Art & Photography Books

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Book SynopsisAt the heart of Memphis lies Overton Park, a 342-acre public space that contains the world-class Memphis Zoo, an old-growth forest, the Memphis College of Art, an amphitheater, and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, among other beloved amenities. Founded in 1901, the park has been at the center of both celebration and controversy. Performers like Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash have dazzled audiences there, while local children have long enjoyed its playgrounds and runners its jogging trails. During the civil rights era, desegregating the park became a major goal of local activists, and the park’s Greensward was the scene of protests against the Vietnam War. Late in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s, when the proposed route of Interstate 40 threatened the park, concerned citizens banded together to fight the plan—a struggle that reached the Supreme Court and eventually saved the park for future generations.This delightfully informative book, filled with historic photos, offers a history of the park from the perspective of those who lived it. Brooks Lamb interviewed nearly a score of Memphians—from civil rights activist Johnnie Turner to U.S. Congressman Steve Cohen, from artist Martha Kelly to retired zookeepers Kathy Fay and Richard Meek—to learn what the park has meant to them and to discover the transformations they have witnessed. The stories they tell reveal a dynamic place that remains, despite changes and challenges, a people’s park and, in the words of one resident, “the heartbeat of Memphis.”

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Book SynopsisNew format from teNeues! A collection of expertly printed wrapping papers, using art from the best art, past and present, in a big format paperback book. We just love this commissioned work by Shelley Davies, celebrating the Mid-Century Modern design, created just for us — not seen anywhere else. Find her 8-Pen Set and 1000-Piece Puzzle to match.

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Book Synopsis1939 was a glorious year for Hermann Goering. He spent it entertaining dignitaries visiting the Third Reich, attending galas, going on official visits, giving rousing speeches at factories and military parades, and indulging in his love of fine art, rich cuisine and sumptuous clothes and jewels. Ever vain, pompous and ambitious, in 1939 he attained the summit of his power and popularity when Hitler, speaking to a packed Reich Chancellery on 1 September, named him his successor. Goering's rise was inseparable from that of his Luftwaffe. As commander-in-chief, he basked in the glory of the Condor Legion's victory in Spain in April 1939 and the Luftwaffe's decisive role in the Blitzkrieg of Poland in September. From these encounters, the Luftwaffe emerged as the world's most feared and respected air force-but beyond the trappings of victory, there were deep-seated flaws. Fearing their exposure against a more powerful enemy, Goering did not want Germany to go to war with Great Britain and France. Hermann Goering: From Madrid to Warsaw and Beyond, 1939 is a photographic chronicle of a momentous year in the life of the Luftwaffe's commander-in-chief, showing him at his most happy and self-confident, and equally, at his most anxious about what the future might bring.Table of ContentsDedication; Acknowledgments; Timeline; Introduction: Two Wars that Hermann Goering as Arminius Won; Reich; Balbo; Spain; Steel; Rechlin; Dahlerus; Poland; Berlin; Burgerbrau; Sitzkrieg; Conclusion; Bibliography; About the Author.

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Book SynopsisWith Beginning Drawing, discover and master the fundamentals of drawing with professional tips and expert instruction.Designed especially for aspiring artists, Beginning Drawing offers a well-rounded introduction to the art of basic drawing. In this concept-and technique-driven approach, beginning artists will discover the fundamentals of the craft and how to put those skills into practice for creating realistic works of art. From showing how to select and work with the tools of the trade to demonstrating a range of basic techniques, Beginning Drawing provides a thorough, easily digestible overview of key drawing concepts, including lighting, shading, shadows, perspective, texture, and composition, and then demonstrates how these techniques intersect, both functionally and creatively, in a wider context within a complete piece of art. Step-by-step lessons encourage practice, focusing readers on the methods and techniques designed to enhance their overall skill level, before graduating on to more subject-specific works. Packed with professional tips and expert instruction, Beginning Drawing is the perfect book for anyone desiring to learn, and ultimately master, the art of drawing. The Portfolio series covers essential art techniques, core concepts, and media with an approach and format that’s perfect for aspiring, beginning, and intermediate artists.Also available from the series:Beginning Acrylic, Beginning Watercolor, Beginning Pastel, Beginning Colored Pencil, Beginning Color Mixing, Expressive Painting, Beginning Color Mixing, Beginning Pen & Ink, and Beginning Composition.

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Book Synopsis"In the summer of 1921, on the west wall of his improvised garage studio in Fontainebleau, France, Pablo Picasso painted two large-scale and astonishingly different-looking pictures side by side. On the left hung his classicizing Three Women at the Spring, long associated with the ''return to order'' in the aftermath of World War I. To its right Picasso worked on one of two versions of Three Musicians, often described as the culmination of his prewar cubist style. The visual dissonance of this pairing still has the ability to shock. Yet a close look at Picasso''s handling of materials, studio installations, and fluid understanding of style reveals that these two seemingly incompatible works have more in common than meets the eye, as do other monumental works on canvas, small paintings, line drawings, etchings, and pastels that the artist created in Fontainebleau during his brief three-month residency there. Published to accompany an exhibition that reunites Three Women at the Spring and Three Musicians withthe richly varied body of work that emerged at the same time, Picasso in Fontainebleau includes never-before-seen photographs and archival documents as well as copious reproductions of the artist''s paintings and works on paper. An introduction by curatorAnne Umland, together with fifteen essays co-authored by art historians and conservators focusing on distinct groupings of works, give the reader both a sweeping overview of this remarkably productive moment in Picasso''s creative trajectory and a deep dive into the compelling artworks he produced during his summer in Fontainebleau" --

