The photographs in "Postcards of Political Icons," from Oxford's Bodleian Library, are masterful in their manipulation, Andrew Roberts explains in his introduction. "Look at Kemal Ataturk's eyebrows drawn to resemble the wings of an eagle in flight, or Eva Peron's braided blonde hair and lovely smile," he writes. "We should not fall for such obvious tricks of political image manipulation ever again. Yet we doubtless will."
Starting with Kaiser Wilhelm and ending with Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the book includes postcards of heroes and villains of the modern age. Everyone, it seemed — Hitler, Pope John Paul II, Emperor Haile Selassie — wound up on a postcard, usually in a photograph that showed off their leadership or charm.
In this book, anyway. The postcards here are from the collection of John Fraser, an Englishman whose collection began when his mother gave him a postcard of King George VI's coronation in 1944. For the most part, they are straightforward expressions of each leader's desired image. Margaret Thatcher looks vital, powerful, even pretty. Pope John Paul II leans beneficently on a rail rather than scooting by in the toy-like, bulletproof pope mobile. Ronald Reagan clasps arms with Mikhail Gorbachev.
But in America during Reagan's presidency, you were at least as likely to find a postcard of him with his chimpanzee co-star from the 1951 film "Bedtime for Bonzo" as one that portrayed him as a world leader. Then there was the popular Elvis and Richard Nixon postcard, the fading glassy-eyed rock star meeting the overeager, squeaky-clean (but not really) president. Postcards — tiny and cheap — seemed well-suited to comment on power or even take cheap shots at it.
As the book "Che's Afterlife" discusses, the mass circulation of an image — even a politically powerful one — eventually devalues it. This little postcard book is not much interested in that conundrum, but it does a nice job of parsing the images it has included.
The sad thing is that while this is a postcard-sized book and postcard-shaped book, it isn't itself a postcard book. There are no perforated edges, no mailing-weight pages. You may be able to read about Gandhi on a postcard, but if you want to send one, you'll have to go out and find it for yourself.
— Carolyn Kellogg
Image: "Postcards of Political Icons." Credit: Bodleian Library
 With poet Dana Gioia at the helm of the NEA, literature seemed to take a front seat. It was under his tenure that two major reports about the state of reading in America -- "Reading at Risk" and "To Read or Not To Read" -- were issued.
Can we expect the same attention to literary matters from Rocco Landesman? Landesman is the current nominee to head the NEA, and his background is very different from Gioia's. He's helped produce 15 Tony
Award-winning plays and musicals, including “Angels in America” and
“The Producers” and has taught in the theater department at Yale. What's more, Landesman is "devoted to baseball, country music and playing the ponies," according to our blog Culture Monster. “He’s sort of fabledly
impatient, and I think he will be a really interesting fighter for the
arts,” says Steven Lavine, president of the California Institute of
the Arts in Valencia and a member of the National Arts Policy Committee
that advised Obama during his presidential campaign. “He’s seen as
someone who’s willing to place big bets, who wants to accomplish
something, and has this sense of not being very interested in business
as usual.”
... Landesman, 61, arrives
at a promising but difficult moment for the arts. Obama, in contrast to
George W. Bush, who partially rebuilt the agency’s budget from a
Clinton-era low, is seen in the arts community as a president who fully
“gets it” when it comes to culture and creativity. But the nonprofit
arts, which the NEA fosters via grants from a $155-million budget, have
seen their private and public sustenance perilously diminished amid the
economic downturn. So Landesman, who was not available to be
interviewed for this article, arrives with heady expectations as a
change agent but under straitened circumstances that could inhibit
ambitious initiatives.
So maybe it's not just the future of literature at the NEA that's in question, but what kind of resources all the arts can hope for in this economic climate. Ever optimistic about the role of arts in our society, I'm deciding to hope for the best.
