ARTBOOK BLOG

RECENT POSTS

DATE 6/1/2023

🌈 Take Pride, June 2023! 🌈

DATE 5/30/2023

The lost voices of African American ancestry in 'Whitfield Lovell: Deep River'

DATE 5/28/2023

In celebration of Memorial Day, classic Lee Friedlander

DATE 5/27/2023

Artbook at Hauser & Wirth LA Bookstore presents J. Grant Brittain launching 'PUSH: 80s Skateboarding Photography'

DATE 5/22/2023

Joy and magnificence in Marilyn Minter's 'Elder Sex'

DATE 5/20/2023

Museum Store of the Month: MFA Houston Shop

DATE 5/16/2023

The essence of life itself in 'Noguchi and Greece, Greece and Noguchi'

DATE 5/14/2023

Goddess-like power in María Berrío and 'Women Painting Women'

DATE 5/14/2023

Mother! Origin of Life

DATE 5/6/2023

An expanded edition of the landmark survey

DATE 5/5/2023

Cinco de Mayo inspiration in 'Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular'

DATE 4/27/2023

Mast Books presents the NYC launch of 'Heads Together'

DATE 4/26/2023

Rizzoli Bookstore presents Eric Hart Jr. and Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. on 'When I Think about Power'


RECENT POSTS

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/30/2023

The lost voices of African American ancestry in 'Whitfield Lovell: Deep River'

Featured spreads are from Whitfield Lovell: Deep River, collecting the artist’s Conte crayon tondo portraits representing anonymous African Americans who may have passed through the Union army “Camp Contraband” refuge as runaway slaves during the Civil War. These are part of Lovell’s acclaimed Deep River installation, recently exhibited at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. “The journey toward freedom was (and still is) a powerful claim to one’s right to be,” Lovell writes in the catalog. “The mood and ambience and quietude of the installation does not attempt to capture the turmoil and tragedy of our history. It simply honors survival and commemorates those lost along the way. It represents the timelessness of a journey well worth taking.”

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/28/2023

In celebration of Memorial Day, classic Lee Friedlander

New York City, 1985, is reproduced from Lee Friedlander: The People’s Pictures, published by Eakins Press Foundation. A photograph that reminds us what we have lost—in so many ways—it also asks us what and how we might remember. Technically, the book collects 147 duotone images, either of people taking pictures, or of pictures having been taken, now out in the world, looking back at us. This is a beautifully edited photobook by the ultimate photographer’s photographer. It imparts a feeling, an understanding, a sense of humor and sometimes a sense of darkness. Ultimately, it expresses the inimitable vision of one of America’s greatest living photographers, who has never stopped looking or seeing.

LACY SOTO | DATE 5/27/2023

Artbook at Hauser & Wirth LA Bookstore presents J. Grant Brittain launching 'PUSH: 80s Skateboarding Photography'

Saturday, May 27 at 3 PM, Artbook at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles Bookstore and Gingko Press present the Los Angeles book launch of photographer J. Grant Brittain's 'PUSH: 80s Skateboarding Photography.' Brittain will discuss his work with a book signing to follow.

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/22/2023

Joy and magnificence in Marilyn Minter's 'Elder Sex'

Featured spreads are from Marilyn Minter: Elder Sex, JBE Books’ beautifully-produced and celebratory new monograph based on the artist’s work for a 2022 New York Times feature on the joys and challenges of sex after seventy. It’s safe to say this book has taken NYC by storm, with recent reviews in Wallpaper* and CNN Style and a notable launch event last week at co-publisher LGDR's East 89th Street gallery. In her aptly-named catalog essay, “Screw it, this is who I am,” New Yorker writer Naomi Fry states, “Her work shows us that we are human in our fullness, in our repellent and attractive parts, and, too, that what counts as repellent can also often be attractive. In the Elder Sex, photos, Minter is unembarrassed to put on display what we are not used to seeing—what culture thinks we don’t want to see—and there is joy and magnificence in that gesture. The bodies that Minter depicts heave and pulse with sensation and texture, giving us something radical. They’re real, and they’re spectacular.”

