books

Shepard Fairey does Dallas! The street artist is making his mark on The Big D with a series of murals that will be unveiled tomorrow. The citywide project is sponsored by Dallas Contemporary, which is celebrating with an “over-the-top, neon-inspired” Saturday night dance party (fingers crossed for glowsticks!). Fairey will balance DJing duties with signing merch from the on-site OBEY pop-up shop. Meanwhile, the Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas are organizing an art bus tour for next Saturday, February 11. Stops include the current Rob Pruitt, David Jablonowski, and Failure exhibitions at Dallas Contemporary, several of the Fairey murals, and a studio visit with Dallas-based graffiti crew Sour Grapes. Don’t miss the bus: tickets are going fast here.

Lately we’ve been sleeping with a copy of Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee’s wondrous Alexander Girard mega-monograph under our pillow, and next Tuesday, February 14, Pratt Institute welcomes the delightful Oldham for a lecture on all things Girard, from his iconic textile designs for Herman Miller and branding and environmental design for Braniff International Airways to his celebrated retail store Textiles and Objects and folk art-stuffed Girard Foundation. The 6 p.m. lecture is free and open to the public, but Pratt students get first dibs on seats.

As part of its burgeoning “Fashion at FIAF” programming, our friends at the French Institute Alliance Francaise here in New York have invited agnès b. (née Agnès Andrée Marguerite Troublé) to curate a month-long series of films that have most influenced her life and career as a designer, photographer, and more recently as a film producer and director. Among her picks are Godard‘s Vivre Sa Vie and Pierrot le Fou, while Valentine’s Day revelers can be transported to St. Tropez at one of three V-Day screenings of …And God Created Woman, starring Brigitte Bardot. The fashionable French fun kicks off on Tuesday, when agnès b. will appear in person to present the first film in the series, The Crime of Monsieur Lange, directed by Jean “Yes, he’s my dad” Renoir. Buy your tickets here.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

“The birds developed out of gag strips and short experiments I had started with. They began to develop personalities….But I didn’t really know how to draw comics. To a great extent, the story of this book is the story of me trying to figure out what I’m doing exactly. For as long as I can remember, I’ve spent a lot of time drawing pictures, and probably for that reason it was something I had become reasonably good at. Making comics, however, is about more than just being able to draw well. It involves rhythm and timing, directing the reader’s focus, making objects and faces recognizable from one panel to the next. Things as subtle as a character’s posture and the way a panel is framed convey information, whether intentionally or not. Part of the pleasure of drawing for me has always been to watch an image take shape in front of me, and to adapt and respond as it unfolds. There’s a way that drawing can be very improvisational. But in comics, if it isn’t consistent, you risk confusing your reader. If that happens more than once or twice, she will take her attention elsewhere.”

-Author and artist Anders Nilsen on his magnum opus, Big Questions, recently published by Drawn and Quarterly

In a year studded with beautiful new volumes by and about artists and designers ranging from Alexander McQueen to Andrea Zittel, these are the five that we found most inspiring.

Autobiography of a Fashion Designer: Ralph Rucci (Bauer and Dean) by Ralph Rucci, with photographs by Baldomero Fernandez
Fashion designer and artist Ralph Rucci has been betrayed by key members of the fashion press, who should have made him a household name years ago, but critics, curators, and connoisseurs have picked up the slack. This just-published volume is a fascinating follow-up to Ralph Rucci: The Art of Weightlessness (Yale University Press), published in 2007 to accompany the Museum at FIT’s exhibition of the designer’s work. Like Rucci’s exquisite creations, Autobiography of a Fashion Designer rewards patience and close-looking, with pages of lush color photos and descriptions of the couture techniques used (and in some cases pioneered) in the Chado Ralph Rucci atelier. Inspired by Sol LeWitt’s Autobiography (1980), a kind of exhaustive visual index of the artist’s life, this book also tells the stories behind 20 objects Rucci has collected in his lifetime. It’s a fitting tribute to an uncompromising designer with the soul of artist.

