Book of the day > Entryways of Milan - Ingressi Di Milano. Published by Taschen. "First impressions count, especially in Milano. In this unprecedented photographic journey, editor Karl Kolbitz opens the door to 140 of the city’s most sumptuous entrance halls, captivating in their diversity and splendor. These vibrant Milanese entryways, until now hidden away behind often restrained facades, are revealed as dazzling examples of Italian modernism, mediating public and private space with vivid configurations of color and form, from floors of juxtaposed stones to murals of minimalist geometry.

The collection spans buildings from 1920 to 1970 and showcases the work of some of the city’s most illustrious architects and designers, including , and Luigi Caccia Dominioni, as well as non-pedigreed architecture of equal impact and interest. The photographs for the publication were exclusively created by the Delfino Sisto Legnani, Paola Pansini and Matthew Billings, each evoking the entryways with individual sensibility and a stylistic interplay of detail shots – such as stones, door handles, and handrails – with larger architectural views.

In the well-documented realm of 20th-century Italian design, Kolbitz has stepped over the threshold and delivered a brand new area of enquiry in Milanese modernism. With the rigor of its multi-faceted research, poised photography, and breadth of its featured hallways, this is an invigorating new reference work and an inside look at the city’s design DNA across high to low architecture."

Book of the day > Alice Neel: Uptown. By Hilton Als. Published by David Zwirner Books | Victoria Miro. "Known for her portraits of family, friends, writers, poets, artists, students, singers, salesmen, activists and more, Alice Neel created forthright, intimate and, at times, humorous paintings that quietly engaged with political and social issues. In Alice Neel, Uptown, writer and curator Hilton Als brings together a body of paintings and works on paper of African Americans, Latinos, Asians and other people of color for the first time. Highlighting the innate diversity of Neel’s approach, the selection looks at those often left out of the art-historical canon and how this extraordinary painter captured them; 'what fascinated her was the breadth of humanity that she encountered,' Als writes.

The publication explores Neel’s interest in the diversity of uptown New York and the variety of people among whom she lived. This group of portraits includes well-known figures such as playwright, actress and author Alice Childress, the sociologist Horace R. Cayton, Jr., the community activist Mercedes Arroyo; and the widely published academic Harold Cruse, alongside more anonymous individuals of a nurse, a ballet dancer, a taxi driver, a businessman and a local boy who ran errands for Neel.

In short and illuminating texts on specific works written in his characteristic narrative style, Als writes about the history of each sitter and offers insights into Neel and her work, while adding his own perspective. A contemporary and personal approach to the artist’s oeuvre, Als’ project is 'an attempt to honor not only what Neel saw, but the generosity of her seeing.'”

Book of the day > Ron Jude – Nausea. Published by MACK (@mack_books). “Nausea—taken from the title of Sartre’s 1938 existential novel—is a body of photographs that registers the interiors of public schools in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Atlanta, Georgia from 1990-92 by American photographer Ron Jude. Departing from mere documentation, however, Jude lures us into peering through windows, doorways and crevices of walls into empty classrooms and corridors, as we become increasingly conscious of the perils of our own gaze. Rousing, rather than abating, the uncertainty of looking, Nausea established the building blocks for the next twenty-five years of Jude’s photographic output, including Other Nature, Alpine Star, Lick Creek Line and Lago.

At the heart of Nausea lies the premise that philosophical inquiry might be filtered and consumed through photographs, just as it is filtered through Sartre’s work of literary fiction. Taking as his subject the banality of institutional learning, the monotonous spaces and objects captured in Nausea serve as a platform for exploring the nexus between the narrative limitations of photography and consciousness. Employing a distinctive visual language, marked by an acute sense of colour, radical framing and shallow focus, Jude created a world both familiar and uncanny, imbued with a pervasive sense of unease.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the inaugural exhibition of Nausea in 1992 at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, Jude has made an entirely new edit of this work. Many of the photographs in this volume have never before been published or exhibited.”

LA Forum is proud to join with Arcana: Books on the Arts in hosting a publication launch for local design and architecture office SO-IL, who are presenting their first monograph, "solid objectives: order, edge, aura" 

Featuring a collection of built and unbuilt projects, texts, processes and experiments from the firm’s first eight years of work (2008-2016), the book proposes an architecture that requires interpretation. The publication is at once a visual and textual manifesto that introduces an attitude towards the design and realization of architecture in an interconnected environment. 

