Umbrella is a quarterly art journal that covers artists' books, mail art, and other multiple editions including audio and video works. They published a print version from 1978 to 2005 and then moved online. Indiana University-Perdue University Indianapolis' Library now has a searchable archive of all their back issues. Go poke around and see reviews of all sorts of old books and magazines, interviews with artists, thoughts on anything from computer cataloging of images to performance art collaborations, and notes from parties and events. You can also subscribe to Umbrella online at their site.

The Spring issue of the lovely Acne Paper is out and the theme is playfulness. Just look at the jaunty angles of those hats! Contributors include Ali Mahdavi, Roger Deckker, Benjamin Alexander Huseby, Vanity Fair's Christopher Mason. The fabulous Iris Apfel is in there as well as the AD of all of Pedro Almodovar's films. Great issue.

This month's Dazed and Confused has Kate Moss on the cover in clothes from her Top Shop line. I like the cover. I'm a sucker for a gatefold and the shot is all relaxed and nice. What else... a tribute to Derek Jarman from the likes of Tilda Swinton, Seamus McGarvey, and Neil Tennant, a piece on 19th century gangs, and 1920s fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli.

Hm, I haven't looked at Adbusters in a while... The theme of this issue is "The Beginning of Sorrow." It has a scary article on the rise of the internet police state, an interview with French political activists The Dismantlers, and an article about how fucked Britain's youth are.

Post Road lacks the dry, stuffy quality associated with most old-school literary journals. It's not only well edited and written - but actually entertaining. What's refreshing is the eclecticism and lack of ostentatiousness in their choices - you get the sensation of a smart and super-cool coffee clutch firing off ideas to each other. Post Road publishes criticism, fiction, non-fiction, poetry (we'll forgive them that) as well as some visual art (though not their strong point). They also have great book recommendations (written more as a pal telling you than as formal review) and a section entitled "Etcetera," which houses anything from a description of a walking tour to twenty questions for David Mamet.

Issue #13 is out now. Available at St. Marks Books or online here.

Post Road is currently conducting a fiction and poetry contest, with a $1000 prize for winners. Apply here.

The pic above is my cover for issue #11, read the essay I wrote for it here. Yes, I'm totally biased. Deal.

The Brave Space Design Hollow End Table is pushing it price wise at $375, but sometimes you have to pay for good, eco-friendly design. It's made of a combination of light and dark bamboo, and at 20 inches high would also be great used as a stool. Magazines can go on either side, leaning vertically, as well as being stuffed flat directly beneath the table surface.

Available at Design Public

Nick Currie isn't just a Print Fetishist, he's a Magazine Pervert, his outlet, Dorama, a store in Japan that carries used magazines.

Flickr Finds: Nancy's impressive collection of music magazines and fanzines.

Picasso's penis is obscene when in cartoon form. [via Jockohomo]

Make your own flip-book!

Lula
Girl of My Dreams
200 pages, full color
$14.99

Lula magazine is a newish British fashion magazine started by Becky Smith and Leith Clark, ex-Vogue people. I like it! Everything in it has such a great girly energy. They mix art and fashion stories well and I'm so psyched that they have so many illustrations. It's full of dreamy photo shoots which feature designers both major and small and thankfully has none of that annoying front of book round-up type of pandering to advertisers stuff that so many other girl-y mags fill up with. I like the way they package a story. For example, in issue #4, there's a big feature on tap dancing which includes a pull out poster with actress Zooey Deschanel demonstrating a tap dance she made up, a fashion illustration story accompanied by text from actress Michelle Williams about her love of tap dancing as a child, photos of girls tapping, and an essay about how all girls love tap dancing. I couldn't have given a crap about tap dancing as a kid and was only interested in skateboarding and book reading but the genuine sweetness and enthusiasm of this piece is contagious. At the end I'm like tap dancing is rad! The whole magazine is like that. It's beautiful. It's cute—and in a fun, exuberant kind of way, not in a cloying fakey sort of way. Flowers, fruit prints, lacy things, lots of sun, an office dog on the masthead, jewelry, sparkly things, and almost no boys anywhere. It gives me an excuse to get in touch with my inner girly-girl (I swear I have one!). Also in issue #4 is a story on Erin Fetherton's fairy princess-like collection shot by Ellen Von Unwerth. I like her. I also like the Sonia Rykiel headbands I saw in another story. So cool! I want them all. My only real complaint is the magazine is too white. Almost every story uses skinny white models and actresses.

