Vintage Tattoo Flash is a one-of-a-kind visual exploration of the history and evolution of tattooing in America. A luscious, offset-printed, hardcover tome--a beautiful and serious addition to the understanding of one of the world's oldest and most popular art forms. Electric tattooing as we know it today was invented in New York City at the turn of the 19th century. In the first days of American tattooing, tattoos were primarily worn by sailors and soldiers, outlaws and outsiders. The visual language of what came to be known as "traditional tattooing" was developed in those early days on the Bowery and catered to the interests of the clientele. Common imagery that soon became canon included sailing ships, women, hearts, roses, daggers, eagles, dragons, wolves, panthers, skulls, crosses, and popular cartoon characters of the era. The first tattooists also figured out that using bold outlines, complimented by solid color and smooth shading, was the proper technique for creating art on a body that would stand the test of time. In the over 100 years since then, techniques and styles have evolved, and the customer base has expanded, but the core subject matter and philosophy developed at the dawn of electric tattooing has persisted as perennial favorites through the modern era. While most tattoos are inherently ephemeral, transported on skin until the death of the collector, a visual record exists in the form of tattoo flash: the hand-painted sheets of designs posted in tattoo shops for customers to select from. Painted and repainted, stolen, traded, bought and sold, these sheets are passed between artists through one channel or another, often having multiple useful lives in a variety of shops scattered across time and geography. The utility of these original pieces of painted art has made it so that original examples can still be found in use or up for grabs if you know where to look. Vintage Tattoo Flash draws from the personal collection of Jonathan Shaw renowned outlaw tattooist and author and represents a selection of over 300 pieces of flash from one of the largest private collections in existence. Vintage Tattoo Flash spans the first roughly 75 years of American tattooing from the 1900s Bowery, to 50s Texas, through the Pike in the 60s and the development of the first black and grey, single-needle tattooing in LA in the 70s. The book lovingly reproduces entirely unpublished sheets of original flash from the likes of Bob Shaw, Zeke Owen, Tex Rowe, Ted Inman, Ace Harlyn, Ed Smith, Paul Rogers, the Moskowitz brothers, and many, many others relatively known and unknown.

"Los Angeles is a city that runs from its own past" explains historian and Bison Archives owner Marc Wanamaker. Many of Hollywood's legendary sets and props, mansions, theaters, restaurants, nightclubs, hotels, and even the studios and the films they produced are now either gone or have been redeveloped, repurposed, or remade beyond recognition. Even more disarmingly, the physical ephemera associated with such items is often MIA as well. Photographs, files, maps, documents, menus, production paperwork, records, manuscripts, everything from matchbooks to movie magazines and entire movie backlots have now been lost in the backwash of dubious progress, short-sighted corporate mindsets, and civic indifference. Fortunately, for the last fifty years, in the very epicenter of Hollywood, thanks to Wanamaker, there has existed a haven where over 70,000 of these items, physically or photographically, have been collected and protected. These artifacts tell the story of Hollywood's glorious past, as well as its uncertain future as the hub of filmmaking in America"--

"Louise Nevelson, now in her eightieth year, is one of our greatest contemporary American sculptors. This book, published in conjunction with an exhibition in her honor at the Whitney Museum of American Art, is a tribute to her spirit, her work, and her ongoing achievements. Nevelson, who worked with little recognition for the first fifty years of her life, became known to the general public in the mid-fifties with an exhibition of wood sculptures called MOON GARDEN + ONE. Accumulations of painted wood fragments, boxed, stacked, hanging, dramatically lit, they inspired wonder, reverence, and awe. A prominent New York critic called the show "shocking, overwhelming...appalling, marvelous." MOON GARDEN + ONE, with its tremendous vitality and power, is presented here along with four other major environments: the all-white exhibition shown at The Museum of Modern Art, DAWN'S WEDDING FEAST; the all-gold environment, THE ROYAL TIDES; and an earlier exhibition, THE ROYAL VOYAGE, whose carved pieces and found objects, painted black and arranged together, led to the idea of sculptural walls. In contrast, the last work, MRS. N's PALACE, is a three-dimensional piece -- a house on a mirrored floor that the viewer can walk around and enter -- made up of myriad small works. The original environment-installations are pictured here, as are many of the individual sculptures that comprised them, introduced by art historian Laurie Wilson, with quotes by Mrs. Nevelson herself. Edward Albee, playwright and friend of Mrs. Nevelson, has written a fascinating introduction discussing the artist's life and her art in the context of the history of sculpture over the past fifty years. Photographer Pedro E. Guerrero takes the reader on a privileged tour of Mrs. Nevelson's home and studio." --

This is the first major monograph on the work of one of Britain's most dynamic artists, Wolfe von Lenkiewicz. His striking paintings and drawings mine the hallowed halls of art history and popular culture in search of visual languages, imagery, themes and motifs that he can appropriate, adapt, use and abuse, bringing together different movements, genres, periods and styles in dialogues that are surprising, innovative and sometimes provocative. Lenkiewicz's imagination and energy seem to be inexhaustible, concocting endless amazing hybrids such as iconic Renaissance paintings invaded by characters from nineteenth-century Japanese woodblocks, French Revolutionary masterpieces spliced with German Romanticism, or Cubism infiltrated by Victorian children's illustration.

The Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film is a unique, one volume work which illuminates a fascinating variety of cinema which is little known outside its own area. The Encyclopedia is divided into nine chapters, each written by a leading scholar in the field. Each chapter covers the history and major issues of film within that area, as well as providing bibliographies of the leading films, directors and actors. The areas covered are: Central Asia, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, The Magreb, Palestine, Turkey. This Encyclopedia will be an invaluable reference tool for students and scholars of Film and Media Studies. It contains more than 60 black and white photographs of featured films, includes references and suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, and the volume concludes with comprehensive name, film and general indexes.

On life and times of Indian painter, Amrita Sher-Gil, 1913-1941 and her father and photographer, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil (1870-1954).