Find RAIL in printing

Message from the publisher and art director of Phong Bui

This month, our editors and writers selected their favorite art books of 2021, including interviews, anthologies, photography, critical works by writers and artists such as Gillian Laub, Robert Storr, Sky Hopinka, and Édouard Glissant.

In the pantheon of great artists as amazing alchemists, on how they realized their material problems, Jackson Pollock used his house paint and dripping, Helen Frankenthal used acrylic and stained, and Eva Hesse used Latex and fiberglass, Jasper Johns used wax and stencils, Richard Serra used lead and rolled Cor-Ten steel, to name a few, Philip Taaffe, with his invention of printing and mixed media, Correctly replaced him with impressive confidence. In the latest volume, Philip Taaffe adds new content to the ever-expanding literature on Taaffe’s entire work as an opportunity to share with the artist’s admirers, the artist’s most unique collector, Rafi Collection of Rafael Jablonka.

In the past three decades, Jablonka has accumulated the most important works of Taaffe in 35 years (from 1983 to 2018). It is easy to remember how much Jablonka and Taaffe have contributed to our vision as collectors and artists Unique and important culture. With Enrique Juncosa’s authoritative introduction, Kay Heymer and Charles Stein’s insight and sensitive text on personal works, and Natalia Leniec’s delightful artist biography, this book once again confirms that Taaffe is a dry and magical sponge. Absorb anything or from the social/political concept art of Hans Haacke to the healing power of Joseph Beuys social sculpture, from the experimental films of Maya Deren, Joseph Cornell, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Harry Smith, and others, to William S. Barth William S. Burroughs (William S. Burroughs) also has experimental works; from world architecture and its architectural motives to the world of organisms; from collection cabinets to Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas and so on. As Taaffe said when talking about his work: "This is a personal artistic interaction with image history, a way to create intimate image reality that can be shared with the world." This book allows us to get as close as possible. The evolution of Taaffe as an artist has indeed brought substantial and exciting fun to the holiday. – Phong H. Bui

NEA award-winning author Aisha Sabatini Sloan (co-authored with her father and pioneering photographer Lester Sloan to add subtitles to the archive)’s latest book, Borealis is One of my favorite books this year. This is an elaborate book-length article that details the author's isolated experience as a black queer writer in Alaska and reflects on past love. This book reads like a diary of tortuous observations and trauma with Lorna Simpson's incandescent "ice system" and actual glaciers as the background. Although this is not a traditional art book—a genre that aims to escape traditional structures—but I think it is an art book because it uses art as a guide to self-examination. Think of Moyra Davey's strange associations in the index cards, with a subtle tone of anxiety that evokes the sidewalks of Valeria Luiselli. It is an exquisite, leisure, and fascinating journey of a book. ——Erica Cardwell

In addition to the charming black cat in the publisher's imprint, David Horvitz's "Nostalgia" (Gato Negro Ediciones, 2021) is a cunning, if sincere, winking of the photobook type. Riso is printed in black and white, and each of the 316 pages of the publication contains a sentence-length description—full file name, date and time stamp—a photo selected from the artist's 2019 installation of the same name. Imagine a series of 15,756 projected photos. The principle of the 2019 works is that each photo is deleted after display; the work itself has life, and eventually there is death. Nevertheless, Horwitz chose to eternalize some of the images in his latest book, not as visual originals, but as textual equivalents. In the genre of artist books known for their dreamlike images, whether it is rich color prints or high-contrast black and white, Horwitz’s non-image changes in the subject are a bit farce. But this gesture evokes nominal emotions—perhaps more successful than photographs—absent from Horwitz's own visual archives in order to elicit an imaginative reaction from the reader. Once gone, the book will be the only remaining trace of a digital image that has been deliberately forgotten or let go. ——Nicole Carker