Printed Matter, the world's largest non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of publications made by artists and one of my favorite shopping destinations, is having a spring benefit party at Hiro Ballroom on May 15. The hilarious and genius John Waters is hosting. Performers include Terence Koh, Peaches, Flaming Fire, and the DJs MEN: JD Samson and Joanna Fateman of Le Tigre. Terence Koh's ritual spectacle will result in a limited edition fundraising multiple. MEN play music all night. There's a less expensive after party you can go to if you're not too in the money this month. We love Printed Matter. It's a great cause and you should go and give them money.

Printed Matter Benifit
Tuesday 15 May 2007
Hiro Ballroom at The Maritime Hotel
371 West 16th Street
VIP Reception 7:30 – 9pm
Afterparty 9 – 11pm
tickets here

The current issue of Another Man has a gorgeous cover - Nick Knight's photo of the luscious Ben Wishaw - soon to be seen in Todd Haynes's much anticipated Bob Dylan film, I'm Not There. Inside there are more photos of the sinewy young actor and a discussion between him and Sir Ian Mckellen. Art critic John Richardson writes about hanging out with Peggy Guggenheim in Venice (apparently the art world also has a casting couch), Jon Savage meditates on Sinatra and the creation of the teenager and David Dalton muses on the women men worship. Another Man is one of the few desirable Men's Fashion magazines. Outstanding photography and brilliant, inventive styling. Norbert Schoerner's and stylist Nicola Formichetti's spring fashion editorial of colorful, techno urban explorers is a standout.

Butt #19 is out. Interviews with non boring homosexuals like porn legend Joe Cage (director of such haaaaaaaht classics as LA Tool and Die), an incredibly disgusting guy from Amsterdam with a fetish for filth (I gagged, but was fascinated) and Francessco Vezzoli - artist and director of the Caligula trailer. Also premiering this issue is an autobiography feature. As always, hot guys and pink paper in the palm of your hand.

Cabinet is a superbly edited magazine, featuring truly great writing. It's sort of an art magazine - I'll be writing a general review eventually. The current issue is titled Insects, featuring essays on the title subject, an interview with entomologist and nature writer Jeffrey Lockwood and regular features like my favorite, the colors essay - this issue Alan Gilbert deals with brown.

I was really excited about Sleaze (the relaunched Sleazenation) - although it's "anti-consumerist," "anti-celebrity" stance sounded a bit bombastic (who am I to judge?), it was nonetheless executed with a joyfully cheeky brit sensibility and ferocious adherence to style. It only lasted 3 issues, but had the hottest covers on the rack. Though completely modern, the covers harkened back to a distant time long, long ago when a cover was actually composed thoughtfully - not just littered with ugly cover-lines.

Beautiful Sleaze

Sleaze is really rocking me out right now. It is by far the best designed, most fun to read style magazine of the moment. It seems to be doing what others posture to do – embracing a true DIY, ‘zine aesthetic, while still being highly refined. The ‘zine influence got hardcore in the 90’s, but most mags had lost their way, like Sleazenation. They pantomimed the look, but forgot the true ethos. Sleazenation did what most cool mags SHOULD do – they scrapped it all and started over with Sleaze. Magazines have a very limited shelf life for capturing a zeitgeist – lets face it, Rolling Stone should have ended at the very latest in 1979. The Face should have called it quits at the very latest in 1995. Sleazenation realized their time had passed; now they’re creating the future zeitgeist. Sleaze is post (faux) irony – we can still want stuff, enjoy fashion and pop culture: but enough is enough, lets make a side note and get real; let’s not be manipulated by gross materialism. Let’s actually believe in something.

