Björk
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Music
Björk Details
Review Music fans of a certain age will recall the lost pleasures of album covers, and especially of box sets, which often included liner notes, lyrics, and interviews (and, of course, records). Bjork, the catalogue for MoMA's spring-blockbuster entertainment, recalls this form, with a slipcase containning four booklets and a slim paperbound book with poetic ruminations on the Icelandic star's first seven albums along with images of the David Bowie-like array of her performing personae. (Christopher Lyon Bookforum)Björk (Museum of Modern Art, March 24) is a beautiful book, let's get that out of the way; it's uniquely designed, and was thoughtfully laid out in a hard slipcase that any fan or newcomer to the artist would appreciate. It is a strange book, separated into five booklets with musical score-sheets printed on the covers, each cover getting the score of a different song, each cover a different color, and each one helping us understand the many shades of Björk's music, art, and life. (David LaGaccia ArtNet News)Beginning March 8, she takes center stage at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where "Bjork," a retrospective surveys her creative experiments over the past 20 years. The exhibition will feature a new, immersive music-and-film project; trace her seven studio albums, from 1993's Debut to 2011's Biophilia (released in a pioneering album-app format); and include her collaborations with drectors, photographers, and designers like Alexander McQueen. (Diane Solway W) Read more About the Author Klaus Biesenbach is the director of MoMA PS1 and chief curator at large at The Musuem of Modern Art, New York.Alex Ross is an American music critic. He has been on the staff of The New Yorker magazine since 1996. He also authored the books The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007) and Listen to This (2011). Nicola Dibben is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Sheffield, co-editor of the journal Empirical Musicology Review and former co-ordinating editor of Popular Music.Timothy Morton is the author of Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (New Metaphysics), The Ecological Thought and Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics.Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson, known as Sjón, is an Icelandic poet, novelist and lyricist. His pen name (meaning "sight") is an abbreviation of his given name (Sigurjón). Sjón frequently collaborates with Bjork and has performed with The Sugarcubes as Johnny Triumph. His works have been translated into more than 35 languages. Read more
Reviews
I saw this book at MOMA in NYC, but didn't want to have to carry it home on the plane (it's big & heavy). If you are a Björk fan, chances are you'll enjoy it. If not, you might not get what all the fuss is about. It's a great set of books in a nice slipcase. The essays are well written, and the whole set is very artfully done.
