World Food Books

Painting as Model
by Yve-Alain Bois

1993 / 1995, English
Softcover, 358 pages, 17.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by The MIT Press / Massachusetts

$65.00 - Out of stock

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First published in October journal in 1986, then expanded into this landmark MIT Press collection of essays in the early 1990s, Yve-Alain Bois’ Painting as Model remains to this day one of the most influential contemporary books on painting. Informed by both structuralism and poststructuralism, these essays by art critic and historian Yve Alain Bois seek to redefine the status of theory in modernist critical discourse. Warning against the uncritical adoption of theoretical fashions and equally against the a priori rejection of all theory, Bois argues that theory is best employed in response to the specific demands of a critical problem. The essays lucidly demonstrate the uses of various theoretical approaches in conjunction with close reading of both paintings and texts.

"A genuinely original contribution, in both style and approach, to a 'new history' of art which reconciles critical theory to historical research." - Louis Marin, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris

Yve-Alain Bois studied at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes under the guidance of Roland Barthes and Hubert Damisch. A founder of the French journal Macula, Bois is currently a professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ.

Very Good—Near Fine copy of 19995 print.

File under: Georges Braque Pablo Picasso Piet Mondrian Barnett Newman Robert Ryman Gerrit Rietveld Vilmos Huszár Jean-Luc Vilmouth Cornelis van Eesteren Theo van Doesburg Katarzyna Kobro Yve-Alain Bois The MIT Press / Massachusetts Art Painting Bauhaus Conceptual Art Dada Minimal Art Theory / Essay

The Anti-Museum : An Anthology

2017, English
Hardcover, 792 pages, 17.3 x 26.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Koenig Books / London

$140.00 - Out of stock

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First edition, out-of-print.

Created by curator Mathieu Copeland and artist Balthazar Lovay, together with a stellar list of contributors, The Anti-Museum presents the first extensive exploration of the radical and paradoxical concept that is ‘the anti-museum’ – a term so present in Art History and yet that has never been the object of an investigation and definition.

The museum is constantly a target for criticism, whether it comes from artists, thinkers, curators, or even the public. From the avant-gardes of the twentieth century up to present day, the museumʼs suspect position has generated countless gestures, iconoclastic actions, scathing attacks, utopias, and alternative exhibition spaces.

For the first time, this anthology is devoted to the anti-museum, through anti-art, the anti-artist, anti-exhibition, as well as anti-architecture, anti-philosophy, anti-religion, anti-cinema and anti-music. This notion (unpatented but regularly reappropriated) traces the erratic and sometimes paradoxical counter-history of the contestation of artistic institutions.

From the first anti-exhibition to the first catalogue retracing the history of Closed Exhibitions, from Dada to Noise music, from ‘Everything is Art’ to NO!art, the Japanese avant-gardes to Lettrist cinema, and not forgetting such major protest figures as Gustav Metzger, Henry Flynt, Graciela Carnevale, and Lydia Lunch, The Anti-Museum sketches a polyphonic panorama where negation is accompanied by a powerful breath of life.

This encyclopedic tome includes the work of over 80 artists and writers including Marcel Broodthaers, Maurizio Cattelan, Maria Eichhorn, Robert Smithson, Jean Tinguely, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Yvonne Rainer, Guillaume Apollinaire, Kenneth Goldsmith, George Maciunas, and Bob Nickas.

Very Good—Near Fine copy.

File under: John Armleder Robert Barry Genesis P-Orridge Andrea Branzi Piero Gilardi Kenneth Goldsmith Robert Morris Jean Toche Ettore Sottsass Guerilla Art Action Group Gareth James Henry Flynt Mierle Laderman Ukeles Marcel Broodthaers Yvonne Rainer Maurizio Cattelan Maria Eichhorn Robert Smithson Jean Tinguely Rirkrit Tiravanija Gustav Metzger Graciela Carnevale Lydia Lunch Zach Blas Johannes Cladders Beatriz Colomina Henry Flynt Kenneth Goldsmith Krist Gruijthuijsen Robert Morris Bob Nickas Sören Schmeling Reiko Tomii Jon Hendricks Jean Toche Andrea Branzi Ettore Sottsass Allan Wallach Guerilla Art Action Group Gareth James Mathieu Copeland Balthazar Lovay Marcel Broodthaers George Maciunas Guillaume Apollinaire Koenig Books / London Conceptual Art Group Shows / Collections Theory / Essay Art Fluxus Performance / Dance / Theater Arte Povera Italian Radical Design / Postmodernism Curatorial Dada Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic Minimal Art Sculpture / Installation Sound / Music Painting Film / Video

Archive of Dreams: Surrealist Impulses, Networks, and Vision

2024, English
Softcover, 328 pages, 21 x 28 cm
Published by Spector Books / Leipzig

$110.00 - In stock -

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The book Archive of Dreams is published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name that will open the Archiv der Avantgarden. Marking the hundredth anniversary of the first surrealist manifesto and the founding of the Bureau of Surrealist Research in Paris in 1924, the volume is dedicated to the surrealist movement as well as the networks it engendered and the artistic stimuli it provided in the twentieth century. The idea was for the Bureau to collect dream testimonies in whatever form, not only to preserve and analyse them but also to give active expression to them in artistic processes. The publication shows how the practices of the avantgardes blurred the boundaries between dream and reality, between the traditional, passive notion of the archive and the idea of active, innovative artistic experiment — and thus ultimately also between the past, the present, and possible futures.

Works and documents from the period before, during, and after the Second World War shed light on the working methods of international artists and the global network they were involved in. They are complemented by diverse reflections on global protest movements and the traumas of war, thus connecting, too, to everyday experiences in a Europe beset by warfare.

File under: Salvador Dalí Max Ernst Marcel Duchamp Hans Bellmer Yves Tanguy Man Ray Unica Zürn Toyen Kurt Seligmann Carolee Schneeman Carolee Schneemann René Magritte Alexander Calder Diego Giacometti Leonora Carrington Egidio Marzona Marion Ackermann Rudolf Fischer Przemysław Strożek Friederike Fast David Wittinghofer Author Erin McClenathan Kristoffer Noheden Sven Spieker Abigail Susik David Wittinghofer Georges Bataille Marcel Duchamp André Breton Guillaume Apollinaire Michel Leiris Louis Aragon Spector Books / Leipzig Surrealism Dada Art Painting Sculpture / Installation Fiction / Poetry Theory / Essay Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art

Broken Music

1989, English / German / French
Softcover (w. flexi-disc), 280 pages, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Daadgalerie / Berlin Gelbe Musik / Berlin

$280.00 - In stock -

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Rare first 1989 edition of Broken Music, an essential compendium for records created by visual artists. Complete with original flexi-disc. The publication was edited by Ursula Block and Michael Glasmeier and published in 1989 by DAAD and Gelbe Musik, Berlin. Broken Music focuses on recordings, record-objects, artwork for records, and record installations made by thousands of artists between WWII and 1989.

It also includes essays by both editors as well as Theodor W. Adorno, René Block, Jean Dubuffet, Milan Knizak, László Moholy-Nagy, Christiane Seiffert, and Hans Rudolf Zeller, as well as a flexi disc of the Arditti Quartet performing Knizak’s “Broken Music.” The centerpiece of the publication is a nearly 200-page bibliography of artists’ records.

