Modern Love: Valentine's Day Staff Picks 2019

Love & Hate & Other Mysteries

Found Altered Snapshots from the Collection of Thierry Struvay

Published by August Editions.
Introduction by Glenn O'Brien

A photograph is forever. Or is it? Culled from the vast vernacular photographic collection of Thierry Struvay, Love & Hate & Other Mysteries presents a funny, often poignant and truthful glimpse into the human condition. The unassuming and elegantly designed hardcover publication explodes once opened with 100 found black-and-white and color photographs that have been manually altered by scissors or pen, or physically attacked in a fit of rage. Some deletions, such as a missing face in the shape of a heart or oval, were clearly intended for a locket. Others, however, contain angrily scratched-out heads and bodies, or are simply torn in half. A third group features manipulations more mysterious in nature: strange cut-outs that hint at a mix of emotions and motives. Together with a poetic introductory text by Glenn O'Brien, the photographs suggest a wide range of human drama, from affection to anger and much in between.

PUBLISHER
August Editions

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 6.5 x 8.25 in. / 144 pgs / 25 color / 75 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 1/11/2016
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ISBN 9780985995850 TRADE
List Price: $40.00 CDN $55.00 GBP £35.00

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Love

Contemporary Art Meets Amour

Published by Skira.
Edited by by Danilo Eccher.

Art is always a great declaration of love. Consider the tragic images of a crucifixion, the moving embrace of the Sarcophagus of the spouses at the Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, the spectral whiteness of Christ's corpse of Mantegna at the Pinacoteca di Brera, the dramatic and secret truth of the Raiser of Géricault, the sweet and silent abandonment of Böcklin's Isle of the Dead, the invading flesh and in the deformed faces of Freud and Bacon, the shocking head of Quinn's son made with his mother's blood and placenta. They are all profound and desperate declarations of love: to the value of sacrifice as a path of salvation, to conjugal life that challenges the transience of time, faith in resurrection and spiritual joys, to the stubborn struggle for an uncomfortable and denied truth, to abandonment and silence of a solitude full of memories, to the joy of a new life that goes through pain to face the world. See it in the evocative scenography of classical Greek theater, in the indescribable face of Santa Teresa wrapped by the marble fluctuations of Bernini, in the soft dialogue of "Quia respexit" between oboe and soprano for Bach's Magnificat, in the young and casual Demoiselles of Picasso's "Rue d'Avignon," in the theosophical balance of the colors of Mondrian or in the atmospheres of a Rothko.

Through the works of the most important artists of contemporary art - among others Robert Indiana, Tom Wesselmann, Andy Warhol, Tracey Moffatt, Francesco Clemente, Marc Quinn, Gilbert & George, Francesco Vezzoli, Vanessa Beecroft - and essays by Danilo Eccher, Federico Vercellone, Pierangelo Sequeri, Mattia Fumanti and Woody Allen, the volume deals with one of the universally recognized feelings which has always been a source of investigations and representations, Love, telling the different facets and infinite declinations. A happy, anticipated, misunderstood, hated, ambiguous, transgressive, childish love that unfolds along an unconventional exhibition path, characterized by visual and perceptive inputs.

PUBLISHER
Skira

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 8.75 x 12.5 in. / 320 pgs / 200 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 10/24/2017
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ISBN 9788857233574 TRADE
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Free to Love

The Cinema of the Sexual Revolution

Published by International House Philadelphia.
Introduction by Jesse Pires. Text by J. Hoberman, Eric Schaefer, Elena Gorfinkel, Whitney Strub, et al.

Free to Love looks at a selection of films from the 1960s and 70s, both commercial and experimental, to investigate how issues surrounding sexual liberation and the undoing of censorship laws manifested themselves in moving-image art from around the world. While the sexual revolution cannot simply be viewed as one unified movement, its conflicts and contradictions inspired some of the most important films from this period, asserting sexual power in an era when "power to the people" was the motto. The essays examine key works and individuals associated with the cinema of the sexual revolution (Radley Metzger, Pat Rocco, Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen), and the book includes a DVD of three short films: Desire Pie (Lisa Crafts, 1976), A Quickie (Dirk Kortz, 1970) and Norien Ten (John Knoop, 1972). Also included is a discussion with A.K. Burns, Barbara Hammer, M.M. Serra and A.L. Steiner.

PUBLISHER
International House Philadelphia

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 5.25 x 7.75 in. / 128 pgs / 47 duotone.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 12/31/2014
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Catalog: SPRING 2015 p. 174   

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ISBN 9780615934525 TRADE
List Price: $19.95 CDN $27.95 GBP £17.50

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Aurelia & Other Writings

Published by Exact Change.
By Gérard de Nerval. Translated by Geoffrey Wagner, Robert Duncan, Marc Lowenthal.

