culture

Hardcover. NY, powerHouse Books, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still in publisher's shrink wrap. Jean Patchett was both model and muse, a famous face from New York's vibrant midcentury popular culture and the most successful high-fashion model of her time.A small-town girl from rural Maryland, Patchett had no firm ambitions until a friend suggested she drop out of college and go to New York and become a model. Within a year Jean had left school, met model agent Eileen Ford, and begun a career that saw her photographed by the greatest photographers of her era, with more than 58 magazine covers over 14 years."A young American goddess in Paris couture," was Irving Penn's epitaph for the model he photographed for a classic series in Lima, Peru where, pushed past their limits, Patchett and Penn created passionate art with a possible passionate relationship as well. Penn would go on to create stunning images of Patchett forVogueand later, for a series of nudes he called "the major artistic experience of my life." Letters from Patchett to her family show a young woman in love with her life and eager to share the thrills and struggles of her career. Quotes from photographers Cecil Beaton, John Rawlings, William Helburn, Jerry Schatzberg, and Francesco Scavullo reflect their admiration for her technical skills as a model as well as her unique beauty. A work diary from 1951 allows us to see how-and with whom-she worked from day to day.

Hardcover. New York, Abbeville Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 247 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. 163 color illustrations throughout.

Softcover. US, Laurence King Publishing, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 186 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Light edgewear to wrappers, else a clean, tight copy. This is the first comprehensive survey of Modernist graphic design as it emerged in America in the period from 1920 and 1960 in various media--advertising, information design, brand identity, magazine design, book design, and posters. It examines the great works which by mid-century had defined American graphic design. The book begins with a section devoted to the emergence of Modernism and its major historical influence, such as European avant-garde movements, popular culture, educational innovations such as the Bauhaus School, architecture, industrial design, and photography. The heart of the book includes the key works of mid-century Modernism as it matured into a fully-formed American style, bringing together such great names as Alexey Brodovitch, Lester Beall, Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Will Burtin, and Alvin Lustig. The final section looks at the impact of and reactions to this new movement as graphic design in America matured in the 1960s and beyond.

Hardcover. Woodstock, New York, The Overlook Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, Encyclopedic volume featuring the historical evolution of American homes. Hardcover, 320 pages. Over 1000 black/white illustrations, including architectural plans for each variety of home discussed. Cloth bound book is in near fine condition, only flaw on the dust jacket is a small blue ink stain on the front.

Softcover. NY, Monacelli Press,, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 272 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. The roadside sign has become an American icon: a glowing neon symbol of the golden age of the open road. Yet signs are complex pieces of design, serving not only as physical markers but also as cultural, political, and economic ones. In American Signs, Lisa Mahar traces the evolution of motel signs on Route 66 in a distinctive visual approach that combines text, images, and graphics. American Signs reveals the rich vernacular traditions of motel sign-making in five eras, spanning from the late 1930s through the 1970s. The motel signs of the early 1940s, for instance, reflect vernacular traditions dating back at least a century, while examples from the later years of the decade reveal a culture newly obsessed with themes. America's fascination with newness and technological progress is manifested in 1950s motel signs. Finally, in the 1960s, a turn toward simplicity and the use of new, modular technologies allowed motel signs to address the needs of a mass society and the beginnings of a national, rather than regional, aesthetic for motel signs.

Hardcover. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1st, 1872, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 74 pages. Hardcover. Green Pebbled cloth. Gilt title and decoration on front cover. Black & white illustrations by Toby. Front endpaper has been removed. Previous owners name on inside front cover and preliminary page. Moderate fraying at bottom of spine, light rubbing to corners. All edges gilt. Clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st pbk., 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 373 pages, b&w illustrations. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers. This engaging, deeply researched study provides the richest and most nuanced picture we have to date of cinema-both movies and movie-going-in the early 1910s. At the same time, it makes clear the profound relationship between early cinema and the construction of a national identity in this important transitional period in the United States. Richard Abel looks closely at sensational melodramas, including westerns (cowboy, cowboy-girl, and Indian pictures), Civil War films (especially girl-spy films), detective films, and animal pictures-all popular genres of the day that have received little critical attention. He simultaneously analyzes film distribution and exhibition practices in order to reconstruct a context for understanding moviegoing at a time when American cities were coming to grips with new groups of immigrants and women working outside the home. Drawing from a wealth of research in archive prints, the trade press, fan magazines, newspaper advertising, reviews, and syndicated columns-the latter of which highlight the importance of the emerging star system-Abel sheds new light on the history of the film industry, on working-class and immigrant culture at the turn of the century, and on the process of imaging a national community.

