Books & Zines

As Art Director for Muji since 2002, Japanese graphic designer Kenya Hara (born 1958) and his aesthetic of pared-back, beautifully functional objects has taken the world by (quiet) storm. With Kenya Hara: Designing Japan, the designer presents his vision of how his industry can contribute to the future of his country: a future founded on Hara’s unique philosophy of beauty as well as crowd-sourced wisdom from around the world.

The book spans history, from the beginnings of professional Japanese design in the 16th century to the impact of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. But Hara's real focus is on the future. A master collaborator, meticulous organizer and globally conscious innovator, Hara draws on more than three decades of work in design and exhibition curating, as well his professional interactions with creators from many fields.

Designing Japan offers a foundation course on the essence of Japanese aesthetics, while maintaining a practical approach to Japan’s circumstances and future possibilities. Hara reveals the methods by which designers in Japan work with government and industry, and considers how design can propose solutions for this island nation as its population ages, other nations take over manufacturing and technology develops. Illustrations and examples recognize successful problem-solving through design, proving that design is a living, changing industry that remains relevant not in spite of, but as a partner to, advancing technology.

PUBLISHER: LARS MÜLLER PUBLISHERS

BOOK FORMAT: Hardcover, 5 x 7.25 in. / 208 pgs / 45 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS: Pub Date 10/29/2019

DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2019 p. 43   

ISBN: 9783037786116

This exhibition catalog accompanies a trio of simultaneous shows by Chinese painter Zeng Fanzhi (born 1964) across Hauser & Wirth venues in Hong Kong, London and Zurich.

Each location focuses on a different theme: abstract landscape, figuration and the intersection of Chinese and Western representation in drawing and painting. Together the book gives an overview of the latest developments in the ever-evolving style of one of China’s best-known exponents of expressionistic figuration.

Text by David Anfam and Fabrice Hergott

Book design: Studio Achermann

Language: English / Chinese

Details:

Hardcover
307 x 217 mm
218 pages

ISBN: 9783906915289

First published in French in 1994, quickly acclaimed as a photobook classic and since republished and enhanced, True Stories returns for the sixth time, gathering a series of short autobiographical texts and photos by acclaimed French artist Sophie Calle, this time with four new tales. Calle's projects have frequently drawn on episodes from her own life, but this book―part visual memoir, part meditation on the resonances of photographs and belongings―is as close as she has come to producing an autobiography, albeit one highly poetical and fragmentary, as is characteristic of her work. The tales―never longer than a page―are by turns lighthearted, humorous, serious, dramatic or cruel. Each is accompanied by an image; each offers a fragment of life.

The slim, portable volume is divided into sections: the first is composed of various reflections on objects such as a shoe, a postcard or "the breasts"; the second, "The Husband," of recollections of episodes from Calle's first marriage; and the third gathers a variety of autobiographical recollections. Calle herself is the author, narrator and protagonist of her stories and photography; her words are somber, chosen precisely and carefully. One of the 21st century's foremost artists, Calle here offers up her own story―childhood, marriage, sex, death―with brilliant humor, insight and pleasure.

PUBLISHER: ACTES SUD

BOOK FORMAT: Hardcover, 4 x 7.5 in. / 112 pgs / 51 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS: Pub Date 5/22/2018

DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2018 p. 40   

ISBN: 9782330093037 

This Ai Weiwei (born 1957) monograph is published on the occasion of his exhibition at the 55th Venice Biennale, presented by Zuecca Project Space and the Lisson Gallery, and offers a summary of the artist's work between 2008 and 2013. It focuses on two projects, Straight (2008–2012) and S.A.C.R.E.D. (2011–2013).

Straight is an installation employing more than 100 tons of steel rods recovered by a team of volunteers from buildings destroyed in the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan. Responding both to the tragedy itself and the government's apathy, Ai Weiwei and his team straightened the bars and created a modular installation with the bars laid flat on the floor. S.A.C.R.E.D. is comprised of six metal containers depicting the often humiliating routines of the artist's 2011 imprisonment on a reduced scale, with models of Ai and his guards. These routines include showering, toilet and interrogation.

Material: Hardcover, 194 pages

Language: English

ISBN-13: 978-3863355593

Product Dimensions: 9 x 0.8 x 11.2 inches

Publisher: Walther König, Köln (October 31, 2014)

Sanmao: author, adventurer, pioneer. Born in China in 1943, she moved from Chongqing to Taiwan, Spain to Germany, the Canary Islands to Central America, and, for several years in the 1970s, to the Sahara.

