recommended art books

[tiny_tove]

angelo cozzi "Innocence in the mirror"
William murrow company NYC, 1978
I wonder is this is somehow exceptional famous or notorious character in Italy? Any italians know something?

I must admit I never heard of him.
The only Cozzi I know is Luigi, the director of crappy movies as Paganini Horror and the quite inventice Contamination.
The criminal who coloured the first Godzilla movie with a Jelly layer and turned the whoole movie Yellow.
But I am going off -topic.
Tomorrow I will attend Arakis' exhibition in Lugano (CH), I hope the catalogue is good.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

KEN-ICHI MURATA "Princess of desire"
edition reuss

Japanese photographer and visual artist Murata creates highly detailed photographic stagings which evocatively depict nude models as though they were characters in an erotic fairytale. His enchanting models blithely shed their clothing and reveal their gorgeous nude bodies. What Murata strives to illustrate with these young girls is the image of the hime: an ancient Japanese word which can denote both a feeling of awe and a yearning for women. The conventional meaning of the word "hime" is noble princess. His second photobook too is a virtuosic and fantastic journey into erotic dream worlds.

This photographer is known perhaps most to be doing works for SM SNIPER magazine in japan. German company put out two books of his works, and they may not have the complete sets of works, but what is important: it's all uncencored! Now you can see the elegance of hand colored black/white images in full page (I mean 24 x 31cm! as opposed to A5 japanese books) with all the genitals without black spots or mosaic! His works are works of genius. Their settings, props, lighting and all the details are top-notch, yet still include all the elements like flat chested jap teenies, shitting, pissing, bondage, etc..

Edition Reuss has done lots of erotic photography books. Never seen single one for sale in Finland. They have russian youthful nudes, japanese stuff, pissing, anal sex, etc etc. Pricey, and therefore I'd hope to get pre-view of content before investing. Out of two books of KEN-ICHI MURATA, this one was better. The other recommended if you have plenty of €€ to spend...

[moozz]

KEN-ICHI MURATA "Princess of desire"
edition reuss

Wow, I really like his style. I need to check out some of his books. It is not too often that I see something I like a lot. Amazing.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

It has text also in English. Explaining the fear of death what artist has, basically shut himself away from life for years etc. I browsed through the books in bookshop in Estonia and bought the better one. Expensive, but worth it.

[absurdexposition]

Tarkovsky Polaroids

Some of it has been digitized here: http://www.diphotos.net/JJ/Tarkovskij/Web/li.htm

[heretogo]

Tarkovsky Polaroids

This looks very good. And only £10 on Amazon... hmm...

[absurdexposition]

I think come payday I'm going to do up a nice little Amazon order. been wanting this one for a while now

[JHC]

Gilles Berquet - Le Banquet
95 pages  Last Gasp (October 2000)

Erotic and mostly bondage themed b&w (and I guess some are filtered/tinted photos) w/ropes and odd contraptions...a handful of pics with women pissing too....good stuff.


also featuring Gilles Berquet work is:

Mïrka
96 pages   Kehrer Verlag; Har/DVD edition (April 1, 2008)


Is photographs of Mïrka Lugosi (GB's muse apparently) frolicking around outdoors mainly looking like a nude 1920s flapper girl with Louise Brooks-like hair but sometimes wearing wigs and masks and usually with shoes on.
Included is dvd that mostly shares same description as the book.

heh....fucking hell what terse descriptions.


Very curious and interested in Francesca Woodman and her works.
Haven't seen any books of FW's stuffs firsthand yet but have seen many of her lonely and utterly depressing photos online.
She flung herself from a window to her death while in her early twenties if I'm not mistaken.

[Cementimental]

Trevor Paglen "I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World" is really nice, good inspiration for pseudo-millitary/occult/industrial noise aesthetic too...

http://www.paglen.com/index.htm

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933633328?ie=UTF8&tag=starwarscust-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1933633328

[FreakAnimalFinland]

One of the best recent art book finds:

Still Life is a unique and hauntingly beautiful photographic study of the Antarctic huts that served as expedition bases for explorations led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton. At the turn of the twentieth century Antarctica was the focus of one of the last great races of exploration and discovery. Known as the 'heroic age', from 1895 to 1917 Antarctic explorers set off from their huts in search of adventure, science and glory but some, such as Scott, were never to return. The World Wars intervened and the huts were left as time capsules of Edwardian life; a portrait of King Edward VII hangs amid seal blubber, sides of mutton, a jar of gherkins, penguin eggs, cufflinks and darned trousers. One of New Zealand's best known photographers, Jane Ussher, was invited by the Antarctic Heritage Trust to record 'the unusual, the hidden and minutiae of these sites'. The Executive Director of the Trust, Nigel Watson, provides a fascinating introduction to the history and atmosphere of each hut and detailed photographic captions. Key points: features Discovery Hut (used by both Scott and Shackleton), Shackleton's Hut and Scott's Hut on Ross Island in McMurdo Sound; unique and intimate glimpse into the lives of Antarctic explorers, a subject that holds great fascination for readers worldwide; large format and seven gatefolds display Jane Ussher's intriguing and evocative photography with stunning impact.

