Book of the Day Posted Nov 16, 2022

Barry McGee: Reproduction

Back in stock! 
 
Barry McGee: Reproduction
 
Hand-stamped special *Los Angeles* edition published by @aperturefnd.
 
 
$ 60.00.
 
Los Angeles-stamped edition is available exclusively from us.
 
Limit 1 per customer! 
 
 
"This monograph is the first to collect the photographs of internationally acclaimed multimedia artist Barry McGee. Though best known for the inventive graphic sensibility of his paintings, drawings, and installations, McGee’s use of photography is an essential component of his artistic vision. Captured at all hours and around the world with whatever camera is at hand, McGee’s images are immediate, casual, intimate, and anarchic all at once. His work boldly employs geometric shapes, clusters of framed drawings and paintings, distinctive characters, and found objects such as empty bottles, surfboards, and wrecked vehicles. Whether incorporated into his iconic multi-element compositions, or printed in the innumerable fanzines and artist’s books that often accompany his exhibitions, photographs pervade McGee’s practice. Barry McGee: Reproduction provides unique insight into the process of a major American artist, and is a testament to the immense amount of visual information McGee has absorbed to build one of the most eclectic and innovative artistic legacies of our time."

 

Book of the Day Posted Nov 11, 2022

Book of the day > Elaine Mayes: The Haight-Ashbury Portraits 1967–1968

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Everyday life on the Haight: previously unseen portraits from the hippie epicenter by the acclaimed documentarian

Elaine Mayes (born 1936) was a young photographer living in San Francisco’s lively Haight-Ashbury District during the 1960s. She had photographed the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and, later that year, during the waning days of the Summer of Love, embarked on a set of portraits of youth culture in her neighborhood. By that time, the hippie movement had turned from euphoria to harder drugs, and the Haight had become less of a blissed-out haven for young people seeking a better way of life than a halfway house for runaway teens.

Realizing the gravity of the cultural moment, Mayes shifted from the photojournalistic approach she had applied to musicians and concert-goers in Monterey to making formal portraits of people she met on the street. Choosing casual, familiar settings such as stoops, doorways, parks and interiors, Mayes instructed her subjects to look into her square-format camera, to concentrate and be still: she made her exposures as they exhaled. Mayes’ familiarity with her subjects helped her to evade mediatized stereotypes of hippies, presenting instead an understated and unsentimental group portrait of the individual inventors of a fleeting cultural moment.

Elaine Mayes: The Haight-Ashbury Portraits 1967–1968 is the first monograph on one of the decade’s most important bodies of work, presenting more than 40 images from Mayes’ series. An essay by art historian Kevin Moore elaborates an important chapter in the history of West Coast photography.
Book of the Day Posted Nov 09, 2022

Book of the day > Henry Taylor B Sides

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The official catalog accompanying the major retrospective at MoCA LA. Henry Taylor creates a grand pageant of contemporary Black life in America.

Surveying 30 years of Henry Taylor’s work in painting, sculpture and installation, this comprehensive monograph celebrates a Los Angeles artist widely appreciated for his unique aesthetic, social vision and freewheeling experimentation. Taylor’s portraits and allegorical tableaux—populated by friends, family members, strangers on the street, athletic stars and entertainers—display flashes of familiarity in their seemingly brash compositions, which nonetheless linger in the imagination with uncanny detail. In his paintings on cigarette packs, cereal boxes and other found supports, Taylor brings his primary medium into the realm of common culture. Similarly, the artist’s installations often recode the forms and symbolisms of found materials (bleach bottles, push brooms) to play upon art historical tropes and modernism’s appropriations of African or African American culture. Taken together, the various strands of Taylor’s practice display a deep observation of Black life in America at the turn of the century, while also inviting a humanist fellowship that pushes outward from the particular.
Book of the Day Posted Oct 22, 2022

Book of the day > Revolution: The History of Turntable Design

"The design, history, and cultural impact of turntables and vinyl technology: the twin powerhouses of the 'vinyl revival' phenomenon. Interest in turntables and records is enjoying a renaissance as analog natives and new converts find their enduring style and extraordinary sound inimitable. Revolution, a follow-up to Phaidon's beloved Hi-Fi: The History of High-End Audio Design, explores the design and cultural impact of the turntable, the component at the center of the 'vinyl revival'. An essential book for audiophiles, collectors, and design fans, Revolution showcases the fascinating history of turntables and vinyl technology from the 1950s to today's cutting-edge designs.