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/20/2023

Museum Store of the Month: MFA Houston Shop

Behold, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston Shop, “one of the most cleverly curated museum shops in America” according to the 'New York Times'—and a store that has always supported serious art and art book publishing.

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/16/2023

The essence of life itself in 'Noguchi and Greece, Greece and Noguchi'

Featured spreads are from Noguchi and Greece, Greece and Noguchi, Atelier Éditions and D.A.P.’s gorgeously designed, two-volume archival excavation of the iconic midcentury artist and designer’s decades-long relationship with Greece—as seen through the lens of New York and Athens-based research and design studio, Objects of Common Interest. “Noguchi’s work transcends disciplines; it was viewed, used and experienced as temporary while also being eternal,” OfCI founders Eleni Petaloti & Leonidas Trampoukis write. “He had a unique way of creating the feeling of space through an articulation of works in relation to each other, as described in an interview with renowned journalist Freddy Germanos during one of his trips to Greece: ‘I am interested in space—and the movement of people and objects within space. There is a certain magic to it. It is as if you are inventing an order of things. I believe there is a secret relationship between space, objects and perceptible and imperceptible movements. Every artist working in this field tries to interpret that relationship in his or her own way. It is the composition and balance of those elements that give rise to the essence of drama and—why not?—the essence of life itself.’”

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/14/2023

Mother! Origin of Life

“Cold or warm, present or absent, everyone has a mother. The archetypal mother, the female figure as a symbol of life and fertility, exists across all times and cultures. Our physical and cultural origin, she ushers us into the world. Even if she is lost or absent, we are all sons and daughters.” So writes Marie Laurberg, co-curator of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art’s deluxe survey, Mother! Origin of Life—a Staff Pick for Mother’s Day 2023. Collecting 160 artworks presenting mother as motif—from prehistoric fertility goddesses to the Madonna and Child to contemporary representations of the queer mother—this volume features works by artists including Sophie Calle, Mary Cassatt, Rineke Dijkstra, Laure Prouvost, Frida Orubapo, Tracey Emin, Alberto Giacometti, Mary Kelly, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso and Alice Neel, whose 1975 painting, “Ginny and Elizabeth,” is reproduced here.

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/14/2023

Goddess-like power in María Berrío and 'Women Painting Women'

María Berrío's "Wildflowers" (2017) is reproduced from Mother’s Day staff pick Women Painting Women,⁠ published by DelMonico Books and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. According to editor and chief curator Andrea Karnes, the artwork is an “allegory for humanity’s integration with, not domination over, nature, and also presents the idea of glorifying women during crises of migration, deportation and transition. … Berrio’s Colombian heritage comes into play, especially in terms of folklore and myth, as the women in her work are often portrayed as priestesses. … Berrio’s work proposes equivalency between species—yet the women convey a goddess-like power.”⁠

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/6/2023

An expanded edition of the landmark survey

“The space surrounding my work is crucial to it,” Donald Judd wrote in 1977: “as much thought has gone into the installation as into a piece itself.” Featured spreads are from the Judd Foundation’s gorgeous, 432-page new edition of Donald Judd Spaces, documenting the artist’s iconic, and ultimately highly influential, living and working spaces in New York and around Marfa, Texas. Featuring exquisite new photographs, drawing details and archival materials, and packaged in a wrap of opaque pergamin paper, this is a book that is virtually impossible to put down, both visually and physically. “Both three-dimensional art—painting is a somewhat ambiguous situation—and architecture make space,” he also wrote in 1977. “You could say they define space, but that assumes that space existed prior to the definition, which is debatable. By making lines or points or planes in space, you actually make the space. The thing that a person likes most about three-dimensional art or architecture is the created space. That’s the main given aspect of it—basically, it’s that and the color.”