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. Middletown CT, Wesleyan University Press, 2nd pr., 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 252 pages. How does a Middle Eastern community create a modern image through its expression of heritage and authenticity? In Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria, Jonathan H. Shannon investigates expressions of authenticity in Syria's musical culture, which is particularly known for embracing and preserving the Arab musical tradition, and which has seldom been researched in depth by Western scholars. Music plays a key role in the process of self-imaging by virtue of its ability to convey feeling and emotion, and Shannon explores a variety of performance genres, Sufi rituals, song lyrics, melodic modes, and aesthetic criteria. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Minneapolis, MN, North Loop Books, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 292 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Color and black and white pictures throughout.

Hardcover. New York, Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 167 pages, 132 plates in duotone and color. Light wear to dust jacket. This book focuses on surprisingly atypical choices from the oeuvres of 125 seminal artists, such as Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alexander Rodchenko, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Ulrich Tillman. Over 130 images in duotone and color illustrate the aesthetic differences between various styles, genres, and authors, and show diversities and affinities among different continents, cultures and periods. This extraordinary recombination of photographs by master artists offers viewers a fresh look at the world of photography.

Hardcover. New York, Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 167 pages, 132 plates in duotone and color. Light wear to dust jacket. This book focuses on surprisingly atypical choices from the oeuvres of 125 seminal artists, such as Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alexander Rodchenko, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Ulrich Tillman. Over 130 images in duotone and color illustrate the aesthetic differences between various styles, genres, and authors, and show diversities and affinities among different continents, cultures and periods. This extraordinary recombination of photographs by master artists offers viewers a fresh look at the world of photography.

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. New York , McGraw-Hill, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, large folio, 159 pages, index, 60 beautiful tipped-in color plates of ancient Mexican sites after photographs by Irmgard Groth. Original gilt-lettered burgundy cloth in original color pictorial dust jacket that has a small chip to top of spine. The author of this book, Ignacio Bernal (1910 - 1992), was an eminent Mexican anthropologist and archaeologist. Bernal excavated much of Monte Alban, originally starting as a student of Alfonso Caso, and later led major archeological projects at Teotihuacan. In 1965 he excavated Dainzu. He was the Director of Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology 1962-68 (at the time of this publication) and again 1970-77. In 1965, he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bernal was awarded the Premio Nacional in 1969. He was a founding member of the Third World Academy of Sciences in 1983. This book includes 60 hand-mounted colour plates and 1 map (all framable); each chosen by Bernal photographed by Mrs. Irmgard Groth, a gifted photographer whose special field was Mexican archaeology. In these plates we see the extraordinary sculpture of the Omecs; the Pyramid of the Moon of Teotihuacan; the Maya temples of Palenque; the Pyramid of the Niches of Tajin on the Gulf Coast; the temples at the great city of Chichen Itza; the gold ornaments of the Mixtecs at Monte Alban; the temple carved by the Aztecs out of the Cliffside at Malinalco; and many other buildings and artifacts, the surviving testimonials - sometimes exquisite, sometimes aw-inspiring - to the greatness of a long-vanished culture.

