Book of the Day Posted Jun 10, 2021

Book of the Day > Catherine Opie

Purchase ● Long awaited, the first survey of the work of one of America's foremost contemporary fine art photographers
 
For almost 40 years, Catherine Opie has been documenting with psychological acuity the cultural and geographic identity of contemporary America. This unique artist monograph presents a compelling visual narrative of Opie's work since the early 1980s, pairing images across bodies of work to form a full picture of her artistic vision. With more than 300 beautiful illustrations and made in close collaboration with Opie, the book marks a turning point in the consideration of this artist's work to date.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 09, 2021

Book of the Day > German Design 1949–1989: Two Countries, One History

Purchase ● The fertile dual evolution of design under socialism and capitalism in postwar Germany The cheap, colorful plastic designs of East Germany pitted against the cool functionalism of West German design: German Design 1949–1989: Two Countries, One History does away with such clichés. More than 30 years after German reunification, it presents a comprehensive overview of German design history of the postwar period for the first time ever. With over 300 illustrations and numerous examples from the fields of design—fashion, furniture, graphics, automobile, industrial and interiors—the book shows how design featured in daily life on both sides of the Wall, the important part it played in the reconstruction process and how it served as a propaganda tool during the Cold War. Key objects and protagonists—from Dieter Rams or Otl Aicher in the West to Rudolf Horn or Renate Müller in the East—are presented alongside formative factors such as the Bauhaus legacy and important institutions such as the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Ulm.
 
The exceptional case of the division of Germany allows a unique comparative perspective on the role design played in promoting socialism and capitalism. While in the Federal Republic to the West, it became a generator of the export economy and the “Made in Germany” brand, in the East it was intended to fuel the socialist planned economy and affordability for broad sections of the population was key. While the book highlights the different realities of East and West, the many cross references that connected design in both are also examined. It impressively illustrates the many facets of German design history in the postwar period: from the domestic sphere to global politics, from industrial products to design’s role as a tool of protest that foreshadowed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 08, 2021

Book of the Day > Michael Schmelling: Scrapyard

Purchase ● Photographs from 2019–2020, shot in Los Angeles. Includes an essay of sorts in which Schmelling writes about his ongoing interest in trash/scrap, and perennial inspirations: Don DeLillo, Marylinne Robinson, Mandel & Sultan’s ‘Evidence’, Daniel Spoerri, Los Angeles, etc…
Book of the Day Posted Jun 05, 2021

Book of the Day > Arthur Jafa: MAGNUMB

Purchase ● An essential overview of Jafa's sweeping, dynamic and disquieting video portraits of Black American life Though he has worked in film and music for decades, American video artist Arthur Jafa only garnered acclaim in the art world in 2016 for his video work Love is the Message, the Message is Death. Composed of found images and videos, his oeuvre revolves around Black American culture, the history of slavery, and ongoing structural and physical violence against Black Americans. As Jafa put it in his 2003 text “My Black Death”: “The central conundrum of black being (the double bind of our ontological existence) lies in the fact that common misery both defines and limits who we are. Such that our efforts to eliminate those forces which constrain also function to dissipate much which gives us our specificity, our uniqueness, our flavor by destroying the binds that define we will cease to be, but this is the good death (boa morte) to be embraced.”
 
This essential overview presents Jafa’s best-known works, such as Love is the Message, the Message is Death and its 2018 follow-up piece The White Album, alongside never-before-seen projects and essays by notable scholars.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 04, 2021

Book of the Day > Calvin Marcus: Conspiracy Of Asses

Purchase ● This publication reproduces Calvin Marcus’s large paintings since 2018. Each painting attempts to achieve complete autonomy within its edges. Capturing dream-like visions and snapshots of the absurdity of contemporary life, they depict diverse subjects: animals, humanoid figures, interiors and landscape-like spaces. These singular representations share a sensibility, at once idiosyncratic and disarming, that immediately draws the viewer into the mysteries of the quotidian world. Each poses—with Marcus's humorous brand of surrealism—as many questions as answers.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 03, 2021

Book of the Day > Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians

Purchase ● In 1979, JEB (Joan E. Biren) self-published her first book, Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians. In a work that was revolutionary for its era, JEB made photographs of lesbians from different ages and backgrounds in their everyday lives—working, playing, raising families, and striving to remake their worlds. The photographs were accompanied by writings from acclaimed authors including Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Joan Nestle, and others. Various women pictured in the book also shared their personal stories. Eye to Eye signaled a radical new way of seeing—moving lesbian lives from the margins to the center, and reversing a history of invisibility. More than just a book, it was an affirmation of the existence of lesbians that helped to propel a political movement. Reprinted for the first time in forty years, Eye to Eye is a faithful reproduction of a work that still resonates today. This edition features additional essays from artist and writer Tee Corinne, former World Cup soccer player Lori Lindsey, and photographer Lola Flash.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 02, 2021

Book of the Day > Hannah Kozak: He Threw The Last Punch Too Hard

Purchase ● When I was nine, my mother abandoned my family to have an affair. Her lover was violent: he beat her so badly she suffered permanent brain damage and had to be moved into an assisted living facility at age forty one.
 
