book pickings

A visual way to explore the Brain Pickings book archive :: Otlet's Shelf by Andrew LeClair & Rob Giampietro :: Back to Brain Pickings

CREATIVITY :: DESIGN :: SCIENCE :: HISTORY :: PSYCHOLOGY :: ART

art

  1. Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson Will Bingley Fear and loathing in six panels.

    Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson

    Will Bingley

    Fear and loathing in six panels.
  2. Get Dressed! Seymour Chwast An unusual and clever children’s book by beloved graphic designer Seymour Chwast.

    Get Dressed!

    Seymour Chwast

    An unusual and clever children’s book by beloved graphic designer Seymour Chwast.
  3. Women Are Heroes JR Poignant global portraits of women’s strength amidst adversity by French guerrilla artist-activist JR

    Women Are Heroes

    JR

    Poignant global portraits of women’s strength amidst adversity by French guerrilla artist-activist JR
  4. Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant to See Francoise Mouly A rare behind-the-scenes look at The New Yorker’s art-science of walking the fine line between keen and crass.

    Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant to See

    Francoise Mouly

    A rare behind-the-scenes look at The New Yorker’s art-science of walking the fine line between keen and crass.
  5. I Saw a Peacock with a Fiery Tail Ramsingh Urveti 17th-century British “trick” poetry meets Indian folk art in this magnificent die-cut masterpiece, two years in the making.

    I Saw a Peacock with a Fiery Tail

    Ramsingh Urveti

    17th-century British “trick” poetry meets Indian folk art in this magnificent die-cut masterpiece, two years in the making.
  6. 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design Steven Heller From visual puns to the grid, or what Edward Tufte has to do with the invention of the fine print.

    100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design

    Steven Heller

    From visual puns to the grid, or what Edward Tufte has to do with the invention of the fine print.
  7. A Technique for Producing Ideas: The simple, five-step formula anyone can use to be more creative in business and in life! James Web Youn “…the habit of mind which leads to a search for relationships between facts becomes of the highest importance in the production of ideas.” James Webb Young’s timeless five-step guide to producing ideas, originally written in 1939.

    A Technique for Producing Ideas: The simple, five-step formula anyone can use to be more creative in business and in life!

    James Web Youn

    “…the habit of mind which leads to a search for relationships between facts becomes of the highest importance in the production of ideas.”

    James Webb Young’s timeless five-step guide to producing ideas, originally written in 1939.
  8. Frank Lloyd Wright: Graphic Artist Penny Fowler An unprecedented look at the iconic architect’s diverse contribution to graphic design — his covers for Liberty (some of which were so radical the magazine rejected them), his mural designs for Midway Gardens, his photographic experiments, his hand-drawn typographical studies, the jacket designs for his own publications, including The House Beautiful and An Autobiography, and a wealth more.

    Frank Lloyd Wright: Graphic Artist

    Penny Fowler

    An unprecedented look at the iconic architect’s diverse contribution to graphic design — his covers for Liberty (some of which were so radical the magazine rejected them), his mural designs for Midway Gardens, his photographic experiments, his hand-drawn typographical studies, the jacket designs for his own publications, including The House Beautiful and An Autobiography, and a wealth more.
  9. Ounce Dice Trice Alastair Reid Poet Alistair Reid and beloved artist Ben Shahn’s marvelous exploration of the nooks and crannies of language, real and imagined, through obscure, esoteric, and invented words for familiar things that are as mind-bending as they are tongue-twisting. It’s part Lewis Carroll, part Shel Silverstein, part something entirely its own and entirely refreshing. The title comes from the playful alternative words bored shepherds used when they grew tired of counting their sheep the usual way.

    Ounce Dice Trice

    Alastair Reid

    Poet Alistair Reid and beloved artist Ben Shahn’s marvelous exploration of the nooks and crannies of language, real and imagined, through obscure, esoteric, and invented words for familiar things that are as mind-bending as they are tongue-twisting. It’s part Lewis Carroll, part Shel Silverstein, part something entirely its own and entirely refreshing.

    The title comes from the playful alternative words bored shepherds used when they grew tired of counting their sheep the usual way.
  10. Luigi Russolo, Futurist: Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult Luciano Chessa Italian Futurist painter and composer Luigi Russolo (1885-1947), best-known for authoring the 1913 manifesto The Art of Noises (public library) and regarded as the first noise artist, is the father of the first systematic poetics of noise. He Russolo played a crucial role in the evolution of 20th-century musical aesthetics and influenced such music icons as Edgar Varese, Pierre Schaeffer, and John Cage. He was also one of the first theorists of electronic music and is even considered by some the inventor of the synthesizer. Yet despite enormous interest in his work, Russolo’s life remained largely unexamined — until now. Here, composer and San Francisco Conservatory music history professor Luciano Chessa reconstructs Russolo’s life through ambitious archival research, uncovering and digesting esoteric and obscure texts to reverse-engineer how the artist’s eccentric interests influenced his creative output — namely an interest in the supernatural and, more specifically, in the occult.

    Luigi Russolo, Futurist: Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult

    Luciano Chessa

    Italian Futurist painter and composer Luigi Russolo (1885-1947), best-known for authoring the 1913 manifesto The Art of Noises (public library) and regarded as the first noise artist, is the father of the first systematic poetics of noise. He Russolo played a crucial role in the evolution of 20th-century musical aesthetics and influenced such music icons as Edgar Varese, Pierre Schaeffer, and John Cage. He was also one of the first theorists of electronic music and is even considered by some the inventor of the synthesizer. Yet despite enormous interest in his work, Russolo’s life remained largely unexamined — until now.

    Here, composer and San Francisco Conservatory music history professor Luciano Chessa reconstructs Russolo’s life through ambitious archival research, uncovering and digesting esoteric and obscure texts to reverse-engineer how the artist’s eccentric interests influenced his creative output — namely an interest in the supernatural and, more specifically, in the occult.
  11. Between Page and Screen Amaranth Borsuk & Brad Bouse A remarkable “digital pop-up book” that tells the love story of the letters P and S through minimalist, wordless black-and-white geometric patterns that spring to life and summon the text when looked at through a webcam. You suddenly see yourself projected on the screen, holding in your hands the paper pages from which the living language of digital text unfolds into the story. And what a story it is — full of wordplay and innuendo, the narrative flows with equal parts humor and poetic sophistication as words morph into one another with your every movement, a visceral metaphor for the longing of the two alphabetical lovers.

    Between Page and Screen

    Amaranth Borsuk & Brad Bouse

    A remarkable “digital pop-up book” that tells the love story of the letters P and S through minimalist, wordless black-and-white geometric patterns that spring to life and summon the text when looked at through a webcam. You suddenly see yourself projected on the screen, holding in your hands the paper pages from which the living language of digital text unfolds into the story. And what a story it is — full of wordplay and innuendo, the narrative flows with equal parts humor and poetic sophistication as words morph into one another with your every movement, a visceral metaphor for the longing of the two alphabetical lovers.
  12. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: With Artwork by Yayoi Kusama (Penguin Classics) Lewis Carroll Yayoi Kusama, Japan’s most celebrated contemporary artist, illustrates the Lewis Carroll classic. Since childhood, Kusama has been afflicted by a rare vision condition that makes her see colorful polka dots on everything she looks at, so her artwork is naturally “hallucinogenic.”

    Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: With Artwork by Yayoi Kusama (Penguin Classics)

    Lewis Carroll

    Yayoi Kusama, Japan’s most celebrated contemporary artist, illustrates the Lewis Carroll classic.

    Since childhood, Kusama has been afflicted by a rare vision condition that makes her see colorful polka dots on everything she looks at, so her artwork is naturally “hallucinogenic.”
  13. Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art Peter Barber This lavish tome collects cartographic curiosities from the golden age of display maps — the period between 1450 and 1800, when maps were as much a practical tool for navigation as they were works of art and affirmations of cultural hegemony or social status — culled from the formidable collection of the British Library.

    Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art

    Peter Barber

    This lavish tome collects cartographic curiosities from the golden age of display maps — the period between 1450 and 1800, when maps were as much a practical tool for navigation as they were works of art and affirmations of cultural hegemony or social status — culled from the formidable collection of the British Library.
  14. Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation Tom Bissell “To create anything… is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic.”

    Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation

    Tom Bissell

    “To create anything… is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic.”
  15. The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present Eric Kandel Something unusual defined Vienna between 1890 and 1918, something that shaped more of Western culture than we dare suspect — artists, writers, thinkers and scientists across biology, medicine, and psychoanalysis came into regular contact and, in the process of these interactions, steered the course of modern art and science.

    The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present

    Eric Kandel

    Something unusual defined Vienna between 1890 and 1918, something that shaped more of Western culture than we dare suspect — artists, writers, thinkers and scientists across biology, medicine, and psychoanalysis came into regular contact and, in the process of these interactions, steered the course of modern art and science.
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