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Mark Ryden’s Anima Animals

by | Dec 1, 2020 | 2020 Gift Guide, For the Animal Lover

Mark Ryden’s Anima Animals
Mark Ryden
$40.00

From his Snow Yak to his very personal interpretation of the California bear, for more than 20 years Mark Ryden has populated an incredible “pop surrealist” bestiary of half-animal, half-plush creatures. Freely inspired by the Rushton toys that enjoyed their heyday in America in the ’60s and ’70s, these creatures are now the object of a cult worship among fans of the artist, and are one of his marks of distinction in the world of contemporary art.

This book reveals the details and backgrounds of the new paintings Mark Ryden has created for his 2020 show at Emmanuel Perrotin‘s gallery in Shanghai, organized in collaboration with Kasmin Gallery, but also some of his most iconic master-pieces showcasing yaks and others creatures of his own mythology.

With a statement  from the artist and an essay by Linda Tesner, this pink book will become an instant classic for the lovers of contemporary art and surrealism.

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KAWS: He Eats Alone

by | Dec 1, 2020 | 2020 Gift Guide, For the Fashionista

KAWS: He Eats Alone
Germano Celant
$65.00

Few artists have managed to bridge the gap between high and low culture as seamlessly as KAWS has since his career took off in the 1990s: his iconic cartoon-inspired designs have graced fashion collections, vinyl figurines, and skateboards as well as canvases sold for millions of dollars. Frequently portraying familiar figures such as Mickey Mouse and Spongebob Squarepants with cauliflower ears and X’ed-out eyes, KAWS employs a sophisticated dark humor throughout his work, exploring the relationship between art and consumerism.

This publication documents the artist’s first exhibit in the Middle East, with more than 40 key pieces in sculpture and painting from the last two decades. The exhibit in Doha, Qatar, and its accompanying catalog also feature a number of KAWS’ commercial collaborations alongside his 5-meter-tall sculpture Companion (Passing Through) and his inflatable 40-meter-tall piece Holiday. Bound in cloth, this volume is a gorgeous collection of KAWS’ most exciting work.

Brian Donnelly (born 1974), known professionally by his graffiti tag KAWS, is the mastermind behind one of today’s most recognizable artistic brands. A graffiti artist since adolescence, Donnelly received his BFA in illustration from the School of Visual Arts in 1996. He then worked as a background artist for animated TV programs before becoming an independent designer. He has worked with artists like Kanye West and collaborated with brands such as Supreme, Nike and Comme des Garçons. He is currently represented by Skarstedt Gallery in New York.

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The New Woman Behind the Camera

by | Dec 1, 2020 | 2020 Gift Guide, For the Feminist, For the Shutterbug

The New Woman Behind the Camera
Harry Cooper, Mark Godfrey, Alison de Lima Greene,Kate Nesin
$49.49

During the 1920s the New Woman was easy to recognize but hard to define. Hair bobbed and fashionably dressed, this iconic figure of modernity was everywhere, splashed across magazine pages or projected on the silver screen. A global phenomenon, she embodied an ideal of female empowerment based on real women making revolutionary changes in life and art—including photography.

This groundbreaking, richly illustrated book looks at those “new women” who embraced the camera as a mode of expression and made a profound impact on the medium from the 1920s to the 1950s. Thematic chapters explore how women emerged as a driving force in modern photography, bringing their own perspective to artistic experimentation, studio portraiture, fashion and advertising work, scenes of urban life, ethnography and photojournalism.

Featuring work by 120 photographers, this volume expands the history of photography by critically examining an international array of canonical and less well-known women photographers, from Berenice Abbott, Dorothea Lange and Lola Álvarez Bravo to Germaine Krull, Tsuneko Sasamoto and Homai Vyarawalla. Against the odds, these women produced invaluable visual testimony that reflects both their personal experiences and the extraordinary social and political transformations of the era.

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Philip Guston Now

by | Dec 1, 2020 | 2020 Gift Guide, For the Art Lover

Philip Guston Now
Harry Cooper, Mark Godfrey, Alison de Lima Greene,Kate Nesin
$60.00

Philip Guston—perhaps more than any other figure in recent memory—has given contemporary artists permission to break the rules and paint what, and how, they want. His winding career, embrace of “high” and “low” sources, and constant aesthetic reinvention defy easy categorization, and his 1968 figurative turn is by now one of modern art’s most legendary conversion narratives. “I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening in America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything—and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?”

And so Guston’s sensitive abstractions gave way to large, cartoonlike canvases populated by lumpy, sometimes tortured figures and mysterious personal symbols in a palette of juicy pinks, acid greens, and cool blues. That Guston continued mining this vein for the rest of his life—despite initial bewilderment from his peers—reinforced his reputation as an artist’s artist and a model of integrity; since his death 50 years ago, he has become hugely influential as contemporary art has followed Guston into its own antic twists and turns.

Published to accompany the first retrospective museum exhibition of Guston’s career in over 15 years, Philip Guston Now includes a lead essay by Harry Cooper surveying Guston’s life and work, and a definitive chronology reflecting many new discoveries. It also highlights the voices of artists of our day who have been inspired by the full range of his work: Tacita Dean, Peter Fischli, Trenton Doyle Hancock, William Kentridge, Glenn Ligon, David Reed, Dana Schutz, Amy Sillman, Art Spiegelman and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Thematic essays by co-curators Mark Godfrey, Alison de Lima Greene and Kate Nesin trace the influences, interests and evolution of this singular force in modern and contemporary art—including several perspectives on the 1960s and ’70s, when Guston gradually abandoned abstraction, returning to the figure and to current history but with a personal voice, by turns comic and apocalyptic, that resonates today more than ever.

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Girl Pictures

by | Dec 1, 2020 | 2020 Gift Guide, For the Feminist, For the Shutterbug

Girl Pictures
Justine Kurland
$50.00

The North American frontier is an enduring symbol of romance, rebellion, escape, and freedom. At the same time, it’s a profoundly masculine myth—cowboys, outlaws, Beat poets. Photographer Justine Kurland reclaimed this space in her now-iconic series of images of teenage girls, taken between 1997 and 2002 on the road in the American wilderness. “I staged the girls as a standing army of teenaged runaways in resistance to patriarchal ideals,” says Kurland. She portrays the girls as fearless and free, tender and fierce. They hunt and explore, braid each other’s hair, and swim in sun-dappled watering holes—paying no mind to the camera (or the viewer). Their world is at once lawless and utopian, a frontier Eden in the wild spaces just outside of suburban infrastructure and ideas. Twenty years on, the series still resonates, published here in its entirety and including newly discovered, unpublished images.

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