Category Archives: Books

Top Design Books: “Studio Gang Architecture” (2020)

Jeanne Gang ArchitectThe most in-depth exploration of one of the most important, innovative, and creative architecture practices working today.

For the last twenty years Studio Gang, led by Jeanne Gang, has created bold, visionary architecture that engages the urgent social and environmental challenges of our time. This first comprehensive monograph brings together 25 signature projects-from the award-winning Aqua Tower and Writers Theatre to highly-anticipated upcoming buildings for the American Museum of Natural History and O’Hare International Airport-to reveal the resonant concepts and design approach that connect them. With a rich variety of visual materials and short essays by Jeanne Gang, the book elegantly captures the creative sensibility and trajectory of an architecture driven by pressing twenty-first-century questions.

Studio Gang - Architecture - Phaidon - May 11 2020

Studio Gang is an international architecture and urban design practice founded and led by Jeanne Gang. A recipient of the National Design Award in Architecture and numerous other honors, the Studio works as a collective to create projects that foster interaction and connection. Their research-based, interdisciplinary approach has produced award-winning buildings across scales and typologies as well as publications and exhibitions that push design’s ability to effect positive change.

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New Photography Books: “Summer To Summer” – New England Coast Homes

Summer to Summer Houses by the Sea  By Jennifer Ash Rudick CoverFrom the rocky coast of Maine to the sandy beaches of the Hamptons, from Nantucket to Newport, from Fire Island to Fishers Island, from Martha’s Vineyard to Provincetown, summer hours are as varied in style as the people who hightail it to the beach as soon as the temperature climbs. In this lushly illustrated book, author Jennifer Ash Rudick has sought out some thirty of the best.

She invites us to a minimally decorated, Isamu Noguchi–designed home in Northeast Harbor, Maine, and Sister Parrish’s cozily decorated house in Dark Harbor, Maine. We imagine relaxing in comfortably cushioned rattan chair on the sun porch of a Nantucket house designed by Tom Scheerer, taking in the view of Long Island Sound through the glass curtain wall of a sleek house on Fishers Island, and feeling snugly cosseted in a tiny Provincetown cottage.

Summer to Summer Houses by the Sea  By Jennifer Ash Rudick

All we need to do is settle back, kick off our shoes, and let the sun-kissed pages of Summer to Summer wash over us.

AUTHORS

Jennifer Ash Rudick is the author of Palm Beach ChicOut East: Houses and Gardens of the Hamptons, and City of Angels: Houses and Gardens of Los Angeles. A contributing editor to Galerie magazine, she has written for national publications, including the Washington PostW, and Town & Country. With Maysles Films, she produced the Emmy-nominated documentary Iris, and she directed and produced the documentary Diner en Blanc. She lives in New York City and Southampton, NY.

Tria Giovan specializes in photographing interiors, still life, food, and portraiture. The photographer of Out East: House and Gardens of the Hamptons, her work has appeared in Costal Living, EsquireHouse BeautifulTravel & Leisure, and Veranda. Two volumes of her work have been published: Sand Sea Sky: The Beaches of Sagaponaack and Cuba: The Elusive Island. She lives in Sag Harbor, NY, and New York City.

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New Books: “The Louvre – The Many Lives Of The World’s Most Famous Museum” (James Gardner)

The Louvre James GardnerThe fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world’s greatest art museum.

Some ten million people from all over the world flock to the Louvre each year to enjoy its incomparable art collection. Yet few of them are aware of the remarkable history of that place and of the buildings themselves―a fascinating story that historian James Gardner elegantly chronicles in the first full-length history of the Louvre in English.

More than 7,000 years ago, men and women camped on a spot called le Louvre for reasons unknown; a clay quarry and a vineyard supported a society there in the first centuries AD. A thousand years later, King Philippe Auguste of France constructed a fortress there in 1191, just outside the walls of a city far smaller than the Paris we know today. Intended to protect the capital against English soldiers stationed in Normandy, the fortress became a royal residence under Charles V two centuries later, and then the monarchy’s principal residence under the great Renaissance king François I in 1546.

