Classic subjects, beautiful formats, art book treasures with Doug Flamm of Ursus Books

Whitechapel Art Gallery
This is Tomorrow
August 9 – September 9, 1956

POP ART IS AN INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT,  ITS INCEPTION CREDITED TO THE BRITISH POP MASTER RICHARD HAMILTON WHOSE FAMOUS COLLAGE SHOWN IN 1956 AT WHITECHAPEL GALLERY’S EXHIBITION, THIS IS TOMORROW,  SIGNALED A SEISMIC SHIFT IN THE AESTHETIC OF CONTEMPORARY ART.

Richard Hamilton
Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?, 1956.

AMERICA PICKED UP THE TORCH, IN PERFECT SYNC WITH OUR CONSUMER-ORIENTED FOCUS AND INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO MARKETING, ADVERTISING, AND BRANDING THAT INSPIRED THE IMAGE-CHARGED POP MOVEMENT WITH THE BRILLIANT WORK OF SUCH GREAT LUMINARIES AS LICHTENSTEIN, WARHOL, AND ROSENQUIST.  IN GERMANY, SIGMAR POLKE AND GERHARD RICHTER RESPONDED TO THE AMERICAN POP MOVEMENT WITH THEIR  CONTRIBUTION OF CAPITAL REALISM, A RIFF ON LICHTENSTEIN’S BENDAY DOTS AND SUBJECT MATTER. RADICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE POP VERNACULAR DEVELOPED ON AN INTERNATIONAL SCALE AND, ALTHOUGH LESSER KNOWN, WERE WORLDWIDE.

TODAY, DOUG FLAMM OF URSUS BOOKS, INTRODUCES US TO AN IMPORTANT EXHIBITION THAT DOCUMENTS THIS REVISIONIST PERSPECTIVE ON THE NATURE OF POP ART WITH HIS RECOMMENDATION OF THE SUPERB CATALOGUE THAT ACCOMPANIED THE CURRENT EXHIBIT AT THE WALKER ART CENTER IN MINNEAPOLIS. FOLLOWING ITS PRESENTATION AT THE WALKER, INTERNATIONAL POP WILL TOUR TO THE DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART AND THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART THROUGH 2016.

International Pop
Walker Art Center

 

ALEXANDER, DARSIE et al. International Pop. 352 pages, including 230 color and 115 b&w plates. 4to, cloth. Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 2015. (#158408) $85.00
This show, a survey of the global Pop movement from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, leads off with a punchy visual chronology which sets the tone for the entire book. Six of the ten chapters focus on individual countries (Argentina, Britian, Brazil, Hungary, Italy, and Japan), prefaced with an essay illuminating the threads of inquiry that run throughout the exhibition. Nearly every plate takes up a full page, and the book is punctuated with full-bleed photographs on shiny, acid colored paper. The energetic design combined with work uncommonly displayed make for an absorbing publication.

International Pop
Walker Art Center, Dallas Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, through 2016

URSUS BOOKS, LOCATED ON MADISON AVENUE AT EAST 62nd STREET AT 699 MADISON AVENUE OFFERS BOTH NEW AND VINTAGE BOOKS, UNIQUE ARTISTS’ BOOKS AND AN EXTENSIVE INVENTORY OF ART REFERENCE BOOKS. MOST OF ALL, THANKS TO ITS DEDICATED AND KNOWLEDGEABLE STAFF, URSUS PROVIDES A SEASONED CURATORIAL EYE  HELPING TO BUILD AN ART LIBRARY AND GRAET EXPERTISE IN LOCATING RARE BOOKS AND CATALOGUES THAT SERVE TO ENRICH THE HOLDINGS OF THE MOST SOPHISTICATED BOOK COLLECTOR.  http://www.ursusbooks.com/

The Collection of the Emanuel Hoffman Foundation

UBI, RALPH et al. Future Present: The Collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation. 800 pages, including 1,200 color and 30 b&w plates. 4to, cloth. Basel, Laurenz Foundation, 2015. (#161327) $75.00

The Basel-based Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation, created in 1933, owns a significant collection of work, ranging from Ernst and Arp to Matthew Barney and Cy Twombly. This brick of a book, a complete and generously illustrated catalogue raisonné of the collection, includes painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, photography and video. Also included are short artist biographies and critical commentaries on more than 80 works from the collection. A section of thumbnail photographs includes images of all the pieces in the collection.

 

Schaulager Laurenz Foundation
Basel, Switzerland

ONE OF MY VERY FAVORITE DESTINATIONS DURING THE BASEL ART FAIR IS THE REMARKABLE SCHAULAGER FOUNDATION, A SWISS-EFFICIENT TRAM RIDE AND WORLD AWAY FROM THE INTENSE MOMENTUM OF THE FAIR AND ITS RELATED EVENTS AND EXHIBITIONS. COMMISSIONED BY THE LAURENZ FOUNDATION AND DESIGNED BY THE IMPECCABLE ARCHITECTURAL FIRM OF HEURON AND DE MEURON, THE SCHAULAGER OPENED IN 2003, CONCEIVED AS AN OPEN WAREHOUSE THAT WOULD PROVIDE OPTIMAL SPATIAL AND CLIMATIC CONDITIONS FOR SUCH UNIQUE WORKS OF ART AS ROBERT GOBER’S HAUNTING PERMANENT INSTALLATION.

Robert Gober
Permanent Installation, Schaulager

 

For the first time in over 30 years, The Schaulager presents an extensive overview of works from the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation. Ever since it was established in 1933, the Foundation has been devoted to the collection and presentation of contemporary art.

The current exhibition FUTURE PRESENT including a wide range of media from paintings, sculptures and drawings to installations, photography and video, FUTURE PRESENT allows visitors to take a journey through a century of art history from classic modernism to the present day.

Bruce Nauman

Early classic modernism is represented by such artists as Max Ernst, Hans Arp and Joan Miró as well as Salvador Dalí’s famous Burning Giraffe and Robert Delaunay’s Eiffel Tower.

