SUPAH SUMMAH SALE

Lauded internationally for her narrative quilts and her colorful paintings of African American life, New York artist Faith Ringgold has explored and sabotaged perceptions of identity and gender inequality through her experiences in the feminist and civil rights movements.
This catalog is published for her international traveling exhibition organized by the Serpentine, London, which traveled to Bildmuseet, Sweden, in 2020 and opens at Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland, in 2021. Focusing on several series of paintings, story quilts and political posters from the 1960s to today, the book includes two texts by Michele Wallace that interweave Ringgold’s biography with the chronology of works in the exhibition. In an extensive interview, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ringgold discuss her life in Harlem, the civil rights movement of the 1960s, her inspirations and her passion for storytelling and exercising her freedom of speech. The book also documents the expanded scope of the exhibition at the Glenstone Museum, which includes key examples of Ringgold’s soft sculpture and rare experiments with pure abstraction.
Faith Ringgold (born 1930) is a painter, mixed-media sculptor, performance artist, teacher and writer best known for her narrative quilts. As an avid civil rights and gender equality activist, Ringgold’s work is highly political; in 2020, the New York Timesdescribed her as an artist “who has confronted race relations in this country from every angle, led protests to diversify museums decades ago, and even went to jail for an exhibition she organized.” She has had solo shows at Spectrum Gallery (1967), Studio Museum in Harlem (1984) and, most recently, a five-decade retrospective at the Serpentine (2019). Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others.

A photobook dedicated to players throughout time who have tried their hand at the beloved cerebral game, featuring text penned by chess enthusiast and acclaimed author Martin Amis

This is a book for chess Grandmasters, novices and inquiring laymen alike. It is a book for anyone who has wondered, as Martin Amis wryly asks in his contributing text, “What are they playing at?”

Marcel Duchamp’s iconic quote, “All chess players are artists,” resonates throughout the volume. David Hockney likened the game’s strategic thinking to that of making art: “Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.” “Chess is war over the board,” said Bobby Fischer, Grandmaster and World Chess Champion, but here John Lennon and Yoko Ono checkmate this notion, with their all-white chess “peace” set.

Chess Players: From Charlie Chaplin to Wu-Tang Clan compiles photographs of notable figures playing the beloved game of strategy over the course of 130 years. The volume strings together zany and remarkable moments in time. In one image, players are captured on board a steamship crossing the Atlantic in 1888; in another, an astronaut studies a board in space. And, as the title suggests, Hollywood celebrities frequent the book’s pages, playing chess on and off the screen: Humphrey Bogart deploys a Sicilian Defense against Lauren Bacall, while Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen plot their next gambit in the iconic chess seduction scene from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).

An exquisitely somber portrait of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood cemetery across the seasons

In March 2020, after suffering from a severe bout of Covid, Eugene Richards sought out a safe place to walk and recuperate, and became entranced with Brooklyn’s much-loved Green-Wood Cemetery. Founded in 1837 and proclaimed a National Historic Landmark in 2006, the 487-acre burial ground and arboretum is the final resting place of more than 550,000 people. Over the subsequent years, Richards made nearly 100 visits to Green-Wood, photographing both poetical details and grand vistas in rich color, across the seasons and in all weather, creating lyrical images of snowbound headstones, grand mausoleums, intimate epitaphs, the encroachments of moss on stone and the wear of time on all things. The photographs in Remembrance Garden were taken between April 2020 and September 2023. Richards intersperses his images with names and dates inscribed on grave markers and deeply personal memories, creating a grand and moving portrait of the legendary cemetery.

 

A Chicago Tribune 2020 holiday gift guide pick

AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) was founded on the South Side of Chicago in 1968 by a group of five young Black artists. Today, it is one of the oldest continuously active American art collectives. The pronunciation—Af-FREE-co-bruh—emphasizes the second syllable, signaling the group’s central principle grounded in Black liberation: creative expression reflecting the Black experience and Black influences.

AfriCOBRA’s founding artists—Jeff Donaldson, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu and Gerald Williams—differed in disciplines and artistic vocabularies but were brought together by the common aspiration to create work that speaks directly to Black people utilizing an identifiably Black aesthetic. This publication celebrates the fifty-year anniversary of AfriCOBRA’s founding and marks the collective’s powerful relevance today. AfriCOBRA: Messages to the People documents two exhibitions curated by Jeffreen M. Hayes, PhD: one at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, and another as an official collateral event of the 58th Venice Biennale. It features more than 80 works by the original members as well as those by Sherman Beck, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, Omar Lama, Carolyn Mims Lawrence and Nelson Stevens.
More than a historical overview of AfriCOBRA, this book is a response to the artists’ continuing contributions and influence, connecting their works to the contemporary moment through essays, archival photographs and ephemera, exhibition views, and contemporary photographs that celebrate the impact of this revolutionary art collective. As their name states, the artists and artworks of AfriCOBRA were as relevant in 1968 as they are today in the continued struggle for Black liberation.

Celebrate the joy of reading with this unique stationery box filled with delightful treasures designed exclusively for people who love books. Featuring artist Louise Pretzel's whimsical, cheerful illustrations, each item in this stationery box was carefully and thoughtfully curated with readers in mind: There's a large journal for keeping tracking of favorite reads, quotes, and characters; a double-sided poster, one side featuring a full-color art print and the other side featuring black-and-white fill-in book spines so you can keep track of your reads throughout the year; a mini sticker book with 50+ bookish stickers for decorating notes to friends; a paper banner that says read more books; and so much more.

