book

SURF CULTURE: review from ‘ADRENALIN’

 
Laguna Beach is a funky town by
Orange County standards.
 
Sure it has its high-rent bistros and slick boutiques, and its streets are prowled by as many Porsches as any of the beach communities up and down LA’s coastal megalopolis. But ‘tuna town’ has a creative edge. You’re more likely to hump into an interesting character in somewhere like the Sandpiper, the late nigh divery on PCH, than you are the perfectly molar-ed spawn of a gated community. And this, moreover, is the centre of the surf universe as far as America is concerned. So what a perfect place to get together a definitive exhibition on surf culture that both reflects the material manifestation of wave-riding over the last century or so, and places it in its contemporary megabucks manifestation. And what a perfect context expands and adds to what was on show.
 
Hiring David Carson to design and produce Surf Culture: The Art History of surfing is another inspired decision by the publishers. Carson has become synonymous with surf culture in print through his association with Surfer magazine and, perhaps more importantly, the mould-breaking but tragically short-lived quarterly, Beach Culture, which, in the early nineties, attempted to break the stranglehold of hydro-porn and monocultural content that had (and continues to) beset mainstream surf magazines. Carson went on to create the initial designs for Raygun, another title whose visual identity broke ground during the publishing boom of the nineties.
 
There are interesting texts in the book by the likes of (you guessed it) Craig Stecyck, and an anthropological perspective on wave-riding by the University of Hawaii’s Ben Finney. Tom Wolfe’s classic deconstruction of San Diego’s Windansea surf community is re-produced, and Carson, as one would expect, provides fluid, dynamic layouts and images, which suit the intention and feel of the book perfectly, even if they are at times a little heavy-handed. But perhaps the book’s major achievement is its placing of surfing at the cutting edge of creative culture and, in this age of corporate bullshit in board shorts, actively asking the question: what exactly is surfing?
 
Surf Culture: The Art History of Surfing is available at all good bookshops. www.gingkopress.com

Review from ‘THE SURFER’S JOURNAL’

 
Surf Culture: The Art History of Surfing By Bolton Colburn, Ben Finney, Tyler Stallings, C.R. Stecyk, Deanne Stillman, and Tom Wolfe
Designed by David Carson LAM/Gingko Press; softbound: www.lagunaartmuseum.org
 
260 pages: $ 39.95
My review hopper runneth over. Suffering through a mini-boom in surf-book publishing, the wire rack I nicked from the dumpster is exploding with camp, kitsch, funk, and dross. I could return most to the Slush Pile Gods and do us all a favor. Exaggerating? You’re denying the existence of a 32-page saddle-stitched pamphlet on the deodorization of wetsuit booties? A 340-page coffee-table book on the history of Newport’s Echo Beach era? Permanent Wave: Surfer Hairstyles? The unexpurgated Filosa?
Welcome to my world.
But there was a diamond in the slag; Bolton Colburn had forwarded a copy of the catalog for that smoking Laguna show (“Mana Overboard”TSJ 11.5) and it’s over the top. We’re talking way better than it needed to be. Rather than a laundry list of items in the show, it’s a deeply vigorous look at the art history and pop interface of surfing. Like the show itself, you don’t want to miss a drop of it. Carson is all up in this thing, so it’s a vibrating eye feast of bent graphics. What, you aren’t running to the phone yet? -S.H.

SURF CULTURE: THE ART HISTORY OF SURFING
Laguna Art Museum with Gingko Press

 
Containing everything from doodles on scrap paper to ancient Peruvian surf imagery to magazine covers of yore and kitsch plastic sculptures, this book tells us something about our own art, how we perceive it and how the outside world sees it. For one thing, despite surfers’ self-percieved image of underground rebelliousness, outsiders consistently seem to see surfing as a symbol of sheer joy, freedom and good health, often useful for selling completely unrelated products.

Among the numerous key players behind this are known geniuses Craig Stecyk of Skateboarder magazine and recently Dogtown and Z Boys fame, and designer David Carson, formerly of Surfer magazine. Carson put the book together and it has to be said, despite every image being covered with its own caption text, it still makes a lively visual feast, a piece of art in itself. from Surfer’s Path