art contemporary

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. For families, art lovers, and history buffs alike, Leonard S. Marcus's visual history tour of 100 years of children's book illustration gathers in one glorious volume the posters of the annual Children's Book Week. Featuring work from early luminaries such as N. C. Wyeth and Marcia Brown to more contemporary illustrators like David Wiesner, Mary GrandPre, Christian Robinson, and Jillian Tamaki, this beautiful collection showcases the conceptual and iconic images that have defined children's books for generations of young readers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Book Palace Books, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 160 pages. In August 1914 much of Europe was pitched into a war that would eclipse all others in terms of its industrial ferocity. In an era when photography and film recording were still in their infancy, much of the news was relayed through the work of reportage artists. Pre-eminent amongst such artists was Fortunino Matania who was The Sphere's artist-on-the-spot for events ranging from coronations to colliery disasters. Sent to a variety of Fronts to cover the conflict, his illustrations created a gripping and, at times, life-affirming testimony to those traumatic times, drawn from the personal visits he made and interviews he conducted with survivors. For the first time ever, this book collects those images in large format so that they can be viewed as they were intended. OVER 150 paintings and drawings on the World War 1 conflict, depicting all its horrors and special moments. His work inspired many contemporary artists: Annigoni and Russell Flint both visited his studio, and many comic strip artists collected his work including Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel, Frank Frazetta, John Bolton, Bernie Wrightson as well as film directors such as Cecil B DeMille and Alfred Hitchcock.

Hardcover. Berkeley/Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 270 pages in color and b&w. The first major book to consider the life and work of Robert Arneson, A Troublesome Subject tells the fascinating story of how a high school art teacher transformed himself into an artist of international stature and ambition. Representing the full scope of Arneson's career in a rich survey of color reproductions, this book is at once a study of the trajectory of contemporary culture, the work of Robert Arneson, and the relationship between the two. It shows how Arneson's work articulated the crisis of narcissism that has defined American culture since 1970. Jonathan Fineberg develops his ongoing work toward a psychosocial history of art as he proceeds through Arneson's career-chronicling his early life, the formation of a personal style, and finding a unique subject matter in his famous post-1970 turn to self-portraiture. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Santa Fe NM, School of American Research Press, 1st pbk, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 241 pages. UW. Scholar and ceramic artist Dillingham offers a comprehensive cultural and technical history of pottery making at the New Mexico pueblos of Acoma and Laguna, lavishly illustrated (color and b&w photos), and supplemented with appendixes listing potters, detailing signs of commercial origin, and cataloging pottery housed in the Indian Arts Research Center at the School of American Research. Commentary extends to the contemporary market and challenges facing today's potters. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Rizzoli, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 160 pages. The mysterious, seductive essence of the night has long entranced the imagination of artists and writers, and now it is the focus of a unique book that pairs evocative black-and-white photography with classic and contemporary poetry. Lynn Saville's photographs, shot after dark in and around New York and at other urban and rural sites in the United States, Portugal, Greece, and India, reveal unusual aspects of familiar cities and monuments as well as the dusky allure of fringe areas such as Manhattan's industrial district and desolate waterfronts. Rich with light and shadow, the photographs suggest the suspenseful, provocative quality of film noir. Accompanying the photographs are 35 poems and poetic excerpts about the night, beginning with Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night," which inspired the book's title and mood. Selected here are works by Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Charles Simic, and Octavio Paz, among other award-winning poets, and citations from ancient verse such as the Rig Veda and The Epic of Gilgamesh. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 120 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. A glimpse inside the mind and artistic process of a fascinating contemporary cartoonist. Born to working-class parents in a small town in Italy, and reared in Chicago, Ivan Brunetti (b. 1967) was drawn to cartoons and comic strips from an early age. Finding inspiration in Spider-Man and Peanuts, he began crafting his own stories and gradually developed a unique style that he applied to imaginative, sometimes shocking subjects. The dark humor of his graphic novels earned him a cult following, yet his illustrations have had broad appeal. Now recognized as an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator, Brunetti has published his work in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others.