Works chosen for the publication revolved around four criteria: (1) record covers created as original work by visual artists; (2) record or sound-producing objects (multiples/editions/sculptures); (3) books and publications that contain a record or recorded-media object; and (4) records or recorded media that have sound by visual artists.

Artists documented in the volume include Vito Acconci, albrecht/d., Laurie Anderson, Guillaume Apollinaire, Karel Appel, Arman, Hans Arp, Antonin Artaud, John Baldessari, Hugo Ball, Claus van Bebber, John Bender, Harry Bertoia, Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Claus Böhmler, Christian Boltanski, KP Brehmer, William Burroughs, John Cage, Henri Chopin, Henning Christiansen, Jean Cocteau, William Copley, Philip Corner, Merce Cunningham, Hanne Darboven, Jim Dine, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Fischli and Weiss, R. Buckminster Fuller, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Jack Goldstein, Peter Gordon, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Bernard Heidsieck, Holger Hiller, Richard Huelsenbeck, Isidore Isou, Marcel Janco, Servie Janssen, Jasper Johns, Joe Jones, Thomas Kapielski, Allan Kaprow, Martin Kippenberger, Per Kirkeby, Cheri Knight, Milan Knizak, Richard Kriesche, Christina Kubisch, Laibach, John Lennon, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Annea Lockwood, Paul McCarthy, Meredith Monk, Josef Felix Müller, Piotr Nathan, Hermann Nitsch, Albert Oehlen, Frank O’Hara, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, A.R. Penck, Tom Phillips, Robert Rauschenberg, The Red Crayola, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Gerhard Richter, Jim Rosenquist, Dieter Roth, Gerhard Rühm, Robert Rutman, Sarkis, Thomas Schmit, Conrad Schnitzler, Kurt Schwitters, Selten Gehörte Musik, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Strafe für Rebellion, Jean Tinguely, Moniek Toebosch, Tristan Tzara, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada, Emmett Walsh, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, and Lawrence Weiner.

Ursula Block is a curator living in Berlin, Germany. From 1981 until 2014, she ran gelbe Musik, a gallery and record shop in Berlin that featured work by artists at the crossroads between music and art. She was married to curator René Block.

Michael Glasmeier is a professor, writer, and editor living in Berlin, Germany. Since the early 1980s, he has curated dozens of shows that explore the intersection between the visual arts, music, film, and language.

Very Good copy all-round, light cover/corner wear.

File under: ×Vito Acconci albrecht/d. Laurie Anderson Karel Appel Arman Antonin Artaud John Baldessari Hugo Ball Claus van Bebber John Bender Harry Bertoia Jean-Pierre Bertrand Joseph Beuys Mel Bochner Claus Böhmler Christian Boltanski John Cage Henri Chopin Henning Christiansen Jean Cocteau William Copley Philip Corner Merce Cunningham Hanne Darboven Jim Dine Marcel Duchamp Max Ernst Lawrence Ferlinghetti Buckminster Fuller Fischli & Weiss Peter Fischli Peter Fischli & David Weiss David Weiss Allen Ginsberg Philip Glass Jack Goldstein Peter Gordon Hans Haacke Richard Hamilton Bernard Heidsieck Holger Hiller Richard Huelsenbeck Isidore Isou Marcel Janco Servie Janssen Jasper Johns Joe Jones Thomas Kapielski Allan Kaprow Martin Kippenberger Per Kirkeby Cheri Knight Milan Knizak Richard Kriesche Christina Kubisch Laibach John Lennon Sol Lewitt Roy Lichtenstein Annea Lockwood Paul McCarthy Meredith Monk Josef Felix Müller Piotr Nathan Hermann Nitsch Albert Oehlen Frank O’Hara Claes Oldenburg Yoko Ono Dennis Oppenheim Nam June Paik Charlemagne Palestine A.R. Penck Tom Phillips Robert Rauschenberg The Red Crayola Ursula Reuter Christiansen Gerhard Richter Jim Rosenquist Dieter Roth Gerhard Rühm Robert Rutman Sarkis Thomas Schmit Conrad Schnitzler Kurt Schwitters Selten Gehörte Musik Richard Serra Robert Smithson Michael Snow Keith Sonnier Strafe für Rebellion Jean Tinguely Moniek Toebosch Tristan Tzara Ben Vautier Yoshi Wada Emmett Walsh Andy Warhol William Wegman Lawrence Weiner Jean Arp (Hans Arp) K. P. Brehmer William S. Burroughs Theodor W. Adorno René Block Jean Dubuffet Milan Knizak László Moholy-Nagy Christiane Seiffert Hans Rudolf Zeller Ursula Block Michael Glasmeier Daadgalerie / Berlin Gelbe Musik / Berlin Art Conceptual Art Performance / Dance / Theater Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Counterculture Out-of-print / Rare Group Shows / Collections Curatorial Theory / Essay Fluxus Arte Povera Pop Art Sound / Music Dada Minimal Art Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic Bauhaus Objects / Ephemera / A/V

Francis Picabia
1999/2000 & 391

1999, English / French / Japanese
Two-volume softcover bookset in curregated cardboard slip-case, 120 pages & 220 pages (colour and b&w ill. throughout), 18 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by APT International / Tokyo Isetan Museum of Art / Tokyo

$250.00 $160.00 - Out of stock

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First Edition of this comprehensive, beautifully produced Japanese two-volume publication on the life and work of the great French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist, Francis Picabia.

Published by APT International in 1999 for a major Japanese travelling exhibition on Francis Picabia, starting at the Isetan Museum of Art in Tokyo in 1999, then to Fukushima and Osaka throughout 1999-2000.

Two Volumes bound in french-fold wraps, beautifully kept fine volumes, both housed in protective corrugated cardboard slip-case with scarlet label wrapped around spine. Slipcase itself is now protected under plastic sleeve.

First volume (226 page) forms a comprehensive retrospective of Picabia's life and prolific and defying work across painting, drawing, printing, poetry and film. Extensive colour and b&w reproductions of a vast collection of his painting, illustration and publishing projects are presented alongside a folio of his poems and drawings, plus photo documentation of his studio and private/social life. Also includes a biography and bibliography, as well as an insightful conversation between Olga Picabia (Francis Picabia's widow), Pierre Calté (director of Comité Picabia), Hans Ulrich Obrist (independent curator) and Stefan Banz (independent curator), about Picabia's life (text in English and Japanese). Introductory essays in Japanese and French by Beverley Calte and Arnauld Pierre.

Second volume (120 pages) "391" is a very special book made up of collated facsimiles of the 19 issues of Picabia's famous Dada periodical, "391", dating 1917-1924.
391 first appeared in January 1917 in Barcelona, published and edited by Picabia, assisted in assembling by Olga Sacharoff, a Georgian emigre residing in Barcelona. The title of the magazine derives from Alfred Stieglitz's New York periodical 291 (to which Picabia had contributed), and bore no relation to its contents. Despite Picabia's renown as an artist, it was mostly literary in content, with a wide-ranging aggressive tone, possibly influenced by Alfred Jarry and Apollinaire. There were contributions by two men new to Dada: Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. However 391 remained essentially the expression of the inventive, energetic and wealthy Picabia, who stated of it: "Every page must explode, whether through seriousness, profundity, turbulence, nausea, the new, the eternal, annihilating nonsense, enthusiasm for principles, or the way it is printed. Art must be unaesthetic in the extreme, useless and impossible to justify."