Joseph Beuys
Schneefall (Snowfall)
1965

Joseph Beuys’s iconic installation Schneefall (Snowfall) and major pieces by Bruce Nauman are among the many works of mid-20th century art that will be on view. Moreover, works by Jeff Wall, Katharina Fritsch, Robert Gober, Tacita Dean, David Claerbout, Thomas Demand, Elizabeth Peyton, Peter Fischli and David Weiss and many others testify to outstanding developments in contemporary art over the past few decades. When the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation published its last catalogue of the collection in 1991, there were 322 entries in the list of works. Today the collection comprises over 1,000 works and reads like a cross-section of the history of art and artistic thinking in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Future Present
Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation
June 13, 2015 – January 31, 2016

On the occasion of the exhibition FUTURE PRESENT, the new catalogue Future Present: The Collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation takes stock of the present and provides a comprehensive insight into this vast treasure trove of artistic responses to the world since the 1920s.

The catalogue of the collection details paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photographs and video works owned by the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation. The illustrated list of works is preceded by over eighty descriptions of works and biographies of all the artists represented in the collection. A conversation between the art historian Catherine Hürzeler and the President of the Foundation, Maja Oeri, adds a personal dimension to the Foundation’s commitment to contemporary art. 

DOUG, THANK YOU FOR BRIGHTENING THE HOLIDAY SEASON WITH YOUR TERRIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS TO ADD TO A COLLECTOR’S LIBRARY AND TO INTRODUCE US ALL TO GREAT EXHIBITIONS AND COLLECTIONS WORLDWIDE.

THE LRFA BLOG THANKS YOU ALL FOR YOUR SUPPORT THROUGHOUT THE YEAR. WISHING EVERYONE THE HAPPIEST YEAR AHEAD.

WELCOME 2016!

ED RUSCHA
That was then this is now
1989

Great gifts for the eleventh hour or any hour, with Doug Flamm of Ursus books

Museum of Modern Art
New York

ONE OF MOST ENRICHING OPPORTUNITIES FOR AN ART FANATIC TO ENRICH THEIR UNDERSTANDING AND APPRECIATION OF A PERIOD OF ART IS THE CHANCE TO STUDY A FIRST-TIER MUSEUM OR PRIVATE COLLECTION. A THOUGHTFULLY CURATED SURVEY OF THE BEST POSSIBLE EXAMPLES OF ARTISTS’ WORKS IS ONE OF THE GREAT LEARNING TOOLS AND SOURCES OF INSPIRATION THAT A BRILLIANT CURATORIAL MIND CAN PROVIDE. IN TODAY’S LRFA POST, DOUG FLAMM OF URSUS BOOKS WILL INTRODUCE SOME OUTSTANDING MUSEUM AND EXHIBITION CATALOGUES TO ADD TO YOUR LIBRARY OR, IN THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT, TO GIFT TO OTHERS. URSUS BOOKS WORKS DILIGENTLY OFFERING CUSTOMERS ART BOOKS THAT COVER THE BEST AND MOST COMPELLING EXHIBITIONS WORLDWIDE AND PROVIDE A DELICIOUS “ARM CHAIR” JOURNEY TO ALL THE GREAT EXHIBITIONS AND MUSEUM COLLECTIONS THAT WE MIGHT OTHERWISE MISS.

The Modern
Fort Worth, Texas

THE OVERVIEW OF A COLLECTION OR EXHIBITION OF GREAT CALIBER IS OFTEN DOCUMENTED IN AN EQUALLY RICH, INFORMATIVE AND ELEGANTLY CONCEIVED ART BOOK THAT PROVIDES PERMANENT DOCUMENTATION OF THE CHARACTER OF A COLLECTION IN GENERAL AND A CURATORIAL PERSPECTIVE SPECIFIC TO THE TIME OF PUBLICATION, A SAMPLING OF THE QUALITY, RANGE OF APPROACHES AND INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT FROM WHICH THE COLLECTION HAS EMERGED. http://www.ursusbooks.com

Museum Ludwig
Cologne, Germany

 

THE LUDWIG MUSEUM IN COLOGNE IS ONE OF THE MOST RESPECTED STRONGHOLDS OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART IN EUROPE. THANKS TO THE GENEROUS DONATION OF COLOGNE LAWYER, JOSEF HAUBRICH, ESTABLISHED IN 1946, IT HOLDS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT COLLECTIONS OF GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM. THIRTY YEARS LATER, ANOTHER SPECTACULAR GIFT BY COLLECTORS PETER AND IRENE LUDWIG ESTABLISHED THE MUSEUM AS A CORNERSTONE OF AMERICAN POP ART. http://www.museum-ludwig.de/en/

A RARE COPY OF A UNIQUE CATALOGUE OF THE LUDWIG COLLECTION OF CONTEMPORARY ART IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE AT URSUS, A GIFT THAT WOULD RESONATE WITH ANY COLLECTOR AT ANY TIME OF THE YEAR.

LUDWIG COLLECTION.
Kunst der sechziger Jahre

LUDWIG COLLECTION. Kunst der sechziger Jahre. 5th erweiterte Auflage. Illustrated with 209 colour plates. Large 4to., 302 x 245 mm, bound in publisher’s plastic embossed covers. Koln: Wallraf-Richartz Museum, 1971.
$1,250.00

This is the definitive fifth revised edition of this famous and striking exhibition catalogue, which is itself a work of art.

Wolf Vostell designed the catalogue for the Ludwig collection of contemporary art, given as a permanent loan to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne. The covers are embossed plastic, and the 209 colour plates are tipped-in on special paper and covered with printed transparencies.

The work of 92 artists is represented, including Dine, Dubuffet, Hockney, Jasper Johns, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Picasso, Rauschenberg, Vostell, Warhol, and Wols. This final fifth edition includes 222 objects, 124 more than appeared in the first edition. A fine copy of the fragile and remarkable catalogue.

THE WAREHOUSE DALLAS REPRESENTS AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO ART PHILANTHROPY. TWO DALLAS SUPERCOLLECTORS, CINDY AND HOWARD RACHOFSKY AND AMY AND VERNON FALCONER, IN THE EXPANSIVE TEXAS SPIRIT THAT I LOVE, JOINED FORCES TO TRANSFORM A 18,000 SQUARE FOOT FACILITY IN THEIR HOMETOWN INTO AN ELEGANT GALLERY EXHIBITING WORKS FROM THEIR INDIVIDUAL COLLECTIONS AS WELL AS THOSE ACQUIRED JOINTLY WITH FELLOW DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART TRUSTEES TO SHARE THESE COLLECTIONS WITH CURATORS, SCHOLARS, CRITICS AND STUDENTS AND TO OPEN NEW DIALOGUES ABOUT POST-WAR MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART.

