art history

Hardcover. Last Gasp, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 288 pages. The Book of Weirdo is the definitive - and hugely entertaining- examination of Weirdo magazine, renowned underground comix cartoonist Robert Crumb's legendary humor comics anthology, which was originally published throughout the 1980s. A "low-brow" counterpoint to Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouley's rather high-faluttin' RAW comix publication, Weirdo influenced an entire generation of alternative and neo-underground artists, as well as creative refuge for the underground comix veterans, and this book features the complete story of the well-recalled comics magazine, along with testimonials from over 130 of the publication's contributors, including interviews with Weirdo's three editors - R. "Keep on Truckin'" Crumb, Peter "Hate" Bagge, and Aline "The Bunch" Kominsky-Crumb - and publisher "Baba Ron" Turner. As much a history of the alternative comics scene of the 1980s - from New York City punk to Seattle grunge - this exhaustive retrospective includes rare and unseen artwork from that era, as well as new comics from modern-day artists celebrating their love for the great oddball magazine. In its time, the periodical featured the finest work of many artists, particularly the best material by Robert Crumb himself, Weirdo's founder and best known for ZAP Comix, Fritz the Cat, and Mr. Natural, and a man widely heralded as the greatest cartoonist of all time. We get photos of the various contributors, some samples of the work, more than a few brand-spanking-new artistic tributes to the magazine and the people who made it. And lots and lots of stories about what it was like to work for and with Robert Crumb.

Hardcover. Last Gasp, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 288 pages. Illustrated with photographs and back and white illustrations. Introduction by Drew Friedman. Fantastic reference work on the history and back story of the creation of R. Crumb's legendary humor comics anthology.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 336 pages. In a world where nearly everyone has a cellphone camera capable of zapping countless instant photos, it can be a challenge to remember just how special and transformative Polaroid photography was in its day. And yet, theres still something magical for those of us who recall waiting for a Polaroid picture to develop. Writing in the context of two Polaroid Corporation bankruptcies, not to mention the obsolescence of its film, Peter Buse argues that Polaroid was, and is, distinguished by its processby the fact that, as the New York Times put it in 1947, the camera does the rest. Polaroid was often dismissed as a toy, but Buse takes it seriously, showing how it encouraged photographic play as well as new forms of artistic practice. Drawing on unprecedented access to the archives of the Polaroid Corporation, Buse reveals Polaroid as photography at its most intimate, where the photographer, photograph, and subject sit in close proximity in both time and spacemaking Polaroid not only the perfect party camera but also the tool for frankly salacious pictures taking. Along the way, Buse tells the story of the Polaroid Corporation and its ultimately doomed hard-copy wager against the rising tide of digital imaging technology. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. NY, The Monacelli Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 640 pages, pofusely illustrated. In the late nineteenth century, Chicago -- the birthplace of modern architecture in the United States -- was a magnet for aspiring architects. The city was forced to rebuild after the destruction wrought by the Great Fire of 1871 and also to expand to accommodate a surge in the population. The seemingly endless demand for taller and more sophisticated buildings offered young draftsmen an unprecedented opportunity to influence the design of the American skyscraper. The Chicago Architecture Club: Prelude to the Modern documents the history of these draftsmen, the organization they founded, and its role in shaping architectural education and modern architectural practice.

Hardcover. NY, The Monacelli Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 640 pages, pofusely illustrated. In the late nineteenth century, Chicago -- the birthplace of modern architecture in the United States -- was a magnet for aspiring architects. The city was forced to rebuild after the destruction wrought by the Great Fire of 1871 and also to expand to accommodate a surge in the population. The seemingly endless demand for taller and more sophisticated buildings offered young draftsmen an unprecedented opportunity to influence the design of the American skyscraper. The Chicago Architecture Club: Prelude to the Modern documents the history of these draftsmen, the organization they founded, and its role in shaping architectural education and modern architectural practice.

