Hasta La Ideas

Save for that quick post last month when we told you she would be the keynote at this year’s BookExpo, it had been almost a full year since we’d last thought about Barbra Steisand writing a book about architecture and design. But now here it is all over the place (thanks BookExpo), with the first peek at its cover (where Babs looks just slightly more comfortable than her very uneasy dog). The initial info has come out now, so we and you now know that it’ll be 288 pages, cost somewhere south of $60 depending on where you buy it, and has an official release date of November 16th of this year. And while we’d really rather not have to think about it again until then, she does score some points in this quote over at the NY Times‘ T blog for dropping Mies van der Rohe‘s name:

Gayle King, the editor-at-large of O, the Oprah Magazine, interviewed Streisand but was obviously outmatched by the diva’s aesthetic prowess. “When I think of a Tiffany lamp,” King said, “I think of bright colors.” “No,” replied Streisand, “you’re thinking of fake Tiffany lamps.” Burn! King went on to quote Oprah, who likes to say, “God is in the details.” “Ah,” Streisand chimed in, “But Mies van der Rohe said the devil is in the details.” They’re both right, of course, but Babs had the last word.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Some nice books on my desk at the moment so thought I’d share them. First up is Art In Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures 1940-1980 by Dan Nodel (published by Abrams; £25) – a chunky hardback compendium of some of the characters that, despite originating from the pens of established comic artists, just never quite made it…

HG Peter, the artist who created Man O’ Metal (who?) in 1942 went on to have considerably more success with Wonder Woman (ah, yes – I’ve heard of her). Author Dan Nadel includes reproductions of entire comic strips so readers can not just familiarise themselves with the unsung heroes included in the book, but also some of their comic book capers. I’ve only scratched the surface but look forward to exploring this one more. Here are some images. Please excuse my shoddy photography.

Impressive: Printmaking, Letterpress & Graphic Design (Gestalten, £40) collects together photographs of tactile, printed works by a wide range of creatives from around the world – including House Indusries, Nobrow, and SORT (The Society of Revisionist Typographers). Here’s some spreads and photos and also a little extract from the book’s introduction:

“In the current climate of corner-store calling cards and exchangable software templates, these tangible human touches and skills – with all their idiosyncratic errors – have become a rare luxury. Sumptuous, luscious, almost prohibitively elaborate and sinful, bespoke hand-crafted cards and invitations reconnect sender and recipient as a thoughtful reminder and promise of things to come. Translated to the corporate sphere, to tailored company stationery or annual reports, hand-printing adds that certain je ne sais quoi, a dash of instant kudos and character. Limited by design, it conveys appreciation for the recipient and certainly leaves an impression – on the card stock and in our minds.”

Just as the Impressive book looks to ride the wave of popularity that analogue, hands on printing is currently enjoying – Pen to Paper (Pictoplasma; €39.90) looks to celebrate the fact that many illustrators working today still favour the humble pen (and pencil) – rather than the mouse. So not a vector image in sight! Featured artists include  Allison Schulnik, Ian Stevenson, John Casey, Luke Ramsey, Kerozen and more… here are some spreads:

Spread showing work by Allyson Mellberg Taylor

Arnaud Loumeau

Frédéric Fleury

Ian Stevenson

Kerozen

Mark Delong

Pictoplasma has also just published Characters In Motion 3 (€29.90) – its third collection of drawn characters brought to life in animated projects. The publication takes the form of a 180 minute DVD housed in the back cover of a book (shown above) containing stills and credits for all the featured films – by the likes of Marc Craste, McBess, Asterokid, David O’Reilly and many more talented directors and animators. More info at publishing.pictoplasma.com/dvds/characters-in-motion-vol-3

In her search for the ornate and unique, Australian photographer and stylist Pia Jane Bijkerk traverses the three cities she calls home—Paris, Amsterdam and Sydney—to find winsome boutiques and ateliers peddling handmade goods well off the beaten path. A follow-up to her first book on such places in Paris, “Amsterdam: Made By Hand” takes an inside look at the venues where Bijkerk sources inspiration, raw materials and personal possessions.

Organized into 10 neighborhoods, Bijkerk covers every nook and cranny of Amsterdam’s maze-like streets. From more well-known destinations like the Noordermarkt—the open-air farmer’s and textile market—to the tiny retail havens nestled between canals that make up the charming Grachtengordel Zuid neighborhood, Bijkerk leads readers through Amsterdam store by store.

