We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

Miss Manners, aka Judith Martin, began writing her syndicated column in 1978. Emily Post was penning etiquette advice as early as the 1920s. Both provided reliable guidelines on how to act politely in this complicated modern era––neither, unfortunately, had much of an interest in the contemporary art scene.

This is where I Like Your Work comes in. Art journal Paper Monument has produced a tiny (but information-dense) booklet with features from 38 artists, critics, curators and dealers on the “sometimes serious and sometimes ridiculous topic of manners in the art world.”

Tuck it in your own back pocket or slide it under the studio door of someone who really needs it.

Good art shouldn’t require explanation, but it should benefit from analysis. In other words, if you can look at a piece for two seconds and comprehend it entirely, there’s something wrong with the work. Or with you.

Paper Monument, a journal of contemporary art, makes for a prime supplement to art-viewing. There are sharp essays (”The End of Carnality is the Beginning of Facebook”), a cultural analysis of YouTube, pieces about design, Deleuze, sculpture and Laurel Nakadate. Consider the journal your secret weapon.