Todd Oldham

Cindy Sherman’s retrospective at MoMA made it clear that she is a serious genius with a volume of distinctive influential work that has never waned in creativity, ingenuity, and execution. It is hard to isolate any of her extraordinary work that has not had a whopping influence on the state of the arts, but the film still series executed in the late 1970s and 1980s has now shaped generations of artists.

One of the first art books I ever owned, it still affects me today exactly the same way it did when I first saw it. Haunting, heartbreaking, and always beautifully framed, Arbus’s work remains astonishing.

Brazilian landscape artist Roberto Burle Marx’s lush and exotic modernists are original, scrappy, and elegant. Burle Marx has a unique hand, combining graphic elements like his work on Brazilian beaches and hyper-verdant environments that feel otherworldly.

I love this book. I even got to work on it taking the portraits of Amy. but I would still say I loved it even if I didn’t get to work on it. This book is one of the most extravagant efforts on record with thousands of pieces of custom art and photography. Amy’s vision is perfectly realized on every page, with a singular language that is so rich you can open this book on any page and land on a jewel. Amy assembled a world-class team of artists to work on the book, including Hillary Moore, Justin Theroux, Billy Erb, Paul Dinello, Laurie Faggioni, and more; even the hand-lettering is by fine artist Ellen Berkinblit. The recipes are delicious and dead serious, but the unifying thread is Amy’s pitch-perfect writing. Whether offering up the recipe for SPA-GHETTI (really delicious!) or giving tips on how to wash your vagina (complete with drawings). this book is a must-read for us all. Her new book, Simple Times, is just as good

Note: Amy spoke at the Book Expo author breakfast when the book launched, along with fellow authors Barack Obama and John Updike, where she read the “How to Wash Your Vagina” chapter at 8:00 in the morning.

Nick Waplington’s photos had the same effect on me as Diane Arbus’s did. The work is beautifully composed, creating a perfect duality with the subject matter. Spooky and nervous-making, with essays by Richard Avedon and John Berger.

I received this book as a gift from a dear friend and it remains one of the best presents ever. The Bouvier sisters took a ship to Europe one summer and kept detailed drawings and diary entries of all they encountered. Well-bred and well-mannered Jacqueline and Lee had a unique version of travel involving “letters of introduction” and bygone luxury but remained unspoiled and grateful. Their doodles and sketches that appear throughout the book show the surprising talent the sisters had at drawing. This book is hard to find but worth the effort.

No one has the ability to string words together like Dorothy Parker. The stories remain fresh after years of reading them and I often marvel how contemporary they are. I have clearly distressed my paperback version so this was the first e-book I bought.

I am mystified by and under the spell of Tim Hawkinson. No one’s brain thinks or sees like his. Every piece is without reference and unique. The last piece by Hawkinson I saw was a bat made from Radio Shack bags that looked as if it had been plucked from the Natural History Museum.