ABC Is Easy

An Alphabet by Peter Blake

Published by Paul Stolper/Coriander Studio.
Text by Mel Gooding, Gavin Turk.

Best known for designing the seminal Beatles album cover, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Sir Peter Blake, born in 1932, is widely considered the godfather of British Pop art. Across his oeuvre, Blake has always drawn inspiration from popular culture, often collaging disparate elements or quoting from works by other artists. Over the years he has continued to produce art for many musicians, including Ian Dury, Paul Weller and Oasis. And today, he is hugely influential among contemporary fine artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.
In 2007, Tate Liverpool presented a major retrospective exhibition of Blake's paintings. At the same time, London's Paul Stolper Gallery collaborated with the renowned fine art printmakers, Coriander Studio, to publish a new portfolio of prints and the accompanying book, Peter Blake: An Alphabet.
Since the 1950s Blake has maintained a deep interest in the letters of the alphabet. This exquisitely fashioned volume reproduces all 26 of the new prints--one for each letter of the alphabet. Each visual interpretation is a collage of images from vintage cards, magazines and books, and the finished works are at once nostalgic and whimsical, humorous and fascinating. This spectacular abecedarium celebrates the interest, from childhood onwards, that we all share in letters and words. With an interview by the renowned art writer Mel Gooding and a specially designed cover by the artist, it is required reading for all Peter Blake fans.

PUBLISHER
Paul Stolper/Coriander Studio

BOOK FORMAT
Hardback, 9 x 12 in. / 64 pgs / 29 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/1/2008
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2008

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780955215452 TRADE
List Price: $35.00 CAD $40.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

The Classroom

From the Late 19th Century Until the Present Day

Published by Wasmuth.
Text by Thomas Müller, Romana Schneider.

Taking as its epigraph the architect Hans Scharoun's aphorism that "young people want to be inspired, not taught," The Classroom shows how furniture designers from the late nineteenth century to the present have strived to enliven the classroom experience for children, telling for the first time the history of this neglected area of furniture design. The book is based on the collection of the VS school museum in Tauberbischofsheim, which houses a unique collection of school furniture from Germany and abroad. Through this collection, it draws out the fascinating tale of educational theory and school architecture over the past hundred years, tracing the ascent of a child-centered approach to education and attendant developments in design, as well as such topics as the use of propaganda in Soviet- and Nazi-era schools. Chairs, desks, classrooms and entire schools by Alvar Aalto, Arne Jacobsen, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Jean-Baptiste Mathon, Jean Prouvé, Eero + Eliel Saarinen and Bruno Taut are abundantly illustrated and examined. The Classroom looks back over this history and looks forward to possible future developments.

PUBLISHER
Wasmuth

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 9.75 x 11.75 in. / 304 pgs / 400 color / 400 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 4/30/2011
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2011 p. 31   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783803033482 FLAT40
List Price: $65.00 CAD $87.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Core Curriculum

Writings on Photography

Published by Aperture.
By Tod Papageorge.

Core Curriculum: Writings on Photography is the long-awaited collection of essays, reviews and lectures by Tod Papageorge, one of the most influential voices in photography today. As a photographer and the Walker Evans Professor of Photography at the Yale University School of Art, Papageorge has shaped the work and thought of generations of artist-photographers, and, through his critical writings--some of which have gained a cult following through online postings--he has earned a reputation as an unusually eloquent and illuminating guide to the work of many of the most important figures in twentieth-century photography. Among the artists Papageorge discusses in this essential volume are Eugène Atget, Brassaï, Robert Frank (with Walker Evans), Robert Adams and his close friend Garry Winogrand. The book also includes texts that examine the more general questions of photography's relationship to poetry, and how the evolution of the medium's early technologies led to the twentieth- century creation of the artist-photographer. Among the previously unpublished pieces in Core Curriculum are an unfinished poem written in response to Susan Sontag's On Photography, a profile of Josef Koudelka and a commencement speech delivered at the Yale School of Art in 2004. Core Curriculum also includes a number of interviews with this esteemed photographer/teacher/ author, ranging in topic from his own photographic work and background in poetry to his energetic observations on the art of photography.
Tod Papageorge (born 1940) earned his BA in English literature from the University of New Hampshire in 1962, where he began taking photographs during his last semester. He is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. In 1979, Papageorge was named Yale University's Walker Evans Professor of Photography and director of graduate studies in photography, both positions he continues to hold today.

