art contemporary

Hardcover. NY, Calla/Dover, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 480 pages. This gorgeous anthology features 29 of Edgar Allan Poe's tales of the fantastic and the macabre. It combines some of his most popular stories -- including "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" -- with lesser-known gems. Illustrated with 8 full-color plates and 24 full-page drawings filled with brooding eroticism by Harry Clarke, a brilliant Edwardian-era artist too long overshadowed by his contemporary Aubrey Beardsley.A Calla Edition, originally published by Tudor Publishing, New York, 1933.

Hardcover. NY, Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Fifteen essays on British (born or living in) contemporary book illustrators, including: Charles Keeping, Faith Jaques, Victor Ambrus, Nigel Lambourne, Brian Wildsmith, Shirley Hughes, John Lawrence, Jan Pienkowski, Helen Oxenbury, John Burningham, Raymond Briggs, Quentin Blake, Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Anthony Browne, and Michael Foreman. Illustrated in b&w and color.

Hardcover. NY, Palgrave Macmillan , 6thpr., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 268 pages, color illustrations. Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock's drip painting No. 5, 1948 sell for $140 million? Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.

Softcover. Pittsburgh PA, Carnegie Institute, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, unpaginated, but around 220 pages with 125 plates. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Vertigo, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in glossy boards, housed in a pictorial cardboard slipcase. 612 pages illustrated in color. The Sandman, written by New York Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman, was the most acclaimed comic book title of the 1990s. A rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama and legend are seamlessly interwoven, The Sandman is also widely considered one of the most original and artistically ambitious series of the modern age. By the time it concluded in 1996, it had made significant contributions to the artistic maturity of comic books and become a pop culture phenomenon in its own right. Now, DC Comics is proud to present this comics classic in an all-new Absolute Edition format. The first of four beautifully designed slipcased volumes, The Absolute Sandman Vol. 1 collects issues #1-20 of The Sandman and features completely new coloring, approved by the author on the first 18 issues, as well as a host of never-before-seen extra material including the complete original Sandman proposal, a gallery of character designs from Gaiman and the artists who originated the look of the Sandman, and the original script for the World Fantasy Award-winning THE SANDMAN #19, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," together with reproductions of the issue's original pencils by Charles Vess. Also included are a new introduction by DC President and Publisher Paul Levitz and an afterword by Gaiman. Clean, bright copy. This is a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. International customers please ask for a shipping quote before purchasing.

Hardcover. Boston, New York Graphic Society, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright Surveys the work of 131 contemporary artists, lavishly illustrated. 100 color, and 297 black and white plates. Bibliography, index. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Princeton University Press, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 288 pages. Crow re-evaluates Conner and other key figures-from Catholic activist Corita Kent to Black Panther Emory Douglas to ecological witness Bonnie Ora Sherk-as part of a generational cohort galvanized by resistance to war, racial oppression, and environmental degradation. Younger practitioners of performance and installation carried the mindset of rebellion into the 1970s and 1980s, as previously excluded artists of color moved to the forefront in Los Angeles. Mike Kelley, their contemporary, remained unwaveringly true to the late countercultural flowering he had witnessed at the dawn of his career. The result is a major new account of the counterculture's enduring influence on modern art. Clean copy. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. UK, Osprey Military Books, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 160 pages. The Boer War devastated the South African economy and left a legacy of bitterness. It saw the invention of the concentration camp and a new style of guerilla warfare. This history of the campaign includes artwork of maps, weapons and uniforms, with contemporary photography from the period. Clean copy. No dust jacket.

NY, Walker Childrens, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY KIMBLE opposite the title page. Warren Kimble, America's foremost contemporary folk artist, lets his favorite cats out of the bag in his first picture book for the very young. From fat cats to clean cats to curious cats, these clever word pairs capture familiar feline behavior and attitudes in all their quirky glory. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st pbk, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 352 pages. A groundbreaking study of cultural life during a turbulent and formative decade in contemporary China, this book seeks to explode several myths about the Cultural Revolution (officially 1966-1976). Through national and local examination of the full range of cultural forms (film, operas, dance, other stage arts, music, fine arts, literature, and even architecture), Clark argues against characterizing this decade as one of chaos and destruction. Rather, he finds that innovation and creativity, promotion of participation in cultural production, and a vigorous promotion of the modern were all typical of the Cultural Revolution. Using a range of previously little-used materials, Clark forces us to fundamentally reassess our understanding of the Cultural Revolution, a period which he sees as the product of innovation in conflict with the effort by political leaders to enforce a top-down modernity. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Schirmer Mosel, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket,, 171 pages. Since the 1970s Cindy Sherman (born in Glen Ridge, NJ, in 1954) has caused a stir in the art world with her photographic self-stagings. From the beginning, Neither her subjects nor her artistic realization of acting as the director, photographer, and performer of her motifs have lost their relevance to this day. Quite the contrary: her multilayered examination of themes of identity and social cliches are hot topics in our age of increasingly public gender and transgender discussions. Entitled 'The Cindy Sherman Effect', an exhibition organized by Kunstforum Wien explores the influence of Cindy Sherman?s work on artists such as Sophie Calle, Pipilotti Rist, Sarah Lucas, Gillian Wearing, Candice Breitz, Zanele Muholi, Markus Schinwald, Douglas Gordon, Samuel Fosso and many more. Clean copy, still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Softcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in a slipcase, This dynamic concluding volume in a series introduces a curious creature from the fourth dimension - Eugene the Jeep! The minute this mysterious marvel with the power of teleportation arrives on the scene, the strip is infused with an oddball, otherworldly quality. Elsewhere, Wimpy continues his befuddling antics; the wily orphan Swee'Pea and the patriarch Poopdeck Pappy cause domestic hijinks; and Popeye does battle with the big bad Man from Mars! Plus, contemporary artist Kayla E. pens a comic homage to the topsy-turvy character headlining this volume.An irresistible alchemy of screwball comedy, tender romance, and rags-to-riches fantasy, Elsie Crisler Segar's newspaper comic strip, starring Popeye the sailor man, captivated readers of the Roaring Twenties and beyond.

