Weekly Perusables: Hanuman Miniature Books

Hanuman books published miniature books by well-known writers and artists from 1986 to 1993.  The press, created by editor Raymond Foye and artist Francesco Clemente, was based out of New York City, but the books were printed and bound in India.  Their small 3" x 4" format was modeled off of Hindu prayer books, and the covers were made with handmade Indian paper and vegetable dies.

With a total of 50 titles, the Hanuman series included works by William Burroughs, Patti Smith, Jack Kerouac, and William de Kooning.  The Herron Library collection holds titles by artists Robert Frank, David Hockney and Francis Picabia, and critic and curator Henry Geldzahler.

Robert Frank One Hour
Henry Geldzahler Looking at Pictures
David Hockney Picasso
Francis Picabia Who Knows
Francis Picabia Yesno
All housed in secure area


Sources
Museu D'Art Contemporani de Barcelona's Col·lecció documental Hanuman Books 
University of Michigan Special Collections Library's Finding aid for Hanuman Books Records

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)

Weekly Perusables: Mamma Andersson





Swedish painter Mamma Andersson creates ghostly, melancholic landscapes and interiors. Many of her interiors depict layers fading into each other, with inside and outside merging, bringing to mind a camera obscura and the work of Abelardo Morell. Painters will find her technique particularly interesting because of the way her oils and acrylics appear by turns washed out and rich. She also employs the decalcomania technique, once popular with Max Ernst and other Surrealists. You can see how her work progresses between the two books in our collection, with the compositions becoming more complex and colors more considered in her recent work.


Mama Andersson
ND793 .A54 A4 2010 (Stacks)
ND793 .A54 A4 2007 (Special Collection)

Image from David Zwirner

(blog entry by Jessica Sowls)

Weekly Perusables: elles@centrepompidou

In 2009 France's national museum of modern art, the Centre Pompidou, devoted the entire permanent collection to the work of women artists. Like the exhibition, the elles@centrepompidou catalog is arranged thematically with key female artists like Frida Kahlo, Sonia Delaunay, and Dorothea Tanning alongside major contemporary creators. More than 500 works by 200 artists are brought together under the themes Pioneer, Free Fire, Body Slogan, The Activist Body, A Room of One's Own, Wordworks, and Immaterials.

In addition to more than 300 pages of color images, elles@centrepompidou includes quotes from the artists and essays reflecting on gender and art. This book is an excellent collection of the multifaceted and diverse work by women that have, and continue to, create art history.


elles@centrepompidou: women artists in the collection of the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre de création industrielle
Centre Pompidou, 2009
N8354 .M8713 2009

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)

Weekly Perusables: The Faith of Graffiti

The Faith of Graffiti documents the early graffiti art of New York City. First published in 1974, the book includes full color photographs by Jon Naar and Mervyn Kurlanksy with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning writer Norman Mailer. Mailer's essay covers the origins of the movement and discusses graffiti as pure art, comparing it to celebrated works in the MoMA and the Met.

Kurlansky and Naar's photographs, shot in twelve days throughout the city's boroughs, depict both the birth of an art form, and the decay of 1970s New York. The pieces in Faith of Graffiti are mainly name tags and early developments of the more elaborate letting styles found in the 1984 book Subway Art by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant. Both titles trace the progression of early street art and serve as essential documentation of work long cleaned off or painted over.

The Faith of Graffiti
by Jon Naar, Mervyn Kurlanksy, and Norman Mailer
GT3913.N72 N44 1974

Subway Art
by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant
GT3913.N72 N43 1984

Sources
"Off the Wall" by Hua Hsu on bookforum.com. Image from flavorwire.com 

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)

Weekly Perusables: Art to Wear

Art to Wear by Julie Schafler Dale showcases wearable fiber arts made in the '70s and '80s. Dale began researching wearable art in the early '70s leading to her opening a gallery dedicated to the medium in NYC in 1973.

The works presented in this book are highly personal, exceptionally crafted, and represent a variety of methods including crochet, knitting, leatherwork, and mixed media. Some standouts include the knitted pieces by Susanna Lewis like the Oz Socks shown above, and the hats and coats with three-dimensional landscapes by Joan Steiner.

