Book of the day > Foreigner: Migration into Europe 2015–2016. John Radcliffe Studio ( @johnradcliffestudio ). “Foreigner: Migration into Europe 2015–2016 is a photography book that documents the lives of people at various stages of their migration to Europe. The book is divided into three sections, focusing on migration to Italy from North Africa, migration to Greece and through the Balkans from the middle east, and the migrant camp in Calais known as ‘The Jungle’. Alongside the photography, written texts serve both as a context, and a means to share the stories of the people we met during the project.

The book was created in response to the imagery used in the media to discuss the issue of migration, which we felt was sensationalist, alarmist and was not giving people the time and consideration they deserved. We wanted to approach the subject from a calmer perspective, using medium format portrait photography as a means of meeting the people at the centre the crisis face to face. John Radcliffe Studio is the creative partnership of Daniel Castro Garcia and Thomas Saxby. We specialise in photography, film and graphic design and have spent the last year documenting the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe.” 
 

Book of the day > The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen & Yayoi Kusama - A Fairy Tale of Infinity and Love Forever. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. “Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Little Mermaid” (1839), a story about a girl from the sea who followed her dreams and suffered a disastrous fate on land, is known all over the world (particularly in its animated incarnation). But the familiar story is brought to new life in this gorgeous edition, a collaboration between the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and artist Yayoi Kusama. Paired with Hans Christian Andersen’s original text, the densely patterned, undulating line drawings of Kusama’s Love Forever series conjure up storms in the roiling waves of the ocean, the Little Mermaid’s vast underwater kingdom and her longing to live in the human world. Kusama’s fertile, endlessly repeating forms are an ideal match for the poetic and disturbing universe evoked in the fairy tale; the result is a true collaboration. Kusama’s drawings both illustrate and interpret Andersen’s story, bringing it to terrifying life, and Andersen’s words lend narrative content to Kusama’s landscapes of unblinking eyes, curling tendrils and disembodied profiles.”

Book of the day > Yokainoshima: Island of Monsters by Charles Fréger. Thames & Hudson.  “In Japan, the passing of the year is marked by festivals and rituals that have gone largely unchanged for centuries. Elaborate outfits, made from textiles as well as branches, straw, and other materials plucked from the natural environment, are donned in rural, agricultural, and fishing communities throughout Japan to celebrate seasonal rites of fertility and abundance. Yokainoshima (literally “island of monsters”) explores the extraordinary crop of masks, costumes, and characters that reappear with the return of each season.” 

Book of the day > Olivia Fougeirol: DAVID. “Olivia Fougeirol’s new book DAVID represents a very unique relationship that Olivia has nurtured with a transient in Los Angeles. Her book DAVID includes a selection of images from her series created over the last five years. From the artist: “David Jones inhabits and carries around with him the wreckage of his own ship. This shipwreck is his life, and the island on which he's found himself shipwrecked is Los Angeles. He shields himself with layers of preservers, tubes, duck tape, books and bottles. With a bicycle as his raft, David Jones as castaway drifts among the vastitude of streets of L.A.”

Book of the day > Shio Kusaka: Volume 3; 2014, 2015, 2016. Blum & Poe (@blumandpoe). “Published in conjunction with the exhibition Shio Kusaka (July 2 — August 20, 2016) held at Blum & Poe Los Angeles. This catalogue is the first in an ongoing series of catalogues documenting a selection of Kusaka’s artworks, inspired by Japanese pottery reference books. This first volume focuses on works from 2014–2016.  Shio Kusaka lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and has been exhibited throughout the world.”

Book of the day > Oscar Abolafia: Icons By Oscar. Terra (TerraLanoo)." Frank. Sammie. Twiggy. Sophia. Elizabeth. Elvis. Priscilla. Jim. Marlene. John. Yoko. Ginger. Janis. Mick. Jack. Fred. Salvador. Cher. Audrey. Dolly. Elton. Marlon... Very few celebrities are so iconic that a single name is all that's needed in order to immediately recognise them. One photographer has captured each and every one of these icons - and more besides - on film. He goes by the name of Oscar Abolafia. You can call him Oscar.   Oscar Abolafia is an American photographer known for his outstanding photojournalism of the celebrities that made the 1960s and 70s truly extraordinary. At a young age, William Vandivert, one of the founders of Magnum Photos, took him on as an assistant and showed him the ropes about technical and lighting skills. Abolafia's work made the pages of world-famous magazines such as People Magazine, Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar. Over a span of 50 years of work in the field of photography, he was able to build personal and intimate relationships with the most enduring stars of our age, such as the Kennedys, Liz Taylor, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, to name but a few. Icons by Oscar is the MENDO initiative that has opened up, for the first time ever, Oscar Abolafia's treasure trove of more than 300,000 intimate and iconic photographs. A carefully curated conversation with the iconic figures from our past starts now.”

