The "Beautiful Losers" Artists: Books & Exhibition Catalogs

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  D.A.P./Iconoclast Beautiful Losers Contemporary Art and Street Culture The greatest cultural accomplishments in history have never been the result of the brainstorms of marketing men, corporate focus groups or any homogenized methods; they have always happened organically. More often than not, these manifestations have been the result of a few like-minded people coming together to create something new and original for no other purpose than a common love of doing it. In the 1990s, a loose-knit group of American artists and creators, many just out of their teens, began their careers in just such a way. Influenced by the popular underground youth subcultures of the day, such as skateboarding, graffiti, street fashion and independent music, artists like Shepard Fairey, Mark Gonzales, Spike Jonze, Margaret Kilgallen, Mike Mills, Barry McGee, Phil Frost, Chris Johanson, Harmony Korine and Ed Templeton began to create art that reflected the lifestyles they led. Many had no formal training and almost no conception of the . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Aaron Rose and Christian Strike. Interview with Agnes B. Paperback, 8.5 x 11 in. / 288 pgs / 220 color / 200 b&w. Publication Date: 10/15/2005 List Price: US $39.95

  Oscilloscope Laboratories Beautiful Losers: A Film By Aaron Rose The joy of making art with a community of friends, of building a scene purely out of passion and enthusiasm: this is the joy that suffuses Beautiful Losers, a heartening documentary about a loose-knit group of like-minded outsiders--young artists rooted in urban street cultures and underground scenes like skateboarding, graffiti, hip-hop and punk rock--who came together at a little storefront gallery in New York in the 1990s to make work that spoke to themselves and their friends, with little thought of the market. Companion to the now-classic book and show of the same name, Beautiful Losers features Shepard Fairey, Mark Gonzales, Spike Jonze, Margaret Kilgallen, Mike Mills, Barry McGee, Phil Frost, Chris Johanson, Harmony Korine and Ed Templeton; the film is directed by Aaron Rose, the artist, writer and curator who ran the storefront Alleged Gallery from 1992 to 2002, helping launch the careers of many of the artists in the . . . . [see book details]

  DVD video, (NTSC) 5.5 x 7.25 in. Publication Date: 7/31/2010 List Price: US $29.99

  Damiani Phil Frost Part of a whole gang of street artists--from Barry McGee to Swoon--who have broken into the art world in the last decade or so, Phil Frost’s signature style is a funky tribalism--Hawaii by way of New York City--infused with a quirky sense of art history and design. In the 1990s, Frost honed his skills by painting walls, found objects and street detritus with his intricate, compulsive and highly evolved form of tagging. Frost’s gallery exhibitions are crowded affairs, filled with wildly patterned totemic objects and baseball bats while the walls are stacked with colorful mixed media paintings. He crafts his painstaking paintings by collaging layers of found imagery on grounds of symmetrical black-and-white patterning, which he paints with correction fluid, and that often morph into language-like glyphs or symbols. Frost states, I believe [my work] is indigenous to myself. I believe that within every person there is an indigenous expression of . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Pushead, Carlo McCormick. Hardback, 10.5 x 11 in. / 162 pgs / 164 color. Publication Date: 3/1/2008 List Price: US $45.00

  Nieves Mark Gonzales: Instead of Eros Avenged Artist, writer and skateboarder Mark Gonzales (born 1968) is always in motion and his work is a real-time product of that unceasing movement. His visual output ranges from drawings and paintings to dolls and in this case, photographs taken with that contemporary equivalent of the Kodak Brownie, the cell phone. This collection of Gonzales' cell-phone pictures takes Jerry Chadwick's poem Instead of Eros Avenged” as its starting point: Started to type / the first chapter / where green eyes / press into / grey eyes / like ivy on granite / and remembered / Lorca shot in Spain / Richard Heakin beaten / to death outside / a tuscon gay bar / and decided / NO / there have been / enough deaths / already.” The photographs depict a life of joyful and chaotic spontaneity, showing Gonzales posing with fans, hanging out with family and friends and performing wallrides. . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Christopher Churchill. Pbk, 6.25 x 8 in. / 300 pgs / 300 color. Publication Date: 9/30/2011 List Price: US $38.00

  Testify Books Todd James Todd James belongs to a small, influential group of artists who acquired the earliest elements of their visual languages painting New York City subway cars, and in doing so altered an entire generation's perception of urban letter forms. Filled with over 150 raucous paintings, drawings and signage, Todd James is a solid catalogue of work from the internationally known artist and designer. This small treasury is an irresistible compendium that highlights some of the artist's best-known works from the last two years, as well as many exclusive works taken directly from private collections and sketchbooks. It is an intense, hilarious and wholly compelling window into the art of one of downtown New York's most celebrated street artists. . . . . [see book details]

  Foreword by Rachel Greene. Paperback, 6.25 x 8.75 in. / 128 pgs / 145 color / 25 b&w. Publication Date: 1/15/2005 List Price: US $25.00