Leafing through the pages of National Geographic as a young girl growing up in Taiwan, Sanmao became enchanted by the infinite and wonderous landscape of the Sahara. Years later, in 1974, she sets out for the Spanish desert territory of El Aaiún in hopes of becoming the first female explorer to cross the hauntingly beautiful expanse. Her boyfriend José would have to wait, or join her. He packs his things, leaves Madrid, and asks Sanmao to marry him.

Stories of the Sahara invites us into Sanmao's extraordinary life in the desert: her experiences of love and loss, freedom and peril, all told with a voice as spirited as it is timeless. At a period when China was beginning to look beyond its borders, Sanmao fired the imagination of millions and inspired a new generation. 

Translated by Mike Fu.

Material: Paperback

Product Dimensions: 234 x 153 mm

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1st Edition, April 2, 2020

ISBN: 9781408881880

Written by a mathematician, a poet and a mathematician-poet, this 1969 guide to the ancient Japanese game of Go was not only the first such guide to be published in France (and thereby introduced the centuries-old game of strategy into that country) but something of a subtle Oulipian guidebook to writing strategies and tactics.

As in the Oulipian strategy of writing under constraint, the role of structured gameplay (within literature and without) proves to be of primordial importance: a means of moving outside an inherent system, of instigating new figures of style and meaning, new paths toward collaboration and new strategies for filling a space: be it the space of a terrain, a blank page, a white screen or a freshly stretched canvas.

Translated for the first time, this treatise outlines the history of Go, the rules for playing it, some central tactics and strategies for playing it and overcoming the threats posed by an opponent, general information and trivia, and a glossary that ranges from Atari(check) to Yose (the end of a match).

Authors: French trio Pierre Lusson, Georges Perec, and Jacques Roubaud.

Material: Paperback, 160 pages

Language: English. 

Dimensions: 4.5 x 0.8 x 7 inches

Publisher: Wakefield Press (2019)

This book is an artist’s guide to copyright, written for makers. Both practical and critical, it will guide you through the concepts underlying copyright and how they apply in your practice. How do you get copyright? For what work? And for how long? How does copyright move across mediums, and how can you go about integrating the work of others? Copy This Book details the concepts of authorship and original creation that underlie our legal system, equipping the reader with the conceptual keys to participate in the debate on intellectual property today.

PUBLISHER: ONOMATOPEE

BOOK FORMAT: Paperback, 5.5 x 8 in. / 192 pgs / 4 bw / 19 duotone.

PUBLISHING STATUS: Pub Date 4/23/2019

DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. Exclusive

Catalog: SPRING 2019 p. 139   

PRODUCT DETAILS: ISBN 9789491677939

Broccoli is an international magazine for cannabis lovers. 

Created by women who love weed, Broccoli is a magazine presenting a new perspective on cannabis culture. Playful, informed, eclectic, and thoughtful, it encourages the discovery and intelligent appreciation of cannabis through explorations of art, culture, and fashion.

Every year, the iconic luxury brand Hermès chooses a new theme to celebrate its creative direction for the upcoming year. Hermès' Year Theme for 2018 is "Let's Play," and the brand is celebrating in style with this new, deluxe pop-up book. Featuring a selection of 14 of the house's iconic square scarf designs, both old and more recent, this book brings the designs alive with exhilarating ingenuity. Delicate paper constructions bring out the depth and volume within the scarf designs; zebras rear up, delicately arching trees grow from the page and painterly strokes detach themselves from the paper surface.

Publisher: Actes Sud (November 27, 2018)

Publication date: November 27, 2018

Language: English

Hardcover: 26 pages

ISBN-10: 2330106483

ISBN-13: 978-2330106485

Dimensions : 8.58 x 1.34 x 8.54 inches

In 2019, New York–based Chinese artist Cai-Guo Qiang (born 1957) was invited to create a work of art in the amphitheater of the Pompeii archaeological site. Inspired by the fate of the ancient Roman city, which was buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Cai’s work involved gunpowder, fireworks, an array of artifacts and a vast canvas. The performance culminated in an “excavation” of the resulting debris, which became part of Cai’s exhibition of related works at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

Cai Guo-Qiang and Pompeii: In the Volcano is published to document Cai’s work in Pompeii. The project at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples is part of an ongoing, multiyear series of exhibitions, An Individual’s Journey Through Western Art History. Staging work in Moscow, Madrid, Florence and now Pompeii, Cai juxtaposes his work with the Western art historical canon.