A luxurious publication celebrating 60 years of haute couture from the legendary Maison Valentino

This beautiful publication takes you into the heart of the Maison Valentino with more than 150 collections, from the very first collection by Valentino Garavani to the unforgettable show by Pierpaolo Piccioli staged on the Spanish Steps in 2022. Published to accompany a landmark exhibition in Doha, the book opens with a reimagining of the Maison’s courtyard at the Palazzo Mignanelli, showcasing 34 haute-couture creations in Valentino’s signature red. These are followed by a visual journey through nine galleries, with highlights including Capriccio Romana, a homage to cinema and the city’s urban landscape; a focus on gowns designed for Valentino’s stars, including Zendaya, Lady Gaga, Anne Hathaway and many more; an immersive runway experience from the Valentino Pink PP collection; and finally a dramatic recreation of the Beginnings show, featuring over 60 ensembles by Valentino Garavani and Pierpaolo Piccioli.
The exhibition views are complemented by sketches and catwalk shots printed on different paper stocks and transparent sheets, creating a multilayered tactile experience, inspired by Piccioli’s collection notebooks. With text by curators Alexander Fury and Massimiliano Gioni, and contributions by renowned fashion writers and editors, this book is a must for followers of the much-loved couture house.

Created in his off-hours on the weekend and in part inspired by the modern artists of his day, Jack Stauffacher’s exquisite prints demonstrate what wood type can do when released from its role in traditional communication and instead used to explore letters as pure form. In the resulting abstract, dynamically composed, often lushly layered prints, Stauffacher reclaims typography as a subject fit for the gallery wall.
Featuring 500 images (most of which have never appeared in a publication before) and essays by collaborators from the worlds of art and typography, Only on Saturday is the first trade book to document the work of one of the past century’s great typographers and printers―and offer the compelling backstory behind its creation.

Born in 1920 in San Mateo, California, Jack Stauffacher was a printer, typographer and fine-book publisher whose delicate yet graphic sensibility landed his work first in library rare book collections and then in museums such as SFMOMA and LACMA, who sought out his typographic prints. A printer of exceptional skill who began his apprenticeship at the age of 16, Stauffacher created books for his Greenwood Press off and on for eight decades.

He taught typography at Carnegie Mellon and the San Francisco Art Institute, and served as typographic director at Stanford University Press. But it was his later wood type prints that ushered his career into the realm of fine art. Stauffacher created these innovative and elegant prints from 1966 until his death in 2017 at the age of 96. In recognition of his contributions to typography and design, he was awarded an AIGA Medal in 2004.

Known around the world for his powerful art and activism, Ai Weiwei (born 1957) does not differentiate between disciplines: his practice glides across art, architecture, design, film, collecting and curating. Richly illustrated with over 200 images, Ai Weiwei: Making Sense is the first major publication to present Ai’s work as a commentary on design and what it reveals about our changing values. It presents a selection of Ai’s collected objects, from ancient stone axe heads to porcelain teapot spouts, from Neolithic tools to modern mass-produced products, as well as new works created specifically for the Design Museum.

These collections draw from the artist’s fascination with historical Chinese artifacts, placing their craftsmanship in dialogue with China’s more recent history of demolition and urban development. Also featured are essays by leading experts covering dominant themes in Ai’s work, such as craft, collecting and the urbanization and industrialization of China. It concludes with an interview between renowned British Israeli architect Eyal Weizman and Ai himself.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee with the Muhammad Ali tribute GOAT: Greatest Of All Time, an epic edition including expert essays, interviews, and thousands of images.

James Beard Award Finalist“[A] mesmerizing mix of recipes and food history.”—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW “Duguid has a scholar’s love of research, a cook’s hunger, and a journalist’s talent for storytelling. . . . The recipes are from all over the world and her knowledge is staggering. . . . Simply brilliant.” —Diana Henry, The Telegraph (U.K.), The Best Cookbooks to Buy in Autumn 2022 Naomi Duguid, who’s taken food lovers to many corners of the globe, now invites readers and cooks on a very different journey—a deep dive into the miracle of salt and its essential role in preserving, fermenting, and transforming food. Learn age-old techniques for making sauerkraut, miso, butter, prosciutto, kimchi, salt-fermented pickles, basturma, salt-preserved lemons, brined eggs, and much more.

"Ebenstein, founder of the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn, finds her peculiar subject at the intersection of science and art in 18th-century Florence." –Publishers Weekly

Of all the artifacts from the history of medicine, the Anatomical Venus―with its heady mixture of beauty, eroticism and death―is the most seductive. These life-sized dissectible wax women reclining on moth-eaten velvet cushions―with glass eyes, strings of pearls, and golden tiaras crowning their real human hair―were created in eighteenth-century Florence as the centerpiece of the first truly public science museum. Conceived as a means to teach human anatomy, the Venus also tacitly communicated the relationship between the human body and a divinely created cosmos; between art and science, nature and mankind. Today, she both intrigues and confounds, troubling our neat categorical divides between life and death, body and soul, effigy and pedagogy, entertainment and education, kitsch and art. The first book of its kind, The Anatomical Venus, by Morbid Anatomy Museum cofounder Joanna Ebenstein, features over 250 images―many never before published―gathered by its author from around the world. Its extensively researched text explores the Anatomical Venus within her historical and cultural context in order to reveal the shifting attitudes toward death and the body that today render such spectacles strange. It reflects on connections between death and wax, the tradition of life-sized simulacra and preserved beautiful women, the phenomenon of women in glass boxes in fairground displays, and ideas of the ecstatic, the sublime and the uncanny.