On May 1st magazine industry types gathered at Jazz at Lincoln Center for ASME's National Magazine Awards. I don't do much more than glance over the list every year because it has little to do with the magazines I love or even the ones I just read regularly. This year was no exception. New York Magazine won 5 (5?!) awards. Maybe I'm just not getting something but in what universe is NYM actually an excellent magazine? I mean, sure, the site is helpful and I use it when I'm hungry and need to know about a restaurant and there's some funny dumb stuff on there like the look book, and I have no idea why but I like looking at the shopping section. But these things do not make the print magazine worthy of an award or five. Esquire also always wins. Esquire? This magazine hasn't been good since the 1970s. I constantly forget it's still publishing. My eyes pass over it every time I cruise the newsstand. The covers are ugly confused messes. The mag has totally lost its focus. So many formerly great magazine giants have this problem and the ASME seems happy to give them awards for it. Some of this list reads more like the Magazines Who Should Have Stopped Publishing Years Ago awards. I mean, Rolling Stone got one. I'm glad to see The Nation win for reviews and criticism. I think The Believer should have won for their music issue. I have some different ideas for the design nominations but if I had to choose from the ones on the list here, I'd go for The Believer for that too. Definitely not NYM or GQ (grode).

The full list of nominees and winners is here. Read it and feel free to snark and/or add your own opinions in the comments!

Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States
By Pete Jordan
HarperPerennial
384 pages
5.25" x 8"
Paperback
$13.95 ($11.16 on Amazon)

I love zines about jobs, like Temp Slave, Guinea Pig Zero, and especially Dishwasher. I used to always look forward to a new issue from Dishwasher Pete. And with this new collection, you too can enjoy his epic tales of cross country dishwashing. The blurb on the back of the book sums it up nicely: "Dishwasher is the true story of a man on a mission: to clean dirty dishes professionally in every state in America. Part adventure, part parody, and part miraculous journey of self-discovery, it is the unforgettable account of Pete Jordan's transformation from itinerant seeker into "Dishwasher Pete"—unlikely folk hero, writer, publisher of his own cult zine, and the ultimate professional dish dog—and how he gave it all up for love. "

Buy it at Amazon.

I'm obsessed with anything magnetic and I love eco-friendly bamboo - so this Magnetic Bamboo File Box is perfect for for me. On the fridge it's great for bills, letters and food magazines, but I'm getting one to stick to the side of my steel desk for current mag issues. For 25 bucks, maybe I'll get one for the fridge too - I'm a greedy bitch.

$24.95 at Solutions.

Pretty self-explanatory. I would never pay good money for these, but If I see them on the sidewalk, I'll snatch them up to see what's going on. Despite the presence of good writers and photographers - I have a lot of disdain for these magazines. Perhaps I'll rip-out a few pages to go into my image box, but these magazines do not fit into my Print Fetish, so soon they will return to the street.

Art News
Art Forum
Details
Entertainment Weekly
GQ
Interview
New York Magazine
Print
Us
Vanity Fair
Vogue
Vman
W (actually, I WILL occasionally pay for a copy of W - except that my neighbor throws it out when it's still on the stands, so why bother buying it?)

Other lists to come: Magazines I Read At The Bookstore But Don't Buy and Magazines I Steal From Ms. Keough

Living in both worlds, I see the similarity of comic nerds and magazine obsessives. Colophon 2007 is undoubtedly the magazine version of Comic-con. With the advent of the internet, magazines will be fetishized as objects in much the same way as comics. Magazine stores will soon be selling mylar bags and Fabien Baron statuettes. I think this might be the first magazine store modeled after a comic book shop. Also, my previous post has sparked a conversation between myself and Search & Destroy that is very reminiscent of a nerd fight over the liberties Sam Raimi took in translating Spider-Man to the screen. BTW... Search & Destroy, I love the character of Spider-Man - but the writing of the current comic book is absurd and the art of questionable skill - therefore, I won't be buying it anytime soon. However, if I see it lying around, I'll check it out. Go Spider-Man!