Francis Picabia (22 January 1879 – 30 November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism. His highly abstract planar compositions were colourful and rich in contrasts. He was one of the early major figures of the Dada movement in the United States and in France. His was later briefly associated with Surrealism, but would soon turn his back on the art establishment.

Very Good copy.

File under: Francis Picabia Man Ray Marcel Duchamp Arnauld Pierre Beverley Calte Francis Picabia Hans Ulrich Obrist Stefan Banz APT International / Tokyo Isetan Museum of Art / Tokyo Art Dada Out-of-print / Rare Painting Drawing Surrealism Fiction / Poetry SALE

Érotique du Surréalisme
by Robert Benayoun

1965, French
Hardcover (clothbound), 244 pages, 18 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Jean-Jacques Pauvert / Paris

$55.00 - Out of stock

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First 1965 clothbound edition of Érotique du Surréalisme, Robert Benayoun's study on the importance of the erotic in the surrealist arts, from L'Androgyne to The Sadist, Le Femme-Enfant to the Poetic Machine, surveying Symbolist and Art Brut precursors, and encompassing the multitude manifestations of eroticism across a broad array of visual and poetic works from the surrealist spectrum, even into the influence in film (a field Benayoun was known in). Reproducing poems and quotes throughout, this heavily illustrated volume reproduces many artworks in b/w and colour plates, including works and works by Max Walter Svanberg, Toyen, Hans Bellmer, Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern, Heinrich Anton Müller, Marcel Duchamp, Jindřich Štyrský, Brancusi, Victor Brauner, Mimi Parent, Andre Masson, Louis Aragon, Yves Tanguy, Valentine Hugo, Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Balthus, Rene Magritte, André Breton, Giorgio de Chirico, Henry Fuseli, Dali, Man Ray, Henri Rousseau, Picasso, Miro, Edvard Munch, William Blake, Hieronymus Bosch, Ingrid Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Konrad Klapheck, Francis Picabia, Óscar Domínguez, Jean Benoit, Paul Delvaux, Pierre Molinier, and many more.

Good—Very Good copy with light tanning to spine and general tanning/light wear.

File under: André Breton Louis Aragon Joyce Mansour Hans Bellmer Salvador Dali Robert Benayoun Guillaume Apollinaire Jean-Jacques Pauvert / Paris Eros Fetishism / BDSM Theory / Essay Fiction / Poetry Poetry Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Surrealism Dada Art Painting Sculpture / Installation Drawing Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle

Hannah Höch, Scott Roben, Johanna Tiedtke
Interior Garden

2024, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 23 x 17 cm
Published by Hatje Cantz / Berlin

$69.00 - In stock -

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At the beginning of World War II, Dada artist Hannah Höch (1889–1978) retreated to a secluded house on the outskirts of Berlin to escape fascist persecution. The adjoining garden inspired and nourished her. And this is also where she hid her unique collection of dadaist artworks. Eighty years later, this richly illustrated and thoroughly researched book combines Höch’s botanical collages and photographs of the garden with documents on her relationship with the writer Til Brugman. Together with new works by artists Scott Roben and Johanna Tiedtke based on visits to the garden, and an essay by the scholar Alhena Katsof, the book interweaves past and present, private and public, personal and political, and opens up new perspectives on Höch’s long-forgotten refuge.

File under: Hannah Höch Scott Roben Johanna Tiedtke Til Brugman lhena Katsof Leah Pires Hatje Cantz / Berlin Dada Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Photography Art Drawing Painting

The Autobiography of George Grosz: A Small Yes and a Big No
by George Grosz

1982, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 246 pages,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Allison & Busby / London

$35.00 - Out of stock

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1982 English hardcover edition of The Autobiography of George Grosz: A Small Yes and a Big No, first published by Dial Press in New York City, translated by Lola Sachs Dorin. In 1982, this new translation by Arnold Pomerans of the 1955 German edition was published by Allison and Busby in London.

The autobiography of George Grosz (1893—1959), the great German artist and satirist, is crammed with unique anecdotes and reminiscences. More than just a chronicle of his own life, it becomes in effect a history of the modern movement and is, says the Stuttgarter Zeitung, "a glorious, exciting book".

Grosz recalls his Pomeranian childhood, army life during the First World War, revolution and hunger in its aftermath, the frenzied, disjointed world of Dadaism and Nazism in the Weimar Republic. He describes the cafés, beer-cellars and studios of Paris and Berlin, a dangerous but optimistic journey to Soviet Russia and final emigration to the United States — less than a month before the Nazis came to power.

He conjures up an exciting period and the central figures, the intellectual outsiders, who were responsible for shaping it — a colourful and unforgettable crowd, the artists and writers and film people and political activists, Dali, de Chirico, Rosa Luxemburg, Thomas Mann, Lenin, Brecht, Dos Passos, Joseph von Sternberg, Trotsky, and many others.

Grosz was the most rebellious and explosive of artists, the scourge of militarism, capitalism and the bourgeoisie in the 1920s, whose lines "tore like barbed wire" and whose life and work became a legend. His autobiography is a rich, enjoyable book, here fully available in English for the first time.

Very Good copy, VG dust jacket.

File under: George Grosz Allison & Busby / London Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Eros Crime / Violence Sociology / Politics Dada Art Painting Drawing Out-of-print / Rare

50 Drawings to Murder Magic
by Antonin Artaud

2016, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 27.8 x 21.4 cm
Published by Seagull Books / London

$39.00 - In stock -

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Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
Edited with a Preface by Évelyne Grossman

A poet, philosopher, essayist, playwright, actor, and director, Antonin Artaud was a visionary writer and a major influence within and beyond the French avant-garde. A key text for understanding his thought and his appeal, 50 Drawings to Murder Magic is rooted in the nine years Artaud spent in mental asylums, struggling with schizophrenia and the demonic, persecutory visions it unleashed. Set down in a dozen exercise books written between 1946 and 1948, these pieces trace Artaud’s struggle to escape a personal hell that extends far beyond the walls of asylums and the dark magicians he believed ran them.

The first eleven notebooks are filled with fragments of writing and extraordinary sketches: totemic figures, pierced bodies, and enigmatic machines, some revealing the marks of a trembling hand, others carefully built up from firm, forceful pencil strokes. The twelfth notebook, completed two months before Artaud’s death in 1948, changes course: it’s an extraordinary text on the loss of magic to the demonic—the piece that gives the book its title.

“Artaud matters,” wrote John Simon in the Saturday Review years ago. Nearly seventy years after his death, that remains true—perhaps more than ever.