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. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st thus, 1882, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth with red, black, and gilt embossed spine title, cover title, and bright cover illustration and decoration. Boards have beveled edges. All edges gilt. 70 pages, tissue-guarded frontispiece, 30 full-page illustrations; artists include A.B. Frost. Howard Pyle. Fredericks, J. S. Davis and others. A ballad written in Paris in 1841 at the time of the second funeral of Napoleon and is a narrative of French military history. Slender piece of cloth chipped away on rear cover, otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. Lexington KY, University of Kentucky Press, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light green cloth, 307 pages. This volume of Eaton's selected writings forms a rich and provocative mosaic of southern life from the years of Thomas Jefferson to the close of the Civil War. These selections, perceptively edited by Albert D. Kinvan, show the wide range of Eaton's interests, including the impact of slavery, the influence of religion, and the art of politics, and they demonstrate the depth of his insight into the civilization of the Old South. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Washington DC, Counterpoint, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 642 pages. Hailed in 1849 as "a new department in the literature of civilization," the slave narrative forms the foundation of the African American literary tradition. From the late-eighteenth-century narratives by Africans who endured the harrowing Middle Passage, through the classic American fugitive slave narratives of the mid-nineteenth century, slave narratives have provided some of the most graphic and damning documentary evidence of the horrors of slavery. Riveting, passionate, and politically charged, the slave narrative blends personal memory and rhetorical attacks on slavery to create powerful literature and propaganda.The Civitas Anthology presents the seven classic antislavery narratives of the antebellum period in their entirety: The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave , the first slave narrative published by a woman in the Americas; The Confessions of Nat Turner , written when Turner was asked to record his motivation for leading the bloodiest slave revolt in U.S. history; The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass , an international bestseller and the first narrative to fashion the male fugitive slave into an African American cultural hero; The Narrative of William W. Brown , an account that explored with unprecedented realism the slave's survival ethic and the art of the slave trickster; The Narrative of the Life of Henry Bibb , the story of the struggles of the most memorable family man among the classic slave narrators; Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom , a gripping chronicle of one of the most daring and celebrated slave escapes ever recorded; and Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl , a dramatic text that exposed the sexual abuse of female slaves and pioneered the image of the fugitive slave woman as an articulate resister and survivor.Born out of lives of unparalleled suffering, the slave narrative captures all the bravery, drama, and hope that characterized the African American struggle against slavery. From these beginnings came some of the most influential novels in American literature, for the works of writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and Toni Morrison owe much of their power and social resonance to the slave narrative tradition. The Civitas Anthology gathers the most important narratives in this tradition into one volume for the first time, an indispensable resource for scholars, students, and general readers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cleveland, World Publishing Company, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 336 pages. Hardcover. Previous owners name on front endpaper. Includes cartoonists: John Held, Jr., Charles Keene, George Herriman, A. B. Frost, Peter Arno, Saul Steinberg, Charles Addams, Virgil Partch, William Steig, Gerald Scarfe, Shel Silverstein, Tomi Ungerer, and more. Black & white illustrations. Dust jacket with chipping along edges. Clean, unmarked pages.

Hardcover. Prion, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 230 pages. In terms of both words and images the world had never seen the like of the American comic book. They were bizarre, morbid, lurid, risque and bursting with subconscious desires of burgeoning youth culture. By the time 1954 arrived their were 500 different comics being published by 35 different companies, selling over 60 million copies a month between them. This is the history of the era and the art it produced. The book looks at the pioneers of the comic book and the comic's founding links with sleazy pulp magazines; the campaign for censorship; the fraught relationship between the comic book artists and their publishers; how what they did was rarely recognized as art at the time - and of course the comics themselves.

