Art Basel 2018
Carl Andre
Art-Siegelaub, Xerox Book, 1968
11533-BK
8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4 cm)
The Xerox Book was published by legendary dealer and curator Seth Siegelaub in 1968. Presenting a range of artists associated with Siegelaub’s curatorial practice and utilizing unconventional modes of exhibition, the book marks an ongoing attempt by Siegelaub to show work outside of the gallery setting, along with his first time presentation of an exhibition in book form. Siegelaub asked each artist to create 25 pages that responded to the photocopy format. Though the photocopy process proved financially unfeasible—the works ultimately being reproduced through the more conventional printing press—the book continued to be referred to as The Xerox Book—preserving its association with the then-new photocopy technology.
Participating artists were Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, and Lawrence Weiner
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Giovanni Anselmo
116 Particolari visibili e misurabili, 1975
11153-BK
8 in. (20.3 cm)
236 pages. 116 pages are 116 visible and measurable parts of INFINITO, conceived as an enlarged written word. The sequence order of the pages is, from top left in a clockwise direction for each of the first seven letters, a corner, a part of a side, a corner, a part of a side, and so on, finishing with the center. Where the inner corners of the letters are concave, their relative convex corners are considered. The last nine pages are respectively the four extreme parts (top, bottom, right, left) of the outer circumference, the same four parts of the inner circumference and the center of the letter O. (from artist's introductory text). Edition of 1,000 unnumbered copies
Price Upon Request
Giovanni Anselmo
Leggere, 1972
11601-BK
6 5/8 x 4 1/2 in. (17 x 11.5 cm)
Original card covers with dust-jacket, titles to spine.
In Anselmo’s first artist’s book, the single word LEGGERE (To Read) gradually reduces in size, page after page, until it is nearly unreadable. Then it comes back progressively, until the word fills the complete field of vision of the book; the pages go completely black, and the word becomes obliterated. This copy is signed and inscribed by Anselmo in pencil on the inside back cover. Signed copies of this artist’s book are scarce. [Ref. Giorgio Maffei - Arte Povera 1966-1980. Librie documenti, p. 40; Germano Celant, Book as Artwork 1960/1972, p. 93]. Published by Sperone Editore, Turin
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Nobuyoshi Araki
Oo Nippon (Oh Japan!), 1971
1902
10 5/8 x 8 1/8 in. (27 x 20.5 cm)
Tokyo: Mikishuppan. 255 black and white photographs printed using the heliogravure method. Original color photo-illustrated self-wraps. Paperback with printed cover. Text by Uchida Eiichi. The strong erotic element of this work would become a characteristic of Araki's style. Female models are photographed nude in front of a plain background. Pubic hair is, in conformity with Japan’s censorship laws, covered with dark marker pen.
Price Upon Request
Nobuyoshi Araki
Senchimentaru no Tabi. (Sentimental Journey), 1971
1882
9 1/4 x 9 1/4 in. (23.5 x 23.5 cm)
Tokyo: Privately printed, 1971. Araki is a major celebrity, but when this book was self-published in 1971, he was unknown. It is a photo diary of Araki's honeymoon, including an image of a gravestone that provides an eerie foreshadowing of a later book chronicling his wife's death. All the elements that make Araki a world-class photographer are on full display here: the juxtaposition of the erotic and the banal, the expressionless beauty of modern Japanese life, the unadorned image, reduced to its bare necessity. Sentimental Journey is one of the most important Japanese photobooks published. After hundreds of books and significant fame, it remains Araki's best and most influential work.
Price Upon Request
John Baldessari
The Telephone Book (With Pearls), 1988
1704
8 1/4 x 5 3/4 in. (21 x 14.8 cm)
The book features a series of cropped movie stills depicting either a telephone or pearls. Signed and dated by the artist in pen. 62 pages, unpaginated, including 43 black and white illustrations, some with color spots. Gent, Belgium: Imschoot, Uitgevers for IC, 1988. First Edition. 8vo, wraps
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Brigid Berlin
Untitled, 1972
4219-BK
6 1/16 x 4 5/16 in. (15.4 x 11 cm)
Former Warhol Factory acolyte, Berlin narcissistically documented her life via Polaroid photographs. This book is a unique example from a series of “tit paintingsâ€â€”colorful prints made by pressing her painted or inked breasts on paper. Inscribed “For Bob with love, Brigid.†Ex-collection Robert Rauschenberg.
