Events Posted Aug 11, 2015

Book Signing at Arcana This Saturday (8/15) > GREG GORMAN: OUTSIDE THE STUDIO

PLEASE JOIN US SATURDAY, AUGUST 15th,
4:00 - 6:00 PM FOR A BOOK SIGNING:
GREG GORMAN: OUTSIDE THE STUDIO
 
Outside the Studio is Greg Gorman's tenth monograph. It finds the noted Los Angeles-based photographer outside the reaches of the portrait and figure-study work for which he is best known, and onto the streets of Southeast Asia. Traveling throughout Singapore, Malaysia, China and India on behalf of Epson to participate in symposiums on fine art digital printing, Gorman got a firsthand look at these very different cultures at the very beginning of the digital revolution. Working in the studio with the likes of Marlon Brando or Robert De Niro had become second nature, and his long-running series of celebrity portraits for L.A. Eyeworks is viewed as one of the iconic advertising campaigns of the late twentieth century. However, having shot exclusively on film for more than thirty years, the transition from analogue to digital cameras was a new experience for Gorman, and being thrust in front of strangers in China, Kuala Lampur, India, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam was an adventure - one who’s engaging results are revealed in this lovely new book from Damiani Editore.
 
Be here at Arcana on Saturday, August 15th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM to meet acclaimed photographer (and winemaker!) Greg Gorman and have him inscribe Outside The Studio for you or your loved ones! If you would like to purchase a signed copy but cannot attend, please place an order here,  or call us at 310-458-1499.
 
Events Posted Jul 19, 2015

Book Signing at Arcana This Saturday (7/25) > TOM ADLER: AN UCOMMON ARCHIVE

 

PLEASE JOIN US SATURDAY, JULY 25th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM FOR A BOOK SIGNING

TOM ADLER: AN UNCOMMON ARCHIVE
WITH JEFF DIVINE AND CRAIG R. STECYK III

 

An Uncommon Archive is a thought-provoking selection of images from the projects, books, and saved references found in the hard drives, stored files, and archives of T. Adler Books. This lovely new volume draws its content from the seemingly disparate worlds of surfing, fashion and style, fishing, music, fine art, rock climbing, world travel, and adventure. The photographs, paintings, ephemera, illustrations, and contact sheets are arranged in pairs and sequences suggesting subtle connections and parallels between them.

Iconic historical images, works by well-known contemporary artists and photographers, and beautiful outdoor photographs blend and share page space with found paintings, vernacular snapshots, and NASA imagery; works by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Jacques Henri Lartigue share space with those of Craig R. Stecyk III, Ed Templeton, Tim Barber, Dewey Nicks, and Thomas Campbell; ocean views from above and below the surface by Wayne Levin and Corey Arnold are scattered throughout the volume alongside paintings by Maynard Dixon and Robert Overby, nineteenth-century Cyanotypes, and a hand-painted sign by Stephen Powers. Iconic surfing photographs by Don James, Ron Church, Steve Wilkings, Leo Hetzel, Jeff Hornbaker, Art Brewer, Jim Russi, Jeff Divine, and Jim Driver are interspersed wit classic climbing images from Glen Denny, Mike Graham, Allen Steck, Johannes Mair, and Jeff Johnson. But it is the editor's imaginative sequencing and pairing of these photographs that provides the unique pleasure of this book. A fresh, blue-sky and water-drenched elegance carries the volume along, resulting in a melding of tone and composition, gestures and cultures, associations and connections that reinforce the individual images.

To read more about about the esteemed Mr. Adler and An Uncommon Archive, please view this most excellent article published in this past week's New York Times.

 

Do come celebrate our pal - as well as our graphic designer! - Tom Adler's latest at Arcana on Saturday, July 25th from 4:00 to 6:00 PM along with legendary surf and skate photographers Jeff Divine and Craig R. Stecyk III, and no-doubt other contributors! If you would like to purchase a signed copy of An Uncommon Archive signed by all three but cannot attend, please place an order here,  or call us at 310-458-1499.

