• Extremely lightweight
• Small enough to fit in a pocket but with more generous dimensions than the average smartphone means comfortable, cramp-free handling
• Reinforced edges with non-slip grip
• High resolution, non-glare, very paper-like display
• Simple, intuitive set of controls (particularly good because some of them seem to be labeled in the manufacturer's native language): No/Oof (On/Off); Next/Dlete/Cancl; Up/Down
• Wireless

Front view of the new E.Book e-reader

Perhaps best of all, the five-and-a-half-year-old company that makes the E.Book is happy to offer customers a personalized message on the back of the device. And even if it's meant to say Merry Christmas instead of "Hape brthday!" (which isn't until August) it's still the perfect gift. Thanks Porter! Love, Dad.

Back of the new E.Book e-reader, with custom engraving 

My issue with the book is spelled out in their own description of the thing as "unrestricted by the constraints of physical space". Think about that for a moment. Think about describing a printed book as unconstrained by physical space.... Of course, they meant unrestricted by the physical space and geographic location of museum buildings and collections (in the Museum Without Walls sense), but it's baffling that they didn't take this idea a step further, to its next logical progression, and bring their "boundless" book online, where it actually could be boundless. To put the extreme amounts of time, effort and money into a project like this that they did, and to come out the other end with a "suitcase full of rocks" is just sad.

That "suitcase full of rocks" quote? Oh, that's from Holland Cotter's review of the book in the New York Times. Of course when the phrase appears in the opening paragraph of Cotter's review, it directly references only the "size and weight" of the book, but by the end of the article it's clear that the statement sums up Cotter's overall opinion of the thing's content and presentation. And for that, I must say, I was grateful. Grateful that I wasn't the only one struggling with the problematic conception and execution of this book. Grateful that even the old guard of the art world wasn't willing to sidle up to the old guard of the art book publishing world and take it lying down. Grateful that he reviewed the book so I didn't have to. I highly recommend you go read it. Not as a put-down of the book itself, but as a call to action for how future projects like this might, and should, go. Here's the insightful and meaty conclusion:

"In a sense, The Art Museum may be most valuable precisely for helping to push the analog-versus-digital-book debate along, and even more for prompting ideas about the need to think about old museums in new ways—ways that it doesn’t itself explore."

Amen.

The MFAH started their club two years ago and have read a dozen books so far. This fall however, public programs coordinator Jay Heuman has dramatically upped the museum's commitment to the club, and is pushing the bounds on what a club can be. Like for most other museum book clubs, the MFAH's book selections—vetted by Heuman and his colleague, Sara Wheeler, public programs assistant—are connected to special exhibitions and the permanent collection. For this fall, the museum has "Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts" and "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs" on view, and so has selected My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk and Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff, for their book club. MFAH's innovation, however, lay in their book club tours and their customized reading/looking guides.

Rather than having a limited sign-up of a couple small groups of people to come in, sit down and discuss the books together in the museum—which is typical to many museum clubs, and can be quite effective with smaller communities in particular—the MFAH is suggesting you simply read the book on your own or with your existing book group and then come into the museum for a special, free book club tour of the galleries. The tours last one or two hours and are geared to connecting themes in the books directly with objects in the galleries. As Heuman relates:

"Each of our book club docents, extremely knowledgeable about the MFAH’s permanent collections and learning more on a daily basis, attend the MFAH Book Club docent education sessions and then develop their own tour in their own style. The common characteristics though include reading excerpts from the books while sitting before works of art, and active discussion/participation. We encourage the docents not to 'talk at' those who tour, but engage them in discussion, sharing their impressions of the books (style, themes, characters, plot, etc.), but also related personal experiences."

The museum has seventeen drop-in book club tours scheduled between October 20 and January 28, both on weekdays and weekends, and in the morning, afternoon and evenings to accommodate a wide variety of schedules. Or, if readers have their own book group of six or more people, they can schedule a private book club tour of their own—also for free. This is phenomenal, and makes participating about as easy as can be. Anyone who chooses to read either of the two books at any time during the next few months can come into the museum almost anytime, with little notice and no additional cost, to discuss that book and its relationship to the art with trained docents and other readers!

