The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa

Design by Barbara de Wilde

The DayGlo orange question mark (not so bright here, but trust me, "glo" it does) shouts from across the room that there's a question that needs to be answered: who stole the Mona Lisa in 1911, almost 400 years after da Vinci finished it? The answer's not so simple: Vincenzo Peruggia was arrested after trying to sell it in 1913 to the Ufizzi Gallery in Florence, but author R.A. Scotti discusses others' possible involvement in the theft. Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire (who is credited with coining the word "surrealism") were among the suspects.


There's more than a small nod toward surrealism in de Wilde's cover, and a pretty brilliant juxtaposition of the modern with the classical (suggestive of modern art's relationship to its historic past). Again, trust me: find this at your local bookstore and see just how unique this is.

Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution

Cover art by Martha Rosler

Not sure that I've ever featured an exhibit catalogue on the BDR before. If I haven't, this is a heck of a way to start.


Check out the page maintained by LA's Museum of Contemporary Art for a spirited discussion of this cover (or tell us what you think here). About the art on the cover itself, someone on the MOCA site quotes the catalogue:

"In one series of thirty-one works, ‘Body Beautiful’, or ‘Beauty Knows No Pain’, Rosler interrupted magazine advertisements by collaging them with elements that call attention to the ubiquitous use of women’s bodies and body parts in the media to market consumer goods."

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Street Art and the War on Terror

What an arresting image on this collection of political street art, which Steven Heller points out "will be the only record for most of the pieces here" given their ephemeralness. Buy this book on Amazon.com.

Visual Shock

Design by Chip Kidd

I'll be honest: I'm not exactly sure why I like this. It might be that I appreciate the restraint: for a history of controversial art, it would be all to easy to put something by Mapplethorpe or Koons or Hirst on the cover in order to create the titular "visual shock." Putting the Washington Monument on the cover drives home the idea that yesterday's controversy is today's banality.

Can someone help out and identify the object on the right? UPDATE: It's Constantin Brancusi's Bird in Space. Thanks to those who wrote in.


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