Price Upon Request
Alighiero Boetti
I Mille Fiumi PiÁ¹ Lunghi del Mondo (Progetto) (Classifying the thousand longest rivers in the world), 1977
10243-BK
8 3/8 x 6 3/8 x 2 1/8 in. (21.5 x 16.5 x 5.5 cm)
Deluxe issue with hand sewn cover. Printed by Boetti in Ascoli Piceno, 1977. Text by Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Boetti. 1006 pages.
Boetti worked with Anne-Marie Sauzeau on this book for over seven years. The desire to reduce the world to the binary logic of “right or wrong†may well be an acrobatic feat of highly refined, abstract intelligence but it is knowledge that bypasses the world. At the time, the world’s rivers hadn’t been measured and measurements fluctuated substantially, regarding not only the source, but even the course and the mouth of the rivers. Fluctuations up to 100 miles in length were no exception. In the book, each page is devoted to one river with a factual list of its technical data. The book conveys metaphor, process, and reality. This copy is #31 of 150 deluxe copies, with hand-sewn cover. Ex-collection Umberto Morera.
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Alighiero Boetti
I Mille Fiumi Pi√π Lunghi del Mondo (Progetto) (Classifying the thousand longest rivers in the world), 1977
7371-BK
8 3/8 x 6 3/8 x 2 1/8 in. (21.5 x 16.5 x 5.5 cm)
Printed by Boetti in Ascoli Piceno, 1977. Text by Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Boetti. Edition with red cover, numbered; 1006 pages. Produced over seven years, Boetti collaborated on this book with art critic Anne-Marie Sauzeau. Boetti had a keen interest in the relationship between chance and order, numbers and the world in various means of organization and classification, and the ways in which cultural order is imposed on the complexities of nature. Known to many scientists as “Boetti List,” the thousand plus-page book categorizes a thousand waterways in order of their length according to the most reliable documentary sources at the time. Each page is devoted to one river with a factual list of its technical data. The book conveys metaphor, process, reality—at once poetic and scientific. Edition of 500 copies.
Price Upon Request
Alighiero Boetti
Dossier Postale, 1969-70
11721-BK
13 3/4 x 9 3/4 in. (35 x 25 cm)
Boetti designated 26 recipients, primarily artists (Giulio Paolini, Ettore Spalletti), art critics (Lucy Lippard, Arturo Schwarz), dealers (Konrad Fischer, Leo Castelli), and collectors (Count Panza di Biumo, Corrado Levi). To each recipient Boetti assigned an imaginary itinerary, a trip to certain specific places in Italy or elsewhere. The program was to send an express mail envelope, presumably empty, to each person at each stop along their itinerary. Since the itineraries were imaginary, the addressee would naturally not be found, and therefore the envelope would be returned to its sender, Boetti, who would place the returned envelope inside a somewhat larger one. This new envelope would then be addressed to the second stop on the journey, with, of course, the same result. With each step, the outer envelope would grow larger, and its contents would grow thicker, denser with history and information. But the addressee would never see or know of any of the envelopes or its contents, which would ultimately remain with the artist. This Copy #31 comes in 3 red cloth bindings made by the artist
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Irma Boom
Hommage √” Kelly, 2016
09823-BK
8 x 6 in. (20.3 x 15.2 cm)
Designed as a tribute to one of her inspirations, the minimal artist Ellsworth Kelly, who passed recently. The enormous 1,216-page volume of offset pure color blocks is encased in a clamshell black box and printed in a limited edition of only 99 copies, each signed and numbered in pencil. Amsterdam: Slewe Gallery. This is copy #95.
Price Upon Request
Louise Bourgeois
ODE A LA BIEVRE, 2007
1669
Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911. In 1919, her family moved to the Parisian suburb of Antony where the Bièvre River "cut across the garden in a straight line". The river was key to their relocation as it was imperative to the family's business of tapestry restoration for the washing of the tapestries. In 2002, Bourgeois would distill her emotions and memories of the river and the garden in an important unique fabric book entitled ODE À LA BIÈVRE. In the book she reminisces through images and text, "With the soil from that river we planted geraniums, masses of peonies, and beds of asparagus ...and honeysuckle that smelled so sweet in the rain." Using her own garments as raw material to make sewn fabric collages, she evoked feelings and memories through lines, shapes and colors. Years later, Bourgeois was to go back to the house with her own family only to find the river to no longer exist, "only the trees that my father had planted along its edge remained as a witness". This 2007 book faithfully reproduces that original fabric work. Each book is signed and numbered on the colophon and includes two signed photographs digitally printed on Verona paper and mounted on 300 gram watercolor paper with the respective titles: "The garden in Antony, 1921" and "The Bièvre River, 1951." Housed in a blind embossed slip case each book is uniquely bound with hand dyed and distressed linen.
