Art Books

Named one of the best books of 2021 by Artforum

Afro-Atlantic Historiesbrings together a selection of more than 400 works and documents by more than 200 artists from the 16th to the 21st centuries that express and analyze the ebbs and flows between Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe. The book is motivated by the desire and need to draw parallels, frictions and dialogues around the visual cultures of Afro-Atlantic territories—their experiences, creations, worshiping and philosophy. The so-called Black Atlantic, to use the term coined by Paul Gilroy, is geography lacking precise borders, a fluid field where African experiences invade and occupy other nations, territories and cultures.
The plural and polyphonic quality of “histórias” is also of note; unlike the English “histories,” the word in Portuguese carries a double meaning that encompasses both fiction and nonfiction, personal, political, economic and cultural, as well as mythological narratives.
The book features more than 400 works from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, as well as Europe, from the 16th to the 21st century. These are organized in eight thematic groupings: Maps and Margins; Emancipations; Everyday Lives; Rites and Rhythms; Routes and Trances; Portraits; Afro Atlantic Modernisms; Resistances and Activism.
Artists include: Nina Chanel Abney, Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, Emanoel Araujo, Maria Auxiliadora, Romare Bearden, John Biggers, Paul Cézanne, Victoria Santa Cruz, Beauford Delaney, Aaron Douglas, Melvin Edwards, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Ben Enwonwu, Ellen Gallagher, Theodore Géricault, Barkley Hendricks, William Henry Jones, Loïs Mailou Jones, Titus Kaphar, Wifredo Lam, Norman Lewis, Ibrahim Mahama, Edna Manley, Archibald Motley, Abdias Nascimento, Gilberto de la Nuez, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Dalton Paula, Rosana Paulino, Howardena Pindell, Heitor dos Prazeres, Joshua Reynolds, Faith Ringgold, Gerard Sekoto, Alma Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, Rubem Valentim, Kara Walker and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

“Travel back in time to witness the creation of the world’s favorite web-slinger as dreamed up by comic book legends Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, who redefined what it meant to be a hero. In this Hulk-sized, collector’s dream, the first 21 Spider-Man stories from 1962–1964 have been meticulously photographed from the most pristine copies of these rare comic books—a fine art celebration of the teen super hero in this inaugural volume of TASCHEN’s Marvel Comics Library series.”

Hardcover, 11 x 15.6 in., 10.62 lb, 698 pages

A Chicago Tribune 2020 holiday gift guide pick

In 1961, Leonard Freed was on assignment in Berlin. He photographed a Black soldier standing in front of the wall. The irony of this soldier defending the USA on foreign soil while Black Americans at home were fighting for their civil rights was not lost on Freed. He returned to the States in 1963 to photograph the March on Washington and began a journey to document Black communities in the North and South living within a deeply segregated and racist country.

Leonard Freed’s seminal civil rights photo essay, Black in White America, was first published in 1968. This newly expanded and redesigned edition includes unseen photographs, as well as Freed’s most iconic images and is the definitive collection of his photographs from the time. The images have never been printed in such quality before, the clarity of print serving to bring home the singular power of Freed’s talent as a documentarian.

This extraordinary work includes pivotal moments in the civil rights movement, such as the March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery marches. It is also a nuanced journey into the ordinary lives of a marginalized Black community living within a deeply divided nation. Freed was celebrated for his singular talent as a socially conscious photojournalist, and this essay conveys with power and dignity the exhausting, endless struggle of being Black in white America.

Leonard Freed (1929–2006) was an acclaimed American documentary photojournalist and member of Magnum Photos. Born and raised in working-class Brooklyn, Freed rose to prominence for his portrayal of societal and racial injustices, particularly in relation to the Black community during the American civil rights movement in the 1960s. He is also renowned for his photo-essays on the Jewish community in Amsterdam and Germany, the Yom Kippur War, Asian immigration in England, North Sea oil development, Spain after Franco and the New York police department in the 1970s, among others.

In 1941, Jacob Lawrence, then just 23 years old, made a series of 60 small tempera paintings on the Great Migration, the decades-long mass movement of black Americans from the rural South to the urban North that began in 1915–16. The child of migrant parents, Lawrence worked partly from his own experience and partly from long research in his neighborhood library. The result was an epic narrative of the collective history of his people. Moving from scenes of terror and violence to images of great intimacy, and drawing on film, photography, political cartoons and other sources in popular culture, Lawrence created an innovative format of sequential panels, each image accompanied by a descriptive caption. Within months of its completion, the series entered the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Phillips Memorial Gallery (today The Phillips Collection), Washington, DC, each institution acquiring 30 panels.

The Migration Series is now a landmark in the history of modern art. Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series, now in paperback, grounds Lawrence’s work in the cultural and political debates that shaped his art and demonstrates its relevance for artists and writers today. The series is reproduced in full; short texts accompanying each panel relate them to the history of the Migration and explore Lawrence’s technique and approach. Alongside scholarly essays, the book also includes 11 newly commissioned poems, by Rita Dove, Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, Tyehimba Jess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Patricia Spears Jones, Natasha Trethewey, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Crystal Williams and Kevin Young, that respond directly to the series. The distinguished poet Elizabeth Alexander edited and introduces the section.

Leah Dickerman is Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Elsa Smithgall is Curator at The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Jodi Roberts is Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Elizabeth Alexander is Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University. Her most recent book of poetry is Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990–2010 (Graywolf Press, 2010).

Rita Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1987) and a former United States Poet Laureate (1993–95). Her most recent book of poetry is Sonata Mulattica (W. W. Norton, 2009).

Nikky Finney is John H. Bennett, Jr. Endowed Professor of Creative Writing and Southern Letters, the University of South Carolina. She is a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry for her book Head Off & Split (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2011).Terrance Hayes is Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a MacArthur Fellow (2014) and a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry for his book Lighthead (Penguin, 2010).Tyehimba Jess is Assistant Professor of English at the College of Staten Island in City University of New York. He is a winner of the National Poetry Series for his book leadbelly (Wave Books, 2005).

Yusef Komunyakaa is Global Distinguished Professor of English at New York University. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1994). His most recent book of poetry is The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012).

Patricia Spears Jones is a poet based in New York. Her most recent book of poetry is Living in the Love Economy(Overpass Books, 2014).

Natasha Trethewey is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing, Emory University. She is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2007) and a former United States Poet Laureate (2012–14). Her most recent book of poetry is Thrall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Cornell University. Her most recent book of poetry is Open Interval (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).

Crystal Williams is Associate Vice President, Chief Diversity Officer and Professor of English at Bates College. Her most recent book of poetry is Detroit as Barn(Lost Horse Press, 2014).

Kevin Young is Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Previously, he was the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing and Curator of Literary Collections and Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University. His most recent book of poetry is Book of Hours (Knopf, 2014).

A Chicago Tribune 2020 holiday gift guide pick

AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) was founded on the South Side of Chicago in 1968 by a group of five young Black artists. Today, it is one of the oldest continuously active American art collectives. The pronunciation—Af-FREE-co-bruh—emphasizes the second syllable, signaling the group’s central principle grounded in Black liberation: creative expression reflecting the Black experience and Black influences.
AfriCOBRA’s founding artists—Jeff Donaldson, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu and Gerald Williams—differed in disciplines and artistic vocabularies but were brought together by the common aspiration to create work that speaks directly to Black people utilizing an identifiably Black aesthetic. This publication celebrates the fifty-year anniversary of AfriCOBRA’s founding and marks the collective’s powerful relevance today. AfriCOBRA: Messages to the People documents two exhibitions curated by Jeffreen M. Hayes, PhD: one at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, and another as an official collateral event of the 58th Venice Biennale. It features more than 80 works by the original members as well as those by Sherman Beck, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, Omar Lama, Carolyn Mims Lawrence and Nelson Stevens.
More than a historical overview of AfriCOBRA, this book is a response to the artists’ continuing contributions and influence, connecting their works to the contemporary moment through essays, archival photographs and ephemera, exhibition views, and contemporary photographs that celebrate the impact of this revolutionary art collective. As their name states, the artists and artworks of AfriCOBRA were as relevant in 1968 as they are today in the continued struggle for Black liberation.

