art modern

Softcover. Washington D.C, National Gallery of Art, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Exhibition catalog. 225 pages, illustrated throughout with photos in b&w and color. Pictorial stiff wrappers. Light wear to edges and spine, else a very nice, tight, clean copy.

Softcover. Burlington VT, BCA Center, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 80 page exhibition catalog illustrated in color. SIGNED BY ARTIST on the title page. Text includes the artist's remarks and essays by Courtney Lynch and Jasminr Parsia. Related postcard and brochure laid in. For more than five decades, Stromeyer has created sculptures whose graphic forms, saturated colors, and complex, balanced compositions seem to defy steel's material limits. Despite the weight of their materials and construction--including welded, cold-bent, half-ton steel plates--many of Stromeyer's sculptures play with space and perception; they seem to defy gravity, appearing to float and extend upwards effortlessly in the landscape. Very Good plus.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover (cloth) in near fine condition with dust jacket which is protected by clear plastic covering, also in near fine condition. 293 pages., including 226 illustrations with 65 color plates. A beautiful and large-format monograph focusing on Willem De Kooning's life and paintings.

Hardcover. NY, Villard Books, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 258 pages, b&w illustrations. Beginning with the 1987 death of Andy Warhol, the author traces the ensuing dispute between the Warhol estate and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts over the artist's multimillion-dollar estate. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 158 pages. Design writer Siegel takes us on a inspiring tour of the history, stylistic concerns and uses of tiles. Though their cool, hard surface might seem best suited to Mediterranean climates, tiles have enjoyed wide use as far afield as the Netherlands, and any area subject to heavy foot-traffic could benefit from their easily cleaned faces. Lavishly illustrated with color photographs supplied by Country Floors, a well-known tile importing company, the book emphasizes the traditional "country" look; a brief, less successful foray into modern styles relies heavily on simple geometric patterns. In his introduction, Country Floors owner Norman Karlson tells how his fascination with tiles developed. Seemingly meant as a sourcebook for designers and tile enthusiasts, the volume offers scant information on the proper application of tiles--only instructions for care and maintenance. Installation, it is hinted, should be left to a specialist.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages. From the 1920s through the 1950s, two individuals, Joseph Urban and Norman Bel Geddes, did more, by far, to create the image of "America" and make it synonymous with modernity than any of their contemporaries. Urban and Bel Geddes were leading Broadway stage designers and directors who turned their prodigious talents to other projects, becoming mavericks first in industrial design and then in commercial design, fashion, architecture, and more. The two men gave shape to the most quintessential symbols of the modern American lifestyle, including movies, cars, department stores, and nightclubs, along with private homes, kitchens, stoves, fridges, magazines, and numerous household furnishings.Illustrated with more than 130 photographs of their influential designs, this book tells the engrossing story of Urban and Bel Geddes. Christopher Innes shows how these two men with a background in theater lent dramatic flair to everything they designed and how this theatricality gave the distinctive modernity they created such wide appeal. If the American lifestyle has been much imitated across the globe over the past fifty years, says Innes, it is due in large measure to the designs of Urban and Bel Geddes. Together they were responsible for creating what has been called the "Golden Age" of American culture.

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 168 pages. Diane Arbus (1923-1971) is renowned for her provocative and unsettling portraits of modern Americans. This book presents a significant body of previously unpublished pictures by Arbus and proposes a radically new way to understand her goals, strategies, and overall work. Diane Arbus: Family Albums examines unknown contact sheets from several of Arbus's portrait sessions, including more than three hundred photographs she took of a New York family one weekend in 1969. Anthony W. Lee and John Pultz put to the test Arbus's claim that she was developing a "family album." They present other images Arbus shot for Esquire magazine (including pictures of the families of Ricky Nelson, Jayne Mansfield, and Ogden Reid) and discuss her interest in photographic groupings of both traditional and alternative families. Challenging common interpretations of Arbus, the authors reveal a photographer far more savvy with the camera, more aware of photography as an artistic and commercial practice, and more sensitive to the social and cultural tensions of the 1960s than has been acknowledged before.

