“WE, ON THE LAST STAGE OF THE PATH TO SUPREMATISM BLASTED ASIDE THE OLD WORK OF ART LIKE A BEING OF FLESH AND BLOOD AND TURNED IT INTO A WORLD FLOATING IN SPACE. WE CARRIED BOTH PICTURE AND VIEWER OUT BEYOND THE CONFINES OF THIS SPHERE AND IN ORDER TO COMPREHEND IT FULLY THE VIEWER MUST CIRCLE LIKE A PLANET ROUND THE PICTURE WHICH REMAINS IMMOBILE IN THE CENTER.”—El Lissitzky, 1920
Having moved in the radical Russian art spheres of Constructivism and Suprematism from before the Russian Revolution all the way through the Stalin years until his death in 1941, El Lissitzky forged his utopian strivings into such aesthetically demanding examples of pragmatic Soviet mass expression as exhibition design, wartime propaganda, book illustration, photomontage posters and architecture. Fluent in German and English, Lissitzky was an important bridge between the German Dadaists of the ‘20s and ‘30s and their contemporaries in the idealistic Soviet art organizations. Compiled by his wife and sometime collaborator, Sophie, and originally published in East Germany in 1967, this book includes a comprehensive collection of his writings and manifestoes, a biographical sketch based on his letters, and hundreds of examples of how Lissitzky help to define the revolutionary modernist aesthetic. SS

Publisher: Thames and Hudson
Hardback: 410 pages
Illustrated

“Introduced 100 years ago, film has since become a part of our lives. For the past century, however, the experience offered by fiction films has remained a mystery. Questions such as why adult viewers cry and shiver, and why they care at all about fictional characters—while aware that they contemplate an entirely staged scene—are still unresolved. In addition, it is unknown why spectators find some film experiences entertaining that have a clearly aversive nature outside the cinema. These and other questions make the psychological status of emotions allegedly induced by the fiction film, highly problematic… It is argued that film-produced emotions are genuine emotions in response to an artificial stimulus. Film can be regarded as a fine-tuned machine for a continuous stream of emotions that are entertaining after all.”

Publisher: Erlbaum
Hardback

Blood-drinking vegetables! Bronze-skinned Gorgons! This A-to-Z guide to monster features such DC Comic creatures as Horro from Sea Devils and the Giant Cat from House of Secrets mixed with Star Trek TV villains like the Horta; horror-movie monsters like Universal’s mummy Im-Ho-Tep and Hammer’s Gorgo; Harryhausen animations like the Minoton from Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger; B movie abominations such as the Crawling Eyes from The Crawling Eye; and pulp horrors from way back like the Klangan from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Pirates of Venus, written in 1932. Whew! Includes references on each monster’s first appearance, “species,” gender and powers, size and “biography.” GR

Publisher: Facts on File
Paperback: 400 pages
Illustrated

Notes, letters, documents and essays on the early years, 1910 to 1914. “We were possessed. In cafés, in the streets and squares, in artists’ studios, we were ‘on the march’ day and night, we drove ourselves to fathom the unfathomable, and, as poet, painter and composer in one, to create the incomparable ‘Art of the Century,’ a timeless art which would surpass all art forms of preceding centuries.” That was the Expressionist vision, but the art of its adherents became imbued with another sort of timelessness—the horrors of World War I and death, which came “like a visitation upon mankind, and the words of those writers who survived formed themselves into a scream of revolt, desperation and hatred.” From 1915 through 1920, Expressionism went dark during and after the war. “Yet something of the old European heritage survived in the passionate hope and faith in the future.” GR

