Book of the Day Posted Aug 20, 2021

Book of the Day > Judy Chicago: In The Making

● Purchase ● One of the founding forces behind the 1970s feminist art movement, Judy Chicago became widely known for The Dinner Party, a massive installation turning women’s traditional household-bound role on its head by setting a feast for thirty-nine remarkable women to shine a spotlight on women’s contributions to history. Like much of her work that would follow, The Dinner Party received massive popular acclaim while being harshly dismissed for its subject matter and embrace of “feminine” craft. For decades, Chicago operated on the margins of the art world, her work shunned by most critics and institutions, but she never stopped creating. Employing a vast array of mediums from textiles to painting to pyrotechnics Chicago is always willing to tackle the most urgent human questions. Judy Chicago: In the Making accompanies the first exhibition to o er a thorough overview of Chicago’s career. It traces the artist’s practice back to its roots, revealing her unique working process and the origins of the formal and conceptual strategies she has applied throughout her oeuvre. Bringing together a selection drawn from every major series of her work, it also reproduces sketchbooks, journals, and preparatory drawings that document her extensive process of research and development.
Book of the Day Posted Aug 19, 2021

Book of the Day > Alex Da Corte: The Roof Garden Commission 2021

● Purchase ● Alex Da Corte confronts themes of identity and consumerism in his work by placing familiar objects and cultural icons in surprising and surreal contexts. As Long as the Sun Lasts, his new site-specific work commissioned by The Met for its Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, draws together the beloved Sesame Street character Big Bird and the kinetic sculptures of Alexander Calder. Shanay Jhaveri's incisive essay explores Da Corte's deep engagement with art history, popular culture, and his personal experiences. Cultural critic Jack Halberstam provides a compelling consideration of As Long as the Sun Lasts in the context of Da Corte's earlier work, and the artist further discusses his diverse influences—from Renaissance painting to horror films—in a conversation with Sheena Wagstaff.

Book of the Day Posted Aug 18, 2021

Book of the Day > (Signed) Hoda Afshar: Speak The Wind

● Purchase ● On the islands in the Strait of Hormuz, off the southern coast of Iran, there is a common belief that the winds can possess a person, bringing illness and disease. The existence of similar convictions in some African countries suggests that the cult may have been brought to Iran from southeast Africa through the Arab slave trade. This history is rarely spoken about but these winds and the traces they have left on the islands and their inhabitants are the touchstone for Hoda Afshar's Speak The Wind. Through her subtle and perceptive images of the extraordinary landscapes, the people and their rituals, Afshar's beautiful and complex book attempts to picture the wind and its psychic entanglements, to form a visible record of the invisible.
Book of the Day Posted Aug 17, 2021

Book of the Day > Jim Hodges (Signed Edition)

● Purchase ● The first in-depth survey of the life and work of Jim Hodges, one of America's most celebrated contemporary artists
 
Jim Hodges is an artist who addresses issues such as memory, love, and existential struggles through a multifaceted practice that includes photography, screen printing, and sculpture. His use of found materials like rocks and denim, coupled with the adoption of transitory shapes like spiderwebs, speaks of a personal experience that resonates on a collective level filtered through elements available in nature. Mysterious, beautiful, poetic, and conceptually deep, Hodges's work has the rare quality of being simultaneously thought-provoking and visually beautiful.
Book of the Day Posted Aug 14, 2021

Book of the Day > Motor City Underground: Leni Sinclair Photographs 1963–1973

● Purchase ● Motor City Underground is a comprehensive document of the art, rock and roll, and political scenes of late 1960s Detroit. The images are arranged in a loose chronology, including events and subjects such as the March on Washington of 1963, and various performances and artists’ events in and around Wayne State University in Detroit; continuing on to the Detroit Artists Workshop, John Sinclair’s activities with jazz musicians and poets, events in Berkeley, Detroit and Ann Arbor; early concerts with the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges in the Grande Ballroom; anti-war protests, Detroit Uprising and the Black Panthers; spectacular documentation of the influential performance style of the MC5; John Sinclair’s various arrests for marijuana possession and the police response to social protest; the Trans-Love Commune in Detroit and Ann Arbor; large-scale outdoor concerts in Detroit and elsewhere; Leni Sinclair’s ongoing documentation of Sun Ra, and other luminaries in jazz, blues and rock and roll.
 
A self-taught photographer, Leni Sinclair emigrated to the US from East Germany in 1959; in 1964 she met poet, jazz critic and manager of the MC5, John Sinclair. The two married the same year and embarked on a decade of political activism, first founding the Artist’s Workshop, a network of communal houses and performance spaces which evolved into the Trans-Love Energies Commune. The following year the Sinclairs founded the White Panther party in solidarity with the Black Panthers. The couple divorced in 1977; Leni has continued to practice photography and lives in Detroit.
Book of the Day Posted Aug 13, 2021

Book of the Day > Tania Franco Klein: Yalitza Aparicio

● Purchase ● This zine is a collaboration between Yalitza Aparicio and Tania Franco Klein. An attempt is made to conceal our breakout star in plain sight. We sneak into an intimate scene of seductive caramels blended across carpet, wood, leather, and heat that would not dare disguise the piercing ferocity of an ancestry folded over, an ancestry that would have been eradicated had it not been for this very ferocity. A face with centuries of history, how could its majesty end up among television static preaching black and white, and a misplaced token to tame the mane protecting it? Generations of adaptability seem to battle sacred tradition; in Yalitza Aparicio, we see the duality of Mexicans in the United States of America.
Book of the Day Posted Aug 12, 2021

Book of the Day > Jean Dubuffet: Brutal Beauty

● Purchase ● Featuring newly commissioned essays and photography of rarely exhibited works, this book highlights the radicalism of Jean Dubuffet, who was one of the most provocative voices of the postwar avant-garde.
 
