art folk

Hardcover. San Diego, Thunder Bay Press , 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 224 pages. From singer-songwriters like Billy Joel and the Bee Gees to folk artists like John Denver and James Taylor to the rock legends Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, you won't find a more complete list of albums that defines the '70s music scene. Each listing features the full-color, original sleeve artwork, and is packed with information about the musician lineup, track listings, and number-one singles that resulted. A celebration of this funky era. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Taschen, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 142 pages. In the late 1910s, in a Europe ravaged by World War I, Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen put the finishing touches on his illustrations of A Thousand and One Nights. The results are considered masterpieces of early 20th-century illustration: bursting with sumptuous colors of deep blues, reds, and gold leaf, and evoking all the magic of this legendary collection of Indo-Persian and Arabic folktales, compiled between the 8th and 13th centuries. However, publishers retreated from Nielsen's project in the financially strapped postwar climate, and the publication never happened. A rising star, Nielsen moved on to other work. This world heritage classic's spectacular pen, ink, and watercolor images remained under lock and key for 40 years. Published just once in the 1970s, the illustrations were rescued from oblivion after Nielsen's death in 1957 and are now held by the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Art Institute of Chicago, and in two private collections. This publication is a unique compilation of fine art prints and stunning illustrations reproduced directly from Nielsen's original watercolors--the only complete set of his extraordinary drawings to have survived. The book features descriptions of all of the images and three generously illustrated essays on the making of this series, the origin of Nielsen's unique imagery, and a history of the tales. In addition, it shows many unpublished or rarely seen artworks by Nielsen and intricate black-and-white drawings Nielsen created for the original publication. Text in English, German and French. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum Books, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in black. Color art by Haley. Discover how an African trickster god made it possible for people to tell stories in this brightly illustrated, Caldecott Medal-winning picture book. Long, long ago there were no stories on earth for children to hear. All stories belonged to Nyame, the Sky God. Ananse, the Spider man, wanted to buy some of these stories, so he spun a web up to the sky to bargain with the Sky God. The price the Sky God asked was Osebo, the leopard-of-the-terrible-teeth, Mmboro the hornet-who-stings-like-fire, and Mmoatia the fairy-whom-men-never-see. Can Ananse capture these sly creatures and give the children of earth stories to tell? No dust jacket, clean copy.

Softcover. Milwaukee WI, Milwaukee Art Museum, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Folio, softcover, 216 pages. Over 200 color illustrations. Published to coincide with the 2012 showing at the Milwaukee Art Museum of works by 64 self-taught artists in the Anthony Petullo Collection. Foreword by Daniel T. Keegan. Art Brut and "Outsider" Art, essay by Jane Kallir - "It's a Picture Already, essay by Lisa Stone. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap.

Hardcover. Cleveland OH, World Publishing Co, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, illustrated by the cowboy/author/artist with sixty five b&w illustrations; red cloth lettered in bright gilt with a sketch of a horse on front cover. The Chapters: The cowboy today; The cowboy's work and outfit; The critter; All in the Day's riding; On the drift; The cowboy calendar; The rodeo; For a horse; Tom and Jerry; Scattered tracks; Folks west; Horseflesh. Clean copy.

Softcover. Newark NJ, Newark Museum, 1st, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, brick-red paper wraps. Exhibition catalogue featuring American folk sculpture, including wood carvings, decoys, and weather vanes. 108 pages with 24 black/white plates to accompany essays and catalogue entries. Near fine condition, some edge wear, small ink mark inside the cover.

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. 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.

Hardcover. Chicago, Rand McNally , 1st Thus, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Non-paginated. Hardcover. Black & white cartoons by Gaar Williams. Dust jacket with chipping along edges - jacket now protected with clear plastic cover. Clean, unmarked pages.

Softcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 176 pages. An unparalleled virtuoso, he captured the pulse of style from the 1960s to the 1980s, and is still revered as the most inspiring illustrator by today's practitioners. Recording and predicting contemporary style trends, Antonio also used his immense versatility to adopt a broad range of art movements, from Pop Art to Surrealism. The man himself, his life and friendships, particularly with Juan Ramos, his constant collaborator, define his oeuvre. For Antonio, life-bestial and sublime-surpassed any fiction. His illustrations and photographs capture the beautiful people who are part of celebrity folklore, and who were more often than not his friends: Jerry Hall (to whom he was engaged), Grace Jones, Mick Jagger, Audrey Hepburn, Andy Warhol (with whom he worked on Interview magazine), Paloma Picasso and Marlene Dietrich. Packed with previously unpublished material, this is a thrilling retrospective about an artist who is represented in major collections from the Metropolitan to the Louvre. Even posthumously, Antonio has not relinquished his grip on the fashion world: his style and quest for beauty live on. 230 illustrations, 155 in color

