| RECENT POSTS DATE 4/1/2020 DATE 4/1/2020 DATE 3/30/2020 DATE 3/30/2020 DATE 3/29/2020 DATE 3/27/2020 DATE 3/24/2020 DATE 3/24/2020 DATE 3/21/2020 DATE 3/20/2020 DATE 3/19/2020 DATE 3/18/2020 DATE 3/16/2020 DATE 3/14/2020 DATE 3/14/2020 DATE 3/13/2020 DATE 3/13/2020 DATE 3/12/2020 DATE 3/12/2020 DATE 3/10/2020 DATE 3/9/2020 DATE 3/8/2020 DATE 3/7/2020 DATE 3/6/2020 DATE 3/6/2020 DATE 3/5/2020 DATE 3/4/2020 DATE 3/3/2020 DATE 3/2/2020 DATE 3/1/2020 DATE 3/1/2020 DATE 3/1/2020 DATE 2/29/2020 DATE 2/27/2020 DATE 2/27/2020 DATE 2/26/2020 DATE 2/25/2020 DATE 2/24/2020 DATE 2/23/2020 DATE 2/22/2020 DATE 2/21/2020 DATE 2/20/2020 DATE 2/20/2020 DATE 2/19/2020 DATE 2/18/2020 DATE 2/17/2020 DATE 2/17/2020 DATE 2/16/2020 DATE 2/15/2020 DATE 2/15/2020 DATE 2/15/2020
| | | RECENT POSTS CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/1/2020"Seated Woman (Dora)" (1938) is reproduced from Picasso and Paper, published to accompany the "spectacular" exhibition currently on hiatus at Royal Academy of Arts, which The Guardian describes as "nothing less than an accumulation of sacred relics." While nothing can compare to seeing the show in person, this superb 328-page exhibition catalog featuring 400 color reproductions and a host of scholarly essays does transport. And why wouldn't it? Picasso used every paper available to him, regardless of its normal function or archival durability—from antique papers with distinctive watermarks to wallpaper, newsprint and table napkins. He tore and folded paper, illustrated poems and letters, drew on envelopes and hotel stationery, made photographs, etchings, prints and much more. The astonishing range of works gathered here prove that, rather than using paper primarily for preliminary studies, Picasso "invented a universe of art" involving paper in almost any form, in the words of William H. Robinson. "This activity sprang from his inexhaustible compulsion to expand the boundaries of thought and aesthetic experience, and constitutes a significant contribution to the history of modern art."
ABOVE: Pablo Picasso, "Seated Woman (Dora)," 1938. Ink, gouache and colored chalk on paper, 30.1 x 22 in. Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Beyeler Collection. Photo: Peter Schibli © Succession Picasso/DACS 2019.
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/30/2020 Featured image—of Shantell Martin in her Broadway studio customizing a limited-edition bicycle for Martone Cycling Co. in 2015—is reproduced from Lines, Heni's beautifully produced new first-monograph on the artist known around the world for her iconic black-and-white line drawings. "The distinct character of Shantell Martin’s line resonates across her work, whether this line is drawn on paper, the wall or an object, and whether it is found in the art gallery, in the classroom, on stage in a club or on the catwalk of a fashion show," Katharine Stout writes. "Martin’s line is a line of enquiry into the endless possibilities of drawing, into experimental technology for this most primordial of mediums, and into the freedom to express who we are—and through this expression, discover who we are."
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/30/2020 "Untitled" (1991) is reproduced from Judd, published to accompany the first US retrospective of Donald Judd’s sculpture in more than 30 years, on temporary hiatus at MoMA. One of Judd's late works produced in Switzerland—a body of work described by one of Judd's longtime assistants, Jamie Dearing, as "kind of shocking, kind of like when Dylan started playing electric guitar," it is one of 350 color illustrations in a catalog that is as scholarly as it is visually illuminating. "There couldn’t be a better time to revisit an artist who doggedly confronted form, presence, and politics, Aria Dean writes in Artforum, "both on the page and in 'real space.'"
