February 2017 brings with it an array of art and design books covering topics ranging from landscape design to well-known contemporary artists. Selections this month include midcentury architecture and design, the LA-based Machine Project, Nick Cave’s current MASS MoCA exhibition and plenty more make up this months Design & Art Book List. Not able to go to Palm Springs for Modern Week? The books on the list may very well be the next best thing.
“Making Midcentury Modern”
Midcentury design has a hold on the American consciousness: from television, to commercials, to the fashion runway. “Making Midcentury Modern” introduces readers to modern design and offers tips for incorporating into a contemporary home.
Christopher Kennedy has emerged as one of the nation's freshest voices in home furnishings and interior design. Working from his studio and shop in Palm Springs, his name has become synonymous with Jet Set modern luxury and California glamour.
BASIC FACTS: “Making Midcentury Modern” is written by Christopher Kennedy. Published by Gibbs Smith. Release Date: February 7, 2017. Hardcover; 208 pages; $35.00.
“Midnight Modern: Palm Springs Under the Full Moon”
Created over the course of three years by Australian photographer Tom Blachford, the images in this book function as portals in time with homes, cars and scenery appearing almost exactly as it did 60 years ago.
Working closely with the Palm Springs community, Blachford gained access to some of the architectural jewels in the area including the Kaufmann Desert House, Edris House, Frey House II, Frank Sinatra Twin Palms Estate and dozens of restored Alexander tract homes in the valley. The book is an important contribution for recording midcentury architecture and design that is bound to appeal to anyone fascinated by Palm Springs.
BASIC FACTS: “Midnight Modern: Palm Springs Under the Full Moon” is written by Tom Blachford (Author) and Chris Menrad (Foreword). Published by powerHouse Books. Release Date: February 14, 2017. Hardcover; 144 pages; $65.00.
“Renzo Piano: The Complete Logbook”
Renzo Piano has created some of the most emblematic buildings of our age, including the New York Times Building in New York City, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Shard in London, and the Parco della Musica in Rome. Here, Renzo Piano himself―whose many international awards include the Pritzker Prize―presents in his own words the works on which he has built his reputation over a span of fifty years.
Over one hundred works are featured, accompanied by over one thousand images of Piano’s work around the world including new photographs, drawings, and sketches, all with commentaries by the architect that combine personal anecdote and technical description with original insights.
BASIC FACTS: “Renzo Piano: The Complete Logbook” is written by Renzo Piano (Author) and Kenneth Frampton (Foreword). Published by Thames & Hudson. Release Date: February 21, 2017. Hardcover; 432 pages; $70.00.
“Designing a Vision: Janice Parker Landscape Architects”
This book is a full-color, illustrated and comprehensive outline of Janice Parker's inspiration, technique, design, construction and implementation of landscape gardening. Diverse styles of landscape projects are represented at all stages of development: from the vision, design, and plans, to the construction process, details, and plantings. Containing first-hand accounts of Janice's experience and practice, this volume is replete with case studies, anecdotes, illustrations, insights, and visual aids.
In her career as a landscape architect, horticultural specialist, garden consultant, teacher, floral designer and speaker, Janice Parker has distinguished herself by rethinking accepted landscape practices and developing inventive, personal solutions for difficult problems. As a result, the work and projects depicted in “Janice Parker Landscape Architects: Designing a Vision” are realistic as well as inspiring.
BASIC FACTS: “Designing a Vision: Janice Parker Landscape Architects” is written by Janice Parker RLA. Published by Images. Release Date: February 28, 2017. Hardcover; 276 pages; $59.95.
“WEtransFORM: Art and Design on the Limits to Growth”
“WEtransFORM” assembles 30 internationally renowned artists and designers on issues of sustainability and ecology. Combining statements on our ecological footprint with works on the growing accumulation of plastic, this volume both assesses and offers solutions for environmental damage.
BASIC FACTS: “WEtransFORM: Art and Design on the Limits to Growth” is written by Eva Kraus. Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst. Release Date: February 28, 2017. Paperback; 160 pages; $29.95.
“William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest – Selected Works”
Over the course of nearly six decades, William Eggleston has established a singular pictorial style that deftly combines vernacular subject matter with an innate and sophisticated understanding of color, form, and composition. His photographs transform the ordinary into distinctive, poetic images that eschew fixed meaning.
Published on the occasion of David Zwirner’s New York exhibition of selections from “The Democratic Forest” in the fall of 2016, this catalogue highlights over sixty images from Eggleston’s project. Featuring original scholarship by Alexander Nemerov, this presentation of “The Democratic Forest” provides historical context for a monumental body of work, while offering newcomers a foothold in Eggleston’s photographic practice.