Second, Heuman has created custom reading/discussion guide for each book, that can be downloaded from the museum's website. Of course, reading guides are nothing new, but the MFAH's guides go far beyond the usual ten-question format. Between five and six pages long each, MFAH's new guides pull out larger themes from each book, suggest discussion questions, and, most critically, include information, images and additional questions about artworks in the museum (and elsewhere) that connect directly to the reading. Each guide is a rich, standalone resource that deepens readers' connections to the books and to the museum, even if they never discuss the books in a book club, or go on one of the museum's tours. Though the way MFAH has set up the tours, they're an opportunity I doubt many will miss!

"Art books are expensive (not accessible), heavy (not mobile), and no one reads them (not social). Our reverence for them is misplaced. Today, a book shouldn’t be beautiful for the way it’s packaged and sold, it should be beautiful for what it says and for the encounters in creates.  Encounters not only with other texts and ideas, but also with people, places and—for the visual art field especially—objects in the real world. I hate art books, but I love art."

This is description of the presentation I'm giving today at the Books in Browsers conference hosted by the Internet Archive, the theme of which this year is "beautiful books". You can download the e-book, or watch the video it live streaming at http://www.toccon.com/live. The e-book is in EPUB format which works on Apple, Nook, Sony, and Kobo readers (sorry, not Kindle) as well as online with the free Ibis Reader or on your desktop with Adobe Digital Editions, also free.

And finally, the funny image at the bottom is a QR code like the one I mention in the presentation. By scanning it with a QR reader on your smartphone, or by simply entering the short URL into your mobile web browser, you'll get the e-book on the presentation. I can't say at this point that it works on every device, QR reading app and mobile browser, but I know at least that on an iPhone you can use this to upload the book directly to iBooks, Stanza or Kobo and start reading instantly. Cool!

Thomas Kinkade, "The Painter of Light" ™, Sweetheart Gazebo

That said, the poetry book I'd like to give quick mention to now, Museum of Parallel Art, by Robert Wynne, stands out first for its whimsy. In it, Wynne uses each poem to consider a famous work of art as if it had been done be a radically different artist than the original: "Anne Geddes' Guernica", "Norman Rockwell's Saturn Devouring One Of His Children", "Piet Mondrian's Starry Night", etc... Even if it's a one-note idea, it's also in many ways a charming collection. What has stuck with me most since first reading it, however, are the opening lines to the poem "Thomas Kinkade's The Crucifixion", both horrifying and hilarious.

It's no surprise
the light shrouding

Jesus is beautiful
even as he dies,

but who knew
this took place

in a gazebo? 

What artist/artwork mash-ups would you propose?  The best, most meaningful of such pairings would transcend the basic novelty of "unlikely couples" and ideally offer new ways of seeing and thinking about each individually. It's definitely not as easy as it sounds at first. I'd like to think up a new artist for The Cremaster Cycle, but who? Instead, I think the best I've come up with so far is "Fred Sandback's Torqued Ellipse".

Share your ideas here, or better yet, maybe there's a Twitter meme to be started: #parallelart? #artmashup?

For our own unofficial part, we're very pleased to announce the publication of new e-book editions of two terrific books on the Los Angeles art world and its denizens: Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia, and The Beat and the Buzz: Inside the L.A. Art World. Both are by Richard Hertz (former professor at CalArts and graduate director at Art Center College of Design) and both also include contributions from dozens of L.A. insiders.

Not to play favorites, but I have to give a special personal recommendation to Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia. This is a book that when I first read it, really engaged me with artists and ideas that I hadn't known anything about before, and made me want to read more and to see more. What more than that can you ask from a book on art? It also makes not-infrequent appearances on recommendation lists and in interesting articles, and has really been a sort of underground hit since its original paperback release in 2003. I'm thrilled to be able to bring out this new e-book edition and I hope you'll check it out.

