100 Masters of Bishojo Painting

Those phenomenally popular Japanese anime girls –big-eyed beauties with winsome expressions and impossibly flexible bodies – are called bishojo, Japanese for “beautiful girls.” In this eye-popping new book from BNN, you’ll find 500 versions of the bishojo gals digitally illustrated by 100 Japanese masters. The cover is designed by one of the genre’s most celebrated artists, Range Murata, and featured artists include professional illustrators who create covers for the young-adult genre called “light novel” in Japan and who design characters for games and animations, as well as stand-out amateur artists who show their works on pixiv (the best-known user-generated illustration website in Japan) or in doujinshi (independently published comics). This eminently useful book also includes information to serve as a directory to these talented Japanese artists and the production environment they specialize in. Using a password and ID in the book, readers can download very cool desktop wallpapers.

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11” x 17” READER

Elisa van Joolen

Ruby Hoette (Ed.)

High concept and high fashion collide in the 11”x 17” Reader, a compilation of texts and images that examine and challenge the fashion industry’s prevailing value system while proposing new working methods. Through the reuse of samples, stock and archive items donated by various fashion brands, van Joolen developed two new series of products that are both conceptual and wearable: a series of unique 11”x 17” Sweaters and hybrid “inside-out” sneakers and sandals titled Invert Footwear. Bringing together the ethical components of production with intellectual property in our hyper-branded society, the project asks what constitutes a clothing collection? To whom does a piece of clothing really belong? Merging this with a hands-on approach, Van Joolen dares to challenge and rethink the current fashion system, proposing new models of production and presentation in a time when sustainability and cost efficiency are powerful forces. For this project, van Joolen collaborated with brands such as Converse, O’Neill, G Star, Nike and Monique van Heist. She asked the brands to deliver sample pieces and a crew neck sweater from which she cut a tabloidsized, 11 x 17-inch swatch. By mixing the pieces of different brands to create a new “collection”, the concept of branding is challenged. High-end sneakers get a similar treatment, turned inside out with dollar store flip-flops added as souls, and the rubber souls of those turned into sandals. The exposed stitching details reveal the hand of the craftsman—a nameless factory worker. Through conversations with Lynn Berger, Pascale Gatzen, Ruby Hoette, Alexandra Landre and José Teunissen, all noted experts in the field, and model-worn photographs from renowned Dutch fashion photographers Blommers / Schumm, van Joolen explores these questions that lie at the heart of this project.

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2 Tone Vision Warping Patterns

Over 100 Royalty Free JPEG and EPS Files

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More from the Royalty Free "Patterns" Series

20’s Kimono

100 Royalty Free JPEGS Files

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More from the Royalty Free "Patterns" Series

Aino Aalto

Ulla Kinnunen

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Alvar Aalto

Designer

Pirkko Tuukkanen

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AFTER VICTOR PAPANEK

The Future Is Not What It Used to Be

Irene Tsatsos (Ed.)

Viennese designer and educator Viktor Papanek’s pioneering influence on sustainable, socially responsible, human-centered design is keenly relevant to current discourses in contemporary art, design and architecture. The catalog from the group exhibition at the Armory Center for the Arts, After Victor Papanek (2015), gathers work by eight artists, including Liz Nurenberg, Michael Parker and Dave Bailey, who engage Papanek’s concerns in projects exploring communal interaction and the monitoring of technologies embedded in our social fiber. Former Dean of Cal Arts, Papanek (1923–1998) emigrated to the US to study design and architecture with Frank Lloyd Wright in 1949 and then earned a B.A. from Cooper Union and M.A. at MIT before moving to Los Angeles in the 1970s, where his knowledge of the Bauhaus and anthropology shaped his conviction that when design is simply technical or merely style oriented, it loses touch with what is truly needed by people. Though modest, this well-designed publication is jam-packed with ideas. Each project and installation is well documented with ample photographs and informative descriptions. Contributions by Irene Tsatsos, Jeff Cain, Liz Nurenberg, Robby Herbst, Michael Parker, Dave Hullfish Bailey, CamLab, Olga Koumoundouros, Rafa Esparza Ken Ehrlich and Mathias Heyden, Rosten Woo, The Llano Del Rio Collective, Los Angeles Poverty Department, Verynice design and Matthew Manos.

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APPETITE FOR THE MAGNIFICENT

Tania and David Willen & Jörg Schelle

In Appetite for the Magnificent, the Swiss duo photographer David Willen (b. 1967, Bern) and picture editor Tania Willen (b. 1968, Bern), render the pictorial and aesthetic dimension of aquariums. Their subjects, taken from Swiss zoos and public and private labs where “aquascapers” designed animal-vegetable-mineral gardens of aqueous delights, float between the poles of reality and virtuality, presence and absence, the animate and inanimate. Only 23 color images are featured in this slender publication, however the Willens’ lush frontal photographs leave the viewer content staring into the small aquatic mysteries for hours. The accompanying essay on Philip Henry Gosse (1810–1888), by art theorist and historian Jörg Scheller, retraces the evolution of the aquarium at the interface of art, science and religion. Gosse was an artistic illustrator, self-taught scientist and devout evangelical whose life and thought are reflected in the underlying principles of the aquarium: the aestheticization of nature and the systematic observation and exploration of marine life.

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BALDWIN KINGREY

Midcentury Modern in Chicago, 1947—1957

John Brunetti & Tom Fredrickson (Eds.)

Chicago’s Baldwin Kingrey department store offered modern design at a reasonable price, an unstoppable formula for sales as well as the beginning of trend-setting salon for the titans of mid-century modern. With wares by Aalto, Bertoia and Eames, the store quickly acquired status as a laboratory for talent. This first publishing effort by Wright features 100 photographs of the store’s inventory alongside candid quotes from the owners, architect Harry Weese, his wife Kitty Baldwin Weese and partner Jody Kingrey.

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KELLY BEEMAN

Window Shopping

Exotic gardens, cool swimming pools, country-house picnics and cocktail parties form the backdrop for Brooklyln-based fashion illustrator/artist Kelly Beeman’s (b. 1983) long-limbed, elegantly dressed Modigliani-like women. Her elegant beauties are not just models for the latest creations of big-name fashion designers, but intended as tribute to the interior design, architecture, music and literature that fueled Beeman’s childhood fantasy world. For Beeman’s first publication—both survey and artist’s book—she gathers over 50 color illustrations whose sources of inspiration include lookbooks and catwalk shots. An autodidact, Beeman studied sociology at Hunter College in New York, then worked for several years in Bolivia and Argentina. Her subjects’ stories are told through self-display. Inspired by the New Objectivity and in particular Christian Schad and Otto Dix, the Vienna Secession and Byzantine art, Beeman’s illustrations have been widely published internationally in Vogue China and Vogue Korea, InStyle, Marie Claire Italia and Numero Tokyo for fashion labels such as Dior, Tory Burch and many others.

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