Printed Matter sales catalogues

Matchbooks

Matchboxes and matchbooks by Arthur Koepcke, Ben Vautier, Daniel Olson, George Brecht & Robert Filliou, David Shrigley, Joyce Holland (editor), Louise Lawler, Barbara Kruger, Ryan McGinness, Rasah Subtler and Red Seifer. 

Artists' Matchbooks: Louise Lawler

 

 

Metro Pictures

Louise Lawler

Matchbook for Arrangements of Pictures, Metro

Pictures, New York, November 20–December 18, 1982

New York City, USA: Metro Pictures, 1982

4.8 × 5.1 × 0.8 cm.

Edition size unknown

Metro Pictures announced today that they will be closing their doors permanently, after four decades. An announcement cited “a demanding year of pandemic-driven programming, and the anticipated arrival of a very different art world.” 

MoMA Sale

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City is currently offering several of their titles at up to 75% off, including books on Robert Rauschenberg, Yoko Ono, Walid Raad, Bjork, Louise Lawler, Elaine Sturtevant, Dieter Roth, and many others. A Gilbert and George vinyl record is also part of the sale. 

Visit their website, here, for details. 

Louise Lawler | Bird Calls

from Micah Lexier's Instagram page yesterday:


"Poster of an early presentation (August 16, 1983) of Louise Lawler’s seminal “Birdcalls”, which I was lucky enough to attend when I was a student at @nscaduniversity. After the performance I took this letterpress-printed poster off the wall (you can still see the pin holes in each corner) and managed to hang on to it for 37 years.

Stacey Allan, writing about “Birdcalls” in Afterall: Issue 20 (Spring 2009) wrote: The towering list of names is impressive…Stacked one on top of the other, the appearance of these artists' names might typically signal the inclusion of their works in a group exhibition, but here they serve as part of an audio-and-text installation by an artist who literally buries her name under the more recognisable names of her contemporaries. At the very bottom of the heap, a modest line identifies the work: 'Birdcalls by Louise Lawler'. Perhaps only after reading this acknowledgement is one able to connect the ambient audio track and its incongruous cries with the names on the wall. The sounds are made by Lawler, who strains her voice to sing the names of twenty-eight celebrated male artists as though they were the songs of twenty-eight unique species of bird. She calls the first, last or full name of each artist as indicated by the part of the name that is printed in red or green, each name given its own specifically nuanced call… Like the artists themselves, each name as performed by Lawler has its own imitable style.

Wendy Vogel wrote the following text - “Bird Calls (1972, recorded in 1981) by Louise Lawler is a six-minute roll call in which the artist squawks, chirps, and warbles the names of twenty-eight of the leading artists of the time—not coincidentally, all men.Each name is subject to distortion and derision as it is transformed into an individual call. This powerful (and powerfully funny) piece, the artist’s only audio work, may seem anomalous in relation to the subtly acerbic photographs and ephemeral multiples for which she is now known. Yet the work, in its explicit irony and eschewal of the visual, represents not only a turning point in 1970s feminist art production.

Yet the work, in its explicit irony and eschewal of the visual, represents not only a turning point in 1970s feminist art production, but a critical model that resonates with contemporary production and curatorial practice that don’t adhere to the notion of a fixed site.""

Louise Lawler | Matchbook for Carnegie International 1991

Louise Lawler
Matchbook for Carnegie International 1991
Pittsburgh, USA: Carnegie Museum of Art, 1991
4.9 × 5.1 × 0.8 cm.
Edition size unknown

Louise Lawler | Untitled, Black / White

Louise Lawler
Untitled, Black / White
New York City, USA: Self-published, 1978
40 pp., 17.5 x 12.5 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown

In 1979, Louise Lawler, in conjunction with her first solo exhibition, screened the 1951 John Houston film The Misfits at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. She played only the audio of the film, leaving the screen blank for the duration. The work is titled A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture.

A year prior she self-published a screenplay without a movie. The slim untitled volume (typically now referred to as Untitled, Black/White) is a screenplay about the death of the Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari, who was convicted of being a spy for Germany during the first World War, and executed by firing squad in France. A portrait of Lawler as Hari appears on the cover of the 'screenplay', which ends with the words ‘A BLACK SCREEN; THE SOUND OF A GUNSHOT’.

The script is by Janelle Reiring, who was working with Lawler at Castelli Gallery at the time, but would co-found Metro Pictures the following year, with Helene Winer. The gallery would represent Lawler's work, as well as Mike Kelley,  Martin Kippenberger, Tony Oursler, Jim Shaw and others. The screenplay wasn't written specifically for the book, though it was also intended to never be filmed, and hasn't ever been.

Lawler told Bruce Hainley of Frieze magazine that an additional part of the enigmatic work was that it was available at unusual locations, "including from the guy who cuts my hair and a diamond dealer."

Untitled, Black / White followed Untitled Red/Blue (released the same year), and borrows the same pricing structure. On the inside front cover it reads "The price of this book is $4.95 or $100. / The price of this work is $4.95 or $100.00. / The price of this copy is encircled. / $4.95 $100.00"

Unlike many "special" or "deluxe" editions of artists' books, these titles were identical, except for the difference in price. When I worked at Art Metropole we had a copy for sale, which was circled "4.95". In pencil on the title page was the item code and the store's price, $100, ironically enough.

In the handwritten card above, Lawler explains (presumably to someone hoping to have her sign the volume) "When I published these books, making the price contingent on which was circled, I was avoiding the artist's signature as value ...although I do sign my work now, it would seem perverse for me to sign it. Best Regards, Louise Lawler."