PUBLISHER
Aperture

BOOK FORMAT
Flexi, 6 x 8.5 in. / 208 pgs / 3 color / 33 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 7/31/2011
No longer our product

DISTRIBUTION
Contact Publisher
Catalog:

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781597111720 TRADE
List Price: $29.95 CAD $35.00

AVAILABILITY
Not Available

Dawoud Bey: Class Pictures

Published by Aperture.
Text by Jock Reynolds, Taro Nettleton. Interview by Carrie Mae Weems.

For the past 15 years, Dawoud Bey has been making striking, large-scale color portraits of students at high schools across the United States. Depicting teenagers from a wide economic, social and ethnic spectrum--and intensely attentive to their poses and gestures--he has created a highly diverse group portrait of a generation that intentionally challenges teenage stereotypes.
Bey spends two to three weeks in each school, taking formal portraits of individual students, each made in a classroom during one 45-minute period. At the start of the sitting, each subject writes a brief autobiographical statement. By turns poignant, funny or harrowing, these revealing words are an integral part of the project, and the subject's statement accompanies each photograph in the book. Together, the words and images in Class Pictures offer unusually respectful and perceptive portraits that establish Dawoud Bey as one of the best portraitists at work today.

PUBLISHER
Aperture

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9.75 x 11 in. / 164 pgs / 70 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 9/1/2007
No longer our product

DISTRIBUTION
Contact Publisher
Catalog:

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781597110433 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CAD $55.00

AVAILABILITY
Not Available

Luc Long & Mark Dion: Carnet de Fouilles, Lab Book

Published by Actes Sud.
Edited by David Djaoui. Text by Luc Long, Mark Dion.

This beautifully designed artist's book offers two perspectives on the same event: the recovery of archaeological artifacts from the Rhône river in France, in October 2009. It brings together British artist Mark Dion's creative assemblings of these artifacts, which he presents in large wooden cabinets, with archaeologist Luc Long's on-site sketches.

PUBLISHER
Actes Sud

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 8.5 x 11 in. / 136 pgs / illustrated throughout.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 10/31/2010
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2010 p. 147   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9782742786091 TRADE
List Price: $39.95 CAD $50.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Tauba Auerbach: How To Spell the Alphabet

Published by Deitch Projects.
Text by Tauba Auerbach.

How arbitrary are the marks, analog and digital, used to express language, and where do they begin to muck it all up? This first book from Tauba Auerbach, Yes and Not Yes features over 20 new paintings and drawings that spring from those questions. They offer an excellent if roundabout answer: while letters are largely arbitrary, they are rich with abstract beauty and conceptual depth. In razor-sharp execution--which reveals their training as a sign painter--Auerbach's works on panel and paper update the abstract conceptual tradition, while retaining its intellectual rigor. Uppercase Insides and Numeral Insides recall Russian Suprematism, and, upon further contemplation, turn out to be just what their titles call them. Works based on signal flags and the Ugaritic Alphabet--an extinct language from Syria, 1300 B.C.--confirm that puzzlement is part of the desired effect here. Where direct exchange between sign and meaning is impossible, the beauty of the symbol comes to the fore.

PUBLISHER
Deitch Projects

BOOK FORMAT
Hardback, 8.5 x 9.75 in. / 112 pgs / 50 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/1/2007
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2007 p. 128   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780977868605 TRADE
List Price: $30.00 CAD $35.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

John Lurie: Learn to Draw

Published by Walther König, Köln.

