Jonathan Monk | Restaurant Drawings

Jonathan Monk

Restaurant Drawings

New York City, USA: Karma Books, 2019

552 pp., 7.5 x 9.25”, hardcover

Edition of 1000

Jonathan Monk sings for his supper in this massive collection of drawings of artworks he has doodled on restaurant receipts and sold for the price of the meal. 

On these bills, Monk recreates the work of John Baldessari, Alighiero Boetti, On Kawara, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt (see below, from our collection), Sherrie Levine, Piero Manzoni, Lawrence Weiner, Andy Warhol, Christopher Wool, and others.

The images are accompanied by an essay by Pedro Alonzo.

Restaurant Drawings is sold out most places, but a few copies are still available from the publisher, here. 

Jonathan Monk | Restaurant Drawing of Yoko Ono on the Simpsons

Following two months of postal strike, it’s nice to finally be getting mail. Today this Restaurant Drawing from Jonathan Monk arrived. Earlier in the year he posted an image of a Baldessari-as-Simpsons-Character receipt drawing being made into a t-shirt. I sent him screengrabs of Jasper Johns and Yoko Ono from other episodes, in case he might want to draw them also. I was not expecting to be gifted one in the mail. 

Baldessari and Johns both lent their voices to the show (Jasper John’s best line being “Yoink” as he steals food from a gallery opening) but Ono is voiced by an actress on staff, in the Beatles parody episode Homer's Barbershop Quartet (S05E01). As Barney’s avant-garde girlfriend she is more parody of an Ono-type artist, ordering a conceptual cocktail and recording a "Revolution 9”-like bit of musique concrete where she recites “Number eight, number eight...” over Barney’s belches. 

According to SimsponsWiki, she is also mentioned in "Last Tap Dance in Springfield” and "Covercraft", and appears as a hallucination in "The Bart of War”, and as a waxwork figure in "Crook and Ladder”. 

The cocktail she orders: "a single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man's hat”, became the basis for an artwork by Ragnar Kjartansson, as part of the 2016 exhibit One More Story at the Reykjavík Art Museum, which was curated by Ono. She Hyperallergic story, here, for more information. 

Jenny Holzer | Living Series: The mouth is interesting because…

 

Jenny Holzer

Living Series: The mouth is interesting because…

New York City, USA: Self-published, 1981

12.7 x 25.4 cm 

Edition size unknown

A cast bronze plaque featuring the text:

The mouth is interesting because it's one of those places where the dry outside moves toward the slippery inside.

Lynda Benglis | Ghost of a Smile

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Bruce Nauman | Pictures of Sculpture in a Room

Bruce Nauman

Pictures of Sculpture in a Room 

Davis, USA: Self-published, c1965

8 pp., 8.5 x 5.5”, staple-bound 

Edition size unknown

Bruce Nauman is not a prolific maker of artists’ books, but has produced a few classics, such as Clea Rsky, L.A. Air, and Burning Small Fires. His first foray into the genre was this title, made when he was a student at the University of California. It is comprised of four black and white images of early sculptures he made by leaning or hanging wood on a wall. 

In the catalogue raisonné Prints, 1970-89, Nauman is interviewed by Christopher Cordes and makes a rare statement about his bookworks: 

“Pictures of Sculpture in a Room was done when I was a student. My aim was to make an object of the book to confuse the issue a little bit. It is a total object, but it has pictures —however, it is a book, not a catalogue.” 

Fluxus Text Shirts

Shirts by Fluxus artists featuring only text, by Ben, Ken Friedman, Yoko Ono and George Brecht.