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/29/2020 It goes without saying that we are living through an unprecedented, open-ended time of confusion, fear, pressure and information overload. All that we have loved (and hated) and every small, hard-to-quantify detail that has given our days structure up until now has been upended. And yet… we still have books! For us book people, reading IS structure. So we've asked one of our resident experts, Natasha Gilmore, for her Staff Pick Reading Books for this period of voluntary (or involuntary) quarantine. Be inspired… and enjoy!
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/27/2020If there was ever a time for emotional eating, it's now. If ever a time for cooking at home, that would also be now. Self-care, light sense of humor? Check, and check. So for anyone trapped at home during corona virus but wishing to feel optimistic, vibrant and connected to community, we highly recommend Dimes Times: Emotional Eating. Authored by Sabrina De Sousa and Alissa Wagner, founders of the chic all-day Chinatown eatery, Dimes, and designed after Bruno Munari by Karma, New York, this is a feel-good cookbook for feeling good—with adorable illustrations, simple, healthy recipes for morning, noon and night, notes on key ingredients, and breezy texts like this one, describing the morning routine: "Prepping, pruning, planning. The motions are meditative, kitchen tai chi. Measure, grind, brew. Rinse, steam, polish. Chop, slice, dice. Yet even tasks as simple as these are done with lots of love." Pictured here is the 10:33 AM recipe for Chickpea Stew.
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/24/2020 "Cape Cod Morning" (1950) is reproduced from Edward Hopper: A New Perspective on Landscape, the beautifully produced new release from Hatje Cantz and Fondation Beyeler, and a fitting book for this time of unusual social distancing and global isolation. "Hopper's silence was famous; recalcitrance was his method," Ulf Küster writes. "Throughout his life, Hopper, who took German in school, carried around a piece of paper with a quotation from a letter by Johan Wolfgang von Goethe to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Aside from indicating his profound knowledge of Goethe's works, it also documents his subjective approach to art… 'See, dear friend, what is the beginning and end of all writing, the reproduction of the world around me, through the inner world in which everything is held, bound up, remade, kneaded, and in peculiar form and manner again set forth; which remains eternally secret, God be thanked, and neither will I reveal it to gapers and chatterers.'"
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/24/2020 "To me, form, color and design are merely a means to an end, the tools I work with, and they do not interest me greatly for their own sake," Edward Hopper wrote in 1939. "I am interested primarily in the vast field of experience and sensation… One must say guardedly, human experience, for the fear of having it confounded with superficial anecdote. I am always repelled by painting that deals narrowly with harmonies or dissonances of color and design. My aim in painting is always using nature as the medium, to try to project upon canvas my most intimate reaction to the subject as it appears when I like it most; when the facts are given unity by my interest and prejudices." Route 6, Eastham (1941) is reproduced from Edward Hopper: A New Perspective on Landscape.
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/21/2020 "Untitled" (1963) is reproduced from Judd, published to accompany the first major retrospective of the artist's work in thirty years, on temporary hiatus now at MoMA. For anyone who can't wait for the show to reopen—as well as anyone who has or ever will see it—this pitch-perfect catalogue is a superb synthesis of the work and thinking of the "last great revolutionary of modern art," in the words of The New Yorker's Peter Schjeldahl. Featuring essays by Ann Temkin, Erica Cooke, Tamar Margalit, Christine Mehring, James Meyer, Annie Ochmanek, Yasmil Raymond and Jeffrey Weiss, alongside 350 color images, this will be the most important and comprehensive book on Judd's work for decades to come.
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/20/2020 Featured spread is from Yvonne Rainer: Work 1961–73, Primary Information's new facsimile edition of the pioneering choreographer's classic 1974 illustrated catalogue of her performance works up to that point. Showing Rainer's notes on Connecticut Composite, "an evening involving 80 students, taking place in five separate performing areas in one building," the audience for this work could move from one performance to another at their own discretion, according to the schedule pictured at right. On the left are Rainer's designs representing "consecutive static configurations by a group of 20 people. The arrows indicate the directions in which they are to face. An unbroken line means shoulder-to-shoulder alignment. A series of parallel short lines indicates column formation." Rainer's instructions call for performers to regroup 20 times.
