If you ever thought Arcana boss Lee Kaplan was inscrutable, now’s your chance to have your mind changed. In the debut episode of her new podcast Voyages, client / collector / aesthete / textile consultant / traveler Joanna Williams (of Kneelandco.com - @jleighwms ) talks to Lee about the Arcana origin story and hears about how his love and reverence for the books he sells sometimes results in grumpy yelp reviews from badly behaved guests. Thank you, Joanna, for giving Lee this opportunity! You can listen to the episode at kneelandco.com/voyages and subscribe to the Voyages podcast on itunes!

Book of the day > Basquiat: Boom For Real. Published by Prestel. "Focusing on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s extraordinary breadth of influences, from graffiti to bebop jazz to Hollywood cinema, this exciting new survey charts his ground-breaking career. Basquiat first came to prominence when he collaborated with Al Diaz to spray-paint enigmatic statements under the pseudonym SAMO©. He went on to work on collages, Xerox art, postcards, performances, and music before establishing his reputation as one of the most important painters of his generation. Accompanying a major exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, this book opens with introductory essays from the curators, which place his practice in a wider art historical context and look at his career through the lens of performance. Six thematic chapters offer new research, with essays from poet Christian Campbell on SAMO©; curator Carlo McCormick on New York / New Wave; writer Glenn O’Brien on the downtown scene; academic Jordana Moore Saggese on Basquiat’s relationship to film and television; and music scholar Francesco Martinelli on Basquiat’s obsession with jazz. This insightful new survey also features extended captions, rare archival material, and extensive photography, demonstrating how Basquiat’s legacy remains more powerful and relevant than ever today."

Join artist and writer Eames Demetrios for an intimate storytelling experience and exclusive first book signing in honor of his most recent book Kcymaerxthaere: The Story so Far...(Folio 1) at Arcana!

This Folio shares and highlights the Kcymaerxthaere stories that exist so far with an intimate experience through imagery, text, artwork and global community that makes the project possible. 

For over the past decade, artist Eames Demetrios has been traveling our linear world installing markers and historic sites that honor events from a parallel world he calls Kcymaerxthaere.  This global project is a vast, interwoven work of 3-dimensional fiction–like a novel with every page in a different place.  Even where one reads such a page influences how one visualizes that particular story.  Kcymaerxthaere also connects communities through shared interpretations of the stories in drawings, weavings and other crafts. Currently, there are 133 markers and historic sites installed in 27 countries on 6 continents.  When Demetrios is not found as the Geographer-at-Large he is found exploring film, art and preserving the design legacy of Charles and Ray Eames as Director of the Eames Office.  He currently continues his exploration of the parallel world in the hope to inspire people to see the world fresh–to see new possibilities in the world around them.  

Book of the day > Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today. Published by Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. " In the history of American art, the contributions of African American artists to the development of abstraction have been largely overlooked. Magnetic Fields aims to change this perspective by focusing on nonrepresentational work by women artists of color, presenting a more complete presentation of American abstraction than has previously been offered. Intergenerational in scope, Magnetic Fields includes more than 20 artists born between 1891 and 1981, among them Lilian Thomas Burwell, Mildred Thompson, Candida Alvarez, Betty Blayton, Nanette Carter, Brenna Youngblood and Jennie C. Jones."

Book of the day > How to Slay: Inspiration from the Queens and Kings of Black Style. Published by Rizzoli. "One of the few surveys of Black style and fashion ever published, How to Slay offers a lavishly illustrated overview of African American style through the twentieth century, focusing on the last thirty-five years. Through striking images of some of the most celebrated icons of Black style and taste, from Josephine Baker, Michelle Obama, Maya Angelou, and Miles Davis to Rihanna, Naomi Campbell, Kanye West, and Pharrell Williams, this book explores the cultural underpinnings of Black trends that have become so influential in mainstream popular culture and a bedrock of fashion vernacular today. A preponderance of Black musicians, who for decades have inspired trends and transformed global fashion, are featured and discussed, while a diverse array of topics are touched upon and examined—hats, hair, divas, the importance of attitude, the use of color, ’60s style, the influence of Africa and the Caribbean, and the beauty of black skin."

Book of the day > Fired Up! Ready To Go! Finding Beauty, Demanding Equity: An African American Life in Art. The Collections of Peggy Cooper Cafritz. Published by Rizzoli Electa. “After decades of art collecting, prominent Washington D.C.–based activist, philanthropist, and founder of the august Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Peggy Cooper Cafritz had amassed one of the most important collections of work by artists of color in the country. But in 2009, the more than three hundred works that comprised this extraordinary collection were destroyed in the largest residential fire in Washington, D.C. history. The pioneering collection included art by Kara Walker, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas, Yinka Shonibare, Nick Cave, Kehinde Wiley, Barkley L. Hendricks, Lorna Simpson, and Carrie Mae Weems, among many others. This beautifully illustrated volume features 200 of the works that were lost, along with works that she has collected since the fire, as well as important contributions by preeminent curators and artists.”