Price Upon Request
Robert Breer
Image Par Images, 1955
4220-BK
4 7/8 x 3 5/8 in. (12.5 x 9.1 cm)
A unique flip book using only lines in movement dedicated to Robert Rauschenberg. Breer was best known for his films, which combine abstract and representational painting, hand-drawn rotoscoping, original 16mm and 8mm film footage, photographs, and other materials. Breer was an experimental filmmaker, painter, and sculptor. This unpaginated flip book is an experiment that helped him transit from painting to films. "I made a flip book of small paintings to try to understand how I arrived at making this final painting. I was working in very simple geometric forms, hard edge, conventional, you know, more or less conventional neo-plasticism. So, this first flip book then became the basis for a film on my next visit to America, which was that year, 1952, and yet I didn’t really use those original images. I had to invent my own system because I had no training in filmmaking at all and certainly none in animation. I only knew that I had to do one frame at a time."
Price Upon Request
Marcel Broodthaers
La Conqu√™te de l'espace, Atlas √” l”šÁ„Á´usage des artistes et des militaires, (The conquest of space, atlas for the use of artists and the military), 1975
6343-BK
1 7/16 x 15/16 in. (3.8 x 2.5 cm)
38 pages in slipcase, offset lithograph, containing silhouettes of a selection of 32 countries of the world shrunk to the same scale as Belgium, with no difference in size, arranged alphabetically. Published by Edition Lebeer Hossmann, Brussels and Hamburg. A tiny and most rare important final artist's book by Broodthaers that plays on language, scale, and function—it is transportable, but useless. This book was published shortly before the artist's unexpected death in 1976 thus all copies remain unsigned and are stamped “Estate M Broodthaers” and numbered by the publisher. Number 17 of 50 copies.
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Sigrid Calon
To the extend of / \ | &, 2012
09852-BK
13 3/8 x 18 in. (34 x 46 cm)
Within the grid and beyond the pattern. Deluxe edition portfolio of only 10 copies consisting of 120 compositions printed on 300 gram Munken Pure uncoated paper. This work arose out of Calon’s fascination with color and a grid—an embroidery grid, to be precise—with a minimal basic grating of 3 x 3 dots. With these dots, 8 different embroidery stitches can be made. A book without text, it reads easily, with work that displays some extraordinarily disciplined and dedicated research, placing abstract forms rhythmically with tremendous chromatic power and opulence. Each color combination in this book appears only once. Edition of only 10 copies. The sold out book was an Edition of 420.
Price Upon Request
Pia Camil
Xiuquilla/Blue milk weed, 2017
09951-BK
19 5/8 x 19 5/8 in. (50 x 50 cm)
Hand sewn cotton accordion pleated leporello book, with screen printing, in cloth box with colophon. Published by Zucker Art Books, NY. Edition of 8 variants, with 2 AP. Each copy is signed and numbered. Each book is handmade from repurposed textiles the artist found in Mexico City. Camil’s interventions include cutting shapes common in making of clothes such as sleeves, collars, torsos, and recombining them in a colorful array, hand sewn into a double sided sequence. She designed small buttonholes in between the panels so the work can be hung as a banner as well, choosing either side for display. This sort of interaction between the work and the viewer is a key element throughout Camil’s oeuvre, which includes works to be worn or walked on.
Price Upon Request
Enrico Castellani
ESTROFLESSIONE, 1968
7113-BK
11 3/4 x 11 3/4 in. (30 x 30 cm)
Thermoformed plastic multiple and accompanying booklet with text on the artist by Vincenzo Agnetti, encased in printed cardboard box.
Published by Achille Mauri Editore, Milan.
Edition of 1000 copies.
Price Upon Request
Marc Chagall
Les Sept péchés capitaux (Seven Deadly Sins), 1926
4235-BK
10 x 3 1/2 in. (25.5 x 9 cm)
15 etchings and one etching printed in sanguine, with two additional suites of the 15 etchings printed in sanguine (one on China paper and the other on Japan paper), with an original pen and ink sketch for one of the etchings. The text contains essays by Jean Giraudoux, Paul Morand, Pierre Mac Orlan, André Salmon, Max Jacob, Jacques de Lacretelle, and Joseph Kessel. Publisher: Simon Kra, Paris. Printed by Louis Fort. This is one of 15 deluxe copies on Japan paper, from an edition of 300. Numbered 4 on the justification with the drawing.