Hardcover. NY, Metropolitan Museum of Art/ The Viking Press, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. In addition to being one of the preeminent American photographers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Alfred Stieglitz was an avid collector of the works of other photographers. From 1894-1910, he collected over 650 prints from a variety of photographers. He donated 400 of these to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1939, and the balance was given in a bequest to the museum in 1949. Photographers included in the collection include Edward Steichen, Gertrude Kasebier, Baron de Meyer, Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and Julia Margaret Cameron. This substantial volume was produced by Weston Naef, who was Associate Curator of Prints and Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It includes a black-and-white reproduction of all the photographs in the Stieglitz Collection, some full-page and many in smaller size. It also includes details about, and portraits and signatures of each of the painters. Small closed tears to dust jacket, otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket In this book, 380 pages, illustrated in color. The award-winning historian Regina Lee Blaszczyk traces the relationship of color and commerce, from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design, describing the often unrecognized role of the color profession in consumer culture. Blaszczyk examines the evolution of the color progression from 1850 to 1970, telling the stories of innovators who managed the color cornucopia that modern artificial dyes and pigments made possible. These color stylists, color forecasters, and color engineers helped corporations understand the art of illusion and the psychology of color. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Paul Holberton Publishing, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 197 pages. Color and b&w plates throughout. This groundbreaking architectural history examines what people actually wanted in their institutional and private patronage over the last two centuries as opposed to what architects and theorists thought they should want - as seen through the prism of Oxford's principal building contractor and craft practitioner, Symm & Company. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 200 pages. Gary Groth interviews father and son cartoonists Gene and Kim Deitch. Academy-award-winning Gene Deitch, whose wide-ranging career has spanned over 60 years, talks about doing illustrations for The Record Changer, directing cartoons such as Munro and Krazy Kat, and creating his comic strip Terr'ble Thompson. Underground comics pioneer Kim Deitch, touches on his father's influence, reminisces about the New York-based scene and outlines the evolution of Waldo the Cat. Plus: The innovative Grant Morrison fills us in on his X-Men run, All Star Superman, the ambitious Seven Soldiers "maxiseries," and how he became one of the architects of the current DC Comics universe. Finally, the comics gallery presents an historical essay and highlights from the turn-of-the-19th-century work of Puck cartoonist, F. M. Howarth.

Softcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 207 pages. A career-spanning interview with Mort Walker, the creator of Beetle Bailey and Hi & Lois. Jordan Crane discusses The Clouds Above: comics by the famous 17th century caricaturist Thomas K. Rowlandson.

Softcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Large softcover, 263 pages, b&w photos ad illustrations. In-depth, career-spanning interviews with the cartoonists - Crumb, Shelton, and more - who forever altered the course of American comics with their anthology title, Zap Comix.The definitive Comics Journal interviews with the cartoonists behind Zap Comix, featuring: Supreme 1960s counterculture/underground artist Robert Crumb on how acid unleashed a flood of Zap characters from his unconscious; Marxist brawler Spain Rodriguez on how he made the transition from the Road Vultures biker gang to the exclusive Zap cartoonists' club; Yale alumnus Victor Moscoso and Christian surfer Rick Griffin on how their poster-art psychedelia formed the backdrop of the 1960s San Francisco music scene; Savage Id-choreographer S. Clay Wilson on how his dreams insist on being drawn; Painter and Juxtapoz-founder Robert Williams on how Zap #4 led to 150 news-dealer arrests; Fabulous, Furry, Freaky Gilbert Shelton on the importance of research; Church of the Subgenius founder Paul Mavrides on getting a contact high during the notorious Zap jam sessions; and much more. In these career-spanning interviews, the Zap contributors open up about how they came to create a seminal, living work of art. Partial color.

Softcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Large softcover, 263 pages, b&w photos ad illustrations. In-depth, career-spanning interviews with the cartoonists - Crumb, Shelton, and more - who forever altered the course of American comics with their anthology title, Zap Comix.The definitive Comics Journal interviews with the cartoonists behind Zap Comix, featuring: Supreme 1960s counterculture/underground artist Robert Crumb on how acid unleashed a flood of Zap characters from his unconscious; Marxist brawler Spain Rodriguez on how he made the transition from the Road Vultures biker gang to the exclusive Zap cartoonists' club; Yale alumnus Victor Moscoso and Christian surfer Rick Griffin on how their poster-art psychedelia formed the backdrop of the 1960s San Francisco music scene; Savage Id-choreographer S. Clay Wilson on how his dreams insist on being drawn; Painter and Juxtapoz-founder Robert Williams on how Zap #4 led to 150 news-dealer arrests; Fabulous, Furry, Freaky Gilbert Shelton on the importance of research; Church of the Subgenius founder Paul Mavrides on getting a contact high during the notorious Zap jam sessions; and much more. In these career-spanning interviews, the Zap contributors open up about how they came to create a seminal, living work of art. Partial color.

