Marc Mayer

Jean-Michel Basquiat was only twenty-seven when he died in 1988, his meteoric and often controversial career having lasted for just eight years. Despite his early death, Basquiat's powerful œuvre has ensured his continuing reputation as one of modern art's most distinctive voices. Borrowing from graffiti and street imagery, cartoons, mythology and religious symbolism, Basquiat's drawings and paintings explore issues of race and identity, providing social commentary that is shrewdly observed show more and biting. This bestselling book, now available in a compact edition, celebrates Basquiat's achievements in the contexts of the key influences on his art. It not only re-evaluates the artist's principal works and their meaning, but also explains what keeps his painting relevant today. show less

Errata Editions' Books on Books series is an ongoing publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of the original books. Each volume in the series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this show more series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study of the creation and meanings of these great works of art. Each volume in the series contains illustrations of every page in the original photobook, a new essay by an established writer on photography, production notes about the creation of the original edition and biographical and bibliographical information about each artist.
In October of 1991, French artist Sophie Ristelhueber photographed the battle-scarred landscape of Kuwait following the end of the first Gulf War. The book, Fait, which in French means "fact" or "what was done," remains one of our least known but most powerful statements about the aftermath of war. Books on Books 3 presents all 71 black-and-white and color photographs as seen in the original artist's book as it was conceived and designed by Ristelhueber. Marc Mayer of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montreal contributes an essay that discusses Ristelhueber's disturbing yet beautiful achievement. show less

The paintings of Basquiat are not to be taken lightly. This book challenges it's viewers and readers to come face to face with perhaps some of the most important paintings of the second half of the twetieth century, and certaintly of the 1990's. Labeled by some as the most famous African American painter ever, Basquiat was a young man living in New York who sucessfully expressed the confusion, elation and horror of life as he knew it. The "neo-expressionist" died young as a result of a drug show more overdose after starting a prolific career that tragically ended after only a decade. show less