Grapefruit. A Book of Instructions and Drawings by Yoko Ono.

Grapefruit. A Book of Instructions and Drawings by Yoko Ono. By Yoko Ono, introduction by John Lennon. Simon & Schuster, 2000. 320pp., 5,8x5,8".

I really enjoyed the exhibition Yoko Ono, Grapefruit at Moderna museet, which took its starting point from Ono's book 'Grapefruit' (originally published in 1964).

I thought it was a pretty great body of work on display, some though-provocative, some known, some singularly important, some magical. Overall, just seeing something unequivocally positive was pretty wonderful.

This is a reissue of the original book, with new work added.


Book description:

"Back in print for the first time in nearly thirty years, here is Yoko Ono's whimsical, delightful, subversive, startling book of instructions for art and for life.

'Burn this book after you've read it'. -- Yoko

'A dream you dream alone may be a dream, but a dream two people dream together is a reality. This is the greatest book I've ever burned'. -- John
"

I'm always dragging that horse around / Sea Prayer

"Sea swell, come washing,
let me taste that sound's round, salty flow,
the sound that was given me
as primordial name aeons and aeons ago!
Words that no mortal
lips can tell
lie hidden
in the fresh, cold swell.

Long, too long
I starved on human words too easily told.
I want to rise up,
I want to satisfy my mouth at my mother's board.
Like a child in loathing's remorse
lost far away to roam,
I turn hungrily round
to the songs of my home.

Let me drink
the speech of speech from a dull roar that never abates.
Let me clear
to your resting depth of light that creates.
Within soul and spirit
I hear your song.
Rise in my blood, and flower
in my tongue!"

Sea Prayer by Karin Boye. From 'Karin Boye: Complete Poems'.

Call Ampersand Response.

Call Ampersand Response. By Michael Dumontier and Micah Lexier. Nieves and Artexte, 2012. 196pp., illustrated throughout, 19,5x25,5cm.

Book description:

" 'Call Ampersand Response' is a collaborative artwork made of images exchanged via email.

Over a period of several months, Dumontier and Lexier sustained an image-based correspondence by sending each other scans of book covers, found objects, drawings and illustrations belonging to each artist’s respective collection.

The project is based on the idea that their collections speak of their shared artistic affinities while informing their practices. Two rules dictated their conduct: each image was to function as a “call” seeking a “response” from the other artist, and the dialogue was to end when an image recalling the project’s opening image emerged, thereby constituting a narrative loop.

Their conversation gave rise to a bookwork co-edited by Nieves and Artexte.

In Artexte’s new gallery space, the project is [was] shown as an installation in which shared themes and motifs are seen to play out over time, alongside objects selected from the source material"

Sonic.

Sonic. Fotohof edition, Vol. 99. By Antje Hanebeck, text by Hans-Michael Koetzle and Ulrich Winko. Fotohof Editions, 2008. 128 pp., illustrated throughout, 30x24,5cm. Edition of 1500 copies. Images from here.

Book description:

"The theme of Antje Hanebeck’s photography is the built-up space.

After beginning with building-like structures such as harbour cranes and their sculptural appearance, she has now turned to the creations of avant-garde architecture, the buildings of Frank Gehry, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind.

But Hanebeck is not seeking to compile an atlas of hotly debated architecture; rather she takes a very close look at the buildings which match her vision and subjects them to an artist’s visual examination, not that of the documentarist.

In her photography Antje Hanebeck bridges the gap between architecture as a motif (one of the medium’s very early themes), pictorial aesthetics (through chemical processing and the often coarse texture and emotionality of the images) and the modern themes of abstraction, reduction and alienation in connection with the most modern buildings."

The Picturesque.

The Picturesque. By Jan Kempenaers. Roma Publications, 2012. 80 pp., illustrated throughout throughout, 33,5x26,5cm. In collabortion with Academy of Fine Arts Ghent. Images from here.

Book description:

"Book with 45 landscapes and architecture photographs by Kempenaers. This book, together with his previous book 'Spomenik' (2010) present the results of Kempenaers' practice based research on 'contemporary picturesque'.

Dirk De Meyer, quoted from this book: "Yet, even when gratifying due to their composition and "their living tints and endless varieties", Kempenaers' photographs of landscapes altered by man forestall the nostalgia that has, over time, become typical for the picturesque. They force the viewer to remain in the present and think about its conditions and its future, and about the forces threatening our environment.

