Contest: Pop Life + Swoon

August 9th, 2010

Swoon

This contest is now closed.

We love Abrams books, so we’re thrilled to have the chance to give away a couple of their best recent art books to a Block reader.

Swoon (Cover)

First up is Swoon, a book about the street artist by the same name. You’ve probably seen Swoon’s highly-detailed wheatpastes before: mermaid women receding into doorways, girls whose bodies are intertwined with the facade of a building. It’s pretty powerful stuff. This well-thought-out book features plenty of photographs of Swoon’s work and details her rise from the streets to the gallery world. As for the text, highlights include an introduction from Jeffrey Deitch, as well as one chapter written by Swoon herself about the Miss Rockaway Armada.

Pop Life: Art in a Material World (Cover).

Second up is Pop Life. It’s is a glossy 208-page book published to accompany the Tate Modern’s Pop Life exhibition, now showing in Ottawa at the National Gallery. The book focuses on post-Warhol artists whose embrace of celebrity and commerce made them stars. Keith Haring, Takashi Murakami, Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst make appearances, just to name a few. And if you want to get all intellectual, there’s a bunch of analysis from the editor of Artforum, the curator of the Pinault Collection, and the curator of the Tate Modern.

Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas in The Shop, 2009

Of course you want these on your coffee table! To enter, just tweet “Give me art books!” (or something like that) @theblockmag – or leave a comment here.