Hardcover. New Haven , Yale University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 120 pages. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. A glimpse inside the mind and artistic process of a fascinating contemporary cartoonist. Born to working-class parents in a small town in Italy, and reared in Chicago, Ivan Brunetti (b. 1967) was drawn to cartoons and comic strips from an early age. Finding inspiration in Spider-Man and Peanuts, he began crafting his own stories and gradually developed a unique style that he applied to imaginative, sometimes shocking subjects. The dark humor of his graphic novels earned him a cult following, yet his illustrations have had broad appeal. Now recognized as an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator, Brunetti has published his work in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, 120 pages. A glimpse inside the mind and artistic process of a fascinating contemporary cartoonist. Born to working-class parents in a small town in Italy, and reared in Chicago, Ivan Brunetti (b. 1967) was drawn to cartoons and comic strips from an early age. Finding inspiration in Spider-Man and Peanuts, he began crafting his own stories and gradually developed a unique style that he applied to imaginative, sometimes shocking subjects. The dark humor of his graphic novels earned him a cult following, yet his illustrations have had broad appeal. Now recognized as an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator, Brunetti has published his work in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others.

Hardcover. MIT Press, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in black cloth stamped with silver lettering. an autobiography in pictures, 400 pages. Ai Weiwei is China's most celebrated contemporary artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. In April 2011, when Ai disappeared into police custody for three months, he quickly became the art world's most famous missing person. Since then, Ai Weiwei's critiques of China's repressive regime have ranged from playful photographs of his raised middle finger in front of Tiananmen Square to searing memorials to the more than 5,000 schoolchildren who died in shoddy government construction in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Against a backdrop of strict censorship, Ai has become a hero on social media to millions of Chinese citizens. This book, prohibited from publication in China, offers an intimate look at Ai Weiwei's world in the years after his return from New York and preceding his imprisonment and global superstardom. The photographs capture Ai's emergence as the uniquely provocative artist that he is today. There is no more revealing portrait of Ai Weiwei's life in China than this. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Kansas City, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art , 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, exhibition catalog, unpaginated. New York artist Alex Katz is best known for his eye-catching, large-scale portraits, figures, and landscapes, but in the mid-1950s he painted intimate works, originating the style that would become the hallmark of his mature work. By the early 1960s, he established a procedure of making small sketches using oil paint on Masonite board, which he would enlarge and modify, then make into paper cartoons to transfer to the canvas. He produces one or more small sketches for every large painting. Although Katz considers the large works to be his major productions, small-scale paintings are the underpinning of his work, revealing his initial passion for a subject--a love at first sight before it has fully matured. While his big paintings are akin to a public performance, the small paintings are rehearsals that reveal not only how he works but more importantly why he is interested in a particular subject. This volume focuses on the achievement and significance of Katz's small paintings.

Hardcover. Taschen, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 264 pages. Alison Jackson has photographed the Queen of England on the toilet, George Bush and Tony Blair chatting in the sauna, Mick Jagger doing gymnastics, and Monica Lewinsky lighting Bill Clinton's cigar. Or has she? The likenesses are uncanny, but of course, her subjects are look-alikes. Her photos demonstrate that while seeing is believing, the truth is another story entirely. In her work, Jackson says, "Likeness becomes real and fantasy touches on the believable. The viewer is suspended in disbelief. I try to highlight the psychological relationship between what we see and what we imagine. This is bound up in our need to look--our voyeurism--and our need to believe." Indeed, by showing "celebrities" ostensibly caught unawares, Jackson's pictures show us what we imagine might go on behind closed doors. Jackson's work causes controversy, because it threatens to cross the line between the private and public life of our contemporary icons. Because we unquestioningly accept the authenticity of the photograph, it would appear that we are being given a glimpse of something confidential, a private moment. It is only upon closer examination that we question the reality of the image, and hopefully this makes us question our unwitting tendency to believe everything we see in the media today.

Hardcover. London/NY, Frieze, London and Distributed Art Publishers, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards. Billy Name was the principal photographer of Andy Warhol's Factory. Now, All Tomorrow's Parties reproduces for the first time Billy Name's recently discovered photos of Warhol, his crowd, and the Factory years, images that give the era another dimensions. These color photos with their experimental use of weird color balances and diptych printing are uncannily contemporary. Together with Dave Hickey's essay and Collier Schorr's interview, Billy Name's photos reveal the Factory in all its intimate grunge and glamour. 135 photos, 122 in color. First 3 pages with mild wrinkling, otherwise very good.