Price Upon Request
Wim Delvoye
seXrays, 2006
1737
12 x 8 3/4 in. (30.5 x 22.5 cm)
Luxembourg. Beaumont Public. 2002.
80 pages. With 25 reproductions on clear acetate of the X-rays, which were printed on aluminum.. Publisher’s spiral binding within printed boards. Black soft rubber end leaves. Published to accompany a 2002 exhibition in Luxembourg of Wim Delvoye’s s eXrays. Delvoye, with the help of a radiologist, had several of his friends paint themselves with small amounts of barium and perform explicit sexual acts in medical X-ray clinics. When he was not an active participant, Delvoye observed from a computer screen in another room, allowing the subjects enough distance to perform uninhibted, although Delvoye has described the whole operation as “very medical, very antiseptic.
With German text by Peter Bexte "Die Göttliche Komödie der seXrays", and a French text by Olivier Goetz "seXrays de Wim Delvoye: Un rayon de bonheur". Complete with the 15-page English translation bound in at the back.
Price Upon Request
Herman DeVries
Rationale Strukturen, 1967
10461-BK
18 7/8 x 18 7/8 in. (48 x 48 cm)
14 white sheets in grey printed portfolio; on the first sheet is a preface by Siegfried Maser, followed by 13 embossed prints, each signed on the reverse.
edition hansjörg mayer, stuttgart
Edition 40, signed and 26 numbered a-z. This is an unnumbered copy.
De Vries liked to strip things away to the bone, to achieve almost total negation by using whiteness in the work, with no visible typography, thus achieving a sort of presence in absence.
Price Upon Request
Marcel Duchamp
Roto Reliefs, 1953
9571-OR
7 3/4 x 7 3/4 in. (20 x 20 cm)
Series of six double sided circular offset lithographs from the 1934 edition, with a black cardboard stand and folding carton box, including instructions and printed signature.
Publisher: Enrico Donati, New York.
Edition of 1000 copies (ca. 600 destroyed).
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Luigi Ghirri
Luigi Ghirri Fotografie 1970-71, 1972
11433-BK
8 1/4 x 5 3/4 in. (21 x 14.8 cm)
Catalogue from Ghirri’s first exhibition in 1972 at the Sette Arte Club in Modena, Italy. Text by Franco Vaccari. 12 pages, plus covers, five black and white illustrations. Working within the scope of conceptual art, Ghirri was a pioneer in manipulating color in photography, and he mixed theatricality, fiction, and reality in his images
Price Upon Request
Dan Graham
End Moments, 1969
11513-BK
11 x 8 3/8 in. (28 x 21.5 cm)
Black and white offset-printed artist's book self-published by the artist in 1969, 68 pages. Contains essays: “Dan Martin / Entertainment as Satire,†“Subject Matter,†“Photographs of Motion,†“Information,†â€Home for America,†“Sign and Object,†“Magazine As System / Ads' Function,†“Likes,†“Two Structures / Sol LeWitt†and additional projects. Incorporates several quirks such as no page numbered 24, two pages numbered 26, and no pages 57 and 58.
Reference: “Book as Artwork 1960 / 1972†by Germano Celant. London, United Kingdom, Nigel Greenwood Inc. Ltd., 1972
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Jannis Kounellis
La via del sangue, 1973
4103-BK
5 7/8 x 4 3/8 in. (15 x 11 cm)
Seven burnt Italian wood matches, each mounted on the singed page annotated with a day of the week of the event, Monday through Sunday.
Published by Galleria La Salita, Rome.
Kounellis created this book in conjunction with an exhibition titled “Apollo†at the Galleria La Salita in Rome in 1973. During the course of a week, he came to the gallery daily and struck a match and mounted it onto paper, noting the day on the page. The artist often introduces temporal elements—fire, smoke, or ash—into his work. The simple act of striking a match to mark each day of the week suggests a ritualized cultural or religious expression, even one of penitence. In this instance, Kounellis is indirectly invoking Apollo, known as the god of light and the sun. Fine condition in publisher’s printed slipcase. Signed on flyleaf. Edition #199 of 250 copies.
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Jannis Kounellis
Alfabeto, 1966
11403-BK
5 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. (14 x 14 cm)
Printed in an edition of 1000 copies. Rome. Galleria Arco D'Alibert.