Crawly creatures: critters, spiders, lizards, toads and, above all, insects. In the Middle Ages they were mainly associated with death and the Devil; but in the 16th and 17th centuries, with the emergence of science, people began to appreciate their beauty, and such creatures appeared in works of art, became the subject of scholarly treatises and were popular collectors’ items. Artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Wenzel Jamnitzer, Jan van Kessel and Maria Sibylla Merian created beautiful depictions of these creatures.
Today, artists are still inspired by “crawly creatures” and continue to depict new ways of dealing with insects and the natural world. This richly illustrated publication, designed by Irma Boom, celebrates the wonders of small creatures and the fascinating relationship between art and science across the centuries.

This catalog traces the history of paper as an ancient material used from antiquity to the present day. Encompassing paper's manufacture, circulation and technical development, Stories of Paper highlights the many aspects of this humble material. The diversity of the artworks reproduced here—many of which are gathered from the collections of the Louvre, Musée Guimet, Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Centre Georges-Pompidou, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Sharjah Art Foundation, Goesan Museum and the Cultural Institute of Korea—inspires readers to consider paper as a medium for creativity and exchange across centuries and cultures.
Artists include: Abdullah Al Saadi, Achille Etna Michallon, Adam Frans Van Der Meulen, Adriaen Frans Boudewyns, Hui Neng, Muhammadi Haravi, Beatrice Casadesus, Bertrand Lavier, Charles Le Brun, Dana Awartani, Du Dashou, Edme Bouchardon, Etel Adnan, Fra Angelico, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Girolamo Muziano, Hassan Sharif, Henri Gissey and Isoda Koryusai.

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, a radical cultural scene emerged in cities across the globe, finding expression in the galleries, nightclubs, and bedrooms of New York, London, Los Angeles, and Rome. In Lyle Ashton Harris: Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs, the artist’s archive of 35 mm Ektachrome images are presented alongside journal entries and recollections from a host of artistic and cultural figures. It offers a unique document of what Harris has described as “ephemeral moments and emblematic figures shot in the 1980s and ’90s, against a backdrop of seismic shifts in the art world, the emergence of multiculturalism, the second wave of AIDS activism, and incipient globalization.”

As a young artist experimenting with installation, performance, and collage at the time, Harris obsessively photographed his friends, lovers, and individuals who either were, or would become, figures of influence, such as Marlon Riggs, Cornel West, bell hooks, Stuart Hall, Klaus Biesenbach, Nan Goldin, Catherine Opie, Glenn Ligon, and others. The images record the confluence of multiple international communities—gathering points for the exchange of ideas and the development of theoretical positions on art and culture that continue to resonate to this day. Together, these photographs and the journals not only sketch a personal history of a unique time of importance to contemporary art, but also show the development and shaping of Harris’s eye and influences as an artist.

An edifying immersion into Vicuña's creative wellspring as well as her decolonization and ecofeminist ideals

Beautifully designed, with a special reverence for her humanitarian heart, Dreaming Water is the most thorough monograph dedicated to the work of Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña to date. Vicuña coined the term "Arte Precario" in the mid-1960s as a new category for her works composed of debris and structures that disappear in the landscape, and which also include her quipus ("knot" in Quechua), envisioned as poems in space. Dreaming Water brings together over 200 works--including paintings, drawings, screenprints, collages, textiles, videos, photographs, installations, poetry, artist books and performances--created throughout the artist's remarkable career. It also features several stimulating texts--a lengthy epistolary piece by curator and editor Miguel A. López as well as new essays by anthropologist Elizabeth A. Povinelli, curator Catherine de Zegher and art historian José de Nordenflycht. Vicuña herself contributes two texts, reflecting on her drawings from the "Palabrarmas" project and the activism of the group Artists for Democracy, which she cofounded in 1974. A rousing conversation between Vicuña, anthropologist Marisol de la Cadena and curator Camila Marambio also figures in the book, blending the artist's voice with those who are experts in fields pertinent to her practice.

A nuanced profile, in image and text, of the great Black Power leader at the exhilarating moment of the movement’s ascendancy

Gordon Parks’ 1967 Life magazine essay “Whip of Black Power” is a nuanced profile of the young, controversial civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Carmichael gained national attention and inspired media backlash when he issued the call for Black Power in Greenwood, Mississippi, in June 1966. Parks shadowed him from the fall of 1966 to the spring of 1967, as Carmichael gave speeches, headed meetings and promoted the growing Black Power movement. Parks’ photos and writing addressed Carmichael’s intelligence and humor, presenting the whole man behind the headline-making speeches and revealing his own advocacy of Black Power and its message of self-determination and love.
Stokely Carmichael and Black Power delves into Parks’ groundbreaking presentation of Carmichael, with analysis of his images and accompanying text about the charismatic leader. Lisa Volpe explores Parks’ complex understanding of the movement and its leader, and Cedric Johnson frames Black Power within the heightened political moment of the late 1960s. Carmichael’s own voice is represented through a reprint of his important 1966 essay “What We Want.”

