Most publications/journals give you the summer reading list in June, you know, before summer. Not us at The Unibrow. We like to go mid-summer, just as the Europeans take the month off and you don’t hear from them even though you have unresolved questions that are unanswered… that sort of list. So I made one. A good one. I asked the team what they have been reading, I have been reading a lot, so let’s make a list.
A few notes to consider: some of these are books we just want or wanted and are interesting in. Sometimes a catalog is a part of a greater experience of just going to a show, and you want a piece of it to bring home. That is of consideration here.
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Christopher Anderson: Index
Stanley/Barker
This one isn’t so much to be read but to be collected and held. Anderson is one of the great photographers of this generation, and a breath of fresh air to have a major collection of his work all in one place. It’s eclectic, for sure, but there is something deeply rooted in the American hegemonic century in here, from war to politicians, revolution and personal revelation.
Miranda July: No One Belongs Here More Than You
MirandaJuly.com
Our contributing editor and sometimes Unibrow Radio host Shaquille Heath recommended this one, and being from 2007, I appreciate going back into the vaults for the summer read. You don’t always need new things, you know? Go with some classics, the ones you missed (more on this down the list). Short stories from one of contemporary art’s unique voices, and this is from a really unique pre-social media blowout era that still gave us experiences we could sit down for.
Water Over Thunder: Selected Writings, by Larry Sultan
Mack Books
Love this entry into the list by our social media director and photographer, Alex Nicholson. Sultan is one of our favorite photographers, and I’m so happy to see that Mack has published his writing, also a lifelong pursuit and craft. This particular volume is both writing and photography, with unseen volumes of work and unpublished words, is quite a special collection and I think you might have some impressive vibes on the beach with this. “Everything is in motion, spinning off of surfaces and slamming against shadowy forms ... it seems impossible to find a break in the surface.” Magic.
The Easter Parade, by Richard Yates
This one came recommended to me by Kelly Beeman, an artist who I worked with this summer on text for her own monograph to come out in the fall. She and I had spoke at length about Yates, and I hadn’t read this one before and Beeman hinted it was a good one. I read it in one sitting, as I have with a few Yates novels, and not only did it provide an interesting theme to my writing on Beeman’s work (the relationship between sisters, a coming of age tale in a pre-Mad Men NYC), the deterioration of relationships and the things we sacrifice in independence), this also provided a backdrop in some themes we explore in Issue 03.
Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles, by Rosecrans Baldwin
Another book I finished this summer, and what a read. I moved to Los Angeles just over 3 years ago on a permanent basis, and I have been so very interested in where I am. I don’t understand Los Angeles, at all really, and I’m not the only one. But there is a story here on every corner, because it is a city built on some sort of necessary dream that really didn’t need to come true, and often doesn’t it. But Baldwin writes about the “city-state” that it is, and the unique birth of what LA not only means to a greater world but to itself. It’s a complicated place, and Baldwin makes a case that complication is beautiful and frustrating.
Marcel Duchamp Exhibition Catalogue
MoMA
I feel like this is cheating, but it was a really fantastic show that took a very difficult artist to articulate and made it exhilarating and exciting. This is rare air, and we got the catalog as a reference to a fantastic tour the team of The Unibrow got with curator Ann Temkin, but also to the vast amount of work Duchamp made throughout his career. It’s the type of show (and text) that makes the case that what you know about the artist wasn’t nearly enough, and it succeeds.
Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life, by Dan Nadel
I have been reading this book in chunks for the last year, and I know many artists have been reading this one since it was published last year. I have used this word a lot in these reviews but fuck it: Crumb is complicated. This biography doesn’t sugarcoat or avoid that complication, but embraces and understands that to tell the story you have to get uncomfortable. In a time where so many artists we adore now grew up on comics and cartoons, Crumb is an origin story.
Montmartre: The Birthplace of Modern Art
Giles, Ltd
As part of a research project, I got this book from an art advisor in the spring and devoured every page. I think what I got the most out of it were the amount of artists I didn’t know or were under-recognized from the period, how much of Paris was about collaboration and competition, about the sheer amount of artists who moved to the city at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. It’s like I knew it all but nothing at all. There are some fantastic outliers who get a shine here, Suzanne Valadon being one o them, but the research makes this part catalog and part historical non-fiction.
Ana Mendieta Exhibition Catalog
Tate.co.uk
This is one of those “collector’s items” that I just wanted to have this summer. I think the more we talk about the career of the Cuban feminist and artist Ana Mendieta, the more we talk about the work and the career that was, the more we can understand the great loss we all suffered in her premature death.
London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth, by Patrick Radden Keefe
Doubleday
This was a book on tape, so is that reading? Well, I book-on-taped this entire recount of death, history, family and the evolution of London on a drive from Los Angeles to Oregon and back, and it was one of the best true-crime stories I have ever experienced. It’s about a death, yes, but it is also about how London’s own history and evolution created a landscape for the collision and confusion of 3 men who found themselves embedded in a short-sighted lie, scheme and betrayal saga over the course of a few months. Breathtaking stuff.
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