Dorothy Herzka | Pop Art One

Dorothy Herzka

Pop Art One

New York City, USA: Publishing Institute of American Art, 1965

16 pp., 15 × 19 cm., spiral bound with loose leaves

Edition size unknown

One of the earliest documents of the New York Pop Art scene, this uniquely designed publication was edited by Dorothy Herzka. Herzka moved to Manhattan at the age of 24, to work at the Bianchini Gallery, on the Upper East Side. The following year, the gallery staged the exhibition The American Supermarket [see previous post] where she met her future husband.  

“We asked Roy [Lichtenstein] and Andy [Warhol] if they’d put an image on a shopping bag. I met Roy when he came in to sign the shopping bags,” she told Gagosian Quarterly in 2018. They married in 1968 and were together until his death in 1997. Dorothy died at her home in Southampton, New York on July 4, 2024, at the age of 84.

Pop Art One is comprised of twenty-seven loose leaf plates by Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, and Warhol. It includes brief biographical notes and small photographic portraits of the artists.

The cover and pages of text are cut lengthwise in half, with plastic-comb binding on the outer edge of each half, folding together in the centre to enclose the portfolio of loose plates. The cover was held together with a sticker designed by Lichtenstein, though few of these survived, as the had to be torn for the book to be opened. 

Copies sell for between four and five hundred dollars. 

Jasper Johns | A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose

Jasper Johns

A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose

Mönchengladbach, Germany: Stadtisches Museum Mönchengladbach, 1971

20.5 x 16 x 3.5 cm

Edition of 550 numbered copies

Often known as Gas Graphische Werk, 1960 - 1970, this boxed catalogue contains a waxed plastic rose and three rolled sheets. The texts include an introduction (in German) to the exhibit by curator Johannes Cladders, a short essay on Gertrude Stein's poem (which provides the work with its title), and a German translation of a poem by the artist. Also include are a banner advertisement for Johns' "lightbulb" works, and a checklist of the exhibition.

The work is currently valued at around a thousand dollars. 

Jasper Johns | Target

[Jasper Johns]

Technics and Creativity : Gemini G.E.L.

New York City, USA: The Museum of Modern Art. 1971

108 pp.,  27 x 22.5 cm., clamshell box

Edition of 22,500

The high edition size of this classic explains why - despite being celebrated and over fifty years - this can still be picked up for a few hundred dollars. 

More commonly known as Target, this publication consists of a white plastic clam-shell box that contains a catalogue raisonné of prints by Gemini G.E.L. and a newly commissioned multiple by Jasper Johns.

The book features 364 illustrations (20 in colour) of the prints and multiples issued by Los Angeles-based Gemini G.E. Artists featured include Josef Albers, John Altoon, Wallace Berman, Sam Francis, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray, Claes Oldenburg, Ken Price, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, and Frank Stella. 

Target is a do-it-yourself collaboration where the buyer is invited to complete the target with the paint-by-numbers watercolour pads and brush provided. Johns’ signature is printed and a space is left to co-sign. 

Jasper Johns | Fizzles

Jasper Johns

Fizzles (Foirades)

New York City, USA: Petersburg Press, 1976

34 x 26.7 x 5.7 cm

Edition of 250 [+30 AP] signed and numbered copies

An artist's book consisting of thirty-three etchings and aquatints (one in colour), on Richard de Bas paper, housed in a grey linen portfolio case, with a purple silk tassel, lined with a coloured lithograph. The work is signed by both Johns and author Samuel Beckett. 

“Two of the most enigmatic artists of our time, Samuel Beckett and Jasper Johns, collaborated on this complex yet elegant artist’s book. Originally written in French..., the brooding essays were rewritten in English by Beckett for this project. Nevertheless, Johns decided to include both texts that expanded his own involvement to thirty-three etchings and aquatints plus color lithograph endpapers. Johns’s imagery is based on a major four-panel painting, Untitled (1972), along with his classic imagery related to numbers and body parts. This cerebral volume that provokes more questions than it answers is considered one of the greatest artists’ books of the second half of the twentieth century” 

- Johnson and Stein, Artists’ Books in the Modern Era 1870-2000

Jasper Johns | A Rose is A Rose is A Rose

Jasper Johns
A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose
Mönchengladbach, Germany: Stadtisches Museum Mönchengladbach, 1971
20.5 x 16 x 3.5 cm
Edition of 550 numbered copies

Often known as Gas Graphische Werk, 1960 - 1970, this boxed catalogue contains a waxed plastic rose and three rolled sheets. The texts include an introduction (in German) to the exhibit by curator Johannes Cladders, a short essay on Gertrude Stein's poem (which provides the work with its title), and a German translation of a poem by the artist. Also include are a banner advertisement for Johns' "lightbulb" works, and a checklist of the exhibition.

Available here, for $860.00 US.

Stadtisches Museum in Mönchengladbach boxed works

In 1967, director of the Stadtisches Museum in Mönchengladbach Germany Johannes Cladder curated his first exhibition at the venue. He invited Joseph Beuys to present his first ever museum solo exhibition. There were no funds in the budget for an accompanying catalogue, just a small brochure printed on the cheapest paper stock. Beuys, who had published a boxed work with Edition Rene Block the year prior, suggested a catalogue/multiple hybrid and the influential Stadtisches Museum Mönchengladbach publications were born.

Rather than illustrate the exhibitions, the boxed works were typically an independent artistic project, some without any reference to the accompanying show at all. Most included essays and exhibition check lists, but they might also contain found objects, an artists’ production or other interventions into the format.

Cladder continued at the museum until 1985 and always prioritized solo exhibitions over group shows. He presented work from a variety of then-emerging movements, including Arte Povera, Nouveau Réalisme, Minimalism, Post-minimalism, Pop Art, Zero, Fluxus, and Conceptualism. In addition to Beuys, Carl Andre, Bernd & Hilla Becher, and Hanne Darboven (as well as many others) all had their first museum exhibitions in Mönchengladbach.

Artists included in the boxed catalogue series include Andre, Beuys, George Brecht & Robert Filliou, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Braco Dimitrijevic, Joel Fisher, Jonas Hafner, Jasper Johns, Jannis Kounellis, Richard Long, Piero Manzoni, Panamarenko, Gerhard Richter, Lawrence Weiner and others.

It's hard to overstate the significance of these works. Many of the artists Cladder selected went on to contribute much to the genre of artists' books and/or multiples, but the series itself functioned as a challenge to museum publishing to create primary works alongside their traditional support materials.

For the next week or so, a different boxed edition published by the museum will be posted here daily. If readers have examples in their collections, please forward images to ddyment@rogers.com.

Jasper Johns | Target

[Jasper Johns]

Technics and Creativity : Gemini G.E.L.

New York City, USA: The Museum of Modern Art. 1971

108 pp.,  27 x 22.5 cm., clamshell box

Edition or 20000, unsigned and unnumbered. 

Better known as Target, this white plastic clam-shell box contains a raisonne of prints by Gemini G.E.L., with 364 illustrations (20 in colour) and a newly commissioned multiple by Johns, with watercolour pads and brush.