Glenn O'Brien

A portrait of a keen social observer at the center of the last 50 years of cultural life, captured through a vivid selection of O'Brien's own writings on music to fashion to downtown art and, just as importantly and unexpectedly, the political temperature of America.

A Portrait

Intelligence for Dummies

The ultimate sartorial and etiquette guide, from the ultimate life and style guru. By turns witty, sardonic, and always insightful, Glenn O’Brien’s advice column has been a must-read for several generations of men (and their spouses and girlfriends). Having cut his teeth as a contributor at Andy Warhol’s Interview in its heyday, O’Brien sharpened them as the creative director of advertising at the hip department store Barneys New York for ten years before starting his advice column at Details magazine in 1996. Eventually his column, "The Style Guy," migrated to its permanent home at GQ magazine, where O’Brien dispenses well-honed knowledge on matters ranging from how to throw a cocktail party (a diverse guest list is a must), putting together a wardrobe for a trip to Bermuda (pack more clothes for less dressing), or when it is appropriate to wear flip-flops in public (never). How To Be a Man is the culmination of O’Brien’s thirty years of accumulated style and etiquette wisdom, distilled through his gimlet eye and droll prose. With over forty chapters on style and fashion (and the difference), on dandies and dudes, grooming and decorating, on how to dress age-appropriately and how to age gracefully, this guide is the new essential read for men of all ages.

A Guide to Style and Behavior for the Modern Gentleman

How to Be a Man

Essays, Diatribes, Homilies and Screeds 1980-1997

Soapbox

"Like Art" was the title of my Artforum column that ran from 1985 to 1990, but it was also my philosophy of advertising. Advertising was like art, and more and more art was like advertising. Ideally the only difference would be the logo. Advertising could take up the former causes of art--philosophy, beauty, mystery, empire. We were clearly living in a time of extremist hypocrisy where various forms of creative work descried one another. Price-gouging painters looked down onlowly craftsmen and entertainment journeymen. Millionaire rock stars adopted a quasi-communist stance, emphasizing the anti-commercia aspect of their work. From back cover.

Glenn O'Brien on Advertising

Like Art

Inez Van Lamsweerde/Vinoodh Matadin. Pretty Much Everything

The ultimate bar book, from the world’s finest cognac producer. Lavishly illustrated, this is the first book on the world's most famous cognac producer. Considered a benchmark of excellence, its blends have become icons of refinement and luxury. In Pass the Henny, renowned writer Glenn O’Brien invites the reader to discover the history of cognac. The highly entertaining text, filled with extraordinary events and O’Brien’s irresistible humor, is married with classic cocktail recipes and evocative imagery that conveys the lifestyle of the Hennessy connoisseur through the ages, including the Mad Men of the 1960s and today’s stars of hip-hop. Featuring contributions from such cultural luminaries as Shepard Fairey, Nas, Futura, Fab 5 Freddy, and Todd Selby as well as never-before-seen images from the Hennessy archive, Pass the Henny is an informative and engaging account of the world’s most revered brandy and a book that belongs on every cognac enthusiast’s shelf.

A Toast to the World's Preeminent Spirit

Hennessy

Tom Sachs

Alex Chohlas-Wood

This volume presents Tom Sachs' most recent bricolage sculptures, some of which play off works by Lichtenstein and Richter, as well as singer James Brown, African sculpture and Sevres porcelain. Several of these paintings incorporate Sachs' pyrography technique, whereby "paint strokes" are burned and etched into the wood surface.

Work

Richard Marshall

Franklin Sirmans

Basquiat

Charlie Ahearn

Ricky Powell

For two decades, Ricky Powell has prowled the streets of his native New York, toured the world with hip hop's biggest acts, and full-on crashed celebrity-studded parties on both coasts. Equipped with only his wits and an instamatic camera, Powell elbowed his way into the center of the scene with no shame. "It's for public access," Powell could be heard, pleading for an interview with a pizza shop owner on his cult cable TV show, "Rappin' with the Rickster."

Ricky Powell Photographs, 1985-2005

Public Access

Dave Hickey

Todd Eberle

Contrasting ultramodernist photographs taken over a thirty-year period constitute the first book by one of the most celebrated photographers working today. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1963, and first coming into prominence in the early 1990s with his iconic photographs of Donald Judd’s works and architecture, Todd Eberle’s photographs document the disparate images that make up American architecture, landscapes, and society and are united by a minimalist aesthetic that runs through his work. Whether his approach to a particular subject is earnest (an unfurling flag) or kitsch (the Vegas strip), Eberle brings to his photographs a heightened sense of precision, symmetry, and proportion. The Empire of Space is a lavish look at Eberle’s career and features many rare and never-before-published portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and interiors. In the spirit of Walker Evans, Eberle creates an enduring and poetic portrait of America, the arts, and architecture through thoughtfully contrasting and analogous photographs. This exciting and definitive book on Eberle’s illustrious legacy is sure to rank among the most important publications to mix modernism, minimalism, and photography.

Empire of Space

Draws on memoirs, poems, letters, essays, and other sources to provide a tour outside the mainstream of mid-twentieth-century America, exploring how period luminaries reflected the experiences of various counterculture groups.

Writing from America's Hip Underground

The Cool School

エドベルトグリオ

マリポール

耀けるニューヨーク・アンダーグラウンドの軌跡。マッド・クラブでの狂騒が蘇る、貴重なヴィジュアルを多数記録。

JEAN‐MICHEL BASQUIAT IN DOWNTOWN81

NEW YORK BEAT

The current GQ "Style Guy" shares his best advice on women, manners, sex, grooming, and dating.

The Style Guy

Nancy Princenthal

Trinie Dalton

Chris J. Martin

Drawing on inspiration from Buddhism to Amy Winehouse, Chris Martin creates bold abstract works that explore the unknowable psychological tendencies of art. His canvases are characterized by flat-yet-textured planes of saturated color, and will often incorporate found materials and highly personal paper ephemera. Works such as Untitled (2013) demonstrate the influence of Pablo Picasso's collages, and his canvases' strong geometries also elaborate a self-proclaimed attachment to Piet Mondrian. Martin's practice came of age in 1980s New York, which saw the explosion of the East Village art scene, led by Keith Haring. This monograph collects texts by Glenn O'Brien, Nancy Princenthal, Trinie Dalton and Dan Nadel: in detail essays are focused on Chris Martin as a young man in he 1970s (Glenn O'Brien); on Brooklyn in the 1990s and Martin's influence in the 2000s (Dan Nadel); on Chris Martin and the history of New York abstraction (Nancy Princenthal) and on the culture that has informed Chris Martin (Trinie Dalton).

Chris Martin

Jon Savage

Jesse Frohman

A book to be published in the 20th-anniversary year of the Nirvana front man's death features 90 previously unpublished photographs taken in August 1993 for the London Observer's Sunday magazine—the last formal photo shoot in which Cobain participated. 10,000 first printing.

Glenn O'Brien

About

Books

Join the club