Search results for ""August Editions""

A photographic meditation on the empty spaces between time, inspired by Japanese aesthetics The Dutch-born photographer Martien Mulder’s (born 1971) new book of images springs from the Japanese concept of ma, which can be described as a pause in time, an interval, or emptiness in space. Teaming up with Amsterdam-based creatives Stef Bakker and Carsten Klein, Mulder embarked on an extensive quest to reveal the ma in her own images, editing from an archive of 25 years of photography. The images in this book are studies of the in-between; some center on details photographed at such close quarters that they lose their context, while others show only the negative space, inactivity or quiet nothingness. The viewing direction of the book is not dictated, nor is the beginning or the end, nor the pace: it can be opened to any page at any time, functioning as an object of contemplation.

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Architect Marcel Breuer’s House in the Museum Garden, now considered one of the most influential architecture exhibitions of the 20th century, was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art and built in their garden in 1949. Exhibited to record attendance, the house featured the updated Bauhaus prescriptions for modern living—an airy, informal combination living room/dining room and a pass-through kitchen—and was intended to inspire the future of American housing. The project featured custom hardware produced by W.C. Vaughan in collaboration with Breuer, which included everything from mahogany door knobs to cabinet hinges. Vaughan also supplied hardware for Breuer’s iconic Frank House, the Geller House, Breuer’s own houses in Massachusetts and Connecticut plus houses by Walter Gropius, Philip Johnson and other modernist masters. An essay by historian Robert Wiesenberger, historical black-and-white and color photographs by Ezra Stoller plus shop drawings by Vaughan of the hardware complete this deeply engaging and important architectural publication.

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By turns humorous, striking, mysterious and surprising, these photographic pairings by MOSS design shop founder Murray Moss reveal unanticipated elements of the objects' personalities. "Some are duets, or fugues," Moss writes. "Some dance a pas de deux. Many are six degrees incarnate. And others are conversations between strangers who share a bench in the park and discover common ground." Reproduced at the actual size of the original photos, with both the front and the often annotated back presented with equal importance, these artifacts, "retired now from their labors, are akin to those exceptional functional objects that have served their time and have later come to be appreciated, even coveted and exalted, for the extraordinary qualities that lie outside of their original function."

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Photographed over a ten-year period, Dog Houses is a collection of 30 forlorn and often humorous color images of canine shelters found throughout the Southern California desert landscape. American photographer Mark Ruwedel (b. 1954), known for his majestic "Westward" series of residual landforms created by expanding railroad lines across the nineteenth-century American West, turns his discerning eye to the last western frontier—the American desert. Dog Houses, part of Ruwedel's larger "Desert House" series, takes readers to a place where signs of human activity in the landscape are much more recent and revealing. Like their human counterparts, the doghouses in these photographs constitute an inventory of an iconic yet surprisingly flexible form. Often made from discarded material left over from the construction of human houses, the funny and sometimes haunting structures evoke the asymmetrical yet reciprocal relationship between owner and animal.

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An alluring portrait of three beautiful homes and the art and design objects that populate them Over a lifetime spent in London, New York, Los Angeles and points in between, collector Ronnie Sassoon has put together an unparalleled grouping of radical artworks, design objects and houses that elucidate her definition of “selection”: important works by Group Zero and Arte Povera artists such as Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Alighiero Boetti; midcentury designers such as Carlo Scarpa, Frederick Kiesler, Jean Prouvé and Gae Aulenti; and many more. At the center of the collection are three important houses that hold the collection: the Levit House by Richard Neutra in Los Angeles, the Stillman II House by Marcel Breuer in Connecticut and the iconic Dean/Ceglic Loft in SoHo, New York. Each of these structures defines its period and place in design history, and is redefined by the objects that now inhabit it. As Sassoon states, “Following one’s passion and desire creates the most pleasing and sensual atmosphere, reminiscent of every intoxicating past experience, whether it be in film, print, or travel. Those memories influence our selections in our quest for the perfect objet nonpareil.” Sensual and illuminating in turn, Selection documents—through beautiful photographs of thought-provoking tableaus of artworks, objects and interiors—a blueprint for a highly selective way of living. As Philippe Vergne writes in his introduction: “Ronnie’s talent is an uncanny ability to integrate all these elements: the art, the design, the architecture, the color (or the absence of color) are the results of deliberate decisions that raise the bar of aesthetic standards, of quotidian gestures…. The room, the gestures, the spirit of the moment shared in Ronnie’s homes are the moment of generosity.”