This new edition of the Cahiers d’Art Revue was published to accompany Ai Weiwei’s (born 1957) 2019 exhibition at the Galerie Cahiers d’Art on rue du Dragon in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The issue features a series of unpublished works on paper made from rust, documentation of Ai Weiwei's gigantic Amazon rain-forest project, a long interview with the artist by Hans Ulrich Obrist, an essay by art historian Ingrid D.

Rowland on Ai Weiwei and archaeology, a tribute to the artist’s father, the famous writer Ai Qing, and a text by the collector Uli Sigg. The issue sheds light on the concerns that lie at the heart of Ai Weiwei’s work: antiquity and contemporaneity, East and West, traditional arts and conceptual art, conservation and destruction. As the artist says, “We can replace everything except the past.” Also featured are recent works and projects by Andrea Eriksson, Jonya Ishigami and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian.

SALE: Faded cover.  FINAL SALE  

Incorporating both formal details and welcoming elements, a sophisticated and balanced look tailored to a sense of home, as shown through the portfolio of Foley & Cox

Foley & Cox is a New York-based interior design firm renowned for serene spaces subtly layered with color and texture that create a sense of welcome and comfort. Taking creative cues directly from their clients–their perceptions, preferences, and passions–the firm creates serene interiors infused with personal style.

This elegant book presents 24 homes, ranging from elegant prewar apartments in Manhattan to retreats in the Hamptons and summer places along the coast of New England and in Europe, and even to a private jet and a yacht that cruises the Mediterranean. What unites these spaces is an overall balance and elegance, infused with luxurious fabrics in subtle tonal variations and a judicious use of highlight color, often in the artwork and accessories. Founder Michael Cox is a master at creating settings for art collections and selecting distinctive vintage pieces that add a sophisticated touch to the rooms.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 304 × 241 mm (12 × 9.5 in)
• Pages: 248 pp
• Illustrations: 220 illustrations
• ISBN: 9781580936163

With his 1543 herb manual, botanical pioneer Leonhart Fuchs created a masterpiece of Renaissance botany and publishing. This edition is based on Fuchs’s personal, hand-colored original and features over 500 illustrations, including the first visual record of New World plant types such as maize, cactus, and tobacco.

By 1944, Gordon Parks had established himself as a photographer who freely navigated the fields of press and commercial photography, with an unparalleled humanist perspective. That year, Roy Stryker—the former Farm Security Administration official who was now heading the public relations department for the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey)—commissioned Parks to travel to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to document the Penola, Inc. Grease Plant.
Employing his signature style, Parks spent two years chronicling the plant’s industry—critical to Pittsburgh’s history and character—by photographing its workers. The resulting photographs, dramatically staged and lit and striking in their composition, showed the range of activities engaged in by Black and white workers, divided as they were by roles, race and class. The images were used as marketing materials and made available to local and national newspapers, as well as corporate magazines and newsletters. However, they served as much more than documentation of industry, enduring as an exploration of labor and its social and economic ramifications in World War II America by one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
Featuring more than 100 photographs, many previously unpublished, this is the first book to focus exclusively on Parks’ photographs for the Standard Oil Company, illuminating an important chapter in his career prior to his landmark career as a staff photographer for Life.
Gordon Parks was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. He worked as a brothel pianist and railcar porter, among other jobs, before buying a camera at a pawnshop, training himself and becoming a photographer. In addition to his tenures photographing for the FSA (1941–45) and Life magazine (1948–72), Parks evolved into a modern-day Renaissance man, finding success as a film director, writer and composer. He died in 2006.

Proceeds from sale of this book have been donated to 826NYC  who offer highly individualized creative writing instruction for over 4,000 young New Yorkers every year. Free programs throughout NYC empower young authors and develop crucial skills they need to thrive in the classroom and beyond.

In August in Rio Seco, California, the ground is too hard to bury a body. But Glorette Picard is dead, and across the canal, out in the orange groves, they’ll gather shovels and pickaxes and soak the dirt until they can lay her coffin down. First, someone needs to find her son Victor, who memorizes SAT words to avoid the guys selling rock, and someone needs to tell her uncle Enrique, who will be the one to hunt down her killer, and someone needs to brush out her perfect crown of hair and paint her cracked toenails. As the residents of this dry-creek town prepare to bury their own, it becomes clear that Glorette’s life and death are deeply entangled with the dark history of the city and the untouchable beauty that, finally, killed her.

Check out a preview of the book & real-life stories and images that inspired the novel!

