| RECENT POSTS DATE 6/8/2019 DATE 6/3/2019 DATE 5/30/2019 DATE 5/26/2019 DATE 5/25/2019 DATE 5/24/2019 DATE 5/23/2019 DATE 5/23/2019 DATE 5/22/2019 DATE 5/21/2019 DATE 5/20/2019 DATE 5/19/2019 DATE 5/18/2019 DATE 5/18/2019 DATE 5/17/2019 DATE 5/17/2019 DATE 5/17/2019 DATE 5/16/2019 DATE 5/16/2019 DATE 5/16/2019 DATE 5/15/2019 DATE 5/14/2019 DATE 5/13/2019 DATE 5/12/2019 DATE 5/11/2019 DATE 5/10/2019 DATE 5/9/2019 DATE 5/9/2019 DATE 5/8/2019 DATE 5/8/2019 DATE 5/7/2019 DATE 5/7/2019 DATE 5/6/2019 DATE 5/5/2019 DATE 5/4/2019 DATE 5/3/2019 DATE 5/2/2019 DATE 5/2/2019 DATE 5/1/2019 DATE 5/1/2019 DATE 4/30/2019 DATE 4/29/2019 DATE 4/29/2019 DATE 4/27/2019 DATE 4/26/2019 DATE 4/25/2019 DATE 4/25/2019 DATE 4/24/2019 DATE 4/23/2019 DATE 4/23/2019 DATE 4/22/2019
| | | RECENT POSTS CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/8/2019Saturday, May 25, from 4–6 PM, photographer Mona Kuhn will appear in conversation with noted fiction writer, cultural critic and urban historian Norman Klein at Arcana: Books on the Arts in Culver City. Following the discussion, Kuhn will sign copies of her new Steidl book, 'She Disappeared into Complete Silence.'
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/3/2019Cultured penicillin, radio tubes, a bouncing ball, mold growing on cheese, soap bubbles, a pendulum in motion and light passing through a prism are just a few of the "scientific" phenomena and objects that Berenice Abbott photographed from the 1930s through the 1960s. If photographic "interpretation is profound and true," Abbott said, "it strikes home. Then the picture is significant. It communicates to us." Featured image is "Lamps 1950s (RCA Research Laboratory, Camden, NJ)" (c. 1950s).
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/30/2019Thursday, May 30 from 7–9PM, Howl! Happening will host a book party and signing to celebrate the launch of 'Phyllis Galembo: Mexico Masks Rituals,' published by Radius Books and D.A.P. Publishing. Join us for a festive night of music, projected images and libations to celebrate Galembo's newest body of work!
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/26/2019 Tennis fans, rejoice! The US Open begins today in Flushing, Queens, and we’re celebrating with this 2013 photograph from Stephan Würth’s new monograph, Tennis Fan. Titled “Cleaning lines at the 96th Street Red Clay Tennis Courts,” this simple but iconic image hints at the photographer’s obsession with any and all things related to the sport. “I think true tennis fans are neurotic people like me,” Würth writes. “I almost feel that a true tennis fan is like a jogger. If you play every day, you start looking like this tempestuous, obsessive, neurotic jogger.” About the court in question, his local favorite, he explains, “I believe the guy who maintains the courts flies the red clay in from Europe. If he doesn’t, it sure feels that way. I definitely don’t think it’s American red clay. You feel like you’re playing in southern Spain or in Italy, even though you’re in the middle of Manhattan.”
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/25/2019Enigmatic and poetic, Mona Kuhn's new photography book, She Disappeared into Complete Silence, "forces the gaze to wander from one image to another, to imagine a story so that we may comprehend them," Salvador Nadales writes. "The work’s personal universe gives rise to situations in which the body in all its integrity, the raw landscape, and the most essential abstraction appear within complete silence, and convey to us absolute truths."