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 168 pages. Diane Arbus (1923-1971) is renowned for her provocative and unsettling portraits of modern Americans. This book presents a significant body of previously unpublished pictures by Arbus and proposes a radically new way to understand her goals, strategies, and overall work. Diane Arbus: Family Albums examines unknown contact sheets from several of Arbus's portrait sessions, including more than three hundred photographs she took of a New York family one weekend in 1969. Anthony W. Lee and John Pultz put to the test Arbus's claim that she was developing a "family album." They present other images Arbus shot for Esquire magazine (including pictures of the families of Ricky Nelson, Jayne Mansfield, and Ogden Reid) and discuss her interest in photographic groupings of both traditional and alternative families. Challenging common interpretations of Arbus, the authors reveal a photographer far more savvy with the camera, more aware of photography as an artistic and commercial practice, and more sensitive to the social and cultural tensions of the 1960s than has been acknowledged before.

Hardcover. Millerton NY, Aperture, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 80 b& plates by Arbus. True first with Two Girls in Identical Raincoats plate, later supressed. Very good in very good dust jacket that's unclipped. When Diane Arbus committed suicide in 1971, only a relatively small number of her most important pictures were widely known. The publication of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph in 1972--along with the concurrent retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art--offered the general public its first encounter with the breadth and power of her work. Now considered a classic of photographic literature, it is probably the best selling photography book of all time.

Softcover. NY, Praeger, reprint, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 189 pages, b&w illustrations. This ground-breaking work brings dance into current discussions of the African presence in American culture. Dixon Gottschild argues that the Africanist aesthetic has been invisibilized by the pervasive force of racism. This book provides evidence to correct and balance the record, investigating the Africanist presence as a conditioning factor in shaping American performance, onstage and in everyday life. She examines the Africanist presence in American dance forms particularly in George Balanchine's Americanized style of ballet, (post)modern dance, and blackface minstrelsy. Hip hop culture and rap are related to contemporary performance, showing how a disenfranchised culture affects the culture in power. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Taschen, 1st, 2006, Book: N, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 792 pages. This volume covers the second half of the 1970s, an era marked by the oil crisis and the related global economic crisis. For the first time, architecture and design dealt with alternative resources, ecological building methods, and recyclable materials. Nevertheless synthetics remained present in many fields, especially in interior design. Examples of projects featured are the postmodern and lightflooded buildings by Richard Meier, the modernistic buildings by Foster Associates, the Centre Georges Pompidou by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, and the buildings of the Japanese architects Arata Isozaki and Kisho Kurakawa. The industrial design of modern transport systems, office machines, and electrical appliances is also highlighted.

Hardcover. Taschen, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, Taschen's Domus collection is a major publishing achievement and a must-have item for all design and architecture teaching institutions, practicing architects, designers, collectors, students, and anyone who loves design. /// The first half of the 1990s represented a generational change in architecture and design.//// This title covers the years 1990-1994 - the next generation. The first half of the 1990s, this volume's focus, marked a shifting of the generations in architecture and design. "domus" - up to date as always - documented the work of this new generation with elaborate articles and reports. The architects Tadao Ando, Jean Nouvel, David Chipperfield, Philippe Starck, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Jacques Herzog, and Pierre de Meuron made their debuts in domus during this period. In addition, established architectural greats like Frank O. Gehry, Mario Bellini, Richard Meier, Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava, and Zaha Hadid were also featured. In product design, Marc Newson, Rodney Kinsman, Jasper Morrison as well as the brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana appeared in the spotlight.