Hardcover. Montreal, Drawn and Quarterly, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 48 pages in color by Clowes. Teen outcast Andy is an orphaned nobody with only one friend, the obnoxious-but loyal-Louie. They roam school halls and city streets, invisible to everyone but bullies and tormentors, until the glorious day when Andy takes his first puff on a cigarette. That night he wakes, heart pounding, soaked in sweat, and finds himself suddenly overcome with the peculiar notion that he can do anything. Indeed, he can, and as he learns the extent of his new powers, he discovers a terrible and seductive gadget-a hideous compliment to his seething rage-that forever changes everything. The Death-Ray utilizes the classic staples of the superhero genre-origin, costume, ray gun, sidekick, fight scene-and reconfigures them in a story that is anything but morally simplistic. With subtle comedy, deft mastery, and an obvious affection for the bold pop-art exuberance of comic book design, Daniel Clowes delivers a contemporary meditation on the darkness of the human psyche. Originally published as a paperback in Eightball #23 in 2004, here beautifully reproduced on heavy stock with new end paper illustrations and a new cover.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 317 pages, b&w illustrations. Translated from the Dutch by Diane Webb. "Rembrandt, Hals and Vermeer are still household names, even though they died over three hundred years ago. In their lifetimes they witnessed the extraordinary consolidation of the newly independent Dutch Republic and its emergence as one of the richest nations on earth. As one contemporary wrote in 1673: the Dutch were 'the envy of some, the fear of others, and the wonder of all their neighbours'. During the Dutch Golden Age, the arts blossomed and the country became a haven of religious tolerance. However, despite being self-proclaimed champions of freedom, the Dutch conquered communities in America, Africa and Asia and were heavily involved in both slavery and the slave trade on three continents." Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 256 pages. In this unique blend of historical fiction and cutting-edge suspense, author Diane Wei Liang succeeds in delivering an incredible mystery veiled behind the red curtain of contemporary Chinese life and culture. Set in Beijing "The Eye of Jade" introduces readers to the enigmatic Mei Wang, the country's first successful female private investigator, and her struggle to uncover the location of a rare and treasured artifact that is believed to have been absconded from the Luoyang Museum during the Cultural Revolution. For Wang this is a task of special importance, and can only stand to make her later life and reputation glimmer, but as she soon finds in the back alleys, this is not going to be easy. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale /Houston Museum of Fine Arts, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 168 pages. Chen Changfen (b. 1941) began to photograph the Great Wall twenty years before the Chinese government officially adopted it as the national symbol in 1984. This fascinating book presents a small fraction of his decades-long study of the monumental form and conveys the fertile range of themes and ideas that Chen has investigated, each informed by traditional Chinese art, history, and philosophy. Combining a unique blend of traditional and contemporary technical processes, Chen's richly evocative photographs at once celebrate the remarkable series of building campaigns that produced the Wall and memorialize the thousands of conscripted laborers whose lives were sacrificed to its construction.One of the most striking features of Chen's photographs is their unexpected variety of perspectives and moods, capturing the vicissitudes of weather, time, and human history that have acted upon it. By excluding the people, highways, factories, and modern buildings that encroach on and daily destroy sections of the Wall, however, Chen eliminates major aspects of the Wall's present reality from his pictures. In a thoughtful essay and interview with the artist, Anne Wilkes Tucker probes the meanings of such omissions and guides the reader through Chen's extraordinary images. The Great Wall of China is essential reading for photographers, historians, and travelers.

Softcover. NY, Collier, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 287 pages. "The best of contemporary graphic literature -- a daring and most unusual anthology. Featuring the work of Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb, Harvey Pekar, the Hernandez Brothers, Matt Groening and Lynda Barry -- as well as 75 other contemporary artists with twenty stories appearing in English for the first time." Tall color pictorial wraps, mostly b/w cartoons with 16 page color section.