Events Posted Jul 18, 2015

Book signing at Arcana 7/26/15 > An Eames Anthology by Daniel Ostroff

PLEASE JOIN US SUNDAY, JULY 26th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM FOR A BOOK SIGNING AND DISCUSSION

AN EAMES ANTHOLOGY: ARTICLES, FILM SCRIPTS, INTERVIEWS, LETTERS, NOTES, AND SPEECHES

WITH DANIEL OSTROFF

An Eames Anthology collects for the first time the writings of the esteemed Los Angeles-based American architects and designers Charles and Ray Eames, illuminating their marriage and professional partnership of fifty years. More than one hundred and twenty primary-source documents and two hundred illustrations highlight iconic projects such as the Eameses' Case Study House in Pacific Palisades, the molded plywood chair, as well as their work for major corporations as both designers (Herman Miller, Vitra) and consultants (IBM, Polaroid). Previously unpublished materials appear alongside published writings by and about the Eameses and their work, lending new insight into their creative process. Correspondence with such luminaries as Richard Neutra and Eero Saarinen provides a personal glimpse into the advance of modernity in mid-century America.

Charles Eames (1907–1978) and Ray Eames (1912–1988) are celebrated for their groundbreaking work in furniture, architecture, exhibitions, graphic design, toys, and film.

Daniel Ostroff is the author of Modern Classic, Eames + Valastro, and Collecting Eames. He was consulting curator for Eames Words and curator of Collecting Eames: The J.F. Chen Collection - both for The Getty Museum's Pacific Standard Time Consortium. He has consulted for The Eames Office, The Museum of California Design, Herman Miller, LACMA and SFMoMA, and others. Mr. Ostroff also produces feature films, television, and documentaries.

Please come celebrate with us at Arcana on Sunday, July 26th as Daniel Ostroff discusses, and signs copies of An Eames Anthology! If you would like to purchase a signed copy but cannot attend, please place an order here,  call us at 310-458-1499.

full event details here

 

Events Posted Jul 10, 2015

Save the Dates! Upcoming Events at Arcana: Books on the Arts

UPCOMING EVENTS AT ARCANA: BOOKS ON THE ARTS


­

Saturday, July 25TH, 4:00 -6:00 PM

TOM ADLER: AN UNCOMMON ARCHIVE
WITH GUESTS C.R. STECYK III AND JEFF DIVINE

Get stoked about meeting our friend Tom (and about buying his book) by reading this great New York Times article about him!

 


Sunday, July 26TH, 4:00 - 6:00 PM 

DANIEL OSTROFF: AN EAMES ANTHOLOGY



Saturday, August 22nd, 4:00 - 6:00 PM

RYAN SCHUDE: SCHUDE


 

COMING SOON (date TBD)
ETHAN RAFAL:
SHOCK AND AWE WITH WHISKY AND PIE!

 

Events Posted Jul 06, 2015

Shio Kusaka + Jonas Wood: Blackwelder - Book Signing this Wednesday, this Wednesday, July 8th from 6 - 8:00 PM!

Join us for a book signing for

Shio Kusaka + Jonas Wood: Blackwelder.

Published by Rizzoli and Gagosian.

Book Launch and Signing this Wednesday, July 8th from 6-8:00 PM.

 

Shio Kusaka and Jonas Wood draw from each others work as painter and potter to probe the tensions between representation and expression, precision and chance, and influences from art history and life. Kusaka’s porcelain vessels play muse to Wood’s drawn and painted interiors, while conversely their idiosyncratic forms and glazes owe something to his impulsive line. They draw from personal memory and their shared existence as a married couple - his half-objective, half-fictional Los Angeles landscapes and still lifes set in their studio on Culver City's Blackwelder Street, and her painted patterns that allude to their young daughter’s fascination with dinosaurs.

Jonas Wood’s works display overlapping textures and disorienting compressions of space. These intimate settings invoke the work of forebears such as Matisse and Hockney, yet his distorted verdant rooms possess an affectless cut-out appearance that is all his own. In drawings, collages, watercolors, and paintings, outlines of pots and vases frame landscape and interior imagery. Drawn and painted vessels set against neutral backgrounds contain a sprawling green golf course, a coral reef with exotic fish, a lush garden, a painter’s studio - all scenes that end abruptly at the parameters of the object.