The “Alfabeto†series of works on paper and canvas were begun ca. 1958 while Kounellis was still a student in Rome. Using black tempera, ink, enamel or acrylic paint on a white ground of paper, cardboard or canvas—either singly or combined—they feature black stencilled numbers, letters, mathematical symbols, and arrows. The first exhibition of these works, described later by Kounellis as “a hermetic rhythmic writing in space†was titled L'alfabeto di Kounellis, and was held at Galleria La Tartaruga, the first gallery for contemporary art established in Rome. This was followed by two further shows in 1964 and 1966, and a third also in 1966 at Galleria Arco D’Alibert. It was in conjunction with this final “Alfabeto†show that this small artist’s book was produced. The printed cryptic symbols and letters are suggestive of a language, code or mathematical formula but now resist any particular meaning or representation. Kounellis’ figures are merely compositional signs, somewhere between image, language, and arithmetic.
Reference: Maffei - Arte Povera. books and documents, p. 88.
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Le Corbusier
Aircraft, 1935
3484-BK
9 7/8 x 7 5/8 in. (25.2 x 19.4 cm)
92 pages, 16 of text with 124 illustrations, most being photographs and some are reproduced drawings.
Published by The Studio, London.
Aircraft celebrates flight and casts the airplane as the pinnacle of modern technological achievement. The book captures the enthusiasm and ideas surrounding the aerial age. Le Corbusier opens the book by emphasizing the “ecstatic feeling†that flight produces in him. It is “symbol of the New Ageâ€, promising adventure, progress and wild possibility. He idealizes the aesthetics of the machines, too, which possess “clearness of function†(a core principle that underpinned Le Corbusier’s utopian architectural schemes). Le Corbusier’s captions are typically bold and uncompromising. The text that accompanies image 9, for example, reads: “The bird’s eye view … man will make use of it to conceive new aims. Cities will arise out of their ashes.â€
Reference: Fotografia Publica 132, p.81; Le Corbusier et le livre, p.122
Price Upon Request
Enzo Mari
Ogetto a Composizione Autocondotta (Self-composed object), 1959
7253-SC
10 x 10 x 1 15/16 in. (25.5 x 25.5 x 5 cm)
Wood, Glass and paint; signed in ink.
Publisher: Galleria del Deposito, Geneva. Edition of 100.
Using a series of three related and repeated three-dimensional elements of squares, triangles and rhombi with equal bases inside a square space with one rectangular bar, Enzo Mari produces a natural phenomena engaging the viewer's participation. The rotation of the square produces nearly infinite combinations as the pieces fall into place.
References: “Enzo Mari, modelli del realeâ€, Mazzotta, Milan, 1988, p. 46
Avossa Antonio and Francesca Picchi, “Enzo Mari, il lavoro al
centro â€, Electa, Milan, 1999, p. 73
Price Upon Request
Mario Merz
Fibonacci 1202 Mario Merz Sperone, 1970
10183-BK
6 3/8 x 3 7/8 in. (16.5 x 10 cm)
Paperback
Torino : Sperone Editore, 1970.
Merz was fascinated by the progressive number series named after the thirteenth century Italian mathematician Fibonacci. The development of a spiral, the natural organization of the elements in nature, is overseen in the growth of a tree. Merz uses the numeric sequence (the number is always the sum of the two previous ones) to organize the development of his figurative speech on the book page. Unspecified edition size.
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Beatriz Milhazes
Meu Bem, 2008
11621-BK
14 1/4 x 11 3/4 x 1 1/2 in. (36.5 x 30 x 4 cm)
Meu Bem, which translates to “My Darling†from Portuguese, consists of 30 pages plus covers, each created by hand, using various complex print techniques including giclée, screen printing, foil blocking, and die-cutting, with detailed collage throughout. The book is hand sewn and in a case bound in a hard cover housed in a clear yellow acrylic box. For each book, Brazilian artist Milhazes has made an original, separate collage. Published by Ridinghouse. Edition of 38 copies.
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Daido Moriyama
Nippon Gekijo Shashincho (Japan A Photo Theater), 1968
2185
8 1/4 x 8 5/8 in. (21 x 22 cm)
Paperback, title printed on the green cover, in its original cardboard slipcase. 149 black and white photographs printed using the heliogravure method. Text by Shuji Terayama. This is the first publication entirely devoted to Moriyama's work. Images are violent and dark. Deeply influenced by William Klein's New York, Moriyama transforms texture, contrast, deformation, the accidental, and abstraction into a visual language representative of the Provoke movement in Japan.
