Pierre Bismuth

[Pierre Bismuth]

Pierre Bismuth

Toronto, Canada: Art Gallery of York University, 2004

96 pp, 6 x 8”, hardcover

Edition size unknown

The catalogue to an exhibition of collages - both paper and video - at the Art Gallery of York University, from October 8th to November 23rd, 2003. 

Respect for the Dead features the opening scenes from various feature films - The Magnificent Seven, Jaws, Goodfellas, Dirty Harry, Dr No, and Breathless - truncated immediately following the first death. 

Collages for Men involves enlarged glossy images from porn magazines, with the models' bodies covered with white paper garments. 

For Unfolded Origami, Bismuth had an origamist fold and unfold posters, then displayed them flat. The posters include Andy Warhol's flowers, a map of Europe, an advertisement for the a fight between Muhammad Ali and Ken Norton, a cute kitten, and (a concession to the Toronto venue?) a Maple Leaf hockey player. The works are titled for the unfolded origami shape: dog, frog, peacock, yacht, etc. 

The fourth and final piece presented is the main draw here: The Jungle Book Project. For this work, the artist spliced together nineteen different international versions of the 1967 Walt Disney animated classic in such a way that each character speaks a different language.  Mogli speaks Spanish with a Latin American accent, Tigger speaks English, King Louie the orangutan speaks Japanese, Baloo speaks Hebrew, Bagheera the panther speaks Arabic, etc. etc. 

The book closes with two essays: “Why do Jewish mothers...?” by Aaron Schuster and "Chinese Whispers” by Alexander Alberro. These are followed by biographies and an exhibition checklist. 

“The Jungle Book Project comments on the entertainment industry's relationship to globalization. As they do with all of their products, prior to translating the film the Disney Corporation carefully researched the commercial viability of The Jungle Book in a number of languages and countries. The consumer reports seem to have indicated that whereas marketing the film in most European languages would be profitable, this would not be the case with African languages. As a result, The Jungle Book has not been translated into any African language. Evidently, Africa is not yet part of the culture industry’s global landscape. The exportation of the Disney product is relatively easy since the change in the voiceover virtually seamless. Unlike the type of out-of-synch effect that occurs when a film with actors is dubbed, to suture new voices to the animated cartoon figures does not pose problems of coher-

ency or delay. Films like The Jungle Book work equally well in all languages."

- Alexander Alberro

Indiana's Indianas

[Robert Indiana]

Indiana's Indianas 

Rockland, USA: William A Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, 1982

24 pp., 23.5 x 23.5 x .5 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

A slim exhibition catalogue with stiff pictorial wraps, documenting a 20 year retrospective of paintings and sculpture from Robert Indiana’s personal collection. 

Thomas Lélu | I have no idea what I’m doing out of bed

Thomas Lélu

I have no idea what I’m doing out of bed

Paris, France: RVB Books, 2023

160 pp., 11.2 x 16.7 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

"In October 2022, after a period dedicated to collage and image manipulation, Thomas Lélu decided to return to his origins, and began a series of sentences that he simply wrote down in a notebook with a ballpoint pen. From then on, he began a daily exercise of writing a minimum of 5 sentences in sketchbooks. A total of over 500 sentences to date. Sometimes funny or witty, often caustic and provocative, they invite the reader to reflect on our times and its excesses."

- publisher’s statement

I have no idea what I’m doing out of bed is available from Printed Matter, here. 

bill bissett | Image Being

bill bissett 

Image Being 

Vancouver, Canada: blewointment press, 1975

[unpaginated], 32 pp., staple-bound

Edition of 300

Douglas Gordon | Punishment Exercice in Gothic

Douglas Gordon

Punishment Exercice in Gothic

Stuutgart, Germany: Oktagon, 2001

[unpaginated], 17.4 x 19.2 cm., softcover

Edition of 1000 signed and numbered copies

A single image of Gordon is repeated throughout this book on the right-hand page, accompanied by short texts on the left: “i need to sleep”; “low”; “the last thing i felt”; etc. 

David Shrigley | Centre-parting

David Shrigley

Centre-parting 

Toronto, Canada: Art Metropole, 1998

16 pp., 20 x 12.7 cm., staple-bound

Edition of 1000

My predecessor at Art Metropole, Roger Bywater, had a good eye for artists who were about to go from unknown to very well known. One trip to the UK, for example, led to projects with both David Shrigley and Martin Creed. 