Named one of the best books of 2021 by The Financial Times

From the most avant-garde jazz musicians, visual artists and poets to architects, philosophers and writers, Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style charts a period in American history when Black men across the country adopted the clothing of a privileged elite and made it their own. It shows how a generation of men took the classic Ivy Look and made it cool, edgy and unpredictable in ways that continue to influence today's modern menswear.
Here you will see some famous, infamous and not so famous figures in Black culture such as Amiri Baraka, Charles White, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sidney Poitier, and how they reinvented Ivy and Prep fashion—the dominant looks of the time. The real stars of the book—the Oxford cloth button-down shirt, the hand-stitched loafer, the soft shoulder three-button jacket and the perennial repp tie—are all here. What Black Ivy explores is how these clothes are reframed and redefined by a stylish group of men from outside the mainstream, challenging the status quo, struggling for racial equality and civil rights.
Boasting the work of some of America's finest photographers and image-makers, this must-have tome is a celebration of how, regardless of the odds, great style always wins.

Follow Peter Lindbergh across four decades of pioneering fashion photography. Through countless collaborations with the most venerated names in fashion, the German photographer created new narratives with his humanist approach, which resulted in iconic shots at once introspective and appealing. This book features more than 300 images, many previously unpublished, as well as an updated introduction in which Lindbergh establishes his sentiment on “so-called fashion photography”.

Hardcover, 9.4 x 13.4 in., 7.04 lb, 440 pages

The first and only monograph to give a comprehensive examination of acclaimed American artist Sarah Sze's painting practice

Since the late 1990s, Sarah Sze has developed a signature visual language that challenges the static nature of art with a dynamic body of work spanning sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, video and installation.

In recent years, Sze has returned to painting, the medium in which she was first trained. Comprising constellations of painted and collaged elements, her expansive abstract landscapes explore a visual world that is constantly evolving, degrading, and generating new ways of seeing. Her paintings are highly sought-after and are held in the permanent collections of prominent institutions and museums worldwide.

The book includes two essays by Mark Godfrey and Tina Pang that explore Sze's influences and her working process, plus an interview between the artist and Madeleine Grynsztejn, that expands on the theoretical underpinnings of her painting practice.

With each copy numbered and hand signed by the artist, this exquisitely illustrated luxury volume, packaged in a cloth-wrapped slipcase, was created in close collaboration with Sze, and is the first monograph devoted to her painting practice.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 308 × 292 mm (12 1/8 × 11 1/2 in)
• Pages: 396 pp
• Illustrations: 300 illustrations
• ISBN: 9781838665623

Hardcover, 9.8” x 13.4” (9.24lbs; 560 pages)

Originating from the highly acclaimed and groundbreaking three-volume Phaidon Design Classics, this new book presents 1,000 of the world's greatest objects in one large-format volume - from everyday items by anonymous creators to lauded pieces by the likes of Charles and Ray Eames, Charlotte Perriand, Dieter Rams, Richard Sapper, Hans J. Wegner, and Florence Knoll.

Carefully revised to bring every detail up to date, and with the addition of 100 new items that highlight designers from a diverse variety of backgrounds (including a greater number of female designers) and products from the last 15 years, this collection of the world's greatest product design is more comprehensive, compelling - and relevant - than ever before.

The book showcases celebrated names alongside the new stars of modern design, including Le Corbusier, Alvar and Aino Aalto, Isamu Noguchi, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Lani Adeoye, Faye Toogood, and Lindsey Adelman. Each entry is accompanied by beautiful imagery and a detailed description that offers a rich insight into the product, its history, and its maker, from the renowned Tulip Chair by Eero Saarinen to the much-loved Bird Zero e-scooter.

This handsome book is the perfect reference guide for design enthusiasts, industry professionals, and all those interested in the creative process.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 310 × 230 mm (12 1/4 × 9 in)
• Pages: 592 pp
• Illustrations: 1000 illustrations

An original approach to gender equality, this striking pictorial statement brings to light the compelling and undeniable phenomenon of 'the only woman': across time and cultures, groups of artists, activists, scientists, servants, movie stars, or metal workers have often included exactly and only one woman.

Covering examples from nearly 20 countries, from the advent of photography until the present day, author Immy Humes reveals and reframes how women and men have related socially in surprising and poignant ways. This is a fresh contribution to visual and cultural history full of unheard stories, courage, achievement, outrage, mystery, fun, and extraordinary women.

A unique focus on women and men in public life from 1860 to the present day charting the phenomenon of 'the only woman' from countries including the USA and the UK, France, Peru, Mexico, India, China, Japan, and Australia. The book features both unknown and well-known women from a diverse range of backgrounds including writers, conductors, civil-rights leaders, domestic workers, sportswomen, and lawyers as well as princesses, railway workers, boxing promoters, and astronauts.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 150 × 210 mm (5 7/8 × 8 1/4 in)
• Pages: 240 pp
• Illustrations: 120 illustrations

An expanded edition of Parks’ classic account of race relations in America, with previously unpublished images and texts

This expanded edition of Gordon Parks: Segregation Storyincludes around 30 previously unpublished photographs, as well as enhanced reproductions created from Parks’ original color transparencies; newly discovered descriptions Parks wrote for the photographs; a manuscript of film-developing instructions and captions Parks authored with Samuel F. Yette; previously published texts by the late art historian Maurice Berger and the esteemed journalist and civil rights activist Charlayne Hunter-Gault; and a new essay by artist Dawoud Bey.
After the photographs were first presented in a 1956 issue of Life magazine, the bulk of Parks’ assignment was thought to be lost. In 2011, five years after Parks’ death, the Gordon Parks Foundation found more than 200 color transparencies belonging to the series. In 2014 the series was first published as a book, and since then new photographs have been uncovered.
In the summer of 1956, Life magazine sent Gordon Parks to Alabama to document the daily realities of African Americans living under Jim Crow laws in the rural South. The resulting color photographs are among Parks’ most powerful images, and, in the decades since, have become emblematic representations of race relations in America. Pursued at grave danger to the photographer himself, the project was an important chapter in Parks’ career-long endeavor to use the camera as a weapon for social change.
Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. An itinerant laborer, he worked as a brothel pianist and railcar porter, among other jobs, before buying a camera at a pawnshop, training himself and becoming a photographer. He evolved into a modern-day Renaissance man, finding success as a film director, writer and composer. The first African American director to helm a major motion picture, he helped launch the blaxploitation genre with his film Shaft (1971). Parks died in 2006

Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History presents the bling culture of rappers and their jewelry. Using 40 years of iconic imagery and compelling stories, this visual history shines a light on the world of hip-hop, where mega stars from Run-DMC to Tupac and Jay-Z to Migos and Cardi B flash brilliant custom pieces to show status and personal style.