Materials: Cloth-bound hardcover, 176 pages

Dimensions: 9.5 x 11.75 inches

Publisher: Silvana Editoriale (September 2018)

Mother River is a four-year project (2010–14) for which the British Chinese photographer Yan Wang Preston (born 1976) photographed the entire 6,211-km Yangtze River at precise 100-km intervals with a large-format film camera.

As China's "Mother River," the Yangtze is routinely depicted through idealistic images of iconic places. With Mother River, Preston conceptually undermines this deep-seated preference toward certain river locales and their landscape representations. The equally spaced photographic locations produce no picturesque views or sublime concrete structures, but a set of accidental and vernacular landscapes that have never or rarely been photographed before.

The book tells an epic story of the entire width of China from its western highland to its eastern coast and demonstrates that, in an era of abundant satellite mapping and saturated imagery, fresh views can still be attained in acts of creative mapping.

PUBLISHER: HATJE CANTZ

BOOK FORMAT: Hardcover, 11 x 13 in. / 160 pgs / 64 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS: Pub Date 12/18/2018

DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2018 p. 130   

ISBN: 9783775744478

A poem originally written in the 8th century by China's drunken superstar poet, Li Bai 李白 (b. 701–762). Translated and illustrated by Jia Sung 宋佳瑜 (b. 1992–present). A dialogue across centuries is created.

Pages:  Staple-bound, 16 pages

Size: 5 inches x 7 inches

RongRong's Diary: Beijing East Village presents a selection of images and diary entries made by Chinese photographer RongRong (born 1968) between 1993 and 1998, within the artistic community known as Beijing East Village—now poignantly described as “a meteor in the history of contemporary Chinese art.” RongRong’s acutely composed, richly expressive images captured scenes of daily life among fellow young, aspiring artists, and created definitive documents of iconic performance works by Zhang Huan and Ma Liuming, among others. Often highly challenging works, their performances and photographs would send an instant shockwave throughout the Chinese avant-garde, and later the global art scene. Revisiting these texts and images anew for this publication, RongRong has composed a personal narrative of an artist coming into his own. Beijing East Village also serves as an invaluable firsthand record of a burgeoning artistic community, its precarious political context and the real lives behind a pivotal moment in Chinese contemporary art.

PUBLISHER: STEIDL/THE WALTHER COLLECTION, NEW YORK/THREE SHADOWS PHOTOGRAPHY ART CENTRE

BOOK FORMAT: Clth, 8.25 x 10.25 in. / 248 pgs / 124 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS: Pub Date 8/20/2019

DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2019 p. 129   

ISBN: 9783958295926

An elegant, large-format homage to the Yamamoto look

This volume celebrates the creative power and style of the great Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto. Shot in sensuous black and white, primarily in Tokyo, these previously unpublished images―by photographer Takay―respond to the iconic black designs and silhouettes of Yamamoto’s clothing, featuring some of Japan’s most accomplished actors, musicians and models, such as stage director Yukio Ninagawa, photographer Daido Moriyama, actress Rie Miyazawa, media artist Yoichi Ochiai and musician Char. The locations hark back to Japan of the 1980s, the end of the Showa era.

The seed for this book was planted many years ago, at the start of Takay’s career, when he worked on a Yamamoto project, and came to fruition after he was offered the use of the Yamamoto archive, which spans 40 years of designs. For Takay, Yohji Yamamoto’s work exemplifies a strong, avant-garde, masculine style, mixed with a keen Japanese sensibility and elegance.

Takay (born 1973) is a Japanese photographer based in New York, whose photographs have been featured in major fashion publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, L'Uomo Vogue and I-D, as well as in global advertising campaigns. His work has appeared in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s exhibition Men in Skirts, which traveled to the Metropolitan Museum in 2003; the Couture Chanel exhibition at the National Museum of China in Beijing; and the Met’s Spring 2013 Costume Institute exhibition Punk: Chaos to Couture. In 2016 Takay published the monograph Echos.

Details: 

Publisher: Damiani; Bilingual edition (April 7, 2020)

Language: English

Hardcover: 208 pages

ISBN-10: 8862087071

ISBN-13: 978-8862087070

Item Weight: 4.37 pounds

Dimensions: 10.5 x 1 x 13.6 inches

Rouge Fashion Book is China's first bi-annual independent fashion and art luxury magazine. 

