Miranda July

Presents a collection of short works featuring sympathetic protagonists whose inherent sensitivities render them particularly vulnerable to unexpected events.

In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing the screenplay for her much-anticipated second film. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the "PennySaver," the iconic classifieds booklet that reached everywhere and seemed to come from nowhere. Who was the person selling the "Large leather Jacket, $10"? It seemed important to find out--or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay. Accompanied by photographer Brigitte Sire, July crisscrossed Los Angeles to meet a random selection of "PennySaver" sellers, glimpsing thirteen surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways. Elegantly blending narrative, interviews, and photographs with July's off-kilter honesty and deadpan humor, this is a story of procrastination and inspiration, isolation and connection, and grabbing hold of the invisible world.

Filmmaker. Author. Performer. Shopkeeper. Miranda July--the most impressive cross-disciplinary artist of her generation--is brought into focus in this career-spanning retrospective. Regardless of the medium, July's daring, urgent, and idiosyncratic voice finds unexpectedly accessible forms that reflect the poignancy and strangeness of the human plight. In film, fiction, performance, public art, commerce, and even a smartphone app, July deftly explores themes of inclusivity, desire, fear, and fantasy. This chronological survey spans the artist's entire career to date, including her early plays and fanzines, participatory works, and personal projects which illuminate the multidimensionality and timeliness of her work. Miranda July is brought to life in an introductory interview with Julia Bryan-Wilson and candid recollections by friends, collaborators, curators, assistants, and audience members: Carrie Brownstein, David Byrne, Spike Jonze, Sheila Heti, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and July herself. This revealing, insightful commentary provides an intimate perspective on the artist's ever-evolving process. July may be impossible to categorize, but the enduring importance of her work and her status as an essential cultural icon is irrefutable.

A haunted woman's reclusively ordered world is thrown into chaos by a houseguest who bullies her into reality and brings love into her life. A first novel by the best-selling author of No One Belongs Here More Than You. 125,000 first printing.

This first in-depth study of Miranda July's work reveals some of its major motives and consequently provides fascinating insights into the lifestyle of the contemporary white Californian middle class. Through an analysis of July's award-winning intermedial work, the author lays open how July takes individualism and self-help as constitutive for the creative class. Although a member of the creative class herself, July's voice oscillates between irony and approval. July thus paints a fascinating portrait of neurotic hipsterism, which triggers self-reflection in the general reader and critical thinking in the cultural analyst.

Presents a collection of art and personal stories taken from the authors' Web site in which participants respond to a variety of artistic assignments, including "Take a flash photo under your bed," "Write your life story in less than a day," and "Make an encouraging banner."

"Like all my favorite art, these paintings bring out that covetous feeling. I want to wear them, dance to them, show them off as an example of how life feels to me: dirty, dumb, terrifying, spiritual, and so funny."—Miranda July "In a time of ironic detachment, Margaux Williamson is a painter of extreme candor, but the violence of her vision is cut with wonder and love. Sometimes she recalls Phillip Guston, sometimes she's like a Pittsburgh-born van Gogh; usually she reminds me of nobody at all. Seeing as she sees feels like waking up."—Ben Lerner From the artist the Toronto Star called "one of the best artists of her generation," and whose 2010 movie Teenager Hamlet was praised by the likes of James Franco and William Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt, comes a breakthrough work for a world where the image of a painting on one's desktop is as real as the painting hanging in the gallery. Margaux Williamson has conceived of a place that never existed, called The Road at the Top of the World Museum, located in the far north, and populated it with her most accomplished paintings yet. With essays by Chris Kraus, Leanne Shapton, David Balzer, and Mark Greif, and reproductions of eighty paintings, this, her first book, transcends the boundary between the authentic and the imaginary, and collapses the distinction between art show, museum catalog, and document of something astonishing that never was. Margaux Williamson was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and lives in Toronto, Ontario. She's co-author of the cultural criticism website Back to the World.