Taryn Simon's catalog The Color of a Flea's Eye is derived from her research and research on the photo collection of the New York Public Library. The collection was established in 1915 and is now located in the main branch of the 42nd Street Library. On open shelves organized by themes, each shelf is filled with newspaper clippings and images selected by curators and the public. Much like Simon’s other research-based photography projects, her investigation of this public archive took the form of photographs and reproductions, which were exhibited in libraries and hardcover catalogs. The book begins with an alphabetical series of photos selected from these thematic documents, with titles including mosquitoes, handshake, Israel, Palestine, and pain. In each of Simon's photos, the photos are superimposed on each other, which usually blurs the actual content of the image, highlighting their status as image objects, rather than the traditional role of photos as signifiers. As the director of the New York Public Library Joshua Chuang wrote in the opening article, Simon “explains the importance of physical images without nostalgia when most of the original utility of physical images has been exhausted. The history of utility.” This book also copied various documents and mayfly images from the collection—image folders, ledgers, and letters from writers and artists who requested access to the collection over the years, including Joseph Cornell and Walker. Evans and Dorothea Lange. The most important thing about this book is how the public uses, digests, categorizes, and consumes images-it is itself another physical object with a purpose (10 x 13.25 inches, over 450 pages). Over time, it will be marked by use and wear and tear-as it should be. – Megan N. Freedom

The letter as a film (La Fabrica/Punto De Vista 2021) is curated by Garbiñe Ortega, the former artistic director of Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival. Experiments or avant-garde groups (including Chick Strand, Jim Jarmusch, Harun Farocki, Jonas Mekas, Robert Smithson, etc.) have led to a pleasantly confusing profile of creative thinking and interpersonal communication. The themes range from carefree to serious, from the 1960s to 2020. In August 1982, Stan Brakhage assured Carolee Schneemann that although she might have heard of him, he was not a chauvinist (although Norman Mailer was a "fair basis for chauvinistic attacks"), and then offered her a teaching job. In September 2013, Richard Linklater expressed his tenderness via email to a young filmmaker dealing with negative critical feedback, frankly admitting that he "still [has not yet] figured out the comments." On April 21, 1966, Jonas Mekas said to Brahag anxiously: "I'm still thinking. Oh my god, why do I make so many mistakes! Because I'm thinking?" What drove Mekas to these ideas, or why he chose to share these ideas with Brakhage remains unclear. Letters As Films turns private ideas into intimate group photos of everyday life. ——Lily Martels

The best photos will surprise you with the tangibility of human psychology-an exciting feeling, like swimming in an icy lake. When I browsed the collection of photos and stories of "Family Affairs", photographer and filmmaker Gillian Laub (Gillian Laub), this reaction made me hairy. These photos and stories documented her huge family. Internal operations. Published at the same time as the exhibition of the same name at the International Center of Photography, "Family Affairs" has gone through two decades. During this period, Laub has worked hard to deal with the provision of privileges and the deprivation of privileges, the space between the older and younger generations, and the perspective and accompanying Values ​​derived from this difference. Laub used her lens angle to sarcasm and humor, capturing the long red nails, Burberry swimming trunks and tanned skin of the family who embarrassed her, as well as the MAGA hats embraced by those who made her feel depressed, Fox News broadcast Talk to her in Trump style. In a very intimate photo book, the artist shows what it means to live in a complicated biological family: aunts, siblings, cousins ​​who have a deep connection with you, make you want to "both embrace them, but also Avoid them."-Alana Pokros

This touching book fills the project with a tangible sense of connection through the elegant combination of souvenirs, handwritten notes and photographs, including folding and movable elements, thus recording Will Harris and his grandmother Evelyn Beckett Intimacy. When Harris struggled to cope with Beckett’s progressive dementia and later she died at the age of 92, he created this book, as well as the audio work accessible via the attached QR code, as “a kind of The sad way when I slipped around; I tried to piece these pieces together to understand it all." You can ask me Nana to unfold in a poetic, non-linear way, with the theme of its memory, family and family heritage Related, the past and present materials of Beckett are mixed between the blue marble backing paper. Harris' book is visually restrained, but full of attention and care, conveying an evocative portrait of a well-loved woman. --Jenny Waldo

Who knew that Edward Hicks was the author of "Sixty Peaceful Kingdoms", he was a master of appropriation, imitation and superhuman identity? Back in the day, almost no one knew that the famous (and unlikely to be controversial) Quaker speakers had also painted. Outside the meeting, he gladly said nothing. Turning himself over, the animal spoke. Hicks had never seen his gorgeous lazy leopard in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, but then a large part of his portraits were provided by clever clip art in print.