PARALLEL VIEWS
Italian and Japanese art from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s

A CURATORIAL TOUR DE FORCE BY THE ASTUTE ALLAN SCHWARZMAN UNITED TWO UNEXPECTEDLY DIVERSE AREAS OF ART IN A 2014 EXHIBITION ENTITLED PARALLEL VIEWS: ITALIAN AND JAPANESE ART FROM THE 1950s, 60s and 70s. IN THE DECADES FOLLOWING WORLD WAR II, BOTH JAPAN AND ITALY WERE REBUILDING AFTER THE RAVAGES OF WAR. PARALLEL VIEWS PRESENTS A BREADTH OF POSTWAR MASTERS OF ITALIAN AND JAPANESE ART AND UNDERLINES THE AESTHETIC PARALLELS BETWEEN THE SENSIBILITY OF THE ARTE POVERA ARTISTS SUCH AS BURRI, FONTANA AND PENONE WITH THAT OF THE MASTERS OF THE GUTAI MOVEMENT IN JAPAN THAT INCLUDES TAKESADA, MURAKAMI AND KAZUO AND THE REMARKABLE MONO-HA LUMINARIES SUCH AS LEE UFAN AND SUGA KISHIO.

SCHWARZMAN, ALLAN (ed). Parallel Views: Italian and Japanese Art from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. 408 pages, including 240 color plates. 4to, cloth. Bologna, Damiani, 2014. (#158439) $75.00
A fabulously lush publication documenting an exhibition which brings together Italian and Japanese works from The Rachofsky and The Amy and Vernon Faulconer collections. The show explores the porous transnational borders between the artists of the ZERO and Arte Povera movements (Fontana, Burri, Manzoni, Paolini), and those of the Gutai, and early Mono-ha (Yoshihara, Shiraga, Matsutani, Ufan). Essays bookending the full-page, highly saturated color plates examine the works individually, and as part of the postwar environments from which they emerged. The text of a panel discussion on the show is both thoughtful and accessible. The final chapter, “Pairings” offers striking juxtapositions of works from both countries.

Parallel Views
The Warehouse
Dallas, Texas

IN OUR NEXT LRFA POST, DOUG OFFERS A FEW ADDITIONAL GEMS THAT WILL ARE BOUND TO BE VERY WELL RECEIVED EVEN IF A LITTLE LATE FOR UNDER THE TREE.

NOW IS THE TIME FOR THE LRFA BLOG TO EXTEND HOLIDAY WISHES TO ALL THE CONTRIBUTORS WHO WORK SO HARD ON THE BLOG AND ARE SO APPRECIATED AND TO ALL THE WONDERFUL READERS AND SUBSCRIBERS WHO SUPPORT THESE EFFORTS.

SO MANY THANKS! SEASONS’ GREETINGS!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Tis the season! Art books for everyone on your list.

SONIA DELAUNAY
2015 Retrospective
Tate Museum, London

AS WE BOLT THROUGH THE DAYS, PARTICULARLY AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, GARNERING NEWS, INFORMATION AND UPDATES FROM OUR PHONES AND LAPTOPS, IT IS A RARE DELIGHT TO SIT AND LEAF THROUGH A BEAUTIFULLY BOUND AND RICHLY ILLUSTRATED ART BOOK ENJOYING THE IMAGES OF THE WORKS AND ABSORBING THE BIOGRAPHICAL AND AESTHETIC SUBSTANCE OF AN ARTIST’S LIFE. IRONICALLY, JUST AS I AM PLANNING TO POST DOUG FLAMM OF URSUS BOOKS’ EXCEPTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HOLIDAY GIFT-GIVING, I HAD THAT EXPERIENCE AND INTEND TO REPLICATE IT BACK HERE AT HOME. JUST YESTERDAY, I WAS SITTING IN A CLIENT’S NEW APARTMENT INSTALLING SOME FIRST-TIER ART FROM THEIR COLLECTION INTO THEIR NEW FLORIDA RESIDENCE. THE ART HANDLER TEAM AND I WERE WAITING FOR THEIR ARRIVAL TO SEE WHAT WE HAD ACCOMPLISHED AND I HAD THE UNEXPECTED GUILTY PLEASURE OF QUIETLY SITTING IN THEIR LIVING ROOM LOOKING THROUGH MONOGRAPHS ON ARTISTS IN THEIR COLLECTION.

THIS IS THE SEASON TO SHARE HOLIDAY SPIRIT AND JOY – AND THE WONDERFUL SENSE OF ENRICHMENT THAT BEAUTIFUL BOOKS AND ART CAN PROVIDE.

NO ONE IS AS DEVOTED AND KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT THE WORLD OF BOOKS AS DOUG FLAMM AT URSUS BOOKS, 699 MADISON AVENUE (62nd STREET) IN NEW YORK. ESTABLISHED IN 1972, URSUS PROVIDES AN EXCEPTIONAL SELECTION OF ART REFERENCE BOOKS AS WELL AS RARE BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS AND SERVES CLIENTS IN NEW YORK AND THROUGHOUT THE WORLD OFFERING BOTH NEW AND OUT-OF-PRINT BOOKS INCLUDING CATALOGUE RAISONNES, MONOGRAPHS AND MUSEUM EXHIBITION CATALOGUES. http://www.ursusbooks.com/

HERE ARE A FEW RECOMMENDATIONS FROM DOUG OF CATALOGUES PUBLISHED IN CONJUNCTION WITH RECENT EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS.

Propeller (Air Pavilion), 1937. Skissernas Museum, Lund, Sweden. © Pracusa 2014083. Photo: Emma Krantz

SONIA DELAUNAY AT THE TATE MODERN IN LONDON: A recent retrospective of Sonia Delaunay, a passionate woman and avant-garde artist who transcended languages, styles, disciplines and borders.

1. Montfort, Anne. SONIA DELAUNAY. 288 pages, including 250 color and b&w plates. wraps. London, Tate Publishing, 2015. (#160780) $49.95

To celebrate the genius of this Ukrainian artist, London’s Tate Modern has organized a retrospective exhibition on view until August 9, 2015, focusing on her prolific production during more than six decades. Born Sara Elievna Stern, in Odessa, Ukraine, at an early age she was sent to St. Petersburg, Russia, to live with her maternal uncle. Under harsh economic distress, her parents couldn’t provide the girl with a proper upbringing at home. She received an excellent education under the tutelage of her adoptive family, and her uncle instilled in her the passion for the visual arts. Over time, the girl—who adopted her mother´s maiden name to become Sonia Terk—would consider herself a Russian artist. In 1906, she settled in Paris, where she joined the intellectual, artistic circles, fraternizing with the likes of Braque, Picasso, Derain, and Vlaminck. Her paintings from that time show an apparent preference for the German expressionists and painters like Van Gogh and Gauguin. 

