Black and white and in full colour

It's 8:00pm on a Monday, still in the shop, snow storm outside, Elton John's A Single Man on the record player... know what that means? It means it's time for art.

We've got two very good looking and affordable new art books in the store I want to type about, both by contemporary American artists: Mat Brinkman's Heads and Dana Schutz's Rizzoli catalog.

Heads is an incredible collection of ink-on-rice paper heads, one of Rory's acquisitions from the New York Art Book Fair. As Brinkman drew these heads, the ink from each drawing would seep onto the next page, giving form to the next head, and so on. The effect is marvelous; some heads are more skeletal, some come out as out of focus b&w Wookiees.

Dana Shutz's bright book provides a nice contrast to Brinkman's stark one. Shutz is a contemporary painter partial to dark humour and fauvist palettes. I adore her Mona from 2006 (pictured below).