Sanford Schwartz is not only proficient in literature, but also an understatement, even though On Edward Hicks is a story about everything. This is the pre-war America eager to fight with itself. A public figure wandered between the community and conscience, hoarding a few good times alone to take pictures. The wet brush licked the beard, the horns, the dazzling eyes, the tumbling clouds, the trembling leaves...for the time being peace was achieved.

Only 152 pages, rich in illustrations. -Brandt Jonso

The book I am most excited about this year is Romy Golan's Flashback, Eclipse: The Political Imagination of Italian Art in the 1960s. Goran tracks the development and events of contemporary art, while Italy has undergone rapid economic changes and regained its footing after the war: What is contemporary art in a country where modernism and fascism are allied? Out of intuition, Michelangelo Pistoletto's mirror painting is not just a plane pop experiment, but involves themselves and their audience in the narrative surrounding them, Golan uses Archival images and news reports on installations and performances reveal the history that may be hidden by non-Italians or people who are not fully versed in Italian post-war art. Although she wrote about the art of Venice and Rome, her book also took us to cities outside of these centers, such as Como and Turin. Such evocative times and places, I imagined myself reading it. At the same time sipping beer in Consorata Square. -Amanda Grubic

In the editor’s foreword, Michael Merrill devoted more than five years to this extraordinary project. He asserted that “Louis Kahn uses paintings to see, learn more, discover, play, and daydream. , Sharing, guessing, cooperating, asserting, explaining, seducing, and pleasing.” In the vast amount of material contained in this extraordinary book, we saw in depth and intimate how Louis Kahn began to paint to discover and communicate what he wanted to build s things. Thorough archival research and hundreds of unpublished drawings and papers by leading figures in the field of architecture make this beautifully designed book not only an important supplement to the academic research of the pioneering architect and his creative process, but also to performance An important supplement to the discussion about architecture-about how the building is actually conceived, developed and finally realized. ——David Rhodes

Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan’s Alt-Text is charming, productive, and very generous. As Poetry advocates the use of alternative text to achieve digital accessibility in art: written descriptions are usually embedded next to images in the HTML of websites and are made for blind, low-vision or Use screen readers in other ways. Coklyat and Finnegan's projects were published in late 2020-this is a popular 2021 list-Coklyat and Finnegan's projects exist in the form of printed workbooks, and there is a website that contains fully available in multiple formats The contents of the workbook for suggested donations. In introducing their disability-led, art-centered alternative text framework, Coklyat and Finnegan explained how other compliance-conscious access strategies usually meet the minimum requirements, resulting in “reluctant and perfunctory” texts, not adopting The "huge expressive potential" of the media is taken into account. On the contrary, Alt-Text as Poetry considers the creative possibilities offered by this image description mode-importantly, all of this does not sacrifice its commitment to accessibility. Alt-Text as Poetry, published under the auspices of Eyebeam and the Disability Visibility Project, includes a series of writing exercises-designed to be done by two readers in groups-and suggestions for holding alternative text workshops in larger groups.

In addition to these resources, Alt-Text as Poetry also offers some provocative questions about the relationship between image description and art criticism—what each practice can learn from the other; their boundaries may be blurred. As practical artists, Coklyat and Finnegan keenly pay attention to the complex and ambiguous relationship between image and text: admit that there is no perfect transition between sensory experiences, but infinite possibilities, challenges and potential pleasures. As a practical guide and a careful reflection on the plasticity of language, Alt-Text as Poetry encourages artists and art organizations (and all of us) to approach digital accessibility with curiosity and fun. ——Daniela Sanad

"Civil Rights Journey" gives us a glimpse of the amazing work created by the Bronx-born documentary photographer Doris Derby when he was active in the civil rights movement. The carefully selected images in the book were taken by Derby between 1967 and 1972. This period was not only critical to her development as an activist, educator, and photographer, but also to the sport itself and the wider American society. It is also crucial. Derby started working in the South in 1963 when she was recruited to join the faculty and staff of the adult education program co-organized by the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee. She was a member of the committee.

