The atmosphere is extremely tense. Bomb shelters and siren drills are being prepared in the capital. Do we stay and fight? Or do we flee Ukraine completely? I wonder what the international response would be if Stockholm, London, Paris, or New York were threatened with an unprovoked and imminent invasion by Russia? Our book is a prayer and a necessary plea to the international community and Nazraeli Press and I have pulled out all the stops to get our book printed and disseminated before Putin invades." Published post-invasion, this important second edition of the book includes an updated artist’s statement and maps.

Book of the Day Posted Sep 17, 2022

Book of the Day > Rosamond Purcell: Nature Stands Aside

● Purchase ● The first comprehensive book in more than twenty years of the artist’s haunting and textural photographic work, published to accompany a major retrospective at the Addison Gallery of American Art.

A definitive monograph to accompany the first museum survey of the renowned photographer and conceptual artist Rosamond Purcell (b. 1942), known for her strangely beautiful, often unsettling photographs of objects from the natural and man-made world.

With more than 150 illustrations, the book reflects the breadth of the artist’s career from the late 1960s to the present day, and includes photographs, assemblages, collages, and installations that serve to illuminate and explore the shifting boundaries between art and science. From large-format Polaroid prints to objects rescued from obscurity, Purcell’s empathetic, evocative, multifaceted work explores the interstices between the unsettling and the sublime, the beautiful and the bizarre, the natural and the manufactured.

With thoughtful and insightful texts from an eclectic list of critical voices—including the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Errol Morris and the writer Christoph Irmscher—and featuring an interview between Purcell and fellow contemporary artist Mark Dion, this book rejuvenates the critical approach Purcell’s work and brings to light the evolution of a remarkable career.

Book of the Day Posted Sep 16, 2022

Book of the Day > Marc Karzen: Late Night Bumpers - 40th Anniversary Edition

● Purchase ● Television shows use images, animations, photographs or graphics before and after commercials as a way of identifying to the channel surfing viewer what they are watching and create a cushion between the show and commercials. These images are called bumpers. In broadcasting, if a local affiliate switched from a local spot back to the network’s show and was off by a second or two, bumpers close that gap.

Over 11 years from 1982-1992, I photographed a series of slice of life New York moments that punctuated segments and guests on Late Night with David Letterman.

This work is all pre-digital, predates Photoshop and everything was shot on 35mm and 120 film cameras.

Graphics art director Bob Pook, graphics producer Edd Hall and I set off into the night over the years to find as many possible ways to integrate the Late Night with David Letterman name into New York life.

These Bumpers challenged viewers to find where and how the show title was integrated into an image as they were only on screen for 3 seconds at a time.

Sometimes we brought props that we put in camera. But for most images, our team of designers, Bill Shortridge, Arlen Schumer and Bob Pook prepared the prints with rub-on type, glued on polaroids, air brush and markers onto the mounted chromogenic master C-prints.

Finally, Dave had approval of all images before they made the airwaves.

Enjoy having a look again, even if it's for the first time!

Book of the Day Posted Sep 15, 2022

Book of the Day > Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight

● Purchase ● Rarely seen installation works that exemplify this pioneering artist’s critical focus on Black identity and Black feminism

Showcasing a lesser-known aspect of Saar’s art, Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight provides new insights into her explorations of ritual, spirituality and cosmologies, as well as themes of the African diaspora. Featured here are significant installations created by Saar from 1980 to 1998, including Oasis (1984), a work that will be reconfigured at ICA Miami’s Saar exhibition for the first time in more than 30 years.

With compelling scholarship and rich illustration—combining new installation photography and archival material—the monograph provides a fresh look at this significant artist’s critical and influential practice. Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight reinforces and celebrates Saar’s standing as a visionary artist, storyteller and mythmaker, and the ongoing significance and relevance of her work to the most pressing issues in America today.

Book of the Day Posted Sep 14, 2022

Book of the Day > Thomas Hoepker: The Way It Was

● Purchase ● Two road trips—one in black and white, the other color—across two Americas, nearly 60 years apart

Magnum photographer (and former Magnum president) Thomas Hoepker (born 1936) was 27 years old when he set out on his ambitious journey across the United States—one that took him from coast to coast and back again over the course of three months and resulted in thousands of photos. The year was 1963 and Hoepker had been commissioned by the German magazine Kristall to “discover” America through his camera. The photo reportages he made, published in five issues of the magazine across dozens of pages, revealed Hoepker’s complex, skeptical and sometimes melancholy view of the American every day, in big cities, small towns and all in between. His was an unromanticized vision in which the decadent existed alongside the desolate, the glitter with the grit.

As much as Hoepker recognized that the problematic American dream could go unfulfilled, he was fascinated with the country (settling in New York in 1976), and in 2020—at the age of 84 and after a successful career as a photojournalist and president of Magnum Photos—he once again set out on a road trip throughout the US. The Way It Was: Road Trips USA juxtaposes Hoepker’s color photographs from this trip with his original black-and-white images, taking us on a journey both through his changing sense of America and through time.

