modern

It: A Poem/Play Installation packs a lot into a small package. As an artists' book, it is considered a work of art and when read, it can be activated as a performance. The New York–based artist, Coco Gordon, incorporates a range of materials in the work such as handmade paper, acetate sheets, xerox copies, photographs, text, and sculptural elements. Each book is hand-bound with a wooden chopstick and has a miniature model of Gordon’s 12 foot sculpture "IT" — a red, lobster claw-like mesh item meant for the reader to “contemplate, lift, unfold, take anywhere."

This charming binder served as the exhibition catalog for Man Ray’s second show at the Hanover Gallery in London (April-May 1969). The exhibition featured mid-career painting and sculpture from the 1940s and 50s, with clear stylistic references to Man Ray’s peers, such as De Chirico, Picabia, and Kandinsky. The metal ring binder is polished aluminum, silk-screened in bright red. The yellow-bordered pages include an essay by Man Ray, 17 illustrations (7 in full color), and a checklist.

The Tate’s Seven Exhibitions (February 24–March 23, 1972) was a seminal event which marked the arrival of conceptual art in Britain. The seven overlapping exhibitions were organized by Michael Compton, and included works by Keith Arnatt, Michael Craig-Martin, Hamish Fulton, Bob Law, Bruce McLean, David Tremlett, and Joseph Beuys. The exhibition included photographs, films, tape recordings, and a public lecture by Beuys on direct democracy, which also marked the first time the Tate displayed mixed media.

This catalog was published in conjunction with the two-part exhibition “Paul McCarthy's Low Life Slow Life,” curated by the artist, which took place at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts on the San Francisco campus of California College of the Arts from 2008-2009. Packaged as a recreation of a vintage Tide detergent box circa 1973, this publication was designed by McCarthy to serve as an extension of the show and as an artwork in itself.

Ailey Spirit is a reflection of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s amazing journey as it has progressed from “a small group of young, African-American dancers traveling the country in a station wagon, to what we now respect as one of the best modern dance companies in the world.”  Photographs from an array of

This limited-edition set of 43 vibrant, color printed cards housed in a custom box is parts that together comprise artist Sanford Biggers’ explorations of identity, rituals, and iconography. Divided into three sections—afronomix, fetico, and fides—the images offer moments of both intimacy and surrealism.

Kiki Smith’s Dowry Book is an intimate, palm-sized collection of images, each representing an exhibition Smith had between 1982 and 1995, a time when she was particularly focused on issues of AIDS, gender, and race. The Hirshhorn Library’s copy is from a limited edition of 800 signed copies, issued in a plain, cardboard slipcase, and designed by Smith on a computer. The illustrated cloth boards reproduce Smith’s Dowry Cloth, 1990, made of women’s hair and sheep’s wool felted together.

In the early 1900s, wood sculptures from Africa (long regarded as curios in the West) suddenly caught the attention of Picasso and other artists who were intrigued by the stylized treatment—simple yet powerful—of human and animal figures. Their experiments with this “new aesthetic” announced the beginning of Modernism, the shift from realism to increasing abstraction.

Africa is rising—fashion, design, wax prints redeux, eco-architecture, floating schools, hammocks in libraries, AK-47s into chairs,  popular culture, récupération, safari lodges, curated dining, LGBT haute couture, Afronauts, sapeurs—where art and design and popular culture collide. Today’s African designers share an unflinching reverence for the past and draw smartly on that heritage in the novelty of their creations. This is not your Africa of yore.

This mysterious 10”x10”x11” cardboard box and its contents, designed for Documenta: The Paolo Soleri Retrospective held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1970, re-envisioned the concept of an exhibition catalog. Paolo Soleri (1919-2013) was an Italian architect who studied in the United States under Frank Lloyd Wright. He developed a theory of “Arcology” which proposed a fusion between architecture and ecology. Look closely at the exterior of Documenta and you will see a collage of text sampling Solari’s manifesto.

Kunstöffner is a kit designed to encourage a young person’s appreciation of art through objects in the collection at the Kunsthaus Zürich, one of the most significant art collections in Switzerland.

This seemingly insignificant, slim volume is the catalog for a groundbreaking exhibition curated by Sam Wagstaff at the Detroit Institute of Arts. A renowned curator and collector, Wagstaff is best known as the benefactor of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and poet-musician Patti Smith.

This is a large, thin book with vivid black and white photos throughout. As a young Washington Post reporter covering jazz during the 1930s through 1940s, the author William Gottlieb (1917-2006) took many pictures of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Dizzy Gillespie.  Before he died, he willed for all his photographs to be put in the public domain. This was carried out four years after his death. The Golden Age of Jazz consists of more than two hundred photos and captions, which are visual thrills for jazz fans.

A catalog of the 2013 exhibition Yayoi Kusama: White Infinity Nets at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London, in which Kusama exclusively showed her recent white Infinity Net paintings. This book contains full color plates of the paintings; installation shots; details of Kusama’s thick, impasto semi-circles; photographs of the artist at work in her studio; and an essay by Rachel Taylor, curator at the Tate Modern museum in London.

"It seems that pumpkins do not inspire much respect. But I was enchanted by their charming and winsome form." Thus Yayoi Kusama explains her attraction to the humble pumpkin in the preface to the catalog of the 2014 exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Pumpkins at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London. Both the pumpkin form and the repeated, striated spray of dots inspired by the markings on Japanese kabocha pumpkins are recurring motifs in this iconic artist’s work across various media.

This hardcover catalog features work from Yayoi Kusama’s critically acclaimed 2013 solo exhibition at David Zwirner, a celebrated contemporary art gallery in London. The exhibit marked the debut of the artist’s large-scale square-format acrylic on canvas paintings, which demonstrate her supreme talent as a colorist. This book features stunning, full color plates of this series of brightly colored paintings.