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Books
Books to Keep You Warm Over the Holidays
A selection of books from Sunday Poem Editor James Crews
The Pictures We Leave Behind
Artists are maybe uniquely situated for the posthumous book treatment because the images do so much of the talking, as opposed to a traditional biography.
The Beauty of Book Spines
With the advent of online bookstores, the cover of a book has become our first visual interaction with unknown tomes. Still, though, in bookstores and libraries and our friends' shelves at dinner parties, we are most often greeted by the spine of a book. It is, despite that familiarity, maybe a bit neglected as a design form—more like the edge of a cassette tape case than the front of a record sleeve.
Jennie Harbour, Where Have You Gone?
One of the most beautiful and contemporary wonder tale books I’ve seen, My Favourite Book of Fairy Tales, was published near the end of the Golden Age of illustration in 1921. It is illustrated by an exceptionally talented artist, acclaimed in her own lifetime, who history has transformed into an elusive mystery: Jennie Harbour.
Six Books’ Stories with Denise Markonish
MASS MoCA curator Denise Markonish shares her stories of experiences with selected books featuring Nick Cave, Jen Bervin, Mary Ruefle, Barbara Bourland, Carl Belz, J.M. Arms Sheldon, and Camille Flammarion.
Book from the Ground: Point to Point by Xu Bing
100 Word Book Review: Book from the Ground by Xu Bing. In the 1920s, a group of scholars in Vienna tried devising a universal picture language called isotype. Today, Shigetaka Kurita has perhaps achieved that vision with emojis. And in 2012 Xu Bing wrote a book without words from emojis and other contemporary symbols.
Joseph Keckler, Interdimensional Traveler
I have a copy of a brand new book, Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World, sitting on the edge of my desk. Inside it is inscribed: "Hope we stay in the same reality. Love, Joseph." At the time, I did not fully appreciate the extent to which Joseph Keckler, the author, is a dimension-traveling wizard. But I already had inklings.
John Stezaker & the Not-So-Perfect Marriage
John Stezaker’s surreal, handmade collages—comprised of film stills, publicity portraits, and postcards collected from thrift stores and bookshops—are masterful studies in contradiction. They are familiar and nostalgic, but also unexpected and strange. Like a Coen Brothers film or Flannery O’Connor short story, they walk that compelling line between comedy and tragedy.
The Gorgeous Nothings: The Envelope Poems of Emily Dickinson
For Proust," Susan Howe writes in her Preface to The Gorgeous Nothings, "a fragment is a morsel of time in its pure state; it hovers between a present that is immediate and a past that once had been present." The fragments Howe is specifically referring to are the envelopes left [...]
Skyscrapers: A Cure For Loneliness & Overconsumption? Judith Dupré on the World’s Most Extraordinary Buildings
Lewis Wickes Hine, A construction worker at the Empire State Building, 1931. (Photo courtesy the New York Public Library Digital Gallery) Books Worth Reading Skyscrapers: A History of the World’s Most Extraordinary Buildings By Judith Dupré. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 176 pages [...]
Gwarlingo’s 26 Favorite Art, Photography, Film & Design Books of 2013
As an ex-librarian and book collector, one of my favorite things to do is to ferret out new publications and share them with readers. Whenever I'm traveling, I scour local bookstores and museum shops for interesting books. (Carting heavy art tomes home on an airplane is a familiar [...]
Chop-Suey, Automats, & Diamondback Terrapin: Michael Lesy & Lisa Stoffer on Dining in America
The chefs of Sherry's restaurant at luncheon in 1902 (Photo courtesy the Museum of the City of New York, the Byron Company Collection. Click to Enlarge) Wisconsin Death Trip My first introduction to the work of Michael Lesy was a chance encounter many years ago with his classic [...]
Writer Howard Mansfield on Clutter, Home Improvement & the Most Hated House on the Block
Lisa Dahl, Suburban Export, household cardboard, 1.5 x 2 x 2 inches (each), installation variable, 2011-12. View the finished installation Suburban Export here. (In-Progress photo of installation by Lisa Dahl courtesy the artist) "Everyone, rich or poor, deserves a shelter for the soul." -Samuel Mockbee The [...]
Daily Rituals: How Artists Create (And Avoid Creating) Their Art
"In my personal life, if I don't have a project, I don't have any discipline," says performance artist Marina Abramovic. Discipline and daily ritual were one of the subjects of her 2002 piece The House with the Ocean View. Abramovic spent 12 straight days living on three open platforms in [...]
Postcards from a Prison Teacher
2.3 million people are currently imprisoned in the United States, that's one out of every 100 adults---more per capita than any other country in the world. (Repressive China is a distant second, with one in 1,000 adults incarcerated.) As Ayelet Waldman and Robin Levi explain in the introduction to their [...]