  Nieves Chris Johanson & Jo Jackson: Peaceable Kingdom Chris Johanson and Jo Jackson, artists, partners and owners of the amazing dog Raisin, here offer up recent graphic works. Both painters are known for their subversive, street-smart, from-the-gut imagery--painted on canvas or walls, installed in galleries, printed on skateboards or otherwise superimposed on everyday detritus. . . . . [see book details]

  Paperback, 6.5 x 9 in. / 32 pgs/ 16 color. Publication Date: 6/1/2008 List Price: US $20.00

  Damiani Chris Johanson: Please Listen I Have Something to Tell You About What Is For more than a decade, Chris Johanson has been transforming day-to-day subject matter into simple stories in paintings that make bright, flat reference to illustration or folk art: The New York Times called their look "a down-on-its-luck, cheerfully abject cartoon style… reminiscent of artists like William Wegman, Raymond Pettibon and Sue Williams." The same primary palette and angular compositions make Johanson's abstract works, which often take the form of geometric patterns or starbursts, into gleeful but sophisticated takes on Modernism. This, the artist's first major monograph, is also only the second title from Alleged Press, created by Aaron Rose of the influential Alleged gallery (1992-2002) and organizer of the groundbreaking traveling exhibition and accompanying catalogue, Beautiful Losers, in which Johanson featured prominently alongside artists such as Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Phil Frost, Spike Jonze and Harmony Korine. Please listen I have something to tell you about what is assembles Johanson's complete . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Aaron Rose. Contributions by Sean Kennerly, Jack Hanley. Hardcover, 9.5 x 12.5in. / 192 pgs / 100 color / 80 duotone. Publication Date: 3/1/2007 List Price: US $50.00

  Nieves Spike Jonze: I'm Here I’m Here is the latest film from director Spike Jonze (of Where the Wild Things Are fame), a half-hour narrative short that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010 and was released on the movie’s own website in March. I’m Here is your typical boy-robot-librarian-meets-girl-robot-free-spirit, boy-robot-librarian-gets-girl-robot-free-spirit… in truth, I’m Here, a whimsical and touching look at love among robots in contemporary L.A., isn’t typical of anything, and neither is this charming book, which provides spreads of color stills from the movie. I’m Here isn’t drawn or stop-motion animation; the movie is live action, with the actors wearing wonderfully awkward costumes concocted of obsolete computer parts. The performers concealed beneath all this hard-molded plastic are British actors Andrew Garfield (Boy A, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The Social Network) and Sienna Guillory (Love, Actually; the television miniseries Helen of Troy). . . . . [see book details]

  Pbk, 4 x 7 in. / 48 pgs / 24 color. Publication Date: 7/31/2010 List Price: US $18.00

  JRP|Ringier Harmony Korine: The Trash Humpers Harmony Korine shocked a nation with his first movie script, 1995's Kids, about drug-addled adolescents wallowing in ennui and sex. Arbiters of culture and morality wrung their hands, but two first-time actors in Kids--Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson--found longtime fame in the ensuing years. Korine himself went on to direct several audaciously polarizing feature films. This book, The Trash Humpers, is based on the photographic research for Korine's latest directorial project of the same name. Released on lo-fi VHS and edited in part while blindfolded--or so Korine attests--the 78-minute movie follows a gang of miscreants who roam the streets of Nashville, molesting garbage bins and causing random mayhem. It's an "ode to vandalism and the creativity of the destructive force," Korine has said. "Sometimes there's a real beauty to blowing things up, to smashing and burning. It could be almost as enlightening as the building of an object." . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Harmony Korine. Pbk, 8.5 x 11 in. / 136 pgs / 51 color / 62 b&w. Publication Date: 4/30/2011 List Price: US $39.95

  Damiani Ari Marcopoulos Ari Marcopoulos immerses himself completely in the personalities and scenes he has photographed, but more than that, he seems to always be anticipating the zeitgeist. As a result, he has become one of our chief documenters of contemporary culture, as it emerges. Whether he was hanging in the East Village in the 1980s at age 23 as Warhol's assistant (and snapping Basquiat at his most intimate), recording the burgeoning hip-hop scene of the late 1980s, riding along with multi-ethnic New York skateboard kids in the 1990s, or shooting snowboard schussers hurtling down a mountain (or chilling in the lodge) in recent years, Marcopoulos's pictures always penetrate the heart of the underground of the moment and its denizens. This volume is the first in a new, ambitious series called Alleged Press, a collaboration between Damiani and the renowned curator Aaron Rose. . . . . [see book details]

  Essay by Aaron Rose. Hardcover, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 200 pgs / 100 color / 100 b&w. Publication Date: 9/15/2005 List Price: US $55.00

