Artful Volumes

The title of MARIAN BANTJES: PRETTY PICTURES (Thames & Hudson/ Metropolis Books, $75) projects a William Morris–like faith in the decorative, as well as an ironic awareness of that concept’s toxicity for modernists. The Vancouver-based artist’s 2010 collection, I Wonder, amply displayed her design virtuosity: letterforms growing swirls and curlicues, like a figure skater’s trail on ice, and intricate border and background designs, assembled in a gorgeous—if a bit airless—small-format volume. Her thumping new fourteen-inch-tall monograph, in which Bantjes looked after every detail, allows her

culture Sept/Oct/Nov 2013

Artful Volumes

Smartly designed by Laura Lindgren, PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR (Metropolitan Museum of Art, $50) evokes nineteenth-century photo albums in which loved ones were preserved like flowers under glass. A fine text by Met photography curator Jeff L. Rosenheim effortlessly weaves strands of photographic, political, military, and social history. The Civil War severely tested the new medium of photography and produced some of nineteenth-century America’s most iconic images. Familiar masters such as Brady, Gardner, O’Sullivan, and company are well represented, but anonymous photographers’