Publisher: Overlook
Paperback: 421 pages

In 1990, the British Museum in London mounted an exhibition consisting entirely of fakes. It gathered together paintings, sculptures, reliefs, ceramics, prints, manuscripts and other artistic and historical artifacts all of which had been initially validated as authentic but which were eventually found to be fraudulent, the products of skilled artists and artisans whose main objective was to fool the experts. It was a visionary show, to say the least, and courageous in that it questioned the authority and the expertise of museums themselves. This book is the catalog of that important show.
Study closely the Cottingley Fairy Photographs believed to be actual images of those elusive beings. Gaze with wonder upon the fur-covered trout, previously owned by the Royal Scottish Museum and at one time believed to be an actual specimen brought back from the wilds of Canada. See the supposedly ancient marble head of Julius Caesar, revealed to have been artificially weathered—perhaps by pounding it with a nail-studded piece of wood. All of these marvels and more are to be found in this remarkable book, at once an investigation of the limits of expertise, a chronicle of the varieties of human gullibility, and an illustrated catalog from a fascinating art show. AS

Publisher: University of California
Paperback: 312 pages
Illustrated

“In 1984, Mr. McGee wrote the acclaimed Fast and Furious, a history of American International Pictures. But, as McGee wrote in his out-of-the-blue offer to do a bigger-and-better, ‘Because of my unnatural interest, I’ve never stopped.’ The result of his ceaseless efforts can be found in this updated and expanded look at AIP. From the time Sam Arkoff and Jim Nicholson founded the company, they dominated the low-budget film market with such teen-oriented movies as Beach Party and I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Their movies were frowned on by critics, not because they were terrible (which they mostly were) but because they were so shameless in their intent—to make money. This new work includes the most comprehensive AIP filmography ever assembled, as well as many new photographs not included in the earlier work.”

Publisher: McFarland
Hardback: 304 pages
Illustrated

Begins with Fellini in a sickbed fever dream melting from adult to child, with nuns and priests popping in and out of view, and Fellini profusely flowing back and forth between life and film—just like Amarcord!—a point driven home by the presence of eight photos from Amarcord and one of Fellini making the film. Includes charming stories from most of Fellini’s life, interspersed with 82 manifestoes on his art: lots of circuses and clowns; his wife actress Julietta Masina; breakdown (Toby Dammit); and subsequent recovery to confront the film of his own life in the finale of 8 1/2. “I’ve seen this blessed film of mine. And it’s something like my own nature. And yet…”—Fellini MS

Publisher: Da Capo
Paperback: 182 pages
Illustrated

“This is a book about the subversion of existing values, institutions, mores and taboo—East and West, left and right—by the potentially most powerful art of the century… It is the powerful impact of these brightly lit images in black space and artificial time, their affinity to trance and the subconscious, and their ability to influence masses and jump boundaries, that has forever made the cinema an appropiate target of the repressive forces in society—censors, traditionalists, the state.” Weapons of subversion include “The Power of the Visual Taboo,” “The Ultimate Secret Death,” “The Attack on God: Blasphemy and Anti-Clericalism” and “Surrealism: The Cinema of Shock.”

Publisher: Random House
Paperback: 336 pages
Illustrated

An exhaustive A-to-Z compilation of Hollywood’s popular postwar film fad, hopelessly over-analyzed by scholars and critics. “[These movies] consistently evoke the dark side of the American persona. The central figures in these films, caught in their double binds, filled with existential bitterness, drowning outside the social mainstream, are America’s stylized vision of itself, a true cultural reflection of the mental dysfunction of a nation in uncertain transition.” Includes plot synopses, critiques, casts and credits. GR

Publisher: Overlook
Paperback: 479 pages
Illustrated

Fireworks (1947): “A dissatisfied dreamer awakes, goes out in the night seeking a light, and is drawn through the needle’s eye. He returns to a bed less empty than before.” Rabbit’s Moon (1950): “A fable of the Unnattainable (the Moon) combining elements of the comedia dell’arte with Japanese myth. A lunar dream utilizing the classic pantomime figure of Pierrot in an encounter with a prankish, enchanted Magick Lantern…” Eaux D’Artifice (1953): “Hide-and-seek in a night-time labyrinth of levels, cascades, balustrades, grottoes and ever-gushing, leaping fountains, until the water witch and the fountain become one.”—Anger

Publisher: Mystic Fire
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