Praise for Between Heaven and Here:

“It is only the rarest of novels that cry for a sequel, the most unusual of stories that at once satisfies and leaves the reader aching for more. Susan Straight’s remarkable Take One Candle Light A Room is such a novel. And she has satisfied our desires in Between Heaven and Here, a magnificent novel, that manages to be at once unflinchingly real and transcendently beautiful. Susan Straight is one of the very best American writers. If you haven’t read her, you’re in for a delight and an awakening. If you have, then you’re probably as thrilled as I am that she has taken us back to Rio Seco.”
—Ayelet Waldman

“Susan Straight finds LA’s secret heart in Between Heaven and Here and with a sleight of hand only the masters have, she creates an alley, a neighborhood, a history that is as rich and tragic as any Shakespearean tale.”
—Walter Mosley

“Straight employs glorious language and a riveting eye for detail to create a fully realized, totally believable world.”
—Kirkus (Starred Review)

“The mysterious murder of a hooker kicks off this exquisitely wrought final installment (after Take One Candle Light a Room) of Straight’s trilogy, set in fictional Rio Seco, California. When Glorette Picard’s longtime admirer, Sidney, discovers her body in a shopping cart in an alley behind a taquería, he fears the wrath or indifference of the police, and so claims her corpse as his responsibility, setting of a storm of consequences. Left behind to weather the world on his own is Glorette’s young son, Victor, who memorizes SAT vocabulary words to drown out the crack dealers, and her uncle Enrique, who takes it upon himself to avenge her death. Straight plunges readers into a whirlwind of dialects, drugs, derelict homes, and delinquent locals as she weaves together the story of Glorette’s life and death, while addressing weighty and timely issues like race, language, and the socioeconomically disenfranchised. Straight deftly avoids clichés and easy outs, and her refusal to vilify or sanctify the numerous members of her cast allows the experiences of each to resonate powerfully.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“And yet, in a novel set in a world in which people are too often stripped of dignity, Straight has accomplished the larger act of ennobling her characters. She sees them clearly and gives them a striking presence on the page.”
—New York Times

“Straight, a 2001 National Book Award finalist for Highwire Moon, has the ability to create straightforward contemporary voices, no pun intended. She does not subscribe to the maximalist school of over-the-top characters, yet she can still dramatize the complex, jagged nature of American culture today. ”
—The Daily Beast

“Despite the tragedies that befall them, Straight’s characters still recognize the splendor of the natural world, from the pepper trees behind the taqueria to the orange blossoms in the alley scenting the midnight air… Straight’s group portrait of this community ought to be recognized as a national artistic treasure. Her focus on this singular place magnifies the hopes and disappointments of so many Americans, so many humans on earth.”
—The Boston Globe

“Susan Straight has remarkable range as a writer. Her voice can be elegant in the rhythms and vocabulary of her narrative, yet also blunt and raw in dialogue… Her work is so intensely alive in its movement, action, and in the speech of her characters that reading it is almost like being caught in the center of a storm: exhausting but exhilarating at the same time.”
—The Rumpus

“How can a novel that is essentially the story of a dead prostitute prove so uplifting? It must be some kind of black magic that only Susan Straight can work… And by the end of this gorgeous and heart-wrenching novel, this family will be your people, too.”
—The Dallas Morning Star News

“A thoroughly engrossing novel, one that operates powerfully in the empty, lonely gaps between people.”
—ForeWord Reviews

“Straight’s writing pulls the reader into a world that is both surreal and yet inescapably concrete, ugly and beautiful all at once. She binds the multifaceted perspectives together into a narrative that is fragmented but still very much whole.”
—BUSTLE

Proceeds from sale of this book have been donated to 826NYC  who offer highly individualized creative writing instruction for over 4,000 young New Yorkers every year. Free programs throughout NYC empower young authors and develop crucial skills they need to thrive in the classroom and beyond.

What role does a mother play in raising thoughtful, generous children? In her literary debut, internationally award-winning writer Courtney Zoffness considers what we inherit from generations past—biologically, culturally, spiritually—and what we pass on to our children. Spilt Milk is an intimate, bracing, and beautiful exploration of vulnerability and culpability. Zoffness relives her childhood anxiety disorder as she witnesses it manifest in her firstborn; endures brazen sexual advances by a student in her class; grapples with the implications of her young son’s cop obsession; and challenges her Jewish faith. Where is the line between privacy and secrecy? How do the stories we tell inform who we become? These powerful, dynamic essays herald a vital new voice.

Read excerpts from Spilt Milk courtesy of The Paris Review, Guernica, and Lit Hub.

 

Praise for Spilt Milk

“(K)eenly perceptive… masterful essays in a fresh, vulnerable voice readers will want to hear more of.”  
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

 

“(M)oves back and forth through time with an elegant quickness that insightfully captures how the past shapes who we are and who we might become.” 
—Booklist (starred review)

 

“In her layered storytelling, (Zoffness) brings empathy to every situation and often finds empathy for herself along the way. Spilt Milk is a generous, warm debut from an already prizewinning writer.”
—Book Page (starred review)

 

“Each essay is just as thoughtful and smart and well-told as the last one — don’t miss this.
—Alma Magazine

“In Spilt Milk, Courtney Zoffness, with compassionate clarity, exposes herself—her worst fears, her best hopes—to expose her art.”
—The Masters Review

“A slim, tender collection of essays.”
—Good Morning America

“lyrical and brilliant in the way a jewel reveals many facets at different angles.”
—Jewish Boston