A harrowing document of a descent into madness, by France's defining poet of bohemian romanticism

Aurelia is French poet and novelist Gérard de Nerval’s account of his descent into madness—a condition provoked in part by his unrequited passion for an actress named Jenny Colon. One of the original self-styled “bohemians,” Nerval was best known in his own day for parading a lobster on a pale blue ribbon through the gardens of the Palais-Royal, and was posthumously notorious for his suicide in 1855, hanging from an apron string he called the garter of the Queen of Sheba. This hallucinatory document of dreams, obsession and insanity has fascinated artists such as Joseph Cornell, who cited passages from it to explain his own work; Antonin Artaud, who saw his own madness mirrored by Nerval’s; and André Breton, who placed Nerval in the highest echelon of Surrealist heroes. Geoffrey Wagner’s translation of Aurélia was first published by Grove Press in 1959, but has remained out of print for nearly 20 years. Also included in this volume are previously untranslated stories by Marc Lowenthal, and poet Robert Duncan’s version of the sonnet cycle Chimeras, making this the most complete collection of Nerval’s influential oeuvre ever published in English.

PUBLISHER
Exact Change

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6 x 8 in. / 240 pgs.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 2/2/2004
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Catalog: SPRING 2012 p. 49   

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ISBN 9781878972095 TRADE
List Price: $15.95 CDN $22.50 GBP £13.99

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Modern Love

Published by Primary Information/Ugly Duckling Presse.
By Constance DeJong.

“People used to tell me, if you keep on writing maybe you’ll make a name for yourself,” New York–based artist and writer Constance DeJong (born 1950) wrote in Modern Love. “They were right: My name’s Constance DeJong. My name’s Fifi Corday. My name’s Lady Mirabelle, Monsieur Le Prince, and Roderigo. Roderigo’s my favorite name. First I had my father’s name, then my husband’s, then another’s. I don’t know. I don’t want to know the cause of anything.”

Modern Love, DeJong’s first book, was published in 1977 by Standard Editions, an imprint co-founded by DeJong and Dorothea Tanning. In 1978, the text was adapted into a 60-minute radio program accompanied by the “Modern Love Waltz,” a piano composition by Philip Glass. In this new edition, DeJong’s debut novel is brought back into print, her dissonant shifts of voice and inimitable staccato rhythm made available to a new generation of readers.

PUBLISHER
Primary Information/Ugly Duckling Presse

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 4.75 x 7.25 in. / 224 pgs.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 5/23/2017
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Catalog: SPRING 2017 p. 73   

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ISBN 9780991558520 TRADE
List Price: $18.00 CDN $24.95

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LGBT: San Francisco

The Daniel Nicoletta Photographs

Published by Reel Art Press.
Introduction by Chuck Mobley. Foreword by Gus Van Sant.

Glittering drag queens, gay politics and alternative theater: Nicoletta was at the heart of the gay mecca that was 1970s San Francisco

Daniel Nicoletta (born 1954) has been a leading chronicler of the LGBT civil rights movement in San Francisco over the last 40 years. This is the first book dedicated to his powerful photographs documenting the journey of the burgeoning lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender mecca that was San Francisco in the 1970s through to the present. Nicoletta is best known for his iconic images of Harvey Milk, one of the world’s first openly gay elected officials, who was assassinated by a homophobic colleague in 1978. Nicoletta portrayed glittering drag queens, the alternative theater world and the steadfast bravery of same-sex couples trying to live their lives amid often adverse cultural sea changes. Today, Nicoletta continues to document the reverberations of Milk’s legacy. He serves as a key point person for LGBT civil rights and Milk-related research. In 2014, one of Nicoletta’s photographs was used on a US Harvey Milk Forever stamp. LGBT: San Francisco is an essential gay history and a stunning photographic work that is not to be missed.

PUBLISHER
Reel Art Press

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9.5 x 12 in. / 304 pgs / 135 color / 135 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 6/27/2017
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Catalog: SPRING 2017 p. 27   

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ISBN 9781909526396 TRADE
List Price: $39.95 CDN $55.00

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Sophie Calle: Take Care of Yourself

Published by Dis Voir/Actes Sud.
Text by Sophie Calle.

In this remarkable artist's book, French conceptual artist/provocateur Sophie Calle presents 107 outside interpretations of a "breakup" e-mail she received from her lover the day he ended their affair. Featuring a stamped pink metallic cover, multiple paper changes, special bound-in booklets, bright green envelopes containing DVDs and even Braille endpapers, it is a deeply poignant investigation of love and loss, published to coincide with the 2007 Venice Biennale--where Calle served as that fair's French representative. All of the interpreters of Calle's breakup letter were women, and each was asked to analyze the document according to her profession--so that a writer comments on its style, a justice issues judgment, a lawyer defends Calle's ex-lover, a psychoanalyst studies his psychology, a mediator tries to find a path towards reconciliation, a proofreader provides a literal edit of the text, etc. In addition, Calle asked a variety of performers, including Nathalie Dessay, Laurie Anderson and Carla Bruni, among others, to act the letter out. She filmed the singers and actresses and photographed the other contributors, so that each printed interpretation stands alongside at least one riveting image of its author, and some are also accompanied by digital documentation. The result is a fascinating study and a deeply moving experience--as well as an artwork in its own right. Already a collector's item, this is a universal document of how it feels to grieve for love.

