Book of the Day Posted Jul 12, 2022

Book of the Day > Toby Mott: New Age — Stonehenge To Jungle B2B 1973/2000

● Purchase ● New Age: Stonehenge to Jungle is a comprehensive collection of iconic UK rave, jungle, sound system and warehouse party flyers dating from the early 1973s to 2000. The book is sourced and curated from the Mott Collection – an extensive archive that gathers paper ephemera of British popular culture from punk to rave – curated by artist and collector Toby Mott.
 
Crammed full of 575 entries of flyers and other collectables, New Age is a visual feast that charts the origins and progress of a series of youth rebellions that were to last for a generation. The book looks beyond the music into the fantastical visual language that propelled this subculture, offering a global perspective on how British party culture shifted through the decades.
 
New Age opens with an extensive array of iconic flyers created for the early 1970s free festivals of Stonehenge and Windsor. It then moves into the 1980s, when the boom of illegal London warehouse parties gave birth to acid house – visually embodied by its iconic smiley face, then evolved into sound system and dub clashes. As rave culture takes over, the designs of the flyers become more complex, unveiling a craving for dystopian experiences and surrealistic universes forged by the vision of masters of flyer art, the likes of Pez and Junior Tomlin – also known as the Salvador Dalí of Rave.
 
The book traces the rise of jungle music and more widely the aesthetic of the 1990s, digging into its Jamaican roots and bringing together reggae, rave and sound system culture, giving insight into the profound, and yet often overlooked, impact of the Black British community on rave music.
Book of the Day Posted Jul 08, 2022

Book of the Day > Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks

● Purchase ● Shoe design is pushing the boundaries of what is possible in both the real and virtual worlds through state-of-the-art technologies, ground-breaking materials, and new and innovative ways of thinking about what a shoe can be.
 
New modes of making and innovations in materials are inspiring shoe designers to challenge what shoes can look and feel like. This book explores today’s most futuristic footwear designs, from the use of new technologies such as 3-D printing and smart technology to the invention of sustainable materials, including “leather” made from mushrooms and soles made from reclaimed ocean plastics. It also examines footwear design in the virtual world where adherence to things like comfort and gravity are no longer part of the equation. The importance of sneakers in games such as Grand Theft Auto and Fortnite are explored as is the new enthusiasm for collectable non-fungible token (NFT) sneakers that are being acquired for tens of thousands of dollars for a single pair.
 
In-depth interviews with of-the-moment designers, including Iris van Herpen, the team at RTFKT, Steven Smith, Eric Avar, Alexander Taylor, and more, all conducted by the author, dive deep into the creative process, influences, and the future of shoe design. The introduction offers an overview of great footwear innovations from the past that have kept us a step ahead.
Book of the Day Posted Jul 07, 2022

Book of the Day > Raymond Pettibon: Point Break

● Purchase ● “All this must be either surfed or painted”: This is the underlying sentiment behind Raymond Pettibon’s iconic works of surfers and waves in this quintessential volume dedicated to the motif.
 
Pettibon is known for his characteristically enigmatic aesthetic and sharply satirical critiques of American culture. Though drenched in cynicism, his work empathizes with the dizzying madness of our own humanity as it engages both so-called high and low culture. Perhaps most poetic among the many motifs present in Pettibon’s oeuvre is the surfer. In 1985, Pettibon began his series of surfers and waves––which he continues to work on to this day––popular for depicting a lone surfer silently carving “a line of beauty” along an impossibly large wave.
 
This book spotlights a selection of more than one hundred surfers from the series, from smaller monochromatic works on paper to colorful large-scale paintings applied directly to the wall. For Pettibon’s protagonist in these works, surfing exists apart from all else. Momentarily he achieves sublimity on the wave, distant yet synced with turbulent reality. We are forced to confront our own scale: small and feeble in the face of the power of nature, what is beyond our control. Pettibon’s lyrical writings on these painted surfaces—both his own and lines taken from literature—reference his own philosophies and the confusions of reality: he critiques and highlights the hypocrisies and vanities of the world he engages. To help navigate, the scholar Brian Lukacher explores art-historical antecedents in Pettibon’s work, particularly the seascapes of J. M. W. Turner, and Jamie Brisick, the writer and former professional surfer, examines the Southern California surf and music culture of Pettibon’s youth. Professional big wave surfers Emi Erickson and Stephanie Gilmore also describe the sensory experience of conquering the enormous waves depicted in Pettibon’s works.
Book of the Day Posted Jul 06, 2022