Woodland
Photographs by Mårten Lange
Published by Farewell Books
6" X 8.75"
44 pages, black and white, laser printed and perfect bound
$10

The crisp photography of Mårten Lange's book Woodland is the first project out from Swedish, small-press publisher, Farewell Books (friends of Kasino A4, I think). The book itself embodies one of my favorite kinds of design - low-tech, yet completely elegant. The bright white paper, classic serif typography and printing method of laser printing perfectly present Lange's tangled, high contrast photographs of forests. Lange pushes an otherwise sentimental subject matter into a chaotic abstraction. The branches here are reminiscent of a tangle of amplifier cords - nature transformed into man-made disarray, yet retaining an austere beauty.

I'm on a road trip with my sister, The Ballerina, and for the next few posts I'll be talking about the stuff I find as we go. Right now we're in Tulsa, Oklahoma, setting for The Outsiders and home of Oral Roberts University, The Tulsa Ballet, a pretty good taco truck (I have my priorities straight), the seriously bizarre Dennie Willis museum of dolls, miniatures, trains and robots, and my new favorite bookstore: Gardner's Used Books and Comics. At 23,000 square feet, it's the most enormous used book store in the state of Oklahoma. For you New Yorkers who are used to calculating your bookstores in miles, it's about 4.3. So, wow. Gardners' Books. They have a huge comic book selection, mostly of the superhero variety. Without Mr. Mcginnis' expert advice on what to buy, I got overwhelmed and passed on the comics section. They have a 100 Greatest Mysteries of all Time Wall, which included many of my favorites. They also have the largest selection of train magazines and kung fu magazines I've ever seen in my life. Not sure where to begin, I picked authors names at random and looked for books. I found almost everything I looked for, including Love in a Cold Climate, Travels with my Aunt, The Thin Man, The Royal Family, and Spring Snow. When I bought this stack, I struck up a conversation with the schlubby guy behind the counter. He corrected my grammar and that made me totally happy. Gardners' Books also has a ton of sticker vending machines, a self-serve coffee bar, a tex mex restaurant and an income tax service. This place rules, I'm moving in!

Because reading is fundamental, check out Boldtype - a cool independent book review newsletter I get in my email once a month. You can sign up, or just browse directly on their site. Each issue centers on a theme - this month it's Food.

The Premiere Issue Project is a collection of first issue covers - feel free to submit.

Flickr Find: collection of 1920's-50's illustrated magazine covers - mostly cheesecake.

If you are looking for classic magazines, try millionmagazine.com. Clunky design, but they have nearly every issue of Life, plus collections of Look (my personal favorite), Colliers and The Saturday Evening Post.

Search and Destroy was a tabloid sized newsprint zine out of San Francisco. V. Vale started the legendary music/punk mag in 1977 with $200 of seed money from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Vale later went on to start his own press, RE/Search Publications, and has published such classics as J. G. Ballard's Atrocity Exhibition, Incredibly Strange Music, and Modern Primitives. I love Search and Destroy. I have the issue pictured above framed in my living room. And the collected issues volumes 1 and 2 from RE/Search. And now that I see you can buy an original set of all 11 issues, I must have it. It's all there: interviews with Iggy Pop, Blondie, The Dils, The Avengers, Crime, writing by Jon Savage and Patti Smith. And it's put together in that great San Francisco collage-y paste-up style I talked about in an earlier post on Street Art, the SF punk poster book. Buy the books and zines from the RE/Search site.

Maximum Rock and Roll is another San Francisco newsprint music zine. It, along with a punk radio show, was started by the weird, crotchety, mean yet awesome Tim Yohannon in 1985. Tim Yo also started Blacklist Mailorder (a catalog of punk records and zines) and Epicenter Zone (a record store, venue, and community center) where I worked during my formative teen years. The Operation Phoenix Records website has a big archive of old issues of MRR in PDF form. My favorite things to read are the columns, the reviews and the scene reports. They also have issues of Flipside, Suburban Voice, and HeartattaCk zines.

Small magazines are expensive! An article about boutique glossies from the New York Observer. [via MagCulture]

A trip to Chicago and new zine recommendations. Andrew Scott from SF zinestore Needles & Pens now has a blog on art site Fecal Face. On it he'll talk about his exciting life as a shopkeeper and tell us which zines and books to buy.