The images copied in "Civil Rights Journey" witnessed the tremendous efforts made by black organizers, politicians, teachers, farmers, fishermen, students, and artists to defend their communities when the Jim Crow Act was the official shield. Exploitation, deprivation of access to education, health care, work and voting, and state-sanctioned acts of violence. A radical strategy used during this period was to create models of self-reliance in all aspects of black life, from school to work to art and media. In addition to the vitality of political rallies, protests, and voting activities, Derby's status as an organizer and educator allows her to be exposed to intimate exchanges at home, churches, funerals, and on the streets. This visit and her collaboration with Southern Media, an independent documentary photography and film production organization, seems to have shaped the way she practices as an insider. She understands the camera as an additional tool for activism and pedagogy, rather than an obligation for outsiders. Be objective.

The black-and-white photos of the book are organized into vignettes, detailing the various environments in which she encountered and worked, from large-scale political gatherings to black-owned businesses to impoverished rural communities. Long descriptions of selected pictures identify local community members, including some leading figures at the time, such as the young pastor Al Sharpton who watched Muhammad Ali speak to young people in Jackson, Mississippi in 1968, and the events that defined this period , Just like the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. The images and title of this book provide a sharp front-line photographer with first-hand information on the progress and setbacks of this movement. ——Memana Farhat

"Journalistic Poetics: Interviews with Poets, Printers, and Publishers" (Ugly Duckling Press, 2021) is one of my top art books this year. Not because it is particularly gorgeous or fascinating—it's a niche academic book, rarely fancy—but because it achieves a specific and clear goal: an in-depth understanding of the history, evolution, and current status of independent creative publishing since 1945 , After letterpress printing was "commercially obsolete." Interviewer and editor Kyle Schlesinger (Kyle Schlesinger) is well versed in the subject and asked some targeted questions that can be answered thoroughly and honestly.

Schlesinger’s interviews with poets, printers, and publishers were not downplayed by the audience; reading them felt like overhearing a conversation between experts discussing their craftsmanship. If you are interested in the specific details of small presses, their participants and processes, then this book is for you. Some themes recurring: push and pull between traditional methods and new technologies, the difference between the terms "art book", "book art", "book work", "hardcover", etc., and the subtle calibration between the two Relationship. The material form and conceptual content, as well as the long-term issues of funding creative work.

In a satisfying meta-action, it also includes interviews with two members of the book's own publisher, Ugly Duckling Presse. Such a dense series is best bite-sized parts, one interview at a time. I sincerely hope that this book will find enthusiastic readers to educate and inspire around the future of book creation, publication and distribution. --Kate Silzer

Stoll's article gently pushes us to become better selves. As the editor Francesca Pietropaolo pointed out in her introduction, Storr is "accomplices" with readers and will not alienate any authority hierarchy in jargon or dismissive tone, except Damien Hirst, but every rule has exception. Furthermore, the author admits a certain weakness, which makes the 51 articles more readable: "Most of these articles involve the art that I encountered problems, and sorting these is the real theme of my writing", he confided in He introduced it to us in his introduction. This is the second volume, and the first volume covers Storr's 1980-2005 papers. Beautiful language: Rosalind Krauss lives in the "castle" of art history, and his vivid description of Kim Jones' Mudman is ingeniously related to Hobbes Philosophy remains the same-this is not about writing to try to be smart, but to make you smarter. There is a good gap between short columns and thought articles on single projects (such as Hirschorn’s Gramsci Monument) and long-term explorations of artist’s work (such as Storr’s 2015 article for Kerry James Marshall’s Look See at David Zwirner) Rhythm. There are articles about Louise Bourgeois, Paul Thek, Kara Walker and R. Crumb, but if you are forced to choose your favorite, mine is an article about Seydou Keïta published in English for the first time, and an article about John Waters The light-hearted article started with Storr brazenly portraying himself as the "straight man" every comedian needs. In this case, Waters also needs: the perfect positioning of the critic, which is both a foil and Rube. --William Corwin