Using Gilpin's topoi of the picturesque - which, by now, are themselves 'classical' - Kempenaers' images confront us with the picturesque's slightly disconcerting aspects.

As one visitor of the 1975 New Topographics exhibition at the George Eastman House observed, the photographs on display were saying "This is it, kid; take it for its beauty and its ugliness." "

The Beginning.

The Beginning. By Ola Rindal. Hassla Books, 2007. 24 pp., illustrated throughout, 20x15cm. Edition of 500 copies. Images from here.

Book description:

" 'The Beginning' by Ola Rindal is Rindal's first book, and features eleven color photographs dating from 1999-2006."

The Point of Secret.

The Point of Secret. By Marc Yankus. ClampArt, 2008. 48pp., illustrated throughout, 5,5x8,25". Images from here.

Book description:

"In his newest [2008] body of work, Yankus explores mysterious points of intersection - moments when reality and illusion plausibly overlap.

Think of a daydream or the haze when waking from a particularly sound sleep. Such gentle transitions are the subject of the artist’s recent photographs. Yankus eloquently writes:

'I am especially fascinated with the city in its rare moments of tranquility - as it sinks into slumber, as it rouses itself to face a new day. At such times the city is all abstraction - looming shapes, diffused light, spectral shadows.
In these moments of transient repose, when its elements are briefly cloaked in softness, a kind of beauty envelopes even the most mundane street scene . . . and my work aims to capture that ineluctable quality.'

Just as the city is a layering of decades upon decades - brownstones set against vast towered backdrops of shining glass and steel - Yankus assembles his photographs in a similar style.

Originally trained as a painter, the artist began constructing collages over twenty years ago. Eventually, he began to fold his own photographs into his work, and then, with the advent of digital technologies in the early 1990s, the artist devised a new kind of layering on the computer screen.

Beginning with his own soft-focused digital images shot on the streets of the city where he was born and raised, Yankus overlays the photographs with various textures, including scratches and dings from the surfaces of old, flea market tintypes or with the subtle paper patterns from blank pages of yellowing, musty books, effectively melding the present and the past."

Portraits of Time.

Portraits of Time. By BohnChang Koo, text by Suejin Shin. HOMI Publishing, 2004. 120 pp., illustrated throughout, 8x11". Edition of 700 copies. Images from here.

Poetic and poignant, a quietly imaginative and beautiful set of photographs bound together in book form.


Book description:

" 'Portraits of Time' is an exquisite book object, finely printed and bound and presenting three separate but intertwined bodies of work, 'Riverrun', 'Portraits of Time', and 'White'.

In each of these groups of images, Koo has focused on single objects, creating compositions that eliminate spatial context and obscure the subject matter.

The grouping for which the book is named consists of what appear to be skyscapes over a distant horizon - the earth and horizon line comprise barely an 1/8 of the frame.

The dusk sky and rolling gray clouds speak of a favonian evening drive in the country. But as you look more closely and move from image to image you get the sense of a different reality in front of the camera. The earth has wood grain and the sky, an occasional crack.

These are really plaster walls with accumulated layers of dust standing in for clouds. It's that first double-take and the consequent mental adjustment that makes the work resonate all that much more.

The group entitled 'White' takes another set of walls as a starting point. Here an abstract, pock marked wall is the result of pulling vines away from the sides of edifices.

The directions one's interpretations can head are endless and marks, perhaps, the most significant accomplishment of these photographs - how one's simple surroundings can be jumping off points for the imagination."

I Spy with My Little Eye, Something beginning with S.

I Spy with My Little Eye, Something beginning with S. By Koto Bolofo. Steidl, 2010. 146pp., illustrated throughout, 29x37cm.

I, too, love the craftmanship and process of bookmaking.


Book description:

"In the age of digital photography, Koto Bolofo is an old-school photographer who still uses an analogue camera.

With his patient, thoughtful approach to photo-documentation, his pictures celebrate objects and people in a humble, uncluttered way.

Over a period of two months, Bolofo explored the corridors of Steidlville in Göttingen with the aim of creating a portrait of the printing and publishing house more personal than the photojournalistic series that have been made in the past.

He achieved this by focusing on often overlooked everyday details such as smeared rubber gloves, tubs of ink and scraps of paper in a wire basket, and by photographing those who work at Steidl in settings and poses chosen by the sitters themselves.

'I Spy with My Little Eye, Something beginning with S' is Bolofo’s homage to the craftsmanship and creativity of bookmaking."

That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.

