Customer Reviews

Tiki Modern

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've read many, many art books. Seldom have I had one that gave me such a delirious buzz as Tiki Modern. It's like walking into some cool but forgotten museum until your mind feels like it's going to explode from too much input. I just got it, today, and I can only look at it for short bits. It's so powerful.

Although I'm not a baby boomer and I do have more than my share of irony, I genuinely love this stuff. The tiki art craze was exciting and gutsy. It was totally unafraid to take a concept and run naked through the streets with it. The fact that it still offends the delicate artistic palates and political sensibilities of others only proves its validity. Besides that, tiki was damn fun.

I never thought anyone could pull off a book that was better than the original "Book of Tiki", but Sven has done it. It's a tiki feast for the eyes and the soul.

This book is large, this book is loaded, and this book is awesome! It is a steal at this price and it is loaded with TONS of cool retro color tiki pics. Also, did I mention there is some nude (topless) vintage tiki PIN-UP babes in this book too? It is perfect for lonely Friday nights in your tiki bar bachelor pad. Oops, did I just say that? Anyways, what more could you possibly want from a tiki book! I can't say enough good things about this book other than it must have been a true labor of love by the author and I wish there were more books out there like this one! Anyone that would criticize or knock a book like this is either not into tiki, has their nose out of joint because they too are "another-modern-tiki-artist-come-lately" with an over inflated sense of importance and ego, and were not mentioned in this book, or they have had one too many Mai-Tai's with their crack cocaine and have fried their brain. This book is a freakin' tiki bible man, pure and simple.

I haven't seen a more engaging and easy to read book on Tiki than 'Tiki Modern'. It is full of vintage photographs that help readers integate the worlds of modern and primitive art. This book leaves you wanting more on the subject of Tiki while wondering "Where can I get a piece of Tiki to add to my home or personal art collection?"

Sven Kirsten's first book was the Tiki bible, but it has now become the Old Testament -- no less essential, but now merely the precursor to an even more impressive New Testament of Tiki. "Tiki Modern" is so full of fantastic vintage imagery and wry, entertaining commentary that you could add another zero to the price tag and it would STILL be worth the money. An essential purchase!

When 'The Book of Tiki' released, it was a marvelous accomplishment unto it's own, helping to recharge public interest in a unique time & style in Pop culture. Suddenly, local stores are restocking their shelves with tiki influenced decor items for shoppers. The result was a renaissance of Tiki - with new interest in Tiki art and Polynesian pop culture now being appreciated by a whole new generation.

There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that Mr. Kirsten would go above and beyond in further researching that fascinating world of Polynesian Pop Culture. I was absolutely amazed at all the unearthed content. 'Tiki Modern' now takes tikiphiles and those interested in retro pop culture and styles to the next level- I was simply floored by Sven's attention to detail & thorough research of Witco's influence in hotel, home and bar decor & design, allowing so many the possibility of "escaping" to their own South Seas islands in their own local surroundings.

Kudos to the book. It is beautiful and marvelous. A true love letter to a fantastic era in pop culture.

TIKI Modern is the best collection of TIKI related information yet to be published. If you are looking for a good coffee table book with entertaining reading and lots of photos about a time when American's were taking their minds off the Cold War, you will not be disappointed.

Considering this book began as a study of all things Witco, it's not surprising that a nice chunk of this massive tome of urban tiki archeology is dedicated to the exploration of William Westenhaver's company.

Great Tiki art, design, music, and lifestyle pieces from the past and from the present day. The subtitle is the Witco Company, which has acquired a bit too much of the focus here, I think. Still, a good book with that oddity.

While its predecessor volume, The Book of Tiki, is a straight-forward exploration of the Polynesian popular culture that came to fruition in early 1960's America, Sven Kirsten's Tiki Modern... and the Wild World of Witco is a more ambitious attempt to place this peculiar phenomena in the larger social, artistic and intellectual context of the time period, primarily as exemplified in the three-dimensional art and furnishings of William Westenhaver.

Both volumes offer an incredible wealth of playful imagery depicting all of the various idioms in which the concept of "tiki" found (and continues to find) expression. This makes Tiki Modern an entirely essential Volume 2 in Kirsten's ongoing attempt to catalog the genre for the growing number of tiki devotees worldwide.

For the intellectually curious, however, Tiki Modern is more than an extrapolation on the first book's suburban tiki archeology. It is an entirely sober effort to explain how a passing suburban infatuation can be understood as a metaphor for America's conflicted psychological condition at what could now be called the apex of her global cultural influence and power.

The World of Witco- a Westenhaver-sculpted map of the world - as depicted on the inside covers of Tiki Modern is the perfect expression of what Kirsten has tried to achieve with this book. On one level Tiki Modern and Westenhaver's map convey the limitless scope and raw energy of space-age primitivism, but on a deeper level they illuminate America's emergence from an inward-looking, pre-war isolationism to a self-conscious and over-sized sense of itself as a global superpower.

A careful reader will linger over the text in Tiki Modern as well as the well-cataloged art and be inspired not only to appreciate and perhaps collect Witco furniture, scupture and paintings, but to seek out and understand how North American society interpreted itself during a period in which the wealth and idealism of the New World pushed the boundaries of technology, art, fashion, architecture and music into realms both sublime and grotesque.

If one looks carefully, the seeds of America's eventual failure to fulfill its imagined destiny as a unifier of peoples and cultures can be glimpsed in the pages of Tiki Modern and within the wild world of Witco. The photograph on page 15 depicting TV host Steve Allen astride a New-Guinea-style crocodile is perhaps the best expression of this quixotic optimism. For those more tactile, I'm certain Kirsten would suggest taking a seat at one of Westenhaver's exotic bars, or perhaps lounging on a dragon sofa.

routinely referred to as The New Testament by Tiki fans (Old Testament being the bible of Tiki, Sven's "Book of Tiki")
This is a must have book for anyone even remotely interested in Tiki Style. From cover to cover the graphics are awesome and rare and the text is informative and full of previously unknown first-hand research. A lot of the book is devoted to design house/carver Witco because originally this was supposed to be a book solely about Witco but the Witco project got merged with the part two of the Book of Tiki project. Now you have two books in one. Enjoy!