JUL-AUG 2013 - Art Books – The Brooklyn Rail

Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas

By Corina Larkin

The story doesn’t get off to a promising start. It begins with a road rage incident on the opening night of Eric Fischl’s 1986 Whitney retrospective. Is this going to be a Jay McInerney-esque, drug-addled tale of the ’80s? Or will it be a self-conscious confessional, as foreshadowed in the next chapter detailing Fischl’s painful suburban childhood? It’s unclear whether the book is going to be an entertaining beach read or a satisfying insight into the mind of a commercially successful, deep-thinking, and influential artist.

2013?: A Doomsday Day Planner

By Miles Klee

I had planned to review Mark Hagen’s 2013?: A Doomsday Day Planner at least six months ago—in other words, before 2013 began. It just never turned up at my door. December 21, 2012, came and went without a noticeable Mayan recalibration of the cosmos, and I didn’t dwell much on the missing book, which, after all, was predicated on the idea that you probably weren’t going to need it. The planner’s (non)existence, for that very reason, felt like an elaborate joke unto itself. 2013? Get real.

Garry Winogrand

By Adam Bell

For many young photographers in the ’70s and ’80s, Winogrand was a mythic figure. The territory Winogrand carved first in the streets of Manhattan, and later in the rodeos of Texas, the airports of New York City, and the open streets of Los Angeles, helped established a photographic language of spontaneous engagement with the world.