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Book SynopsisAn in-depth exploration of the last six decades of work from the iconic photographer and filmmaker, with a special focus on his ceaseless experimentation and artistic collaborationsThis volume, published in conjunction with the artist?s first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, provides new insights into the interdisciplinary and lesser-known aspects of Robert Frank?s expansive career. The exhibition explores the six decades that followed his landmark photobook The Americans, a period in which Frank maintained an extraordinarily multifaceted practice characterized by perpetual experimentation across mediums and artistic and personal dialogues with other artists and with his communities. Coinciding with the centennial of his birth, this catalog takes its name from the artist?s poignant 1980 film, Life Dances On, in which Frank reflects on the individuals who have shaped his outlook.The lushly illustrated publication features photographs, films, books and archival materials, layered with quotes from Frank on his influences and process. Three scholarly essays, excerpts from previously unpublished video footage and a rich visual chronology together explore Frank?s ceaseless creative exploration and observation of life.Robert Frank was a Swiss American photographer and filmmaker best known for his groundbreaking monograph The Americans (1958). Over his decades-long career, Frank captured the complexities of contemporary life with a distinct style and poetic insight. He lived between New York City and Nova Scotia, Canada.

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Book SynopsisRequiring minimal equipment--just scissors, glue, paper, and pens--collage is an accessible craft that offers limitless creative possibilities. Like meditation or journaling, making collage can be an avenue for self-reflection and artistic exploration. In Collage Your Life, artist and teacher Melanie Mowinski teaches a variety of core techniques including lettering, stamping, stenciling, transfers, and adhesive methods, and provides dozens of prompts to jumpstart the creative process and encourage crafters to explore the versatility of collage, such as: make a self-portrait; disrupt your routine instincts; incorporate text; assemble mementos from a trip; process anger or anxiety; collage with others; or try creating block-out poetry with pages from a magazine. Inspiring examples of the author's work along with that of other collage artists are featured throughout. Crafters, journaling fans, scrapbookers, and artists alike will find guidance and support for developing their own distinctive collage style, whether the goal is to create a visual record of daily experiences and special occasions or to expand a creative journaling practice.

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Book SynopsisA career retrospective on the conceptually complex sculpture of the Canadian Postminimalist Compiling documentation of nearly 40 abstract steel sculptures, as well as drawings and paintings, this monograph introduces the work of Canadian sculptor Royden Rabinowitch (born 1943). Rabinowitch’s approach to sculpture is inspired by his admiration for mathematician Henri Poincaré and his distinction between abstract space and the space of ordinary human experience. Though the forms of his abstract metal and wooden sculptures recall the work of Minimalists such as Richard Serra, his aims greatly diverge from theirs. Grease Cone, reproduced here, consists of a black metal cone covered in grease. The cone itself recalls the purity of form of the Minimalists, but the unevenly applied grease expresses Rabinowitch’s concern with human space insofar as it alters the shape of the sculpture, as a whole, into a messier, asymmetrical form.

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Book SynopsisA visual and conceptual conversation between two leading US photo-artists famed for their mutual explorations of race, class and power Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems met in New York in the late 1970s, and over the next 45 years these close friends and colleagues have each produced unique and influential bodies of work around shared interests and concerns. This publication brings together over 140 photographs and video art from the 1970s through the 2010s by two of our most notable and influential photo-based artists. Since first meeting at the Studio Museum in Harlem five decades ago, Bey and Weems have maintained spirited and supportive mutual engagement while exploring and addressing similar themes: race, class, representation, and systems of power. Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue brings their work together in five thematic groupings to shed light on their unique creative visions and trajectories, and their shared concerns and principles. Photographer Dawoud Bey (born 1953) had his first exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. Since then, his work has been presented internationally to critical and popular acclaim. Recent large-scale exhibitions of his photographs have been presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and Tate Modern, London. Bey’s writings on his own and others’ work are included in Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply and Dawoud Bey on Photographing People and Communities. He is a professor of art and Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago. Famed for her Kitchen Table Series, among other works, Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953) explores power, class, Black identity, womanhood, and the historical past and its resonance in the present moment. In addition to photography, Weems creates video, performance and works of public art, and organizes thematic gatherings which bring together creative thinkers across a broad array of disciplines. Her work has been exhibited across the world, at venues such as the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo and the American Academy in Rome.

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Book SynopsisThe official catalog accompanying the major retrospective at MoCA LA: Henry Taylor creates a grand pageant of contemporary Black life in America Surveying 30 years of Henry Taylor’s work in painting, sculpture and installation, this comprehensive monograph celebrates a Los Angeles artist widely appreciated for his unique aesthetic, social vision and freewheeling experimentation. Taylor’s portraits and allegorical tableaux—populated by friends, family members, strangers on the street, athletic stars and entertainers—display flashes of familiarity in their seemingly brash compositions, which nonetheless linger in the imagination with uncanny detail. In his paintings on cigarette packs, cereal boxes and other found supports, Taylor brings his primary medium into the realm of common culture. Similarly, the artist’s installations often recode the forms and symbolisms of found materials (bleach bottles, push brooms) to play upon art historical tropes and modernism’s appropriations of African or African American culture. Taken together, the various strands of Taylor’s practice display a deep observation of Black life in America at the turn of the century, while also inviting a humanist fellowship that pushes outward from the particular. Raised in Oxnard, California, Henry Taylor (born 1958) took art classes at Oxnard College in the 1980s and studied under James Jarvaise, who became a mentor. From 1984 through 1995 Henry Taylor worked as a psychiatric technician at Camarillo State Mental Hospital (a facility that is now California State University Channel Islands) while concurrently attending the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, where he obtained his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1995. Taylor has had institutional solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1 and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He lives and works in Los Angeles.Trade ReviewAn overall commitment to figurative painting in support of his own tribe, to share their stories of joy and hardship, and, more importantly, to relay his own beautiful and unique vision of Blackness, in all its variable parts. -- Terence Trouillot * Frieze *Ever alert to social contradictions, embedded histories, and the gap between public propaganda and private experience, Taylor often graces his subjects with a deliberate equanimity, suggesting only by inference a narrative of quiet, enduring resistance. -- Albert Mobilio * Hyperallergic *Taylor’s scenes of everyday life perform what might be called stop-motion image-making...The picture sticks in your brain, while your body responds to the painterly scene. -- Christopher Knight * Los Angeles Times *Henry Taylor: B Side,’ captures the sweep of Taylor’s career thus far, featuring more than 150 pieces that include drawings and — for the first time in any meaningful way — sculpture, as well as what he calls “painted objects” on small cigarette packs, cereal boxes and beer crates. […] Even his older work has a timelessness that makes it feel contemporary. -- Robin Pogrebin * The New York Times *