BASIC FACTS: “William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest – Selected Works” is written by William Eggleston III and Alexander Nemerov. Published by Steidl Verlag. Co-published with David Zwirner Books, New York. Release Date: February 5, 2017. Hardcover; 120 pages; $27.99.
“Machine Project: The Platinum Collection”
Still going strong after more than a decade, the Los Angeles-based Machine Project is profiled in this encyclopedic book that explores un-conventional ways of seeing and thinking about the world. New essays and images capture the quirky essence of Machine Project, where vacations for plants, concerts for dentists, and operas for dogs are a few of the typical offerings produced at the informal, non-profit, educational institution in Los Angeles.
Designed in collaboration with Kimberly Varella, this book reflects on Machine Project’s ongoing artistic practice, featuring photographs of past projects and documentation of new performance projects at the Tang Museum by Haruko Tanaka, Krystal Krunch, Hana van der Kolk, Carmina Escobar, Kamau Patton, Dawn Kasper, Joshua Beckman, Asher Hartman, and Chris Kallmyer among others.
BASIC FACTS: “Machine Project: The Platinum Collection” is written by Mark Allen (Author), Charlotte Cotton (Author), Rachel Seligman (Author) and Ian Bery (Introduction). Published by Prestel. Release Date: February 25, 2017. Hardcover; 304 pages; $60.00.
“Sarah Crowner”
The artist's first monograph, this book looks at Sarah Crowner's playful engagement with the history of abstraction as well as her transformative appropriations of the colors, rhythms, and forms that populate our everyday lives as well as art history. Known for graphic sewn paintings―which she makes by stitching together pieces of painted and raw canvas―as well as patterned tile structures which transform architecture into painting, Crowner works in a variety of media spanning the fine and applied arts.
Her work from the past decade comes alive through installation shots, studio views, and source images, which have inspired her and pay homage to many lesser known artists, designers, and performers of the 20th century. An interview with Crowner accompanies essays discussing her practice and her exhibition at MASS MoCA
BASIC FACTS: “Sarah Crowner” is written by Susan Cross (Editor), Sarah Crowner (Editor), Suzanne Hudson (Contributor) and Bartholomew Ryan (Contributor). Published by Prestel. Release Date: February 25, 2017. Hardcover; 192 pages; $49.95.
“Nick Cave: Until”
Nick Cave’s “Soundsuits”―brightly colored wearable sculptures adorned with buttons, hair, toys and other found objects―have made him one of the best-known contemporary artists. This book documents his most extensive work to date, turning his art inside out. “Until” fills MASS MoCA’s football field- sized gallery, without a single Soundsuit to be found. Instead Cave takes us inside one of his iconic sculptures with an immersive environment populated by an array of found objects, echoing some of Cave’s and America’s most confounding dilemmas: gun violence, racial inequality, injustice within our cities’ police departments, and death.
An installation diary and images reveal how an idea becomes reality. “Until” also incorporates special appearances by dancers, singer/ songwriters, and poets, as well as community forums, and opportunities for public debate and engagement. Transcripts of the first of these events accompany the book’s illustrations, as well as an essay by exhibition Curator Denise Markonish, commentary by David Byrne and Lori E. Lightfoot that contextualizes Cave’s work against today’s headlines, and an excerpt from Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen: An American Lyric.”
BASIC FACTS: “Nick Cave: Until” is written by Denise Markonish (Author), David Byrne (Contributor), Lori E. Lightfoot (Contributor) and Claudia Rankine (Contributor). Published by Prestel. Release Date: February 25, 2017. Hardcover; 192 pages; $49.95.
“Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects Without Specific Form”
Between 2010 and 2011, curator Elena Filipovic along with artists Danh Vo, Carol Bove and Tino Sehgal, organized a Felix Gonzalez-Torres exhibition across three institutions: WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel; and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. With the visual and conceptual potential of Gonzalez-Torres’ work in mind, Filipovic devised an exhibition structure that entailed two autonomous-yet-adjacent exhibitions of his work at each of the three venues: one iteration by her, and one by Vo, Bove and Sehgal respectively.
This volume follows the show’s structure. Each venue has a dedicated section, which includes a preface by Filipovic, photographic documentation of each exhibition and a contribution by Vo, Bove and Sehgal reflecting upon their positions as curators of Gonzalez-Torres’ work. An illustrated checklist documents each of the 85 works by Gonzalez-Torres featured in all their iterations.
BASIC FACTS: “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects Without Specific Form” is written by Elena Filipovic (Author), Danh Vo (Author), Carol Bove (Author), Tino Sehgal (Author) and Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Artist). Published by Koenig Books. Release Date: February 28, 2017. Hardcover; 656 pages; $70.00.
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