Search results for ""j l books""

Artist and filmmaker Bruce Conner’s (1933–2008) mobility was severely limited for the last five years of his life, when he rarely left the San Francisco home he shared with his wife, Jean. To aid in his physical navigation of its spaces, he worked with assistants to install a succession of solid brass handles in each and every room--surrounding the stove, down the boat-like stairwell, inside the recesses of the bedroom closet. At last count, the handles, a labyrinth of critical support, numbered 163. Still in situ after his death in 2008, the handles are arguably Conner’s last great work--at once physical and metaphysical, fragmentary and elusive, elegant and anonymous. Together, they draft the ghost architecture of Conner’s final years, transforming the pedestrian into something altogether different. Will Brown is a collaborative project founded by Lindsey White, Jordan Stein and David Kasprzak. Formerly based in a San Francisco storefront, Will Brown’s main objective is to manipulate the structures of exhibition-making as a critical practice. Will Brown recently mounted a solo exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive.

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A cultural history of the sublime first image of a black hole, in photographs and documents “Peering into Light’s Graveyard: The First Image of the Black Hole,” read the New York Times' April 11 cover story. The headline, like many others that day, was accompanied by an image of a glowing celestial ring framed by infinite blackness: the first image of a black hole. In his first book, New York photographer Matthew Beck (born 1986) focuses on the unveiling of this previously unseeable image by following it into the depths of the New York City subway. The book suggests the notion that the cosmos is not something to simply be observed from our vantage point as humans, but more a system that we are intrinsically a part of; and the true nature of the black hole seems to be as elusive as the answer to humanity’s most pressing question of “why.”

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San Francisco Oracle was a countercultural newspaper published in the city’s bustling Haight Ashbury neighborhood from September 1966 to February 1968, bookending the iconic “Summer of Love.” In 12 issues combining poetry, spirituality and speculation with revolutionary rainbow inking effects, the Oracle reached well beyond the Bay Area and spoke to a radical new American ethos. Where to Score presents not the candy-colored prophecies of various gurus, but a quieter, more revealing corner of the paper—its classified section. There, surrounded by advertisements for drummers, carpenters and head shops, are the desperate pleas of parents seeking wayward children. “Will you trust me enough to call collect and let me know you’re alright?” Elsewhere, beat poet Michael McClure needs a harp and the Sexual Freedom League is hungry for recruits. The diminutive entries speak volumes to the times, showcasing an honest, immediate and lesser-known chapter in the era’s history.

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Filmmaker, painter, anthropologist, musicologist and occultist--Harry Smith (1923-1991) was an incomparable polymath and seminal figure in the realms of beat culture and avant-garde art. Smith's kaleidoscopic experimental films have influenced generations of artists and cinephiles, while his landmark three-volume compilation, the Anthology of American Folk Music (1952), laid the foundation for the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to his ecstatic artwork, Smith is renowned for his vast collections of curious objects. The Collections of Harry Smith, Catalogue Raisonné series spotlights and indexes his eclectic research obsessions. Volume one features richly detailed photographic documentation of 251 paper airplanes gathered by Smith from the streets of New York City over an approximately 20-year period. Whimsical and weird, the paper airplanes rank among Smith's most mysterious collecting pursuits. This extensive compendium presents the fruits of his extraordinary aeronautic pursuit and highlights the tangled history and myths that accompany them.

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Found art in the form of record covers, lovingly and mischievously vandalized by anonymous music lovers Marred for Life! presents over 250 record covers, lovingly and mischievously vandalized by anonymous music lovers. The LP covers were selected from the collection of Greg Wooten, a Los Angeles–based collector, musician and design purveyor. Wooten and his community of record-collector friends have discovered these in used record bins over the course of several years. Sometimes over-the-top and other times subtle—and often, really funny—the objects become a kind of found folk art. Bloodshot eyes, blackened teeth, moustaches, tattoos, reviews, love letters, collage and psychedelic and pornographic embellishings of record covers by Elvis, the Beatles, Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Yoko Ono, Nina Simone, Led Zeppelin, Sparks, LL Cool J, David Bowie, The Velvet Underground, Mose Allison, Prince, Tim Buckley, Neil Young and more can be found here. The book is edited by Jason Fulford, in a way that highlights connections and humor between the covers.

