COURTESY GINGKO PRESS.
The coffee-table books that work well as statements of identity in the home and office are absurdly heavy to travel with and just don’t look right on the beach, by the swimming hole, or in the benign chaos of the summer rental. Here, then, are some more appropriate picks, lighter in weight and substance, fresh as the ocean spray in your face or the smell of your neighbor’s newly cut lawn, and well, fun, as summer is supposed to be.
Agents Provocateurs: The 100 Most Subversive Skateboard Graphics of All Time
By Seb Carayol
Gingko Press
AMAZON POWELLS INDIEBOUND
COURTESY GINGKO PRESS.
Tracking the skateboard graphics of the ’90s, after the collapse of the skateboard industry in the ’80s sent the movement back underground into the youth culture realm of DIY, Agents Provocateurs compiles some of the rudest eye-popping visual assaults of this silver age when gnarly and rad turned into something far more subversive. It’s irreverent, politically incorrect in ways that can make you flinch, and funny enough to make most parents deeply concerned. If you never looked under a kid’s board in this era, we can promise you that you’ve never seen anything like this.
DON1, The King From Queens: The Life and Photos of a NYC Transit Master
By Louie “KR.ONE” Gasparro
Schiffer Publishing
AMAZON POWELLS INDIEBOUND
COURTESY DON1.
DON1 was a writer’s writer, profoundly influential as an early style master on the New York City transit system of the mid-’70s, but his legacy has been neglected in the history of graffiti art. Perhaps it was because he worked in Queens, which was hardly a hotbed for graffiti, or because his heyday was just before the first significant documentations of the movement came out. He was also a formidable photographer, taking some of the most artful and articulate pictures of this emerging medium, including his own work and the work of many others. A great historical catch and corrective, this volume will not only set the record straight on DON1’s importance, it will offer readers a taste of the wild flavor of New York City at its economic nadir.
Dreamtime
By Bubi Canal
Actividad Contemporánea
BUBI CANAL
©BUBI CANAL.
A book so sensational and full of unexpected delight that you probably should be eight or nine years old to truly appreciate it, Dreamtime is Spanish photographer Bubi Canal’s pictorial ode to the joyful magic of innocence and imagination. Combining fantastical costumes, whimsical gestures, and absurdist assemblage, Canal’s work is full of wonder, all about play, and contains some of the most endearingly optimistic images you’ll ever fall in love with.
Hiroshi Fujiwara
Contribution by Sarah Lerfel and Ino Hidefumi Rizzoli
AMAZON Fujiwara pioneered style through street fashion in ways that have altered the global landscape. After early apprenticeship with provocateurs Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood in London and a deep immersion in the street culture of New York, Fujiwara became the H of Nike’s HTM line, along with Tinker Hatfield, designer of the original Air Jordan, and Mark Parker, the esthetic maven and CEO of Nike. Fujiwara’s work as a designer not only defined the look of a subculture, it simultaneously changed the language of haute couture and urban youth and spawned a kind of product fetish that would make even the most avid art collectors blush. The book includes texts by Takashi Murakami, Eric Clapton, Mark Parker, Colette founder Sarah Andelman, Supreme’s James Jebbia, and Jun Takahashi of Undercover.
Hell on Wheels: An Illustrated History of Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs
By Bill Hayes
Motorbooks
AMAZON POWELLS INDIEBOUND
COURTESY OF THE BOOZEFIGHTERS MOTORCYCLE CLUB ARCHIVES.
The outlaw motorcycle club may have been spawned by the restlessness and pain of the Great Depression, but the beast did not fully unleash itself on our uptight land until the postwar era, when returning veterans–rootless, disillusioned, and scarred by their experiences—formed a less-perfect hell-raising society. Diligently researched and lovingly compiled from a spate of archival photos that are as artless as one would expect from such a subculture, Hell on Wheels delivers the core of youth rebellion, juvenile delinquency, and the graphics of outrage that have persisted in tattoo art, heavy metal music, and so many other aspects of popular culture both as the paradigm of fear for mainstream culture and as a market signifier of bad-ass cred.
Inside Outside Baseball
By Andrew Pope and Raymond Pettibon
Self-published
PRINTED MATTER
COURTESY RAYMOND PETTIBON AND ANDREW POPE.
The ultimate in collectible fetish is the zine, the degenerate cousin of the copy-machine fanzines of yore. Few artists in this medium are more beloved than Raymond Pettibon, whose deft drawing style, starkly poetic language, and acerbic world view make his missives unlike anything else that makes it to the page. Here Pettibon invests his own cultural capital into promoting the work of a fellow draftsman of exceptional talent and remarkable obscurity. Andrew Pope is a master of existential doubt, alienation, and mordant humor—a perfect companion to Pettibon’s asocial savant—and the master himself not only delivers some great work but also provides multiple examples of the drawings he did as a little kid. With only a hundred copies produced, this rare gem is bound to become a cherished relic for those who aspire to hold a definitive collection.
