Secrets of the Contemporary Art World?- Shawn Rossiter On a recent trip I picked up two books about the contemporary art world, Everything You Wanted to Know About Gallerists But Were Afraid to Ask, an interview format book dealing with fifty-one gallerists from all over the world that seemed a light enough read to flip...

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The Art Instinct Denis DuttonBloomsbury Press2009 Reviewed by Steve Holladay It has been a year since Denis Dutton published The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, and since that time the book has continued to receive attention, both by art specialists and the public at large. In Art Instinct Dutton, a professor of the...

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The Forger’s Spellby Edward Dolnick The Man Who Made Vermeersby Jonathen Lopez reviewed by Shawn Rossiter Art forgers have frustrated and fascinated the art world for years. The critics whose reputations can be ruined by false attributions, and the collectors who find themselves holding a painting worth less than a tenth of what they paid...

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Photojojo!: Insanely Great Photo Projects and DIY Ideas By Amit Gupta and Kelly Jensenreviewed by Amanda Moore Photojojo! Is a great book for the flickr addict, scrap booker and diy enthusiast. The book is separated into two halves. The first half is all about unique crafts and presentations you can create with your photographs. The...

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Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern ArtLaney SalisburyPenguin Press2009352pp You couldn’t write a better story line if you were dealing with fiction. John Drewe, a working-class chameleon of a racconteur passes himself off as a posh nuclear scientist with big world connections and infiltrates the British art world...

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Maggie Macnab, author of Decoding Design: Understanding and Using Symbols in Visual Communication will be speaking at SUU’s Art Insights next week, on September 17 at 7 pm in the Centrum Arena at SUU.  Macnab, whose book has been called this year’s hottest graphic design book, has been in the graphic design business for nearly...

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Local artist Alex Bigney, who teaches at Utah Valley University, has just published a book entitled Talking to Tesla. Over the past four years the painter has undergone  experiences that have profoundly impacted his art and changed his life. In a series of uncanny dreams the enigmatic and now largely forgotten scientist, Nikola Tesla, visited him....

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Behaviourables and Futuribles A review of Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness Reviewed by Edward Bateman In 1970, Roy Ascott wrote, “If writing about art has any value at all at a time when art works and processes are themselves polemical, it can only be to discuss alternative futures.” Ascott has always...

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Unmonumental: the object in the 21st centuryreviewed by Geoff Wichert Unmonumental is simultaneously the name of a book, a pioneering exhibition at the New Museum’s new home in the Bowery for which it functions as catalog, and a school of sculpture that the book argues is the leading edge of art right now. According to...

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Dismantling Geneva Steel: Photographs by Chris Dunker Essays by Diana Turnbow and Sara J. Northerner Brigham Young University, Museum of Art reviewed by Laurel Hunter Geneva Steel, in Vineyard, Utah, opened in the 1940s to mill steel for use in WW2 war ships. It slowly declined after its heyday, despite efforts by local businessmen to...

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The Art of Small Things by John Mack Reviewed by Laurel Hunter It is no small thing to read through this book. Every time I picked up The Art of Small Things, I became totally absorbed in the beautiful color photographs that illustrate the book – the objects shown are incredibly varied and engaging, and the photography...

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