David Schnell, Tom McGrath & Dan McCarthy

My name is Narangkar Glover and I am a painter in Oakland. I'm the one who's responsible for most of the painting books that we carry in our Art Books Store. In this entry I review three different catalogues by contemporary painters, and give you my response to each. It's hard for me as an artist to separate the "book" from the art within the book. What's more important? Or is the wholeness of it that should speak to the owner - the combined efforts of the images (the work), the writing, and the design? Personally, when I open an exhibition catalogue, I usually skip past all the art speak and get to the good stuff: the plates, so a big concern is whether the work has been well reproduced.

The catalogue for "Hover" by David Schnell is one of my favorites from the vast inventory of D.A.P. catalogues, and was published by Hatje Cantz.

It's a soft bound, glossy cover book that measures about 9.5" x 13". The first few pages of text consist of several rather concise essays in a variety of languages, or the same essay translated a few times (I can't really tell, but think is cool). Every essay is demarcated with a different fluorescent colored paper ... very design-y ... which I like. Then you get plate after plate of high quality reproductions of his paintings, which are sort of like colorfully abstracted exercises in linear perspective - and very well executed ones at that. Schnell is one of the Liepzig School, contemporary painting's forerunners in art today - and I think I recall seeing a bunch of the Leipzig painting at the Saatchi Gallery in '05. Painting students are going hog-wild for this style of work, and suffice to say, are deriving the shit out of it. Nonetheless, I can't even help but be influenced by Schnell's balance between finely measured and rendered linear perspective (but not in a literal or pictoral sense), and his loose, colorful, and dynamic paint handling, history and decision making. If you are a painter alive today, even if you want to reject his "system", I recommend this book.

Next up is "Tom McGrath: Paintings 2002-2007" published by the Zach Feuer Gallery.

It's a hard cover, cloth bound book measuring about 8" x 10" (landscape). The opening essay by Robert Hobbs, and Art Historian, is like eleven pages long and totally skip-worthy, unless you are a total whore for absorbing every iota of art writing (why?). Each page has one plate, very well reproduced, and no text. The accompanying list is at the back of the book with another, far more concise essay by artist Kevin Zucker, and it's more anecdotal, and therefore more fun to read. And that's about it, book-wise. McGrath's work is compelling in this catalogue. His paintings are painterly renderings of American landscapes taken from the POV of a car windsheild drenched in rain: abstracted surface, yet depicting or alluding to some pictoral scene. But then I'm thrown off by the last three night-time landscape paintings of city lights from atop a hill, which have nothing to do with the car series, and are not as good of reproductions either. But rather than try to make sense of it, I'll move on... Again, a good catalogue if you are a fan of contemporary painting.



... On to a book titled "Dan McCarthy", presented by Anton Kern Gallery and published by The Journal Books.

This is a thick and comprehensive monograph of McCarthy's work to date. Again, the plates are gorgeous reproductions. His paintings are loose and thinly layered washes depicting "statuesque" and often grotesque figures upon rather blank fields, and look to be at first glance, water media on vellum, but are indeed oil on canvas. I think he's expressing a pretty ubiquitus contemporary painting style, where the figure is illustrative and has an ironic hint, rather than expressive, gestural or personal. I think a lot of young painters today derive not only their working style from this formula, but their subject matter as well. There are some images I prefer, and these are in the category of "statuesque", like San Blas Commune (cover), Race, and North/East. All in all, not being a huge fan of "tongue-in-cheek", "nostalgia", or "symbolism", or the use of the phrase "not of this world", I withdraw from alot of the work after reading the accompanying essay by Nick Stillman. It's about eight pages long, consisting mostly of dropped references and quotes, which for me, is circumventing the REAL purpose at hand, which is what, I'm not sure - something along the lines of a commentary on hippie culture? I'm going to go ahead and pass this along to my friend Jacob Tillman, who was just here a minute ago.

We don't actually carry any of these books, but they can be found in a myriad of ways, most easily from the DAP website. Until then, go to our website for stuff we DO carry. I do hope to begin to carry DAP's Painting People: Figure Painting Today soon. Thanks for reading!

Paintings in Art Books; Paintings of Art Books

I used to have a subscription to New American Paintings. For those not familiar, New American Paintings is a juried exhibition in book form, released bi-monthly, and published by Open Studios Press. Each issue is for a different US region and contains 3 works from about (or exactly) 40 artists. While mostly of paintings, other works of art such as drawings, prints, and installation images are also eligible. Each issue costs $20.

