The last quarter century has been an extraordinary and turbulent period in the art world. It was a time of creative intensity during which a handful of artists, like Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, managed, in their different ways, to cross over from the rarefied world of high art into popular culture. It was also a time when other promising careers and even whole movements, like Graffiti, spurted to life and then just as suddenly disappeared. During the astonishing boom years of the 1980s, the newly vigorous art market transformed the role of dealers and collectors to give them unprecedented power as tastemakers and the dangerous glamour of Hollywood power agents. And then came the bust. Writer Anthony Haden-Guest has moved within the art world, known the players, and reported on the scene for this entire span of time. True Colors draws on two decades of reporting to deliver an authoritative and deliciously inside account of the contemporary art world that will be the most talked-about book on art since The Shock of the New. Haden-Guest gives vivid portraits of the art world's key players and dramatizes the pivotal moments in the always evolving scene. Skillfully conveying a sense of the intricate geography of the art world, he tells of its clashes of ambition, its intrigues, its power plays. This is how artists survive, or don't survive. True Colors is filled with telling anecdotes and expertly told stories that cohere to give a sense of how the art world works, its current state, and where it may be going.

The 1980s in New York were an ambivalent time: on the one hand, the city was marked by high crime and the AIDS crisis; on the other hand, the economy was booming, helping its profiteers to live decadently. Artists and cultural workers were attracted to the city of contrasts. They dealt critically with issues such as politics and gentrification - but also enjoyed a hedonistic lifestyle. Photographer Tom Warren became one of the most important witnesses of that time. He was a significant part of the New York art scene and gained notoriety for his artistic repurposing of vacant spaces in the East Village. With his portraits of the people and life of New York, he created memories and documents of these times. This monograph showcases his photographs from this period, bringing a bygone decade to life.

Absolutely Augmented Reality takes as its subject the intersection of technology, fine art and the idea of authorship through a series of richly saturated, theatrical and symbolic images that use costume, character and allegory to create a sense of exploration and melancholic intrigue. In this dream world of strange and alluring portraiture, the viewer is delighted by a host of archetypal images, hybrid creatures, surreal motifs, canonical postures, as well as inversions of iconic art historic references. Appealing to fine art, design, and photography consumers alike, this new book features some 100 colour images from and Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song's previously unpublished art project. Alongside the photographs it offers a statement by the two artists and a brief introductory text by art historian Rosa J.H. Berland, as well as critical essays by art critic Anthony Haden-Guest and Lilly Wei, and an interview with Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song conducted by Iona Whittaker, and Arnau Salvadoe.

Packed with stars, models, socialites, and everyone else who could sneak past the fabled velvet ropes, Studio 54 defined disco and launched the celebrity-driven culture of today. Noted writer Haden-Guest takes readers behind the scenes and tells the whole story -- the glory days, the drugs, the deaths, and the corruption.There was a place where virtually all the themes and energies of the '70s -- disco, the cult of celebrity, the coke and the quaaludes, the glam and the glitter, the pre-AIDS sexual abandon, the emergence of gay culture, uninhibited women, and the general air of debauchery -- were played out with maximum flamboyance.

It was a place that epitomized an era and exemplified the zeitgeist. No one is better suited to chronicle the Studio 54 story than Anthony Haden-Guest. He has re-created the scene and rendered the action in vivid detail from his personal experiences with the key players: the owners, bartenders, and bouncers; the celebrities and the dealers; the divas, DJs and doormen; even the prosecutor who busted the owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager for tax evasion. "The Last Party" is more than a biography of one place. It also tells the story of Nightworld, a realm spawned by Studio 54, comprising past and present clubs. Nightlords, and Nightpeople, their doings and their secrets, which are still unfolding.

New York City in the 1970s was the setting for Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, and Saturday Night Fever, the nightmare playground for Son of Sam and The Warriors, the proving grounds for graffiti, punk, hip-hop, and all manner of other public spectacle. Musicians, artists, and writers could subsist even in Manhattan, while immigrants from the world over were reinventing the city in their own image. Others, fed up with crime, filth and frustration, simply split. Fast-forward three decades and today New York can appear a glamorous metropolis, with real estate prices soaring higher than its skyscrapers. But is this fresh-scrubbed, affluent city really an improvement on its grittier - and more affordable - predecessor? Taking us back to the streets where eccentricity and anomie were pervasive, New York Calling unlocks life in the unpolished Apple, where, it seemed, anything could happen. All five boroughs - the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island - comprising hundreds of neighborhoods and the interlaced worlds of politics, crime, drugs, sex, and mischief, are explored with a love of the city unclouded by romance yet undimmed by cynicism. Acclaimed historian Marshall Berman and journalist Brian Berger gather here a stellar group of writers and photographers who combine their energies to weave a rich tale of struggle, excitement, and wonder. John Strausbaugh explains how Uptown has taken over Downtown, as Tom Robbins examines the mayors and would-be mayors who have presided over the transformation. Margaret Morton chronicles the homeless, while Robert Atkins offers a personal view of the city's gay culture and the devastating impact of aids. Anthony Haden-Guest and John Yau offer insiders' views of the New York art world, while Brandon Stosuy and Allen Lowe recount their discoveries of the local rock and jazz scenes. Armond White and Leonard Greene approach African-American culture and civil rights from perspectives often marginalized in so-called polite conversation. Daily life in New York has its dramatic moments too. Luc Sante gives us glimpses of a city perpetually on the grift, Jean Thilmany and Philip Dray share secrets of Gotham's ethnic enclaves, Richard Meltzer walks, Jim Knipfel rides the subways, and Robert Sietsema criss-crosses the city, indefatigably tasting everything from giant Nigerian tree snails to Fujianese turtles. It's a long way from old Brooklyn to the new Times Square. But New York Calling reminds us of what has changed - and what's been lost - along the way.