Books
A Global Toy Story
Do children's toys breed a culture of violence and war? This was one of the many questions you're left to ponder when reading Miniscule Blue Helmets on a Massive Quest by Dutch artist Pierre Derks.
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Wheel Life: Paul Scheerbart's Quest to Build a Perpetual Motion Machine
My favorite shelf in the home library is where Raymond Roussel, the Comte de Lautréamont, E.T. A. Hoffmann, Leonora Carrington and other writers form a brilliant phalanx of eccentricity and marvel. I turn to it like a five-hour energy drink, sampling a few pages of, say, Raymond Queneau or Heinrich
Books
A Photographer Looks at London's Tattoos
Photographer and photojournalist Alex MacNaughton’s latest book titled London Tattoos, is a lighthearted book of portraits featuring Londoners and their tattoos. Shooting his portraits in the studio against a neutral white background, reminiscent of white gallery walls, MacNaughton treats tattoos, a
Books
NYFA Releases a New Guide to Making Your Art Profitable
LOS ANGELES — I hear it again and again in the art world. So many brilliant artists with great creative work, and yet so many of them tell me that they don't have the first idea on how to start promoting their work and making sales. Enter The Profitable Artist.
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New Book Explores Social Media From Many Angles
We all use social media. We tweet, Facebook, tumble and pin away, and some of us even make art on these platforms. Social media have been explored in countless talks and essays, as everyone from sociologists to artists to technologists have come together to explore just why these new media are so in
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Eating White Fungus
For the past week, White Fungus, a Taiwanese art magazine, was tucked under my arm as I frolicked and gallivanted through New York. I realize that some people love to sit at home, drink peppermint tea and read in bed. But I go out.
Books
Monster In My Head
Ever wondered what your childhood nightmares would look like if they met your adult nightmares? Well, take a peek at Monster, the latest installation of Providence, Rhode Island’s giant, horror-themed comic book.
Books
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Once when I was breaking up with a girlfriend, she told me, “You act like a nice guy, but really you’re not.” Or maybe she said, “You pretend to be a nice guy,” I can’t quite remember. Anyway, I was taken aback. Would it be better to just habitually act like an asshole, rather than trying to do so a
Books
Torn Curtain: Gombrowicz and the Europe That Used To Be
When I read Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke in the late 1980s the Soviet empire was beginning to totter and crack. An English version of the book, published in 1961 in the UK, had been re-issued in 1986 as part of Penguin’s Writers from the Other Europe series, edited by Philip Roth. The project aime
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Bern Porter’s Found Poems
Nightboat Books is, according to its website, “a nonprofit publishing company dedicated to printing original books of poetry and prose, and bringing out-of-print treasures back to life.” Bern Porter’s Found Poems, a collection previously published in 1972 by Dick Higgins’ Something Else Press, is su
Books
Flying Forward into the Zone
Varamo is only the sixth novel by the Argentinian writer César Aira to be made available in English, but the premise already sounds like an Aira-parody: one night in Panama in 1923, a government employee without a literary bone in his body composes a future masterpiece of Central American poetry and
Books
What Is an Artist Book, Really?
Artists’ Book Not Artists’ Book, as the title suggests, is to explore the fine line between whether a book is an artists’ book or not. It all is more playful than that may sound.