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Book SynopsisHow Oppenheimer’s complex artworks break down barriers between art, audience and architecture This publication documents the four interactive artworks by New York–based artist Sarah Oppenheimer (born 1972) created for the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College in the context of her greater artistic oeuvre. Printed in five color with foil stamping, with striking reproductions and contributions by Tracy L. Adler, Suzanne Keen, Sarah Oppenheimer and Seph Rodney, the book explores the artist’s multifaceted approach to empathy, agency, audience and cocreation, among many other themes in her work. Oppenheimer considers the space of the museum as a site of experimentation, where visitors experience the curiosity and joy of transforming the artworks themselves. In Oppenheimer’s words, “You have to enter the temporal network in order for the work to exist.”

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Book SynopsisA captivating selection of family snapshots taken from his mother's photo albums, Michael Snow’s latest artist’s book illuminates patterns and motifs in the passage of time Over the past half-century, through works such as the milestone avant-garde film Wavelength (1967), Toronto-based artist Michael Snow (born 1928) has explored the nature of perception, consciousness, language and temporality. This last theme is particularly relevant to his latest artist’s book, which is dedicated to the life of his adventurous mother, Marie-Antoinette Françoise Carmen Levesque Snow Roig, whose trove of family photographs provide a narrative throughline here. Snow consolidates his mother’s photo albums, presenting a total of 1,500 images. In a tenderly penned foreword, he explains the simple impetus for the project: “[The photographs] are so beautiful and so historic that I wish to share them with others.” While he has integrated small samples of these albums into his work before—notably figuring in his landmark catalog for the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1970, Michael Snow/A Survey—this volume provides a much larger and more unified selection. As a result, the compiled images tell a more complete biographical story—one that Snow leaves intact on the surface. He brings his own layer of interpretation to the photographs by drawing out patterns within the collection and his mother’s writing. Snow creates an album that is fully his own, embracing, as art historian Martha Langford describes, a “deep understanding and surrender to form.”

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Book SynopsisHaring as activist and egalitarian: a fresh, accessible and dynamic look at one of New York’s most exhilarating artists Lavishly illustrated with essays and reflections by cultural leaders, Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody surveys Haring’s dynamic art practice from 1978 to 1990, shining a bright light on the iconic and beloved artist known for his fluid, uniform lines, intricate compositions and repeating imagery such as the barking dog and radiant baby. Forty years after he came to prominence, Haring’s art continues to garner worldwide recognition, breaking down barriers and spreading joy, while taking on complex issues that remain crucial today, from environmentalism, capitalism and the proliferation of new technologies to religion, sexuality and race. Titled after a quote from Haring’s journals, Art Is for Everybody centers on the artist’s activism, the emphasis he placed on community and his egalitarian approach to art and life. The volume is organized chronologically and thematically, emphasizing Haring’s work made with publics in mind such as the subway drawings and murals, his collaborative practice and his unflinching belief that art is essential in making a better world. Keith Haring was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1958 and arrived in New York from Pittsburgh in 1978, befriending artists including Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat. During the 1980s, Haring achieved international recognition and participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions. After being diagnosed with HIV in 1988, he focused his activism on the AIDS crisis. Less than two years later, Haring died of an AIDS-related illness.

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Book SynopsisThe first retrospective on a fascinating protagonist of the 1970s Pattern & Decoration movement, who defied Minimalist orthodoxy with humorous multimedia explorations of domesticity and ornament This is the first comprehensive volume on Cynthia Carlson (born 1942), a key artist of the Pattern & Decoration group who responded to Minimalism’s dominance in the 1970s. The work of this group has recently been revisited and reappraised in exhibitions and by art scholarship. A Chicagoan under the influence of the Chicago Imagists, Carlson landed in New York City in 1965 and has exhibited widely (she was included in Lucy Lippard’s seminal 1971 exhibition 26 Contemporary Women Artists at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art). Her interest in the domestic—as a source of shapes and as a realm of familial experiences, chores and memories—intersects with the works of contemporaries ranging from Jennifer Bartlett to Joel Shapiro and Elizabeth Murray. Carlson's utilization of architectural motifs might align at one moment with the vernacular embraced in the buildings of Venturi & Scott Brown and, at another, with the postmodern rehabilitation of Beaux-Arts ornament. Her hand-painted "wallpaper" is considered a significant contribution and influence on contemporary installation art. Carlson’s artistic identity continues to morph: from room-size wallpaper and a life-size gingerbread house to unexpected shaped canvasses, architectural constructions and pet portraits. Whatever she creates, however eccentric, is high-spirited, genial and insightful.

