Vivienne Westwood

Fashion Designer and Punk Icon Vivienne Westwood died today (December 29th) “peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London.” She was 81 years old.

Westwood authored, or co-authored, a number of books, including Fashion in Art: The Second Empire and Impressionism, Get A Life, and Catwalk. Vivienne Westwood Opus 2008, published in an edition of 900 copies, is a forty-four pound book that measures thirty five by twenty five inches. 

“My thing as a fashion designer is that I said buy less clothes. Keep wearing things that you’ve really chosen that you really love. That is status. It’s not that you have to keep consuming. A status symbol is a book.”

Westwood is pictured above with Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, writer Alan Jones, Chrissie Hynde, and Pamela Rooke (who died in April of this year). 

Dorothy Iannone | You Who Read Me With Passion Now Must Forever Be My Friends

Dorothy Iannone

You Who Read Me With Passion Now Must Forever Be My Friends

New York City, USA: Siglio Press, 2014

320 pp., 7.25 × 9", softcover

Edition size unknown

Edited by Lisa Pearson, this volume reproduces both familiar and rarely seen work, including works from long out-of-print artist's books as well as unpublished writings and drawings. Many are reprinted in their entirety, including the 80-page Danger in Düsseldorf, which was originally published by Hansjörg Mayer in 1973. 

You Who Read Me With Passion Now Must Forever Be My Friends is available from the publisher, here, for $45.00 US. 

Iannone died in Berlin two days ago, on December 26th, at the age of eighty-nine. 

 

Sigrid Calon | 2022 Holiday Card

Sigrid Calon

2022 Holiday Card

Toronto, Canada: Paul + Wendy Projects, 2022

18 x 12.5 cm.

Edition size unknown

 

 

Cary Leibowitz | Kosher Hot Dog Yarmulke (Please Don't Forget Eleanor Roosevelt)

Cary Leibowitz

Kosher Hot Dog Yarmulke (Please Don't Forget Eleanor Roosevelt) 

New York City, USA: Self-published, 1995

20.3 cm. diameter

Edition size unknown

Stanley Brouwn | Send me a map of the city where you are living

Stanley Brouwn

Send me a map of the city where you are living

Copenhagen, Denmark: Self-published, 1970

7.1 x 10.1 cm.

Edition size unknown

A postcard soliciting maps from around the world, not dissimilar to the artist's This Way Brouwn project in which he invited passersby to sketch out quick provisional instructional maps which he then exhibited and published as 'drawings'. 

According to Harry Ruhe's Stanley Brouwn: A Chronology, cards were "send by Brouwn from Copenhagen to people and institutes all over the world."

A scarce piece of ephemera by an important and underrated artist, valued at upwards of a thousand dollars, depending on condition and provenance. 

George Maciunas | Ping Pong Rackets

 

Jean Dubuffet | Banque de l'Hourloupe-Cartes a jouer et a tirer

Jean Dubuffet

Banque de l'Hourloupe-Cartes a jouer et a tirer

London, UK:  Editions Alecto, 1967

52 pp., 19.7 x 5.7 cm., boxed loose leaves

Edition of 350 signed and numbered copies [+ 30 AP]

A boxed set of 52 playing cards. The work is still available from the publisher, here, but no price is listed. The work is typically valued at between $1000 and $1300 US, depending on condition. 

Michael Snow

 

Happy Birthday to Michael Snow, who turns 94 today. 

Veronica Ryan | Cocoa Passion

Veronica Ryan

Cocoa Passion 

Bristol, UK: Spike Island, 2021

14 x 6 x 6 cm.

Edition of 20 [+ 2 APs]

A sold-out edition of cast porcelain cocoa pods, produced on the occasion of Veronica Ryan’s exhibition Along a Spectrum at Spike Island, last year. 

Today it was announced that Ryan won the prestigious Turner Prize, which is valued at £25,000 (the runners up Heather Phillipson, Ingrid Pollard, and Sin Wai Kin will each receive £10,000). 

The Montserrat-born sculptor emigrated to the UK as a child in the 1950s. At age sixty-six, she is the oldest winner in the history of the Turner Prize, which began in 1984. 

Ryan was nominated for the Along a Spectrum exhibition at Spike Island. 

John Lennon | The Lennon Diary 1969

John Lennon

The Lennon Diary 1969

New York City, USA: Roaring Fork Press, 1970

[unpaginated], 4 x 3.25", softcover

Edition size unknown

The Lennon Diary 1969 was published as part of Aspen #7 (The British Issue), which also included a flexi-disc of Yoko Ono performing the three-part track Song For John. Other artists included in the box were Peter Blake, Ossie Clarke, Ian Hamilton Finlay, David Hockey, and Eduardo Paolozzi.

From an intended series of "Diaries of the future", the work is a facsimile of a 1969 pocket diary, filled in November 1968, and not published until 1970.

Lennon's diary entries are more or less identical, with only a few variations: “Got Up, went to work, got home , watched telly. ” Occasionally he adds “fucked the wife“.

Lennon died on this day in 1980,