This booklet (produced as part of the Little Cockroach Press series, which also included Stan Douglas, Emma Kay, John Waters, Zoe Leonard, Sonic Youth, Linda Montano, Maurizio Nannucci, etc.) was one of the earliest publications by Shrigley, who has now produced countless book and object editions. 

Initially distributed in the mail free of charge by Art Metropole, twenty-five years ago, the title is now exceedingly rare. 

Larry Clark | Untitled Notebook

Larry Clark

(Notebook)

New York, USA: Self-published, 2013

[32] pp., 12.7 x 8.8 cm., staplebound

Edition size unknown

Ten years ago Larry Clark self-published this blank notebook as a promotional item for his website www.larryclark.com, which is already defunct. 

The cover portrait drawing of the artist is by photographer Tobin Yelland, whose skateboard photography is clearly influenced by Clark.

Signed copies were made available through Printed Matter, and sold out almost instantly. 

Geeta Dayal | Another Green World

(Brian Eno) Geeta Dayal

Another Green World

New York City, USA: Continuum Books, 2009

112 pp., 16.3 x 12 x .7 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

The 67th title in the 33 1/3 series, which investigates a musician's practice through the lens of a single LP. 

“In this book, Geeta Dayal unravels Another Green World's abundant mysteries, venturing into its dense thickets of sound. How was an album this cohesive and refined formed in such a seemingly ad hoc way? How were electronics and layers of synthetic treatments used to create an album so redolent of the natural world? How did a deck of cards figure into all of this? Here, through interviews and archival research, she unearths the strange story of how Another Green World formed the link to Eno's future -- foreshadowing his metamorphosis from unlikely glam rocker to sonic painter and producer.”                       

- publisher’s blurb

Inside Franz West

[Franz West]


Inside Franz West


New York City, USA: Gagosian Gallery, 2001


72 pp., 33 x 25 cm., softcover


Edition size unknown

A large, colourful exhibition catalogue to accompany a show at the Gagosian Gallery from September 6th  to October 20th, 2001. Includes essays by Achim Hochdorfer, Daniel Birnbaum, and Henry Noltie.

Dick Higgins | Classic Plays

Dick Higgins

Classic Plays

New York City, USA: Unpublished Editions, 1976

[60] pp., 23.5 x 15.5 cm., softcover

Edition of 750

     

Over the course of his life, Higgins wrote and edited forty-seven books. Classic Plays - dedicated to Robert Filliou - is his seventh under the Unpublished Editions imprint. 

"My interest in languages other than my native English had been an ongoing preoccupation from the beginning, as the reader can see from the list of books to date. But I also, therefore, felt that I should extend this into a single work in two languages, punning back and forth between the two. So it happened that in 1976 I wrote and Unpublished Editions published classic plays, which is in French and English throughout, and the title of which is an ironically preten- tious reference to wordplays as well as an allusion to its story, the Persephone myth, which it tells by allusion and reference, following an idea of Augustus Wilhelm Schlegel, one of the Jena group of early German romantics..."

- Dick Higgins, "The Strategy of Each of My Books" 1984

Jonathan Monk | Studio Visit

Jonathan Monk

Studio Visit

Zürich, Switzerland, JRP / Ringier, 2009

154 pp., 10.5 x 18 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

"A homage to Richard Prince's many classic publications, Jonathan Monk's new book reveals that the artist, customarily regarded as a classic instance of the 'post-studio' practitioner, working from a small desk, a computer and a cell phone, actually has a traditional physical space, documented here, Prince-style, with loving attention to his working props."

- publisher's blurb

Christian Marclay | Groove / Locked Grooves

Christian Marclay

Groove / Locked Grooves

London, UK: The Vinyl Factory, 2013

12” vinyl, 45 rpm

Edition of 300, 100 of which are signed and numbered

“Groove“ was Christian Marclay‘s first solo recording in a professional studio. He made use of the available 8-track tape recorder available to build up this dense layering. Multiple copies of the same seven inch single were used. The loops were created by sticking little dots directly on the groove, which caused the needle to skip ans repeat. This composition was previously released on Tellus ‚ 8 The Audio Cassette Magazine in 1985 and the CD only compilation Records (Asphodel) in 1997. This is the first time it has been released on vinyl. Locked grooves were added to the B side as bonus loops for you to create your own mix or add to the main track.