This dazzling tribute to Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s 1974 boxing match in Kinshasa, Zaire, brings together the best of Norman Mailer’s classic commentary The Fight with color and black-and-white photographs from the two men who captured Ali like no one else: Neil Leifer and Howard L. Bingham.

First published as a signed Collector’s Edition, now available in an unlimited edition.

Hardcover, 11 x 13.3 in., 5.98 lb, 260 pages

Peter Lindbergh and Azzedine Alaïa, the photographer and the couturier, were united by their love of black, a love that they would cultivate alike in silver print and solid color garments. Accompanying the exhibition Azzedine Alaïa, Peter Lindberghat the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa in Paris, this book celebrates their artistic partnership.

Hardcover, 9.4” x 12.9”, 240 pages

This encyclopedia explores the hidden meanings of visual symbols across time and geography, from the sun to whales and the human hand. Spanning different eras and cultures, over 800 beautiful images combine with expert illuminations of symbol history, meanings, and psychic associations, offering readers a precious and fascinating resource for thoughtful interpretations of life, art, and spirituality.

Hardcover, 6.6” x 9.4”, 808 pages

A visual and conceptual conversation between two leading US photo-artists famed for their mutual explorations of race, class and power

Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems met in New York in the late 1970s, and over the next 45 years these close friends and colleagues have each produced unique and influential bodies of work around shared interests and concerns. This publication brings together over 140 photographs and video art from the 1970s through the 2010s by two of our most notable and influential photo-based artists.
Since first meeting at the Studio Museum in Harlem five decades ago, Bey and Weems have maintained spirited and supportive mutual engagement while exploring and addressing similar themes: race, class, representation, and systems of power. Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue brings their work together in five thematic groupings to shed light on their unique creative visions and trajectories, and their shared concerns and principles.
Photographer Dawoud Bey (born 1953) had his first exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. Since then, his work has been presented internationally to critical and popular acclaim. Recent large-scale exhibitions of his photographs have been presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and Tate Modern, London. Bey’s writings on his own and others’ work are included in Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply and Dawoud Bey on Photographing People and Communities. He is a professor of art and Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago.
Famed for her Kitchen Table Series, among other works, Carrie Mae Weems(born 1953) explores power, class, Black identity, womanhood, and the historical past and its resonance in the present moment. In addition to photography, Weems creates video, performance and works of public art, and organizes thematic gatherings which bring together creative thinkers across a broad array of disciplines. Her work has been exhibited across the world, at venues such as the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo and the American Academy in Rome.

The definitive volume on the ever-evolving and shape-shifting work of the Chicago-based artist, Nick Cave: Forothermorehighlights the way Cave’s practice has shifted and continues to shift in response to our history and current moment of cultural crisis. Including several new, never-before-seen works, the book shows an artist at the height of his power.
Addressing topics ranging from art history to social justice, Nick Cave: Forothermore includes essays from Naomi Beckwith, Romi Crawford, Antwaun Sargent, Malik Gaines, Krista Thompson and Meida Teresa McNeal. Punctuating these contributions are interviews with the artist exploring his life, work and teaching practice, as well as a roundtable discussion between Cave and dancer Damita Jo Freeman, musician Nona Hendryx and publisher Linda Johnson Rice on Cave's art and influences, as well as pivotal cultural phenomena from Soul Train to Ebony magazine. Nick Cave: Forothermore reveals the way art, music, fashion and performance can help us envision a more just future.
Nick Cave (born 1959) is an artist and educator working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums, including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance. Cave is well known for his Soundsuits, sculptural forms based on the scale of his body, initially created in direct response to the police beating of Rodney King in 1991. Cave has had major exhibitions at MASS MoCA (2016), Cranbrook Art Museum (2015), Saint Louis Art Museum (2014–15), ICA Boston (2014), Denver Art Museum (2013), Seattle Art Museum (2011) and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2009), among others. Cave lives and works in Chicago.

William Eggleston's Guide was the first one-man show of color photographs ever presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museum's first publication of color photography. The reception was divided and passionate. The book and show unabashedly forced the art world to deal with color photography, a medium scarcely taken seriously at the time, and with the vernacular content of a body of photographs that could have been but definitely weren't some average American's Instamatic pictures from the family album. These photographs heralded a new mastery of the use of color as an integral element of photographic composition. Bound in a textured cover inset with a photograph of a tricycle and stamped with yearbook-style gold lettering, the Guide contained 48 images edited down from 375 shot between 1969 and 1971 and displayed a deceptively casual, actually super-refined look at the surrounding world. Here are people, landscapes and odd little moments in and around Eggleston's hometown of Memphis--an anonymous woman in a loudly patterned dress and cat's eye glasses sitting, left leg slightly raised, on an equally loud outdoor sofa; a coal-fired barbecue shooting up flames, framed by a shiny silver tricycle, the curves of a gleaming black car fender, and someone's torso; a tiny, gray-haired lady in a faded, flowered housecoat, standing expectant, and dwarfed in the huge dark doorway of a mint-green room whose only visible furniture is a shaded lamp on an end table. For this edition of William Eggleston's Guide, The Museum of Modern Art has made new color separations from the original 35 mm slides, producing a facsimile edition in which the color will be freshly responsive to the photographer's intentions.

Flowers is a facsimile of the third of William Eggleston’s (born 1939) rare artist’s books, which was first published in an edition of only 15 by Caldecott Chubb in New York in 1978. The original Flowers was a linen-bound volume with red leather spine and corners recreating the look of a photo album, and housed in a slipcase. Within its pages were 12 original chromogenic coupler prints focused on the theme of flowers.

The latest in the Dung Beetle Learning series, Mummy, John and Susan are taken on a thrilling Christmas adventure. "Come with me," says Father Christmas, "and I will show you the magic of kindness." "And I will undermine your vicious program of indoctrination," Mummy counters. She then proceeds to strip Christmas of all its magic and meaning, for the benefit of John, Susan and mankind in general. This book will joyfully ruin the Yuletide festival period for children and adults alike.

In The Spectacle of Illusion, professional magician-turned experimental psychologist Dr. Matthew L. Tompkins investigates the arts of deception as practised and popularised by mesmerists, magicians and psychics since the early 18th century. Organised thematically within a broadly chronological trajectory, this compelling book explores how illusions perpetuated by magicians and fraudulent mystics can not only deceive our senses but also teach us about the inner workings of our minds. Indeed, modern scientists are increasingly turning to magic tricks to develop new techniques to examine human perception, memory and belief. Beginning by discussing mesmerism and spiritualism, the book moves on to consider how professional magicians such as John Nevil Maskelyne and Harry Houdini engaged with these movements – particularly how they set out to challenge and debunk paranormal claims. It also relates the interactions between magicians, mystics and scientists over the past 200 years, and reveals how the researchers who attempted to investigate magical and paranormal phenomena were themselves deceived, and what this can teach us about deception. Highly illustrated throughout with entertaining and bizarre drawings, double-exposure spirit photographs and photographs of spoon-bending from hitherto inaccessible and un-mined archives, including the Wellcome Collection, the Harry Price Library, the Society for Physical Research, and last but not least, the Magic Circle’s closely guarded collection, the book also features newly commissioned photography of planchettes, rapping boards, tilting tables, ectoplasm, automata and illusion boxes. Concluding with a modern-day analysis of the science of magic and illusion, analysing surprisingly weird phenomena such as ideomotor action, sleep paralysis, choice blindness and the psychology of misdirection, this unnerving volume highlights how unreliable our minds can be, and how complicit they can be in the perpetuation of illusions.