atalyst who traversed many different worlds, transferring ideas and dreams from one circle to the next. His larger community is the subject of Semina Culture, which includes previously unseen works by 52 artists. Anchoring this publication is Semina, a loose-leaf art and poetry journal that Berman published in nine issues between 1955 and 1964. Although printed in extremely short runs and distributed to only a handful of friends and sympathizers, Semina is a brilliant and beautifully made compendium of the most interesting artists and poets of its time, and is today a very rare collector's item. Showcasing the individuals that defined a still-potent strand of postwar counterculture, Semina Culture outlines the energies and values of this fascinating circle. Also reproduced here are works by those who appear in Berman's own photographs, approximately 100 of which were recently developed from vintage negatives, and which are seen here for the first time. These artists, actors, poets, curators, musicians and filmmakers include Robert Alexander, John Altoon, Toni Basil, Wallace Berman, Ray Bremser, Bonnie Bremser, Charles Britten, Joan Brown, Cameron, Bruce Conner, Jean Conner, Jay DeFeo, Diane DiPrima, Kirby Doyle, Bobby Driscoll, Robert Duncan, Joe Dunn, Llyn Foulkes, Ralph Gibson, Allen Ginsberg, George Herms, Jack Hirschman, Walter Hopps, Dennis Hopper, Billy Jahrmarkt, Jess, Lawrence Jordan, Patricia Jordan, Bob Kaufman, Philip Lamantia, William Margolis, Michael McClure, David Meltzer, Taylor Mead, Henry Miller, Stuart Perkoff, Jack Smith, Dean Stockwell, Ben Talbert, Russ Tamblyn, Aya (Tarlow), Alexander Trocchi, Edmund Teske, Zack Walsh, Lew Welch and John Wieners.

PUBLISHER
D.A.P./SANTA MONICA MUSEUM OF ART

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9 x 11 in. / 384 pgs / 242 color / 250 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 2/24/2015
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2015 p. 96   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781938922725

ISSUE 1 - Lauch Issue

ISSUE 2 - The Unseen Issue

ISSUE 3 - The Anniversary Issue

Soft cover in print. 130 pages. 8.5” x 11”

25% of proceeds go to AMREF

Platformme Magazine is a New York based magazine that highlights the lives and talents of up-and-coming underground creatives. 

The moon has long furnished humankind with an artistic icon, an image of longing and object of scientific inquiry. Encompassing art, film, literature, architecture, design, natural history and historical objects, and published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first manned landing (July 20, 1969), The Moonsurveys the iconography of the moon, from Romantic landscape paintings to space-age art. It takes the 1969 landing as a thematic fulcrum and a culmination of the deep-rooted cultural conceptions invested in the space race in the 1960s, from David Bowie to Disney.

The book also accounts for the science of the moon throughout the ages, from Galileo to NASA, addressing the many lunar myths that have existed throughout time. Also explored here is moonlight, an important theme in the Romantic nocturnal landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, J.C. Dahl and Carl Julius von Leypold. Another powerful artistic genealogy is associated with science fiction, a genre that has on occasion influenced space programs: Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865), for instance, famously inspired NASA's Apollo programs. Film pioneers such as Georges Méliès and Fritz Lang created cinematic lunar voyages, and in the 1930s, surrealist artists such as Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst explored the moonlit landscape as psychological allegory. Later, during the Cold War, superpowers on both sides of the Iron Curtain worked closely with artists to orchestrate and interpret the space race: Robert Rauschenberg, for example, was one of eight artists invited by NASA to witness Apollo 11, while artists in the Soviet Union played a central role in building the cult of the cosmonaut.

The Moon looks at all these lunar themes and myths, in a thrilling and inspirational gathering for anyone who has felt the moon's pull on their imagination.

PUBLISHER: LOUISIANA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

BOOK FORMAT: Hardcover, 8.5 x 10.25 in. / 128 pgs / 150 color / 50 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS: Pub Date 10/23/2018

DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2018 p. 5   

ISBN: 9788793659087

Ellen Lupton, award-winning author of Thinking with Type and How Posters Work, demonstrates how storytelling shapes great design

Good design, like good storytelling, brings ideas to life. The latest book from award-winning writer Ellen Lupton is a playbook for creative thinking, showing designers how to use storytelling techniques to create satisfying graphics, products, services and experiences. Whether crafting a digital app or a data-rich publication, designers invite people to enter a scene and explore what’s there. An intriguing logo, page layout or retail space uses line, shape and form to lead users on dynamic journeys.

Design Is Storytelling explores the psychology of visual perception from a narrative point of view. Presenting dozens of tools and concepts in a lively, visual manner, this book will help any designer amplify the narrative power of their work. Use this book to stir emotions, build empathy, articulate values and convey action; to construct narrative arcs and create paths through space; integrate form and language; evaluate a project’s storytelling power; and to write and deliver strong narratives.

