If you are like me you have some last minute shopping to do and it's mostly for aesthetically conscious thinkers. Over the years I've found that photography books always go over very well. So here are two of my favorites that are in stock locally in Portland. Todd Eberle's Empire of Space and Winter by Jeffrey Conley


Known initially for his defining photographs of Donald Judd's spaces Todd Eberle has gone on to produce a compelling photographic retrospective of architecture, art, portraits and design in book form, Empire of Space.

It isn't just that Eberle has great subjects like, Bill Clinton's desk, Judd's Marfa spaces or MoMA curators, think of it as a tour de force in the power of aesthetics and the aesthetics of power (which are two different and slippery forces that he keeps in well balanced tension). Eberle has an almost ancient Egyptian eye, in that his near hieroglyphic images always make a dispassionate and intelligently descriptive study of the staying power in people, places and things (against the forces of time)... (more)

No idea what to get? Here are three very nice books on; Asian art, Lynda Benglis and the Chinati Foundation.


Asian Art Now
by Melissa Chiu & Benjamin Genocchio, published by Monacelli Press (2010)

In the past few six years I’ve subjected myself to numerous Asian contemporary art survey shows.

Published by The Monacelli Press

We are a culture obsessed with the secrets that will demystify genius. Convinced of its inherent oddity, we see its anomaly and resulting masterpieces as too fantastic to originate from a normal life. The fame that follows genius and its resulting celebritydom enchant us even more, sending our level of star-struck into the lull of proper swoon. The common assumption intrinsic to genius seems to be...