L) Electric Prisms, 1914. Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris (RMN). © Pracusa 2014083
(R) Simultaneous Dresses (The three women), 1925. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. © Pracusa 2014083.

In 1910, Sonia divorced her first husband to marry Delaunay. Together they created one of the most influential abstract art movements of the early 20th century, called Simultanism. The movement, driven by the couple, claimed color was the expressive paradigm that stops the communicative limitations of the form in favor of contrasting and complementary chromatic expressions. The simultaneous coexistence of sensations created by colors was the fundamental precept of the Delaunays particular styles, which later influenced the poetics of Orphism.

Sonia Delaunay and two friends in Robert Delaunay’s studio, rue des Grands-Augustins, Paris 1924. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

The artist developed her vision—over decades—not only in painting, but also in fashion and custom design, interior and set decoration, magazines covers, and pictorial representations of abstract poems by Blaise Cendrars, among other authors. Between 1915 and 1930, the couple lived in Spain, Portugal, and France. In these countries, Sonia opened shops and ateliers such as Casa Sonia in Madrid (1918), and her boutique at Paris’ Boulevard Malesherbes. Her artistic establishments received great enthusiasm and praise from the aristocracy of Europe’s major capitals. 

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

William Kentridge
The Lulu Plays

William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1955. He attended the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1973–76), Johannesburg Art Foundation (1976–78), and studied mime and theater at L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, Paris (1981–82). Having witnessed first-hand one of the twentieth century’s most contentious struggles—the dissolution of apartheid—Kentridge brings the ambiguity and subtlety of personal experience to public subjects that are most often framed in narrowly defined terms. Using film, drawing, sculpture, animation, and performance, he transmutes sobering political events into powerful poetic allegories. In a now-signature technique, Kentridge photographs his charcoal drawings and paper collages over time, recording scenes as they evolve. Working without a script or storyboard, he plots out each animated film, preserving every addition and erasure. Aware of myriad ways in which we construct the world by looking, Kentridge uses stereoscopic viewers and creates optical illusions with anamorphic projection, to extend his drawings-in-time into three dimensions.

William Kentridge
The Lulu Plays

Kentridge has had major exhibitions at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2008); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, (2007); and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2004); among others. He has also participated in Prospect.1 New Orleans (2008); the Sydney Biennale (1996, 2008); and Documenta (1997, 2002). His opera and theater works, often produced in collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company, have appeared at Brooklyn Academy of Music (2007); Standard Bank National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa (1992, 1996, 1998); and Festival d’Avignon, France (1995, 1996). His production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera, The Nose, premiered in 2010 at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in conjunction with a retrospective organized by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Metropolitan Opera’s LULU

IN NOVEMBER 2015, THE METROPOLITAN OPERA PREMIERED KENTRIDGE’S PRODUCTION OF ALBAN BERG’S OPERA LULU, “A STORY FILLED WITH PSYCHOSEXUAL POLITICS OF GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM”. http://www.wsj.com/articles/lulu-review-william-kentridge-draws-death-and-despair-1447107798

When William Kentridge made his Metropolitan Opera debut with Shostakovich’s “The Nose” in 2010, the piece proved a perfect fit for the South African visual artist’s signature style. That brilliant production was a playful kaleidoscope of film, animated drawings and live action, its tone and spirit celebrating the joyful anarchy of both the wayward body part of the title and the score. Alban Berg’s coruscating 12-tone opera “Lulu,” which opened on Thursday, is a different kind of work, but Mr. Kentridge’s endlessly fertile imagination proved its equal as well, exploring its violent darkness and relentless descent into hell.

William Kentridge
The Lulu Plays

KENTRIDGE, William. The Lulu Plays, by Frank Wedekind. 197 pp. Illustrated with 67 full-page reproductions of drawings by William Kentridge. Folio, bound in publisher’s cloth in matching slipcase, both designed by Kentridge. San Francisco: Arion Press,2015.

$2000.00An exciting new publication from the Arion Press featuring the work of one of today’s most sought-after artists. The text consists of the two plays which are the basis for the libretto of Alban Berg’s Lulu. The Metropolitan Opera will be presenting Kentridge’s production of Lulu which premiers on November 5th. Kentridge worked on the illustrations for the book between 2011 and 2015 and they were made to be used in the Met production by being projected onto the set. As is typical of much of Kentridge’s work there is a strong cinematic influence. Andrew Hoyem has accompanied Kentridge’s illustrations with bold typography in black and red, creating a strikingly modern book while at the same time rendering homage to the works of a century earlier. As new. One of an edition of 400 copies signed by the artist.

William Kentridge
The Lulu Plays

URSUS BOOKS IS HAPPY TO SEARCH FOR BOOKS NOT CURRENTLY IN STOCK AND CREATES CUSTOMIZED LISTS FOR CLIENTS WHO ARE EXPANDING OR BUILDING THEIR COLLECTIONS. DOUG IS A DILIGENT DETECTIVE AND THE RESULTS ARE ALWAYS SPECTACULAR!

MORE RECOMMENDATIONS NEXT POST…THANKS FOR READING.

Artists’ books by masters of sculpture and photography: Puryear, Judd, and Sugimoto

AN ARTIST’S BOOK IS A MEDIUM OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION THAT USES THE FORM OR FUNCTION OF A “BOOK” AS ITS INSPIRATIONAL SPRINGBOARD. THE ARTISTIC INITIATIVE RELIES UPON THE CHOICE OF MATERIALS, THE LAYOUT AND DESIGN, AND THE CREATIVE PROCESS THAT TRANSFORMS A BOOK INTO AN ART OBJECT. TODAY, ARTISTS’ BOOKS EXIST AT THE INTERSECTIONS OF PRINTMAKING, PHOTOGRAPHY, POETRY, THE VISUAL ARTS AND PUBLISHING AND HAVE MADE A PLACE FOR THEMSELVES IN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS, LIBRARIES AND IN THE PRIVATE COLLECTIONS OF BIBLIOPHILES AND ART COLLECTORS. THERE ARE STUDIO PROGRAMS AVAILABLE IN ART SCHOOL CURRICULUMS DEDICATED TO THE “ART OF THE BOOK” THAT USHER IN NEW GENERATIONS OF ARTISTS WHO WILL EXPERIMENT AND CONTRIBUTE TO THIS ART FORM.

