American Utopia by David Byrne & Maira Kalman

David Byrne is a quixotic and irrepressible creator, not limited by convention but not afraid to draw inspiration from it. Such leads to Broadway’s American Utopia, originally a kind of live concert album with a curtain by Maira Kalman, now a documentary by Spike Lee, and here a book of Kalman’s mobile illustrations, themselves illustrated by fragments of Byrne’s lines and lyrics. Like the show-concert-documentary, the book evokes feeling versus story and is meant to be experienced more than read. It is a bright spark within a darker year. — Jocelyn