"Days in The Life" book by Philip Willey

Synopsis
  Simon is a groovy young rock writer in Swinging London who always manages to be in the right place at the right time. We follow him to the TV studios where Ready Steady Go is produced, then on to the flat of art dealer Robert Fraser where only the hippest of the hip hang out. He drives out to Weybridge to visit John Lennon, Abbey Road Studios where Sergeant Pepper is being made, and the Bag of Nails club for the London debut of Jimi Hendrix. Many years later, in Bermuda, he reflects on his life and has an encounter with John Lennon’s ghost. All that in 54 pages, 9 beautifully illustrated. Fact or fiction? Or a mixture of both? Read it and decide for yourself.

 Here you have the new book about John Lennon by our collaborator Philip Willey illustrated by :

Carollyne Yardley, Lance Austin Olsen, Michael Lewis, Lyle Schultz, Robert Amos, Roy Green, Brad Pasutti and Darren White.

to buy the book go to : 

www.philipwilley.com

The Future of The Image by Jacques Ranciere - March 2012 - Book of the Month

In "The Future of the Image", Jacques Ranciere develops a fascinating new concept of the image in contemporary art, showing how art and politics have always been intrinsically intertwined. Covering a range of art movements, and thinkers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Adorno, Barthes, Lyotard and Greenberg, Ranciere argues that contemporary theorists of the image are suffering from religious tendencies. He suggests that there is a stark political choice in art: it can either reinforce a radical democracy, or create a new reactionary mysticism. For Ranciere there is never a pure art: the aesthetic revolution will always embrace egalitarian ideals.

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The Virtual Window - February 2012 - Book of The Month

As we spend more and more of our time staring at the screens of movies, televisions, computers, and handheld devices--"windows" full of moving images, texts, and icons--how the world is framed has become as important as what is in the frame. In The Virtual Window, Anne Friedberg examines the window as metaphor, as architectural component, and as an opening to the dematerialized reality we see on the screen.In De pictura (1435), Leon Battista Alberti famously instructed painters to consider the frame of the painting as an open window. Taking Alberti's metaphor as her starting point, Friedberg tracks shifts in the perspectival paradigm as she gives us histories of the architectural window, developments in glass and transparency, and the emerging apparatuses of photography, cinema, television, and digital imaging. Single-point perspective--Alberti's metaphorical window--has long been challenged by modern painting, modern architecture, and moving-image technologies. And yet, notes Friedberg, for most of the twentieth century the dominant form of the moving image was a single image in a single frame. The fractured modernism exemplified by cubist painting, for example, remained largely confined to experimental, avant-garde work. On the computer screen, however, where multiple "windows" coexist and overlap, perspective may have met its end.In this wide-ranging book, Friedberg considers such topics as the framed view of the camera obscura, Le Corbusier's mandates for the architectural window, Eisenstein's opinions on the shape of the movie screen, and the multiple images and nested windows commonly displayed on screens today. The Virtual Window proposes a new logic of visuality, framed and virtual: an architecture not only of space but of time.

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Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile by Philippe Bordes - Book of the Month - December 2011

This beautifully illustrated book, originally published in 2005 in conjunction with a major traveling exhibition, is the first to examine the transformation of Jacques-Louis David’s work during the post-Revolutionary period (1800–1825). Each of the works––many of which were previously unknown or inaccessible––is reproduced in color and accompanied by detailed scholarly information. Drawing on many new documents and close analysis of the works featured in the book, Philippe Bordes offers a revisionist view of this deeply reactive artist and the creative output of his “second” career.
“A beautiful book and a significant contribution to our understanding of David’s place in art history.”—Art Times"Bordes gives his readers the benefit of years spent looking at these paintings and drawings, as well as his encyclopedic knowledge . . . of the artistic, social and political histories of the period.”—Louise Govier, The Art Book“[A] marvelously produced catalogue . . . meticulous and informative.”—David A. Bell, New Republic

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Looking In: The Art of Viewing by Mieke Bal - October 2011 – Book of the Month

Mieke Bal is one of Europe's leading theorists and critics. Her work within feminist art history and cultural studies provides a fascinating alternative to prevailing thinking in these fields. The essays in this collection include Bal's brilliant analyses of the:

Myth of Rembrandt, Imagery of Vermeer, Baroque of Caravaggio, Neo-Baroque of David Reed Culture of the museum, Visual representation of rape, Closet in Proust