As for The Beat and the Buzz, I really need say only one thing: John Baldessari calls it "a page turner". Awesome. Add to cart.

THE START OF AN L.A. ART BIBLIOGRAPHY

Of course, the reading list on Los Angeles art only starts with our two books. There are shelves worth of other great books to read. Here's our recommend list of titles to get you started (alphabetical by author):

The Beat and the Buzz: Inside the L.A. Art World, Richard Hertz

Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia, Richard Hertz

Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s, Hunter Drohojowska-Philp

Last Chance for Eden: Selected Art Criticism by Christopher Knight 1979–1994, Christopher Knight

Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness, Chris Kraus

Sunshine Muse: Art on the West Coast, 1945–1970, Peter Plagens

Ed Ruscha's Los Angeles, Alexandra Schwartz

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, Lawrence Weschler

Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Expanded Edition, Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin, and True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney, Lawrence Weschler

Pop L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960s, Cécile Whiting

Many people first come to the work of artist Donald Judd via the small west-Texas town of Marfa.

With the idea of finding a permanent place to install his and his contemporaries' artwork, Judd first came to Marfa for an extended stay in 1972. Over the next two decades, until his death in 1994, Judd (and with him, the Dia Art Foundation) bought and renovated increasing amounts of land and dozens of buildings in the town and at a former Army base, Fort Russell, at the town's edge. Today, Marfa is home to the Judd Foundation which maintains the many spaces that made up Judd's home, studios and library; and the Chinati Foundation, established by Judd, which takes up all of former Fort Russell and operates as a museum with ten permanent art installations by as many artists, and two changing exhibition spaces (in perspective and approach, very similar to Dia:Beacon in upstate New York). Marfa's high concentration of art activity (including not only Judd and Chinati but a bustling contemporary art scene, the center of which is Ballroom Marfa) and its distance from everything else (two hours drive from El Paso, and thirty miles away from the next closest town) makes visiting the town something of an art pilgrimage.

Along with his artwork and art installations, Judd is also a well-known and well-respected art writer. Coming to Judd via his writings—whether you do so before, after, or during a visit to Marfa—is a kind of pilgrimage in and of itself.

The first stop on the Judd writing pilgrimage is Donald Judd: The Complete Writings 1959–1975, Gallery Reviews, Book Reviews, Articles, Letters to the Editor, Reports, Statements, Complaints. Often referred to simply as "the yellow book", this collection of Judd's writings was first published in 1975 and, after falling out of print for some time, was subsequently re-printed in 2005, both times by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Press. Now readily available, this is the primary Judd volume for study today. It includes Judd's most famous single essay, Specific Objects, as well as his many early art reviews, about which artist and writer Mel Bochner has said: "Judd produced the most important body of art criticism of the 1960s. Simply put, if you want to understand what happened in contemporary art between 1959 and 1965 there is no other place to turn." 

What's important to note, and what's often overlooked, however, is that though this is a volume of "complete" writings and is the one currently available in stores and most libraries, it's not actually complete. Judd, after all, lived until 1994. Meaning that the yellow book leaves out nineteen years, or more than half of Judd's career as an artist and an art writer.

Given the richness and importance of Judd's extant writings, the idea that half his output still remains widely unread is pretty exciting. The art world version of, say, discovering a half-dozen lost Mark Twain manuscripts. Of course, Judd's later writings are not really lost. They definitely were read upon their original publication, and certainly more and more so as Judd's reputation grew. But the difficulty in finding them today, and the more ready availability of the yellow book, has undoubtedly led to a kind of cultural blind spot or amnesia about the work. To wit, two of Judd's major artistic legacies are his personal installations in Marfa, and his creation of the Chinati Foundation there. Both of these moves let Judd explore and develop important ideas about how art, once created, is experienced and how it relates to architecture and the land. It was only in 1972 however that Judd first started spending extended time in Marfa, which means that the yellow book lacks the bulk of the artist's mature thinking on the subject.