“A graceful debut.”
—Kirkus

“In this collection of essays, Courtney Zoffness tackles motherhood in a way that is simultaneously fresh and achingly relatable… Zoffness recreates tender, moving, and poetic moments that will etch their way into your brain and heart for a very long time. We should be so lucky to get more work from the young writer.”
—Apartment Therapy

“Searching and exquisitely-wrought.”
—Brevity Magazine

“I don’t know what I love the most about Courtney Zoffness’s Spilt Milk. The taut originality of the prose? The acuity of its insights? The daring vulnerability? There is so much I want to say about Spilt Milk, but honestly they’re all variations of This is fucking brilliant. Whatever you think this book is, it’s more. A debut writer this talented and skilled is an event in itself.”
—Mat Johnson, author of Pym

 

“Gentle, playful and laced with subtle wit, these essays are a welcome balm in an insane and un-gentle time.”
—Mary Gaitskill, author of This is Pleasure and Bad Behavior

“Spilt Milk contains the wisdom of a mother, the maturity of an older sister, and the wide-eyed wonder of a small child. It’s a magical gift of a collection.”
—Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women

“In these ten musical, open-hearted essays, Courtney Zoffness establishes herself as one of our most soulful, clear-eyed narrators. A lucid dream of a book I wished would never end.”
—Elisa Albert, author of After Birth

“Wry and masterful—Spilt Milk examines the multiplicities of self and culture, asking the tough questions with remarkable concision. Courtney Zoffness is a writer of supernatural acuity and wit.”
—T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

 

“Spilt Milk is current, self-examining, honest, insightful, biting, and funny. Essentially, a perfect book.”
—Jesse Eisenberg, actor and playwright, author of Bream Gives me Hiccups and Other Stories

 

“Perhaps you have heard that being a mother of small children is hard, especially so right now, and finally, here is a book of essays that don’t cover up the messiness, the oddness, the love and the sadness and the worry all at once. Unsanitized and beautiful.”
—Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here and owner of Books Are Magic

 

“Courtney Zoffness’s collection is written with a fierce and sometimes funny honesty. Zoffness explores motherhood and daughterhood, and how these early attachments make us and unmake us, how they connect us to others—until they are us.”
—Tiphanie Yanique, author of Land of Love and Drowning

 

“These bright, knowing essays spill over with intelligence and wit. Courtney Zoffness traces the dizzying conflict faced by parents—the daily ricochet between burden and joy—and, with a sharply lyric voice, discovers hidden connections between this domestic struggle and the larger cultural and political winds shifting around us.”
—Ben Marcus, author of Notes from the Fog

“On one level, Spilt Milk is an extraordinary exploration of the connections, small and large; real and imagined, between childhood and parenthood. On another level, it’s irrefutable proof that Courtney Zoffness is a wondrous calculus of a prose writer: keen, inventive, candid, open-hearted, not to mention one helluva stylist.”

—Mitchell S. Jackson, author of Survival Math

The design gallery's latest triennial celebration of US-made objects that straddle art, design and craft

R & Company’s landmark triennial exhibition and accompanying publication, Objects: USA, returns in 2024, featuring 55 makers from across the United States whose works blur the traditionally understood boundaries of art, design and craft. The exhibition’s curators and the book’s authors, Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy and Kellie Riggs, have organized these works into archetypes that engage with makers’ intentions and driving interests rather than categories related to medium, proposing a new conceptual framework for understanding 21st-century objecthood. The book includes a preface by R & Company principals Evan Snyderman and Zesty Meyers, an introduction by curator Glenn Adamson, an essay by the authors and richly illustrated profiles for each of the featured artists.
Artists include: Venancio Aragon, Richard Chavez, Jason McDonald, Ryan Decker, Wally Dion, Nik Gelormino, Joyce Lin, Linda Lopez, Luam Melake, Anina Major, Kim Mupangilaï, Jordan Nassar, Jolie Ngo, Cammie Staros, Matthew Szösz, Norman Teague, Lonnie Vigil, Mallory Weston.

A photographic travelog of Meyerowitz’s yearlong journey across postwar Europe

In 1966, at the age of 28, photographer Joel Meyerowitz embarked on a journey that would take him to the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Eastern Europe, Turkey and Greece. In total, he drove 20,000 miles through 10 countries and ended up taking 25,000 photographs. This trip was a transcendental experience and formative in shaping Meyerowitz's instinctive and brilliant identity that he is known for today. Europa 1966–1967 compiles a selection of photographs taken by Meyerowitz on his yearlong trip through Europe, offering an exciting glimpse of the “New Old World” that, having lately overcome the trauma of World War II, opened itself to modernity and progress. Meyerowitz witnessed societies in transition, stuck between dictatorship and economic blossoming. Yet he also documented unshakable cultural traditions, such as when he lived with a flamenco-performing family in Francoist Spain for six months. The strength and freshness of Meyerowitz’s gaze and the new codes that were captured in these pictures inspired the next generation of photographers.

