Book of the Day Posted Mar 08, 2025

Book of the Day: Walter Van Beirendonck - Cut the World Awake

The Belgian fashion magician Walter Van Beirendonck is--get this--also a master collagist!. This book is the proof. From the publisher: "Cut the World Awake by Walter Van Beirendonck presents an exclusive look into a crucial part of the creative method of this Antwerp Six member. Sourcing his materials across art and culture, the fashion designer uses collage as a pre-meditation, creating paper montages that inspire, excite and provoke. Going back as far as the 90s but also including work used as instigators for his most recent collections, this book offers a selection of more than one hundred never-before-seen colour collages, brain-scanned, sliced and juxtaposed by one of the most influential and groundbreaking artists of our time. This publication features an extensive new interview with Walter Van Beirendonck himself and an exclusive and brilliant conversation between Walter and his long-time hero Paul McCarthy." Book of the damn day!
Book of the Day Posted Mar 07, 2025

Book of the Day: Biba - The Fashion Brand that Defined a Generation

From the publisher: "Biba dominated London fashion from the mid-1960s, defining the dress and outlook of a generation. Celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of the opening of the first Biba boutique, this book takes a revealing look at Biba through the words and images of the people who were intimately involved with the company and its phenomenal success. Established in 1963 as Biba Postal Boutique—a small mail-order company selling inexpensive clothing for women and children—by 1973 Biba was a seven-story department store on London’s Kensington High Street. Customers could fill their wardrobe and furnish their home with Biba products; Biba had become the world’s first lifestyle label. Shoppers could buy a tin of Biba baked beans, take tea on Europe’s largest roof garden, or watch live music performances by the New York Dolls, Iggy Pop, and Liberace in the 500-seat Rainbow Room. Created by Barbara Hulanicki and her husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon, Biba was made in the image of its staff and customers. Selling up-to-the-minute and affordable clothing, Biba appealed to teenagers and young women of the postwar generation, becoming the fashion destination of the Swinging Sixties and Seventies. Biba was the place to see and to be seen; its doors were open to everyone, from the Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull, and Twiggy to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. Biba: The Fashion Brand That Defined A Generation includes photographs by Helmut Newton, Sarah Moon, and Duffy, as well as never-before-seen ephemera from Hulanicki’s personal archive. Interviews with the people closest to Biba bring these images and objects to life, while recollections and anecdotes from Hulanicki herself shine a new light on the very personal nature of Biba as a business."
Book of the Day Posted Mar 06, 2025

Book of the Day: Hilary Pecis's "Orbiting"

Book of the day! Vibrancy, color, and a keen eye from Hilary Pecis in the form of her new monograph Orbiting. Let's let the distribtuor tell you more: "Through her vibrant still lifes, interiors and landscapes, California–based artist Hilary Pecis (born 1979) weaves a rich tapestry of glowing colors and subtle ornaments compiled from her everyday surroundings. Her paintings—including such motifs as coffee tables full of books, storefronts, blooming fields and meals set out on patterned tablecloths—form the basis for scintillating, crowded compositions rife with color and texture. Pecis’ use of saturated colors and angular perspectives is evocative of Fauvism, but the ultracontemporary subject matter situates her oeuvre firmly within the modern and materialist world of her native Southern California. With an eye-catching cover, this catalog documents Pecis’ first institutional solo exhibition in China at the TAG Art Museum in Qingdao in 2023, featuring a rich selection of over 20 works created between 2018 and 2023."
Book of the Day Posted Mar 05, 2025

Book of the Day: Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal

Alice Coltrane: Can she be canonized, lionized, and memorialized enough? Not enough for us! Long live her name and her works! And here we have our book of the day, Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal. From the distributor: "This volume unpacks the cultural legacy of musician, spiritual leader, wife and mother Alice Coltrane. Accompanying the eponymous exhibition at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum, the book takes its title from Coltrane’s 1977 autobiography and devotional text, Monument Eternal, in which she reflected on her newfound spiritual beliefs and the path to healing and self-discovery. Coltrane was 'ahead of her time,' as her son, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, says: she was 'one of the first people to move outside the mainstream, and certainly one of the first female, Black, American jazz musicians to record her own music in her own studio, and to release music on her own terms.' Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal explores themes including spiritual transcendence, sonic innovation and architectural intimacy. The project juxtaposes works from 19 contemporary American artists with pieces of ephemera from Coltrane’s archive—including handwritten sheet music, unreleased audio recordings and rarely seen footage—to honor her cultural output and practice." (Delmonico / D.A.P. / Hammer, 2025)
Book of the Day Posted Feb 20, 2025

