Category Archives: Books

Podcast Interviews: Peter Guralnick- Looking To Get Lost In Music & Writing

The bestselling author of Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll and Last Train the Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, this dazzling new book of profiles is not so much a summation as a culmination of Peter Guralnick’s remarkable work, which from the start has encompassed the full sweep of blues, gospel, country, and rock ‘n’ roll.

It covers old ground from new perspectives, offering deeply felt, masterful, and strikingly personal portraits of creative artists, both musicians and writers, at the height of their powers.

“You put the book down feeling that its sweep is vast, that you have read of giants who walked among us,” rock critic Lester Bangs wrote of Guralnick’s earlier work in words that could just as easily be applied to this new one. And yet, for all of the encomiums that Guralnick’s books have earned for their remarkable insights and depth of feeling, Looking to Get Lost is his most personal book yet. For readers who have grown up on Guralnick’s unique vision of the vast sweep of the American musical landscape, who have imbibed his loving and lively portraits and biographies of such titanic figures as Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, and Sam Phillips, there are multiple surprises and delights here, carrying on and extending all the themes, fascinations, and passions of his groundbreaking earlier work.

New Architecture Books: ‘Contemporary Houses’ – 100 Homes Over 2 Decades

This publication rounds up 100 of the world’s most interesting and pioneering homes designed in the past two decades, featuring a host of talents both new and established, including John Pawson,Shigeru BanTadao AndoZaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron, Daniel Libeskind, Alvaro Siza, and Peter Zumthor.

Accommodating daily routines of eating, sleeping, and shelter, as well as offering the space for personal experience and relationships, this is architecture at its most elementary and its most intimate.

Designing private residences has its own very special challenges and nuances for the architect. The scale may be more modest than public projects, the technical fittings less complex than an industrial site, but the preferences, requirements, and vision of particular personalities becomes priority. The delicate task is to translate all the emotive associations and practical requirements of “home” into a workable, constructed reality.

The author

Philip Jodidio studied art history and economics at Harvard, and edited Connaissance des Arts for over 20 years. His TASCHEN books include the Architecture Now! series and monographs on Tadao Ando, Santiago Calatrava, Renzo Piano, Jean Nouvel, Shigeru Ban, Richard Meier, and Zaha Hadid.

Read more

Interviews: 65-Year Old American Chef Thomas Keller On His Latest Book, Covid & His Restaurants

The 65-year old American chef Thomas Keller discusses his latest book, “The French Laundry, Per Se”. The restaurateur also discusses how his company has fared during the coronavirus pandemic.

Thomas Keller is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook writer. He and his landmark Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry in Yountville, California, have won multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation, notably the Best California Chef in 1996, and the Best Chef in America in 1997.

Photography: Brazilian Vik Muniz – ‘Postcards From Nowhere’ (2020)

Vik Muniz’s series Postcards from Nowhere grapples with how, through photographs, we have come to “see” and understand distant yet iconic sites we may never actually view with our own eyes. “The images we hold in our heads are an assemblage,” notes Muniz. “They are an amalgam of every image of those locations that we have ever seen.” 

Not so long ago, it was relatively easy to wake up overlooking Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong and go to sleep in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge; to travel from Venice to Istanbul in time for dinner. The international network of the art world, in particular, made it easy to slip through time and borders—with the right invitation and the right passport. You may never have been to Basel, Switzerland for the art fairs, but you might certainly feel as though you have, experiencing it exclusively through the spate of other people’s images.

Website

Lifestyle: ‘The Monocle Book Of Gentle Living’

The Monocle Book of Gentle Living is a handbook to help you think about how to reconnect, make good things happen, to do something you care about and discover nice places and extraordinary people along the way.

Sometimes the fixes are simple and personal: to run, dive into a lake, sleep more or set aside some time with the people who make us happy. Maybe it’s about eating food from producers who are proud of its provenance or building spaces into cities that respect older residents and value younger ones. Our editors have brought all this together in one simple book – so how about taking a few moments away from the crush to flick through the pages? Gently does it, now.

Read more

Interior Design Books: ‘Sig Bergamin – Art Life’ (2020)

A vibrant tour of twelve interiors from Brazil to Portugal, Art Life not only celebrates Bergamin’s diverse style, but also highlights his steadfast appreciation for art and history. The result is a kaleidoscopic oeuvre of interiors that serve as cultured dialogues between the comfort of home and the world at large.

