R & R

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Céline Resort 2012. More at fashionologie.

A Lit Match

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Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art is a new book by Gwen Allen which surveys American and European artists’ publications from the '60s to the '80s.

Among the magazines Allen examines are Aspen (1965–1971), a multimedia magazine in a box—issues included Super-8 films, flexi-disc records, critical writings, artists' postage stamps, and collectible chapbooks; Avalanche (1970-1976), which expressed the countercultural character of the emerging SoHo art community through its interviews and artist-designed contributions; Art-Rite (1973-1978), an irreverent zine with a disposable, newsprint format; Real Life (1979-1994), published by Thomas Lawson and Susan Morgan as a forum for the Pictures generation; 0 to 9 (1967–1969), a mimeographed poetry magazine founded by Vito Acconci and Bernadette Meyer; FILE (1972–1989), founded by the Canadian collective General Idea, its cover design a sly parody of Life magazine; and Interfunktionen (1968–1975), founded to protest the conservative curatorial strategies of Documenta. These and the other magazines Allen examines expressed their differences from mainstream media in both form and content: they cast their homemade, DIY quality against the slickness of an Artforum, and they created work that defied the formalist orthodoxy of the day. (A work by John Baldessari from the late 1960s shows a photograph of Artforum, captioned "THIS IS NOT TO BE LOOKED AT.") Artists' Magazines, featuring abundant color illustrations of magazine covers and content, offers an essential guide to a little-explored medium.

Looking forward to checking it out. The book is published by The M.I.T. Press; get more info and order from Printed Matter.

Best Foot Forward

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It feels both somewhat sacrilegious to contemplate straying from the original, and sad that at this time of year anyone should still be thinking about rain boots, but there you have it:

Hunter Lapins in dark olive
(also available in black and navy), $225, Hunter.

Coming to Flex

.Front and back cover of the forthcoming Flexions LP Golden Fjord, designed for the newly-minted Cairo Records by yours truly.

The album is out August 2nd and in addition to band members Robin Stein, Devin Welch, and Tyler Swan, also features Margaret Jones and Morgan Henderson (Fleet Foxes, Past Lives, Blood Brothers, and, perhaps most importantly, Mt. Henderson).

Here's the first video, by Chris Ando and the homey Robert M. Wolfe, who is best known for design work with Wavves and Best Coast:


Flexions play at the Wildrose on July 9th and the release party is August 5th at Chop Suey. Mark them calendars. More info here.

Image of the Day

. Anthony Pane serves oysters at The Walrus and the Carpenter. Photograph by Stuart Isett, from an excellent New York Times feature by Frank Bruni on "locavore living" in Seattle. An excerpt:

To eat in and around Seattle, which I did recently and recommend heartily, isn’t merely to eat well. It is to experience something that even many larger, more gastronomically celebrated cities and regions can’t offer, not to this degree: a profound and exhilarating sense of place.

Click here to read the rest of the article and here for an nytimes.com slideshow. See more of Seattle-based photographer Stuart Isett's work at his website.

Image of the Day

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Emily's distant Uncle Jack. We've been at her cousin Rose's wedding/family reunion in deepest Northern Idaho. You can't see from the picture but Jack was rocking some Dior sunglasses, real ones for all I know, with metal details that matched his belt and mechanical arm in a really cool way. We thoroughly enjoyed catching up with the fam... more pics coming soon.