Prophetika (Book One)
By Sun Ra
Kicks Books
AMAZON INDIEBOUND
COURTESY NORTON RECORDS.
From the book imprint of Norton Records, the fantastical home of the most obscure and mind-blowing oddities of popular music history, comes this collection of lost writings marking the centennial of the visionary genius of cosmic jazz. It’s a “hip pocket paperback,” perfect to take along hiking or camping. Like a feral voice in the wilderness of humanity, Sun Ra’s poetry and prose make for an apocalyptic clock ticking down our last desperate daze on earth.
We Are FriendsWithYou
By FriendsWithYou, Contribution by Pharrell Williams and Alejandro Jodorowsky, Introduction by Peter Doroshenko
Rizzoli
AMAZON POWELLS INDIEBOUND
Like a smiling little cloud in a perfect blue sky, or an impossibly blissful moment of peace and happiness that rises in your soul like some glorious dawn, nothing could make your summer more perfect than this delicious volume of art by FriendsWithYou, the two-man collective of ecstatic spiritual joy originally hailing from Miami and recently resettled in Los Angeles. With texts from Dallas Contemporary executive director Peter Doroshenko and the ultimate toy fan-boy and pop superstar Pharrell Williams as well as cult filmmaker, unashamed surrealist, and enigmatic shaman Alejandro Jodorowsky, this book will help you smile your way to enlightenment.
witzend
By Wallace Wood
Fantagraphics Books
AMAZON POWELLS INDIEBOUND
A widely revered veteran of comics from the ’50s and ’60s, Wallace “Wally” Wood defined Daredevil for Marvel’s silver age and was a pioneer at EC Comics with work including Weird Science, Two-Fisted Tales, and Tales from the Crypt. When the comics code forced such dangerous titles out of business, he helped create the game-changing Mad magazine. No stranger to trouble—like the widely bootlegged poster he did of a Disney orgy—and no fan of the self-censoring banality of the comics industry, Wood decided to publish his own comic, witzend, in 1966. Featuring his own work and that of friends who felt similarly shut out of the industry, the 13 issues included such superhero masters as Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby, fantasy and sci-fi illustrator Frank Frazetta, Mad alums Harvey Kurtzman and Don Martin, underground stars Art Spiegelman and Vaughn Bode, and even the painter Ed Paschke. Boxed together in a deluxe two-volume set, here are the irascible voices of a medium far more outré than Hollywood blockbuster movies.
Zombie Love
By WON ABC
Publikat Verlag
AMAZON POWELLS INDIEBOUND
Colour Kamikaze
By WON ABC
Artwaerts/Edition Kunst der Comics
AMAZON POWELLS INDIEBOUND
COURTESY WON ABC.
Imagine that weird kid who just likes to draw and does it better than anyone you ever knew, then consider that he not only has a particularly dark and gruesome taste in comics but is also an habitual criminal of graffiti art, and you can get some sense of how beautiful and utterly indescribable this Munich-based artist’s work can be. The kind of hybrid that seems uncannily alien no matter how familiar its esthetic roots may be, WON ABC’s work is a rare and exotic breed unlike most anything else that grows in our urban gardens. While Zombie Love shows this epic storyteller at his best, there’s further cause for celebration since it has spirited along the republication of his long-lost classic Colour Kamikaze, from 2002.
Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious Story of the World’s Most Famous Heroine
By Tim Hanley
Chicago Review Press
AMAZON POWELLS INDIEBOUND
Not all of popular culture is worthy of academic inquiry, but in his scholarly text Tim Hanley informs us just why the iconic anomaly of Wonder Woman is such a compelling story. She became the quintessential cover girl for feminism when Gloria Steinem put her on the first cover of Ms. magazine in 1972, inspiring an ideal of costume play for little girls, a sure winner for drag queens, and the cheesy ’70s TV show. The Amazonian princess has been a much-reviled object of male fantasy ever since she crashed the boys club of superhero comics in the 1930s. She’s also been a contentious cultural barometer of gender politics for years. Relating the circuitous story of Wonder Woman’s evolution through the decades, Hanley also tells us something of her unlikely creator, William Moulton Marston, a man who earned three degrees from Harvard University in the teens (including doctorates in law and psychology) was a widely published author, created the polygraph machine and lie detector test, expressed his belief that women would soon rule our country, and was an outspoken supporter of women’s worth—and was, well, an aficionado of bondage. It’s not kid stuff for sure, but it’s surely as complex as Wonder Woman herself.