Many tattoo connoisseurs consider the Japanese tradition to be the finest in the world for its detail, complexity and compositional skill. Its style and subject matter are drawn from the visual treasure trove of Japanese popular culture, in particular the color woodblock prints of the early 19th century known as ukiyo-e.

This book tells the fascinating story of how ukiyo-e first inspired tattoo artists as the pictorial tradition of tattooing in Japan was just beginning. It explores the Japanese tattoo’s evolving meanings, from symbol of devotion to punishment and even to crime, and reveals the tales behind specific motifs. With lush, colorful images of flowers blooming on the arm of a thief, sea monsters coiling across the back of a hero and legendary warriors battling on the chests of actors, the tattoos in these prints can offer the same vivid inspiration today as they did 200 years ago.

American visual artist Marilyn Minter (born 1948) has long cultivated a space between the classical and the commercial for her photorealistic paintings and visceral photographs. Minter’s art is characterized by an emphasis on natural textures in all of their extremes—whether that of the turquoise eyeshadow on a young woman’s face or the glittery grit on the underside of a high-heeled shoe. This monograph dedicated to her recent works presents her 2009 film Green Pink Caviar and a dozen monumental paintings as well as the processes behind such works.
In her most recent painting series, Minter is inspired by classical representations of the female bather as an artistic subject from ancient Greece to early Impressionism. She offers a contemporary version of this figure: her female subjects relax and wash themselves in modern showers, their faces and bodies partially obscured by a film of condensation on the glass separating them from the viewer. In some images the women appear as a mere blur behind the glass; in others, the rivulets of water that course down the glass plane reveal enough to identify a face or body part. The effect is a sensuousness that defies the male voyeuristic gaze seen throughout art history.

Cooper Hewitt possesses one of the most diverse and comprehensive collections of design works in existence and is the only museum in the United States devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary design. Reopening in late 2014, the museum has undergone a transformative renovation. Its landmark home in the Andrew Carnegie Mansion offers an entirely new and interactive visitor experience resulting in 60 percent more gallery space. To mark the occasion, Cooper Hewitt is publishing an expansive book on its unparalleled collection, which consists of more than 210,000 objects from all over the world, spanning 30 centuries. Designed by Irma Boom, and a wonderful design object in itself at over 900 pages, the book expresses the museum's primary goal--to inspire people to see how design impacts their lives. Available in three different colors and printing with glow in the dark ink, the book embodies design process. This user-centered approach is reinforced throughout the pages with 54 narratives and an extensive process glossary that discusses individual objects through a design lens. Featuring more than 1,100 collection objects selected by the curatorial staff, Smithsonian Design Library, and renowned designer Irma Boom, Making Design is organized entirely by Boom's visual sequencing of images; her design and the curators' essays weave parallel narratives throughout the book. This wildly playful and unexpected jaunt through the collection ends with Boom's exploration of her process, "Making Making Design," which embraces the essence design and the new experiences in Cooper Hewitt's galleries.

Daniel Nicoletta (born 1954) has been a leading chronicler of the LGBT civil rights movement in San Francisco over the last 40 years. This is the first book dedicated to his powerful photographs documenting the journey of the burgeoning lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender mecca that was San Francisco in the 1970s through to the present. Nicoletta is best known for his iconic images of Harvey Milk, one of the world’s first openly gay elected officials, who was assassinated by a homophobic colleague in 1978. Nicoletta portrayed glittering drag queens, the alternative theater world and the steadfast bravery of same-sex couples trying to live their lives amid often adverse cultural sea changes. Today, Nicoletta continues to document the reverberations of Milk’s legacy. He serves as a key point person for LGBT civil rights and Milk-related research. In 2014, one of Nicoletta’s photographs was used on a US Harvey Milk Forever stamp. LGBT: San Francisco is an essential gay history and a stunning photographic work that is not to be missed.

By the start of 1966, the Rolling Stones’ position as rock gods was established. They were making serious money and splashing out on new homes and cars. Their official photographer and friend, Gered Mankowitz, was invited to shoot an “at home” session with each member of the band. “They hated the idea of unknown photographers visiting their private sanctuaries … If I did it then the press office would have a large selection of this type of image and could fulfil any magazine request without having to bother the band.”

Mankowitz kept these photographs in supermarket carrier bags stashed under his desk for several years, “getting in my way and frequently wondering why I continued to hold on to them.” This is the first time these sessions have been collated and published. The book includes both iconic and unseen photographs: Mick in a kipper tie turning on his new television and posing outside with a new Aston Martin; Keith, Lord of the Manor-style, with his blue Bentley and antique sword at his East Sussex home; Charlie grinning next to lingerie drying in the garden; Brian in obligatory silk shirt in front of a handpainted mural; Bill in the kitchen with his dog.

Goin’ Home with the Rolling Stones ’66 is a beguiling collection of images, shot with incredible skill, that offers that rare thing in Stones photography—a fresh perspective. It features an introduction by Mankowitz and a foreword from the Rolling Stones’ legendary manager, Andrew Loog Oldham.

Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, a series of 69 black-and-white photographs created between 1977 and 1980, is widely seen as one of the most original and influential achievements in recent art. Witty, provocative and searching, this lively catalogue of female roles inspired by the movies crystallizes widespread concerns in our culture, examining the ways we shape our personal identities and the role of the mass media in our lives. Sherman began making these pictures in 1977 when she was 23 years old. The first six were an experiment: fan-magazine glimpses into the life (or roles) of an imaginary blond actress, played by Sherman herself. The photographs look like movie stills--or perhaps publicity pix--purporting to catch the blond bombshell in unguarded moments at home. The protagonist is shown preening in the kitchen and lounging in the bedroom. Onto something big, Sherman tried other characters in other roles: the chic starlet at her seaside hideaway, the luscious librarian, the domesticated sex kitten, the hot-blooded woman of the people, the ice-cold sophisticate and a can-can line of other stereotypes. She eventually completed the series in 1980. She stopped, she has explained, when she ran out of clichés.

Other artists had drawn upon popular culture but Sherman's strategy was new. For her the pop-culture image was not a subject (as it had been for Walker Evans) or raw material (as it had been for Andy Warhol) but a whole artistic vocabulary, ready-made. Her film stills look and function just like the real ones--those 8 x 10 glossies designed to lure us into a drama we find all the more compelling because we know it isn't real. In the Untitled Film Stillsthere are no Cleopatras, no ladies on trains, no women of a certain age. There are, of course, no men. The 69 solitary heroines map a particular constellation of fictional femininity that took hold in postwar America--the period of Sherman's youth and the starting point for our contemporary mythology. In finding a form for her own sensibility, Sherman touched a sensitive nerve in the culture at large. Although most of the characters are invented, we sense right away that we already know them. That twinge of instant recognition is what makes the series tick and it arises from Cindy Sherman's uncanny poise. There is no wink at the viewer, no open irony, no camp.

In 1995, The Museum of Modern Art purchased the series from the artist, preserving the work in its entirety. This book marks the first time that the complete series will be published as a unified work, with Sherman herself arranging the pictures in sequence.

Cindy Sherman is a ground-breaking American photographer, born in 1954. She began her "Film Stills" series at the age of 23, gaining early recognition, and has followed it with remarkable experiments in color photography. Her art has won her wide recognition and praise, and been collected and exhibited by major museums throughout the world since 1980. A major retrospective exhibition of her work was shown at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Dallas Museum of Art. Sherman is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She is represented by Metro Pictures gallery in New York.