IN OUR LAST HOLIDAY LRFA BLOG WITH BOOK EXPERT DOUGLAS FLAMM, OF URSUS BOOKS, 699 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK, DOUG WILL INTRODUCE US TO THREE OTHER RARE AND REMARKABLE BOOKS THAT ARE AVAILABLE AT THE BOOKSTORE. http://www.ursusbooks.com

DONALD JUDD.  Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada. Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Objects and Wood-Blocks 1960-1974 [INSCRIBED]. xv, 319 pp. catalogue well illustrated in b&w. Folio, wraps. 1975. (#156203) $5,000.00
This iconic book was produced on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition in Ottawa.

The only catalogue raisonne of Judd’s sculpture, it is complete with provenance, exhibition history and bibliography. Text in English and French. Inscribed by Judd, “For Sidney and Jane, 9 Dec 76, Don”.

Donald Judd
Dedication

Donald Judd revolutionized practices and attitudes surrounding art making and the exhibition of art, primarily advocating for the permanent installation of works by artists in carefully selected environments. Judd’s first solo exhibition was in 1957 at the Panoras Gallery, New York, the same year he began graduate studies in art history at Columbia University. Over the next decade, Judd worked as a critic for ARTnews, Arts Magazine, and Art International; his subsequent theoretical writings on art and exhibition practices would prove to be some of his most important and lasting legacies.

The work of Donald Judd, one of the most significant American artists of the post-war period, has come to define what has been referred to as Minimalist art—a label to which the artist strongly objected on the grounds of its generality. The unaffected, straightforward quality of Judd’s work demonstrates his strong interest in color, form, material, and space. With the intention of creating work that could assume a direct material and physical “presence” without recourse to grand philosophical statements, he eschewed the classical ideals of representational sculpture to create a rigorous visual vocabulary that sought clear and definite objects as its primary mode of articulation.

Martin Puryear

PURYEAR, Martin. Cane. By Jean Toomer. 141, [3] pp. With 10 woodcuts by Martin Puryear, and an afterword by Leon LF. Litwack. Oblong folio, bound in original tan cloth. San Francisco: The Arion Press, 2000.
$2500.00

An immaculate copy of this important book, first published in 1923, which has long been considered one of the most important works of the Harlem Renaissance. Martin Puryear contributed a stunning set of illustrations and Andrew Hoyem designed an elegant book which does justice to both the author and the artist. The historian Leon Litwack has contributed an essay placing the book in historical context. One of an edition of 350 copies signed by the artist, and already scarce.

Martin Puryear

Martin Puryear (born 1941) lives and works in upstate New York. Puryear’s abstract organic forms are rich with psychological and intellectual references that explore issues of ethnicity, culture, and history. His new sculptures incorporate a diverse range of materials, from bronze, cast iron, and mirror-polished stainless steel to a variety of woods, including red cedar, tulip poplar, maple, holly, Alaskan yellow cedar, walnut, and ebony. Puryear’s sculptures, typically made by hand with labor-intensive methods, often require months to complete. His techniques, developed over a forty-year career, combine practices adapted from many different traditions, including wood carving, joinery, and boat building, as well as recent digital technology.

Martin Puryear

His first one-person exhibition opened in 1968. Since then he has had one-person exhibitions at numerous museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Fundación “la Caixa” in Madrid, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and he has completed public commissions in Europe, Japan, and the United States. In 1989 he represented the United States at the São Paulo Biennial, receiving the festival’s Grand Prize, and in 1992 his work was included in Documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized a retrospective of his work in 2007, which traveled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation award and a Presidential Medal of the Arts.

Sugimoto
Sea of Buddha

SUGIMOTO, Hiroshi. Sea of Buddha. Edited by Atsuko Koyanagi. [7] pp. Illustrated with 48 original double-spread Sugimoto photographs on heavy stockmatte art paper. 8vo., bound accordion-style in polished aluminum covers, title lettered in black on top cover, preserved in white silk slipcase. New York: Sonnabend Sudell Editions, 1997.
$2,500.00

A clever and elegantly designed book printed by Dai Nippon Printing Co. presents Sugimoto’s complete series of 1000 Kannon Bothisattva statues in Kyoto’s Sanju San-Gen-Do temple, The Hall of Thirty-three Bays. The complete edition represents 1 million Bodhisattvas, as mentioned on the title page. The book can be opened to offer a panorama of nearly 48 feet long. Edition limited to 1000 numbered copies.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto, best known for his technically brilliant photographs of American movie palaces and drive-ins, the sea and its horizon, blurred images of Modernist architecture, and lightning fields, used his long exposures to capture these dark early dawn images of Buddhas. A small nick to the aluminum cover else a fine copy.

“After seven years of red tape, I was finally granted permission to photograph in the temple of Sanjusangendo, “Hall of Thirty-Three Bays.” In special preparation for the shoot, I had all late-medieval and early-modern embellishments removed, as well as having the contemporary fluorescent lighting turned off, recreating the splendor of the thousand bodhisattvas glistening in the light of the morning sun rising over the Higashiyama hills as the Kyoto aristocracy might have seen in the Heian period (794-1185). Will today’s conceptual art survive another eight-hundred years?” 

Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1948, and lives and works in New York and Tokyo. His interest in art began early. His reading of André Breton’s writings led to his discovery of Surrealism and Dada and a lifelong connection to the work and philosophy of Marcel Duchamp. Central to Sugimoto’s work is the idea that photography is a time machine, a method of preserving and picturing memory and time. This theme provides the defining principle of his ongoing series, including “Dioramas” (1976–), “Theaters” (1978–), and “Seascapes” (1980–). Sugimoto sees with the eye of the sculptor, painter, architect, and philosopher. He uses his camera in a myriad of ways to create images that seem to convey his subjects’ essence, whether architectural, sculptural, painterly, or of the natural world. He places extraordinary value on craftsmanship, printing his photographs with meticulous attention and a keen understanding of the nuances of the silver print and its potential for tonal richness—in his seemingly infinite palette of blacks, whites, and grays.