A book of funny, strange, enraged, grotesque, brilliant and affectionate drawings by jazz musician and actor John Lurie.
Although Lurie has been making his naughty and often Surrealistic drawings for 20 years, it was not until 2004 that he began to exhibit them--and then to instant acclaim. In 2005, the New York Times critic Roberta Smith wrote, "music's loss may turn out to be art's gain."
In Learn to Draw, 65 black-and-white line drawings are printed across from enigmatically hilarious descriptive titles, such as "wolf serenading asses," "three car salesmen think about the same cat," or "Rose had a barn hat."

PUBLISHER
Walther König, Köln

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 9.5 x 6.75 in. / 136 pgs / 65 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 2/1/2007
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2007 p. 152   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783865600875 TRADE
List Price: $40.00 CAD $50.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Roger Andersson: Letters From Mayhem

Published by Cabinet.
Edited by Sina Najafi. Text by Albert Mobilio.

Roger Andersson's book Letters from Mayhem is an artist's book made of 26 duotone watercolors, each depicting one letter of the alphabet. Printed on thick board in the format of a children's ABC primer, each letter is embedded in a fairytale setting in which wispy long-haired teenagers lie around stoned, sniffing glue, listening to heavy metal, and so on. This garden of vices overgrown with weeds and entangled vines forms a strange foil for imagery drawn from drug culture, anarchy, heavy metal, and children's cartoons, rendering every scene both innocent and corrupt. Full of messages hidden within plants, ponds and clouds, Andersson's drawings evoke a soft nostalgia for childhood tempered by images of soft-edged romantic decadence.

PUBLISHER
Cabinet

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 10 x 10 in. / 64 pgs / 26 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 10/2/2004
Out of stock indefinitely

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2004

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781932698251 TRADE
List Price: $29.95 CAD $39.95 GBP £25.99

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Rethinking the Contemporary Art School

The Artist, the PhD, and the Academy

Published by The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
Edited by Brad Buckley, John Conomos.

With great timeliness, Rethinking the Contemporary Art School examines the very basis of the art school and its role in society. The book considers various art-school models—innovative graduate programs, independent stand-alone schools and art schools that are departments or schools of major research universities—and the problems that art schools face as academically marginalized institutions. Rethinking the Contemporary Art School concludes with essays on new media, inquiring whether the contemporary art school offers the right context for this discipline. The anthology includes contributions by Su Baker, Bruce Barber, Mikkel Bogh, Juli Carson and Bruce Yonemoto, Edward Colless, Jay Coogan, Luc Courchesne, Sara Diamond, Lauren Ewing, Gary Pearson, Bill Seaman and Jeremy Welsh.

PUBLISHER
The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6 x 9 in. / 237 pgs.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 5/31/2010
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2010 p. 74   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780919616493 TRADE
List Price: $25.00 CAD $30.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

ABC of De Designpolitie

ABC of the Designpolice

Published by Valiz.
Text by Emily King, Louise Schouwenberg.

The Dutch firm Designpolitie (Richard van der Laken and Pepijn Zurburg) is celebrated for its fresh, deceptively simple and direct approach to graphic design, which often implements bright color and sans-serif typeface in a lively and fun style. Among other projects, Designpolitie ("Design Police") is behind the review column Gorilla in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, in which the team reacts to current affairs with word-and-image graphics. ABC of De Designpolitie is an index of Designpolitie's reflections on design, catalogued in humorously alphabetical order (with failed projects filed under "Damn," or an account of their simplified methods under "Rocket Science"). More of a workbook, a process book or an inspirational resource than a portfolio, ABC collates Designpolitie projects (implemented and otherwise), schemes, photographs, musings and articles in a style that is both serious and replete with irony and self-mockery--a natural extension of the firm's own ethos.

PUBLISHER
Valiz

BOOK FORMAT
Hardback, 6 x 8.5 in. / 480 pgs / 800 color / 50 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 11/1/2008
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2008 p. 104   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9789078088219 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CAD $60.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available