Book publisher Rizzoli has released a new book celebrating influential American artist Barbara Kruger.

Bold, philosophical, radical, subversive: the art of Barbara Kruger focuses on decoding the social-psychological messages embedded in popular culture. Marrying pictures to words in a variety of media and sites, Kruger raises issues of power politics, sexuality, and representation. Borrowing slogans and phrases from the lexicon of thought, and using the potent weapon of pure graphics, Kruger’s art offers up powerfully distilled messages of word and image. This beautifully designed book is the most comprehensive volume on Kruger’s body of work to date. The book explores her work over the past thirty years, including many previously unpublished works. Aptly designed to embody a manifesto-like aesthetic, the book also presents bold spreads of the artist’s large-scale works and public projects, which confront such controversial and weighty topics as abortion, consumerism, spirituality, and identity.

The book was produced in collaboration with the artist and is now available via Amazon.

Check out the full cover of the book after the jump.

Beginning of June the Bape Gallery Kyoto will be hosting a Bape Archive Exhibition. The exhibition will showcase the most interesting collaborative projects that the brand has worked on in the past 17 years. Furthermore old collaborations, such as the above Futura collab t-shirt from 1997, will be released at the occasion. Also the 15th anniversary book, which was released from Rizzoli in 2008, will be released in a special black/multi-camo version.

The exhibition runs from June 5th until June 20th at Bape Gallery Kyoto.

Take a more detailed look at the special items after the jump

After a first announcement a couple of months ago, we can finally show you the cover of the upcoming Kaws book, published by Rizzoli. The book will be released in September 2010 and of course we will keep you posted on the release.

Rizzoli has amounted a series of very strong titles on and by people from our culture in the last couple of years. For Spring/Summer 2010 the book publisher will come out with the Supreme book by Aaron Bondaroff and today we learned that a book entirely concentrating on the life and career of New York artist Kaws will also be released.

“This comprehensive monograph explores KAWS’s art career in depth, from his early street art interventions to his recent send-ups of familiar cultural icons. With wit, irreverence, and even affection, KAWS takes infa- mous entertainment characters such as the Simpsons and the Smurfs and traps them in plastic blister packages while reinterpreting their appearance. The packaged “Kimpsons” and “Kurfs” are new types of hybrid artworks that both serve and criticize contemporary consumer culture. Also featured is KAWS’s astute and prolific body of commercial work, including apparel from his Japanese store OriginalFake, a partnership with Medicom Toy, as well as product design, limited-edition toys, graphic designs; collaborations with architect Masamichi Katayama and artists Hajime Sorayama, Todd James, and Mark Dean Veca; collaborations with companies including Comme des Garçons, Levis, Lucas Films, The Simpsons, Nike, Supreme, and Marc Jacobs; and Japanese companies such as A Bathing Ape, Undercover, and Visvim.”

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum will hold a large Kaws exhibition from June 27th until January 2nd 2011 and for the opening of the exhibition the book will also be released. We will keep you posted!

Celebrating their 15th Anniversary this year, Japan’s A Bathing Ape has achieved more than most other brands in this business. Today the brand is still going strong and heavily expanding overseas, outside of Japan.
No matter what your opinion on the brand is these days, they were the first in many areas and have pushed the envelope for the market in general. 
"Aptly titled A Bathing Ape, the 368-page book takes a look back at Bape’s design history, through pictures of products like G-Shocks, all over printed hoodies, and sneakers, along with the celebrities like Kanye West, Pharrell and T.I who wear them. The book will be distributed by Rizzoli International Publications and will retail for $60.00 in November." Via Complex.
The book was written by by Nigo, Ian Luna and Akio Iida. More info here.
Check some preview pages after the jump.