PUBLISHER
Dis Voir/Actes Sud

BOOK FORMAT
Hardback, 8.25 x 12 in. / 424 pgs / 108 color / DVD (PAL).

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 12/15/2007
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Catalog: SPRING 2008 p. 61   

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ISBN 9782742768936 TRADE
List Price: $125.00 CDN $170.00

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Dorothy Iannone: You Who Read Me With Passion Now Must Forever Be My Friends

Published by Siglio.
Edited by Lisa Pearson. Text by Trinie Dalton.

For over five decades, Dorothy Iannone has been making exuberantly sexual and joyfully transgressive image–text works. Karen Rosenberg wrote of her in The New York Times: “High priestess, matriarch, sex goddess: the self-taught American artist Dorothy Iannone has been called all these things and more. Since the early 1960s she has been making paintings, sculptures and artist’s books that advocate ‘ecstatic unity,’ most often achieved through lovemaking.” Beginning with the famous “An Icelandic Saga,” in which Iannone narrates her journey to Iceland (where she meets Dieter Roth and leaves her husband to live with him), this singular volume traces Iannone’s search for “ecstatic unity” from its carnal beginnings in her relationships with Roth and other men into its spiritual incarnation as she becomes a practicing Buddhist. Reproducing several previously unpublished or long-out-of-print works in their entirety (such as Danger in Düsseldorf, The Whip, “An Explosive Interlude”), as well as longer excerpts from rarely-seen works like A Cookbook and Berlin Beauties, this volume gives readers the chance to read her work with sustained attention, and enjoy the sophistication of the stories she tells and the visual–textual embellishments that make them so irresistible.

Associated with Fluxus through her close friendships with Emmett Williams, Robert Filliou and Ben Vautier, as well as most well-known for her relationship with Dieter Roth, Dorothy Iannone (born 1933) nevertheless has her own distinct aesthetic style and substantive concerns. Her first major museum show in the U.S. came when she was 75 in 2008 at the New Museum, shortly after her “orgasm box” titled “I Was Thinking of You” was included in the Whitney Biennial in 2006, and she has recently attained more recognition with solo shows at the Camden Arts Centre, Palais de Tokyo and the Berlinischer Galerie.

PUBLISHER
Siglio

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 7.25 x 9 in. / 320 pgs / 95 color / 210 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 11/30/2014
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Catalog: FALL 2014 p. 22   

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ISBN 9781938221071 TRADE
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Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb: Slant Rhymes

Published by La Fábrica.

Selected from photographs taken during the Webbs’ nearly 30-year relationship, this group of 80 paired photographs creates an affectionate play of visual rhymes

Slant Rhymes is a photographic conversation between two renowned authors and artists, Magnum photographer Alex Webb and poet and photographer Rebecca Norris Webb. Selected from photographs taken during the Webbs’ nearly 30-year relationship (a friendship evolving into a marriage and creative partnership), this group of 80 photographs is laid out in pairs—one by Alex, one by Rebecca—to create a series of visual rhymes that talk to one another, often at a slant and in intriguing and revealing ways.

“Sometimes we find our photographic slant rhymes share a similar palette or tone or geometry,” writes Alex Webb in the introduction to the book. “Other times, our paired photographs strike a similar note—often a penchant for surreal or surprising or enigmatic moments—although often in two different keys.”

In this volume, the artists’ photographs—many of which are published here for the first time—are interwoven with short text pieces by the Webbs. A deeply personal book, beautifully produced as an intimate clothbound edition with a tipped-on cover, Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb: Slant Rhymes is an unfinished love poem, told at a slant.

Rebecca Norris Webb, originally a poet, often interweaves her text and photographs in her six books, most notably with her monograph, My Dakota—an elegy for her brother who died unexpectedly—with a solo exhibition of the work at The Cleveland Museum of Art in 2015. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Le Monde, among other publications, and is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Cleveland Museum of Art, and George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY.

Alex Webb has published 16 books, including a survey book of 30 years of color work, The Suffering of Light. He’s exhibited at museums worldwide including the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A Magnum Photos member since 1979, his work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, and other publications. He has received numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007.

PUBLISHER
La Fábrica

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 8 x 9.5 in. / 112 pgs / 80 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 8/22/2017
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Catalog: FALL 2017 p. 46   

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ISBN 9788416248865 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CDN $60.00

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