This beautifully photographed book is a must peruse for anyone interested in fashion, textiles, and dress as a form of personal expression.

Art to Wear by Julie Schafler Dale
Cross River Press, 1986
NK4860.5.U6 D34 1986 Special Collections

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)

Weekly Perusables: Hand Book

Part of the Herron Library's artists' book collection, Damara Kaminecki's Hand Book combines collage and illustration in a hand-shaped book. The artist said about the work:

"The Hand book is a way for people to interact with art as an object. The book's hands mimics the viewers own hands as it lies in their palms. The images are a non-verbal poem relating to touch and how it can be received internally and externally."

A Chicago native, Kaminecki works mostly in illustration and collage under the name Damarak the Destroyer. For examples visit www.damarakthedestroyer.com.

Hand Book is now on display in our artists' book alcove.


Hand Book by Damara Kaminecki
Herron Library - Artists' Books
N7433.4.K355 H36 2005

Sources:
Image by Herron Library, book by Damara Kaminecki
The artist's website www.damarakthedestroyer.com

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)

Weekly Perusables: Atlas

This week's title is Gerhard Richter's Atlas in celebration of the artist's 80th birthday. Richter is a German artist best-known for his paintings from the '60s and '70s that reproduced photographs in gray-scale as an effort to create an objective, pure painting he felt was missing in the abstract work of the period. Various styles and subject matter are found in his later work, including abstracts and landscapes.

Richter began Atlas in 1961 as an archive of sources for his paintings. The photographs, clippings, and sketches are arranged onto grid-like panels, and are presented this way in the book and when shown in galleries. The collection has been continuously added to, and now can be viewed online. The more than 40 years of collection and arrangement is pretty intriguing in itself, but Atlas is also an enlightening backdrop to the artist's work, reflecting the shifts in his subject matter and style.

Atlas
by Gerhard Richter
N7433.4.R528 A4 2006

Sources
www.gerhard-richter.com
Lucius Grisebach. "Richter, Gerhard." Grove Art Online.
Image from www.gerhard-richter.com

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)

Weekly Perusables: Alphabet

Alphabet features the human alphabet created by Dutch graphic designer Anthon Beeke, and photographed by Geert Kooiman. Published in 1970, this non-traditional book consists of a portfolio with loose pages for each letter and punctuation mark. Although the outside cover is blank, the portfolio opens to reveal a collage of images showing his process during the photo shoot.

Beeke took great care in arranging his human nude alphabet, and even modeled it after a well-known font. Come take a look and see if you can tell what font was his inspiration.

Alphabet
by Anthon Beeke
de Jong, 1970
Z253 .B44 Secure Area

Sources: "Nude alphabet / Quadrat Print / 1970" on Past Print blog and the artist's website beeke.nl.
Image from Past Print

(blog entry by Sara O'Sha)

Superbowl Hours

Due to our proximity to the Superbowl excitement, we'll be closed Friday, February 3rd and Monday, February 6th. Have a safe Superbowl weekend everyone!

Beautiful Losers

Following the recent screening of Beautiful Losers, Herron's Active Student Artists hosted a lecture by husband and wife artists, Chris Johanson and Jo Jackson. Here are some of the resources available at Herron Art Library to learn more about these artists, or others featured in the film.


Chris Johanson
by Chris Johnson with an essay by Aaron Rose
Deitch Projects, 2004
N6537.J56 A4 2004








Young, Sleek and Full of Hell: Ten Years of New York's Alleged Gallery
compiled by Aaron Rose
N6512 .A422 2005








Barry McGee T.H.R.
Damiani, 2010
N6537.M3339 A4 2010








Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing
Phaidon, 2005
NC95 .V58 2005

Mike Mills: Graphics Films
Alleged Press/Damiani, 2009
N6537.M558 A4 2009

Beautiful Losers (video recording)
Oscilloscope Pictures, 2009
N6536 .B43885 2009

Exit Through the Gift Shop (video recording)
Paranoid Pictures; a Banksy Film, 2010
N6797.B363 E958 2010

Images from Librarything.com