"A gloriously reproduced edition . . . . There is something in this text that speaks to the creative process--especially to the degree to which so much of what the writer or artist commits to the page (or canvass) extends from a place beyond conscious attention, to be received actively but without specific intention."—Rough Ghosts

File under: Antonin Artaud Antonin Artaud Donald Nicholson-Smith Évelyne Grossman Seagull Books / London Surrealism Dada Performance / Dance / Theater Theory / Essay Drawing Poetry Fiction / Poetry Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Art

OBJET — Deviant Materials

1987, Japanese
Softcover (w. wax dust jacket), 56 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Seibu Museum of Art / Tokyo

$140.00 $70.00 - In stock -

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Rare copy of the 1987 exhibition cataloue OBJET — Deviant Materials, published on the occasion of the group exhibition at Seibu Museum of Art and curated by Tatehata Satoshi, exploring postwar sculptural art in Japan from around 1960 to the present day through the work of 21 artists, an attempt to provide an opportunity to see the expansion and transformation of the so-called object itself. Heavily illustrated throughout with worksm biographies adn statements from artists including Genpei Akasegawa, Kazunori Ono, Mokuma Kikubata, Ryo Kitatsuji, Yayoi Kusama, Tetsumi Kudo, Yumiko Kanno, Shuzo Takiguchi, Kyoji Takubo, Atsuko Tanaka, Satomi Tim, Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Shiro Matsui, Tomio Miki, Kimiyo Mishima, Toyoji Miyazaki, Saburo Muraoka, Tatsumi Yoshino, Masunobu Yoshimura, Isamu Wakabayashi...

Good copy, some wear, light foxing.

File under: Genpei Akasegawa Kazunori Ono Mokuma Kikubata Ryo Kitatsuji Yayoi Kusama Tetsumi Kudo Yumiko Kanno Shuzo Takiguchi Kyoji Takubo Atsuko Tanaka Satomi Tim Natsuyuki Nakanishi Shiro Matsui Tomio Miki Kimiyo Mishima Toyoji Miyazaki Saburo Muraoka Tatsumi Yoshino Masunobu Yoshimura Isamu Wakabayashi Tatehata Satoshi Seibu Museum of Art / Tokyo Sculpture / Installation Minimal Art Art Fluxus Out-of-print / Rare Group Shows / Collections Conceptual Art Curatorial Dada SALE

4 dada suicides
Arthur Cravan, Jacques Rigaut, Julien Torma, Jacques Vaché

1997, English
Softcover, 269 pages, 19 x 17.15 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Atlas Press / London

$65.00 - Out of stock

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Writings by Arthur Cravan, Jacques Rigaut, Julien Torma & Jacques Vaché. With Introductions and biographical essays on each author. Translated by Terry Hale, Paul Lenti and Iain White, introduced by Roger Conover, Terry Hale and Paul Lenti.

These four “writers” took the nihilism of the movement to its ultimate conclusion, their works are the remnants of lives lived to the limit and then cast aside with nonchalance and disdain: Vaché died of a drug overdose, Rigaut shot himself, Cravan and Torma simply vanished, their fates still a mystery. Yet their fragmentary works — to which they attached so little importance — still exert a powerful allure and were a vital inspiration for the literary movements that followed them. Vaché’s bitter humour, Cravan’s energetic invective, Rigaut’s dandyfied introspection, and Torma’s imperturbable asperity: all had their influence.

Atlas Anti-classic 2, a corrected 2005 reprint of the edition of 1995. All prints of this wonderful anthology are long out-of-print.

Very Good copy.

File under: Andre Breton André Breton Arthur Cravan Jacques Rigaut Julien Torma Jacques Vaché Terry Hale Paul Lenti Iain White Roger Conover Atlas Press / London Dada Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Surrealism Art Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare

Dada: Art and Anti-Art
by Hans Richter

1965, English
Softcover, 246 pages, 20.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Harry N. Abrams / New York

$30.00 - Out of stock

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First 1965 English edition of German Dada painter, graphic artist, avant-garde film producer, and art historian, Hans Richter's important book of the Dada movement. "Where and how Dada began is almost as difficult to determine as Homer's birthplace" writes Hans Richter, who was associated with Dada from its early days. The noted artist and film-maker records here the history of that boisterous and fantastic movement, from its beginnings in wartime Zurich to its collapse in the Paris of the 1920s Dada invited the world to misunderstand it and fostered all kinds of confusion; nearly fifty years later its contradictions still intrigue us.

By skilful quotation from manifestoes and other documents of the time Professor Richter re-creates the events of those turbulent days. Looked at in retrospect Dada's role in the development of modern art seems inevitable, and the creative force of its planned outbursts can now be perceived: Dada led on from Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism, and in its turn prepared the way for Surrealism. Dada was enlivened by extravagant, bizarre personalities: Tristan Tzara, Francis Picabia, Hans Arp, Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Man Ray. Today the wheel has turned again; the gestures and provocations of the original movement reappear, hardly changed, in such forms as Pop art. The final section discusses this phenomenon.

"Mr.Richter, one of the original adherents of Dada, describes their attitude in a first-rate history, as objective and sober as the laughter was once derisive."—THE TIMES OF LONDON

Very Good copy, light wear to extremities, tanning to covers.

File under: Hans Richter Tristan Tzara Francis Picabia Hans Arp Kurt Schwitters Marcel Duchamp Max Ernst Man Ray Raoul Hausmann George Grosz Giorgio de Chirico Marcel Janco Hans Richter Tristan Tzara Louis Aragon Andre Breton André Breton Richard Huelsenbeck Philippe Soupault Harry N. Abrams / New York Dada Surrealism Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Painting Drawing Performance / Dance / Theater Photography Sociology / Politics Protest / Revolt Art 'Pataphysics / Oulipo

Semiotext(e) Vol. II, No. 3, 1977 — Anti-Oedipus: From Psychoanalysis to Schizopolitics
Sylvère Lotringer; Gilles Deleuze; Felix Guattari

1977, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 21.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles

$200.00 - Out of stock

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Rare copy of this remarkable issue of the original Semiotext(e) journal, published and edited by Sylvère Lotringer between 1974—1985, with later book-length issues appearing in the 1990s. This key issue, Anti-Oedipus: From Psychoanalysis to Schizopolitics, was published hot on the heels of the publication of Deleuze and Guattari's seminal "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia", published by Viking in 1977. This issue of the journal explores the issues raised by Deleuze and Guattari, whilst searching for their practical applications. Features major contributions by Sylvère Lotringer, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Jean-François Lyotard, Guy Hocquenghem, Antonin Artaud, Jacques Donzelot, John Rajchman, et al.

Founded in 1974, Semiotext(e) began as a journal that emerged from a semiotics reading group led by Sylvère Lotringer at the Columbia University philosophy department. Initially, the magazine was devoted to readings of thinkers like Nietzsche and Saussure. In 1978, Lotringer and his collaborators published a special issue, Schizo-Culture, in the wake of a conference of the same name he had organized two years before at Columbia University. The magazine brought together artists and thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Kathy Acker, John Cage, Michel Foucault, Jack Smith, Martine Barrat and Lee Breuer. Schizo-Culture brought out connections between high theory and underground culture that had not yet been made, and forged the "high/low" aesthetic that remains central to the Semiotext(e) project.

