1 comments about Angel Song Volume One.

1. Angel Song is SQP's follow up to the highly popular Fairy Song, and features 64 pages of both color and black & white art by some of the industry's finest pin-up artists. These angelic subjects are tailor-made for this book and the eclectic collection features everything from the playful to the profound. You know that any collection that features the work of both Arantza and Pelaez is going to be a winner and Angel Song doesn't disappoint.
   
   Arantza starts things off with a stunning cover. This just HAS to be what a real angel looks like! Perla Perlucki gives us a humorous little drawing featuring an exasperated angel fighting off a couple of "pinch-happy" imps with a flyswatter. Danilo Guida's "lovers doomed" features a lovely angel in the embrace of a foul, horned demon. A similar theme is played out in Arantza's "Love Knows no Sin" done in brown tones.
   
   Paelaez' "Retribution" features a lovely, sword-wielding angel walking away from a city that is engulfed in flames. Other great pieces are "Dark Angel" by German Ponce, the gloriously colored "A Kiss most Sacred" by Cesar Britez, and Arantza's darkly gothic "The Heaven of Hell". The book also features the work of Gonzalo Flores, Greg Lopez, Enrique Villagran, and Marcelo Sosa, to name just a few. The back cover is by Dave Nestler, another one of the giants in pip-up and glamour art. His eye-popping blonde angel is the perfect end to this book. A must have for anyone who loved Fairy Song.
   
   Reviewed by Tim Janson

No comments about Richard Kern: Digital Kern.

No comments about Institutional Critique and After (SoCCAS Symposia vol. 2).

No comments about Artist Trading Cards (Twenty to Make).

No comments about Lawrence Weiner: AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE 1960-2007 (Whitney Museum of American Art).

5 comments about Robin Hopper Ceramics: A Lifetime of Works, Ideas and Techniques.

1. I thought this book was great. Robin gave very good background history of his life in ceramics and his views on what he created on his long career.
   I loved the pictures and his instruction on how to be the best in what you make. I have read the book cover to cover a few times and have still learned more after a second and problably a third look.I have tried a few of his ideas and had fun which I think ceramics is all about.



2. Although much of this book is a compliation of his former books, it encompasses his personal and professional history as well as his philosophy, recomendations on style, and insights about pottery, designs and life.
   Every potter, and collector of pottery shoud read and own this book.



3. This book is great. Robin Hopper shares his unique background with the reader and the thought processes that have gone into shaping his life and career. His down to earth approach to doing the work he loves so much was a joy to read. The technical information in this book and the way he presents it with illustrations and examples is great. The experienced potter as well as the beginner will enjoy this book.



4. I am a potter. I make pots. I make a bunch of pots. I am always open for improvement, assistance, and suggestions. And I am very glad I added this book to my personal library!
   
   Robin Hopper writes very simply about the various stages of making pottery. He profusely illustrates his techniques with photos and drawings, making the book itself a work of art. It is a pleasure to read, and an inspiration for all potters who want to learn to be better at it.
   
   Hopper offers tips on every phase of making pots, from sketching, through preparing the clay, to making glazes. His examples are beautiful, and the descriptions are clear and concise.
   
   If you're in one of those inevitable "slumps," I suggest Robin Hopper's "Ceramics: A Lifetime of Works, Ideas, and Techniques" to break you out of the clay doldrums and into new territory.



5. I have several of Robin Hopper's books and I have enjoyed them all immensely. I am able to find any type of info I need from these books. Well laid out, good explanation and very very useful information for a home studio potter. Cheers, Cheryl

1 comments about Classic Stoneware of Japan: Shino and Oribe.

1. Say "stoneware" to anyone fond of traditional Japanese culture and most will respond "raku." Indeed, those loosely-shapen dark wonders of the low-fire kiln are the supercondensed span of an entire culture in an object you can hold. Yet in an almost artless preoccupation with doing just the opposite, two traditions expressing the same qualities of the tea ceremony using entirely materials and effect came into existence and rapidly became popular: Shino and Oribe ware. Both originated during Japan's artistic renaissance of the late sixteenth century (which interestingly was coterminus with the Europeam Renaissance beyond Italy, and just as tumultuous).

   The tea ceremony's origins came in a gentler time, the Muromachi. It was as if the mix of vigor and experience hung in the air like a dust mote after a peaceful zephyr, the same way that war is in the air when come the winds of change. Though several theories claim to be the actual inspiration, the era is more definite. A 1932 chronicle relates, "In the first month of 1574, Kagemitsu, third son of Kageharu of the thirteenth generation after the first Seto potter Kato Kagemasa, moved to Akatsu. By virtue of a tea jar that he presented to Lord Oda Nobunaga, the latter formally recognized him as a retainer. Kakemitsu subsequently left Seto and moved to Kujiri, in Mino, in 1583. There . . . he continued working as a potter."