Architect and designer Sig Bergamin is known for his eclectic vision and vivid interiors that are the perfect mélanges of chic. A constant traveller, Bergamin loves collecting treasures wherever he goes—totems that inspire and evolve his craft. He is also an avid art collector, a tendency that comes across in each of his meticulously designed spaces, where Warhols, Hirsts and Lichtensteins are seamlessly blended with minimalist and maximalist decor from around the world.

Beatriz Milhazes was born in 1960 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her work is included in important museums and collections such as Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Tate Modern and many more. Milhazes’s practice includes painting, drawing and collage. Characterized by vibrant colors, optical movement and energetic visual cadences, her abstract work fuses a diverse repertoire of images and forms, combining elements from her native Brazilian culture with European abstraction. She lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.

Armand Limnander is the executive editor of W magazine. Prior to that, he was features director at T: The New York Times Style Magazine, the editor of VMan magazine, and a senior writer at Vogue and Style. com. Limnander grew up in Bogotá, Colombia, and moved to the United States to attend the University of California at Berkeley. His books Brazilian Style and Private: Giancarlo Giammetti were published by Assouline in 2011 and 2013, respectively.

Björn Wallander was born in Sweden, where he developed his signature style based in naturalism. His work has taken him worldwide, contributing to global publications including Architectural DigestElle DecorHarper’s BazaarArchitectural Digest India, Vogue India, Vogue Brasil, Casa VogueWSJ Magazine, Departures and Cabana. Although he currently resides a couple of hours outside New York City with his dog Kajsa, he considers himself a world citizen, always with camera in hand.

Romulo Fialdini learned photography while working at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP). While working at the museum he met some of the most influential artists, architects, designers and publishers in Brazil, becoming their friend and photographer. Romulo photographs for many magazines like Casa Vogue and Vogue Brazil. His images are sold at Galeria Raquel Arnaud, in São Paulo.

Sig Bergamin, a graduate from the Santos School of Architecture and Urbanism, is globally acclaimed for his unique style in creating audacious spaces. Throughout a brilliant career of more than thirty-five years, he has built a personal brand and style combining eclecticism, ethnic diversity, humor and versatility, the tools of his trade for his projects in Brazil, the United States and Europe. Owner of an architecture firm in São Paulo with offices in New York and Paris, Bergamin is the author of various national and international publications. An integral part of Brazil’s heritage, he has won international awards for his work and is featured on Elle Decor’s A-List and on Architectural Digest’s AD100 list.

Read and see more

New Books: ‘Information Graphics’ (Taschen)

Our everyday lives are filled with a massive flow of information that we must interpret in order to understand the world we live in. Considering the complex variety of data floating around us, sometimes the best—or even only—way to communicate is visually.

This unique book presents a fascinating perspective on the subject, highlighting the work of the masters of the profession, creators of breakthroughs that have changed the way we communicate. Information Graphics has been conceived and designed not just for graphics professionals, but for anyone interested in the history and practice of communicating visually.

The in-depth introductory section, illustrated with over 60 images (each accompanied by an explanatory caption), features essays by Sandra RendgenPaolo Ciuccarelli, Richard Saul Wurman, and Simon Rogers. Looking back all the way to primitive cave paintings as a means of communication, this section gives readers an excellent overview of the subject. The second part of the book is entirely dedicated to contemporary works by today’s most renowned professionals, presenting 200 graphics projects, with over 400 examples—each with a fact sheet and an explanation of methods and objectives—divided into chapters by the topics Location, Time, Category, and Hierarchy.

Includes:

  • 200 projects and over 400 examples of contemporary information graphics from all over the world—ranging from journalism to art, government, education, business and much more
  • Four essays about the development of information graphics since its beginnings

The author

Sandra Rendgen studied art history and cultural studies in Berlin and Amsterdam. Her work both as an editor and in developing concepts for media installations concentrates at the interface between image culture and technology, with a particular focus on data visualization, interactive media and the history of how information is conveyed. She is the author of TASCHEN’s Information Graphics and Understanding the World.

The editor

Julius Wiedemann studied graphic design and marketing and was an art editor for newspapers and design magazines in Tokyo before joining TASCHEN in 2001. His titles include the Illustration Now! and Record Covers series, as well as the infographics collection and books about advertising and visual culture.

Top New Art Books: ‘Salvador Dalí : The Impossible Collection’

In the popular imagination, possibly no other artist’s work is more recognizable than that of Salvador Dalí. Indeed, for many he is the ultimate mad artist, whose singular vision remorselessly probed his own psychological depths. His nightmarish visions and bizarre landscapes express the angst and turbulence of the twentieth century.

