Art books, men's clothes and contemporary connections

This story actually begins several years ago. Since I used to live on the West Side of LA and not too far from Santa Monica when I had some spare time I would go to an art book shop on the Third Street Promenade called Arcana. It was a magnificent little shop with a well schooled staff that were able to answer many of my obsessive questions. They not only stocked the most current art books but had a formidable collection of out of print books that could cost what I would be willing to pay for an original work of art. It is at this store quite by chance that I ran into a Japanese edition of the diaries of Peter Beard for the first time and was overwhelmed. He was a fashion photographer and diarist but was born to an extremely wealthy family. This wealth allowed his to live and travel between Kenya and Montauk, NY. His photography focused heavily on the animals of Africa and the women that magazines such as Vogue paid him to photograph. I believe however his best work was in his diaries where he would juxtapose these images and others along with his notes and occasionally his own blood to create stunning visual tapestries. What makes this relevant to Austin is the odd fact that although Arcana had priced Beard out of my range, in shopping for Christmas gifts I ran across the fact that STAG on South Congress claimed to have a new edition of his available for sale!

I guess you will take your art where you will find it. Beard to me is a precursor for many different types of art. Particularly in the way he layers darker imagery and then writes quotes or thoughts over it. Some of his work has an almost industrial feel to it as it is so caught up in the imagery of death and power. There also seems to be a connection to the contemporary artist from Southern California Ed Templeton.

If anyone finds this post and is interested, I eventually found the collected hardbound Peter Beard edition through Amazon at half the price quoted at Stag who had actually sold out! It appears there are more than a couple of people in town that know who he is and are willing to pay a pretty penny to enjoy his images.