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 594 pages. A landmark in postwar American literary criticism, forty-one extended essays on contemporary poets, including Robert Bly, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, W.S. Merwin, Denise Levertov, and James Merrill. Blending biography, textual analysis, and philosophical reflection, it defined a generation's poetic discourse. The book stands as both a map of mid-century American verse and a statement of Howard's erudite critical voice. Light shelfwear, fraying to top, bottom of dust jacket spine. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY/London, Phaidon Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 80 pages, oblong format. Amandes Ameres (Bitter Almonds) is a portfolio of vivid color photographs that are characteristic of photographer and sculptor Jean-Marc Bustamante's photographic tableaux: intense yet contemplative cityscape images of the capital cities from around the globe, from Buenos Aires to Miami to Tel Aviv. A work of art in its own right, Amandes Ameres was launched in June 1997 at the international art event Documenta X in Kassel, Germany. The volume signifies a highly original distillation of Bustamante's subtle outlook, both in its presentation and in the selection of images designed to illustrate the strikingly sculptural, painterly and symphonic aspects of his innovative and sensitive use of the camera. The compilation is cutting-edge in the context of contemporary visual art and how it is presented, displaying a style that is carefully suited to the atmosphere evoked by Bustamante. Clean copy.

Hardcover. US, Library of Congress/Musee d'Art Giverny, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 250 pages. An exhibition held in Paris a century ago demonstrated the key role American women photographers played in the international pictorialist movement. The accomplishment of these professional and amateur photographers clearly demonstrated a mastery of the medium and made a strong impression on those in attendance. Ambassadors of Progress explores this largely unknown event. Each of the 29 artists, including such well-known figures as Gertrude Kaesebier, Amelia van Buren and Zaida Ben-Yusuf, is represented in a selection of approximately 70 breathtaking color plates drawn from the Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection at the Library of Congress and the National Museum of American History. The photographs include landscapes, portraiture, genre scenes, and still-lifes, all of which are evocatively composed and delicately toned using a variety of photographic techniques.The book contains essays by Verna Curtis (Curator of Photography, Library of Congress -- on Frances Benjamin Johnston as photographer and curator), Michel Poivert (President, Societe Francaise de Photographie -- on the French critical reception), Derrick R. Cartwright (Director, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College -- on the relationship of pictorialist photography to contemporary American painting), and Andrew Robb (Senior Photograph Conservator, Library of Congress -- on the conservation processes surrounding these works).

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.

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. New Haven CT, Yale University Press;, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 208 pages. An authoritative guide to the world's greatest typographers, spanning the history of printThis handsomely illustrated volume features a comprehensive listing of outstanding type designers from around the world, ranging from Johann Gutenberg (c. 1394-1468) to the present day. Arranged alphabetically by designer, the book features the work of more than 260 figures in type design, many of whom are among the field's most renowned--including Morris Fuller Benton, Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger, Claude Garamond, Eric Gill, Frederic W. Goudy, Bruce Rogers, and Hermann Zapf--as well as entries on lesser-known designers whose contributions to typography are substantial. Entries are illustrated by examples of the designers' work taken from posters, private press editions, magazine covers, book designs, and rare archival specimens. An A-Z of Type Designers also features eight essays by leading contemporary typographers Jonathan Barnbrook, Erik van Blokland, Clive Bruton, John Downer, John Hudson, Jean Francois Porchez, Erik Spiekermann, and Jeremy Tankard. These authors discuss different aspects of contemporary type design, including typeface revivals, font piracy, and designing fonts for corporate identities.