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Furniture generated by smart algorithms, the first fully functional 3-D printed steel bridge, and a 3-D printable chair that can be downloaded from the Internet—these are but a few examples of the ingenious oeuvre of Dutch designer and inventor Joris Laarman (born 1979), who works at the intersection of design, art and engineering. Part of the recent high-profile Dutch design movement, Laarman quickly set himself apart from his peers with the Heat Wave Radiator, which erases the lines between the functional and the decorative. Quickly embracing digital technologies and applying them to the traditional field of design, Laarman has produced instant icons such as the Bone Chair designs, which harnesses a computer algorithm to mimic bone growth for the form of the designs. He has also bridged the distance between digital technology and craftsmanship with his Makerchair, downloadable as an open-source design. Abolishing the distinctions between natural and manmade, Laarman’s work opens a new avenue for the future of design. In parallel with the touring exhibition, this handsome hardcover catalog with over 300 color illustrations goes far beyond the exhibition, revealing Laarman’s process, his studio and numerous designs in office, home and workshop settings. Flowing throughout the book are informative project descriptions, a statement from the LAB and assorted essays. The American museum tour includes the Cooper Hewitt, NY (2017), the High Museum, Atlanta, and MFA Houston (2017–18).

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The imagined Instagrams of art history’s “influencers,” from Gauguin to Warhol With his sharp-witted illustrations and insightful one-liners, the French illustrator, painter and writer Jean-Philippe Delhomme (born 1959) is a deft observer and loving critic of our contemporary culture. In his latest book, Artists' Instagrams, Delhomme imagines what the masters of modern art would have posted if they had access to Instagram and shared our addiction to the platform. The results are hilarious: Picasso collaborates with a car brand and compares his follower-count with Braque’s; Mondrian paints his IKEA kitchen; Gauguin incites #FOMO with his travel photographs of tantalizing, exoticizing Polynesian nudes. They are all here, from Joseph Beuys to Andy Warhol. Artists' Instagrams: The Never Seen Instagrams of the Greatest Artists is one of the first art books to engage Instagram’s influence in our visual culture (Kim Kardashian’s pioneering efforts notwithstanding). But Artists’ Instagrams is not only an amusing mash-up of high culture and everyone's favorite social media platform; it's a veritable history of modern art through hashtags.

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Wilshire Boulevard is one of Los Angeles's transportation lifelines, and as close as one gets in the sprawling metropolis to a Main Street. Running east-to-west from downtown to the ocean, Wilshire is a link from late-nineteenth-century L.A. to the explosive growth of this city in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Fascinated by its history, New York–based photographer Adrian Gaut pays tribute to L.A.'s most famous strip in his unique framing of architectural details. Gaut's photographs evoke the 100-year-plus history of L.A.'s growth through rigorous documentation of the boulevard starting with One Wilshire in downtown L.A. and ending with traffic cones that divide the Pacific Coast Highway. In between—the Art Deco details of Miracle Mile, the 1980s reflective glass facades of Century City and the midcentury modern architecture omnipresent throughout the entire strip—is captured in more than 100 color and black-and-white semi-abstract compositions. A brilliant way to mark a time and place in Southern California in the early 21st century.

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Midcentury modernism meets Japanese design in three revolutionary American buildings—the products of a unique, sustained, cross-cultural collaboration In 1953, Japanese architect Junzo Yoshimura designed a now-classic Japanese house and garden that he called Shofuso. It was built in Nagoya, Japan, and shipped to New York in 1954, where it was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and then relocated to Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. The curators of MoMA’s House in the Garden exhibition highlighted its synthesis of historic Japanese architecture with modern architecture: the clarity of the house’s post and beam structure, its flexibility of use and the close relationship of indoor and outdoor spaces. This extensively illustrated volume centers on Yoshimura’s design for Shofuso and two allied sites located in New Hope, Bucks County, Pennsylvania: Raymond Farm (1939–41), a live-work residence built by Antonin and Noémi Raymond within the fabric of an existing 18th-century Quaker farmhouse; and Nakashima Studios, a complex of structures designed by George Nakashima over three decades (1947–77) to serve his furniture-making business and as his family’s home. Each site, in its own way, is the embodiment of the personal relationships and cross-cultural collaborations among this group of architects and designers. The Raymonds, along with Yoshimura, Nakashima and others, came to understand Japan’s changing environment through the act of building, through collaboration and travel. Together, they extended these lessons into the furniture and furnishings of modern living in both Japan and the United States. This volume documents an exhibition of objects and ephemera mounted at Shofuso. New York–based architectural photographer Elizabeth Felicella captures each site in a portfolio of newly commissioned images. Essays by Ken Tadashi Oshima and William Whitaker, illustrated with historical photographs, family snapshots and architectural drawings, further elucidate this important chapter in the history of modern architecture and design.

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Photographs defaced, torn and crumpled in a physical inscription of human emotion A photograph is forever. Or is it? Culled from the vast vernacular photographic collection of Thierry Struvay, Love & Hate & Other Mysteries presents a funny, often poignant and truthful glimpse into the human condition. The unassuming and elegantly designed hardcover publication explodes once opened with 100 found black-and-white and color photographs that have been manually altered by scissors or pen, or physically attacked in a fit of rage. Some deletions, such as a missing face in the shape of a heart or oval, were clearly intended for a locket. Others, however, contain angrily scratched-out heads and bodies, or are simply torn in half. A third group features manipulations more mysterious in nature: strange cut-outs that hint at a mix of emotions and motives. Together with a poetic introductory text by Glenn O'Brien, the photographs suggest a wide range of human drama, from affection to anger and much in between.

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