Taryn Simon | Mono Edition #3

[Taryn Simon]

Mono Edition #3

Berlin, Germany: Mono.Kultur

48 pp.,  20 x 15 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Issue #3 of Mono Edition magazine is dedicated to the work of photographer Taryn Simon. Packaged in a glassine envelope, the issue features free softcover pamphlets and printed cards. 

Little Caesar #8

Dennis Cooper [ed]

Little Caesar #8

Los Angeles, USA: Little Caesar Press, 1979

[72 ]pp., 5.5 x 8.5”, staple-bound

Edition size unknown

Dennis Cooper published his first book of poetry at the age of 20, and began his own poetry zine at the age of 23. Little Caesar evolved into book-sized magazine expanding beyond poetry. Cooper wrote: "Maybe we're crazy but we think there can be a literary journal that's loved and powerful. We want a magazine that's read by poetry fans, the rock culture, the Hari Krishnas, the Dodgers. We think it can be done, and that's what we're aiming at.”

The periodical published twelve issues between 1976 and 1982. It featured interviews with John Lydon, teen pop idol Leif Garrett, Joe Brainard, Gram Parsons, porn director Toby Ross and many others. Contributors included Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Nico, Rene Ricard,  Debbie Harry, Brian Eno,

"We're not fifty year old patrons of the arts. We're young punks just like you, and just because Kenneth Rexroth's got a name in some crowds doesn't mean a wink's gonna get his rickety old crap in here. He comes through the back door like everyone else,” Cooper declared. 

Issue #8 features the iconic nude image of Iggy Pop on the cover and content inside by Allen Ginsberg, Gerard Malanga (whose photographs include portraits of William Burroughs, Mick Jagger, John Cage, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, and Anita Pallenberg),  The Ramones and The Clash, portraits by Maria Resnick, and more.

Copies in good condition are scarce sell for between seven and eight hundred dollars. 

Envelope Doodles

 

Joyce Wieland Independent Canadian Art Show

Ross Mendes & Judith M. Nasby

Joyce Wieland Independent Canadian Art Show

Guelph, Canada: University of Guelph, 1972.

10 pp., 8vo, staple-bound

Edition size unknown

A year after her National Gallery exhibition True Patriot Love [below, bottom], Joyce Weiland held an exhibition at the University of Guelph gallery, with a similar title: Independent Canadian Art Show. 

The exhibition also included her controversial knitted wool work Flag Arrangement, from 1970–71. Barry Lord, an arts writer, curator and cultural nationalist, described the piece as “burlesque” and "a slap in the face to patriotic Canadians.”  

This rare exhibition brochure from D&E Lake in Toronto, for thirty dollars, here. 

Tavares Strachan | Encyclopedia of Invisibility (Pocket Guide)

Tavares Strachan

Encyclopedia of Invisibility (Pocket Guide)

New York City, USA: Marian Goodman Gallery, 2024

[unpaginated], 23.5 x 30.8 x 25.4 cm., hardcover

Edition of 250 signed and numbered copies

The Encyclopedia of Invisibility [below] is a 2018 bookwork by Tavares Strachan that features thousands of entries focused on historically marginalized individuals, places, and events. The Encyclopedia is a 2400 page compendium of research into subject matter and topics of overlooked and hidden histories. It is described by the artist as "a written and illustrated inverse of the Encyclopedia Britannica, functioning as Literature but also taking on the role of Sculpture.”

The Pocket Guide version is a slightly more accessible version. Produced in an edition of 250, it is bound in leather, with gilded pages made of archival paper, and housed on a lucite box and stand. It has a price tag of four grand, and a three month waiting period, as the works are made to order. 

For more information, visit the publisher’s site, here. 

Mark Pawson | Dividers

Mark Pawson

Dividers

London, UK: Self-published, 2015

[82] pp, 23 x 16 x 2 cm., loose leaves

Open edition

When Mark Pawson passed a couple of weeks ago I realized that I have never posted this great project that he sent me years ago. 

It’s a small cardboard box screenprinted with the title on the spine. Inside are printed sheets of coloured paper (making it a very economical publication to produce). The coloured pages are each represent a category of work in his collection, serving as a self-portrait of Pawson by way of his interests: 

Typewriter Art/Concrete Poetry/Visual Poetry

Zines/Fanzines

Radical Cultures/DIY cultures

Ray Johnson

Fluxus/Something Else Press

Book Making/Books About Books/Book Arts

Activist Graphics/Protest Art

Ant Farm & General Idea

Artist Monographs

Badges

Things I’m In!

Mexico

Kitsch/Dubious Tastes

Mail Art...

Dieter Roth

Fashion/Textiles/Pattern

Interesting Magazines Which I Only Have One Issue Of!

Artists Books

My Dad’s Books

Music/Sound/Cage

Photography

Hardly Worth Anything - See Later...

It was produced in 2015, eight years after he had moved into a new flat, when he realized that some books still remained in boxes. In one of them he found George Maciunas’ Flux Paper Events, which he had completely forgotten that he owned. 

“If I couldn’t remember such an inimitable book then it was definitely time to take action and develop a system for locating books quickly and easily,” he writes in the single page introduction. 

Much of Mark Pawson’s work used the materials of fan culture (stickers, buttons, badges) as a way to celebrate his interests and influences, setting up at book fairs and operating in the mail art community as a way of meeting like-minded people. 

This deviates only slightly from that larger body of work, with the librarian instinct that inevitably follows a collection that has grown so large that it demands some organizing principles. 

Richard Tuttle | Portland Works 1976

Richard Tuttle

Portland Works 1976

Cologne, Germany: Galerie Karsten Greve, 1988

40 pp. 18 x 26 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Co-published with the Thomas Segal Gallery, this slim catalogue documents the exhibition of the same name, which ran from April 30th to May 28th, 1988. The show presented works which were originally exhibited at the Northwest Artists Workshop in Portland, Oregon, in 1976. 

The works included are watercolour on airmail writing block paper, from the collection of Herb and Dorothy Vogel. 

The book is designed by Tuttle and features a letter-pressed cover of handmade paper.