Book of the Day > Dayanita Singh: Dancing with my Camera

● Purchase ● The internationally acclaimed artist Dayanita Singh often describes herself as a “book artist.” Singh was closely involved in the making of this exhibition catalogue, which accompanies the major touring retrospective of Singh’s work, curated by Stephanie Rosenthal for the Gropius-Bau. The most comprehensive publication to date about Singh’s art, it includes a series of scholarly long-form and short-form essays, full-color reproductions, and installation images. The texts situate Singh’s work in relation to topics such as Indian classical music, traditions of the photographic, imaginations of the archive, choreography and economies of reproduction. Presenting every important phase in the artist’s oeuvre, it also enters Singh’s archive to include never-before-seen early works from the 1980s, a new series of montages and the works Let’s see, Museum of Chance, Museum of Shedding, I am as I am, Go Away Closer and Box 507, among others.
Book of the Day Posted Jul 05, 2022

Book of the Day > Marcel Dzama: Who Loves the Sun

● Purchase ● Who Loves the Sun is a new zine designed by the Marcel Dzama on occasion of the exhibition at David Zwirner in New York in 2021. The zine features details from an array of new drawings featured in the show, which expand on Dzama’s interest in travel and nature. The work of Marcel Dzama is characterized by an immediately recognizable visual language that draws from a diverse range of references and artistic influences, including Dada and Marcel Duchamp. While he has become known for his prolific drawings with their distinctive palette of muted colors, in recent years, the artist has expanded his practice to encompass sculpture, painting, film, and dioramas.
Book of the Day Posted Jul 02, 2022

Book of the Day > Graciela Iturbide: Heliotropo 37

● Purchase ● A sumptuous survey of Mexico's foremost photographer
 
Through more than 200 photographs, this luxurious volume presents Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide’s most iconic works alongside an important selection of previously unpublished photographs and a series of color photographs specially commissioned by the Fondation Cartier.
 
Working mainly in black and white, Iturbide has explored the cohabitation between ancestral traditions and Catholic rites in Mexico, humanity’s relationship with death and the roles of women in society. In recent years, her photographs have emptied themselves of human presence, revealing the enigmatic life of objects and nature. In addition to her stark images of her homeland, this book also includes images from her series in India, the United States and elsewhere. Heliotropo 37, named for the photographer’s address in Mexico City, also contains an interview with the photographer by French essayist Fabienne Bradu, an original short story by Guatemalan writer Eduardo Halfon and a photo-portrait of Iturbide’s studio by Mexican photographer Pablo López Luz.
Book of the Day Posted Jul 01, 2022

Book of the Day > Jona Frank: Model Home

● Purchase ● Jona Frank: Model Home, organized by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, builds on artist Jona Frank’s Cherry Hill project, launched in its first phase through Cherry Hill: A Childhood Reimagined (New York: Monacelli Press, 2020). Frank, a noted photographer, is known for her sensitive exploration of young people beginning to discover themselves and to assert their own sense of identity, as evidenced by projects such as such as The Modern Kids (2015), Right (2008), and High School (2004). In Cherry Hill: Model Home, Frank turns her lens on the world of her own upbringing. But Frank’s self-investigation, does not directly picture the photographer, but instead uses surrogates, prompting further interrogation of just what it means to “perform” the self. Actor Laura Dern stands in for Frank’s mother, Rose, while a sequence of younger actors—who we watch mature in this narrative—represent the budding photographer.
 