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/5/2023

Cinco de Mayo inspiration in 'Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular'

According to Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular author Layla Bermeo, Frida Kahlo was one of many middle-class Mexican mestizo women who "appropriated the traditional clothing, jewelry and braids of Indigenous women as a performance of nationalism, a wearable extension of collecting arte popular." In this photograph taken around 1940 by Bernard Silberstein, Kahlo—a devout collector of Mexican folk and indigenous art, including painted ceramics, embroidered textiles, religious votives, effigies and children's toys—appears in the same bida ní quichi headdress that she wore in her iconic 1943 painting, Self-Portrait as a Tehuana. In the photograph, she stands before her collection of arte popular ceramics.

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/27/2023

Mast Books presents the NYC launch of 'Heads Together'

Thursday, April 27, from 6–8 PM, Mast Books presents the launch of 'Heads Together: Weed and the Underground Press Syndicate, 1965–1973' with author David Jacob Kramer, who will sign copies of the book alongside an exhibition of underground papers and growers guides.

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/26/2023

Rizzoli Bookstore presents Eric Hart Jr. and Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. on 'When I Think about Power'

Monday, May 15 at 6 PM, Rizzoli Bookstore presents photographer Eric Hart Jr. in conversation with Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. about his new monograph 'When I Think about Power,' a collection of sumptuous and tender portraits of an empowered Black queer experience, published by Damiani.

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/25/2023

Vibrancy, diversity, coexistence and eccentricity in this Loisaida time-capsule from the late 1980s

A family hanging out in front of a bodega, a boarded up public bath, a car repair shop, a building collapse, bridge traffic on Delancey Street, a father and his daughters eating a lunch of boiled crabs on the sidewalk and this 1990 wrestling match on Clinton Street are just a few of the evocative archival photographs reproduced in Damiani new release Tria Giovan: Loisaida—collecting the noted American photographer’s NYC street work, 1984–1990. “The images are my response to a 1980s Lower East Side that has since been radically altered through waves of gentrification,” Triovan writes. “Universally, the images speak to the human condition. They reflect what is eternal and what is intrinsically New York City—vibrancy, diversity, coexistence and eccentricity.”

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/23/2023

An exceptional new catalog of Native American Art of the last millennium

Created by a Zuni artist circa 1919, Wiha of Saiyatasha, Rain Priest of the North, is reproduced from Native American Art from the Thomas W. Weisel Family Collection, the massive, 432-page new release from DelMonico Books and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Spanning nearly 1000 years, and filled with more than 380 color reproductions and essays by a host of noted scholars in the field, this is a must-have volume for anyone interested in Native American art history. “In Zuni the year begins with the winter solstice, a time when the village prepares for the new year,” Milford Nahohai writes. “The leaders of the six kivas each select two members to represent their group for the Shalako Ceremony. Families, generally one per kiva in addition to other sponsors, are selected as hosts of the ceremony. They construct new homes or do extensive remodeling to accommodate the six ten-foot-tall Shalakos, each representing one of the cardinal directions. It is also at this time the Council of the Gods is selected by the priest of the village. One such appointment is the representative of Saiyatasha (Longhorn), also known as the Rain Priest of the North, who signifies long life for the people. As the orchestrator of the Shalako Ceremony, it is a very important appointment. Saiyatasha brings all manner of benefits to the people of Zuni, from control of the weather to longevity and protection from enemies. His small right eye is for witches/evil doers, and his long left eye for good people, to give them long lives. Because he is also a priest, he wears an eagle plume and various feathers to show his priesthood. The Shalako Ceremony is his only appearance in the village.”