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Book SynopsisA memorial exhibition catalog highlighting the performance-inspired and staged works of one of the Netherlands' most acclaimed photographersDutch photographer Erwin Olaf emerged onto the Amsterdam photography scene in his early 20s. His first formal self-portrait shows influence from New York artists such as Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe, while also signaling the signatures of his aesthetic throughout his career: layering props and details in open-ended narrative relationships, leading viewers to fantasize about what story is being told. Throughout the 1980s, Olaf became a well-known and well-loved artist and gay rights activist in the Netherlands, photographing drag queens, bodybuilders, fetishists and celebrities at discotheques and other performances. Olaf's artwork illuminated and celebrated underground scenes, claiming a spotlight for LGBTQ+ identities that expanded everyday possibilities for gay people throughout the Netherlands.This volume includes a selection of key series centered on the concept of performance, a recurring theme in the artist's four-decade career. In particular, it delves into Olaf's intimate and formal relationship with dance. The artist discussed ballet as a major source of inspiration for his personal work, in particular the precision and tension between beauty and gritty strength the genre requires. Olaf's final completed series, Dance in Close Up (2022), represents a collaboration between the artist and choreographer Hans van Manen, celebrating their shared vision of evocative gesture and the gifts of the stage.Erwin Olaf was born in the Netherlands in 1959, and died there in 2023. His work is held in permanent collections such as the Rijksmuseum; the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Paris; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and also circulates on the Dutch Euro coin.

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Book SynopsisLupente showcases five outstanding contemporary artists in an elegant and absorbing package. This volume—the first in our ongoing Flesk Artist Showcase series—features Julia Blattman, a premier visual-development artist working in the animation industry; Stephanie Law, a fine artist who pulls from dreams and reality to illuminate the boundary between those two worlds; Karla Ortiz, a concept and fine artist who is renowned for her personal works and her designs for film; Virginie Ropars, one of the most-revered dollmakers today and an inspiration to sculptors around the world; and Erica Williams, also known as “HookieDuke,” who has gained acclaim by mastering a unique, highly intricate style of lines and designs that centers on Nature as its inspiration. Examples of the most highly regarded works by the five are accompanied by biographical essays, interviews, quotes and captions that reveal insights into their creative processes. In addition, Flesk’s personal access to each artist has resulted in an insightful and engaging introduction to these talented creators, among the best working today.

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Book SynopsisWith more than 350 classic and brand new monsters, this 320-page hardcover rulebook greatly expands on the foes found in the Pathfinder Bestiary. From classic creatures like serpentfolk and jabberwock, returning favorites like the primal dragons or the Sandpoint devil, to brand new menaces sure to test even the bravest of heroes, this must-have tome of monsters designed to challenge characters of any level is an essential companion to your Pathfinder game!This deluxe special edition is bound in faux leather with metallic deboss cover elements and a bound-in ribbon bookmark. The perfect way to commemorate Pathfinder''s new edition! (Cover color and design subject to change.)Pathfinder Bestiary 2 includes: More than 350 monsters drawn from mythology, genre classics, and more than a decade of Pathfinder, with plenty of new monsters too! Gorgeous full-color illustrations on nearly every page! Detailed monster lists sorted by level, type, and rarity to help you

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Book SynopsisWhether the heroes are surveying a moon dotted with erupting volcanoes or fighting on unstable islands in the middle of an active lava flow, no Game Master wants to spend time drawing every volcanic rock outcropping and lava fountain. Fortunately, with Paizo's latest Starfinder Flip-Mat, you don't have to! This line of gaming maps provides ready-to-use science-fantasy set pieces for the busy Game Master. This double-sided map features a river of lava cascading down a cliff face on one side and a bubbling lava lake filling a crater on the other. Don't waste time sketching when you could be playing. With Starfinder Flip-Mat: Lava World, you'll be ready the next time your players discover that the ground is lava! A special coating on each Flip-Mat allows you to use wet erase, dry erase, AND permanent markers with ease! Removing permanent ink is easysimply trace over any permanent mark with a dry erase marker, wait 10 seconds, then wipe off both marks with a dry cloth or paper towe

