"Art for Obama: Designing for Manifest Hope and the Campaign for Change" (Abrams Image) is set to hit bookstores in October, but some of the details have already been made public. The 176-page book will feature 150 full-color illustrations of art work that depicts or was inspired by Barack Obama and the 2008 presidential election. Some of the artists featured in the book are Ron English, David Choe, Kwaku Alston, Maya Hayuk, Justin Hampton, and Shel Starkman -- and of course, work by Fairey.
Much of the art featured in the book debuted at the Manifest Hope art shows, which took place in Denver during the 2008 Democratic National Convention and in Washington, D.C., preceding Obama's inauguration.
The art that is reproduced in the book includes paintings, collages, photo composites, prints and computer-generated images.
Fairey is co-editing the book along with Jennifer Gross. And lest you think this is just another one of the artist's vanity projects, the publisher has said that profits from the book will be donated to Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the arts throughout the U.S.
-- David Ng Photo: the jacket cover for "Art for Obama." Credit: Abrams Image
Joel Grey always had disdain for people who took photographs with their cellphones.
“To me, that’s like standing in front of the Statue of Liberty or shooting yourself or shooting your friends,” says the 77-year-old Grey. “I never took it seriously.”
Best known for his Tony- and Oscar-winning performance as the malevolent, mischievous emcee in the seminal musical-drama “Cabaret,” Grey has also developed a reputation as a photographer.
He’s published two books — “Pictures I Had to Take” and “Looking Hard at Unexamined Things” — featuring vibrant, colorful images he shot around the world with a Nikon he bought in London in 1972.
“We had a show that sold very well in New York and had another show there about a year ago,” says the father of actress Jennifer Grey. “I have two pieces in the Whitney Museum and one in the New York Public Library.”
And now, with the release of his new book, “1.3: Images From My Phone,” it seems he doesn’t hate cellphone photos anymore.
--Unflattering depiction: Cirque du Soleil founder
sues to halt bio depicting him as a bed-hopping scoundrel with an
inexhaustible appetite for sex, drugs, and a rock 'n' roll lifestyle.
At first look, Andy Warhol’s 1966 self-portrait — with its close-up format, large head and direct stare — appears as if he’s inviting you for an intimate conversation. Yet his hand covers his mouth, denying any further communication and distancing himself from the viewer, a typical trait of his public persona.
Then there’s Alexander Calder, best known for his sculptures and mobiles, who created his 1960 self-portrait with ink but made the lines appear as brittle and inflexible as the wires he used in his better-known artwork. The latter image graces the cover of “Reflections/Refractions: Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century,” a book-catalog that coincides with the exhibition of the same name at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., through Aug. 16.
Curator Wendy Wick Reaves edited the 224-page book, which contains images of 80 color drawings and paintings, each accompanied by the detailed story behind the famous 20th century American artist’s self-portrait.
The majority of the pieces are drawn from a collection of 187 portraits donated to the museum by Ruth Bowman and Harry Kahn in 2002, including works by David Hockney, Edward Hopper, Elaine de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg.
“Although self-portraits have been a grand tradition dating back to the Renaissance, there were fundamental, significant changes in the 20th century,” Reaves said.
One reason is that the 19th century teachings of Darwin and Freud altered the understanding of the nature of self and identity. “Artists, writers and intellectuals were increasingly confronting and exploring their identities,” Reaves said. “The self-portrait was used to navigate this new intellectual terrain.”
For example, rather than portraying his own face, Jim Dine’s 1964 etching shows an empty black bathrobe, because the inanimate object “looked like me,” he explained. Rauschenberg’s 1968 lithograph “Autobiography” takes a different approach, incorporating biographical details such as an astrological chart, an X-ray, a narrative from his life and a photo from his childhood.
Although many of the works, such as Childe Hassam’s 1933 self-portrait, show a sole figure, some put the artist in relation to others, such as Ruth Weisberg’s 1975 “The Gift,” which shows her reaching out to children.
And in some cases, pairs of self-portraits created at different stages in the artists’ careers highlight the changes they have undergone. With its crisp lines, Isabel Bishop’s 1929 etching contrasts with her 1984-85 ink wash on paper, done in barely there brush strokes, showing a woman in the twilight of her career.
-- Liesl Bradner
Left column: Robert Rauschenberg's three-part "Autobiography" (1968). Credit: Copyright Estate of Robert Rauschenberg / Rowman & Littlefield.
Right: Alexander Calder's self-portrait (1960) is on the cover of "Reflections / Refractions." Credit: National Portrait Gallery / Rowman & Littlefield
Cécile Whiting, a professor of art history at UC Irvine, has won the 2009 Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art for her book "Pop L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960s."
