This week's @TheTLS, featuring @irinibus on exercise; @wmarybeard on Edmonia Lewis; @annemcelvoy on Germany; Paula Marantz Cohen on Hitchcock; @BarbaraGraziosi on Sappho; a new poem by @hollycorfield – and more pic.twitter.com/tx0L3OgXp2
— George Berridge (@George_Berridge) September 15, 2021
Tag Archives: Books
Photography: ‘Mountain Roads’ By Stephan Bogner & Jan Baedeker (2021)
The new book «Mountain Roads» by photographer Stefan Bogner and author Jan Baedeker is a 496-page tribute to the world’s most beautiful hairpins, serpentines, and alpine roads.
The mountain was there yesterday. And it’ll be there tomorrow. It has no interest in us. Its sense of time is geological, we’re little more than a moth that has landed on its broad flanks a moment ago: the prehistoric hunters, the Roman legions, the pilgrims and medieval traders, the road builders with their dynamite, the royal carriages, the puffing steam trains, the freezing soldiers with their rifles, the first motorists wrapped in clouds of dust and the echo of their engines, the cyclists and their iron thighs and tight trousers, the honking postal coaches, motor-homes and buses, the roaring racing machines – the mountain couldn’t care less. Mule tracks, military thoroughfares, trade routes, panoramic roads – merely fleeting shadows on its elephant skin. When a wave of rock piles up and breaks in the slowest of all slow motion for a billion years – what then is a decade, a century, a millennium?
Architecture: ‘Building Bound to the Ground’
Dig deep into the origins of building. The ground, now often used as a passive foundation for going higher, is rife with possibilities. Bjarne Mastenbroek investigates the relationship architecture has, had, and will have, with site and nature. Through the photography of Iwan Baan and more than 500 analytical drawings by SeARCH, Dig it! dissects structures from the past millennia—some well-known, some previously overlooked. This global survey of nearly 1,400 pages, designed by Mevis & Van Deursen, brings architecture back in harmony with the Earth’s surface. Discover the book: https://www.taschen.com/04697yt
Previews: Times Literary Supplement (TLS) – Sep 10
Travel: Great Escapes USA – The Hotel Book (SEP 2021)
From the Napa Valley to the Hudson Valley, from the Wild West to the South, from the mountains of New Mexico to the coast of Maine: a journey across the USA will take you to legendary landscapes with all kinds of wonderful accommodations. Angelika Taschen presents her favorite destinations: beach houses and desert camps, motels and ranches, mobile homes and tents, resorts and inns.
A Journey to the Finest Hotels in the USA
The USA is one of the most varied and fascinating countries in the world. Its areas of natural beauty such as the Pacific Coast, the Yosemite National Park, and Monument Valley are the stuff of great cinema (Hollywood finds its best settings practically in its backyard). For everyone who explores the USA beyond its big cities on a classic road trip, on the trail of Native Americans and pioneers, in the mountains or by lakes and beaches, unforgettable moments are guaranteed.
In Great Escapes USA, Angelika Taschen presents remarkable places to stay through impressive photography, entertaining texts, and practical details on how to get there, prices, and tips for books and films. Her journey starts on the East Coast, where intellectuals and artists once met in idyllically located country houses such as the Twin Farms in Vermont and Troutbeck in New York State. It continues to the South, where The Moorings Village and Hôtel Peter & Paul, for example, tell of the history of Florida and Louisiana, and Southern belles such as the Commodore Perry Estate in Austin, Texas reveal their glamor.
Travel & Photography: “Wanderlust Alps” (2021)
Stretching from France all the way down to Slovenia, Europe’s most majestic mountain range encompasses eight countries. Wanderlust Alps charts the region’s most treasured routes and guides the reader every step of the way. Aimed at those with an appetite for adventure, this book offers a rich mix of treks for hikers who wish to brave the elements.
Through enlightening maps, first-hand tips, and breathtaking photography, Wanderlust Alps illustrates why the range’s craggy peaks and verdant plains make it an outdoor playground in any season. Expect dazzling content to inspire hikers of any experience and skill level, stunning landscape photography, and helpful hints and information on how best to enjoy more than 50 epic trails.
Alex Roddie is an active backpacker, mountaineer, and climber with over 15 years of outdoor experience. Based in England, he works as an editor, writer, and photographer for outdoor-related print publications and online media. Wanderlust Europe was released by gestalten in 2020.
Previews: Times Literary Supplement (TLS) – Sep 3
Literary Preview: London Review Of Books – Sep 9
Views: ‘Richard Chopping: The Original Bond Artist’
In April 1956, at the suggestion of his friend Francis Bacon, Richard Chopping took the society hostess Ann Fleming to see some of his trompe l’oeil paintings, which were then on show at the Arthur Jeffress Gallery in Mayfair. Impressed by these pictures, Fleming invited the artist to meet her husband, Ian, who was looking for someone to provide dust-jacket illustrations for his James Bond novels.
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Chopping was immediately offered the job, and his striking designs remain the work for which he is best known and are, for many collectors, the reason the novels are particularly prized.
As this small but imaginatively curated exhibition demonstrates, there was a great deal more to Chopping than James Bond. Nevertheless, the highly detailed, finely executed and often macabre paintings he produced for Fleming are characteristic of his work as a whole. Born in Essex in 1917, Chopping moved to London at the age of 18 with little idea of what he wanted to do, but soon got a job on the magazine Decorations of the Modern Home.
Books: ‘Contemporary Japanese Architecture’
The contemporary architecture of Japan has long been among the most inventive in the world, recognized for sustainability and infinite creativity. No fewer than seven Japanese architects have won the Pritzker Prize.
Since Osaka World Expo ’70 brought contemporary forms center stage, Japan has been a key player in global architecture. With his intentionally limited vocabulary of geometric forms, Tadao Ando has since then put Japanese building on the world’s cultural map, establishing a bridge between East and West. In the wake of Ando’s mostly concrete buildings, figures like Kengo Kuma (Japan National Stadium intended for the Olympic Games, originally planned for 2020), Shigeru Ban (Mount Fuji World Heritage Center), and Kazuyo Sejima (Kanazawa Museum of 21st Century Art of Contemporary Art) pioneered a more sustainable approach. Younger generations have successfully developed new directions in Japanese architecture that are in harmony with nature and connected to traditional building. Rather than planning on the drawing board, the architects presented in this collection stand out for their endless search for forms, truly reacting on their environment.
Presenting the latest in Japanese building, this book reveals how this unique creativity is a fruit of Japan’s very particular situation that includes high population density, a modern, efficient economy, a long history, and the continual presence of disasters in the form of earthquakes. Accepting ambiguity, as seen in the evanescent reflections of Sejima’s Kanazawa Museum, or constant change and the threat of catastrophe is a key to understanding what makes Japanese architecture different from that of Europe or America.
This XL-sized book highlights 39 architects and 55 exceptional projects by Japanese masters—from Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Theater, Shigeru Ban’s concert hall La Seine Musical, SANAA’S Grace Farms, Fumihiko Maki’s 4 World Trade Center, to Takashi Suo’s much smaller sustainable dental clinic. Each project is introduced with photos, original floor plans and technical drawings, as well as insightful descriptions and brief biographies. An elaborate essay traces the country’s building scene from the Metabolists to today and shows how the interaction of past, present, and future has earned contemporary Japanese architecture worldwide recognition.
Boomers Daily 