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Book SynopsisFrom the acclaimed author of American Comics and Jewish Comedy comes a sweeping and entertaining narrative that details the rise and enduring grip of horror in American literature, cinema, and, ultimately, culture-from the taut, terrifying stories of Edgar Allan Poe to the grisly, lingering films of Jordan PeeleAmerica is held captive by horror stories. They flicker on the screen of a darkened movie theater and are shared around the campfire. They blare out in tabloid true-crime headlines, and in the worried voices of local news anchors. They are consumed, virally, on the phones in each of our pockets. Like the victims in any slasher worth its salt, we can''t escape the thrall of scary stories.In American Scary, noted cultural historian and Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes the reader to the startling origins of the horror genre in the United States, drawing a surprising through-line between the lingering influence of the European Gothic, the enslaved insurrection tales propagated by slaveholders, and the apocryphal chronicles of colonial settlers kidnapped by Native Americans, among many others.These foundational narratives give rise to and are influenced by the body of work we more closely associate with horror: the weird fiction of HP Lovecraft, the lingering stories of Shirley Jackson, the unsettling films of Alfred Hitchcock, the up-all-night tales of Stephen King, and the gripping critiques of Jordan Peele. From "The Tell-Tale Heart" to M3gan, we begin to see why the horror genre is the perfect prism through which to view America''s past and present.With the extraordinary historical breadth and dexterous weave of insight and style that has made him twice a finalist for the National Jewish Book, Dauber makes the haunting case that horror reveals the true depths of the American mind.Featuring cameos from:Shirley Jackson The Sixth Sense Edgar Allan Poe Nathaniel Hawthorne Anne Radcliffe Charles Brockden Brown Los Espookys Washington Irving Nat Turner Night of the Living Dead H.P. Lovecraft Alien Mary Heaton Vorse Edith Wharton Norman Bates Lon Chaney Frankenstein Dracula H.G. Wells William Faulkner Dashiell Hammett Tananarive Due Twilight Zone The Handmaid''s Tale Ray Bradbury I Am Legend Elia Kazan Psycho Ralph Ellison The Blair Witch Project Stanley Kubrick Helter Skelter Jordan Peele The Walking Dead H.H. Holmes Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Book SynopsisA detailed examination of the last 15 years of Crowley’s life• Reveals Crowley’s sex magick relations in London and his contacts with important figures, including Dion Fortune, Gerald Gardner, Jack Parsons, Dylan Thomas, and black equality activist Nancy Cunard • Explores Crowley’s nick-of-time escape from the Nazi takeover in Germany and offers extensive confirmation of Crowley’s work for British intelligence • Examines the development of Crowley’s later publications and his articles in reaction to the Nazi Gestapo actively persecuting his followers in Germany After an extraordinary life of magical workings, occult fame, and artistic pursuits around the globe, Aleister Crowley was forced to spend the last fifteen years of his life in his native England, nearly penniless. Much less examined than his early years, this final period of the Beast’s life was just as filled with sex magick, espionage, romance, transatlantic conflict, and extreme behavior. Drawing on previously unpublished diaries and letters, Tobias Churton provides the first detailed treatment of the final years of Crowley’s life, from 1932 to 1947. He opens with Crowley’s nick-of-time escape from the Nazi takeover in Germany and his return home to England, flat broke. Churton offers extensive confirmation of Crowley’s work as a secret operative for MI5 and explores how Crowley saw World War II as the turning point for the “New Aeon.” He examines Crowley’s notorious 1934 London trial, which resulted in his bankruptcy, and shares inside stories of Crowley’s relations with Californian O.T.O. followers, including rocket-fuel specialist Jack Parsons, and his attempt to take over H. Spencer Lewis’s Rosicrucian Order. The author reveals Crowley’s sex magick relations in London and his contacts with spiritual leaders of the time, including Dion Fortune and Wicca founder Gerald Gardner. He examines Crowley’s dealings with artists such as Dylan Thomas, Alfred Hitchcock, Augustus John, Peter Warlock, and Peter Brooks and dispels the accusations that Crowley was racist, exploring his work with lifelong friend, black equality activist Nancy Cunard. Churton also examines the development of Crowley’s later publications such as Magick without Tears as well as his articles in reaction to the Nazi Gestapo who was actively persecuting his remaining followers in Germany. Presenting an intimate and compelling study of Crowley in middle and old age, Churton shows how the Beast still wields a wand-like power to delight and astonish.Trade Review“Aleister Crowley has found the biographer he could have wished for. By staying close to the original sources, Tobias Churton has managed to dive deeply into the emotional life of an unparalleled religious thinker who celebrated life. Aleister Crowley in England is like the man himself--profound, witty, imaginative, and joyous.” * Frank van Lamoen, assistant curator and researcher, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam *“Tobias Churton’s masterful survey of the Beast’s declining years battling ill-health and poverty in England, records not only matters Magickal with the author’s usual scrupulous attention to accuracy and detail but also reveals other aspects of Crowley’s perverse personality, like the luxurious meals he prepared for guests even following bankruptcy, his priapic adventures, seemingly undiminished by chronic asthma, and more. All this is dished up with Churton’s customary eloquence and panache, a triumphant addition to the definitive multivolume biography.” * Patrick Robertson O.B.E., Historian *“Tobias Churton gives the deluxe treatment to Aleister Crowley’s often-overlooked final years: As a life of magick, romance, controversy, and intrigue draws to a close, the Beast crystallizes his incredible experiences into his most mature works, does his part for the war effort, reinvents the Tarot, and forges relationships that will carry his legacy well beyond his lifetime. Crowley beguiles and endures to the very end.” * Richard Kaczynski, author of Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley *“Tobias Churton’s excellent series of books exploring the different phases of Aleister Crowley’s life and work continues here, revealing much of the deeper details often overlooked in the Beast’s later years. Churton has a true gift for finding and correlating the different connections Crowley made with people who were first drawn by his reputation, only to be bewitched by his personal magnetism into staying when they had every reason to shun him.” * Toby Chappell, author of Infernal Geometry and the Left-Hand Path *“Resettled in the UK, neither financial problems nor failing health could stop the ‘Great Beast’ from creating The Book of Thoth and a multitude of occult classics. Churton’s masterful study of these final decades of Crowley’s life is as revealing as it is entertaining.” * Carl Abrahamsson, magico-anthropologist, filmmaker, and author of Occulture *“With delightful prose and his ever-present understanding of Aleister Crowley’s humor and humanity, Tobias Churton expertly separates the man, the myth, and the legend, revealing the clearest picture available of the world’s most famous occultist.” * Tamra Lucid, founding member of the experimental rock band Lucid Nation and author of Making the Ord *“Aleister Crowley in England, by scholar Tobias Churton, is a very precious and fascinating work, covering the last fifteen years of the Beast in his native England. It throws considerable light on his final period, not well known and as full of crazy events as his early days. A must-have.” * Philippe Pissier, French translator of Aleister Crowley *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments INTRODUCTIONHe Never Sold Out PART ONE Pre-War 1932-1939 ONE Never Dull Where Crowley Is TWOPotted Sex Appeal THREEJustice Swift The Trial FOURUnbelievable Terror A.M.O.R.C. Round One FIVE Bar 666 SIX Living in a Turkish Bath A.M.O.R.C. AgainSEVEN Seriously on the Path Hitler and Germany According to Protective Prisoner No. 303 Cornwall--August 1938EIGHT Khing Kang King Return of the Goetic Gourmet Qingjing Jing PART TWO WAR NINE Happy Dust TEN What Crowley Does this Year, England Does Next Torquay--Great Magical Retirement?ELEVENRobed as a Warrior Rudolf Hess TWELVE In the Hour of Battle Winston Plus Cigar “Defeatist Activities of Really Serious Groups” Cambridge SpyTHIRTEEN I Dreamed Time FOURTEENMonstrous Worlds The Duke Street-King Street Bomb The Bell A New Gnostic Church--Almost The Book of Thoth Nancy Cunard PART THREERETIREMENT FIFTEEN Death Is King Netherwood The Chinese Ambassadress SIXTEEN Eddies of Obsidian Babalon Now! SEVENTEEN The Universe Chronology 1875 to 1932: Crowley’s Life before He Returned to England Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisExploring occultist, magician, poet, painter, and writer Aleister Crowley’s longstanding and intimate association with Paris, Tobias Churton provides the first detailed account of Crowley’s activities in the City of Light. Using previously unpublished letters and diaries, Churton explores how Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn’s Inner Order in Paris in 1900 and how, in 1902, he relocated to Montparnasse. Soon engaged to Anglo-Irish artist Eileen Gray, Crowley pontificates and parties with English, American, and French artists gathered around sculptor Auguste Rodin: all keen to exhibit at Paris’s famed Salon d’Automne. In 1904--still dressed as “Prince Chioa Khan” and recently returned from his Book of the Law experience in Cairo--Crowley dines with novelist Arnold Bennett at Paillard’s. In 1908 Crowley is back in Paris to prove it’s possible to attain Samadhi (or “knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel”) while living a modern life in a busy metropolis. In 1913 he organizes a demonstration for artistic and sexual freedom at Oscar Wilde’s tomb. Until war spoils all in 1914, Paris is Crowley’s playground. The author details how, after returning from America in 1920, and though based at his “Abbey of Thelema” in Sicily, Crowley can’t leave Paris alone. When Mussolini expels him from Italy, Paris becomes home from 1924 until 1929. Churton reveals Crowley’s part in the jazz-age explosion of modernism, as the lover of photographer Berenice Abbott, and many others, and how he enjoyed camaraderie with Man Ray, Nancy Cunard, André Gide, and Aimée Crocker. The author explores Crowley’s adventures in Tunisia, Algeria, the Riviera, his battle with heroin addiction, his relationship with daughter Astarte Lulu--raised at Cefalù--and finally, a high-level ministerial conspiracy to get him out of Paris. Reconstructing Crowley’s heyday in the last decade and a half of France’s Belle Époque and the “roaring Twenties,” this book illuminates Crowley’s place within the artistic, literary, and spiritual ferment of the great City of Light.Trade Review“This final installment of Churton’s expansive and detailed exposition on Aleister Crowley’s life, work, and milieu is a treasure trove of new information and startling revelations. Scrupulously researched and exquisitely written, Churton’s complete six-volume biography of Crowley confirms his position as one of the most insightful, respected, and eloquent scholars on Frater Perdurabo to ever put pen to paper. Aleister Crowley in Paris is a delight.” * John Zorn, composer *“The young Crowley was in with the ‘in crowd’ in Paris and knew everyone it seems, who then, like him, became one of the characters that creatively shaped the last century. He was engaged to the great Eileen Gray, and lots of other notable women come to life in this very accomplished biography. Tobias Churton is to be applauded for once again getting rid of the gossip and giving us the facts, this time in ‘gay Paree,’ of the life and aspirations of the greatest magician of the twentieth century.” * Geraldine Beskin, co-owner of the Atlantis Bookshop, London *“Tobias Churton’s multivolume work examining Crowley’s life and work in key geographical locations is nothing less than brilliant. This time Churton takes us to Paris, an extremely important place for Crowley. It’s a pure joy to travel alongside both Crowley and Churton to the City of Light and Romance and to indulge in both the scandals and miracles of the Great Beast 666.” * Carl Abrahamsson, author of Source Magic, Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan, Occulture, and Reason *“Aleister Crowley in Paris recasts the Beast’s biography through the lens of Belle Époque Paris, where its expat embrace of freedom, art, publishing, magick, and romance captured Crowley’s heart. We find the mage returning over the years, seeking fresh inspiration or a safe haven from his woes, whether personal or magical. Throughout this engaging narrative, Churton proves that we cannot understand Crowley without understanding his relationship to Paris.” * Richard Kaczynski author of Perdurabo and editor of Crowley’s The Sword of Song *Table of ContentsFOREWORD by Frank van Lamoen ACKNOWLEDGMENTSONE Sir Aleister Crowley Will Be Expelled from France Tomorrow TWO One Flame 1883-1898 Mathers in Paris Mina Mathers and Annie Horniman THREE The Road to Auteuil 1898-1900 FOUR Toward the City of LightGerald Kelly FIVE Paris, November 1902 SIX Old Threads and New 1902-1903 Eileen Gray and Friends The Star and the Garter Nina Olivier SEVEN Where Soul and Spirit Slip 1903 To Nice EIGHTRodin NINE Le Chat Blanc The Upper Room Maugham on Crowley TEN I Piped When You Danced A Khan in the City of Light Return to Paris-AloneELEVEN Adonai 1907-1908 Paris, 1908TWELVE John St. John, or Aleister Crowley’s Great Magical Retirement, 1908 The Thirteen Days THIRTEENRagged and Wilde 1909-1913Covering Embarrassment FOURTEEN Fiery Arrows 1914 Dennis Wheatley and the Legend of Raising Pan in Paris FIFTEEN The Fool Is a Card 1920SIXTEENSpiritual Poison 1921-1923SEVENTEEN I Died 1924 EIGHTEENMan Is a Gambler 1925-1927 284NINETEEN The Mortal Kiss 1928 Retirement--May 24-August 29, 1928 TWENTYRefus de séjour 1929 TWENTY-ONE The Last Time He Saw Paris 1929-1930The Last Dash NOTESBIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

