John Baldessari | The Telephone Book (with pearls)

John Baldessari

The Telephone Book (with pearls)

Gent, Belgium: Imschoot Uitgevers, 1988

68 pp., 21 x 14.7 cm., softcover

Edition of 1000 

Baldessari’s signature style (though the least interesting aspect of his practice) was to use stills from Hollywood, television, or advertising campaigns - purchased for ten cents apiece from a trinket store in Burbank - an obscure them with colorful dots. 

Following Ruscha’s approach to artists’ books ("Does exactly what it says on the tin”), this title features movie stills cropped to reveal classic landline telephones and pearls. 

In addition to the trade version, there were twenty-five deluxe hardbound copies signed in black marker and ‘numbered’ from A-Z [below].

“I will probably be remembered as the guy who put dots on faces.”

- John Baldessari

Artists' Stamps

Postage stamps by Fernando Aguiar, Joseph Beuys, Fluxus, General Idea, Barbara Kruger, George Maciunas, Endre Tot, Ben Vautier, and Bob Watts. 

From Bookworks to Mailworks

Ulises Carrión

From Bookworks to Mailworks 

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Other Books and So, Stedelijk Museum, 1978

12 pp., 31.5 x 23 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

An exhibition catalog for Van kunstenaarsboeken Tot Postkunst, curated by Ulises Carrión for the Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar in the fall of 1978. The title features black-and-white images of exhibited work alongside Dutch and English essays in red text and includes a stapled photocopy of the original exhibition checklist. With contributions by Regina Silveira, Donald Burgy, J.H. Kocman, Roy Grayson, Henryk Gajewski, Thomas Ockerse, Clemente Padín, and Richard Kostelanetz. 

The invitation card and announcement poster for the exhibition are below. 

“[T]his exhibition tries to show the contact points, the relationships, between artists’ bookworks and Mail Art. Both forms are contemporary (they belong more or less to the last two decades) and influence and enrich each other. Although it isn’t possible to draw a chronological sequence leading from one art form to the other, I want to show that Mail Art radicalizes some tendencies in the evolution of the art process—evolution that the bookworks had triggered, and that such radicalization has important formal consequences.” 

- Ulises Carrión

Jenny Holzer | Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise

Jenny Holzer

Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise

Halifax, Canada: The Press of The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1983

[136] pp., 8.5 × 8.5 × 0.5", softcover

Edition size unknown

Between 1972 and 1987, the NSCAD Press published 26 titles by painters, sculptors, filmmakers, dancers, a composer, etc. These include books by Michael Asher, Dara Birnbaum, Daniel Buren, Gerald Ferguson, Simone Forti, Hollis Frampton, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Donald Judd, Bernhard Leitner, Claes Oldenberg, Yvonne Rainer, Gerhard Richter, Martha Rosler, Steve Reich, Michael Snow and Lawrence Weiner, among others. All are now considered classics and are difficult to find, and expensive to purchase, on the secondary market. 

This early artist book by Jenny Holzer, whose full title is Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise - Truisms and Essays, features her best known and most influential work.  

"Jenny Holzer’s Truisms and Essays is the third1 volume in the Nova Scotia Pamphlets. It collects a large number of ‘found’2 statements, that were originally published anonymously in the format of posters in the streets of New York. The sentences are commonplaces of contemporary ideology, prejudices and cliches of thinking that voice repressed desires and aggressive fears. Holzer is successful in making these statements of reified thinking and perceiving transparent in the manner that she simply formalizes and arranges these sentences alphabetically and by juxtaposing various seemingly contradictory viewpoints of conviction without suggesting a reading that would allow for the reader’s easy identification or a simple gesture of critical distantiation. The ‘essays’ are short texts which comprise one hundred words each and they condense moments of unconscious linguistic everyday life into moments of sudden awareness of one’s proper constitution in ideology.”

- NSCAD

1. Following Martha Rosler’s Three Works and Gerhard Richter’s 128 Details from a

Picture. 

2. Found? 

Ken Friedman

Happy Birthday to Ken Friedman, who turns 77 today.