Very Good copy with some wear and usual tanning to the spine, raw paper stock edges. Spine and binding undamaged.

File under: Antonin Artaud Felix Guattari Gilles Deleuze Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari SylveÌre Lotringer Antonin Artaud Guy Hocquenghem John Rajchman Jean-François Lyotard Jacques Donzelot Ferdinand de Saussure Luce Irigaray Georges Bataille Gerard Bucher Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Anarchism Sociology / Politics Psychoanalysis Philosophy Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Counterculture Socialism / Communism / Capitalism LGBTQ+ Eros Dada Surrealism Fiction / Poetry

Hannah Höch
Assembled Worlds

2024, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 23 x 17 cm
Published by Scheidegger und Spiess / Zürich

$90.00 - In stock -

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A groundbreaking, richly illustrated book on Hannah Höch’s montages in the context of film and the visual culture of Modernism. Sheds light for the first time on Hannah Höch’s significance as a pioneering artist to confront the industrial age’s flood of images.

Hannah Höch (1889-1978) moved between differing worlds: as an editorial assistant with a major Berlin-based magazine publisher, and as the only woman who could hold her own in the German capital's vibrant Dada scene of the 1920s. Her works dissected a world marked by the catastrophe of the Great War and an intense consumer culture, and reassembled it in revolutionary, poetic, and often ironic ways. Scissors and glue were the weapons of her art of montage, of which she was a coinventor.

Cutting and montage also shaped film, still a new medium in the 1920s, which strongly influenced Höch's art: she understood her assembled pictures as static films. This richly illustrated and expertly annotated book explores comprehensively for the first time Höch's life-long fascination with film and the visual culture of the modern industrial age. Covering her entire career, It demonstrates how montage evolved in a field of tension between artistic experimentation, commercial exploitation, and political appropriation. A text on photomontage by Höch, written in 1948, and a text-collage on the history of montage, in which major protagonists of Modernism and Avant-garde have their say, round out this volume.

Contributors:
Martin Waldmeier is a curator at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.
Nina Zimmer is director of the Kunstmuseum Bern and its affiliate Zentrum Paul Klee.

File under: Hannah Höch Nina Zimmer Maritin Waldmeier Stella Rollig Scheidegger und Spiess / Zürich Art Dada Surrealism Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art

Francis Picabia
The Matthiesen Gallery, London, October—November 1959

1959, English
Softcover (staple bound), 20 pages, 19.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by The Matthiesen Gallery / London

$110.00 - In stock -

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Gorgeous and very rare 1959 Francis Picabia exhibition catalogue published on the occasion of the solo retrospective show at The Matthiesen Gallery, London, October—November 1959. A catalogue of 56 works, some illustrated with b/w plates, with accompanying text by André Breton. Includes biography.

Francis Picabia (1879—1953) was a Cuban-French avant-garde painter, writer, filmmaker, magazine publisher, poet, typographist and provocateur closely associated with Dada. A friend to fellow iconoclasts Duchamp, Breton, Tzara, and Man Ray, Picabia's discordant, self-contradicting art, in which wispy watercolours, pin-up girls and mechanical pistons could hang side by side, had a clear conviction: to crush distinctions between high and low, elegance and kitsch, and to force us all to the limits of taste. When considering the many styles that Picabia painted in, observers have described his career as "shape-shifting" or "kaleidoscopic". After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism. “The Cuban who out-cubed the Cubists”, his highly abstract planar compositions were colourful and rich in contrasts. He was one of the early major figures of the Dada movement in the United States and in France, publishing his Dada periodical 391 with Duchamp before denouncing Dada in 1921 in favour of the development of Surrealism. "If you want to have clean ideas, change them like shirts."—Picabia. From 1922, Breton's relaunched Littérature magazine featured cover artwork every issue by Picabia that drew on religious imagery, erotic iconography, and the iconography of games of chance. In 1925, Picabia returned to figurative painting, his "Monster" period, followed by his "Transparencies" series (1927—1930) and his then abhorred pin-up girl/"Nazi porn" paintings, all highly influential on contemporary German painters such as Sigmar Polke. Picabia would soon turn his back on the art establishment altogether.

Very Good copy with light shadow from sticker to top-left of cover, two National Gallery of Victoria stamps.

File under: Francis Picabia Andre Breton The Matthiesen Gallery / London Painting Surrealism Drawing Out-of-print / Rare Art Dada

Francis Picabia
Litterature

2018, English
Hardcover (die-cut linen-bound), 64 pages, 22.9 x 29.9 cm
Ed. of 500,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by Small Press / New York

$115.00 - In stock -

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Limited to 500 copies, and now out-of-print, Litterature pairs excerpts from Francis Picabia’s (1879–1953) novel Caravanserail with nine drawings and seventeen studies he created for the cover of André Breton’s Litterature journal between 1922 and 1924. This beautifully produced linen-bound book—whose front cover features circular die-cuts derived from one of Picabia’s dice drawings—offers a celebration of subversive play and fluid forms.

Originally produced as potential covers for André Breton's 1920s Surrealist literary journal, Littérature, the twenty-six subversive—at the time, even scandalous—Francis Picabia drawings that are collected in this remarkable new limited edition from Small Press Books had been sealed in an envelope (dated August 8, 1923) and forgotten for decades until Breton's daughter, Aube Breton-Elléouët, unearthed and exhibited them in 2008. Of the original group, only nine of these playfully insurgent works were actually published by Breton. According to a 1922 letter from fellow Dadaist Marcel Duchamp to Breton, American retailers considered Picabia's cover graphics far too salacious to be displayed on their newsstands. Thus Duchamp was forced to become the journal's only American micro-distributor, circulating it among likeminded friends until its demise in 1924.

Edited by Stephanie LaCava. Translated by Lauren Elkin. Design by Eric Wrenn Office.

File under: Francis Picabia Marcel Duchamp Andre Breton Small Press / New York Dada Art Painting Drawing Fiction / Poetry Surrealism

Max Ernst

1960, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 106 pages, 26.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Misuzu Shobo / Tokyo

$100.00 - In stock -

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First edition of this lovely 1960 hardcover monograph published in Tokyo on the German Surrealist Max Ernst (1891—1976), as part of a Misuzu Shobo series on Modern European and American artists issued for Japanese readers. With accompanying text by Japanese poet, critic and fellow Surrealist artist Shūzō Takiguchi. A prolific and highly original painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet, Ernst's various works are surveyed (paintings, collages, and frottages dating upto the late 1950s) herein generously in colour and b/w reproductions. Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada and Surrealism movements.

Very Good copy with some internal blank stock paper tanning. Dust Jacket with some wear and tear to extremities, all preserved in mylar wrap. A lovely copy of this uncommon title.

File under: Max Ernst Shūzō Takiguchi Shūzō Takiguchi Misuzu Shobo / Tokyo Surrealism Dada Painting Out-of-print / Rare Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Art Drawing

Hannah Höch

2022, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 21 x 26 cm
Published by Prestel / Munich

$70.00 - In stock -

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Now available in paperback, this book on the celebrated Dada artist Hannah Höch explores her use of collage as the artistic medium of choice for both satire and poetic beauty.

