Books
The Scientific Artist: On Reading Michel Houellebecq
I can think of no better way to frame a brief introduction to Houellebecq’s work (still largely unfamiliar to Americans) than to structure it around a tension between analysis and lyricism.
Books
Books
The Retrofuture Shock of Post-Soviet Architecture
If you think Soviet architecture was strange — with its retrofuture angles and monolithic forms — you should see what came after the USSR's collapse. German photographer Frank Herfort has spent years traveling all over Russia and the former Soviet territories, from metropolises to remote rural zones
Books
Library Workers Zine a Bastion for Brooklyn Bookworms
Though the internet may have upended the physical dimension of recorded knowledge, The Borough is My Library zines, created by library workers in the New York City area, harness that accessibility and create a dialogue around the future of such brick-and-mortar institutions amid the swell of digital
Books
8 Finds from the 2014 LA Art Book Fair
LOS ANGELES — This year's Los Angeles Art Book Fair was by all accounts a success. The four-day event certainly shattered the previous year's attendance record, 24,450 visitors, and everyone I spoke to was excited by the quality and diversity of exhibitions, booths, and programming.
Books
Found Sounds, Found Stories: Andy Mister’s Liner Notes
Andy Mister’s recent book 'Liner Notes' captures the intimate texture of a consciousness that interacts with both the boring mundanity of an everyday work routine and the drug culture that, to some, is associated with an artist’s life.
Books
Gathering the Phantoms of Lost Art
Art history is very much a haunted field, with the specters of works obliterated, lost, hidden, or just vanished floating around it. Our visual culture is defined as much by destruction as it is by creation.
Books
Poetry for 49 Days of Grief
There are surprisingly few poetry collections built around the experience of loss. One of them, published just last year, is Time of Grief: Mourning Poems, selected by poet and New Directions editor Jeffrey Yang.
Books
Renaissance Art of the End Times Revealed in Rediscovered Apocalyptic Book
In 1533, hundreds of dragons were reported to darken the skies over Bohemia, following a 1506 sighting of a blinding bright comet slicing over the sky. Were these foreboding occurrences signs of the apocalypse, or just a lot of Renaissance hearsay?
Books
Photographs from a Decade of Motherhood
In photographer Elinor Carucci's new monograph Mother, she chronicles nine years of motherhood, from the tentative expectancy of pregnancy to the whir of raising children in the bustle of New York City.
Books
Jed Perl’s Magicians & Charlatans: In An Ailing Art World, the Best Discoveries Can Stir the Soul
As the American critic Jed Perl points out in his new book, Magicians & Charlatans: Essays on Art and Culture (Eakins Press Foundation, 2013), a collection of essays about subjects in the fields of Renaissance, modern and contemporary art, today the forces of “art as money” have vanquished those of
Opinion
'Mein Kampf' Makes a Digital Comeback
When ebooks and ereaders caught on, they brought about the indomitable rise of a once-languishing genre: romance novels. But they're not alone; other titles in other genres are benefitting from the anonymity of ereader packaging. One book that's seen a big boost? Hitler's Mein Kampf.
News
Bad Book News: Libraries Burned in Lebanon, Dismantled in Canada
Arsonists torched a historic and beloved library in Tripoli, while the Canadian government has gutted its science libraries.