Wallace Berman and Robert Watts | Arranged Marriage

Wallace Berman and Robert Watts

Arranged Marriage

New York City, USA: Roth Horowitz, 1999

40 pp., 19.2 x 26 cm., spiral bound

Edition of 500

 

Arranged Marriage is often referred to as an artists' book, despite the fact that the artists - Watts and Berman - had been dead for 11 and 23 years, respectively, at the time of publication. The book was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name that ran from the 28th October to the 18th of December, 1999, at the Andrew Roth Gallery. 

The inventive catalogue format includes 2 tipped-in fold-outs and an invitation card bound-in at the front. Images from the exhibition are accompanied by an essay from Fluxus historian Simon Anderson,  associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and author of “Living in Multiple Dimensions: George Brecht and Robert Watts 1953-1963,” in Off Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde, 1957-1963 (1999) and “Fluxus Publicus” in In the Spirit of Fluxus (1993).

Both Berman and Watts participated in Pop Art exhibitions, but produced work that fell outside the genre's purview.

Critic Kim Levin called Bob Watts "the invisible man of Fluxus and Pop”. He participated in Allan Kaprow’s Happenings and co-produced the Yam Festival with George Brecht, a collaborative performance predating similar Fluxus activities.

Wallace Berman has been called the "father" of assemblage art and is known for creating the artists' periodical Semina. He had a small role in Dennis Hopper's film Easy Rider, and appears in the Peter Blake collage for the cover of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He died in 1976, on his fiftieth birthday.

Louise Nevelson | Sky Passage

Louise Nevelson

Sky Passage

New York City, USA: Pace Editions, 1976

10.25 x 5.75 x 4”

Edition of 150 signed and numbered copies

A black painted cast relief wood published for the benefit of the Dalton School, a progressive private college preparatory school that encourages teachers and students to work together toward individualized goals that has been operating in New York since 1919. 

A label on the verso is signed and numbered by the artist. 

The work is valued at between three and five thousand US dollars. 

Cosey Fanni Tutti | Re-Sisters

Cosey Fanni Tutti

Re-Sisters

London, UK: Faber & Faber Ltd., 2022

372 pp., 

Limited edition of 300 signed and numbered copies

The deluxe edition of Cosey Fanni Tutti’s acclaimed book includes a hardcover copy, an audio cassette, and pewter erotic pilgrim brooch in a red velvet pouched, all housed in a printed clamshell box. The cassette, Music to Read By, is composed and performed by Cosey Fanni Tutti and is housed in a cardboard sleeve. Side A and Side B are both listed with the same title. 

"In 2018, boundary-breaking visual and sonic artist Cosey Fanni Tutti received a commission to write the soundtrack to a film about Delia Derbyshire, the pioneering electronic composer who influenced the likes of Aphex Twin and The Chemical Brothers. While researching Derbyshire's life, Tutti became immersed in her story and uncovered fascinating parallels with her own life. At the same time, Tutti began reading about Margery Kempe, the fifteenth-century mystic visionary who wrote the first English-language autobiography. The connections between the three women soon shifted into focus.”

- publisher’s statement

Daniel Arsham | Eroded New York Yankees Baseball Cap

Daniel Arsham

Eroded New York Yankees Baseball Cap

Southbank, Australia: National Gallery of Victoria, 2021

13 x 18 x 28 cm

Edition of 500 numbered copies

A cast resin and plaster replica of a NY Yankees baseball visor, produced on the occasion of the National Gallery of Victoria 2020 Triennial, held 19 December 2020 - 18 April 2021. 

The work is produced by Archive Editions and sold with certificate of authenticity from the artist. 

See Arsham’s plaster cast of a camera in an earlier post, here. 

James Lee Byars | TH FI TO IN PH

James Lee Byars

TH FI TO IN PH

Monchengladbach, Germany: Städtisches Museum, 1977

8 x 6.25 x 3"

Edition of 330

A large black tissue with gold printing is crumpled to fit into the (oversized, for the series) cardboard box. The title "TH FI TO IN PH" is an abbreviation of "THe FIrst TOtally INterrogativ Philosophy".

The work was issued to accompany an exhibition at the Städtisches Museum in Mönchengladbach that ran from April 21st to May 22, 1977 (an exhibition invitation, unrelated to the boxed catalogue, is below, bottom). Curator Johannes Cladders’ essay is printed inside the box.

The contents of the exhibition are unclear. Historians are unable to reconstruct precisely what Byars exhibited, given the conflicting documentation from the time. 

Mark Pawson | Mark's little book of Kinder eggs

Mark Pawson

Mark's little book of Kinder eggs

London, UK: Self-published, 1990

32 pp., 8 x 11 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

The artist chronicles the procurement and assembly of eighteen Kinder Surprise toys.

Dave Dyment | My Friend Goo

Dave Dyment

My Friend Goo

Toronto, Canada: Paul + Wendy Projects, 2025

38 pp., 25 x 17 cm. staple bound

Edition of 200 

Today several people wrote to say that they heard Lee Ranaldo mention my Paul+Wendy Projects book My Friend Goo on a couple of recent podcasts. He’s making the rounds promoting a great new LP: a paired down ‘reimagined’ version of the soundtrack for Joris Postema's celebrated 'eco-doc' The System. 

In both interviews Lee is asked about Goo, Sonic Youth’s major label debut. He points out that they signed to Geffen Record in part because they were offered full creative autonomy, but then recounts a story about wanting to use a Raymond Pettibon drawing of Joan Crawford with the word Blowjob and a question mark, and title the record Blowjob. Geffen wrote to say “Ah, we know you have complete creative control, but please don’t do this to us.” 

Ranaldo: "We acquiesced and went with this cover, which is a way better cover and which has spawned a thousand variations. An artist in Canada named Dave Dyment put out a publication last year with about two hundred variations. You know: Luke and Leia, Dre and Eminem, Bernie and, ah, I don’t know who else was in that one, but there’s a million of take-offs. Ren & Stimpy in the car. So it was the right move." 

A few days before the subject comes up on The Broken Record podcast: 

LEE: "As a matter of fact, last year this Canadian artist put out a book - there’s a million spin-offs of the Goo cover: Obama and Hillary, C3PO and R2D2, JayZ and Eminem, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie - there’s hundreds of variations on that cover, they keep coming out all the time. There’s one called Islamic Youth with a woman in a burka, and some artist wrote this long conceptual essay about it and published this zine-like book with two hundred different examples of these spin-offs.” 

Listen to the East Village Radio podcast here, and the Broken Record podcast here. 

The System is released today and can be purchased here. 

My Friend Goo: Memes, Mashups and Remixes can be purchased from the publisher, here.