The prize is given out by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. Art-related books published in the last three years are eligible for consideration.
Whiting, who previously taught at UCLA for 15 years, said the idea for her book originated from a previously published work that focused on Pop art in New York.
"I wanted to shift toward L.A. and explore how artists became fascinated with the city and how they worked to create an image of it," the author told Culture Monster today.
She said that her book is intended to fill in historical background about the Pop art movement and to bring attention to artists who haven't received adequate recognition, such as Llyn Foulkes, Noah Purifoy and the feminist artists of L.A.'s Women's House.
The award comes with a $3,000 prize. "Pop L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960s" is published by the University of California Press and is available in hardback and paperback editions.
— David Ng
Photo: the jacket cover for Cecile Whiting's "Pop L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960s." Credit: University of California Press.
-- Perks of the job: Alec Baldwin, the voice of the New York Philharmonic, tells David Letterman he'll accompany the orchestra to Hanoi. (video on the jump)
-- Lisa Fung
Top photo: Director Joe Wright and actor Jamie Foxx. Credit: François Duhamel / Dreamworks
Bottom photo: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Credit: Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty Images
The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is a necessary pilgrimage for any cultural enthusiast, and this year's event (running Saturday and Sunday at UCLA) is typically jampacked with writers, publishers and commentators from all intellectual fields.
For arts lovers, there is plenty to choose from this weekend. To help you make your way through the throngs of bibliophiles and tchotchke hoarders, Culture Monster has assembled this modest guide to the festival's arts-related events.
First, a few words of motherly advice: Be sure to bring a map (pdf), plenty of water and comfortable shoes. Most events require tickets, so plan accordingly. Patience helps too. If you accept the fact that there will be crowds of people, some of the whom move very slowly, your time at the festival is certain to be a more pleasant experience.
Keep reading for a roster of arts personalities and organizations scheduled to appear ...
Over at Jacket Copy, our sister blog about all things literary, Carolyn Kellogg writes about the new book "The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes: The Art of Alan Aldridge," which presents a history of the artist's elaborate, psychedelic illustrations.
"Unlike most retrospectives," Kellogg writes, "this book doesn't set up a clear chronology
or thesis -- instead, it leads visually, letting the art and design
create the narrative. In it, text and illustration have traded roles."
Though you may not know the name, you know his work -- whether album covers for Elton John ("Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy") or corporate logos for House of Blues and the Hard Rock Cafe. Aldridge also illustrated the 1973 children's book "The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast," which won a Whitbread award.
By the way, Aldridge will be at Book Soup in West Hollywood at 7 p.m. Wednesday to sign copies.
In today's Arts & Books section, Michael S. Roth reviews the new book "The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution" by Denis Dutton, editor of the website Arts & Letters Daily. In the book, Dutton argues that art in all its various forms arises out of universal biological impulses, and that all cultures have developed artistic practices.
So, art is grounded in biological impulses? What does that mean? Roth explains Dutton's position:
... Viewed from a distance, all human practices are ultimately grounded in biology. (Where else would they be grounded?) You like Britney Spears, and Dutton loves Beethoven. It turns out that both musical choices stem from the preferences that evolved in the Pleistocene environment. Dutton would say the same thing if you preferred Lil Wayne, Wagner, Javanese gamelan or Scottish bagpipe music. Biology really makes no difference to our judgments about music, except in the sense that we can always appeal to it as the ultimate ground of our pleasures and dislikes.
Although Roth points out shortcomings in Dutton's theories, he says the author makes some powerful arguments about philosophy and anthropology surrounding the arts -- and does so with a fair amount of wit to boot.
T.C. Boyle's latest novel, "The Women," revolves around the lives of architecture titan Frank Lloyd Wright and the (four) women who loved him. In Sunday's Arts & Books section, Taylor Antrim reviews the 452-page work, which, as you can see above, was penned by a man who makes his home inside a Wright-designed house in Montecito.
Antrim writes:
... Wright carried on scandalous romances, endured personal tragedy and routinely uttered the kind of gasbag statements that cry out for a rambunctious satirist like Boyle. A humdinger serves as the novel’s epigraph: "Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility; I chose arrogance." The potential for entertainment (and wickedness) is high.
But while "The Women" is diverting and vivid, as most Boyle novels are, it is also remarkably benign in its portrayal of Wright.
Why? Antrim wonders if Boyle sees the architect as a kindred spirit.
To see if that theory holds true, read Mark Rozzo's story here (an online exclusive), which opens with the following quote from Boyle about the similarities between him and Wright:
"We are both architects in a way. We both deal with structure, we are both artists, and we are both egomaniacs. I have worn a cape. There is where we end."
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