Softcover. New York, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 300 pages. Softcover with light edgewear to paper wrappers. Clean, tight copy. Color and black and white illustrations throughout. The definitive Comics Journal interviews with the cartoonists behind Zap Comix, featuring: Supreme 1960s counterculture/underground artist Robert Crumb on how acid unleashed a flood of Zap characters from his unconscious; Marxist brawler Spain Rodriguez on how he made the transition from the Road Vultures biker gang to the exclusive Zap cartoonists' club; Yale alumnus Victor Moscoso and Christian surfer Rick Griffin on how their poster-art psychedelia formed the backdrop of the 1960s San Francisco music scene; Savage Id-choreographer S. Clay Wilson on how his dreams insist on being drawn; Painter and Juxtapoz-founder Robert Williams on how Zap #4 led to 150 news-dealer arrests; Fabulous, Furry, Freaky Gilbert Shelton on the importance of research; Church of the Subgenius founder Paul Mavrides on getting a contact high during the notorious Zap jam sessions; and much more. In these career-spanning interviews, the Zap contributors open up about how they came to create a seminal, living work of art.

Hardcover. NY, Abrams, 1st thus, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 668 pages, in a bright dust jacket. Includes the contents of "The Comics Before 1945" and "The Comics Since 1945.

Hardcover. NY, Benjamin Blom, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light orange cloth with brown titles on spine. Traces the history of the time-honored farce, featuring Pulcinella, Harlequin, Pierrot, Pantaleone, and other traditionsl characters, from Roman comedy to Cruikshank's Punch & Judy. Originally published in 1912, this new edition adds 46 pages of illustrations and a folding color frontispiece. Clean copy, no dust jacket.

Softcover. London, Carlton Books, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 128 pages. "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons" is one of the better "Supermarionation" series that came from the hands of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, known by Americans as well as those in the UK for their many classic puppet series "Supercar", "Fireball XL5", "Stingray", and especially "Thunderbirds"- and their classic live action "UFO" and "Space Precinct".The Captain Scarlet series also was shown in the USA, but in a limited market originally and with wider exposure via compilation films on Showtime and HBO and later on SciFi Channel. Captain Scarlet marked one of the first Supermarionation series to have a truly dark and serious storyline, with an invisible alien race, the Mysterons, seeking revenge for an attack made in error on their cities on Mars. The Mysterons then declared war on Earth. Chris Bentley presents a complete production history and guide to all 32 episodes of the Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons series, plus information about voice artists, merchandising and spin-offs. PLEASE NOTE: the book is clean and tight, but was once owned by a smoker and has a smoke odor.

Hardcover. Kitchen Sink Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 95 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Extensive color illustrations throughout. Foxing to dust jacket interior, several pages, and top edge. Some soiling to fly leafs. Otherwise clean, tight copy. Cliff Sterrett was one of the outstanding newspaper cartoon artists in the formative period of this 20th Century art: a skilled draftsman, borderline (and sometimes over the line) surrealist, and humorist. DUE TO SIZA AND WEIGHT, This is a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. International customers please ask for a shipping quote before purchasing.

Hardcover. San Diego, Clover Press, Revised Ed., 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, oblong format. 254 pages, some color, mostly black and white. Introduction by Max Allan Collins. Reformatted and re-scanned, revised from the 2007 printing. Includes over 500 comic strips from January 1935 to July 1936. A special section on the Dick Tracy Big Little Books in color. Clean copy.