Scuppernong Bookshelf
The Art of Books Pick your aesthetic By Brian Lampkin
Art books require a different level
of commitment from the book-buying public. They’re typically expensive and they often occupy a more public space than the semiprivate bookshelf in your office. Art books are haphazardly thrown upon the living room table in an attempt to suggest an absent-minded display of one’s aesthetic. Or even consciously and grandly displayed upon the mantel: This is what I love and you should too! Art books reveal you. Is it Warhol you identify with or Grandma Moses? Robert Mapplethorpe or Andrew Wyeth? These are important distinctions. This month, Scuppernong Books will try to guide you through some recent art books and a few perhaps forgotten gems. Your very reputation is at stake! Since the early ’90s, Maurizio Cattelan has been poking his finger in the eye of the art world with taxidermied animals in tableaux and life-size wax effigies of various people. For one of his most famous works, The Ninth Hour, he built a full-size effigy of Pope John Paul in full ceremonial dress being crushed by a meteorite. In 1999, for his piece Mother, he buried an image of an Indian fakir daily under sand in a small room with only his clasped hands visible. For a retrospective of his work at The Guggenheim he hung every work in the open space of the rotunda, reaching from two inches above the floor to the roof, five floors above. Toilet Paper (Damiani, 2012, $65) is a compilation of his work with Pierpaolo Ferrari, a biannual picture-based publication begun in 2010. Stuffed with alluring images both shocking and surreal, beautiful and macabre, this book reads like a catalogue of emotional and intellectual responses, each page eliciting ever more complex feelings and thoughts, but always with dark humor and a great sense of fun. The texts accompanying the photos are sometimes interesting, sometimes absurd. But one thing’s for sure. There’s no other book in our store where you’ll come across the complete U.S. Patent application for a bird diaper. — Steve Mitchell The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Jean-Michel Basquiat: Drawing (Acquavella, 2014, $60) is a gorgeous book. It opens with an enormous and appropriate quote from Jean-Michel Basquiat himself: “Believe it or not, I can actually draw.” A friend of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, Basquiat rocketed to fame as a painter in the New York City art scene of the early 1980s. His paintings and mixed-media work, typically depicting the heads of heroic figures — athletes, prophets and warriors — framed by garish colors and arresting bursts of unexpected lines, are the source of most of Basquiat’s fame. This book succeeds admirably at shedding light on his drawings, which are an often-forgotten component of his oeuvre. Bought by the Schorr family before Basquiat had made much of a name for himself, these drawings allow us an intimate, almost voyeuristic look into the ethos of the mind of Basquiat the artist. For any fan of his work, this book is an absolute must. And if you’re only just learning about him, this book is as good a place as any to start. Like many others who achieved this measure of fame so early, Jean-Michel Basquiat succumbed to the ravages of addiction and died when he was only 27 years old. It is because of books like this one that his work, characterized by its refreshing candor and sense of childlike wonder, continues to inspire and enchant. — Brian Etling For a different perspective on the art world, you might pick up Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud (Thames and Hudson, 2010, $21.95), by Martin Gayford. It’s a fascinating look at the relationship between an artist and his model, as well as an insightful glimpse into how painters paint — or, at least, how Lucian Freud paints. Readable and accessible, this book also has a lot to say about modern art. In the end, though, it all rests with the model and the artist and the ways in which they might see each other. Included are a number of full color plates of Freud’s work. — Steve Mitchell Photography is arguably criticized and undervalued more than any other medium. For decades, photographers have, like their peers who work in modern, had to defend their work from detractors who pull out the all-too-common line, “Well, I could do that.” The answer over and over again is no . . . you couldn’t (and you didn’t). Vivian Maier: Street Photographer (PowerHouse Books, $39.95) assembles some of the most striking candid street photographs no one was expectSeptember 2014
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