Ellen Lupton is the author of numerous books on design, including Graphic Design: The New Basics (2008), Thinking with Type (2004, second edition 2010), Graphic Design Thinking (2011), Beautiful Users: Designing for People (2014) and Type on Screen (2014), How Posters Work(2015) and Beauty―Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial (2016). She is Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, and director of the Graphic Design MFA program at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore. She received the AIGA Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in 2007.

Material: Paperback, 160 pages

Publisher: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (November 21, 2017)

Language: English

ISBN-13: 978-1942303190

Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches

Backside of the Moon is a brilliantly tongue-in-cheek dissection of the everyday insanities of 21st-century urban living — and a witty guide to how to keep one's calm in the midst of the craziness. Everything Shanghai-born visual artist, cartoonist, social media phenomenon, and advertising executive Tango Goa draws has its own expression. His humour is obvious without words and explanation. His doodles have a simple, fluent, and funny style. 

Even air has a shape and a piece of bread can be a protagonist. Tango celebrates finding joy and surprise in our daily life — no matter how small we are and how frustrating life can be, Tango's playful line drawings may just help you attain inner peace and tranquility. At the very least they will make you smile.

ASIN: B073SGKHM8

Publisher: Skyhorse (December 12, 2017)

Publication date: December 12, 2017

Language: English

File size: 10414 KB

Text-to-Speech: Enabled

X-Ray: Not Enabled

Word Wise: Enabled

Print length: 210 pages

Until Death Do Us Part [双喜] focuses on the unexpected role cigarettes play in Chinese weddings.

As a token of appreciation, it is customary for the bride to light a cigarette for each and every man invited. The bride and the groom are then invited to play some cigarette-smoking games of an unprecedented ingenuousness. This publication pays homage to a tradition in which love and death walk hand in hand.

These photos come from the Beijing Silvermine project, an archive of half a million negatives salvaged over the years from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing.

More on Beijing Silvermine and Thomas Sauvin

Product Dimensions: 53 x 83 x 21mm

Material: Paperback, in original cigarette box, 

108 pages, 

Publisher: Jiazazhi Press

Soviet Asia explores the Soviet modernist architecture of Central Asia. Italian photographers Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego crossed the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, documenting buildings constructed from the 1950s until the fall of the USSR.
The resulting images showcase the majestic, largely unknown, modernist buildings of the region. Museums, housing complexes, universities, circuses, ritual palaces—all were constructed using a composite aesthetic. Influenced by Persian and Islamic architecture, pattern and mosaic motifs articulated a connection with Central Asia. Gray concrete slabs were juxtaposed with colorful tiling and rectilinear shapes broken by ornate curved forms: the brutal designs normally associated with Soviet-era architecture were reconstructed with Eastern characteristics.

Many of the buildings shown in Soviet Asia are recorded here for the first time, making this book an important document, as, despite the recent revival of interest in Brutalist and modernist architecture, a number of them remain under threat of demolition. The publication includes two contextual essays by Alessandro De Magistris and Marco Buttino.

Publisher: FUEL PUBLISHING

Book Format: Hardcover, 192 pages, 140 color

Product Dimensions: 8 x 6.5 in. 

Publishing Date: 5/21/2019

One of the most influential art movements of the 20th century, Surrealism expanded our artistic and quotidian reality by drawing upon myths, dreams and the subconscious as sources of artistic inspiration. The movement began in literature and art, but by the 1930s it was beginning to have an impact on design—an influence that continues to this day. The fascination was often mutual: surrealism opened design up to the realm of dreams, and design could introduce surrealism to the wider world. “I try to create fantastic things, magical things, things like in a dream,” Salvador Dalí said of his work. “The world needs more fantasy.” Designers in fashion, furniture design, advertising, theater, film and architecture took up the call. 

Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design is the first book to document this fascinating conversation. The publication includes numerous essays and a comprehensive selection of images which trace the reciprocal exchanges between surrealism and design by juxtaposing exemplary artworks and design objects.

Among the artists and designers featured in this volume are Gae Aulenti, Louise Bourgeois, Umberto and Fernando Campana, Achille Castiglioni, Giorgio de Chirico, Le Corbusier, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Frederick Kiesler, René Magritte, Carlo Mollino, Meret Oppenheim, Jerszy Seymour, and many others. Historical texts and short commentaries by contemporary designers round out the publication, putting the extravagant objects in context. In-depth yet appropriately fantastical, Objects of Desire makes one thing abundantly clear: form does not always follow function in design—it can also follow our obsessions, fantasies and hidden desires.

Material: Clth, 380 pgs, 500 color

Product Dimensions: 7 x 9.5 in.

Publishing Date: 11/19/2019