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Book Synopsis“All this must be either surfed or painted”: This is the underlying sentiment behind Raymond Pettibon’s iconic paintings of surfers and waves in this quintessential volume dedicated to the motif. Pettibon is known for his characteristically youthful aesthetic and sharply satirical critique of American culture. Though drenched in cynicism, his work empathizes with the dizzying madness of our own humanity as it engages both so-called high and low culture. Perhaps most poetic of the many motifs present in Pettibon’s oeuvre is the surfer. In 1985 Pettibon began Surfers––a series he continues to work on to this day––popular for its depiction of the lone surfer silently carving “a line of beauty,” along an impossibly large wave. This publication traces a selection of one hundred surfers from the series, from smaller monochromatic works on paper to colorful large-scale paintings applied directly to the wall. For Pettibon’s protagonist in these works—his countercultural hero—surfing exists apart from all else. Momentarily he achieves sublimity on the wave, distant yet synced with turbulent reality. We are forced to confront our own scale: small and feeble in the face of so much sublime power. Pettibon’s lyrical writings on these painted surfaces—both his own and taken from literature—reference his own philosophies and the confusions of reality—he critiques the hypocrisies and vanities of the world he engages. To help navigate, the renowned New Yorker writer and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan, perfectly distills the transcendent nature and lack thereof in Pettibon’s work.

