Books

A book dedicated to the people of Grosse Pointe, because they are beautiful.

Written by our dear friend Greg.

Exclusive at Nora.

First edition. Late edition.

This just in! We are very proud to have published Scott Hocking's newest collection of photograph "Detroit Nights", a late entry contribution to our Culture Lab pop-up. 

These images are, like much of the artist's work, moving, surprising, sometimes humorous, and suspenseful. They show the city in a manner that few ever see it. 

It is like a place that lies out beyond the parking lot from that dream you had the other night, you know, the dream where you never looked out past the parking lot. If you had, this is what you would have seen.

When we saw these images the first time we were so taken with them we thought "Well, these have to be a book." And so we made them a book. And that is the way art works. When it's good. 

About the artist: For Nora’s Culture Lab Pop Up, Detroit’s favorite man of mystery Scott Hocking might be welding an antique Ford Edsel to a sidewalk, or mass producing cassettes of spooky Halloween fart sounds. He might also be producing a book with Nora’s own Toby Barlow called Detroit Nights. Hocking describes the ongoing project (started in the mid 90s) as an attempt to capture the “strange serenity that can be found off the beaten paths”. The book is a selection of the last eight years, after Hocking switched from film to digital.

127 pages, softcover.

About This Book

Epistolary commentary on the service industry, including humorous observations on race, culture, and class.  An indispensable handbook to 21st Century etiquette from the poetically unique perspective of Detroit customer and satirist.

ISBN:
Dimensions: 4.25″ x 7″
Pages: 156

Yotam Ottolenghi is one of the most exciting new talents in the cooking world, with four fabulous, eponymous London restaurants and a weekly newspaper column that's read by foodies all over the world. Plenty is a must-have collection of 120 vegetarian recipes featuring exciting flavors and fresh combinations that will delight readers and eaters looking for a sparkling new take on vegetables. Yotam's food inspiration comes from his Mediterranean background and his unapologetic love of ingredients. Not a vegetarian himself, his approach to vegetable dishes is wholly original and innovative, based on freshness and seasonality, and drawn from the diverse food cultures represented in London. A vibrant photo accompanies every recipe in this visually stunning book.

288 pp;
140 color photographs, 15 2-color illustrations
Hardcover

Known for his haunting portraits of solitary Americans in Sleeping by the Mississippi and Broken Manual, Alec Soth has recently turned his lens toward community life in the country. To aid in his search, Soth assumed the increasingly obsolescent role of community newspaper reporter. From 2012-2014, Soth traveled state by state while working on his self-published newspaper, The LBM Dispatch, as well as on assignment for the New York Times and others. From upstate New York to Silicon Valley, Soth attended hundreds of meetings, dances, festivals and communal gatherings in search of human interaction in an era of virtual social networks.
With Songbook, Soth has stripped these pictures of their news context in order to highlight the longing for connection at their root. Fragmentary, funny and sad, Songbook is a lyrical depiction of the tension between American individualism and the desire to be united.

Moving from ancient Russia to the dawn of the New World, stretching into an endless future, but mainly rushing madly around postwar Paris, Babayaga covers a lot of ground. Vengeful witches hunt, charm, and wage battle. Evil scientists hatch sinister plans. A dashing spy runs a crew of outcast mercenaries. A good-hearted police inspector stays on his case, even in the form of a flea! And hapless Will, ad man/CIA informant, is caught in the whirlwind, which just might be the best thing that's ever happened to him. Babayaga crackles with an electric energy driven by its hilariously inventive plot, clever prose, and outrageously eccentric cast of characters. -- Sara Hinckley, Hudson Booksellers, Marietta, GA

Hardcover.

The year is 1959, and strange events are brewing in Paris, a city where nothing (and no one) is as it seems.

Paperback

Two of the most important American sculptors of the 20th century, Alexander Calder (1898–1976) and David Smith (1906–65) pushed sculptural practice in metal to new heights over the course of their careers. Bringing together pivotal sculpture of a historic moment in American art history, this monograph also features photographs from Italian Ugo Mulas, who met both sculptors in Spoleto in 1962 and documented them throughout his life. This publication is released on the occasion of an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Zürich from June 10 to September 17, 2017.

Hardcover, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 112 pgs / 33 color / 36 bw

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit's show 99¢ or Less gathers 99 American artists addressing Detroit's ongoing economic crisis, its 2013 bankruptcy and its role as an industrial powerhouse. The participating artists, among them John Baldessari, Brian Belott, Sarah Crowner, Michelle Grabner, Rob Pruitt and Amy Sillman, use materials from 99 cent stores.

Paperback, 8.25 x 11.75 in. / 288 pgs / 134 color

Yayoi Kusama: Give Me Lovedocuments the artist's most recent exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, which marked the US debut of The Obliteration Room, an all-white interior that viewers were invited to cover with dot stickers of various sizes and colors. Taking The Obliteration Room as its centerpiece, this catalogue reveals, in vivid large-scale plates, the transformation of the space from a clean white interior to a stunningly saturated room, with ceilings, walls and furniture covered in multicolored stickers put there by viewers over the course of the exhibition. The catalogue also includes Kusama's recent large-format paintings from the My Eternal Soul series and a selection of new, large Pumpkin sculptures, a form that Kusama has been exploring since the 1950s. Made of shiny stainless steel and featuring painted dots or dot-shaped perforations, these immersive works seem created on a human scale. Texts include "Hymn to Yayoi Kusama" by art critic and poet Akira Tatehata and a poem by the artist herself. 

Yayoi Kusama was born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan. She was recently named the world’s most popular artist by various news outlets, based on annual figures reported by The Art Newspaper for global museum attendance in 2014. Her exhibitions were the most visited worldwide that year, with three major museum presentations simultaneously traveling through Japan, Asia, and Central and South America?all of which have drawn record-breaking attendances at every venue. Kusama’s work is featured in collections such as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Akira Tatehata is an art critic and poet based in Japan who has written extensively about Yayoi Kusama’s work. In 1993, he invited the artist to represent Japan at the 45th Venice Biennale. He now serves as the President of the Kyoto City University of Arts, Director of The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, and Chairman of the Japanese Council of Museums.

Hardcover, 10 x 12 in. / 120 pgs / 47 color / 1 bw