In 1940s occupied Paris, Jean Dubuffet began to champion a progressive vision for art; one that rejected classical notions of beauty in favor of a more visceral aesthetic. Taking a pioneering approach to materiality and technique, the artist variously blended paint with sand, glass, tar, coal dust, and string. At the same time, he began to assemble a collection of Art Brut–work that was made outside the academic tradition of fine art–even visiting psychiatric wards from 1945 to collect work by patients. This book features texts from leading scholars and is accompanied by images that illuminate Dubuffet’s attempts to move beyond the artistic expectations of his time. The works are grouped into six thematic sections that focus on specific series, from his graffiti-inspired “Walls” and his notorious portrait series, “People are Much More Beautiful Than They Think” to the “Corps de dames,” a controversial series of “female” landscapes, and his anthropomorphic sculptures, “Little Statues of Precarious Life.” Exquisitely produced, this celebration of Dubuffet’s work embraces his world view that art is for everyone, not just the elite.
Book of the Day Posted Aug 11, 2021

Book of the Day > Led Zeppelin Vinyl

● Purchase ● A tribute to the world’s greatest rock band through a kaleidoscopic collection of vinyl, from obscure international records to handmade albums of historic performances
 
Led Zeppelin released only eight studio albums and no singles over the course of their 12-year career, but to date there are more than 1,000 singles and 2,000 LPs in the market.
 
This definitive volume illustrates in full color some of the rarest and most interesting vinyl releases, including one-of-a-kind rarities, bizarre regional variations, official albums and historic recordings of legendary concerts, sometimes featuring handmade artwork or colored vinyl. The vinyl, labels and covers have been documented by photographer Ross Halfin in superb detail and are annotated with details of their release.
 
In addition, the book includes over forty pages of the most up-to-date comprehensive discography ever compiled on the band, with forensic detail. All known album and single vinyl releases from around the world are listed with catalogue numbers, release or recording dates and additional notes.
 
A labor of love, Led Zeppelin Vinyl is a must-have for fans of the group and vinyl enthusiasts. It is a paean of praise to vinyl artwork and graphic design: The illustrations are explosive and surreal, playful, experimental and subversive, interpreting multiple artistic disciplines with flair and wit.
Book of the Day Posted Aug 10, 2021

Book of the Day > David Wojnarowicz, Marion Scemama: A Slow Boat To China

● Purchase ● While working as a reporter photographer in the mid-1980s, Marion Scemama was sent to New York. There she met David Wojnarowicz at the Christopher Street Pier, where he was painting his first frescoes. He introduced her to his friends, gave her access to the New York underground scene she wanted to document. From that moment on, until David's death in 1992, they maintained a passionate friendship that took the form of artistic collaborations on several occasions, with Marion taking pictures or making films that David Wojnarowicz used in his work.
 
In 1991, David was invited to San Francisco for the launch of his book, Close to the Knives. He wanted to get there by land, traveling through the desert, which he had already done alone several times. He loved those landscapes, the extreme loneliness they made him feel, the physical enjoyment and excitement he felt on the road, feeling weighed down by the sun.
 
When David wrote his long-time friend and asked her to join him that trip, he had known for several years that he was HIV-positive and sensed that this trip may very well be the last one he would ever have the strength to take. The photographs show what this trip meant to the two friends. Like a silent farewell, but in a moment when the knowledge of his impending death, no matter how clear and profound, never suppressed the heightened life force that grew within David in the midst of these desert landscapes.
 
During this weeks-long journey, Marion took about one hundred photographs that have been kept hidden until now. The book follows the two friends on the roads, from shabby motels to deserted villages, against the backdrop of the Death Valley's shadowless landscapes, amidst the white rocks of Zabriskie Point, where the old emblems of American mythology live on.
 
To accompany the account of this journey and tie it to David Wojnarowicz's life and oeuvre, two texts, one written by Thibault Boulvain and Elisabeth Lebovici, will close the collection. The contribution of these researchers, who are in France two important figures in the current research in queer studies, will make it possible to introduce David Wojnarowicz's work in France, where there has only been a translation of Close to the Knives —albeit out of print now—and where no major exhibition of his work is yet to be announced.
Events Posted Aug 10, 2021

Book Show & Tell with Burnt Sienna Research Society

Tomorrow, Wednesday 8/11/21, please tune in to Instagram (@arcanabookss) at 5:00pm for the latest and greatest Show & Tell with Jason EC Wright of @BurntSiennaResearchSociety !
 
Gather up your art books, design books, coffee table books or rare magazines and come nerd out with Jason!
 
Here’s how it works: Jason will be live @arcanabooks sharing some of his favorites with you. Raise your hand to share and he will tap you in. Chat about your most influential book or bookshop. Enjoy the hour, meet some interesting people, and support your local bookstore. There’s nothing like a little book fun in the middle of the week. If there's something in the discussion that piques your interest and we have it in stock, we'll even give you a 10% discount for mentioning that you participated!
 
Jason E.C. Wright is the Founder of http://www.burntsienna.org/, a critical-thinking research consultancy for design histories, intangible culture, and reference materials. Jason is Indiana born and raised, who now considers Los Angeles home. He is an accomplished designer, researcher, writer, with 20+ years as a retail and fashion professional, who takes his love of books seriously, serving as librarian-in-residence at home in Treehouse Hollywood.
 
Thanks to Frances Anderton & Angela Anthony / @HelmsBakeryDistrict.

 

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