Packed in a glittering acrylic pearlescent blue box, all I want is Gi (Ginny) Huo's heaven, which embodies the complex process of spiritual rerouting. Although the book-like box looks like a precious object, once opened, it becomes a space for playing, exploring and discovering. This book unfolds in the first person and tells the story of Howe’s growing up as a member of the Mormon Church in Utah. Then she turned away from religion in her adult life, which was a moment of personal liquidation and breakdown that Huo struggled to deal with as an artist and educator. As a place of gentle encounter, the images of exquisite clouds and gleaming pages act as intermediaries, as a gateway into the past and the present-real and imaginary space, personal and collective history. They are intertwined with testimonies, confessions, archive images, family portraits and poetry. The pages of this book are directly bound on the pearl box that contains it, making it delicate and immobile in the metal sea of ​​blue pigment; a humble music box is placed at the beginning of the book, which plays a song for the reader. A recorded carol of comfort. Through the fragmented episode, she revealed to us her doctrines under the church, but also pointed out the potential loopholes in these doctrines, and conveyed how the belief system operates on the shame of being unknowable and rejecting rebuttable. As she navigates the interconnected landscape of faith, patriarchy, and post-colonial assimilation heritage, she invites those of us who also question our belief system and inherited values. With her spiritual journey, she has created a safe and much-needed space for mistakes and unknowns, from which new forms of community, sense of belonging and value can emerge. -True Christian

Sky Hopinka’s Perfidia is a poem divided into 16 chapters by images. It is complementary to his film in form and content-focusing on images (passion for long shots) and voice-overs (usually the filmmaker himself) Voice and text). Published together with the exhibition of Hopinka's works held at CCS Bard in 2020, the text in Perfidia is adapted from his films. Those familiar with his works will recognize the words in Lore (2019) and maɬni-towards the sea, to theshore (2020) Paragraphs and images.

Perfidia is a winter book that deals with images of cold and dampness, between the physical dislocation of friends/family ("thousands of miles away") and the feelings in memory ("your hair gleams in those afternoons") indecisive. Hoppinka wrote in the auditory records of ancient legends; while reading, I found myself reading these words, partly to see if I could remember where they appeared in maɬni (if any). This is an intimate reading, reminiscent of the purpose of telling stories only in winter: "Something warm/to provide a reason for the cold." –JC

This anthology has more than 500 pages of archival material and records the origins and activities of the Godzilla team based in New York, founded in 1990 by Ken Chu, Bing Lee and Margo Machida, with the stated goal of providing a mutual support The forum for communication and exchange is among Asian American artists. Editor Howie Chen edited the organization’s communications and meeting records, review articles, open letters, catalog texts, and scanned copies of other communications to build a picture of ten years of dialogue, resistance, and exchange. Early activities focused on institutional representatives, focusing on the lack of Asian American artists at the 1991 Whitney Biennale, the takeaway menu exhibition around the Franklin stove, and the scandal surrounding NEA's funding of Mel Chin. Flipping through the book’s copier aesthetics page, you can see the humble roots of community organization—dinners, fundraising requests—and exciting descriptions of Godzilla’s struggle and success. The organization’s frequent letters led to open dialogue with the same institution they criticized, which illustrates the fundamental constructive nature of their plan. In view of the museum’s information about the construction of a new prison in Chinatown and its recent urban funding confusion, Godzilla members withdrew from the 2020 Godzilla and the World of Art Retrospective of the Chinese Museum of America Project: 1990-2001. This postscript reflects The consistent spirit in the pages of this book; reading through them reminds us that community building is itself a form of resistance. --Louis Bullock

