McNally Robinson NYC

by Ballistic Publishing
(Ballistic, $45.00)
This most recent edition in the Exotique series features today’s top 2D/3D digital artists. Among them is Marta Dahlig whose cover art is indicative of the quality of beautiful images displayed inside Exotique 3. This is a valuable book for fans and artists of digital paintings rendered in Photoshop or Painter. It is also worth having for those who enjoy digital sculpting using Maya, 3dsMax, Zbrush and Lightwave. Other titles in the Ballistic series are for 3D artists and include Essence: The Face and D’Artiste: Digital Sculpting..

by Esther Smith
(Crown/Random House, $25.00)
It’s very meta: a book about making books that is itself a beautifully made book (from the typographic geniuses at downtown’s own Purgatory Pie Press). It’s also very hands-on, with artsy/literary projects you can actually accomplish in five minutes, or five hours, with stuff you have or can easily get. Indulge your latent arts-and-crafts savant, and enjoy the groovy graphic design as well..

by Maira Kalman
(Penguin, $29.95)
Come along with Kalman on this refreshingly random and often poetic, yet nerdy (in the good way!), ramble through her inner self. As it turns out her inner self is a wonderfully endearing connoisseur of the finer details of life. The artwork is pretty damn precious, and this book also has the best index ever created..

by Shaun Tan
(HarperCollins, $19.99)
Just open this book and look at it. There are no words to get in the way for the youngest child or even the most sophisticated adult. What is here instead is one of our oldest American stories - the immigrant’s journey - made strange and wonderful through Shaun Tan’s imagination. You’ll find yourself moved and amazed at the wealth of our shared experience, and filled with wonder at Shaun Tan’s fantastic worlds..

by David Lynch
(Criterion Collection, $29.95)
This is a must for David Lynch fans. His most recent film represents years of filming - all self-financed - which means that what ends up on screen is finally what he wanted. The result is a mesmerizing, multi-layered plot that doubles as quintessential art-on-screen. Sure, you’ll need to watch it at least twice to make sense of the “plot,” but it’s never dull. In fact, it’s constantly awe-inspiring..

by John Berger
(Penguin, $14.00)
We spend our lives looking at so many images that it is easy to overlook the significance of our visual encounters. Each sentence of this slim, powerful classic will awaken the parts of your brain that question the presence and impact of the images around you and fully renew your experience of art and image. Read this before your next gallery visit, before the next photograph you take, before the next advertisement you see–reconnect to the difference between looking and seeing..

by Philip Ball
(University of Chicago, $18.00)
Oh, sweet micro history! Take me behind the scenes of my very life and show me how it all came to be. With Bright Earth, Philip Ball adds his engaging investigation of color’s role in art to the genre that brought us Salt, Birth, Cod and many others. Travel with Ball through the studios, laboratories, factories and mines that brought us our current rainbow and thrill at all you didn’t know you didn’t know..

Text by Burt Boyar
(Regan Books, $49.95)
Sure, Sammy Davis might seem a bit cheesy to the average 21st century hipster. The idea of this book might make you cringe. Think what you want, the man had a central position in the zeitgeist of his time. Healso carried a camera everywhere he went. I dare you to take a look. These photos are better than you think they’ll be..

by Jonathan Harr
(Random House, $13.95)

This wonderful book traces the discovery and revelation of the ‘lost’ Caravaggio masterpiece ‘The Taking of Christ’ from its disappearance from the Renaissance Mattei collections to its discovery in a Jesuit monastery in Dublin. Part thriller, part exercise in art restoration, part expose of the competitive world of art history study and a thoroughly enjoyable study of the short and wild life of the master of candlelight, this book reads like the wind. Written with journalistic panache and novelistic insight, Harr illuminated the dark corners and dark alleys of Roman history. What fun..

By Suroosh Alvi, Shane Smith, Gavin McInnes
(Little, Brown, $17.95)

Every time I pick up this book and read the acerbic and yet dead-on critiques or, on the other hand, eloquent praise of the people in the pics, I can’t put it down for hours. These guys are funny and intelligent fashion critics - and the pictures are priceless..