One of the most prominent, innovative and influential figures of Chicago's "imagist" movement (an offshoot of the Pop Art era) was Ed Paschke. His paintings spanning a twenty-five year period were hallmarked by themes of confrontation with social and cultural values, and explored personality based media-based images including those of famous celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and a legion of anonymous strippers, pimps, and social outcasts of every category and classification. In this outstanding work enhanced with 63 color plates and 29 b/w photographs, Neal Benezra, Dennis Adrian, Carol Schreiber, and John Yau collaborate to showcase the work, thought and influence of Ed Paschke for a new generation of art students and aficionados.

This is an excellent collection of short fiction, which includes the work of Charles Bukowski who happens to be a favorite of mine! The other authors are also intriguing. Its a great collection and very entertaining! Something for everyone with any hint of a fetish to relate to and chuckle at.

Try to imagine that someone captured all the stars in the sky, molded them into straining human and animal shapes and then sealed them beneath a glistening coat of spring rain. If you can fix that image in your mind you have some slight idea of the power of the sculpture of Luis Jimenez. This artist uses materials that you'd expect to see gracing the clear-coated skins of street rods to make amazing sculptures of men and women who work hard for a living, play hard for life and face Death like a long-lost lover. In his book "Man on Fire" you see a collection of the various stages of the ideas that have sprung from this creative man's mind. It is fascinating to see the pencil drawing receive color, then go on to a maquette and finally a finished sculpture that more often than not looks like liquid fire trapped momentarily in solid form. It is equally fascinating to see and read about what inspired Mr. Jimenez to combine such diverse influences to create uniquely new works. Having seen several of Mr. Jimenez's pieces in person, I can say that the pictures in this book pale in comparison to the real pieces but then a pale reflection of near-perfection is still near perfection. I'd recommend this book and this artist to anyone interested in something beyond the usual and I look forward to seeing more of his work in the future.

Unique work that is overlooked. All work has a very narrative-illustrative style. Srong line quality, color and composition. For a viewer with the ability to explore.

Nothing can prepare you for a Joe Coleman painting if you've never seen one before-- the beauty of these works will literally rip your eyeballs from your skull. With a scholarly, yet fierce courage Coleman reinvents the characters and scenes he portrays, with a technical skill which borders on the supernatural. In a recent show in Rotterdam, Coleman's work was hung beside those of Hieronymus Bosch, a deserved honor.

The essays in this book are excellent, describing Coleman's ground-breaking history as a performance artist as well as a painter. The design of the book by Katharine Gates is beautiful, and enhances appreciation of Coleman's work. I recommend this book to anyone who cares about art in the early 21st Century (or the 15th Century for that matter!).

Joe Coleman is represented in other books, but the essays in this book , along with the reproductions, give the viewer an intimate glimpse into the twisted and detailed paintings of joe coleman! a bargain!

If you're going to insist on having coffee-table books lying around your house, you might as well have one filled with lurid, hand-painted posters for movies like "Hell Comes to Frogtown," "The Fatal Flying Guillotines," or "Confessions of a Window Cleaner," right? Well, you've come to the right place, 'cause here is just such a book-filled with beautiful color reproductions of posters for these, and many other fine movies, straight outta... Ghana. For a period of about ten years, from the mid-'80s to the mid '90s, entrepreneurs in Ghana ran traveling movie screenings, featuring the latest (or not so latest) videos from America and elsewhere. Their agents would pull into town, rent a public viewing space, set up a TV and VCR running off a little generator, unfurl a poster, and voila-instant movie house. Here, presented for the first time in the West are several hundred of the posters, divided into sections with little one-page celebrity introductions, along with a few art expert essays. It depressingly comes as no surprise that of the 230 pages devoted to the posters, 200 are in the "action/adventure," "war and urban commando," "horror," "science fiction and fantasy," and "martial arts" sections, with only 30 pages on "comedy and drama." Interestingly, this last section is largely filled with homegrown films from Ghana and Nigeria, with very few American entries. Clearly, this is because American humor and drama don't export as well as guns, blood, and sex, which are universal-although this is left unstated.

What is stated in most of the section introductions is fairly bland praise to the tune of "look how movies can cross cultures and have meaning even in Africa" and "see how these movies fit into the rich tradition of storytelling." Screenwriter Walter Hill at least has the honesty to say "many of these posters are more interesting than the films." The essays by the art experts attempting to place these posters in a larger historical context of African art manage to utterly fail. Particularly egregious is Deidre Evans-Pritchard's inane assertion that "Just as British television dramas are culturally repackaged for American audiences, so the hand-painted movie posters serve to claim the movies for the people of West Africa." The notion that one businessman paying an semiprofessional artist to paint an advertising poster for "Leprechaun 2" (page 199) so that other people will pay money to watch it somehow "claims" it, is patently silly. The critical difference with her analogy is that the advertising is slightly repackaged, the content certainly isn't. As I leafed through the book, seeing endless images of guns, bare breasts, blood, Rambo, Van Damme, Delta Force, and the like, I was vaguely unsettled. If, through cultural globalization, this is all they're getting from the U.S., what effect will it have on their cultural production, or on their perception of America? Whatever the answer-this is a great book to leave lying around your coffee table. A great companion to this is What It Is... What It Was, which is a slightly less lavish book on blaxploitation poster art.

In Ghana, paying cinema customer line up around a glorified TV set and watch the dross of American cinema, striaght-to-video stuff starring Jan Michael Vincent or Chuck Norris. And to publicize these films, artists paint posters in raging, primitive style with images not usually found in the films. The art is just incredible and horrendous (in the best meanings of the term) and one can only speculate on what cultural filters go into their making. THE coffee table book of the year.

