american art

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press , 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 208 pages. 100+ color plates and figures. Issued in conjunction with a series of 2010-2011 exhibitions. Features eighty-five works, illustrated and with extensive annotations; Includes works by John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Demuth, Charles Burchfield, Rockwell Kent, Jackson Pollock, Morris Graves, and many more. Includes essays by Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Erin Monroe, and Carol Troyen. Clean copy.

Hardcover. The Monacelli Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 160 pages. Lynn Davis records the natural and architectural monuments of the world. In this collection of 100 duotone photographs she presents a series of architectural images throughout the United States, ranging from icons of modern and contemporary architecture to the Hoover Dam, a series of lighthouses, the Very Large Array in New Mexico, and the Epcot Center at Disney World. Davis possesses a unique sense of composition and cool aesthetic that brings out purity and form. The exquisite duotone photography and often quirky definition of architecture are timeless.

Softcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 520 pages. Whitney Balliett's long-awaited 'big book.' In it are all the jazz profiles he has written for The New Yorker during the past 24 years. These include his famous early portraits of Pee Wee Russell, Red Allen, Earl Hines, and Mary Lou Williams, done when these giants were in full flower; his recent reconstructions of the lives of such legends as Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, Jack Teagarden, Zoot Sims, and Dave Tough; His quick but indelible glimpses into the daily (or nocturnal) lives of Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus; and his vivid pictures of such on-the-scene masters as Red Norvo, Ornette Coleman, Buddy Rich, Elvin Jones, Art Farmer, Michael Moore, and Tommy Flanagan. Also included are such lesser known but invaluable players as Art Hodes, Jabbo Smith, Joe Wilder, Warne Marsh, Gene Bertoncini, Joe Bushkin, and Marie Marcus. Clean, like new.

Softcover. Southampton, NY, The Parrish Art Museum, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Tan covers with little wear; only a few minor scratches and marks. Spine is faded and creased. Clean and crisp pages with descriptions of artists along with reproductions of their work. Catalogue of a traveling exhibition, with 65 works by Chase, Duveneck, Ferris, Gifford, Monks, the Moran family, Parrish, Platt, Weir, Whistler, and many more artists. Extensively documented. 62 pages.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, 1970, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 243 pages, 150 b&w plates. Illustrated covers, perfect binding, divided into seven sections organized by historical period, profusely illustrated with b&w plates. Mild rubbing to covers, very minor markings to bottom of page block, front top right corner creased; otherwise a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. London, The Fine Arts Society, 1st, 1907, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 376 pages, hardcover. Decorated boards with gilted top text block. Illustrated by Elizabeth M. Chettle. Homes and memorials of the founders of Virginia, the New England states, and Pennsylvania. Also includes the universities of Harvard and Yale, the first president of the United States and other illustrious Americans. Fading and edgewear to spine. Light bumping to corners with mild fraying. Moderate spotting to text block edges. Weak spine at front endpapers. Unmarked. A clean copy.

Hardcover. Hanover NH, University Press of New England, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright duct jacket, 251 pages, b&w illustrations. For years, designers, educators, and community administrators have clamored for a book that will highlight the problems with contemporary playgrounds, tender sorely needed strategies with which to redress them, and stimulate national debate about today's crisis of undervalued public space. Susan Solomon's groundbreaking and marvelously illustrated American Playgrounds is that book. Since the 1970s, Solomon maintains, American playgrounds have degenerated into irrelevance as cultural artifacts and educational tools. Imbedded in Solomon's text is a frank indictment of American attitudes that are stunted by a heavy-handed emphasis on safety that limits the nature of play and the vitality of places for public assembly. During the past decade an elite few American architects, landscape architects, and sculptors, including Stanley Saitowitz, Walter Hood, and Mary Miss, have pioneered the restoration of aesthetic and developmental values to play areas for young people. Solomon appraises these success stories and proposes fresh and urgent remedies that blend excellent design principles, innovative planning, and affordability-a vision for the future of the playground in America. Supplementing her impeccable command of primary and secondary sources with hundreds of hours of interviews with designers and clients, the author confronts a seriously under-developed topic with powerful and complex arguments rich in social history, law, theories of play and childhood, and urbanism. Readers will be inspired-and equipped-to take up the gauntlet of advocacy for superior American playgrounds. Clean copy.

Softcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 128 pages. For more than a half century, David Levine has taken on the most powerful men of the free world with only his pen and a bottle of India ink. That pen has proved to be mightier than the sword as Levine skewered, illuminated, satirized and condemned every president of the 20th century, as well as the most significant presidents from colonial times and the Civil War era. His drawing of Lyndon Johnson revealing a scar in the shape of Vietnam is considered one of the most recognized (and most copied) of the Vietnam era. His devastating wit and delicately cross hatched drawing have exposed the venality of the Nixon administration, the phoniness of the Reagan years, the duplicity of the Clinton era, and the evil of the Bush cabal. Nine administrations have come and gone during Levine's tenure, and with a new one on the horizon, the artist remains, unbowed, unfazed, and unrelenting. Now for the first time, the best of Levine's five decades of portraits of American Presidents and their administrations are gathered in a comprehensive and visually dynamic book. From John Adams to George Bush; from John Quincy Adams to George W. Bush; from the Great Emancipator to the Great Society, Levine has captured them all including newly elected Barack Obama. 

Softcover. NY, Whitney Museum of American Art / Harper & Row, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, exhibition catalog. 187 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Black/white pictorial stiff wrappers. Light wear around edges and spine, else like new.

Hardcover. New York , Abrams, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, burgundy cloth with gilt lettering. Book and unprice-clipped pictorial dust jacket are without defects. A beautiful catalog of the great Ralph Esmerian collection of American folk art done when the 400 outstanding works were given to the American Folk Art Museum in New York. Outstanding plates followed by detailed descriptions.

Hardcover. Woodstock, New York, The Overlook Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, Encyclopedic volume featuring the historical evolution of American homes. Hardcover, 320 pages. Over 1000 black/white illustrations, including architectural plans for each variety of home discussed. Cloth bound book is in near fine condition, only flaw on the dust jacket is a small blue ink stain on the front.

Softcover. NY, Monacelli Press,, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 272 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. The roadside sign has become an American icon: a glowing neon symbol of the golden age of the open road. Yet signs are complex pieces of design, serving not only as physical markers but also as cultural, political, and economic ones. In American Signs, Lisa Mahar traces the evolution of motel signs on Route 66 in a distinctive visual approach that combines text, images, and graphics. American Signs reveals the rich vernacular traditions of motel sign-making in five eras, spanning from the late 1930s through the 1970s. The motel signs of the early 1940s, for instance, reflect vernacular traditions dating back at least a century, while examples from the later years of the decade reveal a culture newly obsessed with themes. America's fascination with newness and technological progress is manifested in 1950s motel signs. Finally, in the 1960s, a turn toward simplicity and the use of new, modular technologies allowed motel signs to address the needs of a mass society and the beginnings of a national, rather than regional, aesthetic for motel signs.

Softcover. New Haven, Yale University Press , 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover set. Two volumes in a cardboard slipcase, 344, 300 pages. Illustrated with b&w photographs throughout. Vol. 1 covers New England, Vol. 2 - The Middle Colonies and the South. Clean, tight copies.

Softcover. New York , Ballantine Books, 1st thus, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 320 pages, b&w art by R. Crumb, Kevin Brown, Gregory Budgett and others. Clean, bright paperback. The classic collection of the comics that inspired the movie "American "Splendor, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival "American Splendor is the world's first literary comic book. Cleveland native Harvey Pekar is a true American original. A V.A. hospital file clerk and comic book writer, Harvey chronicles the ordinary and mundane in stories both funny and touching. His dead-on eye for the frustrations and minutiae of the workaday world mix in a delicate balance with his insight into personal relationships. Pekar has been compared to Dreiser, Dostoevsky, and Lenny Bruce. But he is truly more than all of them--he is himself. "Mr. Pekar has . . . proven that comics can address the ambiguities of daily living, that like the finest fiction, they can hold a mirror up to life."

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st pbk, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 282 pages. 113 color plates, 47 in b&w. The painters who came to be known as the Hudson River School - Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and others - found inspiration in our young country's natural wonders and were the first to paint many of its still-wild vistas. As America was settled and the wilderness receded, their successors - most notably Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran - carried their quest for the sublime to the Far West, communicating its breathtaking grandeur in brilliant views of Rocky Mountain peaks, roaring waterfalls, and vast canyons. Within a single generation these artists established the dramatic approach to American landscape painting that is celebrated in this stirringly beautiful book. The freshness of their vision, the intensity of their invention, and the energy of their execution were all born of the urgency these artists sensed in the life of America itself. Clean copy. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. New York, George Braziller, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket. Non-paginated. Black & white illustrations by Al Hirschfeld. Introduction by Brooks Atkinson. Previous owners bookplate on front endpaper. Dust jacket with creases, and light wear. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Bulfinch, 1st, 2002, Hardcover, 301 pages, 450 color illustrations. This groundbreaking book, the most comprehensive survey ever assembled, takes America's vernacular art out of the antiques arena and specialty museum and into today's art world. Presents hundreds of newly identified and never-before-published objects, from carnival figures to religious toterns, from antique trade signs to spectacular examples of hand-carved canes.