Arcana: Books on the Arts along with Éditions 
Invite you to a Book Launch and Signing on
Thursday, July 28th between 5:00 and 7:00 PM
for Courts 02 by Ward Roberts
 

Following the release of Courts in 2012, New York-based photographer Ward Roberts releases the second volume of his comprehensive body of work documenting sporting courts in Hong Kong, Bermuda, Hawaii, New York, and Melbourne with Courts 02. 

 
Publisher Éditions has produced two separate releases of the book - a standard edition plus a collector’s edition limited to one hundred examples - and for the very first time a selection of three 23 x 23" color prints that will be on display and available for sale at the event.
 
"As all iconic images inevitably do, Ward Roberts’ Courts have now become a force of their own, circulating the world with terrific velocity via the rushing slipstream of the Internet, gathering momentum and making their mark upon the global eye. His work has brought together a growing community of followers, with whom he feels a humble sense of connection. This is, in a sense, the most beautiful reflection of the essence of what makes his images so riveting, his art so powerful: he gives life to the spaces of photography, and photography to the spaces of life". - Excerpt from Jennifer Kransinki's foreword to Courts 02, 2016.

Ward Roberts is an independent conceptual artist who creates exquisitely composed photographs drawing on themes such as the effects of loneliness and isolation in the modern world. View his Instagram feed!

Éditions is a Sydney-based publisher that collaborates with artists to release collections of limited works. Éditions allows the release of re-interpretative and unexpected forms of contemporary art and publishing. View their Instagram and Facebook feed!

Available at the event will be signed copies of Ward Roberts: Courts 02, Ward Roberts: Courts 02 Special Edition, and three individual color prints in editions of two hundred examples each. If you cannot attend but wish to pre-order a book or a print, please place your online order here by 12:00 noon on Thursday, July 28th, or call us at 310-458-1499.

Book of the day > Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction. Museum of Modern Art + Kunsthaus Zürich. “By rejecting consistency, Picabia powerfully asserted the artist's freedom to change.  Published in conjunction with the first large-scale retrospective of Picabia’s work in the United States since 1970, Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction is a sweeping survey of the artist’s profoundly innovative and influential career. Among the great modern artists of the past century, Picabia is one of the most elusive, given his extreme eclecticism and persistent acts of self-contradiction. Though known as a Dadaist, Picabia’s ongoing stylistic shifts, from Impressionism to radical abstraction, from mechanical imagery to pseudo-classicism and from photo-based realism to art informel remain to be assessed in depth. Similarly, the breadth of his practice, which encompassed poetry, film and performance, is under-recognized. Each makes him a figure relevant for contemporary artists, while his career as a whole challenges familiar narratives of modernism. This volume presents over 100 paintings, complemented by works on paper, publications, and film. Featuring some 500 illustrations and 14 essays, it examines the full range of Picabia’s oeuvre. Authors including distinguished professors George Baker, Briony Fer and David Joselit, and renowned Picabia scholars Carole Boulbès and Arnauld Pierre, discuss a varied series of topics, including the corporeal character of Picabia’s abstractions, his unexpected turn to mechanical painting, his experiments with materials and source imagery, the problems of his politics and his contemporary legacy. A richly illustrated chronology details the expanded nature of Picabia’s visual production—from press polemics to party organizing.”

Book of the day > Slash: A Punk Magazine from Los Angeles: 1977-1980. “The legendary punk and new wave alternative weekly magazine Slash was founded in Los Angeles in 1977 by Steve Samiof, and published a total of 29 print issues before its demise in 1980 (though it had a second life as the punk label Slash Records, which was eventually bought by Warner Bros. Records in 1999). In its brief run, Slash defined the punk subculture in Los Angeles and beyond with the comic strip Jimbo by Gary Panter and photographs by Melanie Nissen, the co-founding publisher and longtime photo editor. Writing by Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Chris D., Pleasant Gehman and Claude “Kickboy Face” Bessy explored reggae, blues and rockabilly in addition to punk and new wave.  Slash diagnosed the nascent punk scene’s challenge to the music industry and established its own oppositional voice in the editorial of its very first issue, staking a position against disco, Elvis and concept albums, and declaring: ‘Enough is enough, partner! About time we squeezed the pus out and sent the filthy rich old farts of rock ’n’ roll to retirement homes in Florida where they belong.’ Slash: A Punk Magazine From Los Angeles, 1977–80 pays homage to the magazine’s legacy with facsimile reproductions of every cover from the publication’s run and reprints of some of the magazine’s best articles and interviews. These are interspersed with new essays, reportage and oral histories from Exene Cervenka, KK Barrett, Gary Panter, Vivien Goldman, Richard Meltzer, Cali Thornhill DeWitt, Chris D., Bryan Ray Turcotte, Chris Morris, Ann Summa and Allan MacDowell, among others, telling the story of this critical chapter in the history of American media.” @hatandbeardpress

Book of the day > Bill Henson. Editions Bessard. “Limited edition of 750 copies with a Signed C-Print inside the book. Lenticular cover. Bill Henson is a visionary explorer of twilight zones, between nature and civilization, youth and adulthood, male and female. His photographs are painterly tableaux that continue the traditions of romantic literature and painting.” @editionsbessard