World-renowned for her work during the Weimar period, Hannah Höch was a pioneer in many aspects, both artistic and cultural. She was the lone woman of the Berlin Dada movement - the riotous form of art that deconstructed sound, language, and images to re-assemble them into new objects, texts and meanings. Höch was a pivotal force in the development of collage, paving the way for today's ubiquitous image editing techniques. A determined believer in women's rights, Höch questioned conventional concepts of partnership, beauty and the making of art, her work presenting acute critiques of racial and social stereotypes, particularly that of her native Germany.

Focusing on Höch's collages, this book examines the artist's career from the 1920s to the 1970s, charting her oeuvre from early works influenced by fashion and mass media, through to her later compositions of lyrical abstraction. It reveals her rapid development of a personal style, which was both humorous and often moving, but also offered critical commentary on society at a time of tremendous social change.

Included are essays that examine themes such as the concept of the "New Woman" and the legacy of German colonialism. Featuring international scholarship on a groundbreaking artist, this volume brings together important source texts and reference material, which were first translated into English for the original edition of this book.

Dawn Ades is Professor Emerita of the History and Theory of Art at the University of Essex, and Professor of Art History at the Royal Academy. She is a former Trustee of Tate and Fellow of the British Academy.

Daniel F. Herrmann is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Projects, The National Gallery.

Emily Butler is a curator, writer and translator, currently Mahera and Mohammad Abu Ghazaleh Curator at the Whitechapel Gallery.

File under: Hannah Hoch Hannah Höch Dawn Ades Daniel F. Herrmann Prestel / Munich Art Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Dada Surrealism

MAX ERNST
1983/1984

1983, Japanese / German / English
Softcover, 164 pages, 24 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Yomiuri Shimbun / Tokyo

$60.00 - In stock -

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Scarce Japanese catalogue on the work of German artist Max Ernst, published to accompany the major retrospective exhibition that travelled Japan 1983—1984.

With an introduction by German art historian Werner Spies, in German and Japanese, this profusely illustrated book is quite a valuable volume on Ernst as it concentrates its pages on a huge collection of his lithography, frottage, collage, etching, and other graphic works, rather than his more well-known works in painting and sculpture, bringing to the surface many lesser-seen works of the artist. Over 300 colour and black and white reproductions, including biography and bibliography. Texts in Japanese and German, with titles and introduction in English.

Max Ernst (1891—1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism.

Good copy with wear and creasing to corners, general wear and tear to cover extremities. Spine uncreased and tightly bound.

File under: Max Ernst Werner Spies Yomiuri Shimbun / Tokyo Art Out-of-print / Rare Sculpture / Installation Surrealism Painting Dada

Man Ray
1890–1976 Genius of light

2024, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 29.8 x 24.8 cm
Published by Silvana / Milan Palais Lumière / Évian-les-Bains

$85.00 - Out of stock

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Man Ray occupies a prominent place in the history of 20th-century art. A versatile artist, who lived mainly in Paris, he is best known as a photographer. Indeed, he was one of the first to use photography, not as a simple means of reproduction, but as a genuine creative medium, turning the technique into an art form. Some of his photographs, such as Le Violon d’Ingres (1924) and Noire et blanche (1926), have achieved iconic status.

Born in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) on 27 August 1890, Emmanuel Radnitsky, known as Man Ray (as in a ray of light), actively participated in the intellectual and artistic circles of New York. He discovered the European avant-gardes and befriended Marcel Duchamp who opened the doors of Dadaism to him and welcomed him to Paris in July 1921.

At the heart of Parisian artistic life, he participated in the innovative experiments of the Dadaists and Surrealists, met with painters, poets and intellectuals, and became famous for his portraits. He developed a career as a fashion photographer, notably for designers Paul Poiret and Elsa Schiaparelli. A tireless experimenter, he rediscovered the technique of “photograms” (abstract silhouettes of objects) that Tristan Tzara named “rayographs” and in 1929, with his new partner Lee Miller, developed the “solarization” technique. In 1940, after the fall of France, Man Ray left for the United States and met Juliet Browner, who became his wife and muse. He returned to Paris in 1951 and lived there until his death in 1976.
Man Ray is renowned for having revolutionized the art of photography, but he was also a painter, draughtsman, assembler of objects, sculptor, writer and filmmaker. It is this protean artist that we seek to discover or re-discover, through a true panorama of his works, which will enable us to comprehend Man Ray’s creative process and the importance of his art.

Edited by Robert Rocca, Pierre-Yves Butzbach.
Texts by Robert Rocca, Pierre-Yves Butzbach, Serge Sanchez, Man Ray, Sylvie Gonzalez, Laurence Benaïm, Marie-Pierre Ribère, Jean-Michel Bouhours.

File under: Man Ray Marcel Duchamp Lee Miller Juliet Browner Robert Rocca Pierre-Yves Butzbach Serge Sanchez Man Ray Sylvie Gonzalez Laurence Benaïm Marie-Pierre Ribère Jean-Michel Bouhours. Silvana / Milan Palais Lumière / Évian-les-Bains Surrealism Dada Photography Sculpture / Installation Painting Drawing Art

OBJECT & IDEA
New Work by Australian Artists

1973, English
Softcover (staple-bound),
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria

$240.00 - Out of stock

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Extremely rare catalogue of the great OBJECT & IDEA exhibition, presented at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1973, curated by Brian Finemore (Curator of Australian Art and co-curator of The Field in 1968). With the assistance of Graeme Sturgeon (Exhibitions Officer 1970–1980), this important survey exhibition helped in defining radical new shifts in contemporary Australian art at the start of the 1970s by bringing together new work by 6 young Australian artists; John Armstrong, Tony Coleing, Aleks Danko, Nigel Lendon, Ti Parks and Imants Tillers, all of whom are profiled here in-depth with illustrations of many of their works, along with biographies, portraits, and notes. Introduction by Finemore and Sturgeon, with texts by Brian Finemore, Gregory Heath, Ian Millis and John Stringer. Designed by Graeme Sturgeon and Melbourne artist Peter Cripps. "This book records an exhibition and poses some questions for Australian Art in 1973. New Art? New Aesthetic? New Artist? New Museum?". One of the finest, yet seldom seen Australian art catalogues. Highly recommended.

“[...] The new art was to be a new reality. It was to be what Duchamp called a cervellite that is a "brainfact". It is from that stream of tradition with its influxions from the tributaries of De Stijl and the Russian Constructivists, this Australian exhibition and "Object and Idea" ultimately comes. I do not say that these six artists are disciples of Duchamp, or that their work is imitative of his art style. What l do say is that their work is in the stylistic and cultural tradition which developed from taking up the options his work proposed. This exhibition is not a manifesto, the artists are not group artists. But it is well to remember that a fundamental revision of collective sensibility, of attitudes to life, often finds its first expression in art and the philosophical disciplines. In the work of these men one may perhaps examine the tides which will direct the future. Their art is of the present yet hints of change.” — from Finemore’s “New Art?” essay.

Very Good, tightly bound copy. Light tanning.

