Robert Frank – Books and Film 1947-2014

[Robert Frank]
Robert Frank – Books and Film 1947-2014
Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2016
64 pp., 40 x 57 cm., newspaper
Edition size unknown

Edited by Axel Rühle, this exhibition catalogue takes the form of a special edition of the German newspaper the Süddeutsche Zeitung. It is printed on newsprint and follows the format and design of the daily paper, one of the largest in Germany.

Conceived by Robert Frank and Gerhard Steidl, the exhibition focuses on Frank's influential bookworks and film projects. These are presented in the context of his life, creative processes, and wider cultural history. The images in the show are also printed on newsprint  -three metres long and installed directly onto the walls. Gallery staff destroyed them following the run of the exhibition.

The newspaper catalogue features interviews, essays, letters and opinion pieces alongside photo sequences. The unpretentious format appealed to Frank's sensibilities. “Cheap, quick and dirty, that’s how I like it!” he is reported to have said about newspaper.

The final two images above are from an exhibition of the same name, held at the Anna Leonowens Gallery in Halifax in 2014. Frank died in September of this year, in Inverness, Nova Scotia.

Meret Oppenheim | Handschuh (Glove)

Meret Oppenheim
Handschuh (Glove)
Zurich, Switzerland: Parkett, 1985
22.1 x 9.2 cm.
Edition of 150 signed and numbered copies

Produced for the 4th issue of Parkett Magazine, just prior to the artist's death at the age of 72. The work is based on a design she conceived of almost fifty years earlier, in 1936 - the same year as her famous “Furlined Teacup”.

The work consists of goat suede with silk-screen and handstitched blood vessels. It is signed with the artist's initials on the inside of the left glove and signed and numbered on the inside of the right glove.
In addition to the 150 copies, there were twelve artist's proofs labelled with roman numerals.


“Meret Oppenheim’s abstruse, multi-leveled work sometimes stubbornly eludes facile interpretation; her virtuoso performance on many instruments at once has long left viewers at something of a loss. On a picture done early in 1933 she wrote the laconic statement: ‘Well, then we’ll live a little later.’ Only gradually, after the critic’s stodgy demand for clear development and stylistic consistency had paled, yielding to a growing fascination for the unfettered approach of recent art, Meret Oppenheim has finally come into her own.”

- Jacqueline Burckhardt Parkett No. 4, 1985

This week on Tumblr

This week on Tumblr: Rubber stamps by artists and rubber stamp artworks by Marcel Dzama, Ray Johnson, Dieter Roth, Fluxus, Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber, Jonathan Monk, Jenny Holzer, JH Kocman, Dick Higgins, David Horvitz, Lawrence Weiner, Maurizio Nannucci, Mel Bochner, Vincent Sardon, Dick Higgins, bpNichol, Andy Warhol, Ulises Carrión and others.

https://artistsbooksandmultiples.tumblr.com/tagged/rubber-stamp-art

AA Bronson | Public Apology to Siksika Nation

AA Bronson
Public Apology to Siksika Nation
Toronto, Canada: Toronto Biennial of Art, 2019
160 pp., 17 x 11 x 1 cm., softcover
Edition of 14000

A free publication given away at the Toronto Biennial of Art, which closes tomorrow. Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts New Chapter Grant, the book is part of Bronson's largest installation, and is presented next to the work of Adrian Stimson, a Siksika artist who responds to the piece.

The title includes an essay by Ben Miller, who served as Bronson's research assistant while working on this project. His text can be read, in full, here.



"I’m doing a project called “Public Apology to Siksika Nation.” I want to apologize on behalf of my great-grandfather. Through doing the research on this, I met Adrian Stimson, who’s a Siksika native. He’s a Canadian artist who about a year ago moved back to the reserve. He was living in Saskatoon, and incidentally he received the Governor General’s Award a few weeks ago. I am working on the project together with him.

[...]

"My great-grandfather founded one of the first residential schools, somewhere between 1883–1884. And, well, the little drama that happened; he was only there for 11 years, and then he was transferred to another reserve because there was a kind of uprising, which has been squashed in written history. You can’t find documentation of it; it’s very, very difficult to find anything about it. But what we know happened was there was a tuberculosis epidemic amongst the children in the school. [With] tuberculosis, you need lots of air and sunlight, and you need to get out into the open air. He was more or less locking the kids in school. He wouldn’t let their parents see them once they were sick because he was afraid the parents would get them to revert from Christianity back to paganism, and then they’d die of the disease, and their souls would go to hell because they weren’t Christian. So he kept them locked up in the school, and they died in the school without ever seeing their parents."

- AA Bronson, in conversation with Dorian Batycka

Yoko Ono | Ask the Clouds to Remember

Yoko Ono
Ask the Clouds to Remember
New York City, USA: Self-published, 2013
17.14 x 11.43 cm.
Edition of 65 signed and numbered copies

Maurizio Nannucci | NOMOREEXCUSES

Maurizio Nannucci
NOMOREEXCUSES
Bologna, Italy: Galleria d'Arte Enrico Astuni, 2016
15 x 157.5 cm. (open), 10.5 x 15 cm. (closed))
Edition of 99 signed and numbered copies

A laser-engraved leporello artist book on gold paper featuring the same text that the artist used in a major installation light work the year prior (below).

NOMOREEXCUSES is valued at between two and three thousand dollars.

The Pipe: Recent Czech Concrete Poetry

bpNichol and Jiri Valoch [editors]
The Pipe: Recent Czech Concrete Poetry
Toronto, Canada: Ganglia Press, 1973
[26] pp., 32.5 x 23.5 cm., loose leaves
Edition of 750

bpNichol began grOnk with David UU (David W. Harris) in 1967, as an offshoot of Ganglia Press. The imprint was mostly devoted mostly to visual poetry. A series of sporadic pamphlets and booklets continued under the imprint until Nichol's death in 1988. More than a hundred grOnk items were published, with The Pipe one of the most ambitious (most others were cheaply produced mimeographed and stapled booklets).

Published as gRoNK series 6, numbers 6&7, and printed at Coach House Press this collection of Czech poets was edited by Nichol and the poet/artist Jiri Valoch. The collection featured concrete poetry (presented both typographically and photographically) by artists living in Czechoslovakia, with the exception of Ludwig Feller, a resident of West Germany.

Twenty six loose cards of different sizes (one folded) were housed in a cardboard box. The contents include: 

Karel Trinkewitz: "poem-object", "text", "poem-object", "poem-object"

Jiri Valock: "hommage to stockhausen" (1967), "textfragment" (1970), "poem score (random text 1970)", "typewriter poem (1965), "found concrete poem (1970)

Jan Wojnar: "processual poem" (1970), "processual poem" (1970), "processual poem" (1970)

Karel Milota & Jaroslav Koch: "a question and its romantic parasits"

Ladislav Nebesky: "number poem", "number poem"

Ludvik Feller: Untitled, Untitled

 J. H. Kocman: "All written on this page is a poem by J H Kocman" (pictured above)

Karel Adamus:"four variations of poem" (1970)

Jaroslav Malina: "three photopoems"

Jiri Valoch: "air (landpoem - 1970)"

Josef Honys: "poem", "knight-text"

Ladislav Nebesky: Untitled


Produced in an edition of 750 copies, the box is now rare and valued at a few hundred dollars, depending on condition.