Book of the Day: Dennis Morris Music + Life

From the publisher: "Dennis Morris: Music + Life is the first in-depth career retrospective of the trailblazing photographer, designer, and art director. Although Dennis Morris is celebrated for his iconic portraits of reggae superstar Bob Marley, this monograph also shines a light on Morris’s documentary work, which explores questions of race and cultural identity as it draws on his experiences as a Black teenager in 1970s Britain. Supported by an international touring exhibition, Dennis Morris unveils a trove of previously unseen images, offering new insight into the image-maker’s visual language.
Jamaican-born Morris moved to East London when he was just five years old. His passion for photography was ignited when he joined a local church’s camera club. A rebellious thirteen-year-old, Morris skipped school to meet—and photograph—Marley, an encounter that would catapult him into a whirlwind tour with Marley and, subsequently, the Sex Pistols as their official photographer. His adventures in the reggae and punk scenes of the 1970s laid the groundwork for a multidecade career spanning photography, art direction, design, and music. The book unfolds in two symbiotic parts: the first captures Morris’s unapologetic lens on race, culture, and identity in 1970s Britain, while the second surveys his collaborations with music legends, including—in addition to Marley—Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Gregory Isaacs, and Marianne Faithfull. Featuring an original contribution from Sean O’Hagan and an essay by the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall, this publication promises to delight both photography aficionados and music lovers alike."
Book of the Day Posted Feb 19, 2025

Book of the Day: "Father" by Diana Markosian

From the publisher: "Diana Markosian: Father presents the photographer’s journey to another place and another time, where Markosian attempts to piece together an image of a familiar stranger—her long-lost father. The book explores her father’s absence, her reconciliation with him, and the shared emptiness of their prolonged estrangement. The images, made over the course of a decade, take place in her father’s home in Armenia. In Markosian’s first monograph, Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020), the photographer recreates the story of her family’s journey from post–Soviet Russia to the US in the 1990s. Father uses both documentary photographs and archives of objects, letters, and vernacular images to probe the fifteen years of absence and separation from the photographer’s childhood. In this voyage of self-discovery, Markosian touchingly renders her longing for connection to a man she barely remembers and who asks her, when she finds him, 'Why did it take you so long?'" Not only is this our book of the day, but we are also hosting Markosian at Arcana on Saturday, February 22nd from 4 until 6PM for a signing event honoring Father. Join us! All are welcome!
Book of the Day Posted Feb 16, 2025

Book of the Day: Shaniqwa Jarvis

The photographic work of Shaniqwa Jarvis is known for blending the aesthetics of modern fashion photography with the sensitive, unfiltered emotion of art portraiture. In this, her impressive first book, Ms. Jarvis presents a selection of her favorite images drawn from two decades that includes editorial work for clients like The Gap, the New York Times, Supreme, Billboard, and Riposte, "Bathroom Portraits" - shot in the toilets of bars in the early 2000s, and portraits of the likes of SZA, Lee "Scratch" Perry, George Condo, Cardi B, and a few requisite selfies. In some of her best-loved imagery she captures vivid reality across a wide variety of subjects that always appear to be an extension of herself. With an introduction by photographer Ryan McGinley, these images speak to raw, disparate feelings imbued with a deep sparkling optimism taken from a vantage point that is female, black, tirelessly hardworking, and brimming with raucous, positive vibrations. This is the 2025, self-published, paperbound second edition of Jarvis's impressive debut monograph. Available here!
Book of the Day Posted Feb 12, 2025