Five decades of Yau’s diverse poetic collaborations with artists from Pat Steir to Richard Tuttle

The poetry of Chinese American poet John Yau (born 1950) is infused with humor and intelligence. Yau uses a variety of poetic forms to examine aspects of visual art, film and popular culture. His critical writing is celebrated for providing fresh insights about already codified artists and for situating diverse practitioners into historical contexts. Disguise the Limit features numerous works that Yau has created with visual artists during the past five decades. These include paintings, mixed-media drawings, print portfolios, artist’s books and letterpress broadsides. The result of friendships and shared sensibilities, these works reveal the poet’s embrace of both representation and abstraction as foils for language generation. Offering nimble turns of phrase, Zen koans, road sign warnings and fragmented poems, Yau is in his element when operating in the performative time and space that collaboration requires.

Artists include: Jake Berthot, Tom Burckhardt, Norman Bluhm, Pia Fries, Max Gimblett, Judy Ledgerwood, Suzanne McClelland, Malcolm Morley, Ed Paschke, Peter Saul, Pat Steir, Robert Therrien, Richard Tuttle, Chuck Webster.

Meditations on Picabia across seven decades, from the acclaimed American realist painter. In the 1950s, American painter Philip Pearlstein completed his MA thesis, "The Paintings of Francis Picabia 1908-1930." When his research coincided with Picabia's death in 1953, Pearlstein briefly became the authority on Picabia and his influence, writing three subsequent essays: "The Symbolic Language of Francis Picabia" for Arts magazine (1956); "Hello & Goodbye, Francis Picabia" for Art News (1970); and "When the Dada Daddies Got Real, or How I Turned Picabia Inside Out" for Brooklyn Rail (2017). Pearlstein's articles present a fascinating comparison between Picabia, Duchamp and Pearlstein himself.
Picabia Inside Out brings together Pearlstein's articles in full, including a facsimile of the 1955 MA thesis presented as a historical document showing all the nuances of his typewriter. A foreword by Robert Storr highlights Pearlstein's importance as a precursor to what became known as postmodernism.
Philip Pearlstein (born 1924) is an American painter best known for his modernist realist nudes. Pearlstein has written many articles for major art journals, and his contribution to contemporary art is acknowledged by his many awards and honors.

In 2002, Kara Walker was selected to represent the United States at the prestigious São Paulo Art Biennial. Curator Robert Hobbs wrote extended essays on her work for this exhibition, and also for her show later that year at the Kunstverein Hannover. Because these essays have not been distributed in the US and remain among the most in-depth and essential investigations of her work, Karma is now republishing them in this new clothbound volume.

Among the most celebrated artists of the past three decades, with over 93 solo exhibitions to her credit, including a major survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker is known for her tough, critical, provocative and highly imaginative representations of African Americans and whites reaching back to antebellum times. In his analysis, Hobbs looks at the five main sources of her art: blackface Americana, Harlequin romances, Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection, Stone Mountain’s racist tourist attraction and the minstrel tradition.

Robert Hobbs (born 1946) has written more than 50 books and catalogs, focusing on such artists as Milton Avery, Alice Aycock, Lee Krasner, Robert Smithson and Kehinde Wiley. Since 1991 he has held the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair of American Art in the School of Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University. Since 2004 he has served as a visiting professor at Yale University.

Famously the most politicized and intellectual of the Abstract Expressionists, Robert Motherwell (1915–91) evolved a form of austere gesturalism reflective of both the human psyche and the political realm. Robert Motherwell: Pure Paintingoffers an in-depth exploration of his oeuvre—the first publication to do so in many years. Leading art scholars Jennifer Cohen, Susan Davidson, Simon Kelly, Monica McTighe and Sarah Rich examine Motherwell’s turn from Surrealism to abstraction and consider the major series that developed over his 50-year career.

The catalog also studies the dialogue between Motherwell’s art and the 19th-century French painting tradition, and investigates his relationship to Spanish painting techniques and processes, with an emphasis on underlying political significance of this relationship (as expressed in his great series Elegies to the Spanish Republic). Another section looks at Motherwell’s unique use of ocher pigment, with its evocation of deep geological time and of avant-garde strategies.

Just Above Midtown, or JAM, was an art gallery and self-described laboratory for experimentation led by Linda Goode Bryant that foregrounded African American artists and artists of color. Open from 1974 to 1986, it was a place where an expansive idea of contemporary art flourished and debate was cultivated. The gallery offered early opportunities for artists recognized as pivotal figures in late-20th-century art—including David Hammons, Butch Morris, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O’Grady and Howardena Pindell—as well as a nonhierarchical approach to art that welcomed artists without stylistic proscription.

Published in conjunction with the first museum exhibition to focus on this visionary gallery and its ongoing impact, Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces showcases rarely seen material from JAM’s history—artworks, ephemera and photographs—that collectively document the gallery’s communal and programmatic activities. This richly illustrated, jacketed paperback catalog includes essays that contextualize JAM and consider its legacy, a conversation between Goode Bryant and Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, a complete exhibition chronology written by MoMA and Studio Museum staff with nearly 50 annotated entries, and excerpts from oral histories with JAM staff and artists conducted especially for this project.

Between 1973 and ’76, Mitch Epstein (born 1952) photographed in American cities—New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans, among others. He was initially shooting in black and white as a student of Garry Winogrand, when he asked his teacher, “Why not color?” With Winogrand’s blessing, Epstein shot his first rolls of Kodachrome. Silver + Chrome is a chronicle of his three years alternating between color and black and white, before eventually committing to color.