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/19/2020For anyone sheltering in place, or even looking for decorating ideas after this period of fear and isolation has come and gone, Ruth Adler Schnee: Modern Designs for Living is a shot of pure inspiration. A beautifully produced book with luxe papers, gorgeous printing throughout and a lovely cloth cover printed with Adler Schnee's 1948 textile design, "Busy Bye Ways Echo," this is the first monograph ever published on the pioneering midcentury designer who is still actively working at age 96. Featured photograph is of Adler, before she became Adler Schnee, working on designs for "Silts and Slats" (right) and "Pits and Pods" (left) in 1947. Other telling textiles are named "Bugs in Booby Traps," "Slinky Shadows," "Mad Plaid," "Pipe Dreams" and "Birds Afar." We cannot recommend this exuberant, scholarly and enlightening book enough.
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/18/2020 Featured image, of Buttons Kaluhiokalani in Velzyland, Oahu, HI, 1974, is reproduced from Jeff Divine: 70s Surf Photographs, new from T. Adler Books. "It was a moment when everything in our little world felt up for grabs," Pulitzer Prize–winning author William Finnegan writes. "Surfing had boomed in popularity in the beach-blanket sixties, failed its audition as a mainstream televised sport, and then blown itself up in a late-sixties design revolution that reduced boards, seemingly overnight, from nine feet six inches to six feet six, from twenty-five pounds to less than ten. Suddenly, people were turning twice as hard, going twice as fast, and, most transformingly, pulling into heaving barrels that had been unridable, off-limits, the stuff of idle fantasy until yesterday. These changes have all been lasting. The social upheavals of the period touched surfing, but only glancingly—in music, fashion, a wavelet of Eastern mysticism, more than a wavelet of recreational drugs, and a few muddy shining pockets of back-to-the-landism in places where the land happened to about pumping waves." To order a signed copy, please contact our friends at Arcana: Books on the Arts.
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/16/2020 "Miles and Jojo" (2014) is reproduced from Jordan Casteel: Within Reach, published to accompany the artist's current exhibition at the New Museum (temporarily on hiatus). "There is power in the gaze," Dawould Bey writes. "Throughout history, black people have been killed for directing their gaze at the wrong—usually white—person; such an assertion of empowered exchange was an extreme violation of the enforced social contract that was meant to keep black people 'in their place.' Jordan is aware of this, and in her paintings, the subject and viewer share a reciprocal gaze, creating a momentary exchange that potentially extends from the object out into the larger social world, with all the capacities for transformed social relations implied by that gesture. Ultimately, Jordan's paintings create a space in which we see can acknowledge each other, in which black people are able to see themselves mirrored in her ambitious material reimaginings. In the fraught times we are living through, this ability to calmly look each other in the eye and recognize a fundamental and expansive humanity staring back may be what we need more than anything."
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/14/2020Featured spread is from Elizabeth Peyton: Aire and Angels, published by National Portrait Gallery, London. NPG Director Nicholas Cullinan writes, "Peyton’s extraordinary and inimitable paintings, drawings and prints from the last ten years don’t look like anything or anyone else. Tough and tender, increasingly fluid—and in which the figure at times almost dissolves and dematerializes—her interest in agency and individual personality has amplified and come to the fore. Theodor Adorno once wrote of Beethoven’s refusal within a musical composition to ‘reconcile into a single image what is not reconciled.' In Peyton’s work there is a similar recognition of irreconcilability. Not all the prosaic details of the face and physiognomy she paints may always be there, but the character and psyche of the sitters certainly are."
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/14/2020 Saturday, March 14 from 4–6 PM, Jeff Divine will sign copies of his new book, "'70s Surf Photographs," published by T. Adler Books, at Arcana: Books on the Arts in Culver City, Los Angeles.