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/22/2023

Salt of the Earth

How beautiful our planet looks from above, and how complex. Featured spreads are from Tom Hegen: Salt Works, collecting the noted German photographer’s aerial images of salt mining and sea salt production facilities around the world. The first spread shows areas of the saltworks in the Camargue Natural Park in Occitania, France, in 2018. These are among the first evaporation ponds in the Mediterranean, where sea salt was originally produced for preserving fish and meat. The second spread shows saltworks along the Saloum River Delta in Senegal, 2022. Here, solar evaporation turns the water into a salty brine, which crystallizes, sinks, and is collected by entire families that live in the surrounding villages. The third spread, photographed in 2022, shows Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, India, where salt has been made for the last 5000 years. The conditions here are incredibly harsh for the workers, many of whom travel across the country, come from the lowest caste, start working as children, and suffer from health problems like color-blindness after years of seasonal labor.

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/20/2023

Heads up for 4/20!

Featured spreads are from Heads Together: Weed and the Underground Press Syndicate, 1965–1973, Edition Patrick Frey’s intoxicating 566-page compendium of marijuana ads and illustrations from the Underground Press Syndicate during the height of the American counterculture. UPS coordinator and cofounder of the East Village Other John Wilcock writes, “Pot was to become a significant part of the impending youth revolution, corresponding to the black flag of anarchy in the way that it rallied the troops. Even if it began as an act of defiance, it soon became the one thing shared by all sectors of the anti-establishment throughout the Western world. There wasn’t any underground newspaper that I visited—Zurich, Rome, Amsterdam, London, Paris, to name but a few where I wasn’t invited to share a friendly joint, just as we had shared pictures and stories… it was impossible to overestimate how important pot had been as a unifying banner and rallying point.”

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/20/2023

MOCA LA presents 4/20 launch of 'Heads Together: Weed and the Underground Press Syndicate'

Thursday, 4/20, from 6–8 PM, MOCA Store at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles presents the launch of 'Heads Together: Weed and the Underground Press Syndicate, 1965–1973,' published by Edition Patrick Frey. Join author David Jacob Kramer for an evening of documentary clips from the Underground Press. Also on display will be original grower’s guides from the era and Underground Press publications.

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/18/2023

The Judd Foundation and McNally Jackson Present Donald Judd Spaces, with Rainer Judd, Flavin Judd and Mahfuz Sultan

Monday, May 8 at 7 PM, McNally Jackson Seaport presents the launch of 'Donald Judd Spaces: Judd Foundation New York & Texas,' the landmark survey of Judd's iconic spaces, featuring new drawing details, archival materials and more. Rainer Judd, Flavin Judd and Mahfuz Sultan will speak.

CHEEYEON PARK | DATE 4/18/2023

Artbook @ MoMA PS1 presents Iiu Susiraja launching 'A style called a dead fish'

Saturday, April 22 at 3:30 PM EST, Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore presents the launch of 'Iiu Susiraja: A style called a dead fish,' published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at MoMA PS1, on view through September 4, 2023. Susiraja will join virtually from Turku, Finland, in conversation with MoMA PS1 Assistant Curator, Jody Graf. Susiraja will also read a selection of her poems.

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/17/2023

Inventory Press is Independent Publisher-in-Residence at Artbook at MoMA PS1!

Each month, our friends in Long Island City feature an independent publishing house whose missions they support and whose books they love. For the month of April 2023, Inventory Press is gracing the store's "bookshelf-in-residence." Please visit this special bookshelf at Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore all month long!

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/16/2023

Hilma fans, rejoice! ‘Anna Cassel: The Saga of the Rose’ has arrived

Featured spreads are from Anna Cassel: The Saga of the Rose, the first major presentation of the Swedish painter and spiritualist who produced artwork, together with Hilma af Klint, as a member of The Five—perhaps even collaborating on works currently attributed to af Klint. “The Guru has a message for you, A[nna],” af Klint wrote in 1914. “Your path is nearly ready for you. Your power will soon grow, and you will become a sturdy pillar like few others. You have been called as one and I as the other to erect the entry arch.”

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/14/2023

What's not to love about plants and animals?