I say I "used to have a subscription" because after a few years I got bored with it. While each issue shows a very diverse set of works, I have come to realize that each issue shows the same diverse set of works. That is to say, you are going to get 10 abstract artists, 6 figurative artists, 4 installation artists, 5 illustrators, 2 people who paint landscapes, 1 textile artist, 1 Ed Ruscha wanna-be, and so on. The pattern was remarkably obvious and surprising considering each issue is juried be a different person. After a few years I let the subscription expire.

So one day, while needing to create shelf space, I decided to cut out all the artwork I really liked, put it in a binder, and give most of my New American Paintings collection away. The one issue I kept completely intact was 2004's Number 49, the Pacific Coast issue. The main reason I kept it was the work of Donald Bradford, a painter and professor at the University of California Extension, San Francisco.

Donald's acrylic and oil paintings in the book were delicately rendered images of... art books. Presented opened with foreshortened perspective, these paintings were some of the first I have seen to incorporate art publishing and its connection to artists and art history. The paintings are both clever, personal, and celebratory.

Donald has also done painting series of art book stacks, art books and cards, floral designs, and other ephemera from his studio bulletin board. I think it represents an artist's connection to not only the images that inspire them, but the actual, tangible vessels of these images... books, cards, and printed matter.

What I really liked was the statement to go with Donald Bradford's paintings:
"I recently drove from the Bay Area to Los Angeles to see a couple of major museum shows that featured two of my favorite artists. I found the work incredibly moving. But what excited me just as much was the thought of buying the two hard-bound catalogues and taking them back home where I could flip back and forth between the images and their detail shots and read about the artists' thoughts and processes. I love looking at books."

Donald Bradford's artwork can be found on his website: donaldbradfordart.com

Honey Pool

I know I've said it before, but it really can't be said too many times... Mel Kadel is the bee's knees. And while the growing demand for her original works on paper are rapidly pricing her artwork out of our hands, you can still get your grubby mitts on some handmade Kadel goodness for less than a case of imported beer. But you had better get on it quick because the Mel bandwagon is getting pretty packed.

Honey Pool is the follow-up to last year's blockbuster, Rough Cookie, and much like The Empire Strikes Back to Star Wars, this sequel amazingly tops an already legendary original. Similar to Rough Cookie in many regards, Honey Pool features 40 pages of Mel Kadel's beautiful pen and ink artwork on coffee-soaked papers. Both figurative and decorative, this book is hand printed by the artist herself in full color on coffee-soaked paper, with a 4-color screenprinted cover. Each book is signed by the artist and limited to a first (and I believe only) edition of 100.

All of my glowing praise of Rough Cookie (read the review here), applies to Honey Pool, only even more so. The amount of labor that went into the construction of this book, not to mention the artwork it features, is just staggering. The fact that it is being sold for only $24 is ridiculous. I sincerely hope that Mel never wises-up and starts to charge and appropriate amount for her publications, cuz I'm hooked and I would surely pay whatever she asked.







You basically only have one chance to own this book, and that is right here and right now. We here at Rowan Morrison have been fortunate enough to have been given the opportunity to sell about a fifth of the edition of Honey Pool... and we are just about sold out. We have, like, two copies left. So if you happen to be reading this and I haven't updated it to say, "Sorry, sold out", yet, then you are one lucky person. Click this link to own your copy of Honey Pool! $24 plus shipping.

And if you are a real Kadel fan and not just some poser, you will also want to own her limited edition serigraph, "Power Like A Flower", offered exclusively from Rowan Morrison. This is an edition of 100, signed and numbered by the artist. These won't be reprinted so get on it. $20 plus shipping, or buy 'em both from the Rowan Morrison online art bookstore and combine the shipping, yo!

Bad Asses

I recently got a fat pack of books from the folks over at Blue-Q, a company mostly known for making bacon air-fresheners and magnets of cats' butts. They have launched a pretty wide line of small-in-size art and photography books that range in price from $4 to $8 each. Not bad. Just at a glance it was easy to see that Mark Todd's Bad Asses was the cream of the crop.

Originally self-published as photocopied, 14-page zines (called Bad Ass's), this 104-page masterpiece is printed in black with red and brown highlights and shadows. The only thing soft about this book is the cover. It features portraits of heavy dudes, chicks, and cars from television, film, comics, music, and sports (well, ok, pro wrestling). Each drawing is accompanied by a little bit of text somehow relating to the subject.

Quickly, off the top of your head, think of a Bad Ass...
Chuck Norris - he's here. Pam Grier - she's in there. Rambo - right there. Jo from the Facts of Life - no problem. Darth Vader - yup. Johnny Cash - page one, motherfucker.
Almost all of your favorites are here: Bigfoot (the monster truck, not the creature), Mr. T, Skeletor, Lita Ford, Robocop, the Batmobile, Bruce Lee, Wonder Woman, Miss Piggy, and the DeLorean from Back to the Future.