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Giulio Paolini
Sei illustrazioni per gli scritti sull'arte antica di Johann J. Winckelmann (Six Illustrations for the Writings on Ancient Art by Johann J. Winckelmann), 1977
7763-BK
19 5/8 x 13 3/4 in. (50 x 35 cm)
Published by Mello e Persano, Genova, Turin.
Large Folio bound in brown buckram with 36 pages sewn in. Three pages of text by Winckelmann plus six double page illustrations printed in lithography and silkscreen, two of which are unique collages by the artist. One with ripped papers and the other with a closed mystery envelope. As published with printed white dust jacket and folding box with printed label on front. Signed and numbered 13 of 33. There were also seven copies numbered with Roman numerals.
Based upon the study of the ancient world by the 18th-century historian and writer Johann Joachim Winckelmann called “On Art, Grecian Drawings, and Beautyâ€, this work by Paolini is divided into six chapters, corresponding with six, two-page illustrations. It is a return to the tradition of bibliophilism, which, through its love of words, considers the book as a precious objet d 'art. Paolini’s reference to Winckelmann reaffirms the neoclassical origins of many of the artist's works. The plates, drawn in a refined contrast between whites, blacks, and ochres, are often embellished with collages.
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Giulio Paolini
Un Quadro, 1971
11631-BK
8 1/2 x 6 1/8 in. (21.5 x 15.5 cm)
Milan: Galleria dell'Ariete, 1971. Folder with loose sheets, unpaginated. The catalogue for the Ariete exhibition becomes, with few textual interventions, an artist’s book. The work on display consisted of appliqué photographs from a work of 1960, Disegno geometrico, to which Paolini added a signature that corresponds to a different, imaginary author, and a title which is different but which bears some relation to the name of the author (e.g. the name Ahmed Barak corresponds to the title Mercato tunisino, which refers to a work by Kandinsky; or Zorah, the name of the Moroccan girl painted by Matisse, is attributed to Kalahari, which is also the name of an African desert). The book, a consequence of all this complexity, takes on the rarefied form of a conceptual work.
Price Upon Request
Giulio Paolini
Cio che non ha limiti e che per sua stessa natura non Ammette limitazioni di sorta, (What doesn't have limits and what of his own nature does not allow limitation of any kind), 1968
10173-BK
9 3/4 x 7 in. (25 x 18 cm)
The book is derived from a work, "Titolo, 1968", consisting of two large canvases placed side by side like two pages of an open book. Paolini states: “I placed all the letters from written names in my notebook.” As curator and critic Germano Celant observes, a name is just an abstract characterization that coincides with the person. This copy is one of only six copies numbered with Roman numerals, V/VI, where the title is handwritten on the cover of the book. In the regular edition of 50 copies, the title is printed on the mylar dustcover.
Price Upon Request
Giuseppe Penone
Svolegere la propria pelle (Developing One's Own Skin), 1970/71
3678-BK
8 3/8 x 8 1/2 in. (21.3 x 21.7 cm)
104 pages, Sperone Editore, Turin, 1971. Penone mapped his entire body with hundreds of photos taken when pressing a sheet of glass against different parts of his body, assembling assembling the resulting images into grids. In these photographs the subject is seen “unrolling one's skin against air, water, earth, rock, walls, trees, dogs, handrails, windows, roads, hair, hats, handles, wings, doors, seats, stairs, clothes, books, eyes, sheep, mushrooms, grass, skin...†wrote the artist, reflecting on the quantity of voluntary and involuntary signs that bodies disseminate and spread onto different things. Unspecified edition size.
Price Upon Request
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Cento mostre nel mese di ottobre (One Hundred Exhibitions in October), 1976
10013-BK
3 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. (9 x 9 cm)
Galleria Giorgio Persano, Turin. *signed on inside cover 100 pages with original wrappers of absorbent yellow blotting paper. Each copy contains an original drawing by Pistoletto on the front cover. For this example, the artist has chosen a series of dots and signed on the inside of the cover. A small cube, this is an artist’s book entirely without illustration, containing instead 100 brief descriptions of exhibitions, all imagined, one per page, in Italian on recto and English on verso. One Hundred Exhibitions was a sort of recipe book of shows and works, many of which were later carried out. Reference: MAFFEI Giorgio, Libri e documenti. Arte Povera 1966-1980, Edizioni Corraini, 2007, pp. 168-169.