Hardcover. San Francisco, Ten Speed Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Color, b&w illustrations. THE ART OF S. CLAY WILSON is the long-awaited career retrospective of the most extreme of the Zap cartoonists of the late 1960s. A self-described "graphic agoraphobe," Wilson draws manically dense scenes of lurid mayhem that rank among the seminal works of underground, counterculture American art. It's all here, from the classic chronicles of the Checkered Demon to salacious stories about the pirates, prostitutes, and poets that inhabit Wilson's divinely depraved world.The definitive collection of the art of legendary Zap comic artist S. Clay Wilson.Features 200 full-color images, including new work and previously unpublished prints commissioned for private collections.Introduction by R. Crumb touts Wilson's role as one of the originators of underground comix."Wilson was the strongest, most original artist of my generation that I had yet met. . . . There was something very familiar about the drawings, yet something entirely new, never before seen! It looked like folk art, like old-time tattoos, like some high school hotrodder's notebook drawings. They were rough, crazy, coarse, deeply American."

Cambridge, MA, Candlewick Press, 1st U.S., 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, unpaginated, color illustrations by P. J. Lynch, DVD "Making Fairy Tales" inside front cover, very clean, tight copy, like new. Brought to new life with enchanting illustrations by award-winning artist P. J. Lynch, this comic American folktale concludes with a final, satisfying twist that says much about fate, identity, and the captivating power of bees.

Hardcover. Five Continents, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards. Born into slavery around 1853-4 on a cotton plantation in Benton, Alabama, Traylor has become one of the most important self-taught artists of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most celebrated African-American artists, along with Thorton Dial and William Edmondson. The story of Bill Traylor's life and work is a remarkable one. It is a story that deserves attention both nationally and internationally. This publication, generously illustrated with full-page high-quality reproductions, provides a close examination of Traylor's recurrent themes, composition schemes, favored iconography, and contextual information related to the artist's biography, creative process and tools, visual environment, and artistic mindset. Each artwork is considered in a context beyond that of an isolated image and in response to one another, forming a series of intricate and consistent narratives, intriguingly cinematic in its development. The elements of Traylor's biography are the anchors of an individual mythology. Instead of merely being a basic depiction, the subject becomes a visual statement structuring Traylor's mind, bringing together hidden symbols from Kongo Vodou, Hoodoo, Southern Baptist, Freemasonry, and Blues sources, as well as layers of references: slavery, uncensored violence in the Jim Crow era, and turbulence within the black enclave known as 'Dark Town' in Montgomery, Alabama. Bilingual edition in French and English. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. New York, George H. Doran, 1st, 1917, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, oversized in tan cloth spine with paper label over illustrated paper-covered boards with a two-color cartoon of a boy holding a kitten surrounded by dogs. 223 pages of b&w drawings printed on rectos only. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1st pbk, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 376 pages, b&w illustrations. The personal history of Barney Josephson, proprietor of the legendary interracial New York City night clubs Cafe Society Downtown and Cafe Society Uptown and their successor, The Cookery. Famously known as 'the wrong place for the Right people', Cafe Society featured the cream of jazz and blues performers--among whom were Billie Holiday, Big Joe Turner, Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Big Sid Catlett, and Mary Lou Williams--as well as comedy stars Imogene Coca, Zero Mostel, and Jack Gilford, the boogie-woogie pianists, and legendary gospel and folk artists. Spanning half a century from the 1930s to the 1980s, Josephson's narrative depicts both the business and the artistic sides of Cafe Society while exposing the tensions between the club's own progressive interracial openness and the more restrictive social and political climate in which it evolved. Publisher's stamp on bottom edge otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with a b&w cartoon featuring the Toonerville Trolley gang. Blue cloth spine. Clean and sharp. No credits, commentary or date but undoubtedly reprinted from his syndicated strip Toonerville Folks. There is an ink inscription on the front fly leaf dated 1922. In great overall condition, now protected by an acetate dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY/London, Tate Publishing, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, tight copy. In this richly illustrated and accessible survey, acclaimed author Paul Gravett considers the vast output of comics culture from the late 19th century to today, including syndicated comics, graphic novels, and contemporary art and illustration. From foundational masterpieces such as Rodolphe Topffer's and Wilhelm Busch's albums, George McManus's Art Deco "Bringing Up Father," and Alex Raymond's "Flash Gordon" to the later retro stylings of Robert Crumb, Gravett considers lines of influence from around the world and examines how comics have shifted from supporting the status quo to becoming the voice of alternative subcultures. Gravett traces the major themes taking place in contemporary comics, noting the rise of publications that function as questioning, transgressive outlets for outsider stories and ideas, and includes the ways that folk art traditions are reinvigorating the form.