Hardcover. Taschen, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 580 pages. 1940-1949: Destruction and Reconstruction. This volume covers the 1940s, when fascism came to a climax and World War II led to the extensive destruction of Europe. But the second half of this decade was also a time of reconstruction, democratization, and the related search for new social values. Unlike in Nazi Germany, in fascist Italy Modernism was able to advance in architecture and design - as proved impressively by the buildings and designs by Carlo Mollino, Gian Luigi Banfi, Franco Albini, and Giuseppe Terragni that are documented herein. After the war, Organic Design emerged alongside the International style. This edition reflects upon the economic, social, and cultural problems of the time, but also shows how the force of the avant-garde continued to thrive in Italy, Switzerland, Scandinavia and the USA. Reports and features on modern industrial design and furniture, as well as domestic and business interiors stand side by side with articles about novel prefabricated houses. In publisher's shrink wrap. Due to size and weight, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Taschen, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 580 pages. 1955-1959: International Affairs. The focus of this volume is the second half of the 1950s, an era of grand visions and increasing internationalization in architecture and design. The often playful and experimental ideas and designs of the first half of the decade became more and more set in a common style, in which the International style forms an alliance with the new organic forms of the postwar period - whereby the only common feature is the high quality of each particular design. The works documented here by architects and designers such as Oscar Niemeyer, Carlos Raul, Villanueva, Vittoriano Vigano, and Angelo Mangiarotti are representative of this development. Also featured are modern office machines by Olivetti, furniture design by Ray and Charles Eames, ceramic and lamp designs by Ettore Sottsass, the Herman Miller Showroom of Alexander Girard in San Francisco, and famous buildings like Le Corbusier's pilgrimage church in Ronchamp or Gio Ponti's Villa Arreaza in Caracas.

Hardcover. Stuttgard GR, Cantz, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 159 pages. Hardcover. Text in English and German. Illustrated with full color photographs. Exhibition catalog of Judd's work presented by the Stankowski Foundation. Slightest darkening to page edges. A clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 304 pages. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. This ambitious collection treating the Italian Fascists appropriation of the past for political purposes focuses on the role of the visual in the aim of fusing the past and the modern world in Mussolini"s Italy. With contributions by art historians.

Hardcover. New York, Aperture, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 96 pages, color photographs, Like new in publisher's shrinkwrap. Doors of the Kingdom is a unique collection of photographs depicting the ancient and disappearing craft of doormaking in Arabia. The Islamic concept of hurma, or sanctity of a place of dwelling or worship, is recurrent throughout Arabic poetry and literature. The door (bab), preserver of sanctity, becomes symbolic of the boundary between public and private space, and between the profane and the sacred. In 1995, Haajar Gouverneur traveled throughout the Arabian Peninsula photographing each region's distinctive doorways and the remaining artisans who make them. The doors of Arabia, painstakingly hand-carved from the wood of the Al-Athel trees, last in their exquisite variety for hundreds of years. This ancient craft, passed down from generation to generation in the central and northern regions of Saudi Arabia, is now nearly extinct. Modern materials, technology, and changing priorities threaten the continuity of the sacred and artisanal tradition of doormaking.

Hardcover. New York, Harper Design, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 256 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Color photographs. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. A lavish, gorgeously designed full-color collection that showcases the designs of Dorothy and Otis Shepard, two groundbreaking giants of early twentieth-century American advertising. Dorothy and Otis Shepard are the unsung heroes of early twentieth-century North American visual culture. Together, they were the first American graphic designers to work in multiple mediums and scales with equal skill and vision, and their work remains brilliant; yet their names are little known today. Dorothy and Otis chronicles their story in detail for the first time. It explores the Shepards' penchant for abstraction and modernism, and shows how the advent of billboard advertising inspired their creativity--large campaigns that matched the grandeur of their lifestyle. Throughout, it demonstrates how their influence touched all aspects of consumer culture--from collaborating on the packaging for Wrigley's Gum and designing uniforms and logos for the Chicago Cubs to planning and promoting the resort island Catalina, where Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Clark Gable, and other celebrities frequented.

Hardcover. Koln GDR, Walther Konig, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 242 pages 152 illustrations 87 in color. Text is in German and English Preface by Dietrich Karner. Introduction by Sabine Breitwieser. Published on the occasion of the exhibition from the Generali Foundation, Vienna 11 May-12 August 2001. List of Works in Exhibition. Biographies and Bibliography. To be able to take one's self off like a jacket and put on another self--who hasn't occasionally wished it were possible? Identity and transformation are among the central issues for contemporary art making, and Double Life pulls together a diverse selection of artists whose work embraces the possibilities of personality and appearance, racial and sexual stereotype, role-playing and reality. The artists in Double Life--from Marina Abramovic, Adrian Piper, and Andy Warhol to Ion Grigorescu, Eleanor Antin, Pierre Huyghe and Cindy Sherman--have all employed various strategies in their desire to assume different roles. Whether ironic, eccentric, utopian or critical, their methods have ranged from the subtle to the extreme. Zoe Leonard's pin-up calendar is filled with sexy portraits of her bearded self. Early black-and-white photographs by Cindy Sherman show the artist casually dressed as a random sampling of everyday people. Pierre Huyghe's Ann Lee is an anime extra, a digital character completely lacking any discernible identity. But artist Lynn Hershman perhaps best articulates the issue when she writes, "I always told the truth for the person who I was, but the person kept fluctuating."