There have been a few efforts at collecting at least some of this later material, particularly Donald Judd: The Complete Writings, 1976–1986, published by the Van Abbemuseum, in Eindhoven. This small, paperback volume includes essays on installation, art and architecture, Abstract Expressionism, masterpieces, symmetry, Marfa, furniture (also an important pursuit for Judd which happened primarily later in his career) and Chinati. Ultimately worth the struggle, the book is unfortunately nearly impossible to get a hold of, with virtually none currently for sale and maybe only a couple dozen copies listed in library holdings in the States.

Other than the Van Abbemuseum edition there have been two other European efforts: Donald Judd: Ecrits 1963–1990, and Donald Judd: Architecktur (1989), this last of which is not focused solely on Judd's writings, but includes a fair amount nonetheless. The books are in French and German respectively, but may include at least some text in English. 

Beyond these volumes, the next stop in tracking down Judd's later writings isn't to a book but instead to the Chinati Foundation Newsletter. Published annually, each issue of the Foundation's extended newsletter includes one or more essays by Judd, and each issue is available in full on the Foundation's website as a free, downloadable PDF. While many of the Judd pieces included have been from earlier years—and so already available in the yellow or Van Abbemuseum books—we found seven that are newer (links are to the full newsletter downloads):

• Statement on John Chamberlain (written in 1988, included in Chinati Foundation newsletter volume 11)
• Concrete Buildings (1989, 10)
• Ausstellungsleitungsstriet (1989, 13)
• Nie wieder Krieg (1991, 10)
• Josef Albers (1991, 11)
• Monument to the Last Horse: Animo et fide (1992, 1)
• 21 February 93 (1993, 3)

And that's it. Short of going to the library and researching and accessing his essays, articles and reviews publication by publication, the sources we've cited so far represent the current extent of Donald Judd's complete and collected writings. For now.

Tantalizingly, in the library at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, is a large stack of photocopies that are proofs for a book referred to by one Chinati intern and guide as Volume I. As it turns out, it was Judd's intention to publish his complete, collected writings (essays and articles previously published and not) and he was planning on doing it in three volumes. The photocopied proofs of Volume I were the partial result of that intention. No word yet who the original publisher might have been, or how much further than the proofs of Volume I Judd might have gotten in the process before his death. However, in good news for fans of Judd's writing, the Judd Foundation has confirmed it still plans "to do all that Judd wanted with his writings" even as they caution that "there remains much work and research to do in advance with this vast archive".

In the meantime, there's one last book definitely worth mentioning, not of Judd's writings themselves but of an appreciation of them. In May of 2008, the Chinati Foundation hosted a symposium called The Writings of Donald Judd and subsequently published a book of the eleven papers presented there by a variety of artists, historians, critics and curators. The various papers cover not only the influence and meanings of Judd's writings (specifically and broadly) but also Judd's life, artistic development and the reception of his work; as well as the role and history of artists' writings in general. Surprisingly, the book is not being distributed anywhere, nor is it even listed on the Chinati website. It does exist though, and we're told that if you contact Chinati directly they'd be happy to ring you up a copy and ship it out. Try them at 432) 729-4362, the 200+ page paperback costs around $20 and is certainly worth it. Or, call up the Marfa Book Company at 432) 729-3906. A bookstore that deserves a mention of its own, not only as Marfa's only bookshop and one of the cultural centers of the town, but as an undeniably beautiful and friendly store with a world-class selection of art books that includes, of course, the yellow book.

We created the book by scanning the printed magazine, digitizing the text and redesigning it into a one-hundred-eighty page, black-and-white book-friendly layout. We printed five copies, four of which we sent to the editor, executive editor, design director and publisher of Artforum. It felt like a triumph. 

