The Situationist International (1957–1972)

Giorgio Agamben

A precursor to Arte Povera, Fluxus and Punk, the Situationist International has bequeathed a uniquely complex and conflicted legacy to contemporary art-making. Led by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, it initially favored the production of art objects; by 1962, collective debate on the role of art had caused the expulsion of its fine-artist members, including Asger Jorn, other members of Cobra and the entire Munich-based Gruppe SPUR. The revolution envisaged by the Situationist International demanded creativity in everyday life, the constructing of situations or the "fashioning of a temporary micro-environment and series of events for a single moment in the life of several individuals." The Situationist International (1957–1972) is the first publication to evaluate the creative contributions of the SI. It addresses three areas of Situationist practice: firstly, anonymous and communal artistic production (e.g Cobra, Asger Jorn's folk art research and the "Bauhaus Imaginiste"); secondly, "detournement," variously translated as "diversion" or "subversion," a key SI strategy in which extant works such as advertisements, comics, paintings or films are politically reconstituted by collage or other means; and thirdly, the practice of "derive"—"drift" or purposeless wandering in an urban milieu—which generated the now widely known phenomenon of "psychogeography" and led to radical reassessments of architectural practice.

The Public Notice: An Illustrated History

Maurice Rickards

Like the poster, the printed public notice is a faithful mirror of its time: it combines elements of social history, nostalgia and aesthetics and it is sought after by the collector and the connoisseur. A wonderful collection of broadsides and notices assembled by the author.

The Zürau Aphorisms of Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

The essential philosophical writings of one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers are now gathered into a single volume with an introduction and afterword by the celebrated writer and publisher Roberto Calasso. Illness set him free to write a series of philosophical fragments: some narratives, some single images, some parables. These “aphorisms” appeared, sometimes with a few words changed, in other writings–some of them as posthumous fragments published only after Kafka’s death in 1924. While working on K., his major book on Kafka, in the Bodleian Library, Roberto Calasso realized that the Zürau aphorisms, each written on a separate slip of very thin paper, numbered but unbound, represented something unique in Kafka’s opus–a work whose form he had created simultaneously with its content. The notebooks, freshly translated and laid out as Kafka had intended, are a distillation of Kafka at his most powerful and enigmatic. This lost jewel provides the reader with a fresh perspective on the collective work of a genius.

Ettore Sottsass: A Critical Biography

Barbara Radice

La Jetee

Chris Marker

La Jetée is the book version of the legendary 1964 science fiction film about time and memory after a nuclear apocalypse. Chris Marker, the undisputed master of the filmic essay, composed the film almost entirely of still photographs. It traces a desperate experiment by the few remaining survivors of World War III to recover and change the past, and gain access to the future, through the action of memory. A man is chosen for his unique quality of having retained a single clear image from prewar days: no more than an ambiguous memory fragment from childhood—a visit to the jetty at Orly airport, the troubling glance of an unknown woman, the crumpling body of a dying man. These elements become crucial hinge-points in the ensuing narrative, thickening and accumulating nuance with each successful expedition into the historical past. The image of the woman, increasingly suffused now with the time- and eros-bestowing capacities of a deep but impossible love, provides the kernel for the recovery of the dimension through which humankind and history will be saved, as well as the tragic abyss into which both the hero and the narrative inexorably fall. The story Marker tells — a stunning parable of our modern fate—is about the death of the world, about loss, memory, hope, and the indomitable power of love.

Massin

Laetitia Wolff

Robert Massin (b. 1925) is a highly influential French graphic designer and writer. He has worked with many famous authors and playwrights, including Eugène Ionesco, Blaise Cendrars, and Raymond Queneau, and for twenty years has been the art director for the pre-eminent French publisher Gallimard. This is the first monograph published in English on the work of Massin, one of the key exponents in the development of post-war graphic design. Wolff charts Massin's wide-ranging career with detailed discussion of some of his most inventive and exciting projects, including the award-winning THE BALD PRIMA DONNA (1964) and LETTER AND IMAGE (1970).

Otl Aicher

Markus Rathgeb

Long-awaited first monograph on German graphic designer and educator Otl Aicher (1922-1991), a key international figure in postwar design and a pioneer in the field of corporate identity and visual communication systems. Aicher is renowned for creating visual identities for dozens of major corporations, including Braun, BMW, Lufthansa and ERCO; for his design of the complete graphics programme for the 1972 Munich Olympic Games; and as the inventor of the popular typeface Rotis. Aicher influenced a generation of future designers in the 1950s and 60s at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG), the school he helped to found in in Ulm, Germany; he also collaborated with British architect Norman Foster and counted numerous corporate CEOs as clients and friends. The most complete selection of Aicher's work in print.