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/13/2020 Featured photograph, shot February 3, 1942, is reproduced from Weegee's Naked City, Damiani and ICP's new, exceptionally well remastered facsimile edition of the crime photographer's classic 1945 photobook. Published in PM Picture News under the headline, "Off Duty Cop Does Duty, Kills Gunman Who Tries Stickup," this particular photograph is captioned, "The boys were playing a little pool and cards in the Spring Arrow Social and Athletic Club, 344 Broome St., near the Bowery last night. Patrolman Eligio Sarro, off duty, went in for a pack of cigarets [sic]. Four men entered. 'This is a stick-up,' the leader muttered. Sarro was a little slow getting his hands ouf of his overcoat pockets. 'Get 'em up,' ordered the leader. Sarro did. One hand held a gun. When he got through firing, the leader was dead.
The usual curious crowd gathered after the gunman, fatally wounded, staggered from the entrance. He was about 22, dark and chunky. Police said he was Andrew Izzo with a record of six arrests."
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/13/2020Measuring almost eleven feet tall by eight feet wide, Hilma af Klint's "Group IV, The Ten Largest, No. 1, Childhood" (1907) is reproduced from Paintings for the Future, a staff pick for Women's History Month, and a fitting collection of images for these complicated times. "The cycle focuses on the stages of life and humanity's connection to the universe," curator Tracey Bashkoff writes. "The mix of floral, geometric, and biomorphic forms with letters and inverted words creates a vocabulary of complex and shifting meanings, with which af Klint herself appears to have grappled. In these works a plant tendril may become a spiral, which in turn unfolds into a coiling line that then scribes a calligraphic letter—codes and words from an unknown language. Two pulsing orbs are, at the same time, microscopic eggs and intersecting solar systems. These forms continue to evade singular or stable interpretations—evolution, continuity, growth and progress all coexist with a return to the beginning of the oneness of the spirit. Science and spirit, mind and matter, the micro and the macro are simultaneously present."
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/12/2020 "Nicolas Resisting" is reproduced from Nicolas & Adrien: A World with Two Sons, the new monograph by photographer Martine Fougeron. "I established a series of practices that enabled trust to build. First, I respected the moments when they absolutely did not want me around. Sometimes it was very difficult with my older son, Nicolas, because when I started the project, he was in full revolt against me. And it later became difficult with my younger son Adrien for the same reason: typical adolescent rejection of authority."
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/12/2020 Thursday, March 12 from 7–8 PM, ICP presents photographer Martine Fougeron in conversation with Sasha Bush, followed by a signing of Fougeron's new monograph, 'Nicolas & Adrien. A World with Two Sons,' published by Steidl.
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/10/2020Featured photograph, by Maurice Jarnoux, is of French novelist and art theorist André Malraux in his studio in Boulogne-sur-Seine working on his book, The Imaginary Museum (1953). It is reproduced from Genealogies of Art, or the History of Art as Visual Art, published by Fundación Juan March. Other visual histories of art in the chapter spanning 1936–2019 include Alfred H. Barr's 1940 "Italian Painting and Sculpture, 1300–1800," Ad Reinhardt's 1961 "How to Look at Modern Art in America, 1946–61," Guy DeBord's "Psychogeographic Guide of Paris: Discourse on Love's Passions," George Maciunas' 1979 "Diagram of Historical Development of Fluxus and 4 Dimensional, Aural, Optic, Olfactory, Epithelial and Tactile Art Forms' and the Guerilla Girls' 1998 "Guerillas in the Midst of History."
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/9/2020Featured spread is from Dorothy Iannone: The Story of Bern, [or] Showing Colors, JRP|Editions' new facsimile edition of Iannone's infamous 1970 artist's book detailing the censorship she and her partner, Dieter Roth, experienced at a 1969 Kunsthalle Bern group exhibition curated by Harald Szeemann, who ultimately resigned over the issue. Originally published in an edition of 500 signed and numbered copies, this is both a graphic masterpiece and an excellent reminder of why we celebrate Women's History Month today.
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/8/2020"By portraying real women with their own unique history, beauty and background, I'm working to diversify the representations of black women in art," Mickalene Thomas is quoted in I Can’t See You Without Me, her best-selling collection of muse paintings from the Wexner Center. "We are not validated until we see ourselves: Not only are we present, we demand that we be seen, be heard, and be acknowledged." Featured image, a self-portrait, is "It Hurts So Good! (Brawlin' Spitfire Two)" (2007).