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Book SynopsisIn his engaging and penetrating observations of major modern and contemporary visual art, Shiff has written about an impressive range of artists, including Willem de Kooning, Marlene Dumas, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Barnett Newman, Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley, and Peter Saul. A leading scholar and powerful voice, Shiff’s insight into prominent artistic practices spans generation, place, and approach, as seen in this considered selection of essays on twenty-seven artists. These writings first appeared in exhibition catalogues for institutions including the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and Tate Modern. Shiff supplements his unquestionable fluency in art history with insights cultivated from his readings in philosophy, phenomenology, literary theory, and psychoanalysis, among other fields. Shiff’s writing—conceptually rich, meditative, and enjoyable to read—is attuned to the nuances of artistic style and technique, drawing out art’s social implications not merely from broad histories but also directly from artists’ mark making and technical gestures. Actively engaged as a viewer and a writer, Shiff has transformed the act of looking at art into contemplative and captivating writing. Writing After Art includes essays on Georg Baselitz, Mark Bradford, Georges Braque, Jim Campbell, Chuck Close, Willem de Kooning, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Dan Flavin, Suzan Frecon, Lucian Freud, Ellen Gallagher, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Julie Mehretu, Barnett Newman, Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley, Peter Saul, Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Richard Tuttle, Cy Twombly, Jack Whitten, and Zeng Fanzhi.

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Book SynopsisAn intimate and unique collection of the work of John Ashbery—a prolific poet and art critic—pairing poetry and art writings with playlists of music from his personal library. This book places poetry by Ashbery (1927–2017), gathered from his later collections, in conversation with a selection of contemporaneous art writing. In addition, as Ashbery loved music and listened to it while writing, the “playlists” here offer representative samplings of music from these same years, culled from Ashbery’s own library of recordings. Ashbery’s poetry is frequently described as ekphrastic, though, rather than writing a poem “based on'' or “inspired” by the content of an artwork of or piece of music, he engages with how the experience of seeing it and the artistic strategies employed offer ways of thinking about it and through it. Many of the observations from Ashbery’s art writing also offer keys to how we might read his poetry. Many of the recordings he listened to feature contemporary classical works that emphasize complex textures, disparate sounds, and disjunct phrases. Ashbery’s poetry similarly plays with a diversity of poetic textures and sudden turns such that a reader might construct multiple narratives or pathways of meaning. He rarely offers linear stories or focuses on evocative descriptions of a scene or object. In exploring this ekphrastic book project, the reader is invited to discover how, for Ashbery, these three forms might illuminate and inform one another.

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Book Synopsis"Michaël Borremans may be the greatest living figurative painter." —John Vincler, The New York Times "'The Acrobat' provides an opportunity — all too rare on this side of the Atlantic — to see the genius of Borremans in the flesh...It’s painterly magic. A major New York museum retrospective is long overdue." —John Vincler, The New York Times Recalling classical painting, both through technical mastery and choice in subject matter, Borremans’s depictions of the surprising and the bizarre invites a second look. Uncanny scenes of figures looking at blurred acrobatic displays, hooded subjects rendered in Rembrandt-esque lighting, or solemn portraits demonstrate Borremans’s unique vision. In this recent body of work, Borremans continues to draw the viewer in closer with his intimately scaled paintings of mysterious figures in peculiar arenas. Accessible yet full of rich detail, this pocket-size book features fifteen masterful works offering a mystifying narrative. An illuminating text by Katya Tylevich mines the scenes Borremans sets, conjuring the multidimensionality of the works’ emotional power and their unique place in the lineage of art history.

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Book SynopsisA stunning, focused document of Nate Lowman’s work from the past four years. ---------- "Brewing the good, the bad, and the ugly of consumerist modern life in his masterful paintings, Lowman draws a portrait of the times that is equally mischievous and somber." - BOMB Magazine ----------- With an archive of source material amassed and processed over time, Lowman creates slippery, layered images that transform visual referents found in the news, media, and art history. In this volume, Lowman plays with cataclysmic imagery that probes the tensions between the everyday and the extreme, presence and absence, and violence and representation. In his vibrant paintings of digitally rendered hurricane imagery and crime scene photography cataloging the aftermath of the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, he considers the physicality of his medium in connection to the chaos of his subject matter. Spotlighting Lowman’s exhibitions at David Zwirner in London and New York along with other recent work, this monograph includes a text by Lynne Tillman that provides a unique perspective across all bodies of Lowman’s oeuvre. In an interview with Andrew Paul Woolbright for The Brooklyn Rail, Lowman discusses his engagement with representation and meaning, twentieth-century gestural and pop art, slow painting, and American violence.

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Book SynopsisWith a career spanning more than sixty years, the renowned painter Gerhard Richter is one of the greatest artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book celebrates the artist’s continued dedication to experimentation and innovation.The Abstract Pictures were created when Richter, a few years ago, poured colored enamel paints onto a glass plate and allowed them to flow into one another in order to take shapes. He then captured these ephemeral moments with his camera and selected 100 of these “pictures” for inclusion in the book alongside equally abstract texts formed by randomly generated letter combinations.An artwork of its own, this intimate volume inspires both close looking and a beautiful interpretation of abstraction.