Shio Kusaka’s recent vessels take traditions of Japanese stoneware and porcelain as a foundation for historical fusions inspired by Iron Age ceramics, Minimalist repetition, and the silt pottery of Ancient Egypt. These quotations merge with the subtle dimples, pinches, and other surface impressions of her haptic approach, as well as eccentric touches such as long handles in the shape of Brontosauri, or blue streaks suggestive of rainfall. Several works are glazed with imprecise grids in which the artist softens hard geometries by allowing her lines to waver and overlap, while on tall glazed vessels colors ebb from dark green to white.

The two share influences and imagery but embark on autonomous explorations of their respective media. Exhibited together, these symbiotic works reveal the autobiographical roots and layers of cross-pollination that inspire their creation. Shio Kusaka and Jonas Wood's unique collaborative working process and artistic output are beautifully documented in the newly-published Gagosian and Rizzoli monograph Blackwelder
.

Please come celebrate with our delightful neighbors Ms. Kusaka and Mr. Wood at Arcana on Wednesday evening July 8th as they unveil the awesome Blackwelder! We're anticipating an enthusiastic turnout, so do try to arrive early to insure ease of parking.

 

Events Posted Jun 23, 2015

PLEASE JOIN US SUNDAY, JULY 5th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM FOR A BOOK SIGNING > LINDA ROSENKRANTZ: TALK


Talk is a hilariously irreverent and racy testament to dialogue - the gossip, questioning, analysis, arguments, and revelations that make up our closest friendships. Set in the summer of 1965, Emily, Vincent, and Marsha are at the beach. The trio are ambitious, artistic, hovering around thirty, and deeply and mercilessly invested in analyzing themselves along with everyone around them. They discuss  sex, shrinks, psychedelics, sculpture, and S&M in an ongoing narrative where anything goes, and no topic is off limits. These conversations were tape-recorded by Linda Rosenkrantz, and transformed into a novel whose form and content put it well ahead of its time. Controversial upon its first publication in 1968, Talk remains fresh, lascivious, and laugh-out-loud funny nearly fifty years later.

"It is sometimes hard to remember just how radical Talk was when it was published. Rosenkrantz’s innovative process of using transcribed recorded conversation as dialogue introduced a level of reality not unlike the choice to paint from photographs instead of live models".
— Chuck Close

Linda Rosenkrantz is the author of several books including Telegram!: Modern History as Told Through More than 400 Witty, Poignant, and Revealing Telegrams, her memoir, My Life as a List: 207 Things About My (Bronx) Childhood, and the co-author with Christopher Finch of Gone Hollywood: The Movie Colony in the Golden Age. She resides in Los Angeles and is a founder of the popular baby-naming site Nameberry.com.

 

Come meet Ms. Rosenkrantz Sunday afternoon, July 5th in the air-conditioned splendor of Arcana and celebrate the long overdue reappearance of her innovative, now-classic Summer read! If you would like to purchase a signed copy (or two!) of Talk but cannot attend, please click here, or call us at 310-458-1499.

 

 

 

 

Events Posted Jun 19, 2015

Book Signing at Arcana, 6/20/15: BRYAN RAY TURCOTTE: FUCKED UP + PHOTOCOPIED | FUCKED UP +: THE READER | CYNTHIA CONNOLLY: BANNED IN DC (NEW EDITION) | NEW DEADBEAT CLUB PRESS 'ZINE: BIG LOTS

PLEASE JOIN US SATURDAY, JUNE 20th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM
FOR A BOOK EVENT:

 

Two seminal documentarians of the American punk scene come together Saturday, June 20th from 4 to 6:00 PM at Arcana: Books on the Arts for one afternoon only to celebrate newly re-released editions of two of their legendary and long out-of-print books. Cynthia Connolly's Banned in DC: Photos and Anecdotes From the DC Punk Underground (79–86) is finally back in print with a seventh edition that includes a brand new, eight page afterword by the Washington DC-based author and publisher. And Los Angeles' own Bryan Ray Turcotte's Fucked Up + PhotocopiedInstant Art Of The Punk Rock Movement - the great visual history of the LA punk flyer in book form - is back with a 15th Anniversary edition.

