Save the date for our two Grand Opening events – Saturdays, September 7 & 14!
The Timeless Interaction of Color
Josef Albers, the German-born artist and educator who taught at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Yale University created Interaction of Color as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students.
For those who have experience with this book (by teaching from or learning from it) knows it is a timeless and mesmerizing resource for anyone interested in color theory and human perception.
Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten color studies chosen by Albers, and has remained in print ever since.
With over a quarter of a million copies sold in its various editions since 1963, Interaction of Color has become a watershed on complex color theory principles and is as pioneering today as when Albers first created it.
Fifty years after Interaction of Colors’s initial publication, this new edition presents an expanded selection of close to sixty color studies alongside Albers’s original text, demonstrating such principles as color relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusion of transparency and reversed grounds.
To further celebrate the book’s 50th anniversary Yale University Press also released a new way to engage with Albers’s lessons by releasing the “Interaction of Color” App for the iPad.
The ($9.99) app combines the book’s text and color studies, video commentary, interviews and over 60 new interactive plates that enables users to try their own color experiments with color.
While we strongly believe there is something essential to holding publications in your hand, feeling the stock and tooth of paper and seeing colors in changing light, this app is an exciting way for Alber’s teachings to reach new audiences in studios and classrooms and that we are unquestionably in favor for that.
Purchase Interaction of Color by Josef Albers here.
Visit the Yale Books website for more info on the Interaction of Color App.
Store Visit: John Waters
John Waters stopped by the & Pens Press store yesterday.
What a pleasure.
& Pens in SFAQ
& Pens Press got a sweet little plug from the folks over at SFAQ. Stay tuned because & Pens will be hosting an LA release party for SFAQ issue no. 14 with a special musical guest tba on September 7th!
Tuesday Poetry
Tuesday in the bookshop brings us Pøems by Nick DeMarco, published in 2012 by Peradam.
This 20 page handheld book features a series of visual poems composed by using typography and glyphs.
Some poetry communicates through flowery vocabulary but DeMarco reminds us that communicating viscerally in a more abstract and formal language can elicit interesting responses as well.
Maya Hayuk at the Hammer
This past Friday we got a chance to see the newly completed Maya Hayuk murals at the Hammer Museum. They are beautiful and should definitely be experienced in person.
This smaller mural at the top of the stairs might have been my favorite.
Going hand in hand with Hayuk’s work was Generationalpictomusicapolis, a night of psychedelic sounds, organized by curator Darren Klein, featuring No Age, Sun Foot and Devin Gary & Ross.
Coincidentally it was the first night of No Age’s tour which lead to much excitement. Good times all around that evening.
Inspiration
Have you seen the amazing video for Sonny & the Sunsets’s Green Blood? It’s animated by Oakland based artist Teppei Ando and we love it!
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/68310078 w=500&h=281]
Monday Morning Meditations
Happy Monday all! To start off the week I thought I would share a new gem in the & Pens Press library, Mazdaznan Health & Breath Culture, the First Six Exercises.
This soft bound, saddle stitched zine, explores the relationship between Mazdaznan, Johannes Itten and the Foundation Courses he taught at the Bauhaus.
If you are not familiar with Mazdaznan studies it was a religion founded by the Dr. Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha’nish in Chicago at the start of the twentieth century. A couple interesting facts that we learned about Dr. Ha’nish was that it is rumored that Edison named the first lightbulb Mazda in his honor and that Henry Ford attributed the dawn of the motor-age to Ha’nish’s influence. The Swiss artist and teacher Johannes Itten was also a devout Mazdaznan and its exercises were an essential part of his courses at the Bauhaus.
To give you a general overview Health & Breath Culture is a practical guide to performing the exercises taught by Itten at the Bauhaus. Throughout the zine you are lead through six exercises in thought, posture and breathing to help improve different senses.
The six chapters concentrate on:
1. Sight and Concentration
2. Hearing and Intuition
3. Smell and Memory
4. Taste and Will Power
5. Touch and Nerve Energy
6. Feeling and Heart Culture
Accompanying the six instructions are these beautiful and sweet line drawings of current Foundation students demonstrating the exercises, illustrated by Ian Whittlesea. (Admittedly the drawings are what lead me to spending more time with the text.)
Following the first section of the book is a selection of found texts and images on the belief and history of Mazdaznan, which is pretty interesting.
So, if you are struggling with the Monday blues today this publication is a great item to have on hand, or in your bag, when you have a quiet moment and need a release. (Our favorite exercise to try at the shop is Taste and Will Power.)
Available (even for skeptics) in the bookstore, here.
Mazdaznan Health & Breath Culture, The First Six Exercises
By Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha’nish.
Illustrated by Ian Whittlesea with drawings of current Foundation students demonstrating the exercises, followed by a selection of found texts and images on the beliefs and history of Mazdaznan.
Friday Favorite : Lee Yanor
Well , here we are, the first Friday of our first week of being open. In celebration of all the great new publication we’d like to share we decided to start “Friday Favorite” a weekly post featuring a new publication we are excited about. For this week’s post we are featuring a stunning new publication by Isralie photo and video artist Lee Yanor.
In 2010 when Director and Artistic Director Pia Forsgren invited Yanor to The Jewish Theatre in Stockholm with the intention of introducing her work to the Swedish art scene, inspiration for creating a new piece in the form of a book emerged from her residency. Forsgren worked on the publication with award-winning Art Director Anders Wester, and in turn the book received a design award by Svensk Bokkonst.
Within this 472 page book is a wide range of Yanor’s photos, emulsions, holograms and documentation of three video works: “Cloud 9,” “Small Songs” and the film Coffee with Pina, about the grande dame of postwar Europe, choreographer Pina Bausch. Accompanying the images is a thoughtful collection of texts by curator Varda Steinlauf, Madelaine Levy, editor in chief of Bon Magazine, poet Paul Celan, Pia Forsgren, Lee Yanor and others.
The result captures a literal and visual poetic flow of her works, leading you from page to page as if taking part in a choreographed dance in the form of printed matter. Even the newsprint-like quality of the paper adds to the ephemeral feel of the book. A must read and see, available here.
Lee Yanor, Publication date: July 2013
Editor: Pia Forsgren, Anders Wester and Lina Österman
Art Direction and design: Anders Wester and Fredrik Axell
Production: The Jewish Theatre
Stay tuned for next week’s Friday Favorite!
OPEN!
It’s official, & Pens Press is open for business! We are pretty excited to share what we’ve been working on so come on by, say hello and celebrate with us. Open 12-7pm, Tuesday- Saturday, and 12-5pm on Sundays at 8564 Washington Blvd in Culver City, CA.
Stay tuned for upcoming events!