Hardcover. Boston, Bulfinch, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 303 pages. Color illustrations, index and appendices. Introduction by Margit Rowell; essay by Joseph Jacobs. A groundbreaking retrospective of art from "off the beaten path" sculpture features spectacular images from a wide variety of American artists and craftspeople, in a study that includes everything from religious totems and antique trade signs to hand-carved canes.

Softcover. New York, Dover Publications Inc., 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 121 pages. Softcover. Light edgewear to wrappers. Black and white pictures throughout. Rothstein was a photojournalist for more than 45 years and the photographs in this volume are from his years as photographer for the Farm Security Administdration. His job was to photographs small towns, rural areas and general agricultural conditions throughout the country.

Hardcover. NY, Da Capo Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 352 pages. As well-known as Robert Frank the photographer is, few can say they really know Robert Frank the man. Born and raised in wartime Switzerland, Frank discovered the power and allure of photography at an early age and quickly learned that the art meant significantly more to him than the money, success, or fame. The art was all, and he intended to spend a lifetime pursuing it. American Witness is the first comprehensive look at the life of a man who's as mysterious and evasive as he is prolific and gifted. Leaving his rigid Switzerland for the more fluid United States in 1947, Frank found himself at the red-hot social center of bohemian New York in the '50s and '60s, becoming friends with everyone from Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky to photographer Walker Evans, actor Zero Mostel, painter Willem de Kooning, filmmaker Jonas Mekas, Bob Dylan, writer Rudy Wirlitzer, jazz musicians Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus, and more. Frank roamed the country with his young family, taking roughly 27,000 photographs and collecting 83 of them into what is still his most famous work: The Americans. His was an America nobody had seen before, and if it was harshly criticized upon publication for its portrait of a divided country, the collection gradually grew to be recognized as a transformative American vision.

Hardcover. NY, Da Capo Press, 1st, 2017, Hardcover, 352 pages. As well-known as Robert Frank the photographer is, few can say they really know Robert Frank the man. Born and raised in wartime Switzerland, Frank discovered the power and allure of photography at an early age and quickly learned that the art meant significantly more to him than the money, success, or fame. The art was all, and he intended to spend a lifetime pursuing it.American Witness is the first comprehensive look at the life of a man who's as mysterious and evasive as he is prolific and gifted. Leaving his rigid Switzerland for the more fluid United States in 1947, Frank found himself at the red-hot social center of bohemian New York in the '50s and '60s, becoming friends with everyone from Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky to photographer Walker Evans, actor Zero Mostel, painter Willem de Kooning, filmmaker Jonas Mekas, Bob Dylan, writer Rudy Wirlitzer, jazz musicians Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus, and more. Frank roamed the country with his young family, taking roughly 27,000 photographs and collecting 83 of them into what is still his most famous work: The Americans. His was an America nobody had seen before, and if it was harshly criticized upon publication for its portrait of a divided country, the collection gradually grew to be recognized as a transformative American vision.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 198 illustrations including 73 plates in full color with text throughout. An in-depth study and illustration of the role of animals in American Art. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Pasadena CA, Pasadena Museum of California Art, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 149 pages, illustrated in color. Bright, clean copy in similar dust jacket. Catalog of an exhibition organised by the Pasadena Museum of Californian Art and held there and at the Gibbes Museum, Charleston, South Carolina, in 2005-6. The book presents 77 works, reproduced in excellent colour as half and full page plates, including nudes, figures and urban and rural landscapes. William Gerdts offers a scene-setting Introduction after which Solon provides an in-depth study of the artist's life and work. This includes his marriage, travels abroad including Europe, Panama and Mexico, experience as an aerial photographer in the Great War, return to Southern California and life in Pasadena, a region that was recommended for health reasons, and a final decade marked by ill-health that contributed to the general decline in his reputation outside of the local art community.

Hardcover. New York, Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 167 pages, 132 plates in duotone and color. Light wear to dust jacket. This book focuses on surprisingly atypical choices from the oeuvres of 125 seminal artists, such as Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alexander Rodchenko, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Ulrich Tillman. Over 130 images in duotone and color illustrate the aesthetic differences between various styles, genres, and authors, and show diversities and affinities among different continents, cultures and periods. This extraordinary recombination of photographs by master artists offers viewers a fresh look at the world of photography.