Book Picks: Visual Storytelling for a Season of Reflection

The end of the year is not just for holidays and gifting—it’s also a season of reflection, recollection, and resolution. With that in mind, here are our book picks among eclectic titles on art, photography, film-making, architecture, urban design, absurdist pedagogy, extreme on-set BTS, obsessive pen-pals, fantasy illustration, Indigenous identities, and the inner and activist lives of artists—all perfect for smartening up your own bookshelves or those of someone you love.

Sofia Coppola: Archive (MACK). Though not technically a memoir, the substantial book exploring Coppola’s filmography in extensive, intimate contemporaneous documentation, ephemera, work process materials, script notes, etc. effectively functions as one. The rich visual narrative and associated conversations touch on aspects of the auteur’s creative process across all of her films, from The Virgin Suicides (1999) to Lost in Translation (2003) and her forthcoming feature about Priscilla Presley’s time at Graceland. But despite its purported outward focus on Coppola’s cinematic art, one leaves the book with an impression of knowing her better as a person—including how thoroughly immersed in her artistic pursuits she is, and what it’s like to be in on it. mackbooks.us.

Toilet Paper, Issue 20 (Damiani). Artists, provocateurs, friends, collaborators—Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari have been publishing their slinky, outrageous experimental design magazine since June 2010—but Toilet Paper is more than a magazine, it’s a parallel universe for the palm of your hand. Channeling the visual conventions and tonal armature of commercial/fashion/celebrity/advertising photography but infusing that lexicon with upsetting surrealism and an assertive lack of contextualizing copy, Toilet Paper is a drastic intervention in our somnambulistic media consumption, and a work of art in its own right. artbook.com.

Kent Monkman: The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testikle, Volumes One & Two (Penguin/Random House). Artist Kent Monkman’s prolific alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle has appeared in his epic paintings over the years, participating in the wild, queer, exuberant, blended historical tableaux for which the artist is known. But in a new two-volume book, Monkman and his long-time collaborator Gisèle Gordon are fully dedicated to telling Miss Chief Eagle Testikle’s very own story. As the character’s talents for time travel and shape-shifting put them in the perfect position to survey the sweep of history, they turn their attention to the queer Indigenous nexus, the shameful history of what is now called America, and the still-unfolding damage of that legacy in the present day. Fortunately for all humanity, it might just be within their power to show us a better way before it’s too late. penguinrandomhouse.ca.

The Fantastic Worlds of Frank Frazetta (TASCHEN). The Godfather of fantasy art finally gets a proper monograph, as a team of artists, writers, scholars, and family members pay weighty tribute to Frazetta’s insane vision and industry-changing career. As the book both explains and illustrates, Frazetta’s definitional glow ups of Tarzan and Conan began in the late 1960s and basically built the worlds we know for those characters—especially Conan, whose juiced up muscles and machismo were largely based on the guys he knew from his classic Brooklyn upbringing. His work blurred boundaries between comics, sci-fi, fantasy, pulp, animation and eventually cinema (we basically have him to thank for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career), but as this book tenderly and amply shows, he was first and foremost a true artist. taschen.com.

Shana Novak: The Heirloomist (Chronicle Books). From Instagram to above the mantlepiece, as @theheirloomist, photographer Shana Novak has made an art (and a business) out of making memories. Well, more like preserving them. Actually, what she does is both preservation and transformation, as she has developed a technique creating “hero” style large format photographs out of keepsakes, mementos, heirlooms, and seemingly ordinary objects imbued with personal meaning—the kind we all have, probably in boxes and drawers, thinking only of their sentimental value but not always of their beauty. In her first book, Novak selects pieces—keychains, toys, matchbooks, baby shoes, pens, silver, cards, receipts, and all manner of meaningful meaningless things—and presents them along with their stories. Hearing from friends, clients, and celebrities alike, this charming book offers a unique way to perceive our common humantiy. chroniclebooks.com.

Dawoud Bey: Elegy (Aperture/Virginia Museum of Fine Arts). Dawoud Bey is best known for his iconic street photography, especially around Harlem, as well as his powerful portraiture, dedicated to an honorable representation of African American life in the United States. However with Elegy—a monograph produced in conjunction with a major exhibition—Bey brings together three portfolios of landscape photography. Night Coming Tenderly, Black (2017), In This Here Place (2021), and Stoney the Road (2023) are situated firmly within his overall practice, but with a switch of perspective from the cities and faces of Black America to the very country itself, the landscapes and landmarks steeped in the bloody, contested history of Virginia, Louisiana, and Ohio. Following the trail of enslavement from auction blocks to plantations to escape and emancipation, Bey reveals that the past is not only a painful prologue, but very much alive in the present. aperture.org.