DOUG, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR INTRODUCING THESE WONDERFUL OBJECTS TO US ON THE LRFA BLOG.

CONSERVATION IS A RICH AND COMPLEX FIELD, ONE THAT REQUIRES GREAT SENSITIVITY AS WELL AS  TECHNICAL EXPERTISE. IT IS OFTEN A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT BETWEEN THE CONSERVATOR AND THE ART HISTORIAN.  IN OUR NEXT LRFA BLOG, BRAD SHAR OF JULIUS LOWY FRAMING AND RESTORATION WILL DETAIL THE ART OF  PAINTING CONSERVATION AS WELL AS INTRODUCING US TO LOWY’S  EXCITING NEW HEADQUARTERS AND FRAMING AND CONSERVATION FACILITIES.

UNTIL THEN, WISHING YOU ALL THE HAPPIEST YEAR AHEAD!

 

Cai Quo- Quiang

James Turrell, Andy Warhol, Kara Walker: 3 monumental artists in an intimate format

James Turrell
ECLIPSE

ARTISTS’ BOOKS ARE A VIBRANT AND ENGAGING AREA OF COLLECTING. JUST AS DRAWINGS AND WORKS ON PAPER ARE OFTEN THE FOCUS OF COLLECTING FOR ART CONNOISSEURS WHO DELIGHT IN A DEEPER AND MORE INTIMATE UNDERSTANDING OF THE ARTIST’S CREATIVE PROCESS, THE ARTIST’S BOOK OPENS A DOORWAY TO AN ARTIST’S UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE AND AESTHETIC. AN ARTIST’S BOOK IS OFTEN PRODUCED IN LARGER EDITIONS THAT ALLOW ACCESS TO THE WORK BY A LARGER AUDIENCE AND, THUS, IS A POWERFUL COMMUNICATIVE AESTHETIC VEHICLE. THE SIMPLICITY OF ITS FORM AND SMALLER FORMAT PROVIDE THE READER WITH A CONNECTION TO THE ARTIST THAT IS INDIVIDUAL AND PERSONAL WHILE SERVING TO DISSEMINATE THE ARTIST’S THINKING IN A BROADER AND MORE INCLUSIVE FORM.

DOUG FLAMM, OF URSUS BOOKS,  WAS CAPTIVATED BY THIS ART FORM WHEN HE FIRST ENCOUNTERED IT AND IT BECAME THE INITIAL AREA OF SPECIALIZATION IN HIS PROFESSIONAL CAREER AS A BOOK DEALER.  HIS KNOWLEDGE AND ENTHUSIASM RESONATES WITH ME AND IT IS MY PLEASURE TO SHARE IT WITH YOU IN TODAY’S LRFA BLOG.

HERE ARE A FEW MORE OUTSTANDING ARTISTS’ BOOKS DOUG HAS SELECTED FROM THE SHELVES OF URSUS BOOKS, LOCATED ON MADISON AVENUE BETWEEN 62nd AND 63rd STREETS,  IN NEW YORK CITY.

http://www.ursusbooks.com/

 

James Turrell

TURRELL, James. Eclipse. Illustrated with two prints by James Turrell, two prints by Thomas Joshua Cooper, a CD of music by Paul Schuetze, and text by Richard Bright. 4to. Linen and wrappers in a linen folding box with paper label as issued. London: Michael Hue-Williams Fine Art, 1999.
$3500.00

A very handsome publication created in response to the total solar eclipse of August 11th, 1999, for which James Turrell created an etching and an aquatint and Thomas Joshua Cooper made two photogravures. This is a scarce book which seems to never appear on the market, and is here in immaculate condition. One of an edition of 100 copies, with the colophon signed by Turrell, who also signed his aquatint. Joshua Cooper signed both photogravures.

 

James Turrell

James Turrell was born in Los Angeles in 1943. His undergraduate studies at Pomona College focused on psychology and mathematics; only later, in graduate school, did he pursue art, receiving an MFA from the Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California. Turrell’s work involves explorations in light and space that speak to viewers without words, impacting the eye, body, and mind with the force of a spiritual awakening. “I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing,” says the artist, “like the wordless thought that comes from looking in a fire.”

Informed by his studies in perceptual psychology and optical illusions, Turrell’s work allows us to see ourselves “seeing.” Whether harnessing the light at sunset or transforming the glow of a television set into a fluctuating portal, Turrell’s art places viewers in a realm of pure experience. Situated near the Grand Canyon and Arizona’s Painted Desert is Roden Crater, an extinct volcano the artist has been transforming into a celestial observatory for the past thirty years. Working with cosmological phenomena that have interested man since the dawn of civilization and have prompted responses such as Stonehenge and the Mayan calendar, Turrell’s crater brings the heavens down to earth, linking the actions of people with the movements of planets and distant galaxies. His fascination with the phenomena of light is ultimately connected to a very personal, inward search for mankind’s place in the universe. Influenced by his Quaker faith, which he characterizes as having a “straightforward, strict presentation of the sublime,” Turrell’s art prompts greater self-awareness through a similar discipline of silent contemplation, patience, and meditation. His ethereal installations enlist the common properties of light to communicate feelings of transcendence and the divine. The recipient of several prestigious awards, such as Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships, Turrell lives in Arizona.

Kara Walker
five poems

WALKER, Kara. Five Poems. By Toni Morrison. Illustrated with 5 silhouettes by Kara Walker. Folio, bound in publisher’s linen-backed decorated boards and matching slipcase. Las Vegas: Rainmaker Editions, 2002.
$1250.00

Kara Walker

A superb contemporary livre de peintre marrying poems by of one of the foremost African-American women writers, the Nobel prize winning Toni Morrison, with illustrations by of one of the leading African-American women artists, Kara Walker, who is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes that examine America’s racial and gender tensions. A superb piece of contemporary bookmaking by the San Francisco printer and book-designer Peter Koch.

One of an edition of 399 copies, with the colophon signed by Kara Walker, Toni Morrison and Peter Koch. As new.

Kara Walker

Kara Walker was born in Stockton, California, in 1969. She received a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991, and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. The artist is best known for exploring the raw intersection of race, gender, and sexuality through her iconic, silhouetted figures. Walker unleashes the traditionally proper Victorian medium of the silhouette directly onto the walls of the gallery, creating a theatrical space in which her unruly cut-paper characters fornicate and inflict violence on one another. In works like “Darkytown Rebellion” (2000), the artist uses overhead projectors to throw colored light onto the ceiling, walls, and floor of the exhibition space; the lights cast a shadow of the viewer’s body onto the walls, where it mingles with Walker’s black-paper figures and landscapes.