Alexander Girard by Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee (Ammo Books)
Treat yourself to the amazing Alexander Girard mega-monograph by designer Todd Oldham and writer Kiera Coffee. The product of nearly four years of research and, at 672 pages, an innovative scheme of printing and binding, this book is a must for any design lover. Oldham was granted exclusive permission to sift through the fastidiously kept archives of Girard (1907-1993), who is best known for his folk art-infused textiles for Herman Miller but also designed everything from buildings to typography. “I’d estimate that 90 percent of the work in the book hasn’t been seen,” Oldham told us earlier this year. “Wait ‘til you see the stuff from his early design career, in the ‘20s.” And take a closer look at the image credits: many of the archival photos were taken by frequent Girard collaborator Charles Eames.
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Working at the interface of landscape and architecture, nature and culture, public and private, Diana Balmori continues to blur the boundaries with innovative green roofs, floating islands, and temporary landscapes that get people talking in more ways than one. In A Landscape Manifesto (Yale University Press), Balmori described her interest in “shaping spaces…not objects within the landscape,” and her new book, Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture (Monacelli), presents 25 projects that mark exciting points of innovation along the building/environment continuum. Co-written with architect Joel Sanders, an associate professor at Yale, Groundwork examines how the likes of Zaha Hadid, Snøhetta, and Aranda/Lasch are linking indoors and outdoors, around the world. “Many books about landscape romanticize nature as a universal palliative and bid designers to consult the ‘genius of place.’ This is not one of them,” write Balmori and Sanders in the book’s preface. “Instead it is an appeal to designers to pursue a new approach that overcomes the false dichotomy between architecture and landscape.”

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.
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This next item in the UnBeige Gift Guide combines four of our favorite favorite things: modernism, minimalism, photography, and Todd Eberle. A longtime contributor to Vanity Fair, Eberle defies categorization: one day he’s revealing the beauty in overlooked architectural spaces (abstracted elevator banks, ceilings, bathrooms) or immortalizing the works of Donald Judd and the next he’s making a luminous portrait of the uber-multitasker: Martha Stewart. Part of the pleasure of paging through Eberle’s 30-year career in Empire of Space (Rizzoli) is that the book, designed by Richard Pandiscio, unfolds as a series of paired images, visual juxtapositions inspired by the Walker Evans book, First and Last. “It allowed me absolute freedom to mix subjects,” Eberle has said. “I wanted to have my first book represent what I do. I think it’s hard to come up with a point of view when making a book and the pairings solved many things for me.”

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.

Previously on the UnBeige Gift Guide:
♦ A is for Adjaye’s African Metropolitan Architecture
♦ B is for Brinca Dada Bennett House
♦ C is for Can Can Pendant Light
♦ D is for Dress by D-Crit

D-Crit is dressed to impress for the holidays. The design criticism MFA program at New York’s School of Visual Arts has turned to matters sartorial for the second volume in its chapbook series. Edited by D-Crit faculty member Andrea Codrington Lippke and 2011 D-Crit grad Aileen Kwun and designed by Walker Design and Matthew Rezac, Dress is a collection of 11 essays on the unique style of public figures ranging from Julian Schnabel and Steve Jobs to Pope Benedict XVI and Dora the Explorer. Pajamas and mock turtlenecks and Prada loafers, ¡Dios mío! “On the journey from person to persona, each celebrity comes to be represented by a host of props that act as visual leitmotifs containing meanings and messages for those able to untangle the associations,” notes Lipke, who teaches the Criticism Lab course in which the book’s essays were generated. Copies of Dress are available on Lulu.com. Priced at $10, the slim paperback makes a perfect stocking stuffer…but what does the stocking signify?

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.