This book contains Epstein’s earliest work, virtually none of which has been seen before. In these kinetic tableaux, the artist’s exuberance is tamed, just barely, by his formal intelligence. He depicts American city life as it undergoes taboo-shattering sexual liberation, economic crises and the repercussions of a boondoggle war in Vietnam, immersing us in the urban chaos of this complicated time.

Early work from Lee Friedlander capturing a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement

 On May 17, 1957, through the generosity of Bayard Rustin, Lee Friedlander was given full access to photograph the participants of the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, D.C. This extraordinary event, organized by Mr. Rustin, as well as A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., brought together many of the great thinkers and leaders of the period, and was a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement.

 Friedlander's photographs depict the famous individuals at the event―Mahalia Jackson, Ruby Dee and Harry Belafonte, among many other luminaries of the African-American community―but they also pay particular attention to the 25,000 men, women and children who gathered to give voice and energy to the ideas embattled by the movement.

 The 58 previously unpublished photographs gathered here are among Friedlander's earliest work. Also included in this publication is the typescript of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Give Us the Ballot" speech and additional ephemera from the march produced in facsimile.

How design can help foster the conditions for global peace: an intersectional visual conversation between activists, designers, architects and theorists

 

How might we collectively put our creative forces together to envision a future we want to live in and take action to create it now? Designing Peace is an intersectional snapshot of the actions—culturally diverse and wide-ranging in scale—that are currently in play around the world.

Offering perspectives on peace through essays, interviews, critical maps, project profiles, data visualizations and art, this book conveys the momentum that design can gain in effecting a peace-filled future. From activists, scholars and architects to policymakers and graphic, game and landscape designers, Designing Peace flips the conversation: peace is not simply a passive state signifying the absence of war, it is a dynamic concept that requires effort, expertise and multidimensional solutions to address its complexity.

Designers engage with individuals, communities and organizations to create a more sustainable peace—from creative confrontations that challenge existing structures to designs that demand embracing justice and truth in a search for reconciliation. This publication aims to expand the discourse on what is possible if society were to design for peace.

Annie Leibovitz began working as a photographer in the early 1970s, which was a volatile and frenetic time in America. The lines had yet to be drawn between journalists and the people they covered, so she had access that would now be considered unusual. This unique collection provides a vivid account both of Leibovitz’s development as an artist and of a pivotal era.

Hardcover, 8.5” x 10.6”, 182 pages

The iconic black-and-white photographs of Hamburg-born photographer Frank Habicht (born 1938) reflect the spirit of the Swinging Sixties in London. In the 1960s, the conservative postwar years in England gave way to a period of upheaval, with a younger generation dreaming of an unconstrained life, one full of free love, peace and harmony. On the streets of the British capital, Habicht began photographing the profound social and political changes that were underway.

Habicht, who has lived in New Zealand since 1981, has produced photographs for many international magazines and newspapers, such as the Guardian, Die Welt, Camera Magazine and Twen. His photographs were recently exhibited at the Barbican in London, and he has made portraits of music and film greats such as Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, Jane Birkin, Christopher Lee and Vanessa Redgrave.

Frank Habicht: As It Was collects Habicht’s photos from the 1960s in an opulent book. A unique collection of images of the swinging, groovy, hippie and psychedelic ‘60s in London, it offers an eye-opening contribution to the history of a country that is currently undergoing yet more social transformation.

Photographs by Stephen Shore. Contributions by Wes Anderson, Quentin Bajac, David Campany, Paul Graham, Guido Guidi, Takashi Homma...

In his latest book, the great American fashion photographer Arthur Elgort presents photographs of women that he has taken throughout his career, in homage to their power, their beauty, their joy and their strength. Depicting a variety of subjects, from young ballerinas at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg to snapshots of fashion’s most influential women, this collection portrays many aspects of femininity across generations. Designed in the style of his classic 1994 book Arthur Elgort’s Models Manual (by the same designer, Steve Hiett), and printed on sumptuous matte paper with a vinyl cover, this book combines text and photographs in one seamless flow, deploying a rich range of color with graphic snap. Featured here are idols such as supermodels Gia Carangi, Cindy Crawford, Karen Elson, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington, and legendary editors such as Franca Sozzani, the former editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia, and Polly Allen Mellen, a former editor at Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Allure.

Arthur Elgort (born 1940) studied painting at Hunter College but quickly transitioned to photography, finding painting too slow and solitary. Elgort attributes much of his spontaneous and liberated style to his lifelong love of music and dance, especially jazz and ballet. In his long career he has worked on many major advertising campaigns, including for Chanel, Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent, shot countless fashion spreads and published several books; his most recent publication is Jazz (2018).

Lady Murasaki’s Tale of Genji has delighted readers for more than 1,000 years and inspired writers to create numerous parodies. Artists have responded with a rich parallel tradition illustrating the courtly intrigues, love affairs and shifting alliances of the epic novel, as well as its retellings. This lavishly illustrated volume explores interpretations of the original story and its spinoffs by Japanese master printmakers such as Kunisada, as well as Hiroshige, Suzuki Harunobu and Chobunsai Eishi, bringing the characters to life in dazzling woodblock prints from the peerless collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
With insightful commentary from a leading Japanese print scholar, this book invites readers to explore the colorful world of The Tale of Genjiand its visual afterlife.