A House to Die In: ICA Bookshop Recommended Reading

Megalomania, failure, jealousy and architecture. We've put together a recommended reading list to accompany our latest exhibition Bjarne Melgaard: A House to Die In.

The Architecture of Failure

Douglas Murphy Douglas Murphy treats his readers with ludicrous civil engineering projects, walking cities, bodies without organs, transient palaces of banality, 50,000 people staring at Bono and the unbearable horror of iron and glass.

Is the Rectum a Grave?

Leo Bersani This series of essays opens up with a secret about sex and thrusts on with gay shame, cruising with Aristophanes, sexual positions with Genet, the end of sex and the biblical commandment which Freud called absurd. A unique opportunity to explore the fruitful career of a formidable intellect.

Megalomania

Philippe Tretiack With the tagline “Too much is never enough,” this oversized book is a richly illustrated drooling mouthful of excess via hotels, architecture, sculpture and celebrity extravagance.

Rich Texts

John Kelsey Compiled for the first time here, the critic, artist, gallerist, dealer and translator John Kelsey’s selected essays gamesomely convey some of the most poignant challenges in the art world, and the many social roles it creates.

Dope Menace

Stephen J Gertz Dope Menace collects hundreds of lurid and collectable covers, from xenophobic turn-of-the-century tomes about the opium trade, to the beatnik glories of reefer smoking, to the spaced-out- psychedelic 60s.

Jealous

Bjarne Melgaard Jealous features a wealth of collage, paintings, drawings, silkscreens, you name it, all boiling with Bjarne’s splattering energy and muscular emergency. Texts by Gunnar B. Kvaran, John Kelsey, Jan Hoet, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hanne Beate Ueland.

Art-Architecture Complex

Hal Foster If you are looking for a book which includes an extensive conversation with Richard Serra, an argument that a fusion of architecture and art has become a defining feature of contemporary culture and also one which is written by someone called Hal, look no further. A riveting, illuminating study of collision.

What is Madness?

Darian Leader Beginning and ending with the case of Harold Shipman - a mass-murderer so apparently 'normal' that some of his patients said they would still be treated by him even after his conviction - psychoanalyst Darian Leader explores discreet, omnipresent madness, and argues that it is only through revising our concept of what madness is that we’ll be able to help people to rebuild their lives.

Killing Pablo

Mark Bowden Killing Pablo charts the rise and spectacular fall of the Columbian drug lord, Pablo Escobar, the richest and most powerful criminal in history. The book exposes the massive illegal operation by covert US Special Forces to hunt down and assassinate the billionaire baddy.

All titles are available from the ICA Bookshop along with a host of other books, DVDs and magazines. We're open 11am – 9pm Tuesday - Sunday. Every purchase supports the ICA.

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