Previously on the UnBeige Gift Guide:
♦ A is for Adjaye’s African Metropolitan Architecture
♦ B is for Brinca Dada Bennett House
♦ C is for Can Can Pendant Light

“The ‘designer,’ loosely defined, has secured a prominent place in the cultural dialogue…[and] ‘interior design’ as a pastime has never captured more general interest. A growing appreciation for the value of design has fueled the advancement of the professions, but it has also led to dilettantism in the field. Cable television shows and shelter magazines loudly proclaim that anyone can design, thus diminishing recognition for the designer’s unique skills and abilities. As a result, the widespread impression of the role of the designer is that of surface stylist and form giver. There is also an unrealistic perception of the mystique of a talented few ‘artists’ who shape new trends by combining unusual shapes and materials with a certain flair. While this interest in design serves to raise a general level of visual interest among the public, ‘design’ is this most rudimentary sense falls far short of what is needed for the meaningful improvement of the human condition. Regarding interior design as an instrument of the ‘cool,’ ‘trendy,’ or stylish ignores its most important contribution: the advancement of well-being.” -Shashi Caan, president of the International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers, in Rethinking Design and Interiors: Human Beings in the Built Environment, published recently by Laurence King

It’s that time of year again, when design lovers around the world seek out gifts that surprise, delight, and won’t be swiftly returned for store credit. In the coming days, we’ll offer an alphabet of suggestions in the UnBeige Gift Guide, which we hope will also supply some ideas on how to spend the seasonal smattering of gift certificates (and store credit) that will soon be burning a hole in your pocket. Our first pick: African Metropolitan Architecture (Rizzoli), the sublime new book by David Adjaye. The set of seven slipcased volumes is the culmination of the Tanzanian-born, London-based architect’s decade-long project to document the built environment of every major African city. It’s a fresh look at a continent that the world has come to know through exotic images from National Geographic.

“I just wanted ordinary pictures. Everyday life,” said Adjaye last week at Design Miami, where he was celebrated as Designer of the Year. “There’s a sense that Africa’s all a jungle, with savannahs, animals running around, and some nice natives.” In fact, with 54 countries and 1.5 billion people, Africa is on an urbanization streak. Growth of cities on the continent is now outpacing that of China. “But nobody’s talking about Africa. I couldn’t even talk to architects about it,” he added. In the course of visiting every African city, Adjaye looked beyond the political boundaries to examine the distinctive aspects of six regions: the maghreb, the sahel, savannah and grassland, mountain and gighveld, desert, and forest. A book of essays about African urban development rounds out the edition. “The landscape of Africa is one of the most primal and powerful environments that we have on this planet,” said Adjaye. “It’s nurtured a lot of artists and creative people, and even when architecture doesn’t realize what’s happening, it’s actually authoring architecture, and that’s what this book is about.”

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.

Jakub Szczesny of Polish architecture collective Centrala recently designed what will be the narrowest house in Warsaw (rendering at right). The slim steel frame will be squeezed between two existing buildings, and the dwelling-cum-art installation will feature remote-control stairs, yacht-style water and sewage systems, as well as the challenge of navigating a space that, at its narrowest, spans a mere 28 inches. The inspiration for this miniature marvel? Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret, an expert at crafting compact narratives that pack an outsized punch. In anticipation of his new story collection (out in April), FSG Originals and BOMB Magazine, have launched a contest that invites readers, artists, and designers to draw inspiration from the written work of Keret to create visual art of their own. The “Something out of Something” contest, which takes its name from a passage in the title story of the forthcoming book, is open for entries through March 1, 2012. The winning piece—as determined by Keret along with judges from FSG and Bomb—will be featured in a Keret story or film. Full details, as well as submissions, can be viewed on the contest’s Tumblr.

One of our favorite purveyors of all things bound, Chronicle Books has its Friends and Family Holiday Sale running through Wednesday, November 30, and Chronicle thinks of UnBeige as family (or at least a bookish buddy). All the good little UnBeige girls and boys can get a whopping 35% off all purchases and—because Santa has plenty of extra room on the sleigh this time of year—free shipping. Just use promo code “FRIENDS” at checkout. Might we suggest the Unhappy Hipsters book, It’s Lonely in the Modern World, or perhaps Pantone gurus Leatrice Eiseman and Keith Recker‘s colorful tour through the 20th century? And even the most grizzled Scrooge will be charmed by this look at the life of Boo, world’s cutest dog.