David Byrne | Strange Ritual

David Byrne

Strange Ritual

Faber and Faber, 1995

192 pp., 26 x 19.5 x 1.5 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

Strange Ritual is the Talking Heads singer’s first stand-alone book (True Stories from nine years prior was ultimately a companion to the film of the same name). Subtitled Pictures and Words, the book is collection of photographs of icons, graffiti, consumer displays, advertising and book covers. The latter have titles that read like the works of Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber: “The Truth About Mars”, “I Dare You”, “How to do All Things”, “The Secret Museum of Mankind”, “Ponder on This”.

The book takes its title from  song from Byrne's third studio album (not counting film and theatre soundtracks), released two years prior. 

The leather-bound volume features a promotional wrap-around, and the Japanese edition was issued with a colourful dust jacket [see below]. 

"Internationally renowned musician, filmmaker, performer, David Byrne is an artist of diverse talents. Strange Ritual is Byrne's extraordinary first work of photography and words. Witty, antic and seductive, this book is a barrage of color photographs that reinvent the icon: playful religious images of high-rise madonnas and squadrons of crucifixes; incantorial representations of worldwide consumerism, from altars of food displays to retail signs out-shining the stained glass of cathedrals; culture-scapes of the omnipresent grid that video has imposed on our perception of reality.

Juxtaposed with the photographs are excerpts from Byrne's travel observations, unpublished song lyrics and poems, including a list of the gods and goddesses of the 90's. Byrne has also compiled found writing in the form of computer-generated poetry, odd book titles, poems and unusual messages found on the street. Traveling in Mexico, he writes, "Anything is up for grabs. Anything is available for everyone to use. Language, clothes, religions, facial features, narratives, gestures, foods, colors."

Strange Ritual offers 240 jam-packed pages of exciting, challenging, ironic, and often hilarious art and words that address the universals in an honest and direct voice. More than a book of photography, it is a bizarre, brilliant vision."

- Publisher's press release

Wolf Vostell

Wolf Vostell was born on this day in 1932.

Carla Liss | Sacrament Fluxkit

Carla Liss

Sacrament Fluxkit 

New York City, USA: Fluxus, c1969

Edition size unknown

A hinged plastic box housing vials of water of varying hues labeled "well," "faucet," "pool," "rain," "brook," "lake," "snow," "river" and "sea”. 

The water was intended to be housed in test tubes, though no known examples of this indicate that it was ever produced this way. Instead the water is housed in small injection bottles with metal caps and rubber diaphragms. The vials originally contained cortisone, which publisher George Maciunas injected to control his asthma. 

Maciunas also designed the box label, this being the less common of the two designs used for this work (see earlier post, here). 

Several versions of the Sacrament Fluxkit were advertised in Fluxus newsletters and price lists, varying from $6 to $30, including a wooden box containing test-tubes housing "water from many sources".

"Geoffrey Hendricks’s Flux Reliquary [below] and Carla Liss’s Sacrament Fluxkit take different approaches. Hendricks’s satirical “Flux Relics” include “Sweat of Lucifer from the heat of Hell,” “Fragment of rope by which Judas Iscariot hung himself,” “Holy Shit from diners at the Last Supper,” and other objects not that far removed from the relics found in churches around the world. Liss’s poetic Sacrament Fluxkit, on the other hand, consists of a box that is labeled on the inside lid with everyday sources of the “holy” water in the nine specimen bottles: “well, faucet, pool, rain, brook, lake, snow, river, sea.” Liss implies that it’s up to us; if we want, we can choose to have a sacramental experience each time we encounter water.”

- Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life

Raymond Pettibon | Tripping Corpse 6

Raymond Pettibon

Tripping Corpse 6

Lawndale, USA: SST Publications, 1985

28 pp., 21.6 x 14 x 0.2 cm., staple-bound

Edition of 500 numbered copies

Between the years 1981 and 1985, Raymond Pettibon produced six issues of Tripping Corpse, this being the final. The ‘zines were published by Pettibon’s older brother Greg Ginn, best known as the leader of the band Black Flag. 

Tripping Corpse included art, poetry, politics and band interviews and reviews. Number six features interviews with Keb Studerbox and Sonic Youth, an album review and drawings on 24 of the 28 pages. 

Reportedly, 400 copies of 500 produced were destroyed, making the title scarce. It has an estimated value of between three and five hundred dollars US. 

Cary Leibowitz | Vomit-bag

Cary Leibowitz

Vomit-bag

Dusseldorf, Germany: ID Galerie, 1991

39 x 44 cm.

Edition of 500

A week from today a new exhibition by Leibowitz opens at Tibor de Nagy in New York City. Titled You Haven't Changed At All, the show runs from October 17th to November 23rd. 

Visit the gallery website, here, for more information. 

Kasper König’s collection

Works from the collection of Kasper König - who died in August at the age of 80 - took in around $6.5 million at auction last week. 

Among the four hundred or so works sold were pieces by artists including Richard Artschwager, Thomas Bayrle, William Copley, Nicole Eiseman, Katharina Fritsch, On Kawara, Paul McCarthy, Claes Oldenburg, Sigmar Polke, and Thomas Schütte. The top went to a work by Kawara, whose work May 7, 1967 fetched roughly $878,000. According to the auction house, Van Ham, this set a new record for On Kawara's date paintings.

Before his death, König donated around fifty works from his collection to Museum Ludwig, including pieces by Pawel Althamer, Maria Eichhorn, Isa Genzken, Dan Graham, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jenny Holzer, Richard Long and Jeremy Deller.

Above are some relevant (to this site) works from the auction. 

Barbara Bloom | The Titanic

Barbara Bloom

The Titanic

New York City, USA: Jay Gorney Modern Art, n.d.

35.5 x 13 cm. 

Signed and numbered edition of 33

I could find very little information about this work, including the date, but I have to assume that it’s from 1991, when Bloom had an exhibition at Jay Gorney titled The Tip of the Iceberg.

The work consists of a champagne bottle in a wooden box sealed with a label. The bottle features the text: "Subject to 6000 lbs. of pressure per sq. inch, at 12,460 ft. below sea level for 7 years, this bottle still has its cork in place”.