Fashion photographer Arthur Elgort has loved jazz since he was nine years old, when a childhood friend introduced him to the music; he soon found himself frequenting jazz clubs all over his native New York City.

The dynamic style that made Elgort such a sensation in fashion photography was directly informed by his love for jazz and dance. His talent as a photographer grew alongside his interest and knowledge of jazz. By the time he was a well-known working photographer, Elgort could parlay his influence into meetings with his boyhood idols, requesting to have his favorite musicians appear in both his fashion and personal work.

Countless jazz greats have appeared in front of Elgort's camera, including Illinois Jacquet, Dexter Gordon and Dorothy Donegan. Each sitting produced not only images but memorable stories: the time Elgort took Dorothy shopping at Chanel; what it was like to shoot Dexter in his Hell's Kitchen apartment; getting to know Illinois and his wife personally. Arthur Elgort: Jazz collects these moments and more, exploring for the first time the creative exchange between the photographer and his musical heroes.

Arthur Elgort (born 1940) studied painting at Hunter College but quickly transitioned to photography, finding painting too slow and solitary. Elgort attributes much of his spontaneous and liberated style to his lifelong love of music and dance, especially jazz and ballet. In his long career he has worked on many major advertising campaigns, including for Chanel, Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent, shot countless fashion spreads and published several books.

This book features more than 150 rarely seen images documenting the rise of hip hop in the early 1980s, taken by French photographer Sophie Bramly. Bramly lived in New York during this period and became firmly embedded in the emergent scene. The book features many stunning, intimate images of a star-studded roll call of legendary hip hop figures, all of whom were only just getting known or in their ascendency. These include Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmixer DST, Jazzy Jay, Red Alert, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Kurtis Blow, Lisa Lee, the Fat Boys, Run-DMC, Beastie Boys and many more.

Bramly knew that hip hop was becoming a cultural force rather than just a musical fashion, and spent many hours photographing the four essential elements of this new world: the emcees, the deejays, the graffiti artists and the break dancers. Here you will see legendary graffiti artists captured at work and play, such as Keith Haring, Dondi, Futura, Phase One, Zephyr and Lady Pink, and break dancers including members of Magnificent Force, Dynamic Breakers and the Rock Steady Crew.

Bramly’s photographs also chronicle the desolate cityscapes from which hip hop emerged; the energy of the fans who first embraced hip hop; and the crucial players behind the scenes (Bill Laswell, Bernard Zekri, Rick Rubin, Fun Gallery co-owner Patti Astor).

Finally, this book also includes a bonus section documenting the rise of hip hop in Europe. Bramly returned to France in 1984 to find herself once again at the center of a new cultural phenomenon, helping bring the first US hip hop artists to Europe, including Fab Five Freddy, Futura 2000, Rocksteady Crew and many more.

In an era of high-tech and climate extremes, we are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. Enter Lo—TEK, a design movement building on indigenous philosophy and vernacular infrastructure to generate sustainable, resilient, nature-based technology. With a foreword by anthropologist Wade Davis and spanning 18 countries from Peru and the Philippines to Tanzania and Iran, this book explores millennia-old human ingenuity on how to live in symbiosis with nature. Manifesting the disclosure of hidden knowledge, the book’s artful Swiss binding showcases an open spine, revealing the construction of the book.

Albertus Seba’s catalog of natural specimens is not only one of the 18th century’s greatest natural history achievements but also one of the most prized natural history books of all time. Inspired from a rare hand-colored original, this collection gathers all his extraordinary illustrations of strange and exotic plants, snakes, corals, as well as “double-headed monsters”, dragons, and many more.

Hardcover, 9.6 x 14.6 in., 10.23 lb, 592 pages

A fresh re-edition of LeRoy Grannis’s sold-out Collector’s Edition, this collection gathers his most vibrant surf photography—from the perfect wave at San Onofre to dramatic wipeouts at Oahu’s famed North Shore. One of the key image-makers in surfing history, Grannis also covers the emerging surf lifestyle, from “surfer stomps” and hordes of fans at surf contests to board-laden woody station wagons along the Pacific Coast Highway.

Looking to the sky, the second volume in TASCHEN’S Library of Esoterica series delves into the vibrant visual history of Western astrology. From its birth as astronomy sister science, to our current Age of Aquarius, the story of this ancient practice is told through more than 400 images from Egyptian temples to contemporary art sequenced to mirror the spin of the planets and the wheel of the zodiac. Hardcover, quarter-bound, 6.7 x 9.4 in., 3.54 lb, 520 pages

Incorporating both formal details and welcoming elements, a sophisticated and balanced look tailored to a sense of home, as shown through the portfolio of Foley & Cox

Foley & Cox is a New York-based interior design firm renowned for serene spaces subtly layered with color and texture that create a sense of welcome and comfort. Taking creative cues directly from their clients–their perceptions, preferences, and passions–the firm creates serene interiors infused with personal style.

This elegant book presents 24 homes, ranging from elegant prewar apartments in Manhattan to retreats in the Hamptons and summer places along the coast of New England and in Europe, and even to a private jet and a yacht that cruises the Mediterranean. What unites these spaces is an overall balance and elegance, infused with luxurious fabrics in subtle tonal variations and a judicious use of highlight color, often in the artwork and accessories. Founder Michael Cox is a master at creating settings for art collections and selecting distinctive vintage pieces that add a sophisticated touch to the rooms.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 304 × 241 mm (12 × 9.5 in)
• Pages: 248 pp
• Illustrations: 220 illustrations
• ISBN: 9781580936163

Superlatives flounder in the face of Joan Blaeu’s Atlas Maior, one of the most extravagant feats in the history of mapmaking. This stunning edition is based on the Austrian National Library’s complete colored and gold-heightened copyand reprints its 594 maps covering all then-known continents to the highest reproduction standard, rendering full justice to this luxurious Baroque wonder.

Revel in the images from the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the great tools in the history of science. Updated with 30 photos to mark 30 years of Hubble, this book includes comment by Charles F. Bolden, Jr. and John Mace Grunsfeld, the astronauts who worked on Hubble, and by Zoltan Levay, who turned Hubble’s data into famous photos.

Fables, folklore, and fantasy—this compendium of all things alchemical and mystical gathers centuries of esoteric mythology in the form of writings, drawings, paintings, and prints. From early Christian mystics to the illustrations of William Blake and the Romantics, this collection spans science, philosophy, and otherworldly mystery over the ages.

Natural science buffs, graphics professionals, and anyone interested in the visual expression of data will be fascinated by this tribute to Fritz Kahn, the German infographics pioneer. He demystified complex scientific ideas and his creative concepts have influenced generations of artists and designers through to today.

Here is an intimate look at one of music’s greatest legends, as he turns 80, by an iconic photojournalist. From the delirium of early Beatlemania to the heady days of 1970s‑era Wings to his quiet rural life in the early 1990s,Paul follows the pop genius through the years with more than 100 rare photographs. Now available in a trade edition following last year’s sold out Collector’s Edition.

Previously available in an exclusive signed edition, this artist’s book by David Hockney now sees an unlimited XL-format release. In 120 iPhone and iPad drawings, the artist records his perceptions of the world from the window of his Yorkshire home. Each image depicts a fleeting moment—together they paint the passage of time through Hockney’s eyes. 