-- Carolyn Kellogg Photo: Landesman in 1995. Credit: Joe Tabacca / For The Times
Collector David Heather found a shop in Hanoi that he considered "an Aladdin's cave of old propaganda posters dating from the 1960s to the present." What he found there appears in the new book "Vietnam Posters" from Prestel Publishing -- see our online gallery. In a brief introduction, critic Sherry Buchanan writes that "black, red and gold leaf, the traditional colors of lacquer objects in Buddhist temples morphed into the yellow, gold and crimson of the socialist revolution." This is just one of the intersections that combines to make these prapoganda images so compelling: French artistic techniques were absorbed and adapted, brutalist styles were taught in art schools by visiting Soviet and Chinese artists, and Vietnamese folk art traditions were revived. The North Vietnamese were at war for decades, against the French starting in 1945, and America from 1964-1975. This week marks the 34th anniversary of the fall of Saigon; the posters provide a window into the visual language of the regime that drove two major Western powers away. For all I'm writing here, there is very little writing and the book. At times I wish there was more information: when exactly a poster was printed, who the artist was, if there was a specific event to which the poster was responding or an action it supported. But it's not a history book, it's an art book, and without that context the art -- which is stunning -- stands on its own. The posters appear on entirely white pages that provide, along the margin, English and German translations of what the posters say (Prestel is a German publisher). The poster above reads, "The battlefield needs weapons and munitions." Others in our gallery advocate for more shrimp production, fighting against aggressors and celebrating Uncle Ho. This is the second book from Heather's collection, which must be massive. The
first was 2008's "North Korean Posters." -- Carolyn Kellogg Image: "Vietnam Posters" / Prestel Publishing
Whether you consider Greil Marcus a rock critic who has a knack for cultural criticism or a cultural critic who thinks a lot about rock 'n' roll, it's hard to think of his books "Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century" (1989) and "Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock and Roll" (1975) as anything short of iconic. Which is probably why the Portland Museum of Art in Maine asked him to give a talk last month to celebrate the opening of its exhibit "Backstage Pass: Rock & Roll Photography."
The Phoenix talked to Greil Marcus as he was still thinking about his speech. At first, he said, rock photography was about capturing a single powerful image. When Baron Wolman, Rolling Stone's first chief photographer, had the chance to shoot Johnny Cash or B.B. King or Phil Spector, the point was to get the shot, the one picture that would capture both the essence of the person and also fix his or her place in the firmament, by picturing his or her aura or by creating it. The pictures that resulted were pictures of self-possession, of command, of thoughtfulness, of reserve — not abandon, excess, wildness. They were pictures of people who, the pictures said, already knew that they had historical roles to play.
While some critics consider punk as having an authenticity that the '60s had lost, Marcus sees what happened with the intersection of punk music and photography as a snowballing artifice. Early punk performance in the U.K., L.A. and San Francisco especially was extreme, unpredictable and sometimes aggressively or accidentally violent. People tried to capture that on film or even provoke or demand extreme physical action to document it — and performers and especially audiences tried to live up to what photographers wanted and, more to the point, what they felt was expected or demanded of them. Finding real moments in such situations — and documenting them — was not easy.
Photography must be as subjective as any other documentary form, but Marcus notes an interesting tension between rock photography and its subject. Ultimately, photographs, which are presumed to record reality, work through silence and mystery, and the silence is part of the mystery, and the mystery is part of the silence.
The "Backstage Pass: Rock & Roll Photography" exhibit is in Portland until March 22. Greil Marcus' new writing can be found in his regular column "Real Life Top 10" in The Believer magazine.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo credits: Jim Morrison: Associated Press. Bob Dylan: AP Photo/Sony BMG, William Claxton.
Maybe you already know Eric Joyner's work; lots of people do. The folks at Spectrum Fantastic Art have given him awards; the San Francisco Chronicle has hired him; he's collected by technology executives and actor Andy Richter. But I came to him only after picking up "Robots & Donuts: The Art of Eric Joyner" from Dark Horse Books.
Joyner's robots are often travelers, sometimes through space, sometimes through time, sometimes through discontinuously pastoral landscapes. Modeled, mostly, on old toys from Japan, Joyner's robots have an out-of-time quality, a vintage vision of a future that will never come to pass. They are rendered with visible brush strokes, transforming them from stamped tin to something more organic. The robots, as above, are sometimes at rest. But often they do battle -- with each other and with classic sci-fi monsters. And with donuts.
"Glazed" (after the jump) was the first painting in which Joyner pitted donuts against robots. The donuts are enormous, rolling in like tanks, robots stuck helplessly in the glaze. In other paintings, the donuts are flying saucers or wield lasers. But donuts aren't always adversarial -- they can also be simple delicious objects of desire. Does it make sense? Not in our the real world. But in Joyner's it does.
Joyner's notes in the book reveal that he's unlike the stereotype of an artist driven by a singular vision. His boxing series, based on Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, is just one that was prompted by a fan's suggestion. In "The Blow," Joyner played off the 1924 "Dempsey and Firpo" painting by George Bellows, replacing the sweaty men with matching competitors of blue and red plastic. It's after the jump.
