Best of
Art-And-Photography

2021

Hayao Miyazaki


Jessica Niebel - 2021
    His animated films, often featuring children navigating unfamiliar and challenging worlds, offer timeless explorations of youth and what it means to grow up. Celebrated and admired around the globe for his artistic vision, craftsmanship and deeply humanistic values, Miyazaki has influenced generations of artists. The universal appeal of his evocative natural settings and complex characters, many among them strong girls and young women, cuts across cultural boundaries. This book is published on the occasion of the 2021 inaugural exhibition at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, in collaboration with Studio Ghibli in Tokyo. It accompanies the first ever retrospective dedicated to the legendary filmmaker in North America and introduces hundreds of original production materials, including artworks never before seen outside of Studio Ghibli's archives. Concept sketches, character designs, storyboards, layouts, backgrounds and production cels from his early career through all 11 of his feature films, including My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001) and Howl's Moving Castle (2004), offer insight into Miyazaki's creative process and masterful animation techniques.

Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes


Barnaby Phillips - 2021
    British soldiers and sailors captured Benin, exiled its king and annexed the territory. They also made off with some of Africa’s greatest works of art. This is the story of the ‘Benin Bronzes’: their history before the British took them, their fate since 1897, and the intense debate about their future. When they were first displayed in London their splendour and antiquity challenged the prevailing view of Africa as a continent without culture or history. They are now amongst the most admired and valuable artworks in the world. But seeing the Benin Bronzes in the British Museum today is, in the words of one Benin City artist, like ‘visiting relatives behind bars’. In a time of huge controversy about the legacy of empire, racial justice and the future of museums, what does the future hold for the Bronzes?

Sacred Decay: The Art of Lauren Marx


Lauren Marx - 2021
    Birds, beasts, fish, plants, and more blossom radiantly on the page in their cycle of birth and destruction.Celebrated artist Lauren Marx's first collection highlights work from her latest gallery show and more, with over 120 pages of full-color art. Don't miss this stunning hardcover!

Organic Music Societies


Lawrence Kumpf - 2021
    Introduction by Lawrence Kumpf and Magnus Nygren. Text by Keith Knox, Rita Knox, Bengt af Klintberg, Iris R. Orton, Åke Holmquist, Pandit Pran Nath, John Esam, Michael Lindfield, Sidsel Paaske, George Trolin, Alan Halkyard, Moki Cherry, Don Cherry, Ben Young, Christer Bothén, Ruba Katrib, and Fumi Okiji. Interviews by Keith Knox and Rita Knox with Don Cherry, Terry Riley, and Steve Roney.Avant-garde jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and textile artist Moki Cherry (née Karlsson) met in Sweden in the late sixties. They began to live and perform together, dubbing their mix of communal art, social and environmentalist activism, children’s education, and pan-ethnic expression “Organic Music.” Organic Music Societies, Blank Forms’ sixth anthology, is a special issue released in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name devoted to the couple’s multimedia collaborations. The first English-language publication on either figure, the book highlights models for collectivism and pedagogy deployed in the Cherrys’ interpersonal and artistic work through the presentation of archival documents alongside newly translated and commissioned writings by musicians, scholars, and artists alike. Beginning with an overview by Blank Forms Artistic Director Lawrence Kumpf and Don Cherry biographer Magnus Nygren, this volume further explores Don’s work of the period through a piece on his Relativity Suite by Ben Young and an essay on the diasporic quality of his music by Fumi Okiji. Ruba Katrib emphasizes the domestic element of Moki’s practice in a biographical survey accompanied by full-color reproductions of Moki’s vivid tapestries, paintings, and sculptures, which were used as performance environments by Don’s ensembles during the Sweden years and beyond. Two selections of Moki’s unpublished writings—consisting of autobiography, observations, illustrations, and diary entries, as well as poetry and aphorisms—are framed by tributes from her daughter Neneh Cherry and granddaughter Naima Karlsson. Swedish Cherry collaborator Christer Bothén contributes period travelogues from Morocco, Mali, and New York, providing insight into the cross-cultural communication that would soon come to be called “world music.” The collection also features several previously unpublished interviews with Don, conducted by Christopher R. Brewster and Keith Knox. A regular visitor to the Cherry schoolhouse in rural Sweden, Knox documented the family’s magnetic milieu in his until-now unpublished Tågarp Publication. Reproduced here in its entirety, the journal includes an interview with Terry Riley, an essay on Pandit Pran Nath, and reports on counter-cultural education programs in Stockholm, including the Bombay Free School and the esoteric Forest University.Taken together, the texts, artwork, and abundant photographs collected in Organic Music Societies shine a long overdue spotlight on Don and Moki’s prescient and collaborative experiments in the art of living.__________Distributed by Les presses du réel in French-speaking Europe, Antenne Books in the rest of Europe, and DAP in the rest of the world.Contact Adrian Rew at adrian@blankforms.org with press inquires.

Field Notes from a Nightmare: An Anthology of Ecological Horror


Alex EbensteinTim Hoelscher - 2021
    Extinction. Warming. Sea level rise... Mother Nature heard our crimes and found us guilty.Field Notes from a Nightmare is an anthology of ecological horror, containing 18 stories from some of the strongest voices in indie horror.With a Foreword from New York Times-Bestselling author Tim Lebbon

Doodle Days: Over 100 Creative Ideas for Doodling, Drawing, and Journaling


Jane Maday - 2021
    Artist and author Jane Maday presents basic techniques, step-by-step instructions, and a world of ideas for drawing animals, flora and fauna, seashells, shapes, and more. The perfect way to add whimsy and fun to any sketchbook, journal, or bujo page, these doodles will make you smile and help you express your creativity, one adorable little doodle at a time.