Books
Spotting Style in a More Bike-Friendly New York
When I became a bike rider back in the late 1970s, the very notion of New York Bike Style — now the title of a book by Sam Polcer (Prestel, 2014) — seemed like a contradiction in terms.
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Belief, Reason, and the Origins of the World in a Striking Series of 19th-Century Illustrations
Galileo and other troublemakers aside, science and religion didn't have such a complete falling out until the 19th century.
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Drawing the Dark Journeys of Drifters
For a digest of comics stories and intricate, free-standing illustrative work called The Lonesome Go, St. Louis artist and writer Tim Lane profiles familiar, typically unshaven folk: bar flies, train-hopping drifters, biker types.
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Lunar Mountains and Divine Spheres: 1,000 Years of Illustrating Outer Space
In a new book called Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time, published this month by Abrams, Michael Benson examines over a thousand years of mapping the great beyond.
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Cats, Cans, and More Curiosities from Toy Camera History
The colorful history of toy cameras, those affordable film cameras in plastic boxes, is being celebrated in a new book.
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Pensive Portraits Behind the Office Doors of 50 Therapists
"In contrast to other medical specialists' offices with their practical equipment of examining tables and rolling tools, the therapist's work space has few obvious demands beyond seating for clinician and patient," psychiatrist and photographer Sebastian Zimmermann writes in an introduction to Fifty
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New Art Book Plays with Scale
Big Art/Small Art by Tristan Manco, out later this month from Thames & Hudson, is an attempt to see what size means to art in the 21st century.
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Picturing the Transfigurations of Fashion
“Fashion” can be characterized as many things: a business, a craft, a lifestyle. At its core, though, it’s a visual culture that embodies one very important quality: transfiguration.
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Contemporary Art's Body Language
The Figure: Painting Drawing and Sculpture, Contemporary Perspectives has the look of a high-end coffee table decoration, but don’t judge this book just by its Martha Mayer Erlebacher cover.
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Is Norway an Artist Book Paradise?
Norway, the enigmatic teardrop of a nation that crowns the Scandinavian peninsula, could be considered heaven or hell depending on whom you ask.
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The Romance of Science in Victorian Natural History Bookbindings
The Victorian fascination with natural history combined with affordable book publishing led to some comely titles in elegant binding.
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Weaving a Bridge Back to Fiber Sculpture's Unraveling History
Despite being a craft dating back over 30,000 years, fiber work only started to get sculpturally experimental in a serious way in the 1960s and 70s.