Bal brings a keen visual sense to these studies, as well as an understanding of how literature represents visuality and how the ethics and aesthetics present within museums affect the cultural artifacts displayed.
In his engaging commentary, eminent art historian Norman Bryson shows how Bal's original approach to the interdisciplinary study of art and visual culture has had wide- reaching influence.
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"Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before" by Michael Fried - July 2011 - Book of the Month

From the late 1970s onward, serious art photography began to be made at large scale and for the wall. Michael Fried argues that this immediately compelled photographers to grapple with issues centering on the relationship between the photograph and the viewer standing before it that until then had been the province only of painting. Fried further demonstrates that certain philosophically deep problems—associated with notions of  theatricality, literalness, and objecthood, and touching on the role of original intention in artistic production, first discussed in his contro­versial essay “Art and Objecthood” (1967)—have come to the fore once again in recent photography. This means that the photo­graphic “ghetto” no longer exists; instead photography is at the cutting edge of contemporary art as never before.

Among the photographers and video-makers whose work receives serious attention in this powerfully argued book are Jeff Wall, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Luc Delahaye, Rineke Dijkstra, Patrick Faigenbaum, Roland Fischer, Thomas Demand, Candida Höfer, Beat Streuli, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, James Welling, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. Future discussions of the new art photography will have no choice but to take a stand for or against Fried’s conclusions.    

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" An Object of Beauty " by Steve Martin - June 2011 - Book of The Month

Lacey Yeager is young, captivating, and ambitious enough to take the NYC art world by storm. Groomed at Sotheby's and hungry to keep climbing the social and career ladders put before her, Lacey charms men and women, old and young, rich and even richer with her magnetic charisma and liveliness. Her ascension to the highest tiers of the city parallel the soaring heights--and, at times, the dark lows--of the art world and the country from the late 1990s through today. 

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Kitaj by Marco Livingstone - April 2011 - Book of the Month !

R. B. Kitaj (1932-) is recognized as a modern master whose powerful, controversial and highly personal paintings, pastels and drawings reflect his unfashionable commitment to the human figure as a subject, and his complex involvement with the art of the past, with political and social issues, and with his own Jewish identity. Marco Livingstone's definitive and much praised monograph on Kitaj is based on an extraordinary series of interviews and letters between the artist and the author, and provides full and up-to-date documentation of Kitaj's life and work. The artist himself participated actively in the design of the book, and a series of articulate and revealing 'prefaces' to his own paintings are also included here. For this expanded third edition, the author has written a new chapter surveying Kitaj's work in the 1990s, a tragic period dominated by his now famous confrontation with the critics of his 1994 retrospective exhibition, the subsequent death of his wife the artist Sandra Fisher, and his eventual return to the United States. This text is complemented by a new plate section illustrating 22 recent works, and three additional 'prefaces' written by the artist. The Bibliography and Catalogue of Works have been expanded and updated, and finally many illustrations that were black-and-white in earlier editions are now reproduced in full colour. With its fresh account of a productive and turbulent phase in Kitaj's career, this new edition will be indispensable for all admirers of the artist. 

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The Music of Painting: Music, Modernism, and the Visual Arts from the Romantics to John Cage by Peter Vergo - March 2011 - Book of the Month !

A sequel to Phaidon's That Divine Order, (2005), which surveyed the relationship between music and the visual arts from ancient times until the mid-eighteenth century, The Music of Painting continues this fascinating study in the period covering the emergence and development of Modernism, c.1850-1950. Composers and artists repeatedly borrowed from one another, yet their motives have seldom been explored. Professor Peter Vergo provides a broad analysis of changes in the character of the analogies drawn at different times, using in his analysis critical and philosophical sources as well as evidence about artistic and musical practice.

Music has inspired some of the most progressive art of our time from the abstract painting of Wassily Kandinsky to the mid-century experimental films of Oskar Pischinger. The most complete examination of this phenomenon to date, The Music of Painting features major works of art plus related documentation, focusing on abstract and mixed-media art forms and their connections to musical forms as varied as classical and jazz.

About the Author

Peter Vergo is Professor of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex, and author of That Divine Order and Art in Vienna 1898-1918, both published by Phaidon. 