Image modified, original from here / AP.

Rest in Peace Neil Armstrong. More here.

Distance.

Distance. By Alexis Zavialoff, cover drawing by Stefan Marx. Nieves, 2007. 48pp., illustrated throughout, 18x14 cm.

Book description:

"Currently living between Zurich and Lausanne, half French and half Russian photographer and filmmaker, Alexis Zavialoff (Colmar, France, 1974) is a well known name and man behind the lens in the European skateboarding and street scene.

'Distance' is the first ever monographic book by Zavialoff to come out after years of collaborations and editorial works with some of the finest magazines around, coinciding with his solo show at Belleville, Reykjavik, this [2007] July.

Zavialoff has been photographing since the early age of 19, when he received his first camera as a present from his grandfather, and like in the best DIY tradition, he has blossomed to become a successful photographer since. His exquisite sensibility, eye for detailing, easiness of adaptation and capability to mix social contents are key to the success of his works.

Zavialoff’s photographs are never predictable and always tend to convey a true warmth, accomplished by a natural understanding and sincerity about the subjects portrayed.

The body of work presented in 'Distance' comes from 3 weeks Zavialoff spent traveling in and out of Moscow’s (Russia) surroundings, with his tiny Pentax auto 110 format camera, going from big metropolitan life to getting lost in the woods, meeting genuine people on the way and staying at their houses, documenting life in front of his eyes.

'Distance' is not just the extent he traveled to shoot these beautiful images, it’s also a sense of both misplace between his Russian heritage and French upbringing, combined with the width and immensity of a country like Russia.

Zavialoff’s obsession for the rare 110 film, which he manages to buy in the United States and develops in Prague, gives the whole project a lengthy and painstaking process. Providing him, at the same time, the ability to play with longer automatic exposures and imperfect framing, making the photography in 'Distance' a pure gift for our eyes."

No Room to Answer.

No Room to Answer. By Teresa Hubbard & Alexander Birchler. Edited by Pam Hatley, foreword by Marla Price, texts by Sara Arrhenius, Iris Dressler, Andrea Karnes, interview with the artists by Andrea Karnes. Hatje Cantz, 2008. 192 pp., illustrated throughout, 22x27,2cm.

Book description:

"Slow pan shots, endless loops, a somnambulistic slipstream of images, and puzzling plot lines: Teresa Hubbard (*1965 in Dublin) and Alexander Birchler (*1962 in Baden, Switzerland) say that Eadweard Muybridge’s early motion pictures and the silent films by Thomas Edison and the Lumière Brothers influenced the deliberately slow cinematography of their fascinating and elaborately produced videos.

'No Room to Answer' examines the artist couple’s interest in the early history of photography and film and demonstrates how their picturesque, brilliantly colored images craft stories without a beginning or an end in vague, repetitious loops, in which calm and movement are precisely balanced and which veer in an etheric zone between reality and dream.

Starting with Hubbard and Birchler’s early series of staged photographs, this monograph presents all the artists’ key works from 1991 to the present and includes three essays as well as a comprehensive interview with the artists about their most recent work."

Nothing Is Hidden.

Nothing Is Hidden. By Lynne Cohen. Steidl/Scotiabank, 2012. 172 pp., illustrated throughout, 31,5x26,2cm. Images from here.

Book description:

" 'I feel as if the world can’t be like it is. It seems full of finished works of art'. Lynne Cohen

'Nothing is Hidden' features both well-known and recent unpublished works by acclaimed Canadian photographer Lynne Cohen, beginning with images from the early 1970s.

The book shows the consistency and depth with which she has mined her chosen theme of uninhabited domestic and institutional interior spaces.

Depicting formally and not so formally arranged uncanny interiors, Cohen’s photographs are sometimes wryly humorous, sometimes bleak, and frequently both. Her vision is informed by a profound feeling for the mystery in the ordinary, what is on the surface but out of sight.


This is the first in a series of annual publications to be published by Steidl celebrating the winner of the Scotiabank Photography Award, Canada’s largest contemporary photography award for an established Canadian artist."

Seneca Ghosts.

Seneca Ghosts. By Danielle Mericle. A-Jump Books, 2008. 56 pp., illustrated throughout, 6x8,5". Edition of 500 copies. Images from here.

Book description:

"Danielle Mericle’s enigmatic new book of photographs takes as its subject an elusive herd of white deer that roams a deactivated cold war-era army depot in upstate New York.