Conceived of by Cynthia Connolly, assembled with Leslie Clague and Sharon Cheslow, and originally released in December of 1988, Banned in DC collects hundreds of photos, flyers, and stories documenting the DC punk scene from the late seventies through the mid-eighties. It includes images of local bands Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Faith, Marginal Man, Scream, Red C, Rites of Spring, Nuclear Crayons, Insurrection, Hate from Ignorance, G.I., Bloody Mannequin Orchestra, Void, Second Wind, and many more. In honor of sharing the event with Bryan Ray, an avid collector of punk-era ephemera, Cynthia Connolly is bringing her personal stock of original flyers from the nineties promoting her U.S. photo tour with Pat Graham. Fans will be able to select a vintage flyer with each purchase of Banned in DC - while supplies last! Also launching will be her new 'zine Big Lots; published by the always great Deadbeat Club Press. Limited to two hundred copies, it is a selection of 35mm half-frame and landscape photography taken in the DIY documentary spirit we’ve come to expect of her.

Bryan Ray Turcotte's Fucked Up + Photocopied: Instant Art Of The Punk Rock Movement is a collection of frenetic flyers produced for the American Punk scene between 1977 and 1985. Many were created by the musicians themselves and demonstrate the emphasis within the movement on individuality and the manic urge of its members to create things anew. Aso available on Saturday will be Fucked Up +: The Reader - the complete collected essays from Fucked Up + Photocopied and Punk Is Dead: Punk Is Everything self-published in a highly legible format in a limited edition of one hundred copies.

Cynthia Connolly is a photographer, curator, letterpress printer, and artist who lives in the Washington, DC area. She has published Banned in DC through her independent press Sun Dog Propaganda. Connolly's photographic work, postcards, and books have been exhibited internationally, and are in the permanent collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Smithsonian Museum of American History, and Corcoran Gallery of Art. She was prominently included in the genre-defining "Beautiful Losers" show that toured the United States and Europe from 2004–2009.
 
Bryan Ray Turcotte spent his twenties on the road with his band while managing to hold down his job at the legendary punk record label Slash. He has co-published Fucked Up + Photo­copied..., Shepard Fairey: Post No Bills, Punk Is Dead: Punk Is Everything and Jeff Gold's 101 Essential Rock Records... in collaboration with Gingko Press, and the forthcoming It All Dies Anyway: LA, Jabberjaw, and the End Of An Era with Rizzoli. He co-owns Teenage Teardrops and Beta Petrol, an independent record label specializing in vinyl-only releases and a music supervision and production company. His archive of Punk-era publications, posters, flyers, and ephemera is legendary.

 

So, break out the leather and hair gel, resurrect the youthful attitude, and head to Arcana Saturday, June 20th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM - the same afternoon as The Culver City Arts District "Summer Crawl" - for this musically-charged Punk publishing extravaganza!

 

Events Posted Jun 06, 2015

Book Signing for Gusmano Cesaretti's "Maria Sabina" at Arcana, Sunday 6/14, 4:00 - 6:00 pm!

PLEASE JOIN US SUNDAY, JUNE 14th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM FOR A BOOK SIGNING

GUSMANO CESARETTI: MARIA SABINA

Maria Sabina (1888-1985) was a healer, curandera, and Shaman in the Sierra Mazateca in the state of Oaxaca. She used the power of the sacred mushroom as part of her ceremonies that cured hundreds in her community throughout her lifetime. This association with the Psilocybin mushroom resulted in an unlikely late in life counterculture notoriety that brought her into contact with the likes of John Lennon, Bob Dylan, and Mick Jagger.

In this newly-released book from Mexico's Conaculta, noted Italian-born, Los Angeles-based photographer Gusmano Cesaretti shares his personal story of self-discovery when this great woman allowed him to enter her sacred world. Gusmano is one of the first to extensively document the Chicano Car Clubs and Street writers of Southern California, has worked extensively for decades with directors Michael  Mann and the late Tony Scott, and his Fragments of Los Angeles 1969-1989 is one of our favorite photography books about the city.

 

So come meet our friend Gusmano and celebrate the publication of this most intriguing visual memoir. If you would like to purchase a signed copy (or two) of Maria Sabina  but cannot attend, please click here, or call us at 310-458-1499

 

 

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