Graphic Thought Facility

Zoe Ryan

London-based Graphic Thought Facility (GTF) has emerged as one of today’s most progressive and versatile design firms. Established in 1990, it has a reputation for a non-conformist approach to graphic design. The firm's originality results from its combination of a handmade aesthetic, knowledge of digital technology, and an interest in new materials and production methods. This handsomely designed and produced catalogue includes photographs and essays that highlight GTF’s most notable projects and commissions, which range from graphic identity to marketing materials to exhibition and catalogue design.

Postproduction

Nicolas Bourriaud

Postproduction: How Art Reprograms the World is an essay by French writer and curator Nicolas Bourriaud. The author discusses how, since the early nineties, an ever increasing number of artworks have been created on the basis of preexisting works; more and more artists interpret, reproduce, re-exhibit, or use works made by others or available cultural products. This art of postproduction seems to respond to the proliferating chaos of global culture in the information age, which is characterized by an increase in the supply of works and the art world’s annexation of forms ignored or disdained until now.

37 Assignments

Indrek Sirkel

This small text book contains 37 provocative graphic design assignments from the famed Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. By focusing only on the assignments, but not the results, it asks questions and gives answers at the same time. With listings of reference material like books, websites and articles on related subjects. Highly recommended.

Paul Rand: Conversations with Students

Michael Kroeger

As one of the most influential and inspirational graphic designers of the twentieth century, Paul Rand defined modern American graphic design. His iconic logo designs for IBM, UPS, and the ABC television network distilled the essences of modernity for his corporate patrons. His body of work included advertising, poster, magazine, and book designs—all characterized by simplicity and a wit all his own. His ability to discuss design with insight and humor made him one of the most revered design educators of our time. This latest volume of the popular Conversations with Students series presents Rand's last interview, recorded at Arizona State University one year before his death in 1996. Beginners and seasoned design professionals alike will be informed by Rand's words and thoughts on varied topics ranging from design philosophy to design education.

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor

Jerry Della Femina

From the back cover: "I refuse to apologize for telling the truth about advertising, and if it offended some people, that's just too bad. If I had wanted to be loved by those people I would have joined the Peace Corps." Jerry Della Femina said that. He also said: "Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on." A fun read.

Six Memos for the Next Millennium

Italo Calvino

Six Memos for the Next Millenium is a collection of five lectures Italo Calvino was about to deliver at the time of his death. Here is his legacy to us: the universal values he pinpoints become the watch-words for out appreciation of Calvino himself. What should be cherished in literature? Calvino devotes one lecture, or memo to the reader, toe each of five indispensable qualities: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity. A sixth lecture, on consistency, was never committed to paper, and we are left only to ponder the possibilities. With this book, he gives us the most eloquent defense to literature written in our century—a fitting gift for the next millennium.

I Am a Camera

Graphic Thought Facility

The Saatchi Gallery, a great supporter and advocate of contemporary art, reveals a collection of work that interprets the modern world around us. I Am a Camera presents primarily photographic work organized into three themes: "True Life Adventures," "Fiction and Artifice," and "Places Portraits Still Lives Tableaux." Some of the works included are from emerging and unknown artists, while most are full-fledged art stars. Sam Taylor-Wood's panoramic views of contemporary domestic life; Jessica Craig-Martin's cropped close-ups of high-society social life revealing nameless wrinkles and age spots on the rich and famous; Andreas Gursky's exaggerated images of urban existence, a sterile display of Nike sneakers or the endless grid of a hotel's balconies, show modern life with barely a trace of human existence. The works vary greatly, but each offers a compelling interpretation of how we live.

Maps of the Mind: Charts and Concepts of the Mind and its Labyrinths

Charles Hampden-Turner

This book, essentially collates, combines, and compares theories of how the human mind works, finding parallels, offering interpretations, and finding intersections of ideas. From Frued to Marx, Jung to Blake, it's an amazing trip through explanations of "us," and served as my first introduction to concepts of cybernetics and feedback in mental and information systems.