I can't really find any online images what would represent this book well. We're talking about hundreds of A4 pages, in hardcover, with special cloth design attached in it. All full color, but in the best possible tonality! In a way, it is modern, that images are pretty sharp and colors are little bit artificially colored/improved looking. Yet, it's so damn well done, and tastefully done and most of all, this is pretty close to what I have done for years, but haven't really found any books of similar interests. So what it is? Even if few landscape and normal interior photos that may be online make you think it's just "normal" nice photobook, no. It's little different. Vast majority of the book is utmost texture studies of various objects & settings. She doesn't just take photos of "room", but may focus on very small elements. Be it macro-photo of rusty safetypin, be it frozen & torn loop of old rope. Rusty tin can surfaces. Broken penguin eggs. Penguin carcasses. Half "mummified" frozen dog that's been dead for decades... or.. century?! Skulls, jars, boxes, etc. It all plays with colors and textures of corrosion, damage and decay. And she doesn't seem to take a pressure of creating photo that would stand out due some extreme technical quality or extremely unusual target, but merely floods such a massive amount of eye-candy, it is really about photo-book. Not about some individual piece. There are no people in this book. It all simply delivers the abandoned ghost house feeling. The only actually living thing seen in the book is large amount of penguins far away in distance.

I guess book is such a new release, and done by Australian publisher, that perhaps it hasn't properly been scattered around the world. I would have not had high hopes about finding it in Finland, but from Copenhagen one could see one lonely copy asking to be purchased. For what it is, c. 30 UK pound price tag seems cheap as fuck. And not to mention there are plenty to read and many "unusual" solutions, such as extensive amount of 4 pages sized panorama folds inside the book. They really put effort to get this done.  

[moozz]

It has text also in English. Explaining the fear of death what artist has, basically shut himself away from life for years etc. I browsed through the books in bookshop in Estonia and bought the better one. Expensive, but worth it.

Finally got Princess of Desire by Ken-Ichi Murata. Expensive, but worth it, exactly. I am not a big fan of those A5 size art books where the pictures are too small to be fully appreciated. Princess Of Desire is big enough and you can really see lots of detail. Just beautiful. The soft image quality (and the unusual scenarions, of course) adds a dreamlike dimension to Murata's work. I think I need to check out his other books too before they can only be hunted down on eBay.

[ConcreteMascara]

Shunji Ohkura - Tokyo-X - I don't think I've posted about this before, but I've been meaning to. I've had this book for years. It's all photography of Tokyo from the 90's - early 2000's. There's no captions to the pictures, but certain sections clearly focus on specific themes like couples, cameras, architecture, sub-cultures, trash, sex, etc. All black and white photography. I've played with this many times in my personal collage work and demo artwork. Looking through it again last weekend with the girlfriend, I was struck by how good it is. How important the big brother, the gov't is watching theme still is. It also shows just how suffocating Tokyo can feel. I think it's cheap on amazon used right now.

[THE SKIN]

went home with this:

Synopsis
The first hardcover part of the work consists of a series of polaroid pictures, taken in Dark Rooms and Sex clubs. Bruylant chooses not to depict the visitors in action, but focusses on the surroundings. We see parking lots, dressing rooms, staircases, walls,... The second poster edition portrays a more human angle, forming a surreel tableau vivant of the sex club underworld.

masterwork

[THE SKIN]

i'm searching  books about ghosts photo capture.
some advices?

[Black_Angkar]

I just visited germany for a small art tour. Besides experiencing the joys and wonders of superior german playback schlager I also managed to move further to my goal of owning a if not complete so at least all-encompassing library section on the Vienna actionists. Already having one fat volume dealing with all four of them, I was quite happy to get my hands at two books dealing with separate artists, and at beneficial prices as well.

First was Otto Muehl on MAK, just under 400 pages (large format) which I got for the rteduced price of 20 euros. A lot of this I already know or own in other formats, but I thought it was too much of an bargain to miss. There are of course his wonderfully looking actionist documentations, also a lot of his works as a painter and graphic artist. facsimiles of his commune publications, and as well some representations of his later COMPLETELY ATROCIOUS "electric paintings" and film stills, which I do find a little interesting though due to the dirty old man factor still surrounding him. Though the art itself is absolut shit. The book is in german which means I can't really read the texts regarding the commune and actionist eras which would've been interesting. I'm thinking of picking up german nhow as I own a fair share of publicationbs in that language which I really want to get into. The one english part I found is an elogy from 2003 by feminist performancxe/conceptual artist Carollee Schneemann celebrating Muehl for the masculine virility of his art.

Second, and best, is a book titled BRUSEUM which is a monster book dealing with Günter Brus, whom is my favorite of the actionists. Around 650 pages hardcover large format, for only 48 euros. It contains some text, interviews etc of which only one is in english (an article dealing with the political aspect of art and actionism through the use of psychoanalysis, which was very popular at the time). It contains lots and lots of pictures in b/w and color ranging from the actions to facsimiles, graphic works, Irrwish material (often different sketch versions than the ones in Irrwish itself), drawings etc etc. The size of this volume makes it a real carreer-spanning compilation. Absolutely fantastic.