Jonathan Monk | My Height In HB Pencil

Jonathan Monk

My Height In HB Pencil

Toronto, Canada: Art Metropole, 2002

10.5 x 15 cm.

Edition of 200 unsigned copies

A hand-drawn line on the front of the card with the verso containing the instructions: 

“Install this postcard on any wall with the pencil line six feet above the floor. "

Destroy All Monsters | Geisha This

Destroy All Monsters

Geisha This

Detroit, USA: Book Beat Gallery, 1995 

100 pp., 8.5 x 0.5 x 11", softcover

Edition size unknown

Destroy All Monsters was a noise-rock, performance art band formed in 1973, by University of Michigan art students Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Niagara, and filmmaker Cary Loren. They were influenced by Futurism, Beat Culture, Sun Ra, the Velvet Underground, and monster movies. The group took its name from a 1968 Japanese kaiju film, directed by Ishirō Honda.

The original line-up performed in the Ann Arbor area, and their only release was an hour-long cassette, which was only available through Charlton Burch's Lightworks magazine. 

Kelley and Shaw left the band in 1977 and were replaced by members who had previously performed with The Stooges and MC5, adding to the notoriety of the group. Rock critic Lester Bangs described their music as "anti-rock". Further cementing their legendary status among noise-rock fans, was a three CD collection compiled by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, released in 1994.

Continuing the revival of interest in their output is this compilation of Destroy All Monsters magazine, released a year later. The volume reprints seven issues of the 'zine, one previously unpublished. The title also includes a flexi-disc containing unreleased tracks. 

I believe this is the second edition. The first (published in an edition of approximately 800 copies) was reportedly hand-assembled and featured a metallic gold cover by Niagara. The third and final edition features the same graphic, but in black and white. 

In 2011, Primary Information released a comprehensive compilation of all of the DAM publications. It was released in an edition of 3000 copies and is out-of-print. 

"The images that drove us were the strange combinations of film noir, monster movies, psychedelia, thrift-shop values, and the relentless anarchy of an over-stimulated pop culture." 

- Cary Loren

Dan Graham | Shopping Bag

Dan Graham

Untitled Shopping Bag

Toronto, Canada: Art Metropole, 2001

49 x 40.5 cm.

Edition of 1000 [29 of which were signed]

I had dinner once with Dan Graham (w/ Anthony Kiendl, Micah Lexier, Roula Partheniou and a few others) but the closest I came to working with him was when I was at Art Metropole and we published this shopping bag.

We began producing a paper shopping bag to take to the Basel Art Fair in Switzerland each year. The first was War Is Over! by Yoko Ono, and others in the series included Michael Snow, Maurizio Nannucci, Ross Sinclair and Jonathan Monk. This may have been the second. 

John Goodwin approached Graham about reproducing his work March 31st 1966  (see image below, from the MoMA collection). This text had apparently not been reprinted in twenty-five years. It reads: 

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.00000000 miles to edge of known universe 100,000,000,000,000,000,000.00000000 miles to edge of galaxy (Milky Way) 

3, 573,000,000.00000000 miles to edge of solar system (Pluto) 

205.00000000 miles to Washington, DC. 

2.85000000 miles to Times Square, New York City 

.38600000 miles to Union Square subway stop 

.11820000 miles to corner 14th St. and First Ave. 

.00367000 miles to front door, Apart. 1, 153 1st Ave. 

.00021600 miles to typewriter paper page 

.00000700 miles to lens of glasses 

.00000098 miles to cornea from retinal wall"

The work was originally produced in an edition of 31, and was first shown in 1967, at Finch College. It was also included in Lucy Lippard's wildly influential book Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. 

Graham referred to the piece as "a [solipsistic] insight represented as a one-dimensional point-of-view extension making up a perspective from [at] my [its] limits of inception [...] the 'interior' plane inverted 'outside' as it is 'inside'."

The artist signed bags for each of the staff, as well as copies to sell to raise funds for Art Met's programming. 

The bags were distributed for use as shopping bags at the art fair and therefore many were likely discarded, making them pretty rare. Unsigned copies sell for around a hundred dollars, and The Archive is Limited has a signed copy, here, for 850 Euros. Art Metropole still has a single copy available, for only $500.00 CDN, here. 