The Collections of Barbara Bloom

Barbara Bloom

This volume assesses a wonderful body of work that encompasses installations, films, artist's books and specimens from the artist's vast archives of ephemera. Like Marcel Broodthaers and Susan Hiller, Bloom has a creative attraction toward taxonomy and museology: the installation "Greed" (1988), for instance, is comprised of a chair, an empty frame and a photograph of a museum gallery with a seated guard. An example of one of her own collections is a complete set of Vladimir Nabokov's writings for which Bloom redesigned all of the book covers, referring both to herself and Nabokov as collectors (he obsessively collected editions of his own books) and in the process interposing herself as artist. In some cases, Bloom revisits previous installations to add new elements, resisting and upsetting the orderliness of a conventional artistic chronology.

Ant Farm: Living Archive 7

Felicity D. Scott

Felicity D. Scott presents a detailed and extensively illustrated reconsideration of the early trajectory of the Ant Farm collective, including its architecture, inflatables, performance, multimedia, and video work. Drawing together archival material on their extended fields of practice, Living Archive 7: Ant Farm features the first full-color publication of the complete Ant Farm Timeline, as well as Allegorical Time Warp: The Media Fallout (1969) and an archival dossier on Ant Farm's Truckstop Network (1970-1972). On Exhibition: Ant Farm: Radical Hardware, Columbia University, New York, Spring 2008.

Inventory: The Work of Christine Hill and Volksboutique

Christine Hill

Exceptionally organized with a sincere nod toward dated encyclopedias and the anachronistic world of old-fashioned stationer's, Inventory holds true to the letter of the dictionary—which definition shall not be supplied here. Please look it up. Cataloging the orderly work that Christine Hill has produced over the past 10 years—including Pilot, Productions, Vending Machine, Tourguide, Reference Library, and Handbag, collectively referred to as Organizational Ventures—Inventory archives work created in each of the Volksboutique's international offices, located in Binghamton, Baltimore, Berlin, and Brooklyn, and a number of vital texts and reference images. Edited by Barbara Steiner. Essays by Doris Berger and Lucy Lippard. Hardcover, 6.29 x 9.5 in., 240 pages, 120 color, 80 b/w illustrations

Project Vitra: Sites, Products, Authors, Museum, Collection, Signs

Project Vitra began in 1957 in Birsfelden near Basel with the production of the furniture of Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson. Today Vitra is active and known throughout the world for its products and cultural initiatives, which are evidenced by the Vitra Design Museum, its collections, and the architecture of the firms own corporate campus. Vitra sees itself first and foremost as a project driven by the desire and determination to design the world. This ambition is also the driving force behind «Project Vitra», which offers an inside look at the firms collaboration with architects and designers, including Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Alexander Girard, Tibor Kalman, Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando, SANAA, Jasper Morrison, Zaha Hadid, Hella Jongerius, Maarten Van Severen,

Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Jean Prouvé, Mario Bellini, Antonio Citterio, Alberto Meda, Verner Panton, Herzog and de Meuron, and many others. The copiously illustrated chapters with contributions by Alex Coles, Rolf Fehlbaum, Luis Fernández-Galiano, Deyan Sudjic, and Alexander von Vegesack tell stories about the places, people, and products connected with Vitra. This overview is rounded off by a history of the firm and a comprehensive glossary.

Josef Albers: To Open Eyes: The Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Yale

Brenda Danilowitz

This book takes the reader through Albers's life inteaching. He began his career in 1923, when Walter Gropius invited him to join the faculty of the Bauhaus in Germany, where he quickly replaced the school's standard course curriculum with his own innovative methods. After moving to the United States in 1933, he and his wife Anni became founding members and teachers at the experimental start-up Black Mountain College. In 1950, he was appointed to head Yale's newly restructured Department of Design and remained there until he retired in 1958.Although he is widely perceived as a strong-minded theoretician, as this book reveals, Albers opposed rigid dogma and encouraged his students to develop lively and original solutions to his many and varied design exercises. On their first day in his classroom, Albers's students were informed that his goal was to educate their eyes and that he was going to teach them how to think and to see—an agenda belied by the somewhat prosaic course names "Basic Drawing" and "Basic Design" and "Color." With energy and flair, Danilowitz and Horowitz have charted Albers's world-changing role as a teacher. Through their archival research of original correspondence, documents, student course notes, and student work produced in his courses, and their interviews of former students, colleagues, and associates of Albers, they reveal the way that Albers's ideas on education and his complex personality have made an indelible imprint in the lives and work of artists all over the world. This book provides not only a compelling study of a key figure of 20th century art, but also ponders what constitutes art and how it is made and taught.