Persepolis

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi is not just a comic book meant for children. Though the illustrations are in clean black and white, they are immensely powerful and beautiful in their sheer simplicity. On top of that is Satrapi's humorous yet mortifying autobiography, told through her eyes as a 10 year old.

For those unfamiliar with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq War, Persepolis will not only be an enjoyable read but also an educative one - it certainly was for me.

There's also a sequel - Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return.

The Sartorialist

Yes, the Sartorialist is now a book.  Pre-order your copy today.  For those of you who don’t know, the Sartorialist is a street style blog run by Scott Schuman that has gained a devoted following.  I, too, am an avid follower, and I am so excited about this.

This blog has received accolades, named as one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Design Influences.  The New York Times says “the bellwether American site that turned photo blogging into an art form.”

Kanye West says, “Scott doesn’t just take pictures, he captures emotion. He is not just a photographer. He’s a historian marking the feelings of this generation one photo at a time.”

Carine Roitfeld, editor of French Vogue, says, “During all the fashion weeks I am approached by many photographers, Scott is the only one who can ask me to cross the street for better light and I do it! I love his portraits.”

I can’t wait to get my hands on this book and flip through all the wonderful photographs.  To me, as much as I love following the Sartorialist online, nothing can compare when I can study the portraits up close in print.

White Oleander

I’m having such a good time reading White Oleander.  You might have seen the movie when it came out in 2002, but the book is really worth reading.  The story follows the heroin, Astrid through intense experiences as she makes her way from foster home to foster home.  Though the plot itself has absorbed my attention, I am mostly delighted with how great a job the author Janet Fitch has incorporated art and its beauty as a means of healing Astrid’s emotional and physical wounds.  The references are spot on, and for the art junkie, it’s also really cool to catch these references and understand.  Right now, I’m reading about how Astrid is going through a Kandinsky phase, but I’ll leave the rest for you to find out.  I hope you enjoy!

Picasso: Drawing with Light

Today, rather than share with you what I recently read in a book, I'm going to share an image feed of a series of pictures that I came across in Life Magazine.

via Life.com:

LIFE photographer Gjon Mili visited Picasso in 1949. Mili showed the artist some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates jumping in the dark—and Picasso's mind began to race. The series of photographs that follows—Picasso’s light drawings—were made with a small flashlight in a dark room; the images vanished almost as soon as they were created.

Aren't these images absolutely terrific?

The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft

If you have not been to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, believe me, it is worth the visit. The founder, a wealthy American, Isabella Stewart Gardner, amassed an impressive collection of art from her travels all over the world, and she it her duty to share and educate the public with her treasured cultural relics. Her love of art is reflected in this museum, where each exhibition gives off an aura of intimacy, as if this were the very house that she lived in. Rather than organizing the art in a methodical fashion, relying on intuition, Mrs. Stewart "decorated" each "room" with art in a way that she found pleasing.

Visiting the museum is really a calming experience, especially sitting by the courtyard with pretty plants growing and blooming year round. Just beware of the guards surrounding the place. They keep an extremely tight eye on all visitors, making sure there is no funny business going down. The tight security is actually the result of a heist at the museum in 1990, where thieves escaped with invaluable art including three Rembrandts and one Vermeer. To this day, the robbers still have yet to be caught, and we still have no idea where the art is.

This robbery forms the plot of the book, The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser. A journalist turned amateur sleuth, Boser takes the reader through his investigation as he pursues leads and collects a wealth of clues. It was such an entertaining read that solving the actual mystery become secondary to the narrative.