Off the Wall

Soy Cuba: Cuban Cinema Posters From After the Revolution

Published by Trilce Ediciones.
Introduction by Stephen Heller. Text by Carole Goodman, Claudio Sotolongo.

Soy Cuba presents a selection of the finest film posters produced in Cuba from the 1950s until the early 1970s. Famous around the world for their brash originality and bright, clear graphic sensibility, Cuban cinema posters of the Revolutionary era are held in as high esteem as the moodier and more abstract Polish film posters of the same era. Susan Sontag devoted a good part of her noted 1970 essay, “Posters: Advertisement, Art, Political Artifact, Commodity” to the particularly satisfying paradox they present. “The Cubans make posters to advertise culture in a society that seeks not to treat culture as an ensemble of commodities-events and objects designed, whether consciously or not, for commercial exploitation. Then the very project of cultural advertising becomes somewhat paradoxical, if not gratuitous. And indeed, many of these posters do not really fill any practical need. A beautiful poster made for the showing in Havana of, say, a minor movie by Alain Jessura, every performance of which will be sold out anyway (because movies are one of the few entertainments available) is a luxury item, something done in the end for its own sake. More often than not, a poster for ICAIC [Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts] by Tony Reboiro or Eduardo Bachs amounts to the creation of a new work of art, supplementary to the film, rather than to a cultural advertisement in the familiar sense.” Collected by designer Carole Goodman in collaboration with the ICAC and other Cuban specialists, this substantial compendium is a visual and intellectual treat.

PUBLISHER
Trilce Ediciones

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 9.5 x 13.5 in. / 320 pgs / 272 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 10/31/2011
Out of stock indefinitely

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2012 p. 32   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9786077663188 TRADE
List Price: $32.00 CAD $40.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Green Patriot Posters

Images for a New Activism

Published by Metropolis Books.
Edited by Edward Morris, Dmitri Siegel. Text by Michael Bierut, Thomas L. Friedman, Steven Heller, Edward Morris, Dmitri Siegel, Morgan Clendaniel.

This book brings together the strongest contemporary graphic design currently promoting sustainability and the fight against climate change. Collectively, essays by Michael Bierut, Steven Heller, Edward Morris and Dmitri Siegel look back in time to posters and ideas that set the stage for the current movement (World War Two posters, images of international cooperation, posters from the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s) and address the state of the poster: what is the efficacy and mode of distribution for purposeful, message-oriented graphic images today? Thomas L. Friedman advocates for "a redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology that can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the twenty-first century." The bulk of the book is given over to a compilation of the best posters on the theme of sustainability by a variety of contemporary artists (both emerging and established), among them Shepard Fairey, Michael Bierut, DJ Spooky, James Victore and Geoff McFetridge. These posters, which have a strong graphic presence and which never rest on the tired slogans of the past ("Save the Earth," etc.), show that graphic design does not passively respond to the zeitgeist--it helps shape it. The book, which is sustainably printed in the U.S., reproduces 50 of these posters as tear-outs. Also included is a section on action, with documentation of designs at work in the world: on buses, billboards, protesters' placards, graffiti, t-shirts and so on. This movement is about a new form of patriotism, one that exhibits pride of place, but not fear of others.

PUBLISHER
Metropolis Books

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 9.5 x 12.5 in. / 128 pgs / 100 color / 50 tear-out posters.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 11/30/2010
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2010 p. 175   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781935202240 TRADE
List Price: $30.00 CAD $35.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Come Alive!: The Spirited Art of Sister Corita

Published by Four Corners Books.
Text by Julie Ault, Daniel Berrigan.

The riotous and colorful artwork of famed catholic nun and educator Corita Kent

PUBLISHER
Four Corners Books

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 9.75 x 11.25 in. / 128 pgs / 100 color / 5 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/1/2007
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2007 p. 62   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780954502522 TRADE
List Price: $29.95 CAD $39.95

AVAILABILITY
In stock

Beauty Is in the Street

A Visual Record of the May '68 Paris Uprising

Published by Four Corners Books.
Edited by Johan Kugelberg, Philippe Vermčs.