Hardcover. NY/London, Tate Publishing, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, tight copy. In this richly illustrated and accessible survey, acclaimed author Paul Gravett considers the vast output of comics culture from the late 19th century to today, including syndicated comics, graphic novels, and contemporary art and illustration. From foundational masterpieces such as Rodolphe Topffer's and Wilhelm Busch's albums, George McManus's Art Deco "Bringing Up Father," and Alex Raymond's "Flash Gordon" to the later retro stylings of Robert Crumb, Gravett considers lines of influence from around the world and examines how comics have shifted from supporting the status quo to becoming the voice of alternative subcultures. Gravett traces the major themes taking place in contemporary comics, noting the rise of publications that function as questioning, transgressive outlets for outsider stories and ideas, and includes the ways that folk art traditions are reinvigorating the form.

Softcover. Urbana IL, University of Illinois Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 295 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY BECK on the title page. A daughter of freed African American slaves, Daisy Turner became a living repository of history. The family narrative entrusted to her--"a well-polished artifact, an heirloom that had been carefully preserved"--began among the Yoruba in West Africa and continued with her own century and more of life. In 1983, folklorist Jane Beck began a series of interviews with Turner, then one hundred years old and still relating four generations of oral history. Beck uses Turner's storytelling to build the Turner family saga, using at its foundation the oft-repeated touchstone stories at the heart of their experiences: the abduction into slavery of Turner's African ancestors; Daisy's father Alec Turner learning to read; his return as a soldier to his former plantation to kill his former overseer; and Daisy's childhood stand against racism. Other stories re-create enslavement and her father's life in Vermont--in short, the range of life events large and small, transmitted by means so alive as to include voice inflections. Beck, at the same time, weaves in historical research and offers a folklorist's perspective on oral history and the hazards--and uses--of memory. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1894, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light green cloth stamped in b&w on the front color, gilt lettering on the spine. Robinson (1833-1900) was a noted Quaker author from a well-respected and artistic Vermont family whose writings and art captured the dialect, culture and time of pre-Civil War Vermont, set in the imaginary town of Danvis, largely drawing from his the inhabitants and experiences of Ferrisburgh, VT. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. Lee Publishers Group, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 285 pages. Preface by Jean Mailey; Introduction by Zhang Ding. Designs in blue and white, fine bright tight copy, unmarked, very good slightly edge-rubbed dj. Collected from the remote areas of China's southwestern provinces, each decorative pattern is rich in beauty and meaning. This royalty-free volume will be an invaluable resource for artists, designers, craftspeople, and any lover of traditional Chinese folk art. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 232 pages. The question "What is American art?" might conjure the hyperrealism of Raphaelle Peale and William Harnett, the bold graphic style of Stuart Davis and Jacob Lawrence, or the Precisionist forms of Charles Sheeler. Little known, however, is that such notions of American art are significantly owed to a Russian Jewish immigrant named Edith Halpert. The founder of the Downtown Gallery in New York, Halpert shaped an identity for American art, declaring that its thrilling heterogeneity and democratic values were what most distinguished it from the European avant-garde. For forty-plus years, Halpert's gallery brought recognition and market success to now-legendary American artists--among them Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O'Keeffe, in addition to the artists mentioned above. She relentlessly championed nonwhite, female, and unknown artists and was a formative advisor in the shaping of many of the nation's most celebrated art museums and collections, from San Francisco to Boston. Not content with those achievements, she also pioneered the appreciation and collecting of American folk art. Richly illustrated with works that passed through her groundbreaking gallery, this book tells the extraordinary and largely overlooked story of her career and legacy. The artists Halpert launched into the American canon are household names--and this book compellingly argues that hers should be, as well. In publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. New York, Abbeville Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, 276 pages illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Gray cloth with dark green title to spine. Pictorial dust jacket. Beautiful copy. Like new. Edward Hicks (1780-1849), itinerant Quaker preacher and painter of coaches, signs and his own pictures, viewed Paine and Spinoza as devils, considered slavery a moral but not a political issue, and abhorred the temperance movement. When not torturing himself with guilt for being an artist or for leaving his wife and children in order to preach, he produced some masterpiecesnotably The Peaceable Kingdom, whose 50 or so variants dramatize Isaiah's biblical prophecies. Fifty color plates and 100 halftones show Hicks's folk renditions of William Penn, Noah's ark, David and Jonathan, along with his pastoral landscapes.