File under: John Armstrong Tony Coleing Aleks Danko Nigel Lendon Ti Parks Imants Tillers Peter Cripps Brian Finemore Gregory Heath Ian Millis John Stringer Graeme Sturgeon NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria Australian Art Sculpture / Installation Dada Conceptual Art Out-of-print / Rare Art Group Shows / Collections Minimal Art

Man Ray
[1890—1976]

1990, Japanese / French / English
2 volumes in cardboard slipcase (w. exhibition flyer); volume 1 68 pages (colour ill.) volume 2 196 pages (b/w ill.), 22.5 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Sezon Museum of Art / Tokyo

$100.00 - Out of stock

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Wonderful, visually exhaustive two-volume boxset catalogue for the traveling exhibition in Japan in 1990—1991, held on the centenary of Man Ray's birth.

Each volume of this Japanese publication on the American artist Man Ray serves as a wonderful index of his incredible lifetime of work. Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Man Ray was a renowned representative of avant-garde photography in the 20th century and is considered as the pioneer of Surrealist photography. A major contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media including drawings, objects and films, but considered himself a painter above all. Volume One compiles many examples of his diverse non-photographic works, reproducing his many paintings, drawings, objects, prints and book editions in full colour. Volume Two (the heavier of the two volumes) focuses on his prolific photographic work, copiously illustrated with a huge catalogue of beautifully reproduced monochromatic works throughout his entire career — Paris, America, Dada, Surrealism and beyond — showcasing his significant contribution to the evaluation of photography as a form of modern art.

Accompanying texts by Merry Foresta, Lucien Treillard, Toshiharu Ito in Japanese, French and English. Primarily in Japanese language. Includes full biography, bibliography and catalogue of all works.

Good—VG copy. Light wear/age/foxing to slipcase and covers otherwise Very Good in general.
1991 exhibition flyer at Seibu laid in.

File under: Man Ray Marcel Duchamp Sezon Museum of Art / Tokyo Surrealism Dada Out-of-print / Rare Sculpture / Installation Art Photography Eros

Putting My Foot In It: A Novel
by René Crevel

1992, English
Softcover, 173 pages, 24 x 15 cm
Published by Dalkey Archive Press / US

$32.00 - Out of stock

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English edition of this 1933 classic surrealist novel by René Crevel (1900-1935), a bisexual communist dadaist who suffered a traumatic religious upbringing and suffered from tuberculosis. Crevel is considered to be one of the most important writers of surrealist fiction, a true genius of the movement. Translated by Thomas Buckley, this edition includes Ezra Pound's well-known essay on Crevel as a foreword, and an introduction by Edouard Roditi.

Imagine, if you can, Freud and Proust sitting down for a chat with Zippy the Pinhead and the marquis de Sade. Then, just when things are starting to get a bit silly, in walks Karl Marx with a dead serious face to deliver a vitriolic diatribe. After he has finished his speech, Jacques Lacan enters and slips a couch under the narrator, who begins psychoanalyzing himself and his text. Zippy soon prevails, however, and the narrative has turned into a political allegory with characters out of Felix the Cat: a surrealist, graphic (historiographic, geographic, pornographic) version of The Romance of the Rose. Rene Crevel's 1933 novel Putting My Foot in It (Les Pieds dans le plat) has long been considered a classic of the surrealist period, but has never been translated into English until now. Loosely structured around a luncheon attended by thirteen guests, the novel is a surrealistic critique of the intellectual corruption of post-World War I France, especially the capitalist bourgeoisie and its supporter, the Catholic Church. The novel begins with an account of the family of the major character, known as the "Prince of Journalists." This bizarre family - the grandparents a soldier and a sodomized woman, the parents an orphaned epileptic and a hunchback - is matched by Crevel's bizarre syntax and vocabulary: nouns that initially appear legitimate, intact, and respectable, soon decompose into obscene epithets, making other nouns, both common and proper, suspect. The story continues in this way to deconstruct itself on many levels - literary, semantic, psychological, ideological - until the final chapter, when the luncheon degenerates in a way reminiscent of a Bunuel film and all of the novel'scharacters appear in a dirty movie entitled The Geography Lesson, a final metaphor for the corruption of European society between the world wars.

File under: René Crevel René Crevel Thomas Buckley Ezra Pound Edouard Roditi Dalkey Archive Press / US Fiction / Poetry Surrealism Dada

Documenta 5
by Harald Szeemann

1972, German / English / French
Vinyl ring-binder (screen printed w. design by E. Ruscha), 650 pages +, 32 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by documenta / Kassel

$500.00 - Out of stock

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Scarce copy of the only edition of the most elaborately designed, and lowest circulated Documenta catalogue, conceived by curator Harald Szeemann to accompany the fifth edition of Documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany.

Subtitled "100 Days of Inquiry into Reality -- Today's Imagery," curated by the team of Harald Szeemann, Jean-Christophe Ammann and Arnold Bode, Documenta 5 followed a lineage of comprehensive shows documenting conceptually and minimally charged artworks curated by Szeemann including Live in Your Head (Kunsthalle Bern, 1969), and Happenings and Fluxus (Kunstverein, Köln), 1970. The largest, most expensive and most diverse of any exhibition anywhere, Documenta 5 was criticized in 1972 as being “bizarre…vulgar…sadistic” by art critic and essayist Hilton Kramer and “monstrous… overtly deranged” by art historian and art critic Barbara Rose, yet it still resonates today as one of the most important exhibitions in history. Featuring the works of over 170 artists and an equally expansive variety of materials and subjects drawn from popular cultural materials, architecture, science fiction, kitsch objects, film, advertising, children's art, etc. in addition to the more anticipated international survey of new painting and sculpture - Documenta 5 valiantly attempted to bridge the gap between art, culture, science and the broader society. This massive tome is housed in the iconic orange vinyl-covered, two-ring binder screen printed with the famous ant design by Edward Ruscha. The binder holds a tabbed index of illustrated artist's pages and associated texts and material, largely in German, but also many in English. All registers are present apart from the usual missing 19-25 which were not directly integrated into the catalogue and had to be ordered by the visitor separately to become their own contribution. This very complete copy also includes the additional 80 page, hole-punched Documenta 5 guide book, with floor plans, complete listing of exhibited artworks, list of exhibitions, bibliography, and many gallery, museum and other related advertisements. More than a catalogue, this publication is a piece of art history in itself.