Two days later, we received a letter from a lawyer representing the magazine. The letter made clear that Artforum considered the book copyright infringement and they demanded we remove all related materials from our website. This was crushing. Not only because we had a lawyer threatening us (even if in a professional tone) but because of the unexpectedly, and unabashedly negative reaction we provoked from Artforum itself. It was never our intention to do any harm. Nor was it our intention to spend the rest of our days arguing the finer points of copyright law or in so doing, to pick a fight with the magazine. So, we removed the post. No more bootleg.

Lessons Learned

The basic idea behind the book was to demonstrate that art writing that traditionally lives in only one form (in this case a large-format, glossy magazine with ads) can easily and perhaps beneficially live in another form as well (a small paperback book with only black-and-white images and no ads). We thought that creating the actual physical book and calling it a bootleg would be the most interesting and attention-getting way of distributing this fundamental idea. We used Artforum because it's so unlike a humble paperback book, and because their summer issue had this great, book-ready special section. We could have chosen another art magazine though, as our point wasn't about the specific content, only about the form that content takes. Obviously, the choices we thought were the best, were also the most troublesome.

For the blog post itself, along with a description of the how and why of the project, we used six pictures of the printed book itself instead of straight images of the layouts and cover. This let us focus on the physicality of the object itself, which again was our point: that content can live in different objects, different forms.

At the end of the post, following the book images and description, we wrote: "We've sent a few copies to the good folks at Artforum, but otherwise, if you're interested in seeing a copy yourself, you'll need to email us and we'll see what we can do." We wouldn't do this again. At the time, we honestly (if, in hindsight, also naïvely) thought that Artforum would really like the book concept and, with their approval, wouldn't mind us sending out a handful of copies to interested folks. We thought this might be five or six copies, and though ultimately we got thirty requests before the post was taken down, this is still pretty paltry compared to a magazine circulation that must be in excess of 25,000. Of course, we also honestly thought we'd hear from the magazine's editor instead of its lawyer, so obviously our judgement is not to be trusted. 

The other big lesson learned was that we needed to be more clear that—despite its physical reality—this was only a conceptual project. Most people understood this, but not all. We received a number of emails from individuals interested in getting a copy of the book not because they thought it was an interesting publishing concept but because they wanted to read the summer issue that way. Still, though we weren't expecting to hear from them, these readers are the exact customer base we wanted to convince Artforum existed, and as it turns out, they do.

This, in the end, is maybe the hardest part about taking down the post that shared our bootleg idea. People were interested. Interesting people with good ideas were excited by concept and wanted to talk about it further; book and magazine publishers wanted to learn how it was done and how it might be applied to their own projects; and art scholars, critics, students and general readers were interested in seeing and reading content this way. Luckily, it's still a good idea.

With the new layout in the museum's shop (I assume this is in the main shop in the museum's new modern wing), Taschen "makes up about 30 percent of the museum store's reconfigured book section with three tables, two walls and a rotating bookstand." The publisher doesn't pay rent for the space, "but it does oversee its branding." The agreement came about in part as the Art Institute was streamlining (cost cutting) its book department and found that "Taschen was the store's best-selling vendor and it offered among the most competitive [wholesale] prices".

The more I think about this, the worse it makes me feel.

While I have no problem with these kind of cooperative agreements for mini-stores or other kinds of marketing between museums and publishers, I have a HUGE problem with what such a partnership with Taschen in particular says about the Art Institute and about its attitude toward its art and its visitors.

I'll just say it, Taschen produces schlock. Beautiful, sexy, inexpensive fast-selling schlock at a great margin yes, but still schlock. By giving up nearly a third of its book section to this kind of content, I'd argue that the Art Institute is essentially saying to its visitors, "Look at our pretty pictures. Don't learn about them. Don't think too hard about them. Just look at them! They're cheap and plentiful and shiny!" For an art museum of any size, this is a disturbing attitude to take.