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/24/2019Angelo Novi's July, 1968, photograph of legendary Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone showing Henry Fonda—veteran of many Westerns—how to hold a gun, is reproduced from Reel Art Press's whopping new study of Leone's Western masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in the West: Shooting a Masterpiece, authored by renowned London film scholar Sir Christopher Frayling and reviewed this week in The Washington Post. In the book, Frayling interviews Martin Scorsese on the film's influence. "What I found so fascinating," Scorsese states, "and how Once Upon a Time in the West became such a favorite film of mine—such an obsession—was that I began to understand more and more the combination of commedia dell'arte with operatic tradition…"
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/23/2019“Man with Skull Plaque” (2013) is reproduced from photographer Phyllis Galembo’s new monograph, Mexico Masks Rituals, launching with events tonight at Green-Wood Cemetery and next week at Howl! Happening. This photograph was made during the Catholic/Cora Semana Santa festival in Sierra Madre, where “the stars of the show are the Judíos (Jews), the underworld spirits who sacrifice the sun,” according to text contributor George Otis. “Beginning on the Wednesday of Holy Week, traditional order is suspended: community governments shut down, the Judíos take over, and the world is symbolically turned on its head. During three days and nights the demons run through the villages to the sounds of flutes and drums, performing a series of highly organized and choreographed rituals and dances, with little food, water or rest in between.”
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/23/2019Thursday, May 23, from 6:30–8 PM, Morbid Anatomy presents photographer Phyllis Galembo giving a highly illustrated talk about her work on the new book,'Mexico Masks Rituals,' and beyond, at Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn. Book signing to follow.
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/22/2019In her new book, launching with events at Green-Wood Cemetery and Howl! Happening in the next week, Phyllis Galembo photographs the fascinating, coded mask cultures of Mexico. In this image, titled “Mayo Chapakoba, Fariseo Mimicking Deer Dancer” (2008), Galembo captures a participant in the Semana Santa festival, initiated by the Spanish colonists in order to help eliminate native religions and convert native local populations to Catholicism. “During the Yaqui and Mayo Semana Santa (Easter Week), los Fariseos (the Pharisees) are some of the principal figures of the festival,” George Otis writes. “They play an unruly, demonic mob under the leadership of Pontius Pilate and with Judas as their saint. Together they represent the forces of evil that persecute Christ… Another group of Fariseos is knowns as chapobokam or chapayecas (long-nosed ones) for the masks of animal skins they wear. These masks are known as sewars and include a flower on the headpiece symbolizing rebirth. Those with long beards represent the elderly. Some decorate their headpieces with deer antlers. In northwestern Mexico the deer is a sacred animal, analogous to the jaguar in southern Mexico and Central and South America.”
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/21/2019 Featured photograph, made in Arkansas in 1961, is from Fraenkel Gallery's superb new Lee Friedlander monograph, Signs. Designed, as always, by Katy Homans with tritone separations by Thomas Palmer and exquisite printing by Meridian to match, this is a photobook for photobook lovers, collecting—what else?—Friedlander's deadpan pictures of signs across America and Canada from the 1950s through 2017. Tailoring shops, movie marquis, segregated SROs and coffee shops, strip clubs, gas stations, fast food joints, churches, parking lots, billboards, stop signs and patriotic message boards all get their due, alongside a few photographs accidentally starring Friedlander and friends from long ago.
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/20/2019Featured image, an emblem for the headquarters of the United States Air Force Space Command program, Cyber Warfare Division, is reproduced from Trevor Paglen's new artist's book collecting fascinating ephemera produced around covert aerospace operations from the archives of Peter Merlin, aviation archaeologist. "Merlin's work as an aerospace archaeologist is animated by a simple premise," Paglen writes, "'Something always remains.' Everything that happens in the world leaves some kind of trace, whether it's paperwork, cultural artifacts, anecdotes or material remnants of the event itself."