  Damiani Barry McGee Barry McGee's art buzzes with an infectious street vitality that celebrates the rich pageant of city living, while lambasting its ills, overstimulations, frustrations, addictions. His early years as a graffiti artist, tagging on the streets of San Francisco under such monikers as Ray Fong, Twist and Twisto, still nourish his drive to inscribe the blank face of modern life with the personal and the handmade. A part of the early 1990s art and graffiti boom associated with San Francisco's Mission School (others include Clare Rojas, Chris Johanson and Aaron Noble) and with the Beautiful Loser generation, McGee synthesizes a wide range of resources, including the Mexican muralists, anonymous street art and San Francisco Beat poetry, all of which are notably characterized by a sense of public address that McGee never neglects to convey in his own work. His paintings, drawings and installations spill over with graphic energy and political anger, and . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Aaron Rose. Hbk, 9 x 12 in. / 176 pgs / 120 color. Publication Date: 12/31/2010 List Price: US $49.95

  Damiani Mike Mills: Graphics Films Graphics Films is the first retrospective monograph on one of the hardest-working men in contemporary creative culture. For more than 15 years, Mike Mills' works in the fields of design and film have determined the visual landscape of our times. Graphics Films is a painstakingly produced document of Mills' career to date, including many never-before-seen examples of his works in graphic design, installation, publications and film projects. Past projects by Mills include music videos for Air ("Sexy Boy"), Blonde Redhead ("Top Ranking"), Yoko Ono ("Walking on Thin Ice") and Bran Van 3000 ("Afrodiziak") and album cover designs for the Beastie Boys (the Root Down EP), Sonic Youth (Washing Machine), Air (Moon Safari and Kelly Watch the Stars) and others. He has designed graphics and textiles for Marc Jacobs and created the identity for X-Girl Clothing, and has exhibited his unique graphic installations worldwide, with solo shows at Andrea Rosen Gallery in . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Aaron Rose. Hbk, 9.75 x 12.75 in. / 176 pgs / 100 color. Publication Date: 2/1/2009 List Price: US $49.95

  Free News Projects Steve Powers: A Love Letter for You Brick Valentines on the Philly Skyline Graffiti artist Steve Powers started painting his "ESPO" alias across the walls and rooftops of Philadelphia in 1984, just as the city's Anti-Graffiti Network was launched. Twenty-five years later, in the summer of 2009, he returned to Philly, armed with 1,200 cans of spray paint, 800 gallons of bucket paint and 20 of the finest spray-painters in America, to inscribe an epic love letter on the rooftops facing the Market-Frankfurt line, as a public art project. Powers consulted the community in West Philly and collaborated with The Mural Arts Program and the Pew Center, and with their help transformed this 20-block stretch of buildings into visual and architectural Valentine poems, with lines such as: "This love is real so dinner is on me" and "Knocked on your door/ legs tired back sore/ migraine for sure/ no more I swore you smile I'm cured." A Love Letter for You: Brick Valentines on . . . . [see book details]

  Pbk, 9.25 x 6.25 in. / 96 pgs / illustrated throughout. Publication Date: 4/30/2010 List Price: US $19.95

  Damiani Ed Templeton: Deformer Eleven years in the making and compiling more than 30 years of material, Ed Templeton's scrapbook of his upbringing in suburban Orange County California is a much-anticipated book. Its photographs give a sun-drenched glimpse of what it might be like to be young and alive in the "suburban domestic incubator" of Orange County, conveyed in the idiom of Nan Goldin or Larry Clark (and with a sharp eye for the streets that recalls Garry Winogrand or Eugene Richards). For like his groundbreaking predecessors, Templeton is always a participant in the scenes he shoots. From the Alleged Press series curated by Aaron Rose, Deformer interweaves disciplinary letters from Templeton's grandfather and religious notes from his mother with sketches, snapshots, telling images and the occasional brutal tale, laying out an unresolved narrative that plunges readers headlong into Templeton's chaotic youth and his reliance on art and skateboarding to accommodate its stresses and joys. . . . . [see book details]

  Hardback, 9.75 x 12.75 in. / 170 pgs / 150 color. Publication Date: 10/1/2008 List Price: US $55.00

  S.M.A.K. Ed Templeton: The Cemetery of Reason Californian artist Ed Templeton (born 1972) delivers up his diagnosis of the contemporary human condition in a whirlwind of present-tense imagery, filtered through photographs, paintings and drawings. Over the past decade and a half, Templeton has built an oeuvre that closely tracks his day-to-day reality, recording life in the Southern Californian suburbs, his flawed family background, his life as a professional skateboarder, his milieu, the relationship between the artist and his muse (his wife Deanna) and much else. Templeton has also drawn deeply on artists such as Egon Schiele, Balthus, David Hockney, Larry Clark and Nan Goldin; as with their work, what begins as a very personal chronicle ultimately opens out onto grander horizons--in Templeton's case, a broad meditation on the chaos and the joy of being human. The Cemetery of Reason is the first large monographic museum publication devoted to Templeton's work. Presented as a mid-career retrospective accompanying a spring . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Thomas Caron. Text by Jean-François Chévrier, Carlo McCormick, Philippe van Cauteren, Arty Nelson, Thomas Caron. Pbk, 9 x 11.75 in. / 160 pgs / illustrated throughout. Publication Date: 8/31/2010 List Price: US $39.95