Akikomatic


Book Description

If you've caught a glimpse of a promotional movie poster in the last 15 years, chances are you were taking in the work of Akiko Stehrenberger, the Los Angeles-based artist you didn't know you knew. Stehrenberger has worked on projects for some of cinema's most important and influential filmmakers, translating their unique vision from screen to film poster. The list of names includes a long roster of trailblazers, among them Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Jonathan Glazer, Harmony Korine, The Coen Brothers, Sofia Coppola, David Lynch, Michael Haneke, and dozens of others. Stehrenberger, a California native, imbues her unique brand of surrealism to the art of the movie poster utilizing various techniques, including painting, computers, and traditional forms of graphic design--all while conceptually dissecting the films themselves, which helps to illuminate why Akiko is such a vital visual artist. The book will put readers at the center of her process (from concept to execution), examining how her life and heroes influenced the special vision she brings to the world of film poster design. Akiko's art making story will be told in a way that mirrors her process, utilizing analog and modern techniques (including film, film photography, and illustration), all in an effort to a better understanding of her creativity. Having become one of the most respected movie poster designers and illustrators of her generation, she is now on the cusp of a major creative change in her life: She has begun to embrace her own fine art and has branched out into new mediums, with the hope of exhibiting her work in the future. This book will capture what she has so skillfully harvested from just one realm of her imagination so far.




Angura


Book Description

"Author David G. Goodman illuminates the theatrical movement for which these posters were created, provides a brief history of modern Japanese graphic design, and describes both the posters themselves and the artists who created them."--BOOK JACKET.




The Language of Graphic Design


Book Description

'The Language of Graphic Design' provides graphic design students and practitioners with an in-depth understanding of the fundamental elements and principles of their language, what they are, why they are important and how to use them effectively.




Beyond the Beyond


Book Description

Beyond the Beyond: Music from the Films of David Lynch explores the use of music and sound in Lynch's films, as well as his own original music, and draws on the director's personal archives of photographs and ephemera from Eraserhead onward. From his early short films made in Philadelphia in the 1960s up through more recent feature films like Inland Empire (2006), legendary artist and director David Lynch (born 1946) has used sound to build mood, subvert audience expectations and create new layers of affective meaning.




The Unnameable Monster in Literature and Film


Book Description

This book visits the 'Thing' in its various manifestations as an unnameable monster in literature and film, reinforcing the idea that the very essence of the monster is its excess and its indeterminacy. Tied primarily to the artistic modes of the gothic, science fiction, and horror, the unnameable monster retains a persistent presence in literary forms as a reminder of the sublime object that exceeds our worst fears. Beville examines various representations of this elusive monster and argues that we must looks at the monster, rather than through it, at ourselves. As such, this book responds to the obsessive manner in which the monsters of literature and culture are ‘managed’ in processes of classification and in claims that they serve a social function by embodying all that is horrible in the human imagination. The book primarily considers literature from the Romantic period to the present, and film that leans toward postmodernism. Incorporating disciplines such as cultural theory, film theory, literary criticism, and continental philosophy, it focuses on that most difficult but interesting quality of the monster, its unnameability, in order to transform and accelerate current readings of not only the monsters of literature and film, but also those that are the focus of contemporary theoretical discussion.




Double Vision


Book Description

Hardcover, 192 pages 9.5 × 11.75 in. 24.13 × 29.845 cm. The first ever career retrospective of Los Angeles photographer George Rodriguez. Since the 1950s, Rodriguez has quietly documented multiple social worlds-in California and beyond-that have never before been displayed together, a rare mix of Hollywood and Chicano L.A., film premieres and farmworker strikes, album covers and street scenes, celebrity portraits and civil rights marches.Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Rodriguez, raised in South Los Angeles, led something of a double life as a photographer. He worked for film studios, record labels, and magazines like Tiger Beat, processing film for Hollywood photographers and shooting countless photographs of the era's biggest music and film stars, while also photographing the social movements and protests that were exploding on the streets of Los Angeles and throughout the country: the East Los Angeles Walkouts, the Chicano Moratorium, the United Farm Workers movement, the Sunset Strip riots, among others.Double Vision explores both of these worlds alongside the many other urban scenes Rodriguez has shot over the years, from L.A. gang graffiti and boxing to early hip-hop. A student of Sid Avery and a contemporary of Dennis Hopper, Rodriguez is one of the great visual documentarians of Los Angeles and of the cultural complexities of Mexican-American life.Assembled by Rodriguez himself, in conjunction with scholar and writer Josh Kun, this book will be an invaluable addition to the way we understand identity, popular culture, and civil rights in American life, and a visual biography of one of the country's most important, yet unsung, visual historians.Edited and with texts by Josh Kun Forewords by Dolores Huerta and John Densmore Designed by Brian Roettinger