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/19/2019 "The Hull" (1952) is reproduced from Modern Mystic: The Art of Hyman Bloom, the enlightening new overview from D.A.P., published in advance of MFA Boston's major Bloom exhibition, opening this summer. A Boston painter described by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning as "the first Abstract Expressionist," Bloom was a pioneer who brought a "new quality into American painting—a new sense of spiritual striving and emotional urgency, and a new sort of release from the confines of literal representation," according to essayist Henry Adams. Yet, today he is nowhere near as well-known as his contemporaries. Born in Latvia into a traditional Jewish family, Bloom emigrated to the United States in 1920. Over the course of his life, he embraced mysticism, studied music and mathematics, and got into dissections and autopsies as fodder for his paintings. "Bloom's paintings have a different goal and expose a terrain that we're usually not aware of," Adams writes, "one that's normally hidden from us—not only the internal layering of muscles, fat, cartilage and bone, but also the body's metaphorical interior, the soul. His paintings are a sort of archaeological excavation."
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/18/2019This year's Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize has been awarded to Susan Meiselas, whose socially-driven work has influenced decades of documentary photographers. In specific, the prize was awarded for Meiselas' 2018 traveling retrospective, Mediations, which originated at the Jeu de Paume in Paris and concluded at SFMOMA. Featured here are three spreads from the appropriately restrained and scholarly exhibition catalog, published by Damiani.
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/18/2019Saturday, May 18 from 4–6 PM, 'Hair Stories' author Rohina Hoffman will appear in conversation with Aline Smithson at Arcana: Books on the Arts in Culver City. Book signing to follow.
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/17/2019Friday, May 17 from 6–8 PM, Bookmarc New York presents photographer Tom Bianchi signing '63 E 9th Street: NYC Polaroids 1975–1983,' published by Damiani.
LACY SOTO | DATE 5/17/2019 Saturday, June 8 at 3PM, Artbook at Hauser & Wirth Bookstore and Soft Skull Press present a book signing with Elvia Wilk for the launch of 'Oval.' In addition to the signing, Wilk will appear in conversation with fellow Soft Skull Press author Leah Dieterich.
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/17/2019Featured image is reproduced from Tom Bianchi: 63 E 9th Street, the photographer's new collection of erotic, sometimes X-rated, Polaroid portraits made in and around his New York City apartment between 1975 and 1983. "In the early days of the queer revolution, we seemed inevitably heading to a more playful and loving way of being," Bianchi writes. "We were learning to live in our bodies. We were learning that our brains inhabited our whole bodies. We were learning to love one another in relationships that stood outside of and beyond social norms. Perhaps we were naïve to think our experience would directly lead to a new, more tolerant world. We see now that fearful, repressive forces continue to censor and suppress the love we found in one another. But we also know that those dark forces make our voices stronger."
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/16/2019Sunday, May 19 at 11AM, Henry Adams, Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University and lead author of 'Modern Mystic: The Art of Hyman Bloom,' will present a lecture on the artist at Sotheby's, New York. Book signing to follow. Admission to this event, which will take place in Sotheby's seventh-floor bidding room, is free.
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/16/2019Sunday, May 19 at 11AM, Henry Adams, Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University and lead author of 'Modern Mystic: The Art of Hyman Bloom,' will present a lecture on the artist at Sotheby's, New York. Book signing to follow. Admission to this event, which will take place in Sotheby's seventh-floor bidding room, is free.
 REILLY DAVIDSON | DATE 5/16/2019The iconic shapes of American couturier Charles James transcend those of any other house of his time—or the present, for that matter. Relentlessly creative and open-minded, James famously lived at the Chelsea Hotel from 1964 until his death in 1978, paving the way for future generations of cross-pollination and experimentation in the arena of couture; today, he is rightly counted among the ranks of legends such as Christian Dior and Coco Chanel. New from Spector Books, Charles James: The Couture Secrets of Shape is a beautifully designed, 398-page exploration of the designer's enigmatic life, from the perspective of his collaborators, those who have drawn inspiration from him, and the writings and archives of James himself. With more than 400 color reproductions, a facsimile of his 1973 manual, The Charles James Approach to Structural Design, instructions for making patterns and forms, and in-depth texts by such noted contributors as Valerie Steele, Dorothea Mink, Carolin Roider, Rick Owens and Homer Layne (James’ last assistant), this massive, one-of-a-kind volume should be required reading for anyone interested in the evolution of design. Not to mention, the overall construction of the book makes it perfect for any fashion lover’s coffee table! Featured photograph, by Juan Ramos at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, captures James with model Jerry Hall wearing the silk crepe scarf dress in 1975.