Written by Schwartz, author of Hi-Fi: The History of High-End Audio Design, who is an audio design expert and passionate about analog music, this book includes 300 illustrations from the world of turntables, from affordable to high-end, and everything in between. An essential addition to the bookshelf for analog natives and those new to the vinyl revival as well as music and design lovers."

 

 

Book of the Day Posted Oct 20, 2022

Book of the day > Diane Arbus: Documents

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Diane Arbus Documents. Texts by 55 authors, including Hilton Als, A. D. Coleman, Holland Cotter, Jacob Deschin, Germaine Greer, Hilton Kramer, Arthur Lubow, Janet Malcolm, Francine Prose, Sukhdev Sandhu, Peter Schjeldahl, Adrian Searle, Susan Sontag, Lynne Tillman, and Colm Tóibín. Published by David Zwirner Books/Fraenkel Gallery
 
Through an assemblage of articles, criticism, and essays from 1967 to the present, this groundbreaking publication charts the reception of the photographer’s work and offers comprehensive insight into the critical conversations, as well as misconceptions, around this highly influential artist.  
 
Best known for her penetrating images exploring what it means to be human, Diane Arbus is a pivotal and singular figure in American postwar photography. Arbus’s black-and-white photographs demolish aesthetic conventions and upend all certainties. Both lauded and criticized for her photographs of people deemed “outsiders,” Arbus continues to be a lightning rod for a wide range of opinions surrounding her subject matter and approach. Critics and writers have described her work as “sinister” and “appalling” as well as “revelatory,” “sincere,” and “compassionate.” Through an assemblage of articles, criticism, and essays from 1967 to the present, Diane Arbus Documents charts the reception of the revolutionary photographer's work.
 
Illuminating fifty years of evolution in the field of art criticism, Documents provides a new template for understanding the work of any formidable artist. Organized in eleven sections that focus on major exhibitions and significant events emerging from Arbus’s work, as well as on her methods and intentions, the sixty-nine facsimiles of previously published articles and essays––an archive by all accounts––trace the discourse on Arbus, contextualizing her inimitable oeuvre. Supplemented by an annotated bibliography of more than six hundred entries and a comprehensive exhibition history, Documents serves as an important resource for photographers, researchers, art historians, and art critics, in addition to students of art criticism and the interested reader alike. 

 

Book of the Day Posted Oct 15, 2022

Book of the day > Ice Cold. A Hip-Hop Jewelry History

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Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History presents the bling culture of rappers and their jewelry. Using 40 years of iconic imagery and compelling stories, this visual history shines a light on the world of hip-hop, where mega stars from Run-DMC to Tupac and Jay-Z to Migos and Cardi B flash brilliant custom pieces to show status and personal style.
 
 
Book of the Day Posted Oct 13, 2022

Book of the day > Joe Brainard: The Art of the Personal

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"The first major publication in twenty years on the prodigious and innovative work of this beloved twentieth-century New York multimedia artist and poet, whose work in collage and assemblage transformed the ordinary into the beautiful.
 
Known for his internationally popular memoir, I Remember, which uniquely captures 1950s America, Joe Brainard (1942–1994) was also a prolific and beloved artist. This beautifully illustrated book covers the entire range of his versatile art, including hundreds of drawings, collages, assemblages, prints, and paintings, many unpublished or never exhibited.
 
Brainard was closely associated with the New York School, a community of poets and artists such as Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Alex Katz, Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, and Fairfield Porter, who thrived in downtown Manhattan in the 1960s and ’70s. Brainard transformed ordinary objects and ephemera collected from his Lower East Side neighborhood into stunning assemblages and collages. The book brings together Brainard’s classic subjects, such as the comic strip heroine Nancy; Madonnas (inspired by Ukrainian images in the Lower East Side); his iconic pansies, poppies, and daisies; and erotic works (male torsos).
 
Poet and art critic John Yau describes in vivid detail how Brainard produced thousands of lush multimedia pieces radiant with poignancy, wit, intimacy, and a sheer beauty that express Brainard’s unabashed affection for the world."