It remained so until 1682, when Louis XIV moved his entire court to Versailles. Thereafter the fortunes of the Louvre languished until the tumultuous days of the French Revolution when, during the Reign of Terror in 1793, it first opened its doors to display the nation’s treasures. Ever since―through the Napoleonic era, the Commune, two World Wars, to the present―the Louvre has been a witness to French history, and expanded to become home to a legendary collection, including such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, whose often-complicated and mysterious origins form a spectacular narrative that rivals the building’s grand stature.

James Gardner

James Gardner is an American art critic and literary critic based in New York and Buenos Aires. He is the author of six books, including Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, and the British Spectator. He was the art critic at the New York Post and wrote architecture criticism for the New York Observer, before serving as the architecture critic at the New York Sun. He is now a contributing editor at The Magazine Antiques.

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Podcast Interview: 56-Year Old British Author Humphrey Hawksley

Monocle 24 'Meet The Writers' PodcastHumphrey Hawksley is an author, commentator and broadcasters. His work as a BBC foreign correspondent took him all over the world, giving him a global perspective that informs his writing. 

His new book, ‘Man on Edge’, puts the reader at the centre of a geopolitical crisis in Moscow.

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Humphrey Hawksley is an English journalist and author who has been a foreign correspondent for the BBC since the early 1980s.

Website

Interviews: “Shakespeare In A Divided America” Author James Shapiro

The Economist Asks PodcastIn a year of plagues, power struggles and star-crossed lovers divided by lockdown, Anne McElvoy asks James Shapiro, author of “Shakespeare in a Divided America”, what the bard would make of it all. Shakespeare is claimed by Americans of all political stripes.

But how can a lad from 16th-century Stratford-upon-Avon illuminate the past and future of the republic now? Plus, what the president might teach the professor about Shakespeare’s work. And, Shapiro prescribes a verse for the trials and tribulations of 2020.

New Photography Books: “Ciao” In Italy By Mario Testino (May 2020)

Ciao BookIn Ciao, Testino handpicks his favorite images of Italy, a country that has featured heavily in his life, from his friendships and breathtaking vistas to quintessentially Italian iconic fashion shoots and Italians’ ever-evolving allure to their effervescent lifestyle. Featuring three sections, IN GIRO (out and about), ALLA MODA (in fashion), and AL MARE (at sea), the result is a highly personal journey across the country through Testino’s lens paying homage to Italy, and it’s culture as well as a chronicle of 40 years of genre-defining photography.

Widely regarded as one of the most influential fashion and portrait photographers, Mario Testino is responsible for the creation of emblematic images, transmitting emotion and energy in an open and intimate way. Throughout his four-decade career, Testino has been on a journey beyond the world of fashion capturing Earth’s traditions and cultures with unparalleled access and an extraordinarily unique point of view.

Ciao

 

Peruvian by birth, Testino’s intimate connection to Italy found its roots in his Italian heritage, but blossomed when he experienced the country for himself. Discovering Italy was, for Testino, synonymous with discovering his passion for fashion. “Rome was all about the hottest, latest trends and fresh new styling, and I loved the way Italians could shed the latest look for an even newer thing without ever losing their own identity.”

The photographer and author

With a four decades career as a leader in the fields of fashion, culture and lifestyle, Peruvian-born Mario Testino OBE has many facets that take him beyond the surface of a photographer and artist placing him as a cultural visionary. Testino’s universe is broad, his impact is uniquely powerful and his lifestyle is completely authentic. Testino’s has seen his works published and exhibited in hundreds of cities around the world. Throughout his career he built unprecedent relationships with editorial and commercial partners such as Vogue, Burberry, and Gucci to name a few. His past and present muses include HRH Princess Diana, Madonna, Donatella Versace, Kendall Jenner and Mariacarla Boscono. His solo exhibitions have shown in museums and galleries worldwide, including the National Portrait Gallery, London; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The contributing author

Alain Elkann is a New York–born author and journalist. Since 1989, he has maintained a weekly interview column for the Italian daily newspaper La Stampa. Elkann has lectured on art, Italian literature and Jewish studies at the Universities of Oxford, Columbia, Jerusalem, Pennsylvania and Milan’s IULM. He is President of The Foundation for Italian Art & Culture (FIAC) in New York and in 2009 was awarded the Légion d’Honneur by the French Republic.