In this assemblage of unsettling “Kodak moments,” pictures brandish moments of aggressive suburban pride: an expectant young mother places her hand over her abdomen with a knowing smile; mother and daughter in matching outfits show off “picture-perfect” pies. Other images, however, undermine this conceit: an overturned cereal display betrays the same daugher’s humiliation in the face of creating an unintended disruption at the supermarket. With humor and candor Frank pictures the moments that punctuate her memory and that shaped her as an individual. Observing the monumental in everyday experience, Frank, in exploring her own memories weaves a narrative that will resonate poignantly with broad audiences. In so doing Jona Frank: Model Home casts a picture of American Suburbia in the post-space age era that casts a critical light on the domestic fantasies that not only enchanted but also entrapped their adherents.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 29, 2022

Book of the Day > Campbell Addy: Feeling Seen

● Purchase ● Candid and personal, dazzling with color and immediacy, this first and only monograph of a rising star of the photography scene features work from major labels and magazines, outtakes from shoots, and newly commissioned texts by Edward Enninful and Ekow Eshun on the importance of authentic diversity behind and in front of the camera.
 
From major portraits of the likes of Kendall Jenner, FKA Twigs, and Tyler, the Creator to cover shoots for leading magazines such as Time, Rolling Stone, and Garage, Campbell Addy has quickly become one of the most in-demand photographers of his generation. The book opens with a foreword by British Vogue’s editor-in-chief, Edward Enninful, discussing the powerful intersection of photography, race, beauty, and representation. This is followed by a broad selection of Addy’s striking photographs, which range from prominent fashion and magazine commissions to candid portraiture. Featuring recognizable cover shots alongside unpublished outtakes and unseen photography, viewers are afforded insight into Addy’s creative process on set. Quotes from leading Black figures including Naomi Campbell and Nadine Ijewere are woven between Addy’s striking imagery, in which these trailblazing Black creatives reflect on the first time they felt seen in their industry. The book closes with a deeper exploration of Addy’s more personal imagery and influences, paying tribute to the heritage of Black photographers through the work of Ajamu and James Barnor. In conversation with curator and writer Ekow Eshun, Addy balances his own experiences as a queer, Black photographer who left his Jehovah’s Witness family home at sixteen with broader questions of identity, intimacy, and art which face many creatives today. Charged with energy, compassion and authenticity, this inaugural monograph signals a major talent whose influence and stature will only grow with time.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 28, 2022

Book of the Day > *Signed* Lilia Luganskaia: Hortus

● Purchase ● History teaches us that a language of flowers can communicate endless things about the culture in which it emerged, and herein lies Lilia Luganskaia's interest. Taking inspiration from the world of 19th Century sentimental flower books, Hortus presents itself as a set of notes towards a modern handbook for contemporary floriography, considering what the discipline might look like today. By collecting common flora across one year in the urban gardens around her home in Amsterdam and cross-referencing their meanings with publications from the past, Luganskaia reflects on their natures, their roles, and the symbolic familiarity they might hold for the communities living with them. A female artist and reader of the twenty-first century, she seeks out the essence of modern life through her lens, and through flowers, just like the women who came before her.” The Hortus project is an open investigation into the nature of seemingly common objects through 'Floriography', urban gardens, and the history of female rights. Hortus was inspired by urban gardens in West Amsterdam and created with its plants by Lilia Luganskaia.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 25, 2022

Book of the Day > Paul Newman: Blue-Eyed Cool

● Purchase ● Once, when asked how he’d like to be remembered, Paul Newman replied: "I’d like to be remembered as a guy who tried. Tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being."
 
As an actor who became a film star, Newman repeatedly tapped into his times and in doing so redefined what movie stardom could be. Newman was a new kind of movie star, bringing a particular authenticity, intensity and sensitivity to his performances.
 
Throughout his career, Newman was extensively photographed: these images enriched film audiences’ connection to him as a cool and graceful presence both on and off-screen.
 
Milton Greene, Douglas Kirkland, Lawrence Fried, Terry O’Neill, Al Satterwhite and Eva Sereny are amongst the photographers who worked with Newman on and off-set across his career. From early-stage work with his wife, Joanne Woodward, to his love of racing cars, to the essential 1980s drama Absence of Malice to the great success of the new western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the cult favorites, Pocket Money and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, Newman’s movies were an essential part of American culture.
 
With comment and contributions from the photographers, Paul Newman: Blue Eyed Cool, gathers together portraits, stage, racing and on-set photography — including never before seen images — in a celebration of an actor who was always… cool.
 
Paul Newman: Blue Eyed Cool is a must-have for fans who see in Newman’s work and in his life a true hero.
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