Includes artists: Vito Acconci, Vincenzo Agnetti, Peter Alexander, John de Andrea, Giovanni Anselmo, Arbeitszeit, Archigram, Chuck Arnoldi, Art & Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Ashkin, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Georg Baselitz, Lothar Baumgarten, Robert Bechtle, Gottfried Bechtold, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Karl Oskar Blase, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Christian Boltanski, Claudio Bravo, George Brecht, K.P. Brehmer, Marcel Broodthaers, Stanley Brouwn, Günter Brus, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Michael Buthe, James Lee Byars, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Castelli, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Chuck Close, Tony Conrad, Ron Cooper, Bill Copley, Joseph Cornell, Robert Cottingham, Paul Cotton, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, David Deutsch, Jan Dibbets, Herbert Distel, Gino de Dominicis, Marcel Duchamp, John Dugger, Don Eddy, Franz Eggenschwiler, Ger van Elk, Richard Estes, Luciano Fabro, John C. Fernie, Robert Filliou, Jud Fine, Joel Fisher, Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Hamish Fulton, Franz Gertsch, Gilbert & George, Ralph Goings, Hubert Gojowczyk, Dan Graham, Walter Grasskamp, Nancy Graves, Hans Haacke, Duane Hanson, Guy Harloff, Michael Harvey, Haus-Rucker-Co, Auguste Herbin, Eva Hesse, Rebecca Horn, Jean Olivier Hucleux, Douglas Huebler, Jörg Immendorff, Will Insley, Rolf Iseli, Ken Jacobs, Neil Jenney, Alfred Jensen, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Max G. Kaminski, Howard Kanovitz, Edward Kienholz, Imi Knoebel, Christof Kohlhofer, Jannis Kounellis, Tom Kovachevich, Piotr Kowalski, David Lamelas, Barry Le Va, Jean LeGac, Alfred Leslie, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Ingeborg Luscher, Inge Mahn, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Etienne Martin, Richard McLean, David Medalla, Fernando Melani, Jim Melchert, Mario Merz, Gustav Metzger, Bernd Minnich, Malcolm Morley, Ed Moses, Bruce Nauman, Hermann Nitsch, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Blinky Palermo, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, A.R. Penck, Giuseppe Penone, Vettor Pisani, Sigmar Polke, Stephen Posen, Markus Raetz, Arnulf Rainer, Gerhard Richter, Klaus Rinke, Dorothea Rockburne, Peter Roehr, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Ulrich Ruckriem, Robert Ryman, John Salt, Salvo, Lucas Samaras, Paul Sarkisian, Jean-Frederic Schnyder, Ben Schonzeit, Werner Schroeter, HA Schult, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Fritz Schwegler, Richard Serra, Paul Sharits, Allan Shields, Katharina Sieverding, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Klaus Staeck, Paul Staiger, Jorge Stever, Robert Strubin, Paul Thek, Wayne Thiebaud, Andre Thomkins, David Tremlett, Richard Tuttle, Ben Vautier, W + B Hein, Franz Erhard Walther, Robert Watts, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, John Wesley, H.C. Westermann, William Wiley, Rolf Winnewisser, Tom Wudl, Klaus Wyborny, La Monte Young, Peter Young, Gilberto Zorio.

Catalogue also includes Bob Projansky and Seth Siegelaub's "The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement." This "Agreement form has been drafted by Bob Projansky, a New York lawyer, after my [Siegelaub] extensive discussions and correspondence with over 500 artists, dealers, lawyers, collectors, museum people, critics and other concerned people involved in the day-to-day workings of the international art world. The Agreement has been designed to remedy some generally acknowledged inequities in the art world, particularly artists' lack of control over the use of their work and participation in its economics after they no longer own it. The Agreement for has been written with special awareness of the current ordinary practices and economic realitites of the art world, particularly its private, cash and informal nature, with careful regard for the interests and motives of all concerned. It is expected to be the standard form for the transfer and sale of all contemporary art, and has been made as fair, simple and useful as possible. It can be used either as presented here or slightly altered to fit your specific situation. If the following information does not answer all your questions consult your attorney." -- from Agreement's cover. Copies of the contract are individually included in English, Germany, and French editions.

Very Good, complete (as issued) copy. Very minor wear.

File under: Vito Acconci Vincenzo Agnetti Peter Alexander John de Andrea Giovanni Anselmo Arbeitszeit Archigram Chuck Arnoldi Art & Language Richard Artschwager Michael Ashkin John Baldessari Robert Barry Georg Baselitz Lothar Baumgarten Robert Bechtle Gottfried Bechtold Joseph Beuys Karl Oskar Blase Mel Bochner Alighiero Boetti Christian Boltanski Claudio Bravo George Brecht Marcel Broodthaers Stanley Brouwn Günter Brus Daniel Buren Victor Burgin Michael Buthe James Lee Byars Pier Paolo Calzolari Luciano Castelli Chuck Close Tony Conrad Ron Cooper Bill Copley Joseph Cornell Robert Cottingham Paul Cotton Hanne Darboven Walter De Maria David Deutsch Jan Dibbets Herbert Distel Gino de Dominicis Marcel Duchamp John Dugger Don Eddy Franz Eggenschwiler Ger van Elk Richard Estes Luciano Fabro John C. Fernie Robert Filliou Jud Fine Joel Fisher Terry Fox Howard Fried Hamish Fulton Franz Gertsch Gilbert & George Ralph Goings Hubert Gojowczyk Dan Graham Walter Grasskamp Nancy Graves Hans Haacke Duane Hanson Guy Harloff Michael Harvey Haus-Rucker-Co Auguste Herbin Eva Hesse Rebecca Horn Jean Olivier Hucleux Douglas Huebler Jörg Immendorff Will Insley Rolf Iseli Ken Jacobs Neil Jenney Alfred Jensen Jasper Johns Joan Jonas Max G. Kaminski Howard Kanovitz Edward Kienholz Imi Knoebel Christof Kohlhofer Jannis Kounellis H.C. Westermann William Wiley Rolf Winnewisser Tom Wudl Klaus Wyborny La Monte Young Peter Young Gilberto Zorio Franz Erhard Walther Robert Watts William Wegman Lawrence Weiner John Wesley Tom Kovachevich Piotr Kowalski David Lamelas Barry Le Va Jean LeGac Alfred Leslie Richard Long Ingeborg Lüscher Inge Mahn Brice Marden Yoko Ono Dennis Oppenheim Blinky Palermo Panamarenko Giulio Paolini A.R. Penck Giuseppe Penone Vettor Pisani Sigmar Polke Stephen Posen Markus Raetz Arnulf Rainer Gerhard Richter Klaus Rinke Dorothea Rockburne Peter Roehr Allen Ruppersberg Edward Ruscha Reiner Ruthenbeck Ulrich Ruckriem Robert Ryman John Salt Salvo Lucas Samaras Paul Sarkisian Jean-Frederic Schnyder Ben Schonzeit Werner Schroeter HA Schult Rudolf Schwarzkogler Fritz Schwegler Richard Serra Paul Sharits Allan Shields Katharina Sieverding Robert Smithson Michael Snow Keith Sonnier Klaus Staeck Paul Staiger Jorge Stever Robert Strubin Paul Thek Malcolm Morley Ed Moses Bruce Nauman Hermann Nitsch Claes Oldenburg Agnes Martin Etienne-Martin Richard McLean David Medalla Fernando Melani Bernd and Hilla Becher K. P. Brehmer Christo & Jeanne-Claude Seth Siegelaub Harald Szeemann Jean-Christophe Ammann Bob Projansky Arnold Bode documenta / Kassel Art Group Shows / Collections Out-of-print / Rare Objects / Ephemera / A/V Arte Povera Conceptual Art Feminism Theory / Essay Architecture / Interior Performance / Dance / Theater Fluxus Dada Curatorial Film / Video Minimal Art Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic Painting Photography Pop Art Sculpture / Installation Counterculture Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic