Category Archives: Books

New Art Books: “Walton Ford – Pancha Tantra”

walton_ford_update_2020_fp_int_3d_43453_2001151040_id_1294265In this stunning but sinister visual universe, beasts and birds are not mere aesthetic objects but dynamic actors in allegorical struggles: a wild turkey crushes a small parrot in its claw; a troupe of monkeys wreaks havoc on a formal dinner table; an American buffalo is surrounded by bloodied white wolves. In dazzling watercolor, the images impress as much for their impeccable realism as they do for their complex narratives.

At first glance, Walton Ford’s large-scale, highly detailed watercolors of animals recall the prints of 19th-century illustrators John James Audubon and Edward Lear. A closer look reveals a complex and disturbingly anthropomorphic universe, full of symbols, sly jokes, and allusions to the ‘operatic’ quality of traditional natural history.

Walton Ford - Pancha Tantra - Taschen

First available as a signed and limited volume, this updated edition of Pancha Tantra is the most comprehensive survey of Ford’s oeuvre to date, with 40 new works, more than 120 additional pages, and a new essay by the artist. It features dazzling details, an in-depth exploration of his visual universe, a complete biography, and excerpts from his textual inspirations: from Indian folktales and the letters of Benjamin Franklin to the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and Audubon’s  Ornithological Biography.

Also available in an Art Edition limited to 100 copies, each with a print signed by Walton Ford

The artist

Walton Ford, born 1960, studied filmmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design, but soon realized he was a painter. For the last 20 years he has been creating large-scale narrative watercolors. His work has been widely exhibited, including solo shows at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

The author

Bill Buford is an author and New Yorker staff writer, as well as the founding editor of Granta, which he edited for 16 years. His books include Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as a Kitchen Slave. He lives in New York City with his wife and two sons.

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Travel Books: “Sailing The Seas – A Voyager’s Guide To Oceanic Getaways” (2020)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASailing the Seas will take readers on a series of nautical adventures across the globe, from the coast of the USA down to the Caribbean, through classic Mediterranean voyages and on trips in far-flung locations such as Thailand and French Polynesia. Presenting a fresh, younger side of sailing, this volume reveals the sights, sounds, tastes, and experiences that can be had on board a boat.

Since the dawn of time, exploring the world by boat has been seen as the pinnacle of freedom. There is no greater adventure than setting sail, at the mercy of the wind, being sprayed by salty water as you voyage from island to island and sea to sea, discovering new landscapes and cultures.

Sailing The Seas - Gestalten 2020With beautiful photos of locations, detailed itineraries, and “Captain’s Notes” filled with useful tips and insights on destinations, Sailing the Seas will inspire novice sailors and “old salts” alike to take to the waves.

Text and preface by Dayyan Armstrong and Ross Beane

Sailing Collective is comprised of an energetic group of captains, culinary artists, and explorers with a shared enthusiasm for adventure. Their passion lies in curating journeys to the world’s most exotic locations, captained and crewed by talented professionals.

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Best New Fiction Books: “Shadowplay” By Joseph O’Connor – “Ingenious”

Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor“Shadowplay” opens in Dublin in the winter of 1876, with O’Connor painting that ravishing city with a soft lyricism that Stoker himself might have envied: “Smacks heading down the estuary, trailing petticoats of nets, out towards the expanse of the sea.” Stoker, a government clerk who moonlights as a theater critic, is reeling from the visceral intensity of Irving’s performance in Dublin as Hamlet. “Eyes glowing red in the gaslight,” Irving terrifies the audience, “slinking towards the lip of the stage, left hand on hip, wiping his wet mouth with the back of his sleeve. Sneering, he regarded them. Then he spat.” (NY Times Review)

Henry Irving is Victorian London’s most celebrated actor and theater impresario. He has introduced groundbreaking ideas to the theater, bringing to the stage performances that are spectacular, shocking, and always entertaining. When Irving decides to open his own London theater with the goal of making it the greatest playhouse on earth, he hires a young Dublin clerk harboring literary ambitions by the name of Bram Stoker to manage it. As Irving’s theater grows in reputation and financial solvency, he lures to his company of mummers the century’s most beloved actress, the dazzlingly talented leading lady Ellen Terry, who nightly casts a spell not only on her audiences but also on Stoker and Irving both.

Bram Stoker’s extraordinary experiences at the Lyceum Theatre, his early morning walks on the streets of a London terrorized by a serial killer, his long, tempestuous relationship with Irving, and the closeness he finds with Ellen Terry, inspire him to write DRACULA, the most iconic and best-selling supernatural tale ever published.

A magnificent portrait both of lamp-lit London and of lives and loves enacted on the stage, Shadowplay’s rich prose, incomparable storytelling, and vivid characters will linger in readers’ hearts and minds for many years.

Novelist, screenwriter, playwright and broadcaster, Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin. He is the author of nine novels including Star of the Sea, Ghost Light (Dublin One City One Book novel 2011) and Shadowplay (June 2019). Among his awards are the Prix Zepter for European Novel of the Year, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, an American Library Association Award and the Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature. His work has been translated into forty languages. In 2014 he was appointed Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. Twice-Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey has written, ‘There are few living writers who can take us back in time so assuredly, through such gorgeous sentences. Joseph O’Connor is a wonder, and Shadowplay is a triumph.’

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New Art Books: “Vincent’s Books – Van Gogh And The Writers Who Inspired Him”

From Hyperallergic (June 13, 2020):

Vincent's Books Van Gogh and the Writers Who Inspired Him - Mariella Guzzoni - 2020In his paintings we see books on their own, or books in the company of people or other objects; small, lonely ziggurats of books, or a book beside a candle. That last juxtaposition is telling in the extreme. Vincent had a reverence for books. They were sacred ground. They have a kind of inner glow about them.

He reverenced books for their intellectual and emotional content.

He read Dickens, Carlyle, Flaubert, Balzac, Maupassant, and Zola in the original. Dickens and Carlyle were never very easy to read, then or now, but this Dutchman did so. He even read English poetry – John Keats, for example.

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About the Author

Mariella Guzzoni is an independent scholar and translator living in Bergamo. She has been collecting editions of the books that Vincent van Gogh read and loved for many years, and curated the exhibition ‘Van Gogh’s Passion for Books’ at the Sormani Library, Milan, in 2015.

New Travel Books: “Capri – Dolce Vita” (Assouline)

Capri Dolce Vita - Assouline - July 2020Capri, a resort island dating back to the height of the Roman Empire, has long been an extraordinary destination full of ancient charm. Cherished by everyone from physician Axel Munthe, who recommended its clean air to his patients as a cure for bronchitis; to film director Jean-Luc Godard as the setting for his 1963 film Contempt; to literary icons, celebrities, poets, and the jet set, Capri boasts a rich Mediterranean spirit and style that encompasses a wealth of beauty, from gardens to villas to caves to the people walking in the lively Piazzetta, where cars are prohibited and the island’s playful attitude runs rampant. Capri Dolce Vita is a look at this fabled corner of the world through the ages and a celebration of paradise on earth.

Capri Dolce Vita - Assouline - Cesare Cunaccia - July 2020

Cesare Cunaccia is a writer, lecturer, curator, and journalist. He was editor at large for Vogue Italia and L’Uomo Vogue and the antiques consultant for Architectural Digest Italy. He has also contributed to the divisions of Architectural Digest in Germany, China, and Russia, as well as Connaissance des ArtsOpera magazine, and L’Oeil. Cunaccia has published a variety of books, particularly on the Italian artistic heritage, which have been translated into twelve languages.

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Top New Digital Catalogs: “Artbook – D.A.P Fall 2020”

Artbook - DAP Catalog Fall 2020“We are proud to announce the Fall 2020 Artbook | D.A.P. Catalog of new books on art and culture.”

Against the odds, our publishers have produced a collection of gorgeous, generous and enlightening new books on some of the world’s most important and relevant artists—whether they be contemporary–like Kara Walker, Gerhard Richter, William Eggleston or Taryn Simon–or historic–like Hilma af Klint, Claude Monet or Rembrandt. Re-discoveries abound this season in the work of west coast sculptor and ceramicist JB Blunk, a facsimile 1982 dymaxion cookbook for Buckminster Fuller’s eighty-sixth birthday and the ultimate new edition of Helen Levitt’s classic A Way of Seeing, to name just a few.

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Artbook - DAP Catalog Fall 2020 Klee

And yes, Reel Art Press really is publishing a collection of Neal Preston’s photographs of the rock band Queen, with texts from the band.

Literary Profiles: The “Sparkling, Perfect” Prose Of P.G. Wodehouse (BBC)

From BBC Culture (June 2, 2020):

P.G._Wodehouse_-_My_Man_Jeeves_-_1st_American_edition_(1920_printing)_-_CropWith every sparkling joke, every well-meaning and innocent character, every farcical tussle with angry swans and pet Pekingese, every utopian description of a stroll around the grounds of a pal’s stately home or a flutter on the choir boys’ hundred yards handicap at a summer village fete, he wanted to whisk us far away from our worries.

If we’re talking about culture that makes people happy, we have to start with the works of PG Wodehouse. There are two reasons why. One reason is that making people happy was Wodehouse’s overriding ambition. The other reason is that he was better at it than any other writer in history.

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P. G. Wodehouse: A Brief History

P.G. WodehouseThe author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P. G. Wodehouse was born in 1881 and educated at Dulwich College. After two years with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank he became a full-time writer, contributing to a variety of periodicals including Punch and the Globe. He married in 1914.

As well as his novels and short stories, he wrote lyrics for musical comedies with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, and at one time had five musicals running simultaneously on Broadway. His time in Hollywood also provided much source material for fiction.

At the age of ninty-three, in the New Year’s Honours List of 1975, he received a long-overdue knighthood, only to die on St Valentine’s Day some forty-five days later.

Official Website

New Art Books: “Bosch – The Complete Works”

Bosch - The Complete Works - Stefan Fischer - TaschenA bird-monster devouring sinners, naked bodies in tantric contortions, a pair of ears brandishing a sharpened blade: with just 20 paintings and nine drawings to his name, Netherlandish visionary Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516) secured his place as a pillar of art history. To this day, the painter par excellence of hell and its demons continues to puzzle and enthrall scholars, artists, designers, and musicians alike.
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Based on the best-selling XXL edition, which saw TASCHEN commission new and exclusive photography of details and recently restored works, this large-scale monograph presents Bosch’s complete oeuvre. Texts from art historian and Bosch expert Stefan Fischer dissect the many compelling elements that populate each scene, from hybrid creatures of man and beast to Bosch’s pictorial use of proverbs and idioms. By tying together the elusive threads of his oeuvre into one exhaustive overview, this book reveals just what it was about Bosch and his painting that proved so immensely influential.

Bosch - The Complete Works

Features:

  • Impeccable full-page reproductions celebrating the artist’s staggering compositional scope
  • Enlarged details unveiling the most intricate and bizarre scenes as much as the unsuspected technical minutiae, from subtle brush-strokes to the grain of the canvas
  • fold-out spread drawn from the legendary Last Judgement
  • special chapter focusing on Bosch’s most famous work, the mesmerizing and terrifying triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights

The author

Stefan Fischer studied art history, history, and classical archaeology in Münster, Amsterdam, and Bonn. In 2009 he completed his doctoral thesis “Hieronymus Bosch: Malerei als Vision, Lehrbild und Kunstwerk.” His specialist fields are Netherlandish painting of the 15th to the 17th centuries and museology.

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Website

Interviews: Author Peter Boxall On His Book “The Prosthetic Imagination”

In this interview, Peter Boxall answers questions about his new title, The Prosthetic Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life. If the novel has helped to give our world a human shape, it also contains forms of life that elude our existing human architectures: new amalgams of the living and the non-living that are the hidden province of the novel imagination.
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These latent conjunctions, Boxall argues, are preserved in the novel form, and offer us images of embodied being that can help us orient ourselves to our new prosthetic condition.
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Discover more about this title at: https://www.cambridge.org/academic/su…

Podcast Interviews: Filmmaker Jon Wilkman On “Screening Reality”

New Books in History talks to Professional filmmaker Jon Wilkman, who draws on his own experience, as well as the stories of inventors, adventurers, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, and activists who framed and filtered the world to inform, persuade, awe, and entertain.

Screening Reality: How Documentary Filmmakers Reimagined America (Bloomsbury, 2020) is a widescreen view of how American “truth” has been discovered, defined, projected, televised, and streamed during more than one hundred years of dramatic change, through World Wars I and II, the dawn of mass media, the social and political turmoil of the sixties and seventies, and the communications revolution that led to a twenty-first century of empowered yet divided Americans.