Also from Fecal Face, a look at a new SF darkroom, zinestore, gallery space brought to you by cool photo zine and Magazine We Love (tm), Hamburger Eyes.

The Olive Reader, HarperPerennial's blog, loves books, book parties, bookstores, book reviews, book festivals, and other book related things.

Inmodern's Surfin Magazine Rack suggests the form of a butterfly or moth and comes in three lovely finishes. $50 (free shipping for a limited time) is a great deal for something totally made in the USA, and eco-friendly. It's Made from FSC/Rainforest Alliance Certified SmartWood and 100% non-toxic water based stains, so its lovely in every way. Inmodern is the eco-friendly, more designery branch of The Real Simple Furniture company. All their furniture assembles without hardware, like a 3 dimensional puzzle.

A Public Space
6" x 8"
200 pages, perfect bound
full color cover, 2-color inside
$12

As usual, I discovered A Public Space initially because I wandered into their first issue party. How can you resist a beautiful loft space, free booze and a free copy of a mag?—I guess I'm pretty easy. There's a magazine launch party at least once a week in New York so aside from not really having to buy drinks, we end up with stacks of stuff to look at. Most of which is crap. In fact, it's rare that I leave a party with a magazine I'd gladly continue to buy. A Public Space is one of them and last night on my endless trip home from Dallas I read issue 3 from cover to cover. This Brooklyn-based newish (on their 3rd issue) literary magazine is edited by former Paris Review executive editor Brigid Hughes. They describe themselves this way on their about page: "We encourage writers to get away from their desks and investigate what intrigues them, explore, snoop around. There are no boundaries, and we will support writers wherever they take us." I like the theme of investigation that's present throughout the book, from David Levi-Strauss' essay on Chile and writing at night to a special section on Peru to Sam Stephenson's archiving of photographer W. Eugene Smith's life and work. All those pieces were stand outs for me. The focus on Peru is great and includes an essay on young Peruvian writers and the themes that unite them, and photographs of resistance fighters and peasant life in Peru in the 80s and 90s. It's easy for me to space out trying to read a literary journal but so far I'm really enjoying this one.

Buy single issues or subscribe here.

I seriously need to get manly and start building stuff. I am really envious of people who can make furniture happen, and fix-up their own houses. I am especially envious of this magazine rack and hidden bookshelf this guy made.

I would totally buy this if I saw it somewhere! I'm going to try and get Ms. Keough's handy dad to make it for the R&S office.

In his first solo show in Germany The End of Living, The Beginning of Survival at Berlin's Contemporary Fine Arts, Dash Snow reminds us of an important alternate use for a stack of books: a fort! I'm going to add it to my own list of things to do with books. This list includes but is not limited to: ammo, room dividers, shields, hard hats, ways to make my bag heavier, places for the cat to sleep, fashion accessories, and step ladders.

The arguably irrelevant Interview Magazine is perhaps for sale

Flickr Finds: Spies, Lies and Alibis, a collection of pulp covers

Galapagos leaves Williamsburg

Why I love the dearly departed Nest: check out this 2004 interview with Joseph Holtzman discussing the end of the magazine

This summer Printed Matter presents a history of the legendary '60s folk rock group The Fugs. The Fugs were started by Lower East Side poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg. While reading up on the band just now I discovered that the word "fug" originates from a euphemism for "fuck" used in novels from the 40s and 50s. It was most famously used in Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. The first time I heard The Fugs, a friend played me their song Group Grope and I was hooked. These guys are nuts. It's hard to put it into words, so I'll give you a lyric sample: "I'm not ever gonna go to Vietnam. I prefer to stay right here and screw your mom." I think with everything so crazy in the world, right now is a perfect time to revisit The Fugs. The war getting you down? Listen to Kill For Peace. Erosion of our civil liberties pissing you off? Try The Government Surveillance Yodel.

Printed Matter will have complete sets of Kupferberg's Yeah and Swing magazines as well as the full run of Sanders' Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts. I've been wanting to see these for ages. The show opens this Saturday, June 2nd from 5-7 at Printed Matter, 195 Tenth Avenue, NYC. The bands' records and various other ephemera will also be on display. I'm psyched, let's go!