Dan Graham | Rock My Religion

Dan Graham

Rock My Religion

Cambridge, USA: MIT Press, 1993

330 pp., 20 x 27.5 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

Sharing its title with Graham's celebrated 1984 film (scored by Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth), this volume collects eighteen essays written by the late artist between 1965 and 1990. These include articles rejected by magazines such as Artforum, Arts, Esquire, ZG and Screen, and published by Aspen Magazine, Vito Acconci and Bernadette Mayer's 0 - 9, Open Letter (Toronto), Real Life (New York), Parachute (Montreal), Art Press (Paris), and (eventually) Artforum. 

The volume is divided into three sections: "Information: Conceptual Art/Magazines/The Sixties", "Performance: Punk Rock, Popular Culture, Theater" and "Architecture: Art/Design/Urbanism". Each alternates between descriptions and documentation of Graham's own projects with his writings about other artists (Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman) and musicians (The Ramones, Devo, Patti Smith, The Sex Pistols, The Runaways, Lydia Lunch, The Slits). 

The title essay traces the parallels not only between religion and rock music, but between rock music and propaganda, rock music and capitalism, politics, the media, etc. etc. 

Flipping through it today - for the first time in years - I'm most enjoying a text about Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. It recounts the story of the band Adam and the Ants asking the impresario to help "reshape their image". McLaren began by ousting Adam as the lead singer, replacing him with fourteen year-old Annabella Lwin (and briefly, also, George Alan O'Dowd, who would later achieve superstardom as Boy George). Changing the band's name to Bow Wow Wow, he wrote the controversial lyrics to their songs which ranged from the innuendo-laden "Sexy Eiffel Tower" (complete with faux-orgasmic panting by the adolescent singer) and songs promoting cassette piracy (released on the largest record label at the time). 

The book includes Graham's influential interventions in newspapers and magazines, such as Detumesecence (1969) and Figurative (1965), important texts such as Homes for America (1966-67),  performative works like Performer/Audience/Mirror (1977) and early forays into public art, including 

Children's Pavilion (1989), a collaboration with Jeff Wall. 

Wall also provides a blurb for the dust jacket:

"Dan Graham's essays are essential reading for everyone interested in the big issues in art and culture since the 60s - and some of the little issues too." 

as does Kim Gordon: 

"Dan was the first person to encourage me to write. By participating in performance of his involving an all-girl band he also encouraged me to play music. Sonic Youth would never have existed without Dan Graham. Rock My Religion is a fresh momento of Dan's perceptive brilliant and friendship". 

Rock My Religion spans twenty-five years of Graham's work, which would continue for another thirty-two, until his death on Saturday at the age of 79.  

George Bowering | Baseball: A Poem in the Magic Number Nine

George Bowering

Baseball

Toronto, Canada: The Coach House Press, 1967

[24] pp., softcover

Edition of 500

Subtitled A Poem in the Magic Number Nine, this "book-length poem" is bound in green felt-like wrappers to mimic a sports team pennant. 

The title was reissued by Coach House Books thirty six years after this original publication in 1967 (see below image). 

Bowering's other baseball titles include Poem & Other Baseballs (Windsor, Black Moss, 1976), Taking the field (Red Deer, RDC Press, 1990), Baseball Love (Vancouver, Talonbooks, 2006) and The Diamond Alphabet (Toronto, BookThug, 2011). He is also the author of a memoir about Greg Curnoe. 

"From its remarkable design to its effervescent language, George Bowering1s ode to the beautiful game is as original as it is funny, as bittersweet as it is playful. A long-out-of-print Coach House classic, originally published in 1967, Baseball weaves together mythology, autobiography, literary history and pop culture into an inimitable book-length poem that explores all the nuances of the sport. Here are all the greats: Mantle, DiMaggio, Maris, Williams and Manuel Louie, shortstop for the Wenatchee Chiefs, their exploits captured in passages of off-kilter, occasionally melancholy, lyricism. Gar Smith1s enchanting and ingenious design has also been preserved; the book, complete with green velvet-flocked covers, is shaped like a pennant that, when unfolded, forms a diamond.