Hardcover. Tonawonda NY, KCP Poetry, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with black cloth spine, 44 pages illustrated in color by Jorisch. Visions in Poetry is an innovative and award-winning series of classic poems re-interpreted for today's readers by outstanding contemporary artists in distinctively beautiful editions. The sixth Visions in Poetry book is The Owl and the Pussycat, a nonsense poem by Edward Lear, brilliantly illustrated by Stephane Jorisch. The artist's vision begins in a segregated world where different species never mix and everyone hides behind a mask. Against this backdrop an aristocratic owl from Owl Heights and a bohemian pussycat from the other side of the tracks find each other. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Madison WI, University of Wisconsin Press, reprint, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth with white lettering on spine. 276 pages. Between 1868 and 1897 Henry James wrote a number of short essays and reviews of artists and art collections; these essays were published in magazines such as "Atlantic Monthly" and "Harper's Weekly" and in newspapers such as the "New York Tribune". They included James' comments on Ruskin, Turner, Whistler, Sargent, and the Impressionists, among many others. Thirty of these essays were collected and first published in a modern edition in 1956, accompanied by John Sweeney's introduction which sketched James' interests in the visual arts over a period of years, focusing on the ways in which painting and painters entered his work as subjects. Susan Griffin's new foreword places James' observations in a contemporary context. Some of the novelist's judgements will seem wrong to today's readers: he was very critical of the Impressionists, for example, but all of these essays bear the stamp of James' critical intelligence, and they tell us a great deal about his development as a writer during those years. Bight, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, John Wiley & Sons , 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 170 pages, color illustrations. n The Passionate Collector: Eighty Years in the World of Art, you'll follow this fascinating financial figure and great patron of the arts from the streets of 1920s Paris to the museums of New York as he develops the eye of a connoisseur and begins to collect great contemporary art.Vivid detail puts you in the center of the action as Neuberger collects the brilliant artists of his time-Milton Avery, Jackson Pollock, Ben Shahn, Edward Hopper; works with legendary art dealers Paul Rosenberg, Betty Parsons, Sidney Janis, and Leo Castelli; and befriends avid collectors, including the incomparable Duncan Phillips. You'll follow Neuberger as he strives to further the cause of contemporary American artists by exhibiting, lending, and donating from his growing collection, and becoming an activist for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney. You'll also see how the Neuberger Museum of Art was created at the urging of Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and how it continues to fascinate art enthusiasts today. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Crowell/Alskog, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 96 pages. This is one of a series of eight books on various aspects of photography. They were published in the mid Seventies and have a great deal of good information and diagram some of the shots featured in the book. This book is one of the best of the eight and that is saying something as they are all good. Sadly Art Kane committed suicide five or six years after this book came out, so it is now a retrospective of most of his work. This is an overview of some of Kane's most defining work at the height of the 60's culture wars, some pieces have gone on to define a generation. Fully illustrated in b/w & color with full page descriptions of techniques involved.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 300 pages. In this lavishly produced volume, journalist Gaudriault accompanies photographer Rancinan to Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States to interview 23 masters of contemporary photography, paying homage to fashion photographers and photojournalists, traditional chroniclers of their times and conceptual artists. Rancinan's photographs record each encounter in portraits that encapsulate each subject's relationship with his shared discipline. Readers follow paparazzo Ron Galella fending off the camera; Martin Parr, the sardonic chronicler of middle-class British life, having tea in a cafe; Rankin, the creator of the hip magazine Dazed and Confused, hopping into a trashcan filled with his own cast-off images. Gaudriault's short essays quote liberally from her interviews and provide both biographical information and incisive commentary. Several of the older photographers strike an elegiac tone and confess to finding themselves at the end of the eras that gave birth to their visions, but optimism reigns among younger practitioners: David LaChapelle is reinventing himself in Hawaii; Rankin is bearing witness to an age that is still young; and Oliviero Toscani, the radical combination of journalist and marketer behind the Benetton campaigns, describes billboards as the church frescoes of today.

Hardcover. London, Edmund Spettigue, 1841, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, half leather with marbled boards, 460 pages. Ornate gilt design on spine with 4 raised bands. Copy block with marbled edges. A contemporary note on a blank prelim page suggests this copy was a gift from Hawker's daughter. A classic that received its unique name because it was originally published in small penny portions so as to be affordable to the poor. Each morning and evening portion contains between 150 and 600 words; the size of a newspaper article or bulletin. The lessons and thought offered are to-the-point, teaching about a given Bible phrase, psalm, or proverb. Every nugget of spiritual wisdom is prefaced with a Biblical quotation that directly pertains to the author's explanations and instruction. Clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pages. A photograph can serve as as both witness and catalyst, art object and call to action. In this catalog of a pivotal exhibition of works from the Ralph R. Parsons Photography Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, photographs capture the heartbeat and mindset of America. Works by French photographer Brassai set the stage; the bulk of the exhibition features photographs by Robert Frank, Helen Levitt , Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand, among others. When many of these works were first shown, they were met with criticism and outrage, but today, we've accepted them as profound documents of our nation and era. Includes essays by exhibition curator Cornelia H. Butler, as well as Max Kozloff, A.D. Coleman, Liz Kotz and Emily Aer. Dimension: 9 1/4 x 11 1/2 inches, 125 duotone & 11 color reproductions, Exhibition Catalog.