In May 1968, thousands of workers and students took to the streets of Paris, provoking an unprecedented wave of strikes, walkouts and demonstrations. The confrontations between police and protesters led to a general strike of eleven million workers that brought the country to a virtual standstill and nearly toppled Charles de Gaulle's government. The faculty and student body of the Ecole des Beaux Arts were among the strikers, and a number of the students met spontaneously in the college's lithographic department to produce the first poster of the revolt, which bore the declaration “Usines, Universités, Union” (“Factories and universities unite,” loosely translated). From this initiative was born the Atelier Populaire (or “popular workshop” ), a collective of print shops that produced hundreds of posters to encourage the protestors and to report on police brutality. These posters included many of the often Situationist-inspired mottos for which May '68 is remembered today, such as “Be young and shut up” and “return to normal” (accompanied by a picture of a herd of sheep). Beauty Is in the Street reproduces more than 200 of these posters in full color, which have since become landmarks in political art and graphic design. Also included is a thumbnail index of an additional 411 posters; a wealth of archival documentary photographs and new translations of firsthand accounts of the clashes between the students and strikers and the police, many published in English for the first time; and an introduction by Philippe Vermčs, one of the founders of the Atelier Populaire.

PUBLISHER
Four Corners Books

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9 x 11 in. / 272 pgs / 200 color / 100 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 8/31/2011
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2011 p. 175   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780956192837 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CAD $63.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

Posters: Travelling Around Italy Through Advertising

1895-1960

Published by Silvana Editoriale.
Edited by Dario Cimorelli, Anna Villari.

In the late nineteenth century up until very recently, for the middle classes, the famous and the wealthy alike, an extended tour of Italy was a necessary part of a cultural education. Italy's cuisine, its landscapes, its countless art capitals, archeological ruins and its tradition of hospitality made the country a favored destination for an exclusive class of tourist. To alert this lucrative market--as well as Italians themselves--to the many attractions of the Beautiful Country, the message was laid on with graphic radiance in the print culture of the times, through posters, flyers, brochures and picture magazines. Graphic design for tourism advertising was often commissioned from the leading illustrators of the period, from Duilio Cambellotti to Leonetto Cappiello, from Marcello Dudovich to Franz Lenhart, from Gino Boccasile to Mario Puppo. This volume draws on the collection of Achille Bertarelli to tell the story of Italian tourism's rich graphic design heritage in 250 color reproductions.

PUBLISHER

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 10 x 12 in. / 288 pgs / 250 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 10/31/2011
Out of stock indefinitely

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2011 p. 122   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788836619221 TRADE
List Price: $75.00 CAD $99.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Ghanavision

Hand-Painted Film Posters from Ghana

Published by Bongout.
Introduction by Thibaut de Ruyter.

Against today's copyrighted-to-the-gills Hollywood movie industry, the wacky world of Ghanian movie posters comes as a joyous relief, with its absolute lack of respect for not only the directors and even stars of Hollywood, but especially the official iconography that accompanies such films. With the arrival of the video cassette in West Africa in the 1980s, a type of mobile movie house was born, typically consisting of a TV, a VCR, an electrical generator and a car, sometimes presenting blockbusters, sometimes underrated and nearly-forgotten movies, most of them Hollywood-produced. To promote these screenings, artists were commissioned to handpaint posters, often with only a few stills to guide them as to the movie's subject, and with a completely free hand as to the posters' content--they were at liberty to add or change scenes, toss in a few mutant monsters, anything to catch the prospective customer's eye. By applying this basic rule of packaging, artists created bizarre images in which monsters mixed with naked women and superheroes, pitched against naively painted and weirdly proportioned African landscapes. Sadly, this window of copyright-free anarchy lasted only a short time, and by the end of the 1990s the mobile cinema business had declined as television became more widely available in Ghana. Proof that naked mutant superhero monsters are always where it's at, this wonderfully illustrated volume commemorates a glorious moment in popular art.

PUBLISHER
Bongout

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 6.75 x 9.25 in. / 68 pgs / illustrated throughout.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 8/31/2009
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2009 p. 46   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783940907059 TRADE
List Price: $25.00 CAD $30.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Living Pictures

Perspectives on the Film Poster in India

Published by Open Editions.
Edited by David Blamey. Essays by Rosie Thomas, Patricia Uberoi, Sara Dickey, Emily King, M.S.S. Pandian and Christopher Pinney.