And don't tell me that what is carried in the bookstore is inconsequential to the message the museum gives to its visitors. I'd be willing to bet anything that in a given day the museum shop gets more foot traffic than at least 50 percent of the galleries in a large museum like the AIC. 

I also understand the budget and revenue issues the museum was surely facing (as an independent publisher, God knows I understand). I don't argue that Taschen may help the museum in this regard, but making decisions based on financial issues without a thought as to the larger ramifications is short-sighted and shows extremely poor cultural leadership on the museum's part. The museum should be protecting, sharing and celebrating visual art. Instead, with the new Taschen partnership, it's cheapening it.

In reconfiguring their bookstore, the AIC had the opportunity to choose a complete different direction. Instead of getting rid of small publishers with low sales numbers, they could have invited more in. The AIC could have chosen to make themselves Chicago's premier destination for art books of all kinds and created a market for publishers of all sizes who are working diligently, creatively and thoughtfully in the field of art. The message they sent to their visitors could have been, "Look at the range and depth of great work being published about visual art. There's something for everyone to learn about and to enjoy. Pick a book up. Don't be intimidated. Learn a little bit more about what you've seen today and come back to visit us again for more great books on art and more great experiences with art."

I wish Taschen well and don't begrudge them for this effort, but it would be an enormous and endlessly-disappointing mistake for other museums to follow the AIC's lead. As Creed Poulson, the spokesman for Taschen America, says of the new store: "The million-dollar question [emphasis mine] is would we do this in other museums. We would certainly be open to that. We're very eager to see how this plays out." The answer from those other museums we can only hope, is a resounding no.

Portrait of Dr. Gachet, Vincent van Gogh, 1890.

Like me, you've probably seen reproductions of this work quite a lot, but did you ever notice those yellow books in the lower-left corner? I just stumbled into a reference that drew my attention to them. Van Gogh painted a legible title on the spine of each, and as it turns out, the top book is the 1867 French novel, Manette Salomon by the Goncourt brothers. The very same Manette Salomon that we happen to be publishing the first English translation of next spring! Very cool.

In short, Manette is about a group of artists of different types struggling to find their place in the art world of 1840s and 50s Paris. Written by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, it fits neatly in the rich literary tradition of artists novels in France: appearing right between Balzac's The Unknown Masterpiece in 1831, and Émile Zola's L'Oeuvre in 1886. (The Goncourts were also responsible for the other yellow book on Dr. Gachet's table, the novel Germinie Lacerteux.) Going back to Saltzman's book, here's what she wrote on the significance of the books in the painting:

[Dutch scholar Evert van Uitert] argued that the yellow novels, Germinie Lacerteux and Manette Salomon, were not, as had been claimed, simply favorite books loaned by the artist to the doctor. Instead van Gogh had used them to align "the new art of portraiture" with "the modern novel," specifically as the Goncourts defined it in their preface to Germinie. The novel, the brothers contended, was "the great, serious, impassionate and living form of literary study and social inquiry," and also "contemporary moral history." The presence of the second book, Manette Salomon, van Uitert felt, also helped to shift the painting's melancholy theme away from the artist himself and toward the condition of French artists in the nineteenth century. He likened van Gogh's vision of the modern artist to that of the Goncourts, who describe the melancholy state of one of the artists in the novel:

"[He] came to that grief which seems in this century inevitably to crown the career and lives of the great painters of modern life. He was devoured by that fever of deception, that internal desolation which Gros called "the rage of the heart."

I love that by painting a title on a book, and in such a seemingly casual manner, van Gogh could add a whole range of depth and meaning to the portrait. I also love that in making the novel available for the first time in English (in a fantastic new translation by Tina A. Kover) we're going to be able to give a whole new audience access to that extra meaning for themselves. Plus, publishing a book that was known to an artist like van Gogh and was important enough to him to be included in a painting like this? Well, that kind of just kicks ass.

A specific pub date for Manette Salomon has not been set, but we expect it to be available in February or March of 2012. Please sign up for our email list to be kept up to date.