Hardcover. Gloucester MA, Peter Smith, reprint, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers, 569 pages. Two decades after Darwin, intellectuals were writing about the evolution of everything. In England Edward Taylor focused on material culture such as fire making, cooking, or tool making. In America, Lewis Henry Morgan, concentrated on social evolution combined with subsistence techniques. His thinking was influenced by his Iroquois neighbors in New York. Like many others he posited three stages of evolution: savagery, barbarism and civilization, but he refined the three periods with three subperiods. In Lower savagery, for example, he saw humans subsisting on fruits and roots in tropical climes, using gesture language and marrying siblings in a consanguine family. Middle savagery saw fish subsistence, monosyllabic language, and marriage of cousins. Bows and arrows appeared in Upper Savagery along with syllabic language, clans, and tribal organization. Obviously Morgan was speculating on most of the developments, but he had found arguments for his positions from the reports of explorers and missionaries around the world. As a result, Morgan inspired an era of inquisitive thought that led to the development of American anthropology. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, pages. Seventeenth-century England has long been heralded as the birthplace of a so-called 'new' philosophy. Yet what contemporaries might have understood by 'old' philosophy has been little appreciated. In this book Dmitri Levitin examines English attitudes to ancient philosophy in unprecedented depth, demonstrating the centrality of engagement with the history of philosophy to almost all educated persons, whether scholars, clerics, or philosophers themselves, and aligning English intellectual culture closely to that of continental Europe. Drawing on a vast array of sources, Levitin challenges the assumption that interest in ancient ideas was limited to out-of-date 'ancients' or was in some sense 'pre-enlightened'; indeed, much of the intellectual justification for the new philosophy came from re-writing its history. At the same time, the deep investment of English scholars in pioneering forms of late humanist erudition led them to develop some of the most innovative narratives of ancient philosophy in early modern Europe. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. London, Goodman Books, 1st, 20091st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 128 pages, 300 color/b&w photographs plus over 20 pieces of memorabilia. One of the world's best-known artists, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) still exerts influence on contemporary art and culture. Packed with information about Warhol's prolific creativity, as well as his other cultural interests, the project follows the arc of his life. This beautifully illustrated publication reveals Warhol's rags-to-riches life from his early years in Depression-era Pittsburgh to his success as an illustrator in New York City in the 1950s and his transformation into a notorious Pop Artist, underground filmmaker, author, publisher, collector, recorder and iconic celebrity. With 21 beautifully produced removable facsimile documents help give an unprecedented insight into Warhol's life and work in this unique and authoritative guide to this celebrated modern artist.

Hardcover. London, Phaidon Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 624 pages. Hardcover. 2000 illustrations, 1400 in color. Sixteen pound monster elephant folio, a huge volume. Laminated covers, clean, very good. Andy Warhol "Giant" Size is the definitive document of this remarkable creative force, and a telling look at late twentieth-century pop culture. A must-have for Warhol fans and pop culture enthusiasts, this in-depth and comprehensive overview of Warhol's extraordinary career is packed with more than 2,000 illustrations culled from rarely seen archival material, documentary photography, and artwork. Dave Hickey's compelling essay on Warhol's geek-to-guru evolution combines with chapter openers by Warhol friends and insiders to give special insight into the way the enigmatic artist led his life and made his art. It also provides a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the New York art world of the 1950s to the 1980s. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Koln GR, Walther Konig, 1st, 2008, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: None, Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 118 pages, no dust jacket issued. English and French text. On the occasion of what would have been Andy Warhol's eightieth birthday, in 2008, this exquisitely produced volume examines one essential but miraculously under-studied element of the artist's work: The shadow. Beginning with photographic still lifes of skulls and taxidermied animals, then moving on to male nudes, tabletops and table settings, celebrity portraits, gems, fruits and many amazing still lifes of hammers, sickles, shoes and other ordinary objects that presage Fischli & Weiss' Equilibres by several years, Shadows and Other Signs of Life concludes with Warhol's photographs of actual shadows and an outstanding selection of abstract silkscreens, stenciled works and piss paintings. Published to accompany the eponymous exhibition at Paris' Galerie Chantal Crousel, this volume contains illuminating short texts--Anniversary Notes for Andy Warhol--by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh.