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/7/2020 "I first saw them—Ivy and Naomi and Colette—crossing the bridge near Morgan Memorial Thriftshop in downtown Boston. They were the most gorgeous creatures I'd ever seen. I was immediately infatuated. I followed them and shot some Super 8 film. That was in 1972. It was the beginning of an obsession that has lasted twenty years.
Soon after, I met them again through David, my closest friend, who had started to do drag. From my first night at The Other Side—the drag queen bar of Boston in the 70s—I came to life. I fell in love with one of the queens and within a few months moved in with Ivy and another friend. I was eighteen and felt like I was a queen too. Completely devoted to my friends, they became my whole world. Part of my worship of them involved photographing them. I wanted to pay homage, to show them how beautiful they were. I never saw them as men dressing as women, but as something entirely different—a third gender that made more sense than either of the other two. I accepted them as they saw themselves; I had no desire to unmask them with my camera. Since my early teens, I'd lived by an Oscar Wilde saying, that you are who you pretend to be. I had enormous respect for the courage my friends had in recreating themselves according to their fantasies…" —Nan Goldin, The Other Side. Featured image is "Picnic on the esplanade, Boston 1973."
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/6/2020 "Burley, Idaho" (2015) is reproduced from Peter Kayafas: The Way West, published by Purple Martin Press. "In these photographs two dominant elements—youth and animals—are passing through the landscape of the American West," Rick Bass writes. "These twinned elements seem to move sometimes like sleepwalkers lost in a dream that was never quite birthed into reality. The animals as well as people—particularly the young people—still possess a primal power, but many appear also to be just at the edge of being aware for the first time in their lives of something that might be about to go away."
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/6/2020 Thursday, March 12 from 6–8 PM, Gitterman Gallery presents photographer Peter Kayafas signing 'The Way West,' his new monograph from Purple Martin Press.
 CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/5/2020"Spider" (2003) is reproduced from Louise Bourgeois: The Spider and the Tapestries, back in stock from Hatje Cantz. Featuring textile and needlepoint works alongside archival materials and the artist's writings, it's a staff pick for Women's History Month, 2020. "The unraveling of a torment: you have to begin somewhere: the color blue, the damage is repairable," Bourgeois writes. "I cannot throw it away because I do not want to put it on the back burner. It is worth saving. I have gone through this one hundred times + any piece of tapestry is worth (not saving, cherishing) result: mountains of unusable clothes, buried under torn clothes. I can’t renounce the past. I cannot, do not want to forget. imitation + homage to the mother."
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/4/2020 In a 1916 letter to Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe wrote, “The sky was like a wonderful jewel—darkest in the center—light around the edges. I’ve always wanted to touch it—since I was a little girl—and it always seems more wonderful—I’m wanting it more. It makes me feel like such a little girl." This quotation and the 1916/17 painting "No. 22 – Special" are reproduced from Radius Books' superb monograph, Georgia O'Keeffe: Watercolors, a staff pick for Women's History Month, 2020.
DATE 11/5/2019  They're cute, they're small, they're surprising and affordable. Here are 15 staff picks for the stockings on your list » DATE 11/4/2019  The must-have art books of 2019 » DATE 11/7/2019  A few of our favorite 2019 monographs and surveys by Modern and contemporary photographers » DATE 11/10/2019  Gifts for design devotees: your guide to the top new architecture and design books for the 2019 holidays » DATE 11/10/2019  Whether you love to cook, eat or ponder the politics of food, here are our staff pick food and cooking gift books of 2019 » DATE 11/17/2019  Our staff favorite 2019 books on black art and history » DATE 11/9/2019  Impress your favorite armchair astronomers with wonderful gift books on the cosmos » DATE 11/8/2019  Our staff favorite holiday fashion gift books for 2019 » DATE 11/6/2019  Five must-have 2019 reading books for the literature lovers on your list » DATE 11/14/2019  Our staff feels love for these top film and music books of 2019 » DATE 11/16/2019  Our staff favorite 2019 books on or by LGBTQ artists » DATE 11/10/2019  This is a year of escape fantasy for many Americans, and we've got just the right book for every world traveler on your list » 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. |
|
