In the News Posted Apr 06, 2022

Getty Acquires the "Whitney and Lee Kaplan African American Visual Culture Collection"

4/1/22
After months and months of keeping things under wraps, we are very proud - and excited - to be able to announce that the “Whitney and Lee Kaplan African American Visual Culture Collection” of printed materials documenting the visual culture and representation of African Americans and the African Diaspora in the Western Hemisphere has found a fantastic “forever home” at the Getty Research Institute!
 
I began this journey in 1989 with the purchase of the now incredibly-coveted Charles White Brown Pharmaceutical print portfolio and a self-imposed challenge to amass as many books on African American artists in my book-buying forays as I could. By 2020, this archive had grown to 3500 exhibition catalogues, periodicals, posters, announcements, and bits of ephemera including much material on a vibrant Post-War Los Angeles art scene with the likes of Betye Saar, Samella Lewis, David Hammons, Senga Nengudi, Ed Bereal, Bernie Casey, John Outterbridge, and Kerry James Marshall up through Charles Gaines, Henry Taylor, Mark Bradford, Martine Syms, Devin Troy Strother, Senon Williams, and Devin Reynolds. And so many others.
 
Now, over thirty years later, we are overjoyed that this archive has been acquired by the Getty and will remain a vital resource in the city we love.
 
We owe a HUGE debt of gratitude to all of the artists, photographers, booksellers, curators, gallerists, collectors, and individuals that helped make this possible. We are particularly indebted to Simone Fujita and Kathleen Salomon at the Getty Research Institute for making our wish of placing this collection in the best possible hands come true.  – Lee Kaplan
 
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Book of the Day Posted Apr 05, 2022

Book of the Day > Gerry Johansson: Spanish Summer

● Purchase ● Over more than three decades, Gerry Johansson has brought his shrewd and sensitive eye to bear on peripheral landscapes the world over, from Ulan Bator to Antarctica. Spanish Summer sees him return to one of the first places that captured his imagination: the plains of central Spain. The chapel remained etched into Johansson’s memory and, decades later, led him to return and rediscover the country’s architectural heritage, religious significance, and beauty. With these images, a survey is conducted of a landscape into which thousands of years of cultural traces have bedded down. Johansson’s exacting composition and delicate black-and-white tonalities reveal a transient territory in which telephone wires transcend hoary crucifixes, modern plaster meets timeworn stone, and the shadows of industrial megaliths reach blindly across the dust.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 02, 2022

Book of the Day > Rebel Stylist: Caroline Baker - The Woman Who Invented Street Fashion

● Purchase ● Caroline Baker is the antidote to high fashion. As the legendary fashion editor of Nova magazine in the 1960s and '70s, her style was quite literally cutting-edge (she famously chopped up clothes to achieve her desired looks). She is credited with challenging the status quo of the industry and society at large, and introducing street fashion to the mass market. Stylist-of-choice for the most dynamic female designers on the scene – Katharine Hamnett and Vivienne Westwood – Caroline has continued her trajectory as a fashion provocateur. Her work has appeared on the pages of Vogue, Tatler and Cosmopolitan as well as The Face and i-D – and unsurprisingly, a new generation of style-setters is now looking to Baker’s back catalogue for inspiration.
 
This book offers an in-depth overview of Baker’s work, expertly curated and considered by Iain R. Webb. It is divided into sections that highlight specific recurring themes and tropes – such as Punk Rock, DIY, Utility and Sportswear. These ideas have defined Baker’s evolving sartorial vocabulary over six decades, and set a template for street fashion that endures to this day. Accompanied with personal commentary from Baker herself and specially written contributions by Vivienne Westwood and Katharine Hamnett, this is the definitive guide to Caroline Baker and her influence on fashion.
Book of the Day Posted Mar 31, 2022

Book of the Day > i-D: Wink and Smile!: The First Forty Years

● Purchase ● i-D began as a fanzine dedicated to the street style of punk-era London in 1980 and quickly earned its position at the vanguard of fashion and style, abiding by the premise of “originate—don’t imitate.” This anniversary volume is the ultimate tribute to the irreverent and forward-thinking magazine that revolutionized not only the world of fashion publishing but fashion itself.
 