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/15/2019At last, the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial has opened in New York, and we are delighted to recommend the sophisticated companion publication, Nature: Collaborations in Design, featuring 65 international projects from the fields of architecture, product design, landscape design, fashion, interactive and communication design and material research. The "Tranceflora" Nishijin kimono and boots (2015–19), created by Sputniko! and Masaya Kushino of Another Farm in collaboration with Japan's National Agricultural and Research Organization and the 300 year old Hosoo textile manufactury, are made of transgenic glowing colored silk, which has been engineered by injecting silkworm eggs with the green fluorescent protein that makes jellyfish luminesce. According to essayist Andrea Lipps, "'Tranceflora 2.0,' the next in the series, will be made using silk engineered by NARO scientiests with coral DNA (to glow red) and oxytocin, a key hormone in human bonding."
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/14/2019Claudio Dicochea's 2010 painting, (of Supreme Governance and Chief Saddle Blazing, it turned into a Martian), is reproduced from Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas, published to accompany the traveling exhibition on view at the Queens Museum through August 18. Important and refreshing for a variety of reasons, including the subject—the intersection of art and science fiction—and the list of artists—Chicano, Latino and Latin American artists from across the Americas—this book does an excellent job of critiquing the known-knowns while inciting the reader to imagine new realities, both utopian and dystopian. "Dicochea draws on eighteenth-century colonial casta (caste) painting in his work," Rudi Kraeher writes. "Casta paintings depict mixed-race families and functioned as visual taxonomies of racial hierarchy. Departing from historical casta paintings, Dicochea creates his own postmodern portraits of mestiza families. Through a technique of re-appropriation and visual sampling, Dicochea creates unique, hybridic characters. A key element of this collage-like process is what Dicochea calls the 're-racing' of his figures: darkening or lightening the skin tone of the people he portrays."
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/13/2019 Featured image, of an early twentieth-century séance in progress, is reproduced from The Spectacle of Illusion, Dr. Matthew L. Tompkins' comprehensive and copiously illustrated new examination of paranormal illusions since the 1800s. "Magician William S. Marriott stands in the background, ostensibly witnessing the emergence of a female apparition carrying a 'spirit' bird and flowers," the caption reads. "This was one of many glass lantern slides used by psychic investigator Harry Price in his talks, to demonstrate the methods and equipment regularly used by fraudulent mediums at the time."
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/12/2019 "For over fifteen years, Lisa Sanditz's pulsating, Kool Aid-colored landscapes have captured the intersection between the natural world and built environments and its effect on food production, consumption, ecology and the economy," Susan A. Van Scoy writes in Mother's Day staff favorite, Landscape Painting Now. "Sanditz travels to diverse places—single-industry cities in China, junk food factories in Arizona, industrial sites in Miami—and collects artifacts, smells, tastes and stories, making sketches and taking photographs, then returns to her studio to replicate the human action on the land, using what she calls her 'painterly moves.'" Sanditz came up with the idea for Fumigation Tents (2016), pictured here, while driving around Los Angeles, where termite extermination tents are common. "The whimsical landscape is dotted with a number of these tents," Van Scoy writes, "but color seeping out of their lines as well as aerosol spray-paint marks at the top of the painting hint at their deadly purpose."
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/11/2019Inspired by Ditch Plains Beach in Montauk, Long Island, Daniel Heidkamp's "Memory Dune" (2017) is reproduced from Landscape Painting Now, our pick for mothers, painters and contemporary art lovers everywhere. "Heidkamp delights in capturing the timelessness of contemporary scenes—his paintings are more than landscapes in that they record the rich history of a place with Fauvist-like, saturated colors marinating in their site-specificity," Susan A. Van Scoy writes, noting that he is attracted to locations that behave like "an 'art vortex' for their strong scenery, light, character and historical nature."