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Art in Mind: How Contemporary Images Shape Thought by Ernst van Alphen - February 2011 - Book of The Month

Art has the power to affect our thinking, changing not only the way we view and interact with the world but also how we create it. In Art in Mind, Ernst van Alphen probes this idea of art as a commanding force with the capacity to shape our intellect and intervene in our lives. Rather than interpreting art as merely a reflection of our social experience or a product of history, van Alphen here argues that art is a historical agent, or a cultural creator, that propels thought and experience forward.
Examining a broad range of works, van Alphen—a renowned art historian and critic of cultural theory—demonstrates how art serves a socially constructive function by actually experimenting with the parameters of thought. Employing work from artists as diverse as Picasso, Watteau, Francis Bacon, Marlene Dumas, and Matthew Barney, he shows how art confronts its viewers with the "pain points" of cultural experience—genocide, sexuality, diaspora, and transcultural identity—and thereby transforms the ways in which human existence is conceived. Van Alphen analyzes how art visually "thinks" about these difficult cultural issues, tapping into an understudied interpretation of art as the realm where ideas and values are actively created, given form, and mobilized. In this way, van Alphen's book is a work of art in itself as it educates us in a new mode of thought that will forge equally new approaches and responses to the world.


"This book advances a strong and original claim: that art, in this case contemporary art, thinks. And in this study, thought is always visual. The style is clear, animated, and free of jargon. Anyone interested in contemporary art or philosophy will find this book informative, thought provoking, and rewarding."—Norman Bryson, author of Looking at the Overlooked

"A highly original interdisciplinary study about the functions of the image in contemporary art and literature. Van Alphen brilliantly demonstrates how a theory of images developed from art and literature can contribute to a rethinking of traditional forms of human identity. Clearly and lucidly written, Art in Mind is a work of true significance."—Matthew Biro, author of Anselm Kiefer and the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger

About the Author

Ernst van Alphen is the Queen Beatrix Professor of Dutch Studies and professor of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as professor of literary studies at the University of Leiden. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Armando: Shaping Memory; Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in Contemporary Art, Literature, and Theory; and Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self.

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Art Power by Boris Groys –January 2011– Book of the Month

Winner of the 2009 Frank Jewett Mather Award given by the College Art Association (CAA).
Art has its own power in the world, and is as much a force in the power play of global politics today as it once was in the arena of cold war politics. Art, argues distinguished theoretician Boris Groys, is hardly a powerless commodity subject to the art market's fiats of inclusion and exclusion. In Art Power, Groys examines modern and contemporary art according to its ideological function. Art, Groys writes, is produced and brought before the public in two ways—as a commodity and as a tool of political propaganda. In the contemporary art scene, very little attention is paid to the latter function; the official and unofficial art of the former Soviet Union and other former Socialist states, for example, is largely excluded from the field of institutionally recognized art, usually on moral grounds (although, Groys points out, criticism of the morality of the market never leads to calls for a similar exclusion of art produced under market conditions).
Arguing for the inclusion of politically motivated art in contemporary art discourse, Groys considers art produced under totalitarianism, Socialism, and post-Communism. He also considers today’s mainstream Western art—which he finds behaving more and more according to the norms of ideological propaganda: produced and exhibited for the masses at international exhibitions, biennials, and festivals. Contemporary art, Groys argues, demonstrates its power by appropriating the iconoclastic gestures directed against itself—by positioning itself simultaneously as an image and as a critique of the image. In Art Power, Groys examines this fundamental appropriation that produces the paradoxical object of the modern artwork.

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Your Engagement Has Consequences: On the Relativity of Your Reality –December 2010 – Book of the Month

Olafur Eliasson’s large-scale installations addressing aspects of human perception are as fascinating as they are unsettling. Eliasson believes that art is a practice through which vital aspects of society and life may be examined, challenged, and renegotiated. Cultural practices such as art are not driven by capitalistic values, but operate through reflection on the values that define sociality, on the way that experience and ethics are intertwined, and ultimately on how subjectivity is defined. Eliasson’s interest in architecture, space, time, and art thus comes from a fundamental interest in human beings and in our potential to re-evaluate the conditions that determine or influence our sense of subjectivity. Eliasson explores these aspects of his work in this volume which documents in detail three exhibitions: Your Light Shadow, Hara Museum, Tokyo; Notion Motion, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and The light setup, Malmø Konsthall. This volume also contains a seminal text by the artist.
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Telling Stories:Philip Guston’s Later Works-October 2010-Book of The Month

In Telling Stories, David Kaufmann focuses on Philip Guston's controversial figurative paintings of the late 1960s and 1970s. He looks at the early critical reception of these works to see what the artist was actually doing and, at another level, to investigate the odd alchemy of artists and their audiences. Grounding his historical approach in careful readings of the paintings, Kaufmann pays close attention to Guston's intense and complicated relationship to Judaism. At the same time, by situating Guston in the context of the fashions of the New York art world, Kaufmann provides unique insight into the workings of that world at the moment when the strictures of artistic modernism began to fade.
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Sweet Dreams -Contemporary Art and Complicity- September 2010- Book of The Month

