The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music Edited by Rob Young
Touching on musicians from John Cage to Sun Ra to Fela Kuti, this briefing on must-know artists who fall into the categories “Avant Rock,” “Funk, Hip-Hop & Beyond,” “Jazz & Improvisation” and “Modern Composition,” offers informative overviews of the styles that have shaped modern song and in-depth explanations of the greatest albums of each genre. According to the introduction, a working title for this book was How To Buy Modern Music and, considering the recommendations for seminal records like The Fall’s Live At The Witch Trials, various Glenn Branca albums and 20 different titles featuring Ornette Coleman, that seems like it would have been a very apt title.
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The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music
Edited by Rob Young
The Brooklyn Navy Yard
Architectural photographer and former Port Authority engineer Bartelstone offers 95 photos from Brooklyn’s 250-acre Navy Yard taken since 1994. Pictures of industrial Brooklyn and of the majestic ships that dock between the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges are breathtaking, giving viewers an unparalleled chance to peek inside what is still one of New York’s most active industrial sites. At this point, enough New York porn has been published that we never need to see skyscrapers, graffiti or grandmothers on stoops again, but Bartelstone’s shots from this remote and sometimes-forgotten corner of the world reminds us that there’s always another facet of the city at which to marvel.
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The Brooklyn Navy Yard
By John Bartelstone
Animals and Objects In and Out of Water Posters
The Chicago-based artist Ryan literally began his career underground, printing brightly colored posters of rounded, unrefined animals in the basement of his apartment building. Since then, he has illustrated the Windy City’s music scene, designing posters for indie acts like The Decemberists and Built to Spill. In his second collection of posters, printed between 2005 and 2008, Ryan puts art into the craft. Bears ride bikes, cats watch a volcano explode—Ryan deftly tows the line between cute and creepy. In a short introduction, rocker Andrew Bird writes that, “each printed piece reach[es] beyond the band’s music.” Ryan’s posters leak a soft, sweet sound of their own.
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Animals and Objects In and Out of Water Posters
By Jay Ryan
Planisphere
by John Ashbery
At 81 years old, John Ashbery has already won a National Book Award, a Pulitzer Prize and two Guggenheim fellowships, but with Planisphere, the latest collection from the man Harold Bloom has called “America’s greatest living poet,” Ashbery isn’t resting on his laurels. The 99 poems in this latest collection range from the terse “They Knew What They Wanted” to the lush title poem (all are arranged in alphabetical order) and are intelligent, winsome and lovely to read. Whether you enjoy the collection straight through or bit-by-bit, this book of previously unpublished work makes a serious case for the importance of reading poetry.—Joseph Harding
Lost Buildings
by Jonathan Glancey
The black-and-white image of the Twin Towers on the cover may have been intended as a way to sell copies, but it does this book a disservice, making it appear to be an homage to the WTC destruction of 9/11. In fact, it’s a much more thorough account of hundreds of buildings that have either achieved mythical status through their destruction or may have only existed in literary imagination. Unlike Italo Calvino’s “novel” Invisible Cities, which explores imagination through Marco Polo’s vivid descriptions of the built environment, author Glancey—who happens to be the architecture and design editor of The Guardian—is more concerned with man’s fallibility and destruction, as well as his creative powers. Sectioned by the ways in which buildings were “lost”—such as “Self-Destruction,” “Acts of God,” “Lost in Myth”—the book includes vivid descriptions and illustrations. Although it may appeal to those with a more literary bent rather than architectural one, the inclusion of building plans may whet a discerning appetite to explore further.—Jerry Portwood
Heads On and We Shoot: The Making of Where the Wild Things Are
by the editors of McSweeney’s
Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are took on a new life when director Spike Jonze presented its film version this year. Heads On and We Shoot ventures behind the scenes of the visually stunning movie, revealing the process that went into its creation. The tri-fold book features full-color photographs of the furry suits crafted by the Jim Henson Company and operated by performers on set to give the film its realistic, non-digital look. The book also includes early sketches, storyboards and character designs, as well as text from Jonze and Dave Eggers, interviews with the cast and crew, early drafts of the screenplay and tales from the set, making it the ideal source for knowing all there is to know about going Wild.—Christine Werthman
South African Art Now
edited by Sue Williamson
The title may suggest only art of recent times, but Sue Williamson’s book opens up the world of South African art for the last four decades, taking readers from the years of apartheid to the present day. In-depth essays and photography accompany pictures of art in every medium, crafted by nearly a hundred South African artists. The more than 500 works in the book reflect a timeline of South African history, moving through art reflecting the resistance to the apartheid, democracy and freedom in the 1990s, the AIDS epidemic and the country’s continuing struggles today. As South-African author Nadine Gordimer explains in her moving forward, Williamson’s book does more than showcase the art; she uses it to explain what it means for an art form to be truly South African. —Christine Werthman
Serizawa: Master of Japanese Textile Design
edited by Joe Earle
Released as a catalogue of the Japan Society’s current retrospective of his work, this book on the design of Serizawa Keisuke features hundreds of colorful photos and illustrations showcasing the textile work of the man who was named a Living National Treasure in 1956. Items including book covers, wall hangings and kimonos are exhibited, showing off the playful and colorful style that Serizawa became known for. In addition to the images, a slew of writers have contributed essays on Serizawa, his processes and his influence, giving the book an aesthetic edge and making it an interesting read.
Mapping New York
edited by Phoebe Adler, Tom Howells and Duncan McCorquodale
Maps may mean more to New York than any other city. It was the rational planning of streets that created Manhattan, transforming it from pastoral island to the epitome of 20th-century modern planning. This beautifully illustrated book appeals to more than the map fetishist or the academic looking for a compendium for reference. Rather than chronological, the editors have done a wonderful job organizing a wealth of maps—from the pragmatic and to the quixotic—into four sections: history, servicing, living and imagining. One of the most intriguing sections is a series of pages that show the abstraction of New York through transit maps. The sort of graphic interpretations that can rarely be pored over for long in a museum setting, this British-produced volume is a must-have for any New Yorker who seeks to understand the city from the ground up.
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Who Shot Rock And Roll: A Photographic History 1955-Present
by Gail Buckland
There are photos of musicians that become iconic—Bob Dylan walking down Jones Street in the snow or Johnny Cash, middle finger extended, on stage at San Quentin—but in this collection, by Cooper Union professor Buckland, it’s the photographer, not the subject, who is celebrated. From Astrid Kirchherr’s shots of a young John Lennon to Ryan McGinley’s photos of fans at a 2004 Morrissey concert, the pictures, each paired with notes about the photographer and the photograph, say just as much about the person taking them as they do about the musicians on the other side. Whether they’re outtakes from famous shoots, images from live shows or candid snapshots, the photos that Buckland uses—and which will be exhibited in an upcoming show at The Brooklyn Museum—can be as exciting and exhilarating as the musicians they capture.