Book of the Day Posted Sep 13, 2022

Book of the Day > Johnny Ryan: Barely Human

● Purchase ● The cartoons that keep getting Johnny Ryan banned from Instagram, collected for the first time as one big ol' exquisitely gross picture book! Johnny Ryan's compulsion to flout any and all accepted standards of decency in his humor and cartoons have not only garnered him a tremendous following — Instagram has banned him multiple times with hundreds of posts scrubbed from those accounts. (He can be found, currently, at @johnnyryanjohnnyryan1). Guess what? We've got 'em! Over 500 of the grossest, crudest, most surrealistic, scatological, and of course hilarious cartoons you'll ever see, presented with loving care in this gorgeous, oversized collection with fine art paper. They may not meet with your approval, but you will laugh. Crafted throughout the pandemic and posted daily, these cartoons helped keep both the author and hundreds of thousands of others sane during the past two years. From conventional gag cartoons to pieces decidedly unconventional and almost Dadaist in their humor, these are some of the most visually imaginative — and comedically brilliant — single-panel cartoons ever conceived, whether in the service of boner jokes or sheer visual absurdism.

Book of the Day Posted Sep 10, 2022

Book of the Day > Colin Sussingham: Be L’eau

● Purchase ● Shot between 2019-2021 this body of work takes the audience into another dimension. A space that is colorful and dramatic, beautiful and eerie, where bodies are celebrated and the subject can let go. The pressure of water, the lack of visibility, gravity, and breath, are the forces that create the calm and the tension, the grace and the struggle, the release and the resistance.

Book of the Day Posted Sep 09, 2022

Book of the Day > Gio Castranova: Still Missing

● Purchase ● Still Missing is a beautifully designed art book exploring the folk art of lost & found pet posters. Featuring nearly 200 pages of high quality full-color images and illustrations.

Still Missing is a curatorial voyage through the world of lost and found pet posters that combines graphic and visual arts, illustration, and photography in a poetic and cohesive collage of raw emotion. Art connoisseurs and casual observers of all backgrounds, interests, and ages will find their own deep resonance within its pages.

A collection of art by everyone, for everyone, this book truly speaks worlds about the human condition. It’s strange, it's weird, it's funny, it's beautiful, it's creative and yes...it's also sad. From toucans to tortoises, roosters to ferrets and dragons to unicorns, it will always keep you guessing with what’s coming next.

What is the largest reward for a cat? What is the smallest reward for a turtle? What's the strangest pet name? What's the most unique poster material? What's the biggest or the smallest poster I've ever found? It's all in the details... Still Missing will answer all of these questions, while provoking even more.

RULES
• All posters collected in Los Angeles County from 2010-2013 by Gio Castranova.
• Rules for collecting: to take a single poster, at least three identical posters must be observed within a given one block area, to not defeat the owners' quest of finding their animal.
• Respect, preserve and transmit the message of the poster as displayed when first encountered.

Book of the Day Posted Sep 08, 2022

Book of the Day > Yoshitomo Nara: Pinacoteca

● Purchase ● Recent works and a gorgeously crafted miniature gallery from the much-loved Japanese artist

From the outset of his career, Japanese painter and sculptor Yoshitomo Nara (born 1959) has fruitfully explored the relationship between art and the space in which it is placed. At the cornerstone of Nara's recent exhibition in Pace's London gallery was the most recent product of his ongoing study: a new multiroom installation that was reworked from an earlier project titled London Mayfair House.

Borrowing its title from the Ancient Greco-Roman term for a public art salon, Pinacoteca (2021) is a specially crafted, tiny, homelike structure that imitates an exhibition space. On the internal walls, the artist hung new paintings on wood and canvas as well as drawings on paper, used envelopes and cardboard boxes. On the external walls, which have been directly painted onto, Nara hung new paintings that are stylistically simpler and more graphic than the works inside the installation.

Yoshitomo Nara: Pinacoteca presents a close look at the structure, as well as the artist’s recent paintings, sculpture and works on cardboard also displayed in the exhibition. An essay by acclaimed music writer Simon Reynolds explores the relationship of music to Nara’s artistic production, and an essay by curator Stephanie Rosenthal dives deep into the role of built environments in the artist's oeuvre.

Book of the Day Posted Sep 07, 2022

Book of the Day > (Signed) Greg Girard: JAL 76 88

● Purchase ● "When I first arrived in Tokyo in April, 1976 the plan was to spend a few days and then continue on to SE Asia. I decided to stow my luggage at the airport that first night so I could just wander around. I had no idea where I was going to stay. I took the monorail from Haneda airport into the city and then rode the circle of the Yamanote line around Tokyo. When I arrived at Shinjuku I got off the train. It seemed the brightest, noisiest and most crowded part of town. I spent the night wandering around Shinjuku and nearby neighborhoods and by morning I knew I wanted to stay. It’s perhaps worth pointing out that in 1976 there was nothing to prepare a first-time visitor for Tokyo. “BladeRunner-esque” had yet to enter the language. At the time the notion that the future had arrived, and was alive and well in an Asian city, was simply not known. And so, to stumble across it was thrilling and eye-opening.“