The first comprehensive book on the surreal, queer and humorous photographic art of Jimmy DeSana, a central figure in New York's art and music scenes of the 1970s and '80s

 This is the first overview of the work of Jimmy DeSana, a pioneering yet underrecognized figure in New York's downtown art, music and film scenes during the 1970s and 1980s. The book situates DeSana's work and life within the countercultural and queer contexts in the American South as well as New York, through his involvement in mail art, punk and No Wave music and film, and artist collectives and publications.

 DeSana's first major project was 101 Nudes, made in Atlanta during the city's gay liberation movement. After moving to New York in 1973, DeSana became immersed in queer networks, collaborating with General Idea and Ray Johnson on zines and mail art, and documenting the genderqueer street performances of Stephen Varble.
By the mid-1970s, DeSana was a fixture in New York's No Wave music and film scenes, serving as portraitist for much of the period's central figures and producing album covers for Talking Heads, James Chance and others. His book Submission, made with William S. Burroughs, humorously staged scenes out of a S&M manual that explored the body as object and the performance of desire. DeSana was also an early adopter of color photography, creating his best-known series, Suburban, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This body of work explores relationships between gender, sexuality and consumer capitalism in often humorous, surreal ways. After DeSana became sick as a result of contracting HIV, he turned to abstraction, using experimental photographic techniques to continue to push against photographic norms.

The first book on Basquiat's ingenious uses of found objects and unconventional materials

 Bringing together a range of unconventional painted supports and found-object sculptures, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art and Objecthood provides an innovative, in-depth look into the artist's sculptural practice. In addition to painting and drawing on everything within his domestic spaces--refrigerators, chairs, cabinets--Basquiat made use of discarded windows and doors, mirrors, wood boards and subway tiles in his earliest creations. In a 1985 interview with Becky Johnston and Tamra Davis, he explained: "The first paintings I made were on windows I found on the street. And I used the window shape as a frame, and I just put the painting on the glass part and on doors I found on the street."

 Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art and Objecthood borrows its title from the influential 1967 essay by renowned art historian Michael Fried, who critiqued Minimalism for its dogmatic separation between "art" and "object," arguing that its presentation of isolated objects as art was theatrics rather than a true art, which for Fried implied the unity of art and object. Invoking Fried's stance, this book invites viewers to consider the debate on art and objecthood as a lens through which to consider Basquiat's uses of objects. The book also demonstrates the extent to which these uses reveal his dedication to the struggle against social inequality and his profound engagement with the politics of race in the US.

A kaleidoscopic celebration of the USDA's pomological collection, offering an engaging, biophillic meditation upon the sweetest of the earth's produce

 The United States Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection encompasses 7,497 botanical watercolor paintings of evolving fruit and nut varieties, alongside specimens introduced by USDA plant explorers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Assembled between 1886 and 1942, the collection's remarkable, botanically accurate watercolors were executed by some 21 professional artists (including nine women). Authored largely before the widespread application of photography, the watercolors were intended to aid accurate identification and examination of fruit varietals, for the nation's fruit growers.

 Documenting the transformation of American pomology, the science of fruit breeding and production, and the horticultural innovations accountable for contemporary fruit cultivation and consumption, the USDA's collection offers fascinating anthropological and horticultural insights concerning the fruits we ecstatically devour, and why.

 With an abundance of reproductions from the collection, this gorgeous volume encompasses fruit-suffused anecdotes and observations drawn from the fields of archaeology and anthropology, horticulture and literature, ancient representation and contemporary visual art. It includes contributions by authors Jacqueline Landy, John McPhee, Michael Pollan and Marina Vitaglione.

The official catalog accompanying the major retrospective at MoCA LA: Henry Taylor creates a grand pageant of contemporary Black life in America

 Surveying 30 years of Henry Taylor's work in painting, sculpture and installation, this comprehensive monograph celebrates a Los Angeles artist widely appreciated for his unique aesthetic, social vision and freewheeling experimentation. Taylor's portraits and allegorical tableaux--populated by friends, family members, strangers on the street, athletic stars and entertainers--display flashes of familiarity in their seemingly brash compositions, which nonetheless linger in the imagination with uncanny detail. In his paintings on cigarette packs, cereal boxes and other found supports, Taylor brings his primary medium into the realm of common culture. Similarly, the artist's installations often recode the forms and symbolisms of found materials (bleach bottles, push brooms) to play upon art historical tropes and modernism's appropriations of African or African American culture. Taken together, the various strands of Taylor's practice display a deep observation of Black life in America at the turn of the century, while also inviting a humanist fellowship that pushes outward from the particular.

The Danish design scholar Birgit Lyngbye Pedersen discovered the work of Finn Juhl (1912-1989) when she was looking for a suitable sofa for her 1950s home. Juhl's furniture is undergoing a renaissance at present, and when his house in Charlottenlund--which he designed and decorated in 1941-42--came up for sale, Pedersen purchased the building and all of its furnishings, presenting it immediately afterward to the adjacent Ordrupgaard Museum. This monograph takes a look at Finn Juhl--who, alongside Hans J. Wegner and Arne Jacobsen, is one of the most important Danish modernists--in an agreeable, unpretentious fashion. Per H. Hansen, a renowned expert in Scandinavian furniture design, provides a humorous, extremely informative description of Juhl's unconventional character and his classic furniture--the Chieftain Chair, the Pelican Chair, the Poet Sofa. Drawings, photographs, images of the newly curated house (2008) and an amusing final chapter about his patrons round off this unusual and atmospherically illustrated tribute to the brilliant Danish designer and his own home, an icon of good taste.

The product of more than 30 years of research, this astounding and authoritative volume reveals the political metaphors underpinning El Anatsui's magnificent abstract sculpture

Authored by two acclaimed scholars, Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, this is the most comprehensive and authoritative account yet on the work of El Anatsui, the world-renowned Ghanaian-born sculptor. The product of more than three decades of research and close collaboration with the artist, it shows how his early wood reliefs and terracottas, and the later monumental metal sculptures, express a search for alternative models of art-making.
The authors argue that the pervasiveness of fragmentation as a compositional device in Anatsui's oeuvre evokes the impact of colonization and postcolonial forces on African cultures. At the same time, the invocation of resilience and fragility invests his shape-shifting sculptures with iconic power. The authors also show how, in his critically acclaimed metal works, the manual labor of flattening, cutting, twisting and crushing bottle caps and using copper wires to suture and stitch the elements into one dazzling, reconfigurable epic piece serves as a powerful metaphor for human life.

This book presents Anatsui as a visionary of incomparable imagination, also situating his work within a broader historical context--specifically, the postcolonial modernism of midcentury African artists and writers, the cultural ferment of post-independence Ghana and the intellectual environment of the 1970s Nsukka School. By recovering these histories, the authors show how and why Anatsui became one of the most formidable sculptors of our time.

How design can help foster the conditions for global peace: an intersectional visual conversation between activists, designers, architects and theorists

How might we collectively put our creative forces together to envision a future we want to live in and take action to create it now? Designing Peace is an intersectional snapshot of the actions—culturally diverse and wide-ranging in scale—that are currently in play around the world.

Offering perspectives on peace through essays, interviews, critical maps, project profiles, data visualizations and art, this book conveys the momentum that design can gain in effecting a peace-filled future. From activists, scholars and architects to policymakers and graphic, game and landscape designers, Designing Peace flips the conversation: peace is not simply a passive state signifying the absence of war, it is a dynamic concept that requires effort, expertise and multidimensional solutions to address its complexity.

Designers engage with individuals, communities and organizations to create a more sustainable peace—from creative confrontations that challenge existing structures to designs that demand embracing justice and truth in a search for reconciliation. This publication aims to expand the discourse on what is possible if society were to design for peace.