Over the 40 years since its launch, i-D has grown from a hand-stapled zine to one of the world’s leading international style titles with two million Instagram followers. Founded by Terry Jones in 1980, i-D began as a chronicle of style and attitude as much as a fashion bible, and over the years it has kept to that ethos, in the process becoming a nurturing ground for generations of fashion talents, from David Sims to Juergen Teller, Edward Enninful to Wolfgang Tillmans, Tyler Mitchell to Harley Weir.
 
This celebratory volume commemorates the 40th anniversary of i-D through the prism of different cultural eras, with each chapter focusing on a decade of the magazine’s history and featuring a mix of original rephotographed spreads from the magazine, reprinted text pieces, archival imagery, covers, and new essays exploring both the history of i-D and the wider cultural contexts of the era it was created in. It’s a magazine that has given Greta Thunberg, Madonna, Naomi Campbell, and Sonic the Hedgehog their first covers; that invented the emoticon; and that, across 40 years and 500 cover winks, has had one defining message: that fashion should be inclusive, fun, diverse, and—always—original.
Book of the Day Posted Mar 30, 2022

Book of the Day > Lucas Foglia: Summer After

● Purchase ● “This is how I remember New York City in 2002. I was 19 years old and had just moved to Manhattan from my family’s small farm on Long Island. It was the first summer after the September 11 attacks. Workers were removing the last of the debris from the collapsed Twin Towers. The city felt both immense and fragile compared to the groundedness of my childhood home.”
 
“On weekdays, I worked in Arnold Newman’s photography studio. After hours and on weekends, I walked through the city’s five boroughs with my camera. When someone made eye contact with me, I asked if I could make a portrait of them. At first, I assumed people would respond with caution. I was a stranger. The city was recovering from an event that shook its sense of security. Yet, most people said yes and looked straight into my camera lens. I am grateful they chose to trust me.” - Lucas Foglia
 
Published on the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Lucas Foglia’s portraits show the tremendous diversity of New York City. Everyone is portrayed with dignity, regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. Today, as the world begins to heal from the coronavirus pandemic, the photographs remind us to approach strangers with compassion, across social distances.
Book of the Day Posted Mar 29, 2022

Book of the Day > Kehinde Wiley at the National Gallery

● Purchase ● Presenting new work by American artist Kehinde Wiley, as he explores the European landscape tradition through film and painting
 
The American artist Kehinde Wiley (b. 1977) is best known for his spectacular portraits of African Americans with knowing references to the grand European tradition of painting. He was commissioned in 2017 to paint Barack Obama, becoming the first Black artist to paint an official portrait of a president of the United States. His work makes reference to old master paintings by positioning contemporary Black sitters in the pose of the original historical figures, raising issues of power and identity, and the absence or relegation of Black and minority-ethnic figures within European art.
 
For his first collaboration with a major UK gallery, Wiley will depart from portraiture to explore the European landscape tradition through the medium of film and painting, casting Black Londoners from the streets of Soho. His new works will explore European Romanticism and its focus on epic scenes of oceans and mountains, drawing inspiration from the National Gallery’s masterpieces in landscape and seascape.
Book of the Day Posted Mar 26, 2022

Book of the Day > YSL Lexicon: An ABC of The Fashion, Life, and Inspirations of Yves Saint Laurent

● Purchase ● The world's leading authorities on fashion and design celebrate the 60th anniversary of YSL's first runway presentation with a lexicon that includes many images from the designer's extraordinary archives. Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) is credited with reviving French haute couture in the 1960s, with making ready-to-wear reputable, and with using non-European cultural references. In addition to the kaleidoscope of images in this book, a coterie of tastemakers have supplied listings that encompass YSL's style inspirations (C is for Costumes, as exemplified by the Russian theme of the famed autumn-winter 1976-77 collection, T is for Tuxedo, which the designer initially referenced with his 1965 "Le Smoking") and important facets of his life (J is for Jardin Majorelle, the garden of the couturier's paradisiacal retreat in Marrakech, R is for Rive Gauche, the bohemian, chic neighborhood of Paris where the YSL boutique is situated and also the name of the house's famous perfume launched in 1970). This distillation and celebration of the designer's life reveals the inner world of a twentieth-century master.
Book of the Day Posted Mar 25, 2022

Book of the Day > Diane Keaton - Saved: My Picture World

● Purchase ● Diane Keaton’s cabinet of saved and found photographic curiosities is a visual autobiography of sorts and scrapbook of her fascinations and reflections.
 