Kara Walker

With one foot in the historical realism of slavery and the other in the fantastical space of the romance novel, Walker’s nightmarish fictions simultaneously seduce and implicate the audience. Walker’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. A 1997 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Walker was the United States representative to the 2002 Bienal de São Paulo. Walker currently lives in New York, where she is on the faculty of the MFA program at Columbia University.

ANDY WARHOL

WARHOL, Andy. Andy Warhol. [Exhibition catalogue]. [17] pp. including title-page and numerous quotations by the Artist, followed by hundreds of full-page black and white photographic illustrations. Large 4to., 268 x 210 mm, bound in original wrappers featuring neon-coloured flowers by Warhol, with original printed cardboard box. Stockholm: Moderna Museet, 1968. $1,500.00

Andy Warhol
Stockholm: Moderna Museet

First Edition of the catalogue for Warhol’s first solo show at a European museum, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, in February-March 1968, curated by Pontus Hultén and Olle Granath. A near fine copy.

Andy Warhol
Flowers

More than twenty years after his death, Andy Warhol remains one of the most influential figures in contemporary art and culture. Warhol’s life and work inspires creative thinkers worldwide thanks to his enduring imagery, his artfully cultivated celebrity, and the ongoing research of dedicated scholars. His impact as an artist is far deeper and greater than his one prescient observation that “everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” His omnivorous curiosity resulted in an enormous body of work that spanned every available medium and most importantly contributed to the collapse of boundaries between high and low culture.

The turbulent 1960s ignited an impressive and wildly prolific time in Warhol’s life.  It is this period, extending into the early 1970s, which saw the production of many of Warhol’s most iconic works. Building on the emerging movement of Pop Art, wherein artists used everyday consumer objects as subjects, Warhol started painting readily found, mass-produced objects, drawing on his extensive advertising background.  When asked about the impulse to paint Campbell’s soup cans, Warhol replied, “I wanted to paint nothing. I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing, and that was it”. The humble soup cans would soon take their place among the Marilyn Monroes, Dollar Signs,Disasters, and Coca Cola Bottles as essential, exemplary works of contemporary art.

THE  NEXT  LRFA BLOG WILL FEATURE ARTISTS’ BOOKS BY THE EXTRAORDINARY SCULPTORS, MARTIN PURYEAR AND DONALD JUDD, AND THE INTERNATIONALLY CELEBRATED PHOTOGRAPHER, HIROSHI SUGIMOTO.

TIS THE SEASON TO BE THANKFUL- ALL YEAR LONG, REALLY- FOR THE READERS OF MY BLOG, FOR THE EXPERTS THAT CONTRIBUTE AND INFORM ME IN SO MANY WAYS, FOR ALL THOSE NEAR OR FAR WHO ENRICH MY LIFE.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

 

 

Tis the season! very special gifts culled from Ursus Books by Doug Flamm

ARTISTS’ BOOKS ARE MADE AND CONCEIVED BY ARTISTS AND COME IN MANY DIFFERENT SHAPES AND SIZES. DOUG FLAMM, OF URSUS BOOKS, A NEW YORK BASED BOOKSTORE SPECIALIZING IN ART BOOKS AND ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, HAS A DEEP KNOWLEDGE OF AND PASSION FOR THIS UNIQUE AREA OF PUBLISHING. PRIOR TO JOINING URSUS,  DOUG WAS AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER, DEALING IN THESE EXTRAORDINARY BOOKS THAT RESONATE WITH ART AND BOOK CONNOISSEURS ALIKE.

URSUS BOOKS PROVIDES AN INTERNATIONAL CLIENTELE WITH A COMPREHENSIVE SELECTION OF ARTISTS’ BOOKS, REFERENCE BOOKS, EXCEPTIONAL COPIES OF RARE BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS AND FINE ANTIQUE DECORATIVE PRINTS.  LOCATED ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF 699 MADISON AVENUE AT 63rd STREET, URSUS IS AN INVITING AND WELL-STOCKED NICHE WITH A WELCOMING AND INFORMED STAFF. http://www.ursusbooks.com/

IN HIS ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE LRFA BLOG, DOUG EXPLAINED THE REVOLUTIONARY INFLUENCE THAT ARTIST ED RUSCHA HAD ON ARTISTS’ BOOKS (FORMERLY IN THE FORMAT OF LIMITED EDITIONS BY 20th CENTURY MASTERS SUCH AS PICASSO AND MATISSE, OFTEN CONTAINING AN ORIGINAL ETCHING OR LITHOGRAPHY BY THE ARTIST.)

Ed Ruscha turned this category on its head. He changed the definition of what an artist’s book is. He conceived of ideas and projects using the commonplace technology of off-set printing. He selected very banal subjects (as he does in his paintings and works on paper) – parking lots, gas stations, swimming pools, and produced these images in a rudimentary way that parallels his artistic genre. In so doing, he created extraordinary objects that don’t fall within the traditions of livres d’artiste but have a value and vitality very much their own and liberated this form of artistic invention.

 

Douglas Flamm
URSUS BOOKS

 

 

I WAS DELIGHTED WHEN DOUG AGREED TO GATHER TOGETHER A WONDERFUL SELECTION OF ARTISTS’ BOOKS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE AT URSUS – A MEMORABLE GIFT FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON OR A GREAT ADDITION TO ONE’S OWN LIBRARY YEAR ROUND.

 

Olafur Eliasson

ELIASSON, Olafur. Your House.

908 pp. Illustrated by Olafur Eliasson using computer-aided laser die-cuts. Oblong folio, 285 x 440 mm, bound in original cloth. New York: Library Council of the Museum of Modern Art, 2006. (#157176) $18,500.00

Conceived by Olafur Eliasson as part of the Contemporary Editions series at The Museum of Modern Art, this book is one of the more exciting new achievements in book making in the 21st Century. The subject of the book is Eliasson’s house in Denmark that is rendered in a vertical cross-section through an elaborate laser die-cut process of each page. The format of the book allows Eliasson the space to fully realize his idea on a scale of 85:1, so that each leaf corresponds to 2.2 centimeters of the actual house.