A long-time utility player, Bowering (our Homer?) has written books in many different genres and was recently named Canada1s first Poet Laureate. Baseball is a tantalizing glimpse of the writer at the beginning of his illustrious career; a real curveball of a book that will dazzle literature and sports fans alike." 

- Publisher's blurb

Bob Cobbing | Sonic Icons

Bob Cobbing

Sonic Icons

London, UK: Writers Forum Press, 1970

62 pp., 20.5 x 25.5 cm., staple-bound

Edition size unknown

Sonic Icons is the 9th publication from Writers Forum Press, a group that began meeting in 1952 and continues today, long after the death of Bob Cobbing, its founder. Concerned with the "limits of poetry", the group began publishing in the early sixties. Initially it self-published members writing and later would also publish work by John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, P.J. O'Rourke, Maggie O'Sullivan, Brion Gysin and many others. 

Sonic Icons is a hand-made collection of Cobbing’s typewriter poems, printed on a variety of coloured papers, with a rubber-stamped cover. The book is considered a landmark in Cobbing's work, but also in visual poetry in general - a moment when concrete poetry gestured towards the performative sound poetry. 

The yellow-page poem Beethoven Today, above, is reprinted in the 2015 book BOOOOOK: The Life and Work of Bob Cobbing. 

Already scarce, the provenance of this copy makes it particularly noteworthy - it is signed and dedicated by Cobbing to bpNichol, whose name he misspells:  “For Barry, greetings from Bob, 2 Nov 1970”. 

"Bob Cobbing is a senior and major exponent of the international concrete poetry movement in Great Britain. What is immediately impressive about his large body of work, in comparison with that of other poets in the field, is its range, and the published texts, which are freestanding visual poems, are also scores for vocal performance as sound poems. One of Cobbing's titles, Sonic Icons, stresses the interdependence of the two sides of his work through its appropriate anagram. His division of labor between self-publishing and performance ensures the unity of a creative project of great importance, yet his quest for new materials, techniques, and processes remains undiminished in energy and innovation."

- Robert Sheppard

"The publication of Sonic Icons in 1970 signalled a level of sophistication that was to become a trademark of Cobbing􏰂's visual and sound poetry from that point onwards. It was another pivotal moment for Cobbing􏰂's art."

- Mark Anthony Jackson

"I centre that in Sonic Icons, but one could place it in several other titles—in this case we have the intermediate stages resulting from new properties that Cobbing’s work accreted—for example, the idea of the graphical being readable into utterance; the idea of text on the page as being a landscape."

- Lawrence Upton

"Owning the means of production (the office duplicator, the photocopier) meant that Cobbing could conflate the processes of writing, design and printing. Performing regularly meant that he could heal the split in concrete poetry between those who presented silent icons, most famously Ian Hamilton Finlay, and those who developed the art of pure sound, such as Henri Chopin. Cobbing's anagrammatic title Sonic Icons was emblematic.

[...]

Between 1963 and 2002 Writers' Forum published more than 1,000 pamphlets and books, many of them his own work, but he was also generous as a publisher to younger writers, such as Lee Harwood and Maggie O'Sullivan. He issued texts by John Cage and Allen Ginsberg, and by fellow concrete poets, such Frenchman Pierre Garnier and Italian Arrigo Lora-Totino, both of whom were guests at the workshop in the 1990s."

- The Guardian

Al Hansen | Performance / Live Art Notes

Al Hansen

Performance / Live Art Notes

Cologne, Germany: Edition Hundertmark, 1981

16 pp., Size: 15 x 21 cm., staple bound

Edition of 300

Some confusion over edition size: the Hundertmark site lists the edition size as 300, but the Bonotto Foundation copy (above, centre) is signed and numbered out of 500, as is my copy (above, top). The copy from the Lomholt Mail Art Archive (above, bottom) is unsigned and unnumbered. 

Either way, the title is out-of-print and no longer available from the publisher. 

Dexter Dalwood

[Dexter Dalwood]

Dexter Dalwood
London, UK: Gagosian Gallery, 2000
36 pp., 21 x 21 cm., mylar jacket
Edition size unknown

Beautifully designed by Peter Saville Studio, this out-of-print exhibition catalogue features 10 colour reproductions of Dalwood’s paintings (Brian Jones’ pool, Kurt Cobain’s greenhouse, etc.) and an essay by Jan Verwoert.