You've seen her art in the pages of Playboy Magazine and in dozens of other publications, on calendars, book covers, limited edition prints, greeting cards, and movie posters. Now, for the first time, Olivia's work has been compiled into one deluxe book. Included are over 100 drawings and paintings, many previously unpublished, spanning the past fifteen years.
“One of the finest writers of the new nonfiction” (Harper’s Bazaar) explores the role of art in our tumultuous modern era. In this remarkable, inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing makes a brilliant case for why art matters, especially in the turbulent political weather of the twenty-first century. Funny Weather brings together a career’s worth of Laing’s writing about art and culture, examining their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keeffe, reads Maggie Nelson and Sally Rooney, writes love letters to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, she celebrates art as a force of resistance and repair, an antidote to a frightening political time. We’re often told that art can’t change anything. Laing argues that it can. Art changes how we see the world. It makes plain inequalities and it offers fertile new ways of living.
9x12, in full color. Hardbound, Smythe sewn. Over 100 new paintings, drawings, and studies. Comments by Olivia on technique, models, and the creative process. Interviews with: Hugh Hefner Bettie Page Dita Von Teese Margaret Cho
Bettie Page was one of the most popular pin-ups of the 1950s. She first appeared as a Playmate in the pages of PLAYBOY in January, 1955 in a fetching yuletide photo shot by Bunny Yeager. At the end of the decade, she disappeared, but her legend continued to grow until, by the 1990s, she had become an icon.
Olivia's newest paintings and drawings are lovingly presented in thishardcover night table book. All new art, created since her last collection"Second Slice, " this book features models Dita Von Teese, Masuimi Max andmany more favorites, including Bettie Page, newly drawn in Olivia's everchanging styles, and ever evolving techniques.
"Astute and consistently surprising critic" (NPR) Olivia Laing investigates the body and its discontents through the great freedom movements of the twentieth century. The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. In her ambitious, brilliant sixth book, Olivia Laing charts an electrifying course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights and sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement. Drawing on her own experiences in protest and alternative medicine, and traveling from Weimar Berlin to the prisons of McCarthy-era America, Laing grapples with some of the most significant and complicated figures of the past century—among them Nina Simone, Christopher Isherwood, Andrea Dworkin, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, and Malcolm X. Despite its many burdens, the body remains a source of power, even in an era as technologized and automated as our own. Arriving at a moment in which basic bodily rights are once again imperiled, Everybody is an investigation into the forces arranged against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.
There is a particular flavor to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by thousands of strangers. This roving cultural history of urban loneliness centers on the ultimate city: Manhattan, that teeming island of gneiss, concrete, and glass. How do we connect with other people, particularly if our sexuality or physical body is considered deviant or damaged? Does technology draw us closer together or trap us behind screens? Laing travels deep into the work and lives of some of the century's most original artists in a celebration of the state of loneliness.
Step right up, Ladies and Gentlemen! Gasp in awe at an epic pairing of impossibly beautiful ladies and gloriously grotesque monstrosities! Connoisseurs of the unusual are cordially invited to marvel at the spectacle of "Beauties Beasts", a first-of-its-kind melding of the creative talents of Olivia De Berardinis (world's greatest living pinup artist) and Jordu Schell (legendary creature creator). These two world-renowned artists have never been showcased together... until now. This book is a full-color catalog of the wildly popular "Beauties Beasts" exhibition that premiered at the Oceanside Museum of Art. Dare to enter a visually mesmerizing realm of sexy sirens and sinister super-freaks unlike anything you've ever imagined. Behold the spectacle of "Beauties Beasts"!
When a new girl joins Mrs. Hoggenmuller's class, Olivia is very upset--they're both named Olivia! Olivia is convinced that she lives in a "one Olivia town" so she decides to change her name to Pam. But Olivia doesn't feel Pam-ish--she feels Olivia-ish! Come along as Olivia discovers a lesson about sharing and friendship in this hilarious storybook.