This charming book of Indian film posters offers the uninitiated a window into the sub-continent's famously over-the-top movie industry, and for those who know it well, there is a wide selection of classic and little-known material. Posters from smaller production outposts in Tamil Nadu and Kerela appear alongside their more glamorous Bombay cousins, and contemporary work alongside archetypal images from what's thought of as Bollywood's golden age. Street photographs show the art in situ, while essays addressing it from anthropological, sociological and design perspectives put it in broader context as a visually charismatic key to the politics, history and beliefs of India.

PUBLISHER
Open Editions

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 8.5 x 9.5 in. / 260 pgs / 153 color and 8 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 8/15/2006
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2006 p. 47   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780949004154 TRADE
List Price: $35.00 CAD $40.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Mark Bradford: Merchant Posters

Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co./Aspen Art Press.
Text by Malik Gaines, Ernest Hardy, Philippe Vergne, Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson.

This book gathers for the first time an extensive selection of American artist—or “builder and demolisher,” as he describes himself—Mark Bradford's gorgeous, searing and heavily textured “merchant posters.” The original printed posters, collected by Bradford from around his Central Los Angeles neighborhood, are brightly colored local advertisements that target the area's vulnerable lower-income residents. For Bradford, they serve as both the formal and conceptual underpinnings of his works on paper, décollages/collages that engage with the pressures of the cityscape. “The sheer density of advertising creates a psychic mass, an overlay that can sometimes be very tense or aggressive,” he notes; “If there's a 20-foot wall with one advertisement for a movie about war, then you have the repetition of the same image over and over—war, violence, explosions, things being blown apart. As a citizen, you have to participate in that every day. You have to walk by until it's changed.” Eagerly anticipated, this is the first large-scale publication by a major publisher about the work of this important and increasingly influential artist. Artist and writer Malik Gaines considers Bradford's play with signs in relation to literary and performative theories of African-American forms; writer and cultural critic Ernest Hardy addresses social issues, in Los Angeles and more broadly, raised by Bradford's source material; Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson examines the language in the work as it relates to Concrete poetry; and Dia Art Foundation Director Philippe Vergne looks at the surface of the work and Bradford's processes of mining and excavation.

PUBLISHER
Gregory R. Miller & Co./Aspen Art Press

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 11 x 9 in. / 160 pgs / 100 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/31/2010
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2010 p. 55   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780980024227 TRADE
List Price: $50.00 CAD $67.50 GBP £45.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

Mihály Biró: Pathos in Red

Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg.
Edited by Peter Noever. Text by Kathrin Pokorny-Nagel, Michael Diers, Sebastian Hackenschmidt.

The designer Mihály Biró (1886-1948) was the graphic voice of Soviet communism in Hungary. He joined the Social Democratic cause early in life, and between 1910 and 1920 designed some of the most widely admired posters and illustrations of the era, for the SZDP (Hungarian Social Democratic Party) and then the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The advent of Miklós Horthy's fascist regime soon forced him to flee to Vienna, where he created The Horthy Portfolio (1920), a set of color lithographs that documented the atrocities of the Horthy regime. Alongside such political works, Biró also created posters for individual businesses and the booming Austrian film industry. He was soon forced to leave Austria, and relocated to Czechoslovakia, then to Paris, returning to Budapest one year before his death in 1948. This revelatory monograph surveys Biró's political posters, as well as commercial work, postcards, photographs and lithographs.

PUBLISHER
Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

BOOK FORMAT
Flexi, 5 x 9.5 in. / 144 pgs / 70 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 8/31/2011
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2011 p. 122   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783869841571 TRADE
List Price: $30.00 CAD $35.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now

Prints from The Museum of Modern Art

Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Text by Judith B. Hecker.

A survey of both political and non-political prints by some 30 South African artists from the 1960s to the present, encompassing etchings, comic books, lithographs, digital prints and linocuts

PUBLISHER
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 8 x 10 in. / 96 pgs / 72 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 4/30/2011
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2011 p. 51   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780870707568 TRADE
List Price: $29.95 CAD $39.95

AVAILABILITY
In stock