   To diehard raku buffs, Shino ware must have seemed a bit overadorned, fussy perhaps. There are geometrics, abstracts, and representations of familiar fare such as birds, grasses, plus the occasional poem such as:

   The inner essence
   Of the fence of deutzia flowers
   In a mountain village:
   The feeling of treading a road
   Covered with freshly fallen snow.

   The authors convey all this with a mix of the poet and the historian. Here is an extended passage that carries the aroma of the whole text:

   "To me [Shino ware's] charm lies in the feel of its surface and the mellow luster that accords so well with that surface. And there is the straightforward beauty of the pictures decorating Shino ware. The overall effect is intoxicating.
   "Shino pictures are drawn with lively lines depicting the everyday scenery surrounding the potters-the bridges over the streams at Kuguri, a cypress fence and dew-covered path leading to its brushwood gate, a grove of trees in flower, the trees and grasses just outside the window, even the mountain road they traveled day after day.
   "Such was the aesthetic of the Momoyama period in general. But the single tree, the few blades of grass these artists sketched are somehow pleasing because the designs pulse with life, the brushwork is clean and bold.
   "The white of Shino can be compared to the first snow of the season, or to the last traces of the winter snow, which the warm spring winds are erasing as the bush warbler's first song rings out. Shino's white surface is soft like a mother's breast; it brings back memories of childhood.

   "Shino white is tidiness itself. And on that white the potters painted designs with an iron glaze made of oni-ita, a red clay rich in iron and manganese and abundant in the Seto region. The effect of flame in the kiln added distinctive fire marks. Shino is an elusive ware, capable of infinite transformations.
   "The Shino potters thickly applied their glaze, which they made by carefully grinding feldspar and refining it in water. To this they added their own secret proportion of ash. Then, after offering sake and prayers to the gods of the kiln, and ritually scattering salt to purify the area, they entrusted their pieces to the fire."

   In the depths of the heart
   From which pottery springs
   Flows a crystal clear stream
   Reflecting nearby mountains.
   -- Rosanjin Kitaoji

   The above is but the glaze. To get the pot you must get the book. Be sure to look at pictures 2 and 3 on page 54: This seemingly unassuming Shino teabowl is considered the finest teabowl in existence.

   Alas, or perhaps huzzah, styles last not long. The next innovation in Japanese teaware can be directly traced to a single man, Furuta Oribe, and as changes in teacups go, his was a doozy.

   Japan in Oribe's time was a chessboard of warlords incessantly raiding each other for fun and profit. Oribe, among other things, also was a distinguished general. His tastes ran to the "robust, generous, vigorous, and distorted in shape." He introduce these qualities to the entire tea ceremony-most notably by making it part of a dinner event with a large number of others, all lubricated as much by saké as by tea. Hence Oribe commissioned not only tea ware but serving and dining dishes, saké ware, unusual geometrics, and heavy, dripping glazes the tea ceremony's predecessors would have deemed ghastly. This was not very Zen. On the other hand, Oribe's shaking up the establishment led directly to a great flowering of ceramics. Eventually more subtle tastes tamed down the founder's style-a process that can be seen vividly in the many illustrations of Oribe ware-and Oribe's great-great-great grandchildren's great grandchildren still being made today.

   Alas, this review is all too brief. To sum the book in PR blurb terms, "Classic Stoneware of Japan: Shino and Oribe" is a comprehensive visual survey and text explication of the two traditions' glazes, processes, shapes, and decoration. You come away with a clear idea of the essence of these wares and with half an eye you can come to expertly recognize either. The detail is exhaustive given its scant 42 pages of text. Potters will celebrate it. Everyone else will learn from it. No one is likely to forget it.

No comments about Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House: Writings 1973-1994.

1 comments about Alpha Males.

1. Henning von Berg's ALPHA MALES is certainly far and away the best book of male nude photography of the year and the most engaging collection by a single artist since Paul Freeman's beautiful BONDI CLASSIC. This outstanding retrospective published by Bruno Gmunder, consisting of over a hundred photographs in color, black and white and sepia, is divided into three sections: "Germany", "North America" and "Round The World." Dr. Boris von Brauchitsch and David Leddick, himself the editor of several similar volumes of photography, have written brief introductions to the photographs. The photographer also includes an occasional quotation to accompany the images from Shakespeare as well as Quentin Crisp and Gore Vidal, whom he calls his "admired role models," along with Martin Luther King, Sir Ian McKellen and John Waters, for their "outspoken fight for equal rights, liberation and freedom," a strange accolade, however, for Mr. Crisp who was mostly famous for being Quentin Crisp and living so long.
   
