Books
The Rise and Fall of Polaroid
Instant: The Story of Polaroid, an entertaining book by the New York-based writer Christopher Bonanos, follows the long and twisting career of Edwin Land and his brainchild corporation, Polaroid.
Books
Books
Inside David Wojnarowicz's Comic Book
Many people know that David Wojnarowicz was an excellent artist, but fewer probably know that he was also an excellent writer. 7 Miles a Second, originally put out by DC Comics in 1996 and recently republished by Fantagraphics Books, is a memoir comprised of personal stories mixed with dreams, hallu
Books
Five Decades of Tough Love and Leather
In Nancy Grossman: Tough Life Diary (Prestel, 2012), performer Elizabeth Streb relays an anecdote about artist Nancy Grossman startling her by wearing a monkey fur jacket. It's one of those images that has an unsettling, visceral nature to it, like striding through life in a skin ripped from another
Books
10 Street Artists Remix Contemporary Book Covers
Penguin UK has released ten editions of ten contemporary classics with covers all commissioned from street artists, using photographs documenting the literary-inspired work.
Books
It’s the Political Economy, Stupid: The Global Financial Crisis in Art and Theory
It's the Political Economy, Stupid is alternately a depressing, frustrating, and inspiring call to action for the left in the face of the diminishing economic and social returns of global capitalism.
Books
Three Reads to Unsettle Your Mind, and Support Small Presses
Why not instead of settling in for an easy summer read, you nudge your brain out of its comfort zone with some independent press selections? Below are three recent releases with an edge of the disconcerting.
Books
Luminous Loss: Karen Green's "Bough Down"
At the start of Karen Green’s prismatic first book, Bough Down, it is June. “Does it begin like this?” she writes, and describes in glittering prose a pastoral arrangement of household objects: garden hose, cigarettes, fuzzy pills, artichoke stalks. The items seem innocent enough until they become i
Books
Mary Heilmann's Good Vibrations
With summer almost upon us, we note the arrival on these shores of Mary Heilmann: Good Vibrations, published last year by Walther König, Cologne, to accompany the artist’s reception of the prestigious Biennial Award for Contemporary Art (BACA) and its related exhibition.
Books
The Bookish Queer: Locating Queer Literature, Then and Now
How did queer writers and bookish types find queer content in the past and how they do it today, when so many of the past networks would appear to have dispersed?
Books
Your Worst Fear and Your Best Fantasy Traced Through Art History
Holding a sign that reads "I am your worst fear, I am your best fantasy," a photograph of a proud and defiant woman at a gay liberation march in the 1970s opens Phaidon's newly published Art & Queer Culture, illustrating the dual visions of queer identity by the field of art history.
Books
Reading the "Nothings that Are": Craig Dworkin's "No Medium"
“In No Medium Craig Dworkin looks at works that are blank, erased, clear, or silent … point[ing] to a new understanding of media.” So goes the back cover copy of the author’s new book, which was released in March by MIT Press. This paratextual statement, while certainly catchy, is a bit misleading r
Books
Etched Oddities and a Wandering Skull
The technique of etching has given many a brooding artist a shadowy medium for their art, and while the time-consuming mode of creation has fallen out of mainstream popularity, Moroccan artist Érik Desmazières continues to use etching almost exquisitely in his work.