This holiday weekend, consider the Lobster!

The Fourth of July holiday is both fun and loaded. But whether you love the barbeques and the fireworks, or you fixate on contradictory aspects of our country’s history, we think there’s something special about this 1935 Lobster photograph by Madame Yevonde. Reproduced from Chromotherapia, it’s one of 170 “feel-good” color photographs selected by artist and Toilet Paper editor Maurizio Cattelan and curator Sam Stourdzé for their unusual intensity. “Color photography is often criticized and belittled,” Cattelan and Stourdzé write, “but it has been a bonanza for artists, allowing them to get out their palettes and repaint the world. Some have broken with the medium’s traditional documentary role to explore photography’s shared roots with the world of the imagination, flirting with pop culture, Surrealism, bling, camp, kitsch and the bizarre—all associated with bad taste and extravagance. But why shouldn’t the trivial and the banal also have something to tell us about our existence and the age we live in? Why should rigorous, ascetic minimalism be the only way to approach reality?”

ABOUT ARTBOOK

the source for books on art & culture

Published by Damiani, 2025

STAFF PICKS | FROM THE SHELVES

Hot Child in the City: Summertime Staff Picks, 2025

FEATURED STORE

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Since its inception in 1965, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has been devoted to collecting works of art that span both history and geography, in addition to representing Los Angeles's uniquely diverse population. Today LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States, with a collection that includes nearly 130,000 objects dating from antiquity to the present, encompassing the geographic world and nearly the entire history of art. LACMA's mission is to serve the public through the collection, conservation, exhibition, and interpretation of significant works of art from a broad range of cultures and historical periods, and through the translation of these collections into meaningful educational, aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural experiences for the widest array of audiences. The LACMA Store reflects the museum itself through its thoughtfully curated selection of books, jewelry, gift items, and one-of-a-kind Los Angeles-based designs as well as children's books and toys. The store has a wide selection of art and photography books, and special exhibition catalogues. It is located in the Resnick Pavilion.

FEATURED PUBLISHER

Guggenheim

As a vital part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s mission as an educational institution, the Guggenheim Museum’s Publications Department publishes books and catalogues to document its exhibitions and collections. Guggenheim publications are renowned for the high quality of their design and production, as well as for the depth of their scholarship.

CURATED ART LIBRARIES

Curated Libraries by Movement and Subject Area

Shop By Color	Black Art & Culture	Women Artists	Illustrated Literary Classics
Danish Design	Classic Photobooks	Pop Art	Outsider Art
Avant Garde Music & Dance	Product Design Bookshelf	Performance Art	Bauhaus
Surrealism	Dada	Contemporary Figurative Painting	Modern and Contemporary Drawing
Photography: Photojournalism	Photography: Polaroids	Feminist Art	Graphic Design Bookshelf
Photography: New Topographics	Sound Art	Collage & Photomontage	Architecture: Essential Books
Urban Studies	German Expressionism	Curatorial Studies	Contemporary Sculpture
Prints & Graphics	Pacific Standard Time	Pictures Generation	Beautiful Losers
Nouveau Realisme	Sustainable Design	Films & Filmmakers	Relational Aesthetics
Conceptual Art	Lee Friedlander Library	Artists Books	Essential Photography Reference Books