Read on »
When Jona Frank read a 2005 New Yorker story about the new, highly conservative and wildly ambitious Patrick Henry College, she was compelled to go and see its students for herself. The result is more than two years of photographs gathered in "Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League" from Chronicle Books, and an exhibit, now open, at the Sherry Frumkin Gallery.
Frank -- whom I went to college with years ago, at the (by comparison) moderately conservative and not particularly ambitious University of Southern California -- has focused her photography on teenagers, and also on sameness (a recent project was on twins). As the book begins, boy after teenaged boy appears in shirt and tie, girls in politely mature outfits; almost all appear ready to be decisionmakers in Washington -- roles PHC grooms them for -- bending the culture to their way of thinking.
And their way of thinking is clear: "The Mission of Patrick Henry College," its website declares, "is to prepare
Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture
with timeless biblical values and fidelity to the spirit of the
American founding." God and the Bible appear frequently in the pages of schoolwork that Frank shoots against plain white background, much of it from the homeschooling PHC students undertake instead of attending public high school. She returns to the homes of a few students, photographing their often-large families (one has 10 children, ages 21 to 2) standing together or one by one, framed against the same background. Although there are a few shots of people in action, generally these are portraits, people looking directly at the camera.
In all the displays of sameness, little differences emerge. Details take on greater meaning, making the viewer pay closer attention to a smirk, a wrinkled brow, a slightly upturned chin. Noticing difference becomes a key to understanding.
PHC has a strong internship program, as the book's final section,"Interns," demonstrates. Students are photographed in their workplaces: at Fox News, in Congress, Slate magazine, at the White House National Economic Council. They are taking their place in formulating the culture.
But if you're thinking that this is a liberal's terrified look into the
conservative abyss, think again. Frank could have focused on
dogmatists, perhaps, but she does not. A few interviews with students, especially toward the end
of book, show a genuine questioning, examinations of the school's
failings that are measured and fair. Although the students wouldn't think to question their conservative values, the book shows they can turn
their critical thinking skills on the college that shaped them.
The show, which is open now, holds its reception next Saturday, Jan. 24, at the Sherry Frumkin Gallery in Santa Monica.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photos: Jona Frank
Photographer Patrick Ecclesine's "Faces of Sunset Boulevard" travels along Sunset from downtown -- Mayor Villaraigosa is the book's first face -- all the way to the beach. But where Ed Ruscha famously, in "Every Building on the Sunset Strip" (1966), captured the visuals of the street itself, Ecclesine tries to tell a more human story. Sunset serves as an occasional visual backdrop and as a narrative path through the city's population.
The book is mostly staged portraits, with a few street snapshots. Every picture is accompanied by a brief statement by the subject. Almost all the photographs have the polished, almost plastic beauty often associated with this city. Where but in Los Angeles could you find a Realtor who's happy to pose in a bikini -- and, when she does, looks both cheerful and stunning?
Well, actually, Beverly Hills. The book is organized by neighborhood, traveling through Echo Park, Silverlake, East Hollywood, Beverly Hills, the Pacific Palisades and more. There's something poetic about West Hollywood, with its fame seekers, being shot entirely, glamorously, at night. Along the route, Ecclesine captures people from many walks of life: a cook; a cowboy; construction workers; families; teenagers; a drug addict; and a philanthropist with, it appears, a pet tiger. He gets celebrities too: Larry King (the CNN building is on Sunset Boulevard), Arnold Schwarzenegger (who lives in Bel-Air, a gated community off Sunset), and Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman, whose dad wrote "Gidget" about her and her friends (at 60, she returned to surfing off Malibu, where Sunset ends).
The book, moving along its westward trajectory, begins its story with outsiders and people in desperate circumstances, moves on to those who aspire and those who have been left behind, then focuses on the successful, on the really, really big successes and, then, those too cool to care about success. This representation of the city may be somewhat two-dimensional, but that certainly doesn't make it untrue.
Within each neighborhood, the pictures jump back and forth along Sunset, which I found disorienting at first. And I was disappointed when Ecclesine left the road altogether to pose his subjects in rather elaborate, thematic setups, such as L.A. Lakers' owner Jerry Buss in a yard with his family and a gaggle of performing Laker Girls. But perhaps I'm too literal -- Ecclesine's emphasis is on the people, not the street. And he's got an eye for a magazine-like, flattering beauty: Everyone glows -- the monks at the Self-Realization Fellowship as well as the people waiting for the bus. And the bus driver too.
