Book reviews on visual arts books and books related to Utah’s art community.
If you’re still looking for gift ideas you might check out Radio West’s Best Music of 2010 and Holiday Book Show programs. And if you haven’t read the entire December 2010 edition of 15 Bytes we’ll remind you that there are some art-related book suggestions on pages 5 […]
Seven Days in the Art World by Ann Poore Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World is an insider’s view (and a reality check) for aspiring artists and a whirlwind tour of just what the title says for the rest of us. It’s a terrific read and deserving of […]
At the end of Shopgirl, a first novel published to cautious praise in 2000 and made into a well-received movie in 2005, Mirabelle Butterfield, a struggling artist supporting herself in a dead-end retail job, makes a vocational leap upwards to selling art in a gallery. A decade later, […]
Behind the cover of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Gallerists But Were Afraid To Ask you won’t find the tell-all the title suggests. There are no salacious anecdotes from the big-name gallerists that have attained rockstar status in today’s international art world. For the most part the 51 […]
Becoming Pablo O’Higgins is a study of character that questions identity, integrity, authenticity and ultimately loyalty. This newly released biography by Susan Vogel, published to accompany the exhibit of O’Higgins’ work now at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, gives us a compelling portrayal of Paul Higgins, a young […]
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 through […]
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 […]
The Forger’s Spell by Edward Dolnick The Man Who Made Vermeers by Jonathen Lopez 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 […]
This week’s book review originally appeared in the April 2009 edition of 15 Bytes. We are revisiting the review in conjunction with the UMFA’s current exhibit, The Continuing Allure: Painters of Utah’s Red Rock, which will be covered in this month’s edition of 15 Bytes Painters of Utah’s […]
Spiral Jetta: a road trip through the land art of the American West by Erin Hogan The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 2008 In the 1960s and 70s, artists were drawn to slogans. “Art is dead” was followed by “Museums are where art goes to die.” […]
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 […]
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art Laney Salisbury Penguin Press 2009 352pp 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Behaviourables and Futuribles A review of Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness 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.” […]
Unmonumental: the object in the 21st century reviewed 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 […]
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 […]