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/10/2019 Featured image, a 1963 watercolor and India ink on sketchbook paper, is reproduced from Eva Hesse: Oberlin Drawings. An extraordinary early Fall release, this 428-page collection of more than 350 drawings in the collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College is a two-inch-thick brick of a book with creamy, matte paper and exquisite reproductions. "Rather than saying that drawing expresses Hesse's deepest feelings," Briony Fer writes, "maybe we could say that it was a way of articulating her frustration—that is, the shortfall between the wanting and the having, the thwarting and the satisfaction, that is vital to creative life. In this sense the need to draw is—not so simply—the drive to carry on making work. Doing things on paper was not a substitute for doing supposedly more important things like make a painting or a sculpture—but what Hesse did because she was an artist (and not just a doodler)."
DATE 11/5/2018  They're cute, they're small, they're surprising and affordable. Here are 15 staff picks for the stockings on your list » DATE 11/4/2018  The must-have art books of 2018, from a collection of Vienna Secession art magazine covers to new monographs on Warhol, Kusama, Picasso, Whitten, Nauman, Giacometti, Magritte, Turrell, Kingelez and af Klint » DATE 11/7/2018  A few of our favorite 2018 monographs and surveys by Modern and contemporary photographers » DATE 11/10/2018  The must-have architecture and design books of 2018, from FUEL's "Spomenik Monument Database" and "Brutal Bloc Postcards" to Inventory Press's companion publication to the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, "Dimensions of Citizenship" » DATE 11/9/2018  Impress your favorite armchair astronomers with wonderful gift books on the cosmos, Soviet space dog memorabilia and space colonies » DATE 11/8/2018  From Viktor & Rolf to Van Cleef & Arpels - our staff favorite holiday fashion gift books for 2018 » DATE 11/6/2018  10 must-have 2018 reading books, from R. Crumb's "Dream Diary" to Georges Bataille's "Sacred Conspiracy," to collected writings of Dick Higgins and Jack Whitten » DATE 11/14/2018  Beginning with Led Zeppelin's first and only authorized illustrated history, and including new books on The Ramones, Johnny Cash, The Beatles, Michael Jackson and more, this season also includes cinephile specialties on Andy Warhol's "The Chelsea Girls," the making of "Rosemary's Baby" and a collection of Jonas Mekas' "Conversations with Filmmakers" » DATE 11/2/2018  Whether you love it or hate it, left it or long for it—here are 5 favorite gift books for the New Yorkers in your life » DATE 11/10/2017  Travel-themed books this season include two photo books centered around swimming pools; two books on Soviet design; a gorgeous book of international landscape design and photo books that take us to Mongolia, Madagascar and Provence » DATE 11/11/2018  Now is the time to give books on resistance and revolution. Hit the streets with these staff favorite gift books for those who question authority and shout their protest in the streets » DATE 11/12/2018  Whether for a book collector or a lover of limited editions, these deluxe publications make wonderful gifts for those with a taste for the finer things. DATE 3/7/2019  We will miss Carolee Schneemann, fearless performance artist, painter, filmmaker, feminist and innate breaker of taboos. She died this week at the age of 79. In memoriam, we present an excerpt from 'Carolee Schneemann: Uncollected Texts,' published by Primary Information.
DATE 5/9/2018  This week, Lars Müller of Lars Müller Publishers was honored at the 2018 Storefront for Art and Architecture Benefit at the New York Public Library. As the North American distributor of Lars Müller's extraordinary list of books on art, architecture, design and theory, we are ourselves honored to reproduce his acceptance speech here. DATE 1/9/2017  This weekend, the world lost jazz and civil rights champion Nat Hentoff, one of the greatest and most passionate music journalists of all time. In memoriam, we are honored to present Hentoff's eloquently direct text, 'Jazz Festivals and the Changing of America,' from 'Jim Marshall: Jazz Festival' by Reel Art Press. |
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