Dalí’s creativity embraced many different modes of expression and was never constrained by any one style. Over eight decades, the prodigious range of Dalí’s activity spanned every conceivable medium, from painting and drawing to sculpture, film, furniture, books, stage design and jewelry, not to mention his highly eccentric public persona, which could be considered an art form in itself.

Selected by curator and art historian Paul Moorhouse, Assouline presents Salvador Dalí: The Impossible Collection, spotlighting 100 works by this extraordinary creative mind, exploring Dalí’s inspirations and array of influences, from Old Masters to realism, Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism as well as experimental approaches that delved into his obsessions with religion, science and stereoscopy.

Paul Moorhouse is a London-based art historian and curator. Currently chief executive of the Anthony Caro Studio, he was senior curator and head of displays at the National Portrait Gallery, London (2005–17) and senior curator at the Tate (1985–2005), where he was closely involved with the creation of Tate Modern and Tate Britain. He has curated numerous exhibitions internationally and published extensively, with books and exhibition catalogues on major modern and contemporary artists, including Anthony Caro, Salvador Dalí, Alberto Giacometti, Howard Hodgkin, Hans Hofmann, Richard Long, Gerhard Richter, Bridget Riley, Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol.

Read more

New Photography Books: ‘Louis Vuitton Fashion Eye Greece’ – François Halard

Famed for his photographs of interiors, François Halard sees himself as a soul hunter, capturing places that are alive, infused with the spirits of their owners. Here, he presents his very personal vision of Greece, and in particular the island of Symi. Classical sculptures, mineral structures and landscapes rising up from the earth fill the pages, tinted in blue tones, as if under the watchful eye of Halard’s mentor, Cy Twombly. Born in Paris to parents who were interior designers, François Halard initially made his name in the world of fashion. Haute couture, ready-to-wear, still‑life vignettes, portraits — his photographs were featured in magazines like GQ, Vanity Fair and French Vogue. But with his travels taking him far and wide, and after many inspirational encounters with artists, he moved away from fashion to hunt down fascinating homes and the souls of their owners. It is said he has photographed more than 4,000 of them. Inspired by the House’s travel heritage, the Louis Vuitton Fashion Eye collection evokes cities, regions or countries through the eyes of fashion photographers, from emerging talents to industry legends. Each title in the series features an extensive selection of large-format photographs, together with biographical information and an interview with the photographer or a critical essay. After Louis Vuitton City Guides and Travel Books, this third collection presents travel photography with a fashion perspective, as the chosen photographers all infuse their images of great cities, faraway places or dream destinations with their unique vision.

New Travel Books: ‘Great Escapes Mediterranean – The Hotel Book’ (Taschen)

Angelika Taschen set out in search of the most beautiful hotels on a great variety of coasts, islands and beaches, taking you on a journey to the luxurious Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc and the ultra-chic Les Roches Rouges on the Côte d’Azur, to the little-known Pardini’s Hermitage on the Italian island of Giglio, which is only accessible by boat or on foot, and to Bodrum in Turkey, where the elegant Amanruya resort lies hidden in one of the most stunning bays in the Mediterranean. 

The Mediterranean is surrounded by three continents – Europe, Africa and Asia – and even though the cultures around this sea are highly diverse, they harmoniously share a pleasant climate, distinctive flora and fauna, and not least the intense blue of the water.

She also presents new hotel concepts, great architecture and creative design – for example the finca Menorca Experimental on the Balearic Islands, the modernist Villa Dubrovnik in Croatia and Dexamenes on the Peloponnese, where new life was breathed into decommissioned wine tanks.

Further highlights are the brand-new, stylishly designed Mezzatorre on Ischia and the Torre di Cala Piccola with its enchanting private beach on the Argentario peninsula in Tuscany, an almost unknown location that possesses the aura of 1960s Italy. Another real gem is La Locanda del Barbablù, with just five rooms in the shadow of the mythical volcano on Stromboli. Look forward to staying at the Nord-Pinus in Tangier with its fantastic view of the Strait of Gibraltar, and the charming Coco-Mat Eco Residences on Serifos, or experiencing the originality of Ammos on Crete, where the art and design are as essential as the sun and the beach!

The editor

Angelika Taschen studied art history and German literature in Heidelberg, gaining her doctorate in 1986. Working for TASCHEN from 1987, she has published numerous titles on art, architecture, photography, design, travel, and lifestyle.

Texts by

Christiane Reiter is a freelance author based in Brussels. She studied journalism at the University of Eichstätt and worked as a travel editor for Ringier Publishing in Munich and Zurich. Later, she established the travel section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.