We hope you enjoyed our most recent Book Fact Friday, because this week we’re giving away a copy of The First Pop Age!

The First Pop Age: Painting and Subjectivity in the Art of Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter, and Ruscha
by Hal Foster

Who branded painting in the Pop age more brazenly than Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and Ed Ruscha? And who probed the Pop revolution in image and identity more intensely than they? In The First Pop Age, leading critic and historian Hal Foster presents an exciting new interpretation of Pop art through the work of these Pop Five.

Beautifully illustrated in color throughout, the book reveals how these seminal artists hold on to old forms of art while drawing on new subjects of media; how they strike an ambiguous attitude toward both high art and mass culture; and how they suggest that a heightened confusion between images and people is definitive of Pop culture at large.

As The First Pop Age looks back to the early years of Pop art, it also raises important questions about the present: What has changed in the look of screened and scanned images today? Is our media environment qualitatively different from that described by Warhol and company? Have we moved beyond the Pop age, or do we live in its aftermath?

FACT: “The word ‘tabular’ derives from tabula, Latin for ‘table’ but also for ‘writing tablet,’ in which, in ancient use, painting as well as printing figured as a mode of inscription. Richard Hamilton deploys both techniques in his practice (where printmaking is not necessarily secondary to painting); he does so in part because he finds the effects associated with them already imbricated in the media. ‘Tabular,’ then, also invokes writing, which Hamilton involves through his generative lists and programmatic titles. It connotes ‘tabloid’ as well, a form that Hamilton takes up directly in Swingeing London 67 (1968-69), a series of posters and paintings based on press coverage of Mick Jagger and Robert Fraser arrested for drug possession.”

The First Pop Age: Painting and Subjectivity in the Art of Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter, and Ruscha
by Hal Foster

Who branded painting in the Pop age more brazenly than Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and Ed Ruscha? And who probed the Pop revolution in image and identity more intensely than they? In The First Pop Age, leading critic and historian Hal Foster presents an exciting new interpretation of Pop art through the work of these Pop Five.

Is there a recipe for creating a vibrant, economically viable arts community? (Take two profitable artists, add in one art dealer, one gallery, a splash of music, and hefty rent breaks, and voila, a new arts community.)

The reality is that the arts can be engines of economic growth — look at areas like SoHo, Venice Beach or Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood — and so it isn’t too surprising that the National Endowment of the Arts is throwing its hat in the ring to create the next big place.

In this article “Where do Bohemians Come From?”, USC Urban Planning professor Elizabeth Currid explores the folly of one-size fits all arts spending — apparently Kevin Costner was wrong, if you build it, they might not come, they may just stay where they are. She describes a more organic process of identifying where art is already happening, why it works in that location, and how it can be further supported. Using terrific historical examples (she looks at how trends toward larger art necessitated the use of certain types of buildings — buildings found in SoHo — and contributed to the growth of the neighborhood), she makes a compelling case for a new form of arts spending for growth.

We published Elizabeth’s book The Warhol Economy in 2007, but this new debate has certainly brought its arguments about arts and urban planning to the fore again. Read Chapter 1 here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8758.pdf

Sometimes it seems as if days have themes — or at least days of blog postings have themes. Whacky Shorts Creations asked the authors of Viewpoints for their earliest drawing memories, and in this terrific review of Avian Architecture, Ken at Rosyfinch Ramblings also looks back at his earliest memories of birds and nests. He recalls watching a rooftop “nest” of a nighthawk before he was four years old and other memorable nests since as he presents lovely pages from our book. I hope you will check it out and then share your earliest bird or bird nest memory below.

Over at Whacky Shorts Creations, they speak with the authors of Viewpoints about their earlier memories of drawing and their current work at the intersection of mathematics, drawing, and art:

Today, I’m so, so excited to present to you a new “why people draw” that is such a wonderful example of how drawing is not just art, but is rather a wonderful visualizing, knowledge-sharing, enlightening thinking tool. Mathematicians Annalisa Crannell from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, and Marc Frantz from Indiana University in Bloomington, IN share their thoughts on drawing, and how they have designed ways to teach math concepts to teachers and college students through drawing! They also discuss how drawing plays a part in their own process of solving problems.

This week’s book giveaway is The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art, and Music Drive New York City by Elizabeth Currid

Which is more important to New York City’s economy, the gleaming corporate office—or the grungy rock club that launches the best new bands? If you said “office,” think again. In The Warhol Economy, Elizabeth Currid argues that creative industries like fashion, art, and music drive the economy of New York as much as—if not more than—finance, real estate, and law. And these creative industries are fueled by the social life that whirls around the clubs, galleries, music venues, and fashion shows where creative people meet, network, exchange ideas, pass judgments, and set the trends that shape popular culture.

The implications of Currid’s argument are far-reaching, and not just for New York. Urban policymakers, she suggests, have not only seriously underestimated the importance of the cultural economy, but they have failed to recognize that it depends on a vibrant creative social scene. They haven’t understood, in other words, the social, cultural, and economic mix that Currid calls the Warhol economy.

With vivid first-person reporting about New York’s creative scene, Currid takes the reader into the city spaces where the social and economic lives of creativity merge. The book has fascinating original interviews with many of New York’s important creative figures, including fashion designers Zac Posen and Diane von Furstenberg, artists Ryan McGinness and Futura, and members of the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

The economics of art and culture in New York and other cities has been greatly misunderstood and underrated. The Warhol Economy explains how the cultural economy works—and why it is vital to all great cities.