Marcel Duchamp-the first comprehensive monograph and catalogue dedicated to the artist-became a reference book after it was published in French and English in 1959. Duchamp (72 years old at the time) was closely involved: he himself cut the double-exposure portrait placed on the dust cover, and supervised the layout and content (designing the tail and front page, proofreading, translating his own lectures, verifying the reproduction of his work ). The art historian and critic Robert Lebel is a suitable collaborator for this book. He is immersed in the artist’s macroscopic world-he describes it as "with an exuberant temperament, a pessimist and a clown Alternate appearance"-because he is also a bilingual and culturally capable of unraveling Duchamp’s difficult-to-translate, multi-layered zingers (he described them as "an oral ready-made with overlapping and interpenetrating meanings").

Hauser & Wirth’s 2021 fax reproduces everything from Duchamp’s earliest turn of the 20th century oil painting to his iconic bearded Mona Lisa; written by André Breton An article in 1904 about a sketch of the artist playing chess, which is his favorite pastime ("He used to take me to the competitions he participated in, usually held in smoky places, and everyone drinks a lot of coffee," French writer HP Roche recalled. “He needed a good chess game, just like a baby needs his bottle”). Supplements to contemporary texts contextualize the fax, including the contribution of Lebel’s son Jean-Jacques, in which he pointed out that Duchamp and the art world operator “disrespect each other” during his lifetime. In addition, “people treat him with disrespect”. The works are shocked". Constantly strive to outwit and defeat the system. "-Sarah Moroz

Lee Lai's Stone Fruit starts with the protagonists Ray, Bron and Nessie, who are portrayed as wild animals. They have cat-like eyes, jagged fangs, grinning, and walk through the woods with elastic limbs that don't look like bones. When Nessie's mother, Ray's sister, called to check on them, the game time was over. When they brought Nessie home, everyone had changed back to their indoor form. When Ray and Brown get away from Nessie's exuberant joy, their relationship becomes tense because of the self-evident distance between them. In the end, the frustrated Brown moved back to a conservative family that did not accept her, and the lost Ray tried to repair her relationship with her sister.

Throughout the process, the crisp and opaque black contrasted with the painterly wash of gray and slate blue, which concealed the emotional heavyness of this story. Lai's painting style is smooth and watery, and his face is full of curves and waves: under the eyes, the shadow on the cheeks, and a strand of flying hair. The narration seamlessly switches between the story of Ray and Brown, between memory and the present, and is interrupted by a formal interruption: the picture of Ray and the Loch Ness monster appears in graphite form on graph paper; a dream sequence is in It unfolds in a dense forest; the scene in the movie is a two-page enlarged line work.

Like the title of the book, Lai's debut work is a sharp contrast: the sweetness of childhood and the bitterness of adulthood. If Ray, Bron, and Nessie can become “barbaric and screaming” while playing and believing in natural landscapes, then when they return to the constructed urban landscape, they will encounter the limitations of their own defined identities and relationships. Shi Guo hovered in the fragile silence between the families, whether they were selected or not, and the fragility needed to repair what was destroyed. ——Gu Jialun

In the in-depth and frank dialogue with Hans Ulrich Obrist, the most elegant and practical interlocutor of the time, it was completely unique to Édouard Glissant. Some philosophical and poetic criticism methods shine. The fact that this book literally fits in one's palm is only made more compelling by the depth of thought achieved on each small page. For me, Glissant's thought trajectory reminds people how the practice of art criticism can continue to develop a writer's intuitive ability by focusing first on perceptual behavior and secondly on reflective behavior. Glissant mused, if "Creolization is mixing to produce completely unexpected things, then this is also the role of utopia. Utopia gives you something new and unpredictable." Art criticism is such a utopia. --Charles Schultz

Critical views on art, politics and culture

© Copyright 2000-2021 Brooklyn Railway

Find RAIL in printing

Message from the publisher and art director of Phong Bui

Your annual winter support keeps Rail independent, relevant and free

We have received $39,682 from 150 donors!