I have early, fond memories of my mother as a beautiful, passionate, vivacious Guatemalan -esque Sophia Loren. But after she left, I had tremendous feelings of abandonment and rage towards her. I judged her as impetuous, selfish, reckless and negligent. I resented what she did to herself and her family. I carried so much anger, yet whenever I saw her, I was overcome with pity and sadness. Looking at her hand gnarled from brain damage brought forth more emotion than I could bear. For these reasons, I virtually ignored my mother to distance myself from my own pain.
 
But pain ignored does not disappear. I came to realize our relationship needed healing. Thankfully, through graduate work in Spiritual Psychology and with a healer, I was able to dissolve the judgments I carried about my mother and myself and forge a relationship with her. I began to photograph her in December 2009 until 2019, for this project.
 
These photos are meant to take me out of my comfort zone while telling my mother's story of isolation, loneliness, abuse, connection, compassion, forgiveness, family, humanity, grace, joy, and love. I didn’t need to travel the world to deepen my spirituality. My greatest teacher was in front of me my entire life. I just couldn’t see it was my mother, a true Bodhisattva. She forgave me for not visiting her all those decades without uttering a word. I forgave her for leaving our family. Forgiveness happens when you care more about the love in a relationship than the logic of your ego. I no longer pity my mother. She continually inspires me to live by my heart, not my head. The love I feel for her has broken my heart wide open.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 01, 2021

Book of the Day > Gio Ponti (XL)

Purchase ● To study Gio Ponti’s prolific body of work is to appreciate the clear, unifying vision behind a complex creative universe. A synthesis of the arts, his creations expand intuitively with the Italian grandeur and studied lightness that defined his iconic style. Ponti’s rare capacity to move seamlessly between scales allowed him to approach the design of a teaspoon with the same conviction as he did an entire city. He was as much an architect and designer as he was a publisher, poet, and man. A treasure in its own regard, his contribution is also a distinctive landmark of Italy’s mid-century Renaissance and the modernist values it sought to realize.
 
This new book is the most comprehensive account of Ponti’s work to date, unprecedented in scale and scope. It tracks the development of his oeuvre over 6 decades, with 136 projects indexed and reproduced in high resolution, each object framed by the context in which Ponti had created it. Like windows onto his elusive life, unpublished materials and candid imagery create new dialogues between his famous masterpieces and his lesser-known feats. A rich layer of texts, featuring an extensive biographical essay by Stefano Casciani, was produced in close collaboration with the Gio Ponti Archives offering an intimate insight on his life’s work. Materializing Ponti’s core philosophy of modernity, this book presents architecture as a performing object, a "self-illuminating" stage for his humanistic art de vivre and boundless creativity.
Book of the Day Posted May 28, 2021

Book of the Day > Alessandra Sanguinetti: The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and The Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams (Signed)

Purchase ● For more than two decades, Alessandra Sanguinetti has been photographing the lives of Guillermina and Belinda, two cousins living in rural Argentina, as they move through childhood and youth toward womanhood. This volume, originally published in 2010 and reissued now as the first instalment of a trilogy, chronicles the first five years of their collaboration. Sanguinetti’s images portray a childhood that is both familiar and exceptional. The farmlands of western Buenos Aires province are a particular mix of the modern and traditional, where life is lived in consonance with animals and rugged landscapes. Against this backdrop, Guille and Belinda go through the childhood rites of dressing up and make believe, exploring and appropriating the world around them as they go. As they slip between roles, alternately performing for and being caught by Sanguinetti’s camera, the profound bond between the two girls is unmistakable. Approaching the precipice of early adolescence, their games are imbued with the poignant weight of their dreams and desires as the world of play meets that of reality. By depicting the lives of women and girls within the conventionally masculine world of Argentinan gauchos and farmers, Sanguinetti’s book interrogates the frameworks of mythologies of all kinds, honouring lives that are usually unseen. The Adventures of Guille and Belinda is a portrait of rural childhood at once quiet and poetic, in which the fantastic and the mundane are intimately entwined.
Book of the Day Posted May 27, 2021

Book of the Day > Jim Shaw: Paperback Covers

Purchase ● Dream-inspired book covers for imaginary pulp novels by Americana connoisseur-bricoleur Jim Shaw
 
Since the 1970s, American artist Jim Shaw (born 1952) has used his multimedia artistic practice as a means of exploring and exploiting pop-culture iconography. This publication focuses on one of the key series in Shaw’s corpus, in which he draws inspiration from the Anglo-American graphic design and illustrative tradition of cheap paperback books. Inspired by the artist's intense dreaming life, the Paperback Covers series (1996–2013) recreates the lurid imagery associated with pulp novels, with vertical canvases that depict fantastical and irreverent imagery: in one, a werewolf in suspenders is struck by an oncoming 18-wheeler; in another, a line of chorus girls dance in front of a vampire and a woman in red as the couple is in engulfed by flames. Though these “books” bear no text, Shaw’s paintings evoke exciting narratives within a single image. All the inventoried Paperback Covers are collected in this softcover volume along with a text by Charlie Fox.
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