I hate to post something unenthusiastic about such an exciting photographer, but "Photographs" was somewhat dissapointing for me -- I'd read/viewed with great interested his previous book, "a private view" -- which was fantastic. "Photographs" brings back a lot of those same images in a larger format, on worse paper, without the exciting layout and at twice the price. (Had "private view" not been published or were it out of print, I would have rated this book higher.) I think D'Orazio is one of the most exciting fashion photographers working today and I was ultimately saddened that there's not a whole new books worth of photographs here. If you have the option, buy "a private view" instead.

If photography books were rated by how relaxed, natural, and open the models are, this book would be a five star book. Many of these images have not been published or shown before.

Before going further, be aware that this book contains many tasteful female nudes and one male nude. If this book were a motion picture, it would probably have an "R" rating.

The book has two serious flaws. First, many of the two-page spreads are devastated by the center crease of the binding. The images should be been skipped or reproduced differently. Second, many of the images are vapid. Whenever Mr. D'Orazio moves away from doing a female nude in motion or with a prop, there's often not much there.

The best of the book is outstanding, and if you overlook the spoiled and uninspiring images, you will be very pleased. Mr. D'Orazio at his best has good talent in composition and use of shadows that make his work much more interesting. When he models work with a prop, whether a cigarette or something more substantial like an easel or a skull, magical things usually happen. The book uses a very fine quality matte paper that reproduces the subtle shadings well.

His unadorned and propless female nudes are a tour de force in one sense. He shows you something you haven't seen before in these people (most of whom are celebrities). Few photographers can accomplish so much with so little, but the viewer (unless totally addicted to the celebrity) wants a bit more.

I found Mr. D'Orazio's portraits of men and humanless scenes much less rewarding. Julian Schnabel and Mike Tyson were the exceptions. He captured something there that was quite remarkable.

As Mr. Yau says in his brief essay, "His subjects seem to have stopped for a moment, relaxed and let down their guard." "Some have even transformed themselves into someone unexpected . . . ." For example, you will see a different side of Julia Roberts. "The men . . . project their image of masculinity . . . ." "All of this D'Orazio captures with a painter's eye . . . ." I disagree with that last comment. The images seem to me to be much more sculptural than painterly, and that is to the good.

Here are my favorites:

Kristen McMenamy, 1986, Shelter Island, New York

Eva Herzigova, 1996, Long Island, New York

Sofia Loren, 1999, Milano, Italy

Julia Roberts, 1996, Culver City, California

Frederique, 1996, St. Barth's

Suzanne Lanza, 1986, Peconic Lodge, Shelter Island, New York

Eva Amurri, 1999, New York City (this is quite remarkable and appears on the back of the book's dust jacket)

Mike Tyson (the second one), 1996, Las Vegas, Nevada

Sylvester Stallone, 1996, New York City

Claudia Schiffer, 2000, London

Eva Amurri and Susan Sarandon, 1999, New York City

Polly Mellen and Leilani, 1992, New York City

Kate Moss, 1995, Glen Cove, New York

Julian Schnabel, 1990, (paint splattered with canvas and easel), Montauk, New York

Courtney Love, 1999, Los Angeles, California

Stella Schnabel with Skull, 1999, New York City

Drew Barrymore, 1993, Hollywood, California

After you enjoy this book, I suggest that you think about what the book teaches about relaxation. When do you drop your "social mask" to be relaxed and experience yourself more fully? Those who are most relaxed here, look most alive. How can you achieve this more often and benefit from it?

Take off your cares and worries!

Finally, a book of celebrity photographs which transcends the formula of merely exposing famous skin! Here is a book of rare and intimate sensuality which brings to the viewer's eye a private and lush sensuality which seems coaxed out of the sitters and never forced. D'Orazio is a genius and this book is one of the most amazing gifts I have received in years. I am buying it for several friends as it is a surefire, sophisticated winner. MORE!!

Sugimoto is a very special author. I have seen some of his photographs (theater, blurred horizonts) and I liked them, so I decided to buy this book. What a surprise... Photograps in this book didn't impressed me much. The best one is on the cover and other looks uninteresting for me. No playing with light or shapes much, most of photographs here seems to be shot with minimal invention, just blurred buildings/object... I won't understand this booch much.

Hiroshi Sugimoto is known for his long-exposure photos of empty movie theaters and museums: his blurred masterpieces of public places depict both familiar, major structures and lesser-known buildings. Sugimoto: Architecture is an impressive collection of his art offers full-page unsullied black and white reproductions of his finest works and will delight fans of photography, architectural representation, and the Sugimoto style in particular.

A few years ago, I quite enjoyed Corpse and Mirror when I found a paperback copy of it. Nice humor, just enough intellectual pretension, plus the occasional bumrush of interesting language. So Yau's name was one that stuck in my head, and I've read him, in subsequent time, in publications like APR and Conjunctions and the like, and haven't been hugely impressed (but not depressed, either); nevertheless, based on the good will from my first experience with him, I bought his selected, and found myself bored. His early stuff (including Corpse) seems very Ashbery and Robert Kelly-ied, that is, loose and fast, depending on inventiveness and tonal control to hold pieces together. Yau is adequate at this, though without the oommmph of either Ashbery or Kelly. Dean Young does this sort of thing much better: more inventive, riskier, less posing. Yau's more recent work seems to be written right after reading Michael Palmer's "At Passages": austere, restrained, tortured. Yet, for whatever reason, Yau's take on this bores while Palmer's excites: it seems a necessity for Palmer, or almost like an unbearable weight: a hairshirt; it seems like a nice shirt for Yau, something comfortable and stylish to wear in the nicest journals.