 

Book of the Day Posted Oct 12, 2022

Book of the Day > (Signed) Katie Shapiro: Big Sur

● Purchase ● "Located in California's Central Coast, Big Sur has long been a place of escape, retreat and renewal. As an artist, it has been all of those things for me. A magic hovers amongst the raised-up cliffs that make up its rugged topography. Extending for roughly 26 miles, Big Sur is a region of organic flowing coastline that no boundaries can clearly define. Perhaps this is what makes it feel so free.
 
Big Sur has long been a magnet for artists and dreamers alike. Driving between this meeting of land and sea yields a profound quiet of the mind. These feelings are unique to this location. Simply being in this place is a meditation.
 
Over the years I have returned to Big Sur as a place for retreat, renewal, and inspiration. This series of photographs explore different approaches to the landscape. They speak to the place as a changing topography over time, and a space that emits a palpable energy."
Book of the Day Posted Oct 11, 2022

Book of the day > Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party


By Stephen Shames and Ericka Huggins. Published by ACC Artbooks. "Many of us have heard these three words: Black Panther Party. Some know the Party’s history as a movement for the social, political, economic and spiritual upliftment of Black and indigenous people of color – but to this day, few know the story of the backbone of the Party: the women.
 
It’s estimated that six out of ten Panther Party members were women. While these remarkable women of all ages and diverse backgrounds were regularly making headlines agitating, protesting, and organizing, off-stage these same women were building communities and enacting social justice, providing food, housing, education, healthcare, and more. Comrade Sisters is their story.
The book combines photos by Stephen Shames, who at the time was a 20-year-old college student at Berkeley. With the complete trust of the Black Panther Party, Shames took intimate, behind-the-scenes photographs that fully portrayed Party members’ lives. This marks his third photo book about the Black Panthers and includes many never before published images.
 
Ericka Huggins, an early Party member and leader along with Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, has written a moving text, sharing what drew so many women to the Party and focusing on their monumental work on behalf of the most vulnerable citizens. Most importantly, the book includes contributions from over 50 former women members – some well-known, others not – who vividly recall their personal experiences from that time. Other texts include a foreword by Angela Davis and an afterword by Alicia Garza.
All Power to the People."
 
Stephen Shames has authored over 10 monographs, and his images are in the permanent collections of 40 museums and foundations. His work is dedicated to promoting social change, and sharing the stories of those who are frequently overlooked by society. His previous monographs include Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers by Stephen Shames and Bobby Seale (Abrams, 2016) and The Black Panthers (Aperture, 2006).
 
As an activist, former political prisoner and leader in the Black Panther Party, Ericka Huggins has devoted her life to the equitable treatment of all human beings, beyond the boundaries of race, age, culture, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability and status associated with citizenship. For the past 40 years she has lectured across the country and internationally. She spent 14 years in the Black Panther Party, and eight years as Director of the renowned Oakland Community School (1973-1981).

 

Book of the Day Posted Oct 04, 2022

Book of the Day > Liza Lou

 
The most comprehensive book on the work of Liza Lou, whose popular and critically acclaimed installations made entirely of beads consider the important themes of women, community, and the valorization of labor.
 
Liza Lou first gained attention in 1996 when her room-sized sculpture Kitchen was shown at the New Museum in New York. Representing five years of individual labor, this groundbreaking work subverted standards of art by introducing glass beads as a fine art material. The project blurred the rigid boundary between fine art and craft, and established Lou's long-standing exploration of materiality, process, and beauty. Working within a craft métier has led the artist to work in a variety of socially engaged settings, from community groups in Los Angeles, to a collective she founded in Durban, South Africa. Over the past fifteen years, Lou has focused on a poetic approach to abstraction as a way to highlight the process underlying her work.
 
In this comprehensive volume that considers the entirety of Lou’s singular vision, curators, art historians, and artists offer important perspectives on the breadth of the work. Author Julia Bryan-Wilson and Cathleen Chaffee and Glenn Adamson and Elisabeth Sherman, Contributions by Carrie Mae Weems @liza_lou_studio @rizzolibooks Designed by @purtillfamilybusiness

 

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