Thurston Moore to launch boutique art publisher

This weekend, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore announced the upcoming launch of Ecstatic Peace Library, a boutique publisher of art books to debut in 2010. Catalogs of the initial releases are being distributed at this weekend's New York Art Book Fair and will be available from the publisher's website on Jan. 1. The publisher intends to release the art books in tandem with recordings from the artist-authors, slated to include Raymond Pettibon, Dave Markey and Kim Gordon, his wife and band-mate.

Moore,  best known for his inventive, dissonant guitar, has also written, edited and art-directed more than a dozen books, including "Mixtape: The Art of Cassette Culture," "We're Desperate: The Punk Rock Photography of Jim Jocoy," "Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy" and "No Wave: Post Punk. Underground. New York."

Lee Ranaldo, the other inventive, dissonant guitar player in Sonic Youth, is also an author, having published tour diaries with Soft Skull Press and other works with independent publishing houses. 

Moore's Ecstatic Peace Library books will be distributed through D.A.P./ Distributed Art Publishers; look for them at bookstores with cool artsy books and museum bookstores near you.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Thurston Moore performs with Sonic Youth. Credit: Barry Brecheisen/WireImage.com

Henry Miller lithograph crops up at estate sale

Onetime Big Sur resident Henry Miller is best known as an author. He wrote the controversially racy "Tropic of Cancer" -- published in 1934 in France, it finally came to America in 1961, where it was the subject of an obscenity trial -- and "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare," a portrait of America's commercialism circa 1945. But he also liked to sketch and paint, often producing brightly colored, whimsical works.

Some of his art is for sale on a website maintained by Miller's daughter, Valentine. She writes:

He painted mainly watercolors, turning out several thousand in his lifetime. He painted for pleasure, enjoying the process of creating. His paintings were shown in exhibitions in the U.S., Japan & Europe.

Many of his watercolors were printed as lithographs, usually in editions of 250-300 prints. Dad would have them stacked on the ping pong table taking time in the day to sign & number them. He was pleased that people liked his paintings, giving them to friends & admirers.

Original watercolors from the Miller family collection are listed on the site for as much as $30,000; signed lithographs are $8,000 to $15,000. Other lithographs, some signed, are available on EBay for a few hundred dollars. And this weekend, a signed Henry Miller lithograph will be among the items offered by Hughes Estate Sales at a sale in Northridge.

The estate belonged to Milt Rosen, who wrote episodes of "My Three Sons," "That Girl," "Bewitched," "The Brady Bunch" and even "The A Team." Like most estate sales, this one includes furniture, china and knick-knacks. The Henry Miller art is something different. And for the literarily inclined, there will be books for sale too.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: dalvenjah via Flickr

Patti Smith at Book Soup on Saturday

Saturday at noon, Patti Smith and filmmaker Steven Sebring will appear at Book Soup to sign copies of "Dream of Life." The book is taken from Sebring's 2008 documentary film of the same name, and is described as "an evocative exploration of the interior life of the artist Patti Smith."

Smith began publishing poetry in the early 1970s and has continued to use books as one of her creative outlets since then. Her most recent work, "Trois," was released in conjunction with a 2008 show at the Cartier Foundation in Paris. It consists of three paperback notebooks: one a combination of text, drawings and photos focusing on Arthur Rimbaud; one photobook; and one journal, half-filled by Smith, the other half empty, to be completed by its new owner.

Will the poet laurete of punk read from her writings? Will she engage with fans? There are no guarantees. In fact, all we know for sure is that she's supposed to show up at Book Soup to sign copies of "Dream of Life," which, judging by Sebring's website, promises to be quite beautiful.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Patti Smith in 1978. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Hey, it's Che Guevara (again)

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

Will Rocco Landesman bring changes to the NEA?

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

'Vietnam Posters' highlights propaganda images

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

Greil Marcus on rock photography

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.

Eric Joyner paints robots. And donuts.

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.

Faces of the right

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

The people of Los Angeles, via Sunset

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