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Michelangelo Pistoletto
Mochetti, Piacentino, Pistoletto, 1970
11193-BK
8 1/4 x 11 5/8 in. (21 x 29.7 cm)
36-page catalogue of the Galleria Toselli exhibition in Milan that was split among the three Arte Povera artists who were free to decide what the scope of their participation would be. These catalogues became to be regarded as artist’s books.
Price Upon Request
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Le ultime parole famose (The Last Famous Words), 1967
3492-BK
7 1/8 x 5 1/8 in. (18 x 13 cm)
Turin: Tipolito Piana
Pistoletto’s first book (16 pages) is a summary, partly due to this humble, yet elegant edition (words only, with no other visual aid), of the ideals and tensions, which Arte Povera artists had been trying to express since their beginnings. The little book contains the artist’s writing in Italian and English, broken down into two sections, Speculation and Being. Choosing two languages, unusual at the time, seems to be the expression of a need to expand thoughts beyond the physical confines of the artist’s own existence.
Price Upon Request
Dieter Roth
Stundenbilder (Hourly Photographs), 1977
11692-BK
4 x 6 in. (10.2 x 15.2 cm)
16 leather bound books containing a total of 305 signed photographs with hand written time stamping.
On January 1, 1977, at 1:00 a.m. in Chicago, Roth devised an ambitious photo project for which he planned to take one photograph every hour, 24 hours a day, for 365 days of a year: every hour a shot of what simply lay in front of him at that particular moment. Although he abandoned this idea in March he self-published a set of 16 books in readymade bindings in a small edition of 3 which documents the idea. It is one of the key works of conceptual artists’ books of its time and is a testament to how far ahead of his time Roth's ideas really were. A prescient precursor of Instagram!
Price Upon Request
Dieter Roth
Hat Ring, 1971
4455-PR
1 15/16 x 3 7/8 x 5 7/8 in. (5 x 10 x 15 cm)
Edition of only 10 copies. ReykjavÃk / Luzern, 1971. Contains a gold ring and 5 interchangeable hats: iron, copper, brass, silver, and gold, in brass box. Copy 6 of 10, made by Langenbacher & Wankmiller, Luzern. Signed on the ring.
Price Upon Request
Dieter Roth
book fc, 1965
11453-BK
16 1/8 x 16 1/8 in. (41 x 41 cm)
Portfolio with 22 blue and orange sheets. Hand-cut slots at 45 and 90 degrees in various sizes. Hand written colophon by artist with an impression of his fingerprint. All sheets contained in black cloth cover box with “FC” in colors in the middle. Typed instructions are added, most probably typed by Roth himself. Inscription: “Handcut for Ives-Sillman”. Edition 4/50. Not recorded in Roth's Collected Works vol. 20.
Price Upon Request
Dieter Roth
book e, 1960
4408-BK
15 x 15 in. (38 x 38 cm)
22 black and white sheets with different cut out shapes, including trapezoids. Hand-cut slots at 75, 80, 87, 88, 89 and 90 degrees in various sizes. Hand written colophon by artist with an impression of his fingerprint. Copy 12 of 25. In his Collected Works vol. 20, Roth identifies only 20 copies completed.
Price Upon Request
Ed Ruscha
Set of 16 books from Henry Hopkins, 1963-78
4377-BK
Set comprises 16 seminal books by the artist: Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Various Small Fires, Some Los Angeles Apartments, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, Thirtyfour Parking Lots, Royal Road Test, Business Cards, Nine Swimming Pools, Crackers, Babycakes, Real Estate Opportunities, A Few Palm Trees, Dutch Details, Records, Colored People, and Hard Light. All signed or inscribed to Hopkins except Babycakes, which has the rare â€compliments of author card†signed "give to henry, Ed" from Ruscha enclosed. Hopkins was the curator at the LA County Museum in the 1960s and bought Ed's first painting for the museum. Henry Hopkins directed the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art before returning to UCLA, where he led the Wight Art Gallery and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Dimensions variable.
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Kiki Smith
Still Life, 2001
2165
6 1/4 x 6 7/8 in. (16 x 17.5 cm)
Visual artist Kiki Smith and writer Lynne Tillman collaborate in this artist’s book designed in the spirit of a small and intimate medieval book of hours. The work consists of twenty-four color photographs in dialogue with the sentences of a short prose piece titled "The Lost City of Words." Sentiments of loss, memory, and the ephemeral nature of life are juxtaposed with objects found in Smith's studio: sculptural works-in-progress, luminescent glass bulbs, dead birds, items found in a makeshift bedroom. The book is elegantly presented in a case of molded plastic and closes with a clasp in wrought metal designed by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec. Edition of 60.
