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Coffee Table Curator: August 2015

Hisachika Takahashi: From Memory Draw a Map of the United States, Hatje Cantz, 75 USD

In a classic example of "simple premise, hard execution," artist Hisachika Takahashi (who also served as a studio assistant to Robert Rauschenberg) decided to recruit 22 well known artists from 1971-1972 to draw a map of the United States from memory—no stencils or aids allowed. The results are just about what you'd expect, ranging from excellent geographic depictions to completely abstract and unrecognizable blobs. If you ever wanted to know how the minds of Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist map our great nation, this volume holds all the answers.

Harf Zimmermann: Brand Wand, Steidl, 98 USD

For the Berlin-based artist Harf Zimmermann, severely damaged buildings elicit few thoughts about impending reconstruction efforts and more about the decrepit charm they represent. By focusing exclusively on German tenement blocks, Zimmermann photographed buildings' walls (often long and made of brick) and how they progressed over years of wear and tear. No matter if the buildings changed in appearance due to graffiti, advertisements, or provisional repairs (and even World War II bombings), they appear like remarkable paintings and provide insight into prominent German historical events since the Gründerzeit.

Images of Conviction: The Construction of Visual Evidence, Editions Xavier Barral, 75 USD

When photography was invented in 1822 by Nicéphore Niépce, it became clear that the medium would radically transform both science and art. It also affected the criminal justice system by serving as visual evidence, helping to expose truths and deliver correct verdicts. Expanding on the forensics side, this volume chronicles 11 criminal cases: their historical and political context, and how images used posed in the trials. An equal mix of historic (Stalin's "Great Purge") and modern (drone strikes in Afghanistan and Israel) cases are presented.

Klee & Kandinsky, Prestel, 60 USD

Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky were undoubtedly influential masters of the modernist art movement. Despite their seemingly differing backgrounds (the idealistic and abstract Kandinsky from Russia, the ironic and natural Klee from Switzerland), the two formed a meaningful and beneficial friendship that spanned the course of 30 years. With the Weimar Republic serving as the main backdrop to open the dialogue, this book traces their relationship beginning with the formation of The Blue Rider ("Der Blaue Reiter") group around 1912, to the formative Bauhaus years, to the artists' respective deaths in the early 1940s. 

Art of Burning Man, Taschen, 59.99

If you can’t physically make it to the notoriously wild Burning Man festival later this month, living vicariously through this volume is the next best option. Chronicling the past 16 years of Burning Man's history, writer and photographer NK Guy provides a vibrant visual feast of the Black Rock Desert, Nevada-based event, where one week out of the year the barren and hostile landscape radically transforms into an oasis. Equal parts art, culture, and music, Burning Man is one of the purest and most expressive festivals in American history, and Guy manages to strikingly capture that essence.

Karl Lagerfeld: Villa NoaillesSteidl, 60 USD

With the Lagerfeld name attached to it, it's easy to imagine Villa Noailles as a mecca of ostentatious beauty and style—and it certainly used to be. Built at the turn of the 20th century in the large town of Hyères in southern France, artists such as Man Ray, Luis Buñuel, and Salvador Dalí retreated to the uniquely modern and Bauhaus-inspired villa to live and work for indefinite periods of time. However, with each passing decade came neglect and eventual abandonment; now the villa stands almost in complete obscurity. Lagerfeld decided to explore what remains with nothing more than his camera, and the results are hauntingly beautiful.