In addition to being found in the book, Ecclesine's photos are on display at ArcLight Hollywood through Feb. 4.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo credit: Patrick Ecclesine
This illustration by J.C. Leyendecker appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in late 1908. It was one of his earliest New Year's babies; his first -- the first -- was in 1906.
Leyendecker had a gift for creating holiday icons as well as portraying impossibly handsome men for advertisements and magazine covers (one was his life partner, model Charles Beach). At the top of his game, Leyendecker was America's top illustrator, throwing high society parties and renting a studio in Texas Guinan's building, where he had a dumbwaiter that ran to her speakeasy. Young Norman Rockwell so wanted to learn from Leyendecker that he moved to a home near his in a New York suburb. Leyendecker's story, along with a vast showcase of his work, can be found in the book "J.C. Leyendecker: American Imagist," reviewed this Sunday.
Today is Wednesday, and the New Year is knocking at the door. May your 2009 be rosy-cheeked and carrying a big sack of books.
Happy new year from Jacket Copy!
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: American Illustrators Gallery NYC / 2008 © by National Museum of American Illustration, Newport, R.I.
The University of Virginia hosts a library -- or gallery -- called Artists' Books Online. It's a highly academic resource that includes "facsimiles, metadata, and criticism." It's also got a lot of pretty pictures.
Artists' books are, generally, books made by people in the world of visual arts who have taken the book/book-like object on as an art form. They gained enough traction so that "The Journal of Art Books," which undertook the "creative exploration of the intersections of book arts, artists' books, poetry, photography, experimental literature, and other book-related creative endeavors," was launched in 1994. The journal, published twice a year until 2003, and all its issues have found a home on the Artists' Books Online website. All these issues, along with a wide range of the works themselves, appear on the website.
It is not surprising that the crossed threads of visual arts and storytelling eventually got wrapped up on the Internet. What is surprising, perhaps, is the thoroughness with which the works are presented here. Cataloged and categorized, explained and explored, most of the works have been photographed from cover to cover, and can be perused through a flash interface. Visiting the site is like standing in a library, being able to pull any book off the shelf and flip through at will.
The project was headed up by Johanna Drucker, who was recently appointed the inaugural Bernard and Martin Breslauer Professor of Bibliography at UCLA's Department of Information Studies. She is the author of several books, including "SpecLab: Digital Aesthetics and Projects in Speculative Computing" (2009), "Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity" (2005), both by the University of Chicago Press, and "The Surprise Party Or: on not going not ongoing," (1977) pictured above.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: Artists' Books Online
Yaddo is the sylvan New York retreat that has been welcoming writers and artists since 1926. The elite artists' colony is remembered, collage-style, in a new book, "Yaddo: Making American Culture." Susan Salter-Reynolds writes that editor Micki McGee has gathered "photos, letters and other ephemera from the Yaddo
archives to create a portrait of collaboration and community."
The book accompanies an exhibit at the New York Public Library that opened in October and will remain on display until Februrary, good news for those who will be in New York over the holidays.
Notable members of the Yaddo community include James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Leonard
Bernstein, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Truman Capote, John Cheever, Aaron Copland, Sylvia Plath and Flannery O’Connor. Its alumni have won 59 National Book Awards, 63 Pulitzer Prizes, 45 Whiting Writers Awards, 25 Macarthur Fellowships and one Nobel. Yes, they work very hard at their art.
But as the New York Times noted in its review of the show's opening, many of them also played at Yaddo -- and played around. "John Cheever used to boast that he had enjoyed sex on every flat surface in the mansion, not to mention the garden and the fields," writes Charles McGrath. Other Yaddo pairings include Truman Capote and Newton Arvin and Henry Roth and Muriel Parker. As for secret dalliances? Who can keep track.
Not that such behavior was encouraged. Notes show fears that Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Henry Miller might all cause too much trouble. It's interesting that the book and exhibit include these traces of poor judgment alongside rhapsodic memories.
And the fact that the committee sometimes makes mistakes must be reassuring for the hundreds of applicants that are turned away by Yaddo each year.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
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Book Editor, Los Angeles Times
Deputy Book Editor, Los Angeles Times
Lead blogger, Jacket Copy
email: jacketcopyla [at] gmail.com
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Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times