Price Upon Request
Nakahira Takuma
Kitarubeki Kotoba no Tameni. For a Language to Come, 1970
2180
12 x 8 1/2 in. (30.5 x 21.6 cm)
Paperback with an illustrated cover and dust jacket. Original cardboard slipcase with title and name of author printed on the covering sticker. 103 black and white photographs printed using the heliogravure method. Text by Okada Takahido. Graphic concept by Kimura Tsunesisa. Nakahira was the instigator of the movement PROVOKE and, in a sense, its political conscience. This work reflects the best of the group's aspirational work even though it appeared well after they split up. Mainly nighttime photographs, these images taken between 1965-1970 have great expressive and lyrical force.
Price Upon Request
Yves Tanguy
La Vie Immediate, 1932
4452-BK
7 7/8 x 6 1/8 in. (20 x 15.5 cm)
Paris, Editions des Cahiers Libres
First book with an etching by Tanguy (ref. Wittrock 1) for poems by Paul Eluard. There were only 22 copies of the book with the etching; 10 regular copies with text printed in the plate and 12 author’s copies on blue mauve paper with the etching on Japon nacré. This copy is one of the 12 author’s copies with a dedication by Paul Eluard to Theodore Fraenkel, a doctor and classmate of André Breton. Exceptional example of this rare book, bound in leather by A. Demules. Edition of 12.
Price Upon Request
Shuntaro Tanikawa
Picture Book (Ehon), 1956
3409-BK
10 x 9 5/8 in. (25.5 x 24.3 cm)
First edition. Limited edition of 300 copies. 20 tipped-in offset photographs (incl. one on front cover). Japanese text. Quarto. Original cloth binding. Unpaginated, 44 pp. Tokyo, Matoba Shobo, dated: Showa 31 [i.e. 1956].
Tanikawa Shuntaro (b. 1931) is possibly Japan's most highly regarded living poet. He has written over sixty books in addition to translating Charles Schulz's Peanuts and the Mother Goose rhymes into Japanese. This is his fourth book of poetry, which Tanikawa illustrated with his own photographs and privately published. Extremely rare. Unrecorded. No copy in OCLC. No copy in ALC.
Price Upon Request
Cy Twombly
Octavio Paz, Eight Poems, Cy Twombly, Ten drawings, 1993
5653-BK
13 1/8 x 10 in. (33.4 x 25.7 cm)
Complete set of four unsigned heliogravures in color by Cy Twombly and eight poems by Octavio Paz, hors-texte, title, justification, colophon, and reproductions of the artist's drawings, text in English and German, on smooth wove and laid papers, signed on the colophon by Paz and Twombly.
Published by Udo and Anette Brandhorst, Cologne.
100 copies of the Special Edition (the total edition was 1,000), bound in two volumes (as issued), with full margins, in excellent condition, original paper-covered portfolios, and original paper covered slipcase.
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Franco Vaccari
La scultura buia (Dark Sculpture), 1968
11203-BK
9 x 8 3/4 in. (23 x 22.5 cm)
16 pages stapled into a soft-cover glossy binding.
This publication inaugurates a practice that the artist continued in years to come: the artist's book as consequence or the continuation of the exhibition itself. For his second exhibition, in the work “L’ambiente buio†(The Dark Environment), shown at the Centro di Documentazione Visiva, Piacenza, Italy in 1968, Vaccari engaged the viewers’ experience of darkness. He extended the experience through this small book utilizing blank black foil sheets as a tactile recollection for the viewer.
Price Upon Request
Christopher Wool
Four Short Stories(4 parts), 2004
4213-BK
19 x 13 in. (48.3 x 33 cm)
A set of four color Inkjet prints on wove paper with full margins, printed by the artist, each one signed, dated, and numbered in pencil. Title sheet on copy paper. Published to benefit the Camden Arts Center in London. Edition of 65 copies.
Price Upon Request
Christopher Wool
Empire of the Goat, 1985
10002-BK
11 x 8 1/2 in. (27.9 x 21.6 cm)
79 pages. Self-published, Wool’s second artist’s book contains photocopies of paintings made in the early period of his oeuvre. Paper cover bound with Japanese string, bearing a red ink stamp of a goat on the cover. Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil. Edition of 33 copies. Mint condition.
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