Through a compelling mix of photographic empiricism and poetic stream-of-consciousness, this book becomes a reflection on our limited ability to access and engage the political past through personal experience.

'Seneca Ghosts', via its inability to fully articulate the white deer (thus its failure as a useful document), exudes instead the notion of linear history as mere illusion."

Robert Smithson: Art in Continual Movement.

Robert Smithson: Art in Continual Movement. By Max Andrews, Eric C. H. de Bruyn, Stefan Heidenreich, Sven Lütticken, Anja Novak, Vivian van Saaze. Alauda Publications, 2012. 240 pp., illustrated throughout, 20,4x26,8cm. Images from here.

Book description:

"The central figure in this book is the American artist Robert Smithson, who achieved cult status in the international art scene during the 1960s and 1970s and continues to generate great interest among artists and curators to this day.

In 1971, Smithson realized the famous Land Art work Broken Circle/Spiral Hill for the exhibition Sonsbeek 71 in Emmen, the Netherlands. It is one of only three Land Art works in the world by Smithson that still remain preserved.

For the first time, this book brings together a complete selection of archival material related to the work - ranging from photographs, film scripts and drawings to original manuscripts and letters - spread over different archives in the Netherlands and the US."


'Robert Smithson: Art in Continual Movement' is part of Land Art Contemporary, and was part of the March symposium Rethinking Robert Smithson.

The Peace Warriors of Two Thousand and Three.

The Peace Warriors of Two Thousand and Three. By Carl Chiarenza. Nazraeli Press, 2005. 40 pp., illustrated throughout, 14x17". Limited edition of 500 copies. Images from here.

Book description:

" 'Everywhere confrontation reigns, conflict is chosen, resolution avoided. My world is a confused collage, a nightmare montage - a world in which, once again, humanity and inhumanity are seen, impossibly, as one and the same.' - Carl Chiarenza

We are delighted to announce the publication of our second monograph by Carl Chiarenza, whose work as artist, educator, art historian and critic has been a significant influence on the American photography scene for many years.

He made these powerful collages in 2003, a time when, he says, 'the world once again went mad'. Coming out of his sense of impotence and frustration at world events, these collages shed their abstraction and do indeed resemble warriors, but these are warriors for peace.

'Chance', says Chiarenza, 'structured these images as much as chance structured our world. But chance itself is structured by human beings'.

His photographs are represented in many important collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston."

Having a coke with you

Frank O´Hara reads his poem 'Having a coke with you' in his New York flat, shortly before his death in 1966.

This is an [updated] re-run (that should be re-run).


"Frank O´Hara reading his poem 'Having a coke with you' in his flat in New York in 1966, shortly before his accidental death.

Taken from - 'USA: Poetry: Frank O'Hara' produced and directed by Richard Moore, for KQED and WNET. Originally aired on September 1, 1966."

More videos can be viewed here (also read more here, here and here for example).


"Francis Russell O'Hara (March 27, 1926 - July 25, 1966) was an American poet who, along with John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Barbara Guest and Kenneth Koch, was a key member of the New York School of poetry.

[...]

O'Hara's poetry is generally autobiographical, much of it based on observations on what is happening to him in the moment.

Donald Allen says in his introduction to The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, 'That Frank O’Hara tended to think of his poems as a record of his life is apparent in much of his work'.

O'Hara discusses this aspect of his poetry in a statement for Donald Allen's New American Poetry: 'What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems. I don’t think my experiences are clarified or made beautiful for myself or anyone else, they are just there in whatever form I can find them'. He goes on to say, 'My formal 'stance' is found at the crossroads where what I know and can't get meets what is left of that I know and can bear without hatred'. He then says, 'It may be that poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time'.

[...]

O'Hara was active in the art world, working as a reviewer for Art News, and in 1960 was Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art."

Quotes from here and here.

Charles H. Traub.

Charles H. Traub. By Charles H. Traub, text by Marvin Heiferman. Gitterman Gallery, 2006. 40pp., illustrated throughout, 10,5x9,25". Images from here.

Book description:

"Charles H. Traub once used a lens shade one size too small for his square-format camera.

The vignetting caused by the mistake emphasized the intimate perspective of the photographer’s vision.

The square format and proximity to his subjects charged his images with an immediacy that celebrated the character of the times [the 1970s]."

Rest in Peace Gore Vidal

I was very saddened by the news this morning that the seminal writer Gore Vidal has passed away at the age of 86. Rest in Peace.

Read more here, here, here, here and here for example.