Dark Black


Book Description

In this haunting debut collection of short stories, Sam Weller, authorized biographer of the legendary Ray Bradbury, blurs the boundaries between the weird, the outre, the paranormal, the Gothic, and old school punk rock. Dark Black features 20 tales, at turns chilling, melancholy, hilarious, and nightmarish.A marine biologist at the end of his career embarks on his greatest field study to find the mythical sea beast he believes he witnessed as a young man, long ago.A writing professor discovers the Clutter murder house, made infamous in Truman Capote's 1966 classic, In Cold Blood, is available on a vacation rental site. He books the home to finish his latest book with unexpected results.A group of kids use a Ouija board to contact their beloved, deceased friend.A punk rock musician writes a groundbreaking album, collaborating with the ghost of a musical legend.A college student with subtle telekinetic abilities attempts to use her powers in the midst of a horrifying school shooting. Sam Weller worked side by side with Ray Bradbury for over a decade. No surprise, then, that Dark Black is deeply inspired by Bradbury's dark and enduring 1955 collection, The October Country, mashed-up with modern influences, such as anthology television program The Black Mirror" and "American Horror Story." Dark Black 's 20 short stories are made up of evanescent ghosts and inner demons, lost souls and lost love.Featuring striking, original color artwork by renowned artist and printmaker Dan Grzeca, known for his concert prints for The Black Keys, Sharon Van Etten, U2, among others, Dark Black is art object as book, in this case of haunting new American Gothic fiction."




Akikomatic


Book Description




The Mash Up


Book Description

Hat & Beard Press has joined with Fahey/Klein Gallery, the foremost photography gallery in Los Angeles, to produce The Mash Up: Hip-Hop Photos Remixed by Iconic Graffiti Artists.With photographs by Janette Beckman and work from a wide-ranging selection of graffiti artists curated by Cey Adams, the book features the fusion of Beckman's iconic hip-hop portraits with graffiti-based interpretations from Crash, Futura, Lady Pink, Lee Quiñones, Queen Andrea, Revolt, Todd James, Zephyr, and more.Janette Beckman is a British-born photographer who lives and works in New York. She began her career at the dawn of punk rock working for music magazines The Face and Melody Maker. Drawn to the underground hip-hop scene, she moved to NYC in 1983 where she photographed pioneers Run DMC, Slick Rick, Salt-N-Pepa, Grand Master Flash, and LL Cool J. She has published four books, The Breaks: Stylin' and Profilin', 1982-1990 among them. Her work has been exhibited in galleries worldwide and is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian and the Museum of the City of New York.Cey Adams, a New York City native, emerged from the downtown graffiti movement to exhibit alongside fellow artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. He appeared in the historic 1982 PBS documentary Style Wars, which tracks subway graffiti art in New York. As the Creative Director of hip hop mogul Russell Simmons' Def Jam Recordings, he co-founded the Drawing Board, the label's in-house visual design firm. He exhibits, lectures, and teaches art workshops at institutions all over the US and Canada. He coauthored DEFinition: The Art and Design of Hip-Hop, published by Harper-Collins and designed Def Jam Recordings: The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label, published by Rizzoli.




Moby Dick


Book Description

500 pages, 150+ illustrations 71⁄2 × 91⁄4 in. 19.05 × 23.495 cm. Hat & Beard Press is celebrating Herman Melville's 200th birthday with a full-color edition of Moby-Dick, illustrated by the rediscovered art of Gilbert Wilson. Film director John Huston declared him "a brilliant artist and one of America's foremost painters." Pearl S. Buck sponsored an exhibition of his work in New York, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about his work in her newspaper column. Yet, for most of his life, artist Gilbert Brown Wilson (1907-1991) lived in relative obscurity, despite a critical splash in the 1930s. He sacrificed financial security for artistic freedom. An acolyte of Diego Rivera and an assistant to Rockwell Kent, Wilson became recognized for his gargantuan murals at Indiana State University and Antioch College, and for the controversy sparked by his "social realist" style. But Moby-Dick became Wilson's lifetime obsession, for which he produced more than 200 paintings and drawings, and helped inspire Huston's 1956 film adaptation starring Gregory Peck and Orson Welles. This large, coffee-table book will showcase never-before-published artwork, notes, and meditations on the novel--drawing from unprecedented access to Wilson's estate. The book will also provide a platform for the international art community to reassess and rediscover this remarkable man and his work. The edition pays homage to Melville's original text, while breathing new life into the story via Wilson's vibrant, timeless artwork. Critics have called Moby-Dick "the most ambitious book ever conceived by an American writer"--and Wilson's version will be the most ambitious illustrated edition of that book. Edited by Robert K. Elder Images courtesy of the Swope Art Museum.