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press;, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 208 pages. An authoritative guide to the world's greatest typographers, spanning the history of printThis handsomely illustrated volume features a comprehensive listing of outstanding type designers from around the world, ranging from Johann Gutenberg (c. 1394-1468) to the present day. Arranged alphabetically by designer, the book features the work of more than 260 figures in type design, many of whom are among the field's most renowned--including Morris Fuller Benton, Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger, Claude Garamond, Eric Gill, Frederic W. Goudy, Bruce Rogers, and Hermann Zapf--as well as entries on lesser-known designers whose contributions to typography are substantial. Entries are illustrated by examples of the designers' work taken from posters, private press editions, magazine covers, book designs, and rare archival specimens. An A-Z of Type Designers also features eight essays by leading contemporary typographers Jonathan Barnbrook, Erik van Blokland, Clive Bruton, John Downer, John Hudson, Jean Francois Porchez, Erik Spiekermann, and Jeremy Tankard. These authors discuss different aspects of contemporary type design, including typeface revivals, font piracy, and designing fonts for corporate identities.

Softcover. San Diego CA, San Diego Museum of Art, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 86 pages, b&w illustrations. Includes bibliographical references (p. 35-36) and index. In 1916, George Wesley Bellows, a successful painter at the height of his artistic power, turned his considerable talent to the graphic medium of lithography. Over the next nine years, until his untimely death in January 1925, Bellows created nealry 200 lithographs - an impressive body of work unparalleled in the history of American art. While some of these lithographs appeared as illustrations in contemporary periodicals , and others were graphic versions of drawings and paintings he had previously made, the majority stood as independent works. Their subjects and styles span the breadth of Bellows's artistic vision. Light sticker residue to front cover, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 400 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. The book presents contemporary art comics produced by 75 artists, along with some classic comic strips and other related fine art and historical materials. Brunetti arranges the book to reflect the creative process itself, connecting stories and art to each other in surprising ways: nonlinear, elliptical, sometimes whimsical, even poetic. He emphasizes continuity from piece to piece, weaving themes and motifs throughout the volume. As gorgeously produced as Brunetti's previous anthology of graphic fiction, this book does full justice to the creative work of Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Charles Burns, Gary Panter, and the other prominent or emerging comic artists who are currently at work at the cutting edge of their medium.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards. 184 pages in color. Anais Nin, the author of works such as Delta of Venus and House of Incest, is the patron saint of taboo-breaking pop culture sexual iconoclasts. Not only is she an inspiration for contemporary figures such as Madonna, but her oeuvre, which encompasses erotica, autobiography, essays, short fiction, novels, and much more, has been adapted into film (Henry and June), television (Little Birds), and other media.The cartoonist Leonie Bischoff traces the life of the prolific writer in this lushly colored graphic novel. It begins with Nin struggling to reconcile the man she married (who had artistic aspirations) with the banker she finds herself living with in the Parisian suburbs. Soon, her obsession with June Miller leads to inspiration. Nin's life and art, the truth and fiction, are further intertwined as she recounts her many sexual liaisons including those with Henry Miller (whom she and her husband subsidize so he can write the controversial Tropic of Cancer), her psychoanalysts, and even her father. Although Bischoff's drawing is largely representational, she occasionally depicts Nin's sexual experiences in scenes as surreal as Nin's own written portrayal of them.

Hardcover. Rome, Grafica Internazionale, 1st, 1969, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, oblong format, orange cloth covers stamped in brown and white. ITALIAN TEXT. Introduction by Elio Mercuri. Poetic texts by Langston Hughes, Owen Dodson, Sterling A. Brown, James Weldon Johnson. With 32 color plates and 60 black and white illustrations. 8vo, 100 pages, Aligi Sassu created all the plates reproduced here in 1969 for the scenic cantata ''Anch'io sono l'America'' by Mario Nascimbene, inspired by the texts of contemporary black poets. The work is; had its world premiere on 20 June 1969 at the Teatro Sociale in Lecco, interpreted by Helenita Olivares and Therman Bailey. Covers with fading, light soil. Interior clean.

Softcover. London, Barbican Art Gallery, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 168 pages. Color photos throughout. A collection of photographs chosen from Eggleston's earliest photographs taken in the American South and through to his most recent work in England. William Eggleston (born 1939) was a pioneer in exploring the artistic potential of color photography. Eggleston made a name for himself with his eccentric, unexpected compositions of everyday life that were nonetheless rife with implied narrative, elevating the commonplace to art. William Eggleston, born in 1939 in Memphis, is one of the most important contemporary American photographers. From the 1970s onwards, his work has significantly contributed to the recognition of color photography as an artistic medium.