If you are looking for spot-on renderings and anatomical correctness, you should get as far away from this book as possible. Mark Todd has created a very successful illustration career from "drawing badly" and this book highlights the charm and hilarity created from crude likenesses. Strangely, the selections within "Bad Ass Rides" are pretty well drawn. I find cars hard to draw so this kinda surprised me a bit.

What sets this publication atop the huge, huge pile of crudely drawn artworks (so hot right now) is the little tidbits of writing to go with each Bad Ass. Sometime they are simple descriptions or quotes from the films that feature each characters, and other times they are little personal anecdotes from Mark Todd's interaction with the character. Such as the first time he heard a Blondie song (to go with Bad Ass Debbie Harry), or how he used the cape from his Darth Vader costume as a kid to dress up as Dracula the next year.
Even better are Mark's opinionated commentary on some of the featured characters, such as labelling the Flying Monkeys from the Wizard of Oz as "total assholes". Or writing of K.I.T.T. (the car from Knight Rider), "That voice was kind of annoying. So smug. 'Michael' this, 'Michael' that."

So, yeah, Mark Todd's book, Bad Asses, is, well, bad ass.


Links: Mark Todd's Website - order the original zines here - order the book on Amazon here

The Americans

I really don't know how to judge a photograph beyond the instincts of "what I like" and "what I don't like". Though several Intro to Photography classes in both high school and college (as well as a degree in film/video) have given me a basic understanding of exposure, printing, contrast, and composition, I am still at a loss to explain what makes a good photo. I am even more puzzled when presented with what has been declared a great photograph that I just can't connect with. Certainly there is something more... more than subject matter, more than when things are printed correctly, or intentionally incorrectly. There is a connection that I cannot grasp that makes a photograph pleasing and provoking. And then there are images that are important (whether these qualifications lie within subject matter or technique or both is not for me to say). Things really get exciting when the importance of a photograph is in harmony with this unspeakable connection. It all feels right.

In 1955, fashion photographer and photojournalist Robert Frank received a grant from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to travel the US and photograph its citizen and society from all angles. With his wife and two children alongside for part of the journey, Frank traveled continuously for two years, capturing almost 30,000 pictures (83 of which made the exhibition and publication). Upon returning to New York in 1957, Frank befriended Beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, who shared similar experiences of rambling travel across the United States and a unpolished presentation of the cultural American landscape.

Originally finding it difficult to get a publisher (it was published in Paris in 1958 before a US edition in 59), Frank's association with the Beats and Kerouac's introduction to the US edition helped the work gain widespread popularity despite harsh criticism of the work as "sloppy", "muddy", and "drunken". It has gone on to be considered a giant step forward in raw journalistic photography and has become the most popular photography book of all time.

The Americans has been reprinted in different editions many times, the latest being the deluxe 50th Anniversary Edition from publisher Gerhard Steidl. It uses modern scanning and tritone printing techniques. Some of the images are cropped a little wider in this edition as well. And, apparently, two images have been switched out entirely. The original Kerouac introduction is again presented. This book will be released in June in conjunction with the new tour of The Americans photo exhibit (coming to SFMOMA in mid-2009).

I must say that many of these images strike me visually and powerfully beyond their subjects and context. Often in much darkness and hazy focus, the architecture and portraits do seem truly American and offer a counterpoint to the antiseptic portrayal of Americans in the 1950s. While this sub-genre of "honest, ugly portraiture" has become the norm with contemporary young photographers, I can imagine how amazingly fresh and brutal this work seemed 50 years ago. The Kerouac essay is some classic Beat ramblings, which I enjoy. Like I've said, I don't really know why a photo works for me but this book definitely feels good without beeing "feel-good".

Special thanks to the folks at D.A.P. for flowing me a press copy of this edition for this review. There is a great essay on The Americans by Brian Appel over at artcritical.com. The images in this review were taken digitally by me from my copy of the book, so don't judge the photographs by them.

the Bloom Screenprinted Journal

For me, the little details make a big difference. I can spot an offset print in a pile of Xeroxes a mile off. I immediately noticed when skate deck graphics started being applied with heat transfers instead of screenprinting (it was back around 2000), and I can tell the difference between super8, 16mm, and 35mm film (and video, of course) at a glance. And don't even get me started on optically printed vs authentically captured slow motion (am I alone on this one?!?). So when I first spied a box of these bad boys on the floor at Bloom Press in Oakland, I knew I'd struck gold.

Technically, this publication has no title. It occupies that foggy landscape between zine and journal and art book and book-as-art. It is only knowing that its creator, Nat Swope, encourages us to contribute to the book with our own images and writings that I designated it the Bloom Screenprinted Journal, although I don't think that title really does it justice.