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Interviews: Author Olivia Laing On Her New Book “Funny Weather – Art In An Emergency” (Podcast)

Monocle on Culture Monocle 24 podcastsNovelist and art writer Olivia Laing tells Robert Bound about ‘Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency’, her new collection of essays, columns and character studies from the past decade.

Funny Weather brings together a career’s worth of Laing’s writing about art and culture, and their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keeffe, interviews Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith, writes love letters to David Bowie and Wolfgang Tillmans, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, Funny Weather celebrates art as an antidote to a terrifying political moment.

Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic.  She’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2018 was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction. She’s the author of To the RiverThe Trip to Echo Spring and The Lonely City, which has been translated into 17 languages and sold over 100,000 copies worldwide.

 Her latest book is Crudo, a real-time novel about the turbulent summer of 2017. It was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and a New York Times notable book of 2018 and was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize. In 2019 it won the 100th James Tait Black Memorial Prize. 

Laing’s writing about art & culture appears in the GuardianFinancial Times and frieze, among many other publications.  

Her collected essays, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, will be published on 16 April 2020. She’s currently working on Everybody, a book about bodies & freedom.

Website

 

Art Books: “Velázquez – The Complete Works”

Velázquez The Complete Works Taschen 2020Manet called him “the greatest painter of all.” Picasso was so inspired by his masterpiece Las Meninas that he painted 44 variations of it. Francis Bacon painted a study of his portrait of Pope Innocent X. Monet and Renoir, Corot and Courbet, Degas and Dalí…for so many champions of art history, the ultimate soundboard was—and remains—Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660).

Velazquez The Complete Works
Las Meninas – Diego Velázquez (1656)

This updated catalog raisonné brings together Velázquez’s complete works, jaw-droppingly reproduced in extra-large format, with a selection of enlarged details and brand new photography of recently restored paintings, achieved through the joint initiative of TASCHEN and Wildenstein. The book’s dazzling images are accompanied by insightful commentary from José López-Rey on Velázquez’s interest in human life and his equal attention to all subjects, from an old woman frying eggs to a pope or king, as well as his commitment to color and light, which would influence the Impressionists over two centuries later.

Taschen Logo

The authors

José López-Rey (1905–1991) taught Italian Renaissance at the University of Madrid and worked as an art advisor for the Spanish Ministry of Education. Before the end of the Spanish Civil War, he emigrated to the USA, where he resumed his teaching career at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York. In 1973 he was awarded emeritus status. López-Rey was a corresponding member of the Hispanic Society of America and a consultant and contributor to several international art journals, including the Gazette des Beaux Arts and Art News.

Odile Delenda, graduate of the École du Louvre, served as professor there, and then as deputy head of the department of paintings at the Musée du Louvre until 2007. She has collaborated on several exhibitions of old master paintings. A research fellow at the Wildenstein Institute in Paris since 1990, she has continued her study of Spanish art from the Siglo de Oro. She is, among other works, the author of Vélasquez, peintre religieux (1993) and, under the auspices of the Wildenstein Institute, the first critical catalogue raisonné of the painted oeuvre of Francisco de Zurbarán and his studio (2009/10).

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Housing: “Container Atlas – A Practical Guide To Container Architecture”

Container Atlas seeks out luxurious remote hideaways, urban dwellings, community centers, and more, all showing how the humble container can put the fab into pre-fab.

Container architecture has become an essential part of our twenty-first century surroundings, with it being used to create modular structures for pavilions, brand showrooms, retail premises, and even residential homes. Ten years after the first publication of Container Atlas, this eagerly anticipated follow-up charts how this movement has evolved into an essential part of today’s architectural vocabulary. Container Atlas serves as a practical and inspirational reference not only for architects and engineers, but also for all creatives eager to learn about the rich and diverse language of container architecture and modular building.

Architect and Professor Han Slawik and his team have established themselves as international experts in the field of container architecture. He is the author of the first edition of Container Atlas and has returned to the subject with refreshed insights into this burgeoning movement.

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