Sweet Dreams - Contemporary Art and Complicity
Johanna Drucker

" Sweet Dreams challenges the critical legacy of the avant-garde and postmodern art movements through a lively survey of the re-emergent studio culture... A helpful and eye-opening guide for the novice as well as the artist and critic "
Sarah Estes Graham


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Seven Days in the Art World - August 2010 - Book of the Month

 " the best book yet written about the modern-art boom ... a Robert Altmanesque panorama of the most important cultural phenomenon of the last ten years"
- Sunday times ( London )



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Botero -July 2010 - Book of the Month

Botero -Philosophy of the Creative Act 
Marcel Paquet
Mallard Press

Botero is the best known and most highly regarded Latin American artist at work today.His entirely original style of painting bears correspondances to the school of Latin American writers headed by Garcia Marquez.For him the widdly imaginative is commonplace and is rendered as faithfully as one would an everyday landscape.His work is rooted in the fertile quasi-magical soil of his native Colombia.
Botero's world is an extraordinary place.His inflated figures are whimsical yet full of sorrow as they peer out on the improbabilities of the world around them,and his apparent naivete disguises penetrating cultural and political analysis.Intense and evocative,Botero's powerful work takes hold of the viewer and transforms commonly held notions about art and perception.

Translate3d by Susan Resnick 

Kokoschka 'Great Modern Masters'-June 2010- Book of the Month

KokoschkaGreat Modern Masters Series
By Cameo/Abrams

Harry N. Abrams Inc.Translated from the Spanish by Diana Cobos
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" A mayor figure in the Expressionist movement, Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) studied in Vienna,and early in his career was strongly influenced by Art Nouveau,particularly the elegant style of Gustav Klimt. Around 1909 he painted the first of his Expressionist portraits, which seem to reveal their sitters' emotional life. The restless draftsmanship and broken patterns of colour in these likenesses predict the emergence of the artist's mature style in such paintings as Bride of the Wind of 1914. "

Matisse the Master-May 2010-Book of The Month

Matisse The MasterA life of Henri Matisse
The Conquest of Colour
1909-1954

By Hilary Spurling

Alfred A. Knopf - New York 2005
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" If my story were ever to be written down truthfully from start to finished, it would amazed everyone," wrote Henri Matisse. It is hard to believe today that Matisse, whose exhibitions draw huge crowds worldwide, was once almost universally reviled and ridiculed. His response was neither to protest not to retreat; he simply pushed on from one innovation to the next, and left the world to draw its own conclusions. Unfortunately, these were generally false and often damaging. Throughout his life and afterward people fantasized his models and circulated baseless fabrications about his private life.

Art Encounters,Thought Beyond Representation-April, 2010-Book of the Month

Art Encounters
Thought Beyond Representation
Deleuze and Guattari

Simon O'Sullivan

Palgrave -macmillanwww.amazon.ca

' A smart and accessible introduction to Deleuze's provocative and brilliant contribution to reconsidering art. Simon O'Sullivan has written a book that will open art up to its most contemporary understanding. A thoughtful, intense and original analysis of art as the most aesthetic but also political, ethical and cultural of human forms of self-overcoming, this book will change the way students and scholars understand the place of art in social life.'
Professor Elizabeth Grosz, University of Utrecht, Netherlands

What Painting Is -March 2010-Book of The Month

When one looks at a Monet, what exactly is one looking at? A framed painting, surely. And, too, as traditional art history texts would suggest, an "impression of light and atmosphere." But for art historian and painter Elkins, the essence of a painting--" what painting is" --goes beyond such abstractions. For one must not overlook the "process" of painting itself, the process by which artists get their hands dirty mixing oils and pigments, jabbing and scraping until one day the mess of paint blobs magically emerges as water lilies (or a haystack or a field of poppies) on the canvas. Indeed, it is the transformative power of the act of painting that Elkins explores in What Painting Is and that he elucidates expertly by way of another transformative art--the ancient practice of alchemy. In each of the nine chapters, Elkins draws parallels between artistic and alchemical processes. Like the alchemist, the painter sequesters him-or herself into the studio to mix and match substances in search of a recipe that will turn unpromising materia prima into the perfect painting (the philosopher's stone). Elkins, a true alchemist of ideas, has conjured up an original and insightful book that is sure to transform the reader's understanding of painting. Veronica Scrol

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