What few constants there are in this publication are that it is 5.5" x 8.5", about 40 pages, saddle bound, with quality paper covers and a custom embossed Bloom logo. Within those boundaries, the content of each copy of the journal is a seemingly random mix of multi and single color screenprinted artwork, photocopied art, skateboard photos, found ledger and graph paper, vintage newspaper classified ads, various colors and textures of paper, portions of serigraph tests and misprints, political posters, completely blank pages, and other tasty treats. No two journals are even close to being the same.


Nat spent many years screenprinting the T-shirts for most of your favorite bands before he struck out on his own seven or so years ago to start a sticker, poster, and fine art screenprinting company, Bloom Press. Bloom is know for its service and proficient craftsmanship, so the quality of the journals surpasses many mass-produced papergoods. Nat also notices and cares about the details.


You are lucky to even get a silkscreen cover these days, so to have a book like this that features bold, multi colored, screenprinted artwork throughout is a real treat. It is hard to sum it up with just a few photos since each spread of each book is unlike another. Even the covers are unique.

The big finish is that the Bloom Screenprinted Journal is only five bucks. Only somebody running an awesome printing business could price these so low. You can order your copy from the Rowan Morrison online shop here. One will be sent at random and it may or may not feature some or none of the images in this blog, but they are all awesome. If you live in the Bay Area you can browse the batch of them in person in the gallery. Or, contact the master over at Bloom Press to order directly. I bought 3 of 'em.

Bad Teeth Books 5 - Draw Some More

Glenn over at Bad Teeth Comics now has the esteemed distinction of being the first person to contact me about submitting an independent art book to the Rowan Morrison Art Books Blog and then actually following-up and sending me the book. This feat is made all the more impressive as it was originated halfway around the Earth from the marsupial producing country/continent of Australia. While I couldn't guarantee that I would like what was being sent to me, I have total support for anybody putting there work out there on their own. Like I've said, "Bad art is better than no art". And, I have even more respect for anybody willing to flow me some free goods.

Luckily, Draw Some More, the 5th book from Bad Teeth, is neither "bad art" or "no art" and is quite easy to enjoy. It presents a broad creative vision incorporating comic strips, pop-culture video stills, snapshot photographs, art installation views, graffiti photos, original fine art, skateboarding, and other tasty tidbits. While the mix of subjects and mediums might initially seem a bit disconnected from each other, the more time I spent with this book the more cohesive a vision it became. A portrait of an artist, his influences, and the subsequent expressions began to emerge. Most importantly, it was a vision I could relate to. I feel like I've been drawing from the same collected, popular influences... comic books, skateboarding, hipster art, video games, sarcasm, the movies of my youth (Nightmare on Elm Street, Robocop, Goonies...), partying, and junk food. This connection is all the more pleasing when I consider this artist and I have lived on opposite ends of the planet.

However much I might understand these inputs, I still feel this book presents an undeveloped statement. It has all the exciting rawness and excitement of a young artist, but it lacks the refined vision and thoughtful craftsmanship of experience. The artistic mediums represented in the book (street art, pop reference, party photos, comic strips) don't really support one another. Someone without a context of the wider scope of "hipster art" would get lost pretty fast. When any artist puts it ALL out there, the danger of being viewed as a "jack-of-all-trades, yet master of none" is present.

In my opinion, the weakest link in the book is the Hamburger Eyes-esque photographs. Maybe it is just me, but I've seen all these photos before. Someone puking... check. Someone tagging... check. Ugly old person in public... check. Tattooed hardcore singer on stage... check. I think the overall book would have been stronger without these, but maybe it's just me getting bored with that stuff.

The object itself is 5.5" x 8", 100 pages, perfect bound, black and white (with color cover), printed on various tinted papers, with most pages either being full-page or bisected into two images. Other than web links, there is no publication data or writing at all. I would have preferred straight-up white paper, and maybe an edition numbering, but that is just me nit-picking. My interweb research has come up with a retail price of $15, but I don't know if that is in US greenbacks or Oz-dollars (AKA dollaradoos), and what the difference would be either way.

In summary, Draw Some More stands tall in the world of art zines and is a fun and fascinating work from a young artist working in a lot of mediums. I look forward to seeing the evolution (and hopefully some refinement) in the Bad Teeth books series (the next one is already in the works and slated for a mid-2008 release). Unless it has a picture of some dude in a hotel room with a bunch of cash fanned out on the bed in front of him... in that case I'm over it. Let this book inspire you to stop waiting for whatever it is you are waiting for and put your art out there. Hell yeah.

Order your own copy of this and some other Bad Teeth books and products at the Bad Teeth web store.

other links for Bad Teeth Comics: website - myspace - blog