A visual autobiography of a kind as only Diane Keaton could tell it, via the celebrated star’s idiosyncratic and personal collections and ruminative texts, Saved offers an unprecedented glimpse into the mind of the legendary film star. The book begins with an homage to movies—curiously, to old “b” grade horror flicks, such as Attack of the Puppet People—a passion that manifests in a collection of rare film stills showing large-brain aliens with crablike hands and terrified men with eyes growing from their shoulders. In a second chapter or collection, the reader encounters “Cracked,” a startling selection of crinkled and neglected negatives: found portraits that speak of the past through the broken lens of time. Even more intimately revealing are photographs taken by the star herself, be they of pigeons while on downtime from the set of Reds in London or of the “greeters” of Hollywood Boulevard, caught at the other end of her Rolleiflex camera lens, now revealed as the seen, the experienced, the remembered, the cherished. But this is only the beginning, the surface of a very deep dive into the wellsprings of one of the great creative talents at work today. The book is an invitation to dive in.
Book of the Day Posted Mar 22, 2022

Book of the Day > Harry Bertoia: Sculpting Mid-Century Modern Life

● Purchase ● An extraordinary artist and designer: a fresh view of Harry Bertoia’s entire body of work.
 
Italian-born American Harry Bertoia (1915–78) was one of the most prolific and innovative artists and designers of the postwar period. Trained at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he met future colleagues and collaborators, such as Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, and Eero Saarinen, he went on to make one-of-a-kind jewelry, design iconic chairs, create thousands of unique sculptures including large-scale commissions for significant buildings, and advance the use of sound as sculptural material. His work speaks to the confluence of numerous fields of endeavor but is united throughout by a sculptural approach to making and an experimental embrace of metal.
 
Harry Bertoia: Sculpting Mid-Century Modern Life accompanies the first US museum retrospective of the artist’s career to examine the full scope of his broad, interdisciplinary practice and features important examples of his furniture, jewelry, monotypes, and diverse sculptural output. Lavishly illustrated, the book offers new scholarly essays as well as a catalog of the artist’s numerous large-scale commissions. It questions how and why we distinguish between a chair, a necklace, a screen, and a freestanding sculpture—and what Bertoia’s sculptural things, when taken together, say about the fluidity of visual language across culture, both at midcentury and now.
Book of the Day Posted Mar 19, 2022

Book of the Day > *Signed​* Foodheim: A Culinary Adventure

● Purchase ● Director and actor Eric Wareheim might be known for his comedy, but his passion for food and drink is no joke. For the last fifteen years he has been traveling the world in search of the best bites and sips, learning from top chefs and wine professionals along the way. His devotion to beautiful natural wine, the freshest seafood crudos, and perfectly cooked rib-eyes is legit. And now he wants to share with you everything he’s learned on this epic food journey.
 
In Foodheim, Wareheim takes readers deep into his foodscape with chapters on topics like circle foods (burgers, tacos), grandma foods (pasta, meatballs), and juicy foods (steak, ribs). Alongside recipes for Chicken Parm with Nonna Sauce, Personal Pan Pep Pep, and Crudite Extreme with Dill Dippers, you will discover which eight cocktail recipes you should know by heart, how to saber a bottle of bubbly, and what you need to do to achieve handmade pasta perfection at home.
 
Written with award-winning cookbook editor Emily Timberlake and featuring eye-popping photographs and art chronicling Wareheim’s evolution as a drinker, how to baby your pizza dough into pie perfection, and more, Foodheim is the ultimate book for anyone who lives to eat.
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