Book of the day > Mark Bradford: Pickett's Charge. Published by Yale University Press. "This beautifully illustrated book documents Pickett’s Charge, an ambitious and timely project by renowned artist Mark Bradford. Eight new paintings extend nearly four hundred feet to form a 360-degree experience encircling an entire floor of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. Bradford’s monumental installation is inspired by the 1883 cyclorama painted by Paul Philippoteaux to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg, which has been considered the critical turning point of the Civil War and, consequently, of American history. Elements from Philippoteaux’s paintings are among multiple layers of collaged paper that Bradford has scraped through to reveal hidden textures and complexities, and this interplay—between past and present, between the legible and the mysteriously evocative—encourages a reconsideration of history’s conventional linear narratives. The catalogue features an interview with the artist by Stéphane Aquin and an essay by Evelyn Hankins that situates the site-specific project within a broader art historical context. With lavish images of the paintings and their installation, including two gatefolds, this book records a significant new contribution to socially engaged American art."

Saturday, March 3rd, 4:00 - 6:00pm

Join artist and writer Eames Demetrios for an intimate storytelling experience and exclusive first book signing in honor of his most recent book Kcymaerxthaere: The Story so Far...(Folio 1) at Arcana!

This Folio shares and highlights the Kcymaerxthaere stories that exist so far with an intimate experience through imagery, text, artwork and global community that makes the project possible. 

For over the past decade, artist Eames Demetrios has been traveling our linear world installing markers and historic sites that honor events from a parallel world he calls Kcymaerxthaere.  This global project is a vast, interwoven work of 3-dimensional fiction–like a novel with every page in a different place.  Even where one reads such a page influences how one visualizes that particular story.  Kcymaerxthaere also connects communities through shared interpretations of the stories in drawings, weavings and other crafts. Currently, there are 133 markers and historic sites installed in 27 countries on 6 continents.  When Demetrios is not found as the Geographer-at-Large he is found exploring film, art and preserving the design legacy of Charles and Ray Eames as Director of the Eames Office.  He currently continues his exploration of the parallel world in the hope to inspire people to see the world fresh–to see new possibilities in the world around them.  

LYLE ASHTON HARRIS: TODAY I SHALL JUDGE NOTHING THAT OCCURS
 

JOIN US SATURDAY, JANUARY 27th 4:00 - 6:00 PM 

FOR A LYLE ASHTON HARRIS BOOK LAUNCH

 AND CONVERSATION WITH WALEAD BESHTY,

CHARLES GAINES, AND NAIMA J. KEITH

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, a radical cultural scene emerged across the globe, finding expression in the galleries, nightclubs, and bedrooms of New York, London, Los Angeles, and Rome. In Lyle Ashton Harris: Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs, the artist’s archive of 35mm Ektachrome images are presented alongside journal entries and recollections by additional contributors coalescing in a presentation of what Harris has described as “ephemeral moments and emblematic figures... against a backdrop of seismic shifts in the art world, the emergence of multiculturalism, the second wave of AIDS activism, and incipient globalization.” The Ektachrome Archive "constructs collective and private narratives to comment on identity, desire, sexuality, and loss" and was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial.

Born in the Bronx in 1965, Lyle Ashton Harris received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Studies Program. His work has been exhibited worldwide including at the Whitney Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 52nd Venice Biennial, and São Paulo Biennial. He currently is an associate professor of art at New York University, and is represented by New York's Salon 94.

Born in London in 1976, Walead Beshty is a Los Angeles-based artist and writer. Beshty was an Associate Professor in the Graduate Art Department at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, and has taught at numerous schools including UCLA, UC Irvine, CalArts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the MFA Program at Bard College. He is renowned for his unique conceptual approach to photography and sculpture and emphasis on the conditions of the production and circulation of images and artworks.

Charles Gaines received his MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1967. In 2013 he received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and presented the critically acclaimed solo exhibition Notes on Social Justice at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. In 2012, Gaines was the subject of a mid-career survey at the Pomona College Museum of Art and the Pitzer College Art Gallery in Claremont, California. His works are in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Whitney Museum of American Art. He has been a full-time faculty member of the School of Art at CalArts since 1989. He currently resides in Los Angeles, and is represented by Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects and Paula Cooper Gallery.

Naima J. Keith joined the California African American Museum (CAAM) in 2016 to guide the curatorial and education departments as well as marketing and communications. During her tenure at CAAM, Keith has also curated Hank Willis Thomas: Black Righteous Space (2016), Genevieve Gaignard: Smell the Roses (2016) and Kenyatta Hinkle: The Evanesced (2017). She is the 2017 recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize in recognition of her contributions to the field of African American art history.

Join us Saturday, January 27th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM to celebrate Mr. Harris' new Aperture monograph Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs with what is sure to be a lively and engaging presentation. If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a copy please place your order here, or call us at 310-458-1499.