Eliasson summarizes the experience of viewing this book, “Reading a book is both a physical and a mental activity. It is like walking through a house, following the layout of the rooms with your body and mind: the movement from one room to another, or from one part of the book to another, constitutes an experiential narrative that is physical and conscious at the same time.”

Signed by Eliasson on the colophon. One of an edition of 225 copies. Condition is as new.

Born in 1967, Olafur Eliasson is a Danish-Icelandic artist whose sculptural and installation works are deeply informed by culture, ecology, and the nature of human perception. His works are inspired by his investigation of the relationship between subjective perception and natural phenomena. Perception, according to Eliasson, is as much an immediate sensory experience as it is rooted within the cultural framework of our memory.

Among the recurring themes in Eliasson’s works are light, ephemerality, and the environment. Such projects like The Weather Project (2003) in which an ecological model is placed into an institutional model frame of the Tate Modern, are fundamental rejections of object-based art. In creating environments and situations that engage our most basic sensory responses, Eliasson’s works democratize the experience of art. Participation and the act of viewing brings Eliasson’s works to life as he once explained, “I like to think that my work can return criticality to the viewer as a tool for negotiating and reevaluating the environment—and that this can pave the way for a more causal relationship with our surroundings.”

LEWITT, Sol. Complex Forms.

Comprised of four (4) large double-folded colour screenprints, 355 x 1420 mm (14 x 56 inches). Square folio, 360 x 360 mm, bound in thick paper over board, lettered spine and both covers with original colour screenprints by Lewitt. Preserved in black cloth folding box. Zurich: Annemarie Verna & New York: Brooke Alexander, 1990. (#156784) $30,000.00

Sol LeWitt

Edition limited to 15 copies signed and numbered by Lewitt. These four original coloured screenprints printed by Watanabe Studio in New York capture on paper the amazing Lewitt series of wall paintings that the artist conceived in 1987-88. Complex Forms represents Lewitt’s experiments with fracturing the cube into component parts. The application of four colours juxtaposed in variations of hue and saturation further expands the visual experimentation.

 

A key factor to emphasize is that Lewitt’s wall paintings were executed directly on the wall for a limited duration, usually a month or two. When a given exhibition was over, many of his creations were not sold and carried away like a painting or sculpture. They were simply painted over and permanently lost except for the original drawings and/or colour gouaches.

Sol Lewitt

“The essence of Lewitt’s work is the original idea as formulated in the artist’s mind. Because it emphasizes conceiving rather than implementing, this kind of art has often been referred to as conceptual art” (Andrea Miller-Keller, Sol Lewitt: Twenty-Five Years of Wall Paintings 1968-1993 in the exhibition catalogue of Addison Gallery, University of Washington Press, 1993, p.37). Condition is “as new.”

Sol LeWitt, whose deceptively simple geometric sculptures and drawings and ecstatically colored and jazzy wall paintings established him as a lodestar of modern American art. Sol LeWitt was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1928. As a child, he attended art classes at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. LeWitt completed a BFA at Syracuse University in 1949 and then served in the United States Army in Korea and Japan during the Korean War. In 1953 he moved to New York, where he took classes at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and did production work for Seventeen magazine. LeWitt subsequently worked in graphic design in the office of architect I. M. Pei from 1955 to 1956. During the first half of the 1960s, LeWitt supported himself by working as a night receptionist at the Museum of Modern Art, where he met future critic Lucy Lippard and fellow artists Dan Flavin, Robert Mangold, and Robert Ryman.\

LeWitt is regarded as a founder of both Minimal and Conceptual art. Inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s sequential photographs of animals and people in motion, LeWitt incorporated seriality in his work to imply the passage of time or narrative. Two important essays by LeWitt, in particular, defined the new movement: “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (1967) and “Sentences on Conceptual Art” (1969). The earlier text proclaimed: “The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” He began making wall drawings in 1968. The earliest consisted of pencil lines—in systematized arrangements of verticals, horizontals, and diagonals on a 45-degree angle—drawn directly on the walls. Later wall drawings included circles and arcs and colored pencil. LeWitt would eventually use teams of assistants to create such works.

In the early 1960s, LeWitt made paintings and reliefs before concentrating on three-dimensional works based on the cube in the mid-1960s. For these, he used precise, measured formats such as grids and modules, and systematically developed variations. His methods were mathematically based, defined by language, or created through random processes. He took up similar approaches in works on paper.

RUSCHA, EDWARD. Every Building on the Sunset Strip.

Every Building on the Sunset Strip
Edward Ruscha

Accordian fold artist’s book illustrated in b&w. 8vo, wraps preserved in a new cloth box. 1966. (#105867) $7,500.00
First Edition, first printing. Photomontage showing contiguously every building on both sides of the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.

Sunset Strip
Ed Ruscha

Approximately 22 feet long when folded out to its full length. Ruscha identifies street numbers and the names of cross streets. The folded accordion paper of Ruscha’s “Sunset Strip” has an extra 2″ flap of paper folded over behind the last page, therefore making this a true first edition. The final Jaguar building is pictured alone on this last half page. All other editions are cut evenly on the final page, including later printings that say “first edition” in front. Apparently the printer made an error in estimating the proper folding length of the printed paper the first time, but this was corrected in subsequent editions. Chip to silver mylar of slipcase and slight crease to spine of book, else a very good copy.

Sunset Strip
Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha’s photography, drawing, painting, and artist books record the shifting emblems of American life in the last half century. His deadpan representations of Hollywood logos, stylized gas stations, and archetypal landscapes distill the imagery of popular culture into a language of cinematic and typographical codes.  The ironic choice of words and phrases that are a dominant feature in his work draw upon the moments of incidental ambiguity implicit in the interplay between the word and image. Although his images are undeniably rooted in the language of a piercing observation of  American life, his elegantly conceived art addresses complex and widespread issues regarding the appearance and function of the world  at large and our transient place within it.

Ruscha’s artist books have proved to be deeply influential. They have widely influential other artists who have adopted their disaffected look. Their influence also extends to architects: Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi and Frank Gehry, who has known Ruscha since the 1960s. Inspired by the unassuming books that he found on street stalls during a trip to Europe, in 1962 Ruscha published his first artist book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations under his own imprint, National Excelsior Press. 

MORE SPECIAL ADDITIONS TO YOUR HOLIDAY GIFT LIST IN OUR NEXT LRFA BLOG.