Standouts include the 8,000-title-strong bookshop Boekie Woekie—dedicated to tomes written or designed by artists—and Swarm, American expat and former Anthropologie visual director Leslie Oschmann’s private atelier. An impressive array of buttons sells at Knopenwinkel (pictured above), a boutique set up in a 1920s canal house, while the surprising location of Tesselschade-Arbeid Adelt (located in the city’s famed café district) stocks beautifully crafted goods all handmade by local women (pictured below) and maintained by its volunteer program.

For astute tourists or locals looking for a fresh take on their hometown, both “Amsterdam: Made By Hand” and its Paris counterpart make well-edited guides to some of each city’s most distinct offerings.

Out June 2010, “Amsterdam: Made By Hand” is available for pre-order from The Little Bookroom (where you can also pick up “Paris: Made By Hand“) or from Amazon.

On the occasion of his fashion house’s 60th anniversary, Pierre Cardin has no regrets. “I will have owned it all,” he says, “without it owning me.”

The new retrospective, ”Pierre Cardin: 60 Years of Innovation,” considers the breadth of the fashion legend’s career. Written by Jean-Pascal Hesse, longtime director of communications for the label, the book features 200 color and black-and-white images.

Recognized as a pioneer from the start, Cardin embraced a dramatically futuristic style early on. His avant-garde, architecturally and geometrically inspired fashions were never for wallflowers, but handsomely rewarded the fashionably bold.

Today, Pierre Cardin is a household name, with licenses in more than 100 countries and a company that employs over 200,000 people internationally. We can, as Assouline’s new collection points out, “wear, eat, drink or live in Cardin: cigarettes, champagne, cosmetics, perfume, chocolate, wallpaper, automobiles, planes—his name is on everything.”

And at 87, Cardin continues to work as he always has, his perfectionist hand still firmly engaged in every facet of his eponymous empire, both as artist and businessman. He is designer, owner and chief executive. This approach to fashion as art and business makes sense given Cardin’s background: Before entering the fashion world, he studied architecture at Saint-Etienne; during World War I, he was trained as an accountant in Vichy. By 24, he had joined Dior, and by 28, he’d opened his own couture house.

Describing his aesthetic evolution, the Italian born, Paris-based fashion designer says simply, “The essentials are the cut and the volume. The shape changes over time.” But looking back on the last 60 years, his contributions seem a bit more complex than that. At the least, it’s impossible to deny Cardin’s one-of-a-kind gift for the dramatic. From his 1954 bubble dress, to the increasingly sharp angles of his 1980s collections, to the 2007 prêt-à-porter fashion show in China’s Gobi desert, Cardin has never lost his sense of flair and has continued to push himself—and his work—forward.

As Laurence Benaïm writes in the book’s foreword, “&#8216Utopia’ is too abstract a word for Pierre Cardin; he prefers ‘dream.’ Utopia remains a concept, but a dream—a dream can come true.”

“Pierre Cardin: 60 Years of Innovation” is now available at Amazon.

“Swoon,” the new eponymous book by the artist (aka Caledonia Curry and one of the best known female street artists in the world), finally came out this month. Tracing her process and showing some of her installations in galleries and streets around the world, as well as her larger scale community projects, including the street art collective Toyshop, the monograph includes essays by Curry herself, critic Carlo McCormick and others explaining her role as an instigator in the art world.

Callie recently talked to CH about her experience making the book, “it was amazing and sort of did my head in to try and encapsulate my whole life in art making over the last ten years—and this is me giving it my best shot. And almost none of that book would exist without the constant and beautiful vision of Tod Seelie.”

In as much as Swoon is an artist, she’s also an organizer, a hub and conduit for making things—wild things—happen. The book shows how Swoon goes about making her prints and ethereal cut-outs, as well as her Flotillas projects, like The Miss Rockaway Armada. For the project, handmade rafts sailed down the Mississippi, “Swimming Cities of Serenissima” took place in 2006 and 2007, and the rafts crossed the Adriatic and appeared in Venice for the biennale in 2009.

The book also highlights some of her other projects, including “Portrait of Silvia Elena” memorializing one of the first victims of the widespread killings of young women in Juárez, Mexico, where she researched the grisly phenomenon. A brief film describes her approach to making the work.

One essay mentions that Swoon doesn’t sleep much, a fact that makes sense given her cohesively broad and prolific output over the past few years.

“Swoon” sells from Abrams Books or Amazon.