Grey Shelf Still Life (2016) is reproduced from deluxe, oversized new release Jonas Wood: Plants and Animals, published by David Kordansky Gallery. Featuring recent paintings (of interiors and landscapes with all variety of potted and natural plants plus animals including dogs of many breeds, leopards, deer, cats and even alligators) and preparatory materials like drawings, collages, prints, photographs, previous paintings and studio shots, it’s truly a window into the artist’s process, amplified by a very personal running text by the artist. “In order to live I have to paint, and I seem to always paint about my life,” Wood writes. “So I think I really focus on painting things that are important to me—my family, our pets and other animals, my studio, and the plants inside it and around Los Angeles. It’s funny that I even paint a lot about painting, but I guess it makes sense. It’s one of the most important things in my life, and I’m grateful to be able to share it with you.”

AVERY LOZADA | DATE 4/13/2023

Join Artbook & MCA Chicago Store at EXPO CHICAGO 2023!

Thursday, April 13 through Sunday, April 16, join Artbook & MCA Chicago Store for EXPO CHICAGO 2023! Located in the northwest corner of Festival Hall near the West Café, the Artbook & MCA Store presents a vibrant pop-up shop featuring exclusive products, limited-edition artworks and a hand-picked list of new and classic exhibition catalogs, art and photography monographs, artist's books and more! Works by Chicago artists Brandon Breaux, Liz Flores, Isabelle Gougenheim and MCA’s current exhibition, 'Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora 1990s–Today,' will be showcased. We're also happy to announce that our wildly popular Hans Ulrich Obrist BOOKS ARE URGENT heavy-duty tote bags are back in time for EXPO CHICAGO!

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/11/2023

A photographic goldmine in 'Richard Avedon: Relationships'

Truman Capote, New York, October 10, 1955, is reproduced from new release Richard Avedon: Relationships, collecting the inimitable photographer’s portraits of sitters with whom he developed strong bonds over time. Capote became much more than a subject over decades of collaboration. Here, he is pictured at just thirty-one years old. “The photographer’s choice of a pose underscores the vulnerability of the young Capote—he is laid bare for our scrutiny and delectation,” Rebecca A. Senf writes. “Avedon’s last portrait of Capote was taken in 1974 when the writer was fifty. The lithe sensuality of the earlier image is gone. Avedon now focuses on Capote’s head—which fills much of the frame—off center and sitting atop a dark shirt, jacket, and bowtie. Capote looks out from puffy eyes, his thinning hair retreating from his spotted forehead. A large welt on his head and a raised sore on his lower lip make you wonder: ‘What has happened here?’ The mind that produced some of America’s most acclaimed writings of the twentieth century is there, but instead, we see the face, with its age and damage. The fluid motion and grace of the younger man’s body have been replaced by a set jaw and an intractable stare. Each of these portraits of Capote is enriched by the other, and by knowing that Avedon was not just Capote’s photographer, but his friend and collaborator.”

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/9/2023

In a season of renewal, to look without fear

An image that fills us with longing and some strange sense of mortality—or immortality—“Clipped Tulip” (2020) is reproduced from Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear—published to accompany the exhibition on view now at Art Gallery of Ontario en route from MoMA. This is the image we most want to look at right now, as we contemplate the various emotionally-charged overlapping holidays of renewal this week. “For Tillmans, life’s holy mess of ordinary pleasures is not merely catalogued but equalized,” Durga Chew-Bose writes. “The surreal complacency, for instance, of rotting fruit, is given prominence. But so is fresh parsley or half a grapefruit, sucked dry. A single white rose lying on a bed of cherries is funereal. A red pear—its stem erect—seems shy. If his practice shows a preference for what is, an allegiance to parity is essential to how Tillmans documents his worlds. There is no justifying the maple leaf next to the ashtray, next to the kiwi. Tillmans’ still life photography eludes any hierarchic portrayals of the quotidian, harmonizing matter-of-fact materials (like bubble wrap) with romance (like dried flowers). The margins and the middle collide, but more than that, they are in concert. But more than that, they are unsolvable. And isn’t that the point? As the poet and essayist Mary Ruefle notes: ‘It is not what a poem says with its mouth, it’s what a poem does with its eyes.’”