In & out of Amsterdam : travels in conceptual art, 1960-1976Christophe Cherix
Museum of Modern Art, 2009
During the 1960s and 1970s, Amsterdam was a nexus of intense art activities, drawing artists from all over the world including Stanley Brouwn, Gilbert & George, Sol LeWitt, Charlotte Posenenske, Allen Ruppersberg, and LawrenceWeiner. Reciprocally, some of the most influential Dutch artists traveled abroad extensively before establishing themselves in Amsterdam: Jan Dibbets studied in London, while Ger van Elk and Bas Jan Ader trained in Los Angeles. As a result of this new mobility, a dynamic cross-pollination of ideas and influences took place between artists of different nationalities, and many produced works directly related to the notion of travel and the city that fostered them. In & Out of Amsterdam presents more than 120 works including works on paper, installations, photographs and films by artists who were part of this remarkable creative culture. Essays, accompanied by lively illustrations and documentary photographs, illuminate the significance of these works as well as the unprecedented role that prints, bulletins, posters, mail art, artists books and ephemera played in the artists discourse. A brief essay or interview introduces each artist, and an extensive chronology, bibliography and illustrated checklist round out this unique volume.
The Surrogates : owner's manualRobert Venditti, Brett Weldele
Top Shelf Productions, 2009
The year is 2054, and life is reduced to a data feed. The fusing of virtual reality and cybernetics has ushered in the era of the personal surrogate, android substitutes that let users interact with the world without ever leaving their homes. It's a perfect world, and it's up to Detectives Harvey Greer and Pete Ford of the Metro Police Department to keep it that way. But to do so they'll need to stop a techno-terrorist bent on returning society to a time when people lived their lives instead of merely experiencing them. Designed to complement the upcoming, feature-length movie, The Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis and slated for release September 25th, 2009 from Touchstone Pictures, this special hardcover edition features both the original and prequel graphic novels of The Surrogates.
I never liked you : a comic bookChester Brown
Drawn & Quarterly, 1994
Brown's latest autobiographical work is a study in adolescent socialization and the peculiar combination of budding sexuality, self-obsessed dreaminess and downright mean-spiritedness that epitomize the teenage years. Like The Playboy, his previous book, I Never Liked You chronicles the Harvey Award-winner's suburban, Canadian childhood and his affectless relations with his family, the idiosyncrasies of his mother and his strained encounters with both admiring and hostile schoolmates. But unlike the previous book (which focused on his onanistic obsession with Playboy magazine), this one captures Brown's weirdly detached relations with almost everyone and his awkward, almost pathological passivity and inability to "fit in." But girls do like him, which can be both a dream come true and his worst nightmare. Chester isn't sure (actually hasn't got a clue) what to do after he tells a friend he loves her. Brown is a wan, but intensely focused, episodic storyteller who can transform the usual memories of teenage yearning into distinctive passages of muted comedy or adolescent emotional desperation. He scatters his panels asymetrically across black pages, isolating their beauty and carefully pacing the narrative forward. His drawing is exceptional both for its economy and for the attenuated sensuality of his lines and figures. A strange and engrossing teen memoir by one of the most talented artists working in alternative comics today.
Saga of the Swamp ThingAlan Moore, Stephen Bissette
DC Comics, 2009
Alan Moore's classic SWAMP THING tales, published in hardcover for the first time!
Created by a freak accident, the Swamp Thing is an elemental creature who uses the forces of nature and wisdom of the plant kingdom to rail against a polluted world's self-destruction.
Inspired by the 1970s creation of writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson, Alan Moore, the writer of WATCHMEN and V FOR VENDETTA, took the Swamp Thing to new heights in the 1980s with his unique narrative approach. His provocative and groundbreaking writing, combined with masterly artwork by some of the medium's top artists, made SWAMP THING one of the great comics of the late twentieth century.
Public photographic spaces : exhibitions of Propaganda, from Pressa to The Family of Man, 1928-55Jorge Ribalta
Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2009
This book focuses from a chronological perspective on photography as a tool for a new visuality and the rupture of the role of the spectator: photographic exhibitions from 1928 to 1955, from the spaces designed by Lissitzky's to The Family of Man; the trajectory of utopian architectural-photographic space and from post-Revolutionary Russia to America during the Cold War. This space documents the exhibitions designed by Lissitzky (Pressa, Film und Foto, etc); German, Italian and Spanish exhibitions in the 1930s, and exhibitions in MOMA during the Second World War.
Cassavetes on CassavetesJohn Cassavetes, Raymond Carney
Macmillan, 2001
Since his death in 1989, John Cassavettes has become increasingly renowned as a cinematic hero--a renegade loner who fought the Hollywood system, steering his own creative course in a career spanning thirty years. Having already established himself as an actor, he struck out as a filmmaker in 1959 with Shadows, and proceeded to build a formidable body of work, including such classics as Faces, Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Gloria. In Cassavettes on Cassavettes, Ray Carney presents the great director in his own words--frank, uncompromising, humane, and passionate about life and art.
Conquest of the useless : reflections from the making of FitzcarraldoWerner Herzog
HarperCollins, 2009
One of the most revered filmmakers of our time, Werner Herzog wrote this diary during the making of Fitzcarraldo, the lavish 1982 film that tells the story of a would-be rubber baron who pulls a steamship over a hill in order to access a rich rubber territory. Later, Herzog spoke of his difficulties when making the film, including casting problems, reshoots, language barriers, epic clashes with the star, and the logistics of moving a 320-ton steamship over a hill without the use of special effects.Hailed by critics around the globe, the film went on to win Herzog the 1982 Outstanding Director Prize at Cannes. Conquest of the Useless, Werner Herzog's diary on his fever dream in the Amazon jungle, is an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of a genius during the making of one of his greatest achievements.
Ghanavision : hand-painted film posters from GhanaThibaut De Ruyter, ... et al.
Distributed Art Pub Inc, 2009
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.
Toth: "one for the road"Alex Toth, Manuel Auad
Auad Publishing, 2000