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Book SynopsisA joining of two artists, exploring their shared fixation on the problematics of architecture, language, institutions, scale, and value '[The exhibition is] powerful and unhinged and overbuilta monument to the entropy of the postindustrial city, and the tenuous dance of its inhabitants.' The New York Times Gordon Matta-Clark and Pope.L are esteemed for their respective interdisciplinary practices that examine the value and paradoxes of urban life as well as the risk inherent in art making. Utilizing performance, film, drawing, and various multimedia projects, the two artists often open up interstitial spaces by realizing sweeping gestures that take into account shifting, decentralized zones. Grounded in the concept of failure, the sixth exhibition at 52 Walker and its accompanying catalogue reconsider societal, artistic, and structural failureand in its expression a consideration of hope. With an introduction by the curator and director of 52 Walker Ebony L. Haynes, this publicati

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Book SynopsisAlice Neel''s unstinting, visionary engagement with the lives of those around her resulted in an inclusive oeuvre. This aspect of queer representation in her work is explored for the first time in this new catalogue.Curated by Hilton Als and organized in collaboration with the Estate of Alice Neel, At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World highlights the artist’s vibrant involvement with the human condition. Within a lifetime of work, Neel painted many people from many walks of life--this catalogue is the first to focus on queer communities, those who were part of their circle, as well as allies and others with whom the artist was in broader conversation—together forming a collective portrait that both embodies and complicates an understanding of the queer world of Neel’s moment and the artist’s place within it. This collection of paintings includes rarely seen works depicting individuals including Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg,

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Book SynopsisThe newest volume in the beloved ekphrasis series focuses on dance and poetry through the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest critics“I am interested at the moment in recalling to you how it looks when one sees dancing as non-professionals do, in the way you yourselves I suppose look at pictures, at buildings, at political history or at landscapes or at strangers you pass on the street. Or as you read poetry.” —Edwin Denby After starting his career as a dancer with companies and troupes in Germany and Switzerland, Edwin Denby moved to Manhattan, where he formed friendships with prominent members of the New York School, including Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, and artists such as Rudy Burckhardt. In his critical writing, he brought his experience as a dancer to the page along with a poet’s sensibility, distinguishing himself as an authority through delicate observation and illustrative prose. This collection

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Book SynopsisThe first monograph on the internationally celebrated Nigerian American painter who blends her personal history and African diasporic identity in layered compositions“Critics have often (and rightly) marveled at the care and finesse with which Akunyili Crosby assembles vast multiplicities of time and place into singular sites of visual contestation.” —Frieze Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s work unites multiple places and temporalities, reflecting both personal and universal dimensions of contemporary life and, in particular, the intricacies of the African diasporic identity. This first monograph on Akunyili Crosby brings together nearly fifty paintings, made from 2010 to 2023, that chart her methodical practice of layering painted representations of people, locales, and aspects of her own experiences with transferred images sourced from her personal collection, Nigerian publications, and other outlets. Akunyili Crosby reveals and revisits distinct realms, from lush gardens to domestic, interior worlds related to motherhood, family, marriage, the body, and personal identity. New texts from Jareh Das, Helen Molesworth, Jason Rosenfeld, and Drew Thompson focus on a range of themes in Akunyili Crosby’s work, including her visual language and material practice, her mixing of Western and Nigerian imagery and forms, and her use of photography in portraiture and figuration.

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Book SynopsisKayode Ojo?s sculptural installations made of ready-made items prompt reflections on class, consumption, and the fragility of luxury.?There is a sense of urgency in these fleeting collisions between fashion and art. It?s the kind of tenuous exchange between culture and commerce that he does best.? ?W magazine Replete with sequins, chrome finishes, and transparent and reflective surfaces, Ojo?s sleek sculptures move between the related visual languages of delicate minimalism and glittering opulence, foregrounding the transformative power of the material object and its ability to transport its owner through dimensions of time, place, and social status. Sourcing his materials from fast-fashion websites and online shopping hubs, the artist weaves the familiar cadences of searching, scrolling, purchasing, and receiving into his nimble artistic practice. Ojo works instinctively to refashion these items into poetic yet perverse arrangements that make visible the phenomenon of social aspiration, unveiling its double-edged nature as a facilitator of both belonging and instability. Texts in this volume, including a curator?s note by Ebony L. Haynes and an essay by Serubiri Moses, explore Ojo?s influences and examine the consumerism that is both called out by and a central component of the artist?s creative practice.

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Book SynopsisFeaturing a foreword from legendary director Martin Scorcese,Woodstock: Interviews and Recollections combines stories, anecdotes, and perspectives from dozens of musicians and filmmakers about the making of the Academy Award-winning documentary Woodstock. Assembled by associate producer Dale Bell, the oral history takes readers behind the scenes—and behind the camera—at the decade-defining event.

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Book SynopsisInvite light, warmth, and the freshness of spring into your home in time for Easter! Designer Thea Rytter, a fan favorite for her beautifully subtle color palettes and undeniable creativity, is back with a brand-new selection of decorations, ornaments, and more—including both well-known Easter classics such as colorful eggs and fluffy hares, and fun, festive springtime designs for flowers, feathers, and a sweet, soft friend or two. Welcome the season in style, with cozy, charming, characteristically Norwegian Easter knits. - Start small and work your way up: quick single-color patterns keep it simple for beginners, and wrapped-yarn projects like birds and feathers are perfect for kids - Once you've mastered the basic patterns for eggs, flowers, and miniature birds—shake things up with color changes, beads, embroidery, and more! - Step-by-step instructions, full-color photographs, and additional guidance for techniques like short-row shaping, to guide knitters who've never tackled them before.

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