Book of the Day: My Teddy Bear

TEDDY BEARS! My Teddy Bear from Decorative Arts Editions is our book of the day. From the publisher: "The immense popularity of the teddy bear, now found in every child's bedroom, conceals a paradox: how did this ferocious, wild animal become the symbol of childhood? The teddy bear was born at the same time in two different places. In 1902, the toy was invented in the United States in reference to Theodore Roosevelt - hence its Anglo-Saxon name, Teddy's bear, which became teddy-bear. In Germany that same year, Margarete Steiff marketed her first teddy bear, made from needle cushions, which was a resounding success in Europe and America. Since the first examples made of mohair and wood straw, which were heavy and rigid, the teddy bear has become softer and gentler. They have been adorned in bright or pastel colors, so that they can be transformed into cuddly toys, the transitional object studied and theorized by the paediatrician Donald Winnicott. The bear now reigns over a whole menagerie of stuffed animals, as well as children's fiction, thanks to Winnie the Pooh, Mishka and Paddington. More surprisingly, fashion designers are also keen to revisit the bear. Today, through the figures of the panda and the polar bear, the bear is the symbol of climate change and an endangered natural world. Through five essays and three thematic sections, this catalog traces the history of the teddy bear, from its first steps to its transformations and successes. It also examines our relationship with bears since Antiquity. Finally, it is supported by a rich iconography that offers a wide range of old and more recent teddy bears, compared with man's representations of bears over the centuries."
Book of the Day Posted Feb 06, 2025

Book of the Day: Cannes Uncut

Tres chic! Tres glam! Our book of the day chronicles the bygone Golden Age of the Cannes Film Festival. Excessive celeb overload! From the publisher: "When 22-year-old Richard Blanshard arrived at the Cannes Film Festival in 1976, he had no idea that he would become an official photographer for the UK and US film industry for the next two decades. His first assignment was to photograph Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly as they promoted their movie That’s Entertainment, Part II. It was to be the first of many. Today the only images we see are from the red carpet. Smartphones and social media have made it difficult for the talent to relax, but during his time there Blanshard had unfettered access to the stars and industry greats as they worked, partied and relaxed throughout their time at Cannes. His photographs were designed to document candid, personal moments alongside glitz and glamour to create international publicity. Not only that, but they showcase the unique atmosphere of Cannes and the festival. Through his remarkable collection, spanning stars and celebrities from the Golden Age of Hollywood through to the rising talent of the era, Blanshard lifts the lid on what life was really like behind the scenes at the world’s most iconic film festival. In an age where publicists, actors and actresses are ever mindful and protective of their image and reputation, we’ll never see another collection quite like it."
Book of the Day Posted Jan 26, 2025

Book of the Day: "Americans Seen" by Sage Sohier

From the publisher: "The photographs in Americans Seen were made between 1979 and 1986, when Sage Sohier was a young photographer living in Boston. As Sohier writes in her introduction, 'In that pre-digital and less paranoid era, families — and especially children and teenagers — used to hang out in their neighborhoods. A kind of theater of the streets emerged from the boredom of hot summer days and it was a great time to photograph people outside. Undoubtedly my own childhood afternoons, often spent in my neighbor’s basement creating theatrical productions with the four kids who lived there, helped to form my vision of the play of children as a kind of rite or performance. That our audience was comprised of our dogs never discouraged us.' Over the next seven years, Sohier made portraits of people living in Boston’s many working class and ethnic neighborhoods, as well as in the towns she visited each summer during her annual road trips: one through small town Pennsylvania via dilapidated Newburgh, New York, another to mining areas in rural West Virginia, and once to Mormon enclaves in Utah and Idaho. During long Boston winters, Sohier would head south and photograph in the citrus-producing regions of inland Florida, or through the Florida panhandle to New Orleans and Cajun country. Nazraeli Press first published Americans Seen in 2017 as part of our limited-edition NZ Library series. We are thrilled to announce a remastered trade edition, making this extraordinary body of work available to a larger audience. Sage Sohier’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the International Center for Photography, New York; and the Art." (Nazraeli Press, 2024)

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