Art books?
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- omahadesigns
Does anyone have a collection of nice art books and actually look at them?
I'm not talking about text books, but books you find for museum shows, artists exhibitions and pretty limited-run expensive paper books.
I have a few. I bought them because they were well designed or the paper was nice. But I never look at them and they aren't that interesting either.
Are they just another thing people collect?
- nb0
I keep a decent collection, mostly photographer monographs as that's what I'm interested in. I look at them often enough. Something to do in the evening instead of watching another boring series on Netflix.
- fadein110
yes
- arne0
a couple of years ago (after moving a lot) i made a 3 meter bookshelf and limit the books i own to that ever since. so i give / throw away something every time i get / buy something. over the years the shelf transformed to a collection of almost only non-text books - mostly art, illustration and comics - eh - graphic novels. i found that i started missing visual work on real paper in well crafted books, no matter how much visual input is available online. while for reading i became indifferent about the medium and just choose the smallest ballast.
- MrAbominable0
I do. But certainly to a less degree than say ten years ago. Art books are low priority on the ebook trend but it's inevitable that they too will move entirely digital.
Some of them are useful as artifacts (exhibition notes etc) but reference material is always more useful online where available.
- nb0
I prefer art books because the printing tends to be a little nicer than digital on-screen reproductions, although Retina is getting closer and is very good.
The big benefit to books is more precise reproduction of colour and contrast, because my computer screen (and rgb colour profiles and jpg compression) will affect that. At least with a book, the artist (or an expert) usually helped ensure the colour and contrast were correct before printing.
Of course, neither screen nor offset printing comes close to seeing the original artwork, so sometimes I wonder if it's really worth keeping the physical book when it's not perfect, anyway.
- doesnotexist0
content, yo
- sleepyfatso0
Here's 422 of them from The Met...
- colin_s0
i always look at them for inspiration. more than anything. but rarely for the same medium.
like if i want to design something i may look at a cartier bresson monograph or if i want to paint i may look at old typeset posters.
favorites would have to be rauschenberg's combines, warhol "giant", emigre no. 70, the neasden control centre 1st book, carson's "end of print" obv ... robert frank's "the americans", jenny holzer's whitney monograph ... there's so much great out there.
- i also love the book as a medium though, and constantly find myself just staring at layout choices and design decisions as well.colin_s