This publication is dedicated solely to the early and canonical body of work by American artist Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953). The 20 photographs and 14 text panels that make up Kitchen Table Series tell a story of one woman's life, as conducted in the intimate setting of her kitchen. The kitchen, one of the primary spaces of domesticity and the traditional domain of women, frames her story, revealing to us her relationships--with lovers, children, friends--and her own sense of self, in her varying projections of strength, vulnerability, aloofness, tenderness and solitude.

As Weems describes it, this work of art depicts "the battle around the family ... monogamy ... and between the sexes. Weems herself is the protagonist of the series, though the woman she depicts is an archetype. Kitchen Table Series seeks to reposition and reimagine the possibility of women and the possibility of people of color, and has to do with, in the artist's words, "unrequited love."

A Great Turn in the Possible follows Weems’s muses, as they perform and re-enact life itself, as they occupy public space, as they challenge history and its scenarios, as they embrace the future and its conditions of possibility, as the artist seeks to generate a space for a new socio-political and cultural conversation, praising the efforts of the precursors, widening the path for the successors, and most of all, aspiring to a communal reimagination of a shared future.

Named one of Time’s best photobooks of 2019, and now revisited by Atelier Éditions, Séance offers readers a remarkable series of supernatural photographs exploring spiritualist practices and beliefs within communities found across the US, the UK and Europe. The photos are accompanied by Taggart’s commentary on her experiences, a foreword by Dan Aykroyd, creator of the Ghostbustersfranchise and fourth-generation spiritualist, and illustrated essays by Andreas Fischer and Tony Oursler.

For more than twenty years, globe-trotting English-born, Los Angeles–based photographer Roger Davies has shot stunning, luxurious, and unique residences by the world’s most acclaimed designers and architects for the most prestigious magazines.

In Beyond the Canyon, he trains his camera on residences in the Golden State, his adopted home, driving the coast to shoot interiors from Malibu to Marin County, Laurel Canyon to Rancho Mirage. Davies takes readers into the often glamorous, always compelling homes of the artists, film directors, actors, interior designers, art collectors, and others who lend the West Coast its cachet.

Across the variety of spaces represented—among them legacy works by midcentury masters John Lautner, A. Quincy Jones, and Craig Ellwood, and contemporary designs by Tadao Ando and Frank Gehry—he captures the essence of California living in his portraits of spectacular spaces and breathtaking views, all bathed in a warm glow.

As one of the world's top photographers of interiors, Davies's work has appeared in many interior design and architecture monographs. In Beyond the Canyon, his own first book, he provides in his own words a rare behind-the-scenes, industry insider's experience of photographing the stunning residences.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 305 × 267 mm (12 × 10 1/2 in)
• Pages: 304 pp
• Illustrations: illustrations

Over the past two decades, Mickalene Thomas's critically acclaimed and extensive body of work has spanned painting, collage, photography, video, and the immersive installations that have become her signature. With influences ranging from nineteenth-century painting to popular culture, Thomas's art articulates a complex and empowering vision of aspiration and self-image through gender and race while expanding on and subverting common definitions of beauty, sexuality, and celebrity. This book, made in close collaboration with Thomas, is the first to survey the breadth of her extraordinary career. Publication coincides with the opening of Mickalene Thomas's first global exhibition, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, at Lévy Gorvy galleries in New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 305 × 238 mm (12 × 9 3/8 in)
• Pages: 288 pp
• Illustrations: 225 illustrations

Great Women Painters is a groundbreaking book that reveals a richer and more varied telling of the story of painting. Featuring more than 300 artists from around the world, it includes both well-known women painters from history and today's most exciting rising stars.

Covering nearly 500 years of skill and innovation, this survey continues Phaidon's celebrated The Art Book series and reveals and champions a more diverse history of art, showcasing recently discovered and newly appreciated work and artists throughout its more than 300 pages and images.

Artists featured include: Hilma af Klint, Eileen Agar, Sofonisba Anguissola, Cecily Brown, Leonora Carrington, Mary Cassatt, Elaine de Kooning, Marlene Dumas, Nicole Eisenman, Jadé Fadojutimi, Helen Frankenthaler, Artemisia Gentileschi, Maggi Hambling, Carmen Herrera, Gwen John, Frida Kahlo, Tamara de Lempicka, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Plautilla Nelli, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paula Rego, Bridget Riley, Jenny Saville, Dana Schutz, Lee Krasner, Yayoi Kusama.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 290 × 250 mm (11 3/8 × 9 7/8 in)
• Pages: 348 pp
• Illustrations: 300 illustrations

Life Meets Art presents an unparalleled, global, behind-the-scenes tour through 250 beautiful interiors from the homes of the most creative people in art, architecture, design, fashion, literature, music, film and theatre.

These inspiring, unique spaces show us the spaces where the greatest creatives in history lived their lives, honed their crafts and, in many cases, produced some of the world's most celebrated masterpieces - providing an intimate and insightful perspective on the masters that define artistic history. Organized alphabetically by artist, each interior features a color photograph and a short descriptive text, including details on whether the house is open to the public or private.

This book will inspire everyone fascinated by stylish living, creative interior design, and the myriad possibilities for home décor, as well as those fascinated by the personal and professional lives of their cultural heroes.

Life Meets Art includes homes from creative masters of past centuries such as artists da Vinci, Raphael and Rubens, composers Handel, Lizst, and Verdi and writers Dickens, Byron, and Coleridge. The book also showcases the extraordinary interiors of many twentieth century stars and epoch-defining talents such as architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Eileen Gray, Le Corbusier, and Walter Gropius, artists Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Henry Moore, writers Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Agatha Christie and musicians Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley.

Homes from some of the most celebrated talents of today are also featured, including artists Francisco Clemente, Cornelia Parker, and Gilbert and George, fashion designers Alexander McQueen, Marc Jacobs, and Diane von Furstenberg, designers Marc Newson and Es Devlin and musicians Moby, Jimmy Page, and David Bowie.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 290 × 250 mm (11 3/8 × 9 7/8 in)
• Pages: 304 pp
• Illustrations: 275 illustrations

Larger-than-life British artist Lucian Freud enjoyed a career lasting over seven decades. He worked almost until the day he died, when he left a portrait of friend and studio assistant David Dawson unfinished.

Now available for the first time in one elegantly combined edition, this acclaimed celebration of Freud's work from the 1930s to his death in 2011 includes hundreds of paintings, drawings, sketches, and etchings - even personal photographs and illustrated private letters.

A comprehensive overview of his life and work in one luxurious volume, this book is a gorgeous addition to the shelves of art lovers everywhere. Created in collaboration with the Lucian Freud Archive and David Dawson, Director of the Archive, and edited by Mark Holborn.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 353 × 273 mm (13 7/8 × 10 3/4 in)
• Pages: 624 pp
• Illustrations: 487 illustrations

The traditional colors of Japan have been in use since the seventh century, originally to indicate rank and social hierarchy but, over time, their significance has broadened to include all manner of designed objects. This landmark volume celebrates a curated selection of 200 colours (iro in Japanese), with each traditional shade illustrated by one or more items – ranging from 16th-century kimonos to contemporary chairs, humble kitchen utensils to precious ceramics – providing a unique route to a deeper appreciation of Japanese design. Expertly bound in a traditional Japanese style, this stunning book is a beautiful design object in its own right and is a must-have for all lovers of design.

