Literature List in November

Those of you who read this blog regularly might have wondered what happened to the October literature list. Well, in October I indeed didn’t buy a single book. This is very rare. Lack of time to read them, hardly makes me stop buying books. However, free time has been so scarce lately, that I could not even find the time to buy one. Very fitting that I only bought a picture book this month:

• Raw+Material=Art. Found, Scavenged and Upcycled by Tristan Manco. From the backside of the book: “Expect the unexpected in this vibrant survey of contemporary artists and makers who transform the most unlikely everyday materials into works of breathtaking skill and originality.”

I am not sure what to make of it yet. It features mostly photos of works of 38 different artists, some of which I already knew (Brian Dettmer is in there, to name an example of someone whose work I had already noticed) and some who I am happy to make the acquaintance with their art through this book (Hiroyuki Hamada to name one I found particularly interesting).

On first glance I am not very happy with the book, its format, and its pages. It seems to me it is not made to be read. It is a coffee table book, and since our small flat doesn’t have a coffee table my need for such books is very small. It has a very large format, significantly larger than A4 which I actually find surprisingly hard to handle. Not so much the turning of the pages, but looking at the page is what causes me problems. It seems I can’t grasp the whole page at one glance which apparently usually I am doing. It is funny that I learn something about how I process a page with this book. Mhm. This leads me to think about a new project of my own… (rushes off to grasp a notebook and leaves her readers instead with a more complete description and analysis by Hiroyuki Hamada himself).