Check out the hyper-natural work of environmental artist Jenny Kendler if you want to get in touch with your inner animal.

I finally saw Beautiful Losers last night (holy shit! Beautiful Losers is on Netflix! Drop whatever you’re doing and go watch this movie RIGHT NOW).

A part that really stuck with me was the section where Barry McGee is talking about getting your work out there. He said that once he was showing in galleries he felt that his work was being presented to a smaller audience than would see it if he had painted on a train or a billboard.

It got me thinking about writing in print and online. Most people who submit to us would rather be in the print version than online. Due to our small print run, the chances that any given contributors work will be read is exponentially greater if it’s posted on our website. So I ask you, what gives?

If the point is to get your stuff out there, wouldn’t you rather be published online?

(screenshot: R.I.P. the brilliant Margaret Kilgallen)

Our intern reports from Miami. Take it away Janelle!

Art Basel was in Miami this past weekend and I just had to be there. Why? Well, I love Miami, I love art, I love a good time, and my sister was in need of some inspiration.

Can I be honest though? I say I love art, and I do, but I know very little about it. What I learned in humanities classes years ago is long gone and there were probably times this weekend I was ignorantly admiring advertisements like this guy…

And the idea of writing about art here made me anxious.

But it’s all okay. Thanks to my sister. She supplemented my slack-jawed appreciation with some solid facts and I ended up learning a few new things.

Shepard Fairey.

Os Gemeos.

You have to see this. Just because.

Art is forever evolving and I shouldn’t have assumed I ever knew anything about anything. All I can do is appreciate and support.

Wow, been a while since we done one of these.

I’m calling bullshit on Amazon’s Best Book Covers of 2009. Given, there are some nice covers you can vote on, but does it irk anyone else that the nominees are all Amazon best sellers? What about all the choice book covers that have been featured on The Book Cover Archive? For my money, any given entry on BCA blows the Chronic City cover out the water. Let’s start our own list. Anyone have a vote for best book cover of the year? Post a link to the image in the comments section.

(Yes, I realize calling bullshit on Amazon is like calling bullshit on Disney or Starbucks, it’s granted at this point that they’re a huge greedy corporation that is the #1 enemy of the indie book store. Yes, I realize that their contest is a thinly veiled sales push for the holiday season. Regardless. Bullshit!)

Documentary photographer Dave Jordano’s work is simply stunning. I suggest checking out his Articles of Faith project. Click here for an interview with the artist.

I made a new friend. Her name is Gianelle Gelpi. She arts here. I wanted an excuse to post the above image because I think it is amazing. Click the link and check her out. And don’t be scared to check out her side project Furry Fangs:

Wow!

Here we have a case of my ignorance of artistic styles and movements getting the best of me.

When I look at these I hear French accordions chugging to life and tumbling into a jolly yet melancholic (and slightly drunk) tune, swimming in cigarette smoke and sunglasses. I know that’s called something and I know there’s an artist who pioneered that style, but I don’t know their name or when they lived. All I know is I like them.

Some questions for the peanut gallery:

-Is it important to know why you like something? Follow-up: Does analyzing this thing that you like reduce your affection for it?

-Is it anti-intellectual to admit your ignorance and not be ashamed of it?

-Is it mildly scandalous that I run a magazine with a heavy bent towards fine art yet I have little-to-no knowledge of art history?

MAKR and I went up to Chicago. He had to go to Horween, one of the oldest leather tanneries in the country, to pick out some hides to make into bags.

It was like Charlie and the Chocolate factory. But with dead flesh.

This is what it looks like in Jason’s brain.

This is how the hides come in. That’s horse hide imported from France.

I want Horace McCoy to write a book called The French Eat Horses, Don’t They?

The hides are bathed in a sort of bleach wash deal that turns them into pasty white piles of mush.

Leather byproduct splatter strewn across an American flag. There’s a metaphor there but I’m not sure what it is.

Most footballs used for pro games? Yup. They came from Horween.

This place has been around since 1905 and is still family owned and operated. Skip Horween, the gentleman who showed us around, took us to this dark hole where the hides dry.

Horween is the last place in the States to make Cordovan, which is essentially the butt of the horse. I told Skip that it kind of looks like Illinois. He agreed and told us that an uncut hide looks like the United States. I said there was another good metaphor in there somwhwere. Skip quietly tolerated the foppish writer by saying, “Yeah, there’s something in there.”

But it wasn’t all leather for us. Side note: I enjoyed introducing Jason to my Chicago friends by saying, “This is Jason. He’s really into leather.”

We went to the Russian Tea Room, which made people whisper further.

We took the pink line (God, this is getting bad) down to Pilsen.

If you live in the greater Chicago area, care about the most interesting stuff happening in art book publishing and you have not yet been to Golden Age then you, my friend, are robbing yourself of one of the better experiences of your lifetime.

Go see Marco and his amazing store right away!

This was one of the best trips I’ve made back to the city since I moved. Without a doubt.

Thank you Tom, Bill, Ben, Anne, Theresa and Sheba. I miss you all.

And dare I say it? I miss this city.

Sarah Manguso’s memoir concerning a blood disease that made her body turn against itself yields not one but two beautiful book covers. Above is the paperback (which I kind of like better, a bit more striking) and below is the more sedate, but equally beautiful, hardcover:

Not sure what those things are. Some sort of medical supplies (IV tubes? Catheters?) shaped to look like a kind of musical signature symbol or type embellishment. I’m guessing a nod to Manguso’s poetic roots and lyrical language. Designs by Alexander Knowlton and Jennifer Carrow, respectively.

Thanks The Rumpus and BDR.

Designers Ben Pieratt and Eric Jacobsen have taken it upon themselves to archive some of the best book covers of recent memory over at The Book Cover Archive. While most bloggers are satisfied writing pithy reviews of book covers (ahem) BCA simply lets the cover speak for itself, as well as providing useful information as to who actually designed what. Well done fellas. Now go waste your morning at this place.