Specifications:

• Format: Flexibound
• Size: 270 × 205 mm (10 5/8 × 8 1/8 in)
• Pages: 288 pp
• Illustrations: 250 illustrations

Modern and Contemporary African art is at the forefront of the current curatorial and collector movement in today’s art scene. This groundbreaking new book, created in collaboration with a prestigious global advisory board, represents the most substantial appraisal of contemporary artists born or based in Africa available. Features the work of more than 300 artists, including El Anatsui, Marlene Dumas, David Goldblatt, Lubaina Himid, William Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, and Robin Rhode, as well as lesser-known names from across Africa, with stunning and surprising examples of their art paired with insightful texts that demonstrate their contribution to the painting, sculpture, installation, photography, moving image, and performance art.

Advisory Panel: Alayo Akinkugbe, Kavita Chellaram, Raphael Chikukwa, Julie Crooks, Tandazani Dhlakama, Oumy Diaw, Janine Gaëlle Dieudji,  Ekow Eshun, Ndubuisi C. Ezeluomba, Joseph Gergel, Danda Jaroljmek, Omar Kholeif, Rose Jepkorir Kiptum, Alicia Knock, Nkule Mabaso, Lucy MacGarry,  Owen Martin, Aude Christel Mgba, Bongani Mkhonza, Riason Naidoo, Paula Nascimento, Simon Njami, Robert Njathika, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi,  Chika Okeke-Agulu, Hannah O’Leary, Sean O’Toole, John Owoo, Brenda Schmahmann, Mark Sealy, Yasmeen Siddiqui, and Joseph L. Underwood

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 290 × 250 mm (11 3/8 × 9 7/8 in)
• Pages: 352 pp
• Illustrations: 315 illustrations

This illustrated biography tells the story of Gropius's life, beginning with his shattering experiences in World War One, his turbulent marriage to the notorious Alma Mahler, the establishment of the Bauhaus, and the tragic death of their daughter Manon.

After Gropius's agonized decision to leave Nazi Germany in 1933, the book explores his life in exile in London and then his move to America in 1937, where he lived and worked until his death in 1969.

Features more than 375 illustrations including letters, telegrams, sketches, drawings, photographs, posters, brochures, and other ephemera. The authors present the life of Walter Gropius as not just a key figure of 20th-century architecture, but as an extraordinarily generous person - a connector, protector, and benefactor who improved the lives and careers of all those with whom he came into contact.

This is the first comprehensive illustrated biography of one of Modern architecture's most important figures.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 305 × 238 mm (12 × 9 3/8 in)
• Pages: 320 pp
• Illustrations: 377 illustrations

Before dawn one morning in October 2016, renowned New York-based floral designer Lewis Miller stealthily arranged hundreds of brightly colored dahlias, carnations, and mums into a psychedelic halo around the John Lennon memorial in Central Park. The spontaneous floral installation was Miller's gift to the city—an effort to spark joy during a difficult time. Five years and more than ninety Flower Flashes later, these elaborate flower bombs—bursts of jubilant blooms in trash cans, over bus canopies, on construction sites and traffic medians—have brought moments of delight and wonder to countless New Yorkers and flower lovers everywhere, and earned Miller a following of dedicated fans and the nickname "the Flower Bandit."

After New York City entered lockdown, Miller doubled down, creating Flower Flashes outside hospitals to express gratitude to frontline health workers and throughout the city to raise spirits. This gorgeous and poignant visual diary traces the phenomenon from the first, spontaneous Flower Flash to the even more profound installations of the pandemic through a kaleidoscopic collage of photos documenting the Flower Flashes, behind-the-scenes snapshots, Miller's inspiration material, fan contributions, and more.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 254 × 241 mm (11 1/2 × 9 1/2 in)
• Pages: 240 pp
• Illustrations: 350 illustrations

Through some 300 objects this book explores contemporary Japanese design: from everyday objects and packaging to interior design and lighting elements. Ultimately the book aims to explore the way in which Japanese design manages to harness its materials – whether natural or synthetic – and at the same time combines respect for tradition with forward-thinking and experimentation.

The objects featured were chosen because of their strong Japanese character and the influence this 'Japaneseness' has had on Western culture. Rather than following a chronological order or concentrating on the designers, this book focuses on the objects and is categorized by material, highlighting the strong link between design and material in Japan.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 270 × 205 mm (10 5/8 × 8 1/8 in)
• Pages: 288 pp
• Illustrations: 300 illustrations

How artists have used clothing as a sculptural medium and a tool to explore gender, performance and more, from Louise Bourgeois to Andrea Zittel

Chronicling contemporary art’s engagement with costume, Garmenting: Costume as Contemporary Art shows how visual artists around the globe are using garments to examine issues of subjectivity, identity and difference. Featuring 35 international artists, Garmenting is organized around five interrelated themes: functionality, cultural difference, gender, activism and performance.
Pioneered by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, garmenting as an artistic strategy emerged during the 1960s and ’70s, and came to further prominence during the 1990s, with work by artists such as Nick Cave, Yinka Shonibare and Andrea Zittel, and has flourished in recent years.
Artists include: Xenobia Bailey, Raphaël Barontini, Sanford Biggers, Karina Bisch, Zoë Buckman, Nick Cave, Enoch Cheng, Sylvie Fleury, Jeffrey Gibson, Annette Messager, Mark Newport, Raul de Nieves, Wanda Raimundi Ortiz, Jacolby Satterwhite, Devan Shimoyama, Yinka Shonibare, Mary Sibande, Franz Erhard Walther and Saya Woolfalk.

This haunting dossier―anonymously assembled and found in a thrift store―gives an unprecedented and intimate lowdown on the Chicago mafia

Writer, curator, and gallerist John Corbett struck thrift gold at a going-out-of-business Chicago junk shop when he stumbled onto a browned and brittle manuscript intimately documenting the Chicago mob of the early 1930s. The tone of its typewritten and hand-annotated pages immediately grabbed him―sensationalistic and funny, they read like an embellished police blotter, naming names, listing addresses, and recounting crimes. For all of the dossier’s texture and personality, however, Corbett could find no clues as to the identity of its author.

Presented here in facsimile in order to capture its distinctive materiality, Bullets for Dead Hoods: An Encyclopedia of Chicago Mobsters, c. 1933 offers a detailed rundown on the Chicago Outfit through 140 noir character sketches, which range from the infamous―Al Capone, George “Bugs” Moran, the Everleigh Sisters―to their lesser-known aiders and abettors. Whoever dared to put this testament together was clearly someone with access to information―a cop? a reporter? a bitter mafioso?―but who would’ve risked sharing these particulars, and why, is a mystery that will likely never be solved. What we are left with is this idiosyncratic introduction to a storied chapter in Chicago history that knits the city together in a new way.

In addition to the full-color manuscript, Bullets for Dead Hoods includes related documentary material, an introduction by John Corbett, a compilation of more than 400 locations referenced in the manuscript, and a pull-out map of Chicago that pinpoints hundreds of street addresses.

Super-hero teams had been around since the 1940s, but Thor, Ant Man, the Wasp, Hulk, and Iron Man broke new ground when they joined forces to form the Avengers in 1963. They not only fought together, they occasionally fought each other! The first 20 stories from the Avengers are collected in this Hulk-sized volume and have been meticulously photographed from the most pristine copies of these rare comic books—a fine art celebration worthy of Tony Stark’s library.

Agnes Martin The Distillation of Color

Hardcover, 8.3” x 10.2” (1.23lbs; 96 pages)