Softcover. Baltimore MD, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Large softcover, 202 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Less famous than Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, the Cone sisters were important patrons of early modernism and the School of Paris. Their collection, which is especially rich in works by Matisse, now resides in the Baltimore Museum of Art. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pointed Leaf Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The first monograph on the work of Kenneth Paul Block, one of the most influential fashion illustrators of the twentieth century. The oversize, lavishly illustrated book chronicles Block's lifetime of drawings, watercolors, and astute observations during the artist's over 30-year career at Women's Wear Daily, powerful fashion publication. A long awaited book of astonishingly vibrant fashion and portrait drawings of swan necked beauties by a much admired fashion-insider. Mr. Block studied at The Parsons school of Design and illustrated the work of the most influential fashion designers from about the mid 20th century to the nineties before unoriginal, mediocre photography (and unskilled illustrations) completely dominated how fashion was communicated to the celebrity obsessed, style challenged, uninformed masses. With seemingly effortless ease (the energy in the art looks like it could have been sketched yesterday!), Mr. Block drew the ever changing mood of fashion from London Mod to Italian Modern, Preppy Classic to Japanese Experimental, French couture to American casual and inspired many generations of fashion enthusiasts in the process. Mr. Block's portraits showcase a few of his favorite ladies. A rare and exquisite breed who set the standard for elegance and chic for most of the 20th century. Society beauties like Mrs. Guinness, Mrs. Paley, Mrs. Guest, Mrs. Vanderbilt and Mrs. Kennedy speak of a time when grace, poise and mystery mixed with a certain sense of knowing defined a chic, stylish lady. PLEASE NOTE: The book,while clean and bright, has a mild musty smell. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY due to size and weight.

Hardcover. New York, Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 302 pages. Foreword by John Ashbury. 285 duotone illustrations and photographs, 70 in full color. Green cloth covers with gold lettering. Tipped in color frontispiece illustration. Dust jacket and pages clean and in like-new condition.

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, March 1, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 245 pages, illustrated throughout. Clean, bright pages and tight binding. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898) was a towering figure in late nineteenth-century France. The country's greatest public painter, he created murals that decorated museums in Amiens, Rouen, and Lyons as well as major buildings in Paris-most notably the Pantheon, the Sorbonne, and the city hall. Critics from the political right, left, and center, the avant-garde, the Academy, and the state all agreed on the importance of Puvis's murals. Avant-garde artists greatly admired and drew from his work. There was much controversy, however, over the meaning of these murals. This handsomely illustrated book is the first full-length examination of Puvis's murals and their critical reception during the artist's lifetime. Jennifer L. Shaw explains that Puvis's paintings were imagined to embody a vision of France. Although his regional images, allegories of the French heritage, and evocations of the nation as an embracing motherland were all part of a grand tradition of public art, Puvis's painting style was more closely aligned with the avant-garde. Rather than providing a specific narrative or allegory of France, Puvis's murals provoked viewers to experience their own fantasies of Frenchness; rather than using the close brushwork favored by most of his contemporaries, Puvis used large flat areas of color to render his subjects. Shaw persuasively argues that Puvis was the only painter of the period to unite the traditions of public art and modernist form. Her original analysis of Puvis's art underlines his importance to the history of modernism; her examination of the public response to his art illuminates debates about art, subjectivity, and national identity in fin de siecle France.

Hardcover. Philadelphia PA/New Haven CT, Philadelphia Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 336 pages, hardcover with dust jacket. Published to commemorate the centenary of Levy's birth. With 300 photographs, including many unfamiliar works by well-known artists, the catalogue presents a stunning survey of this collection, long hidden from public view. Fading to dust jacket spine and fore edges. Unmarked. A clean and tight copy.