The event will feature SO-IL's Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu in discussion with Johnston Marklee's Mark Lee.
 

Book of the day > Ashley Hicks: Details. Published by IDEA Books @idea.ltd “Hicks' zooms in on the architectural and decorative details of great British and European houses. The results of this historic snoop around are juxtaposed with his own highly creative and idiosyncratic interiors." "Details by Ashley Hicks is a new interiors book that presents an annotated photographic insight into great historic homes and buildings. Much of the photography was taken by Hicks himself, almost half on his phone, capturing fragments of his own work besides historic interiors, with a focus on the key intersection of materials which Hicks sees as ’the most telling moment of design.’ Properties included are Sir John Soane’s Museum, Montacute House in Somerset, Holkham Hall in Norfolk and Hicks' own rooms at Albany, the exclusive residences hidden between Piccadilly and Savile Row. Limited edition of 500 copies.” @ashleyhicks1970

Book of the day > Nick Cave: Until. Published by Prestel. "This generously illustrated book takes readers inside Nick Cave’s newest work: an enormous, elaborate journey through the workings of the artistic mind. Nick Cave’s “Soundsuits”―exuberant, brightly colored wearable sculptures adorned with buttons, hair, toys and other found objects―have made him one of the best-known contemporary artists. This book documents his most extensive work to date, turning his art inside out. Until fills MASS MoCA’s football field- sized gallery, without a single Soundsuit to be found. Instead Cave takes us inside the belly of one of his iconic sculptures with an immersive environment populated by a dazzling array of found objects, echoing some of Cave’s and America’s most confounding dilemmas: gun violence, racial inequality, injustice within our cities’ police departments, and death. An installation diary and numerous images reveal how an idea becomes reality. Until also incorporates special appearances by dancers, singer/ songwriters, and poets, as well as community forums, and opportunities for public debate and engagement. Transcripts of the first of these events accompany the book’s illustrations. This book features an essay by exhibition Curator Denise Markonish, commentary by David Byrne and Lori E. Lightfoot that contextualizes Cave’s work against today’s headlines, and an excerpt from Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric. Powerful and transformative, Until promises to take its place among the era’s most important artistic statements."

Book of the day > Encyclopedia of Flowers, Vol. 3. Published by Seigensha. “Makoto Azuma and Shunsuke Shiinoki collaborate once again to further their pioneering ‘Encyclopedia of Flowers’ series, which focuses in part on changes that impact floristry, such as the disappearance and new emergence of species, as well as on changing the common perception of flowers. Following the first volume in 2011 and the second in 2015, this third dazzling instalment features a greater variety of styles, reflected in photographs divided into seven chapter-categories that include ‘Coexistence’, ‘Hybrid’, ‘Chiaroscuro’, and ‘Autogenesis’. The myriad arrangements done in Azuma’s singular style are expertly captured by Shiinoki’s camera.”

UPCOMING EVENTS AT ARCANA!

Stay tuned for details or sign up for our e-mailing list.

Sunday June 18th, 4:00 to 6:00 PM
DAN HICKS: I SCARE MYSELF - A MEMOIR
BOOK SIGNING AND PANEL
MODERATED BY KRISTINE McKENNA 
with VAN DYKE PARKS, MARIA MULDAUR, JIM KWESKIN, 
AND HOT LICKS GUITARIST PAUL ROBINSON!

Saturday, June 24th, 4:00 to 6:00 PM
BARRY AND BARBARA SHAFFER: ECHOES OF BHUTAN

Book of the day > Mike Kelley: Memory Ware: A Survey. Published by Hauser + Wirth. “Over the course of his four-decade career, Mike Kelley (1954–2012) critically questioned aesthetic conventions and examined all forms of culture. The approximately 100 Memory Ware and associated works were made during the first decade of the 21st century; all are reproduced in this catalog. Named for a genre of North American folk art in which everyday utilitarian objects such as vases are coated with a claylike substance and then embedded with small objects including shells, beads and buttons, Kelley’s Memory Ware series consists both of wall-hung works (known as Memory Ware Flats) and freestanding pieces. The artist’s appropriation of this folk tradition eliminates recognizable underlying objects and expands the original method to include a wider variety of keepsakes. The Memory Ware sculptures, by contrast, juxtapose dense clusters of found objects with minimally or undecorated areas and reintroduce an overall structure.”