Art Instruction

Experience the beauty, joy, and poetry of universal human experiences through this gorgeously illustrated volume from renowned artist Lisa Aisato.

Enter the breathtaking world of internationally acclaimed artist Lisa Aisato with this heartwarming book featuring her most beloved illustrations.

Celebrated artist Lisa Aisato distills the many stages of life, in all their rainbow hues, into a lushly illustrated book that will inspire and comfort readers at all moments of their journeys. More than one hundred beautiful images, stunning in their diversity, each illustration an exuberant story unto itself.

Colorful and heartfelt, All the Colors of Life explores the universal ups and downs of a life while highlighting what is most important in life....love.

Along the Way is a tour through New York's underground museum of contemporary art, works commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit for the subway system and commuter rail lines. Vivid murals by Roy Lichtenstein and Romare Bearden convey the energy of Times Square, while Robert Wilson's Coney Island Baby captures the festive spirit of the city's playland. Currently underway are a photographic installation by Mike and Doug Starn at the new Fulton Street Transit Center and a large-scale ceramic wall drawing by Sol LeWitt at Columbus Circle. Initiated in 1985, this collection of site-specific public art now encompasses more than 150 pieces in mosaic, terra-cotta, bronze, faceted glass, and mixed media. The program takes its cue from the original mandate that the subways be designed, constructed, and maintained with a view to the beauty of their appearance, as well as to their efficiency. Arts for Transit is committed to the preservation and restoration of the original ornament of the system and to commissioning new works that exemplify the principles of public art, relating directly to the places in which they are installed and the community around them.

Alphabets explores the language of letters that we see around us everyday, touching on the alphabet's origins in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters, to the Greek alphabet, through to its development as a significant part of our history and visual vocabulary. From a comprehensive introduction on the origins of the written word, through to theories such as "The Alphabet Effect", exploring the coding/decoding and abstraction of form to the more appetising concept of 'Alphabet Soup', Alphabets features illustrations, found objects, graphic design, art, conceptual typography, graffiti, and much more.

Through the exploration of this grouping of 26 symbols, it becomes clear that each letter has its own persona and history, and the alphabets presented in this book show how artists, typographers, illustrators and educators have responded uniquely to each individual letter. By removing the letters from the context of words and spelling, each begins to stand alone as a character in its own right. Featuring letters of all shapes and sizes, and alphabets ranging from Victorian classroom aides and Dr Seuss' ABC through to Peter Blake, Michael Craig-Martin, Tauba Auerbach, and the Tangled Alphabets of León Ferrari and Mira Schendelto to ABC Blocks, phonetics, Braille, and Muji alphabet ice cube moulds, Alphabets: A Miscellany of Letters offers a cornucopia of imagery for artists, collectors and enthusiasts alike.

Photographer Robbie Cooper's Alter Ego explores personal and social identities being shaped in the metaverse at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Portraits of online gamers and virtual-world participants from America, Asia and Europe are paired with images of their avatars, with profiles of their real-world and virtual characters. The book is both an entertainment and a serious look at a phenomenon that is shaping the future of human interaction. With an introduction by Julian Dibbell and interviews and a glossary by Tracy Spaight.

A dazzling collection of "remarkably elegant essays" (Newsday) on art--and the companion volume to the celebrated Just Looking and Still Looking--from one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century.

In this book, readers are treated to a collection in which "the psychological concerns of the novelist drive the eye from work to work until a deep understanding of the art emerges" (The New York Times Book Review).

Always Looking opens with "The Clarity of Things," the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities for 2008. Here, in looking closely at individual works by Copley, Homer, Eakins, Norman Rockwell, and others, the author teases out what is characteristically "American" in American art. This talk is followed by fourteen essays, most of them written for The New York Review of Books, on certain highlights in Western art of the last two hundred years: the iconic portraits of Gilbert Stuart and the sublime landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church, the series paintings of Monet and the monotypes of Degas, the richly patterned canvases of Vuillard and the golden extravagances of Klimt, the cryptic triptychs of Beckmann, the personal graffiti of Miró, the verbal-visual puzzles of Magritte, and the monumental Pop of Oldenburg and Lichtenstein. The book ends with a consideration of recent works by a living American master, the steely sculptural environments of Richard Serra.

John Updike was a gallery-goer of genius. Always Looking is, like everything else he wrote, an invitation to look, to see, to apprehend the visual world through the eyes of a connoisseur.

Poised to be the most important photography book of the year, Zoe Strauss's America shines a light on the often unseen people and places in the United States today.

Once in a great while, a photographer and their photographs break new ground and people sit right up and take notice. Zoe Strauss is such a photographer. The Philadelphia native who has brought us searing images of that city's marginalized people and places on the fringe of society, has taken her no holds barred, up close and personal style of photography to the roads less traveled across America. At times witty, touching, poetic, and downright shocking, Zoe Strauss's photographs capture the beauty and struggle of everyday life and resonate as a social document of our time, and as sheer and powerful art.

Zoe Strauss picked up a camera on her 30th birthday, but in only eight years, has generated a huge body of work that has been exhibited in the Whitney Biennial, and has garnered her a United States Artists grant.

Although known primarily as a country music star, Marty Stuart has been taking photographs of the people and places surrounding him since he first went on tour with bluegrass performer Lester Flatt at age twelve. His inspirations to do this include his own mother, Hilda Stuart, whom he watched document their family's everyday life in Mississippi, bassist Milt Hinton's photographs of fellow jazz artists, and Edward Curtis's well-known images of Native Americans at the turn of the twentieth century. Stuart's work ranges from intimate and often candid behind-the-scenes depictions of legendary musicians, to images that capture the eccentricities of characters from the back roads of America, to dignified portraits of members of the impoverished Lakota tribe in South Dakota, a people he was introduced to through his former father-in-law, Johnny Cash. Whatever the subject, Stuart is able to sensitively tease out something unexpected or hidden beneath the surface through a skillful awareness of timing and composition as well as a unique relationship with many of the subjects based on years of friendship and trust.

This book will present images from these three bodies of work: "Badlands," on his time with the Lakota; "The Masters," from his work with musicians like Bill Monroe, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Dolly Parton, George Jones, Kitty Wells, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings; and "Blue Line Hot Shots." As Stuart explains, "The newly built Interstate Highway System was at one time represented on our maps by the color red, while the two-lane highways and back roads of the nation were represented in blue. The back roads are where you'll find some of the people that I admire, respect, and always keep an eye out for. ... They are renegades ... As Roger Miller once said, 'These people flush to the beat of a different plumber.' "

The photographs are framed by an introduction by Stuart and a context-setting essay by photography historian Susan Edwards, executive director of the First Center for the Visual Arts. The book and accompanying exhibition at the First Center demonstrate that Marty Stuart is a master storyteller not only through his songs but also through his revealing and compelling photographs.

Excerpt
"When I first began traveling I loved the adventure of going from town to town and exploring what each place had to offer. Whenever possible, on the day of the show I walked the streets and back roads, gathering stories and songs from local folks. I studied everything from the different kinds of architecture that surrounded me to the majesty of the sunsets and how they affected the mood of the town I was in. That first season was filled with the joy of a new musical life taking flight. The applause, the spotlight, the sparkle of the fame, the freedom of 'here today, go somewhere else tomorrow' charmed me night after night, day after day, until show business found its mark and became a way of life. I enjoyed every minute of the dance. I still love those things, but most of all it's the people that I've enjoyed along the way, namely the characters. The kind of characters who can be defined as American originals."
--from the Introduction by Marty Stuart