The New Brownies’ Book: A Love Letter to Black Families (Chronicle Books). Inspired by the work of scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois—who in 1920 joined the founders of the NAACP to publish The Brownies’ Book: A Monthly Magazine for Children of the Sun—a modern survey of Black creatives takes up the mantle for uplift and inspiration. From the gorgeous cover image by Atlanta-based photographer Tokie Rome-Taylor, who channels conventions of upper class portraiture to illuminate the regal qualities within communities of color, to an eclectic array of visual styles, essays, poems, photographs, paintings, and short stories reflecting on Black joy, The New Brownies’ Book is on a mission to instill a new generation with pride, love, curiosity, and ambition. chroniclebooks.com.

Groundswell: Women of Land Art (Delmonico Books/Nasher Sculpture Center). When most folks hear “land art,” they think of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, and maybe Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field. James Turrell’s Roden Crater. The point is, when they think of an artist out there with bulldozers and earth-movers, dragging giant boulders around and literally changing geography, they are probably also thinking of the men. But just like everything else, it turns out there were always women at the table, doing their own very good work, despite being overshadowed and underfunded. It turns out, the same has been true of Land art. But a new show and catalog for Groundswell: Women of Land Art shifts that attention and (re)introduces audiences to a great many historical and contemporary Land art works by women. Artists like Lita Albuquerque, Nancy Holt, and Ana Mendieta were not only “also” making Land art, but doing it their own way—no less ambitious, but often with an energy of collaboration with the elements rather than dominance of them, listening rather than imposing, and offering rather than extracting. artbook.com.

Cole Sternberg: Talk Soon (Praz Delavallade Gallery). Gerhard Richter is an imperious, unapproachable and by all accounts curmudgeonly, yet fairly worshiped German painter of considerable stature; Cole Sternberg is a Los Angeles-based conceptual artist with a certain sense of wanderlust, a penchant for game-playing, and a puckish sense of humor. In 2017, Sternberg got his hands on Richter’s home address and wrote to him every single day, posting letters daily from January 1 until December 31; to be clear, they had never met. And they still haven’t, as Sternberg never received a reply. But the literary exercise was its own reward—and now, its own book. Over time taking on an increasingly ritualistic character, and yet also becoming ever more surreal, the 365 letters range from the poetic to the menacingly quotidian, with the non sequitur logic of a dream and a confusing sense that it’s all a matter of great urgency and full of meaning. What he ate, the weather, the bird that dashed its head against the window, the lost keys, the evening news, the day’s art-making, and so on. “Talk soon,” they each conclude—but so far, no word. colesternberg.com

Renewing the Dream: The Mobility Revolution and the Future of Los Angeles (Rizzoli). Car culture isn’t good for anyone. We know this, but here we are. Asking individual citizens of the world’s most famous automobile-first city to unilaterally decamp for a dodgy, underfunded, and spotty public transportation system hasn’t really worked. The new trains might make a difference. But what we really need is a drastic overhaul, a total reimagining, massive investment, and research-based policy that takes all of urban planning into account and not just roadways. We need a manifesto. And here it is. From a consortium of the most respected experts in a cluster of interrelated areas in design and culture, Renewing the Dream offers a thoroughgoing look at the challenges and opportunities at this inflection point—and illustrates their arguments with a surprising (for a research book) range of historic photographs, maps, and engaging artwork by famous L.A.-loving artists like David Hockney, Catherine Opie, Ed Ruscha, Wayne Thiebaud, and Carlos Almaraz. rizzoliusa.com.

Artists’ Letters (Quarto). Ever wonder what artists like Dali, Michelangelo, Klimt, Jasper Johns, William Blake, Marcel Duchamp, Gauguin, van Gogh, Picasso, Rothko, Monet, Marina Abramovic, Cindy Sherman, Leonora Carrington, Yoko Ono, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Leonardo da Vinci, Frida Kahlo, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Andy Warhol say to each other in private, or in letters? Wonder no more, as a beguiling collection of personal and professional (the best is when they mix) epistles written by great artists to friends, family, businesspeople, and each other give just the sort of personality insight you’re hoping for as to their thoughts on love, struggles at work, details of daily life, the importance of friendship, unsolicited feedback, stirring travels, and above all—art. quarto.com.

Ken Grossinger: Art Works: How Organizers and Artists Are Creating a Better World Together (The New Press). There is no denying the power of the arts to help effect social change. Whether on their own as amplifiers of social progress, or in strategic concert with political and grassroots movements themselves, the contributions of visual artists, poets, musicians, and filmmakers to the global history of activism cannot be overstated. The Hope poster, the musical Hair, Angels in America, Howl, The Killing Fields, Roots—the list is diverse and endless. Now a new book from progressive movement impresario Ken Grossinger takes a unique, focused survey of the behind the scenes organizing that goes into this kind of culture-forward progressive labor of love. With contributions from voices like Jackson Browne, Shepard Fairey, Jane Fonda, JR, Jose Antonio Vargas, and more, and drawing from historical to contemporary examples like BLM, Grossinger’s primer is must-read for every artist/activist, and it even comes with its own collection of movement anthems as a Spotfiy playlist. thenewpress.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

/Editor’s note: The disclaimer below refers to advertising posts and does not apply to this or any other editorial stories.

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.