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Economically downtrodden New York City in the mid-to-late 1970s was like the end of the world, but only if you chose to see it that way. For young artists running amok in the collapsing capital, the possibilities seemed endless. For Manuel DeLanda (born 1952), a Mexican transplant enrolled at the School of Visual Arts, overcrowded sidewalks and decrepit subway stations were blank canvases for inspired mayhem. Widely recognized today as a philosopher, professor and author (of A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, Assemblage Theory and The Rise of Realism, among other titles), DeLanda initially came to prominence as one of the premiere experimental filmmakers of his generation. Fueled by the gonzo humor and graphic audacity of Frank Zappa and Zap Comix, DeLanda’s fevered productions were among the most deliriously innovative movies of the punk era. While films like Raw Nerves: A Lacanian Thriller and Incontinence: A Diarrhetic Flow of Mismatches are certified underground classics, DeLanda’s visually striking, virtually unknown graffiti work (signed with the tag Ism Ism) has long remained more urban legend than legendary. ISM ISM presents a comprehensive overview of DeLanda’s ephemeral street collages through a colorful frame-by-frame breakdown of a Super-8 short film made in 1979 to document his sweetly subversive activities. Extensive still images, an expansive interview and copious contextual materials combine to illustrate the story of DeLanda’s aesthetic attack on 23rd St, including his friendly competition with fellow taggers Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

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Corita Kent’s photographs of vernacular inspiration—from street signs and folk art to kites, parades and fairs Corita Kent, formerly Sister Mary Corita, is known for her exuberant, colorful serigraphs and her teaching, as evidenced in her lively art classes. As a Catholic nun from 1936 until 1968, Corita lived and worked in the Immaculate Heart of Mary community in Los Angeles. She taught lettering and layout, image finding, and art structure for 20 years in Immaculate Heart College’s art department. There, she screened multiple films simultaneously, hosted guest thinkers including Saul Bass, Buckminster Fuller and John Cage, and guided the making of large-scale collaborative projects with students. Corita regularly took her students out for looking sessions at a used car lot or an art exhibition. While constantly looking and discovering visually, Corita shot thousands of 35 mm slides documenting references, the IHC milieu and the art department processes. For Corita, the vernacular environs of advertising, supermarkets and the city’s media landscape were a source of inspiration and raw material. Her slide collection encompasses a wide range of subjects: cookies, coke bottles, toys, presents, experiments, projects, Mary’s Day celebrations stemming from Corita’s classroom, flowers, magazines, seeds, puppets, visits with Charles and Ray Eames, street signs, trade fairs, folk art, boxes, billboards and kites. Drawing from the Corita Art Center’s vast slide collection, Ordinary Things Will Be Signs for Us embodies Corita’s philosophy of looking. Corita Kent (1918–86) was known for her iconic art, innovative teaching methods and messages of social justice. Born Frances Elizabeth Kent in Fort Dodge, Iowa, she entered the order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Hollywood at age 18. As a professor and later chair of the art department, she helped establish its reputation as a hub of creativity and liberal thinking. By 1968, her art was enormously popular, showing in more than 230 exhibitions and held in public and private collections around the world. She remained active in social causes until her death in 1986.

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A tender, lighthearted homage to a father’s “beautiful legs” Croatian-born photographer and architect Sara Perovic's mother once told her, "I fell in love with your father because of his beautiful legs." With this small paperback photobook, Perovic (born 1984) has created a tender, humorous study of her boyfriend's legs, as a stand-in for her father's, depicting them in color against various backdrops—aboard a boat, indoors, standing on a bed, or on the tennis court—isolated from the rest of his body. She laments that her father's love of tennis kept his attentions away from her when she was a child, and a short series of full-figure portraits of him delivering a backhand shot in flipbook style concludes the volume, along with a coda from the photographer: "And now my daughter's father has beautiful legs.

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