“Any discussion about New York City’s economic well-being tends to start and end with one phrase: Wall Street. As the Street goes, we assume, so goes the city, which is why politicians will do almost anything to keep the brokerages and investment banks happy…. [In] The Warhol Economy the social scientist Elizabeth Currid argues that this fixation is misdirected, and that it has led us to neglect the city’s most vital and distinctive economic sector: the culture industry, which, in Currid’s definition, includes everything from fashion, art, and music to night clubs. In other words, it’s SoHo and Chelsea, not Wall Street, that the politicians should really be thinking about. Of course, everyone knows that art and culture help make New York a great place to live. But Currid goes much further, showing that the culture industry creates tremendous economic value in its own right.”—James Surowiecki, New Yorker

The random draw for this book with be Friday 10/7 at 3 pm EST. Be sure to “Like” us on Facebook if you haven’t already to be entered to win!

This week’s book giveaway is Victor Regnault and the Advance of Photography: The Art of Avoiding Errors by Laurie Dahlberg.

This lavishly illustrated book establishes the towering influence of the scientist Victor Regnault (1810-1878) in the earliest decades of photography, a period of experimentation ripe with artistic, commercial, and scientific possibility. Regnault has a double significance to the early history of photography, as the first leader of the Société Française de Photographie (S.F.P.) and as the maker of more than two hundred calotype (paper negative) portraits and landscapes. His photographic and scientific careers intersected a third field with his appointment in 1852 as director of the Sèvres porcelain works.

Readers are treated to Regnault’s own beguiling pastoral, garden, and forest scenes; striking portraits of the scientists and artists in his circle of friends; quirky images of acoustic experiments; and an insider’s view of the Sèvres porcelain works. Regnault’s richly varied photographs also encompass perhaps the most extensive group of family portraits in early photography, and his romanticized landscapes reflect a moment when the rural outskirts of Paris were being aggressively suburbanized and industrialized.

Occupying a unique and powerful position in the overlapping spheres of photography, science, industry, and art, Regnault was elected president of the newly formed S.F.P. in 1855. By examining his intertwined activities against the backdrop of French photography’s nascent pursuit of institutional legitimacy, this book illuminates an important and overlooked body of images and the irregular cultural terrain of early photography.

“In Laurie Dahlberg’s Victor Regnault and the Advance of Photography, you will find much to satisfy both curiosity about photography’s early technology and pleasure in his subjects. . . . A fascinating book, it combines stunning images with a thoughtful biography.”—Maggie McDonald, New Scientist

The random draw for this book with be Friday 9/16 at 3 pm EST. Be sure to “Like” us on Facebook if you haven’t already to be entered to win!

Library Journal just posted the best-selling art and music titles for the last year or so and happily two PUP books are on the list: A General Theory of Visual Culture by Whitney Davis took the #2 spot and Michelangelo: A Life on Paper by Leonard Barkan was #4.

Glad to see that libraries are stocking up on our titles! Go check out these and other great art books.

This week’s book giveaway is The Anatomy of Nature: Geology and American Landscape Painting, 1825-1875 by Rebecca Bedell. This beautifully illustrated book has won several awards, including the 2002 New York Book Show Award.

Geology was in vogue in nineteenth-century America. People crowded lecture halls to hear geologists speak, and parlor mineral cabinets signaled social respectability and intellectual engagement. This was also the heyday of the Hudson River School, and many prominent landscape painters avidly studied geology. Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, Frederic Church, John F. Kensett, William Stanley Haseltine, Thomas Moran, and other artists read scientific texts, participated in geological surveys, and carried rock hammers into the field to collect fossils and mineral specimens. As they crafted their paintings, these artists drew on their geological knowledge to shape new vocabularies of landscape elements resonant with moral, spiritual, and intellectual ideas.

Rebecca Bedell contributes to current debates about the relationship among art, science, and religion by exploring this phenomenon. She shows that at a time when many geologists sought to disentangle their science from religion, American artists generally sidestepped the era’s more materialist science, particularly Darwinism. They favored a conservative, Christianized geology that promoted scientific study as a way to understand God. Their art was both shaped by and sought to preserve this threatened version of the science. And, through their art, they advanced consequential social developments, including westward expansion, scenic tourism, the emergence of a therapeutic culture, and the creation of a coherent and cohesive national identity.

This major study of the Hudson River School offers an unprecedented account of the role of geology in nineteenth-century landscape painting. It yields fresh insights into some of the most influential works of American art and enriches our understanding of the relationship between art and nature, and between science and religion, in the nineteenth century.

“In this wide ranging book, Rebecca Bedell looks beyond the usual labels . . . to find an unexpected continuity in 19th century American landscape painting: its obsession with the once fashionable science of geology. In lucid prose free of academic jargon, Bedell surveys the intersection of art, tourism and geology in the work of such painters as Thomas Cole, John Kensett and Thomas Moran.”—New York Times Book Review

“[A] gracefully written and handsomely crafted book.”—Choice

The random draw for this book with be Friday 8/12 at 11 am EST. Be sure to “Like” us on Facebook if you haven’t already to be entered to win!