   While a few of these photographs are predictable-- "Twins," for example of a young god leaning against a mirror-- von Berg creates images over and over of the male animal in all his glory, often erect, without repeating himself, no small accomplishment. Furthermore, he is inclusive in his choice of models. Caucasians, blacks, Asians and Latinos, the musclebound, those sans muscles, the older (the model Leo Jackson) as well as the younger, the tattooed, the occasional cross-dresser, all get to do their thing before the photographer's lens.
   
   There seems to be no end to either von Berg's creativity or humor. Some of his most effective shots include several naked men together, often doing risque things ("Domination IX" and "Domination I", "Intermezzo III" and "Intermezzo IV." Also "Exercising" and "Training," both photographs that are beautifully naturally lit from the windows, should you happen to notice.) Many of the images from North America are shot in the rugged desert of California far away from the madding crowd of censors. Some of these shots are scary-- for instance, in the photograph entitled "Hanging" the model is hanging just by his fingers from a ledge of a high buiding. Also "Cliff Dancer" in which the model clad only in a tutu appears to be stepping off a high mountain ridge. "The Milk Man" is shot just after having poured milk down the front of his body. Obviously von Berg is playing with words in his shot of the blond seated before a Hardman grand piano.
   
   Some of my favorite photographs: "Brandenburg Gate" and "Stairway" from the Berlin series; "The Bat" in which the model, wearing a bat mask, is crouching on a high cliff; "Russian-Brazilian Hunk," aptly named and exquisitely lit; the last photograph in the book, "Sampson's Hair," albeit fake dreds; "Meditation IV," a brilliant juxtaposition of a naked man inside a beautiful church; and finally "Cook," of a thin young man wearing only women's platform shoes in a pose that Helmut Newton, one of the photographers von Berg lists as among his idols, would have approved of, accompanied by a quotation from the acerbic Mr. Crisp: "For flavor, instant sex will never supercede the stuff you have to peel and cook." The most amazing picture in the collection has to be "Antenna." When you see it, you'll understand why. (The pages in ALPHA MALES are not numbered so it is difficult to refer easily to the photographs.) The photographer does name his models, however, and gives the dates and locations of each shot. Most of the models are included more than once as well.
   
   This book is one you will come back to again and again and that will bring you much pleasure.

2 comments about Rich Larson's Bed & Bondage 1.

1. While no one can possibly deny Rich Larson's great skill at illustration, and with the admission that I wish I could draw with 1/100th of his talent, I can regretfully not give this book a good recommendation. The reason is both simple, and obscure. His artwork has always struck an odd chord with me, and while looking through this book, my unease solidified while reading his rather gruesome 6-page story. His work has no soul. It is technically accurate and extraordinary proficient, but lacks any real feeling. Even his more playful and fun illustrations, as in the cover, are somehow antiseptic. No fear, or desire, or amusement in his victim's expressions. The bondage is at times laughable, and is neither convincing, nor, lacking that, amusing. The book is almost all sketch work, and has the feel of someone who is posing models, rather than trying to be entertaining. Even the parts where he wants to be scary, it comes across as, well, two dimensional. Rich Larson is an extremely talented artist, who I hope finds a degree of passion in his future projects.



2. Fastner & Larson have been putting pen to paper and creating some of the most beautiful yet amusing women for some time and the pair are back in "Rich Larson's Bed & Bondage." As the title aptly suggests, Larson is putting his signature hotties in a variety of harrowing situations. In addition to the pin-up pages, there is also a six page strip called "Crule and Unusual." The work includes sketches and finished pieces as well as those gorgeous full-color covers.
   
   In Big Top of Horror, a mean old circus Ringmaster and his henchmen clowns have a couple of buxom babes tied up and ready to become the latest show attraction. Little Angels is shown both in sketch and finished painting form as two lingerie-clad beauties find themselves at the mercy of a pair of cute, but devious little cherubs. A damsel in utter distress is left tied to a post just outside the abode of a troll in Doorstep Delivery.
   
   The cover featuring that very buxom blond being tied to the bedposts by a quarter of little devils is called The Devil's Bed and is one of my favorite pieces in the entire book. The strip tells the story of Mr. Crule who makes Ebenezer Scrooge look like Santa Claus. A thoroughly rich and evil cyst of a man who controls everyone and everything in town. But Mr. Crule is about to get his just rewards from his Mistress Miss Harde.
   
   Rich Larson's Bed & Bondage is another delight for his fans and fans of bondage, pin-up, or good girl art and we can all thank SQP for delivering it to us!
   
   Reviewed by Tim Janson