Hardcover. Koln GR, Walther Konig, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 118 pages, no dust jacket issued. English and French text. On the occasion of what would have been Andy Warhol's eightieth birthday, in 2008, this exquisitely produced volume examines one essential but miraculously under-studied element of the artist's work: The shadow. Beginning with photographic still lifes of skulls and taxidermied animals, then moving on to male nudes, tabletops and table settings, celebrity portraits, gems, fruits and many amazing still lifes of hammers, sickles, shoes and other ordinary objects that presage Fischli & Weiss' Equilibres by several years, Shadows and Other Signs of Life concludes with Warhol's photographs of actual shadows and an outstanding selection of abstract silkscreens, stenciled works and piss paintings. Published to accompany the eponymous exhibition at Paris' Galerie Chantal Crousel, this volume contains illuminating short texts--Anniversary Notes for Andy Warhol--by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh.

Hardcover. NY, Carroll & Graf, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Altogether original, at once searing and amusing, this darkly comic novel confronts Harold Klein, now in his infirm seventies, with a strange malady -- the loss of his "inner voice" -- and introduces him to the steamy world of Internet sex. Inexplicably bereft of the mental faculty that would under normal circumstances keep him from blurting out, uncensored, the first thought that pops into his head, art connoisseur Klein wanders one evening into a pornographic Web site, Angelica's Grotto. An ongoing on-line dialogue, totally without verbal inhibition on Klein's part, eventually brings him face-to-face with the brains behind the grotto, an academic sex researcher named Melissa Bottomley. Harold Klein's erotic odyssey takes him not only through unimagined erogenous zones but also into arcane corners of the art world, as he seeks to meet Melissa's need for funding and she his for sexual gratification. As Klein strives to reconcile new desires with old habits, author Russell Hoban compellingly explores the dark relations between art and pornography, acts virtual and real, culture and politics, revelation and privacy.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This book examines the far-reaching legacy of one of the great myths of classical antiquity. According to Greek legend, Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, secretly buried her brother in defiance of the orders of Creon, king of Thebes. Creon sentenced Antigone to death, but, before the order could be executed, she committed suicide. The theme of the conflict between Antigone and Creon - between the state and the individual, between young and old, between men and women - has captured the Western imagination for more than 2,000 years. Antigone and Creon are as alive in the politics and poetics of our own day as they were in ancient Athens. Here, Steiner examines the treatment of the Antigone theme in Western art, literature and thought, leading us to look again at the unique influence Greek myths exercise on twentieth-century culture.

Hardcover. New York, Rizzoli, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, like new. Best known for dazzling illustrations in Women's Wear Daily, Vogue, the New York Times, Interview, and for high fashion labels, Antonio Lopez (1943-1987) was a major force in the fashion world for three decades. In the '60s, Lopez's vibrant illustrations helped usher youth culture into the pages of magazines, setting a new, free-flowing, sexually liberated standard for fashion imagery. Living in Paris during the 70s with his creative partner Juan Ramos, Lopez launched the modeling careers of Jerry Hall, Grace Jones, and Jessica Lange among others, and worked with design royalty like Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent. Returning to New York City in 1976, Antonio documented the sexy influence of athletic-wear, puffy, down coats, and break-dancing style, inspiring such designers as Norma Kamali and Anna Sui. Lopez produced an incredible number of drawings, illustrations, paintings, photographs, and fantastic mixed-media journals, and the book Antonio Lopez: Fashion, Art, Sex, and Disco showcases his most iconic works, as well as never-before-seen photos, behind-the-scenes Polaroids, letters, and ephemera which, together, provide an understanding of the career trajectory of an extraordinarily talented artist.

Softcover. Millerton, Aperture Magazine, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 80 pages. Magazine. Illustrated with black & white photographs. Features articles: 'People and Ideas', 'Real Pictures for just 25 cents', 'The Arctic Voyage of William Bradford', 'Views of Japan', 'Photographer without Photographs', Passion for Genius', 'The Peasant Miners of Morococha'. Light wear. Clean, unmarked.