Art as Experience


John Dewey - 1934
    Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, Art as Experience has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.

Street Sketchbook: Inside the Journals of International Street and Graffiti Artists


Tristan Manco - 2007
    Artists' sketchbooks offer exclusive access into the creative processtheir dog-eared, paint-splattered, sometimes crumbling pages have an intimate and visceral appeal. Street Sketchbook includes never-before-seen works by new and acclaimed figures such as Banksy (UK), Alexander Purdy (US), and more, as well as sketches that have formed the basis of large public works. Ingenious throughout, these sketchbooks epitomize the audacious originality of vision that defines the street art scene today.

Art as Therapy


Alain de Botton - 2013
    Art as Therapy is packed with 150 examples of outstanding art, with chapters on Love, Nature, Money, and Politics outlining how these works can help with common difficulties. For example, Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter helps us focus on what we want to be loved for; Serra's Fernando Passoa reminds us of the importance of dignity in suffering; and Manet's Bunch of Asparagus teaches us how to preserve and value our long-term partners.De Botton demonstrates how art can guide and console us, and along the way, help us to better understand both art and ourselves.

American Utopia


David Byrne - 2020
    Don't miss the Spike Lee film of the Broadway hit American Utopia--on HBO.A Beat Most Anticipated Graphic Novel of Fall 2020A joyful collaboration between old friends David Byrne and Maira Kalman, American Utopia offers readers an antidote to cynicism, bursting with pathos, humanism, and hope--featuring his words and lyrics brought to life with more than 150 of her colorful paintings.The text is drawn from David Byrne's American Utopia, which has become a hit Broadway show and is now a film from Spike Lee on HBO. The four-color artwork, by Maira Kalman, which she created for the Broadway show's curtain, is composed of small moments, expressions, gestures, and interactions that together offer a portrait of daily life and coexistence.With their creative talents combined, American Utopia is a salvo for kindness and a call for jubilation, a reminder to sing, dance, and waste not a moment. Beautifully designed and edited by Alex Kalman, American Utopia is a balm for the soul from two of the world's most extraordinary artists.

If I Were a Book


José Jorge Letria - 2011
    In the hands of this internationally acclaimed father-and-son duo, a book becomes a mountaintop with a spectacular vista (“If I were a book, I’d be full of new horizons”), and an endless staircase of imagination (“If I were a book, I would not want to know at the beginning how my story ends”). Seamlessly weaving together art and prose, this petite tribute to a reader’s best friend makes a timeless addition to every bookshelf.

Seven Days in the Art World


Sarah Thornton - 2008
    Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion. In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture. 8 illustrations.

The Book of Skulls


Faye Dowling - 2011
    Since its 1970 s renaissance in the iconic album designs of bands such as the Grateful Dead, the skull has found its way into the visual vocabulary of urban life, adorning T-Shirts, badges and rock memorabilia as the ultimate symbol of anarchy and rebellion. Repurposed and recast by artists, illustrators and designers, it has become one of the most iconic cultural symbols of our time. In response to this cultural phenomenon, The Book of Skulls presents a cool visual guide to the skull, charting its rebirth through music and street fashion to become today s ultimate anti-establishment icon. From Black Sabbath to Cypress Hill, skater punk graffiti to Gothic tattoos, from high-couture to Hello Kitty and Dali to Damien Hirst, this book is the ultimate collection of cool and iconic skull motifs. Drawing together artwork from music, fashion, street art and graphic design The Book of Skulls is a celebration of one of today s most iconic cultural symbols.

What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell


Will Gompertz - 2012
    Rich with extraordinary tales and anecdotes, What Are You Looking At? entertains as it arms readers with the knowledge to truly understand and enjoy what it is they’re looking at.

Picturing and Poeting: Picturing and Poeting


Alan Fletcher - 2006
    Follow-up volume to the best-selling The Art of Looking Sideways, Picturing and Poeting is the latest collection of mind-bending images and creative wordplay from Alan Fletcher, one of the most internationally influential figures in graphic design.

The Drawings of Bruno Schulz


Bruno Schulz - 1990
    

New Vintage Type: Classic Fonts for the Digital Age


Steven Heller - 2007
    Retro is the new modern. And nowhere is that fact more evident than in typography, which today uses vintage type in ads, book and magazine design, movies, and everywhere words convey meaning. Viewers may not even realize that the type itself conveys mood, information, and a sense of style, but graphic designers know the power of vintage type. Now the world’s foremost historian of graphic design presents New Vintage Type, a remarkable rethinking and rediscovery of old and classic typefaces for today’s modern needs. Hundreds of amazing, astounding, and obscure examples from around the world are gathered here, organized into five historically and stylistically grouped sections: the Victorian Age, the Woodtype Era, Art Deco Style, Modern Movement, and the Eccentric Movement. With hundreds of lively and one-of-a-kind examples, plus informed, intriguing tex, New Vintage Type is the graphic designer's guide to choosing and using vintage type for maximum impact.

The Americans


Robert Frank - 1958
    There is no question that Robert Frank's The Americans is the most famous and influential photography book ever published. It was 1959 when the book first came out: a series of deceptively simple photographs that Frank took on a trip through America in '55 and '56, pictures of normal people, everyday scenes: lunch counters, bus depots, cars, and the stangely familiar faces of people we don't quite know but have seen somewhere. They are pictures that saw the "American way of life" as we hadn't yet quite been able to see it ourselves, photographs that condensed the entire life of a nation in classic images that still speak to us today, forty years and several generations later.

Ways of Seeing


John Berger - 1972
    First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has."Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of the professional art critics . . . He is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation" —Peter Fuller, Arts Review"The influence of the series and the book . . . was enormous . . . It opened up for general attention to areas of cultural study that are now commonplace" —Geoff Dyer in Ways of TellingWinner of the 1972 Booker Prize for his novel, G., John Peter Berger (born November 5th, 1926) is an art critic, painter and author of many novels including A Painter of Our Time, From A to X and Bento’s Sketchbook.

The Secret Lives of Color


Kassia St. Clair - 2016
    From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history.In this book, Kassia St. Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colors and where they come from (whether Van Gogh's chrome yellow sunflowers or punk's fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilization. Across fashion and politics, art and war, the secret lives of color tell the vivid story of our culture.

On Photography


Susan Sontag - 1973
    Sontag develops further the concept of 'transparency'. When anything can be photographed and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photograph freely with no expectations of discovering what it means. This collection of six lucid and invigorating essays, the most famous being "In Plato's Cave", make up a deep exploration of how the image has affected society.