Dear Friends,
 

We are closed for in-store shopping. But we are here - working behind closed doors - ready to help you! 

Pick-up, delivery, and shipping are all available and welcomed! We are here if you need something though we are required to limit visitation for the safety of our staff and to comply with local ordinances.

You can order from amongst the listings on this site (our recent Books of the Days are here), give us a ring or send us a message and we will be happy to satisfy your bibliographic cravings. You can also buy a gift certificate!
 

Our website has only a few thousand listings and is by no means representative of the entirety of our stock - so let us know what you're looking for and we will check our shelves:  310-458-1499 / books@arcanabooks.com.
 

PLEASE BE SAFE & WELL!

photo by Yoshihiro Makino

Book of the day > Duro Olowu: Seeing. By Published by Prestel. Flying off of the shelves faster than hand sanitizer!!! Link to order in bio - more copies on the way... "Fashion world leader Duro Olowu applies his creative process and cosmopolitan eye to a major exhibition drawn from Chicago's great art collections. Nigerian-born British fashion designer Duro Olowu is internationally renowned for his womenswear label launched in 2004 that speaks to a cosmopolitan sensibility informed by his international background and a confident eye for visual disciplines from art to film to popular culture. Olowu's global viewpoint has translated into wildly popular platforms and projects from Instagram postings to revelatory curatorial projects in London and New York that position him at the transcultural crossroads of art, culture, and fashion. Now Olowu turns his gimlet eye on Chicago to curate a show drawn from that metropolis's public and private art collections, anchored by the MCA's holdings. Published on the occasion of Olowu's largest curatorial project, Duro Olowu: Seeing elucidates the designer-cum-curator's creative process as he imagines relationships between artists and objects across time, media, and geography: Naomi Beckwith illuminates Olowu's curatorial process, driven by a voracious appetite for contemporary art and culture brought together in sharp juxtapositions. Valerie Steele situates Olowu's designs within the contemporary fashion world. Ekow Eshun focuses on Olowu's role within Britain's black and Afro-Caribbean creative community. Thelma Golden interviews Olowu about his work as designer, curator, and chronicler of culture and style across the worlds of museums and fashion. And Lynette Yiadom-Boakye creates new fiction for this volume."

We're going to close for the day. We apologize for any disappointment but we're looking out for our staff.

Here for you always via email and back in some capacity on Tuesday,

Your pals at Arcana.

PS: Snoozy Animals available for purchase here!

Punkouture. Published by Gingko Press. “Punkouture is a stunning international catwalk displaying and reconstructing everything that has ever been sewn together in punk style. Divided into different thematic sections — clothing, hair, make-up, footwear, accessories, trademarks, and shops — this illustrated guide includes designs by BOY, Vivienne Westwood, Fiorucci, Shelly’s, and more. Punk aimed to be a brutal attack to the middle class. They said that to be punk you just had to wear all that was ugly and combine it in the most absurd way: jailed pants and leather braces, straitjackets with chain belts and buckles in abundance, pants made with bags for garbage, leather pants, ripped fishnet tights, tattered skirts held together by huge safety pins and masking tape… Punkouture‘s color and black & white photographs and illustrations capture all the clashing styles and trends. This collection of texts and images is perfect for fans of the 70’s and 80’s, music, graphic design, and pop and underground culture."

Dear Friends,
 
We regret that we must postpone our March events for Jeff Divine: 70s Surf Photographs and Matthew Spiegelman: Transmitter. We will have signed copies of both fantastic books available to pick-up or ship soon, so order away. If you have already ordered copies, they will ship starting on Wednesday. Stay tuned for new dates.
 
The well-being of our community is our top priority.

Our second priority is getting our community the fabulous books that you so deseperately need - now, more than ever!
 
So we are here for you.
 
If there’s something you’d like to have but you’d rather not come to the shop, call us or write to us! We’ll take care of it remotely. We can ship it, have it delivered, hold it for you, or you can drive by and we can run out to your car with the goods! If you’d like to come in outside of our regular hours, let us know – we’ll try and make it work.
 
We’re doing lots of constant cleaning, offering hand sanitizer (while supplies last!), and keeping it very, very cheerful over here! If you can’t travel, take a trip somewhere exotic through books. The music is playing, the books (so many books!) are here, we want to do what we can to keep everyone at ease and happy. So let us know what we can do to help you.
 
We’re truly sorry that so many great events are being cancelled around the world and we are so lucky that we have this permanent space to share with you. Many small publishers and artists rely on events such as the L.A. Art Book Fair each year for their income – please don’t forget that we are stocking their books year-round! You can support them, and us, by coming to Arcana where it’s a virtual #artbookfair over 300 days a year.

Book of the Day > Daniel Clowes: Original Art. Published by Fantagraphics. “Original Art: Daniel Clowes turns the spotlight on one of the medium's most dynamic creators. A vital entry of the Fantagraphics Studio Edition series, this volume draws from Clowes's nearly 30 years of comics art, ranging from his seminal one-man anthology, Eightball (in which Ghost World was originally serialized), to his most recent graphic novel, 2016's best-selling time travel thriller, Patience. The edition features over 150 pages of art from 1989-present, each reproduced as exact facsimiles of the original to best showcase every detail of the artist's cartooning process. The book also includes new covers, endpapers, and other surprises from Clowes, including five unpublished pages of an abandoned graphic novel and an illustrated glossary of obsolete production techniques used for their original publication. The book also includes several tipped-in pages of clear acetate and vellum to perfectly approximate some of these production processes, making this a one-of-a-kind art object. Carefully curated by the artist himself, many of these pages have hung in museums around the country, and now you can enjoy them in your own library.”

Book of the Day > Dali: Tarot. Published by Taschen. “Dalí poses as the Magician, his wife Gala becomes the Empress, and the death of Julius Caesar is reinterpreted as the Ten of Swords in the artist’s extraordinary custom tarot deck. First published in a 1984 limited edition that has since long sold out, this lush box set brings back all 78 cards, each dazzling in color, along with a companion book on the making-of and practical instructions.”