International Contemporary Masters Volume III

World Wide ArtBooks has recently released its International Contemporary Masters Volume III, which traces the current art world’s latest trends and features the work of select international artists who are helping to mold the evolution of the contemporary art world. International curator and founder of World Wide ArtBooks Despina Tunberg produced the book with the goal of showing that innovation in art is still thriving around the globe.

Greek born Tunberg, who owns galleries in both Europe and the U.S., recognized how artists can spend time struggling to show their art, when they would rather spend time creating it. She created the International Contemporary Masters series as a luxury art publication that would allow artists to introduce their world to the art world. Her books include well known and lesser known artists, all of whom are extremely talented and innovative.

The newest volume features some 400 images of artwork from over 230 artists. Nearly 50 countries’ artists are represented, and each artist was selected by a special committee that adhered to strict criteria of originality and proficiency. Editors sought the inclusion of artists who have broken new ground – even if the artists haven’t yet been discovered by the art world at large. Media presented in the book includes painting, mixed media, sculpture, photography, digital art and installation.

Click here to read more about the book, how Tunberg supports artists beyond including them in her publication, and about World Wide ArtBooks.

Biggest Book in the World on Display

While it's not necessarily a "read-worthy art text," the 350 year-old Klencke Atlas is definitely a "view-worthy art text." The colossal book is five feet tall and six feet wide; it was given to the king by Dutch merchants and placed in his cabinet of curiosities. The Atlas, which has never publicly been displayed with its pages open, will be on view this summer at the British Library. The summer exhibition is dedicated to maps and will be showing about 100 of the world's greatest - about three-quarters of which have never before been on display.

Peter Barber, the British Library's head of map collections, recently stated,

"...[the maps] hold their own with great works of art. This is the first map exhibition of its type because, normally, when you think of maps, you think of geography, or measurement or accuracy."

Furthermore, the exhibition will show how great maps are often as important as great art. They were important status symbols, especially before the 1800s, and were considered to be almost as prominent as paintings, sculptures and tapestries.

Visit the Guardian to read more on the history of maps and other types of maps that will be on display at this summer's unique exhibition.

"Painting Below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art"

The term "Pop Art" is defined as a visual art movement that challenged tradition (first during the mid-1950s in Britain and then in the late 1950s in the U.S.) by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Case in point: the most well-known American Pop Artist, Andy Warhol, silk-screened a seemingly non-iconic image of a Campbell's soup can onto a canvas and voila, the public became fascinated with the Campbell's Soup image (and the product itself).

As a recent review from the NY Times discusses, James Rosenquist penned "Painting Below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art," an autobiography about the artist's accidental status as a pop artist (as a Midwest painter whose work happens to thematically parallel that of Warhol). Rosenquist started his art career as a sign painter and didn't initially meet Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein until 1964 (after Warhol and Lichtenstein had individually developed their avant-garde styles).

The artist's book contains a detailed biography (including his various art-world experiences), along with photographs (like the one below of the artist standing with his proud mother below his first billboard painting - for Coca-Cola), and various anecdotes. Rosenquist acquired the assistance of David Dalton (a founding editor of Rolling Stone Magazine) as well as Tony Scherman (a veteran music journalist) on his book.



To read the entire article from the NY Times - including more about Rosenquist's autobiography and life, art critic Arthur C. Danto's new pop-art related book, and discussion on new definitions / explanations of "Pop Art," click here.

Tattoos as Art

The art world is constantly evolving - and thus, the definition of art (or maybe just that of "contemporary art") continues to broaden. While tattoos were once considered taboo, or an act of rebellion against conformity, getting permanently inked with body art has turned into a pretty widespread occurrence (at least in the Western world).

Tattoos are now frequently accepted as a form of self-expression, but even more interesting are those who actually create the tattoos and ink them onto bodies. It seems that the growth of acceptance of tattoos has allowed tattooists to be viewed as artists and tattooing - like painting or sculpting - to inch its way to being considered a standard form of art.

More and more contemporary tattooists have fine-arts backgrounds - and many have developed their own unique artistic styles, with their tattoo parlors now resembling specialized art studios and galleries.

Accordingly, the market for tattoo-themed books has expanded over the past several years. One recently published book, Art by Tattooists: Beyond Flash by Jo Waterhouse, is unique among the category.

Tattooist Jo Waterhouse examines drawings and paintings by tattoo artists independent of the bodies they are permanently attached to. Thus, without the images of tattooed bodies, the viewer sees the tattoo as a true piece of art (and can subsequently judge it purely as art, rather than thinking of it as a tattoo).

To read more about Jo Waterhouse's book, click here.