Poems by John Giorno

John Giorno

Poems by John Giorno

New York City, USA: Mother Press, 1967

64 pp., 8 × 6 1⁄4”, softcover

Edition of 1000

Giorno’s first book, edited by Peter Schjeldahl, features new poems, and pieces that had previously been published in Mother, Spice and C magazines. Titles include Paratrooper, Alone on a Beam, Leather, She Tasted Death and Pornographic Poem. 

The book’s cover are frontispiece are by Robert Rauschenberg and Les Levine, respectively. Both were close friends with Giorno. Of the thousand copies produced, fifty were signed and numbered by all three. 

The trade edition can be purchased by Giorno Poetry Systems, here, for $250 US. Granary Books has a copy of the edition signed by Giorno, Rauschenberg and Levine for $1000 US, here. 

Robert Rauschenberg | The Talking Heads' Speaking in Tongues

When I first posted the below text twelve years ago, I got an email from a publicist, asking if I wanted to interview Talking Heads members Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, to promote their new Tom Tom Club record. I thought about it and - after listening to the disc - declined, explaining that while I was a fan of the Talking Heads, I had written this because the record was designed by an artist, and that the site was not music-based. 

Looking back, I regret it. I should have just talked to them and tossed off some quick post. 

Here’s the text again, with some new images. The original can be found here. 

After their debut in 1977, the Talking Heads released a studio album a year for the next three years (More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, and Remain in Light), all produced by Brian Eno. Their fifth studio album, Speaking in Tongues, took three years to produce, with a live album in released in 1982 as a stop-gap). All members of the group put out solo projects in this time, but part of the delay might also have been the ambitious plans for the album packaging.

“I approached Bob Rauschenberg in the mid-’80s to design a cover…I had recently seen some of his black-and-white photo collages at Leo Castelli’s gallery on West Broadway and thought they were amazing, and I wondered what he would do with an LP cover,” Byrne wrote in an op-ed obituary for the artist, published as Bob The Builder in the New York Times in May, 2008.

Rauschenberg agreed, but didn’t simply want to provide an illustration for the standard 12” cardboard sleeve. “His package consisted of a conceptual collage piece in which the color separation layers — the cyan, magenta and yellow images that combined to make one full-color image — were, well, deconstructed. Only by rotating the LP and the separate plastic disc could one see — and then only intermittently — the three-color images included in the collage. It was a transparent explication of how the three-color process works, yet in this case, one could never see all the full-color images at the same time, as Bob had perversely scrambled the separations.”

The design harkens back to Rauschenberg’s contribution to the boxed work entitled Artists & Photographs, which was published in 1970 by Marian Goodman’s imprint Multiples, Inc. [see below]. The portfolio of nineteen artists’ publications included many works that are now considered classic editions: Mel Bochner’s Misunderstandings, Dennis Oppenheim’s Flower Arrangement for Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson’s Torn Photograph…, Ed Ruscha’s Babycakes and many more, with works by Christo, Jan Dibbets, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Richard Long, Allan Kaprow, Dan Graham, etc. Rauschenberg’s contribution, Revolver, was a portable version of a larger, motorized work, of the same name, from 1967. It comprised of five rotating plexiglass disks (9 inches in diameter), each screenprinted. The box was published in an edition of 1200 copies.

Due to production problems and escalating costs, it was decided that the Rauschenberg designed Speaking in Tongues would only be released in a limited edition, of 50,000 copies. The record would also be released in a standard package with a cover by Byrne, which he designed by painting onto the white sleeves of test pressings. Guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison lists “Helped coordinate the manufacture of the Robert Rauschenberg cover for Speaking in Tongues” as one of four achievements in 1982, on his autobiographical timeline. Apparently it took a year and a half to find a company that could vacu-form a clear vinyl record. Eventually Harrison turned to the Oscar Meyer hot dog packaging company.

Speaking in Tongues, was a commercial breakthrough for the band, producing their only American Top Ten hit, "Burning Down the House". The tour to promote the album, documented by Jonathan Demme’s feature film Stop Making Sense, would be their last.

In 1983 Robert Rauschenberg won a Grammy Award for the album cover art, the first and only for the band while they were active. In 2005, fourteen years after their break-up, the group was awarded a Grammy for the packaging of the retrospective Once in a Lifetime box set, which featured paintings by Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov. The band have never been awarded a Grammy for their music.

Most copies of Speaking in Tongues have yellowed over time from exposure to light, though periodically copies found stored in boxes remain transparent. These are often offered for exorbitant prices, but tend to sell for between $40 and $120.00, with the higher end being sealed copies, or less yellowed.

At least one promotional event was held at the time of the album’s release where Byrne and Rauschenberg signed copies of the record together. These are increasingly rare now.

In 2000 a copy signed by both was auctioned for $646 and recently the Gagosian Shop offered one for $2000. This week [in 2012] on Ebay a copy housed in a specially designed plexi-stand failed to reach the minimum bid of $1500.00.

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg was born on this day in 1925. 

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. 

Robert Rauschenberg | Cardbird VI, from Cardbird Series

Robert Rauschenberg
Cardbird VI, from Cardbird Series
Los Angeles, USA: Gemini G.E.L., 1971
66 x 71.1 x .09 cm.
Edition of 75 signed and dated copies [+6 AP]

The sixth of seven works in the Cardbirds series, which re-create the flattened cardboard boxes that Rauschenberg found in alleyway dumpsters off of La Cienega Boulevard, near the Los Angeles print shop that fabricated much of his work at the time. The torn edges, markings, folds, and labels have been meticulously reproduced onto pristine cardboard to duplicate the discarded found boxes.

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg was born on this day in 1925.

Robert Rauschenberg | Opal Gospel

Robert Rauschenberg
Opal Gospel
New York City, USA: Racolin Press, 1971
45.7 × 50.8 cm.
Edition of 230 signed and stamped copies


"Opal Gospel is among Rauschenberg's best known multiples, a three-dimensional "book" consisting of Native American stories, songs, poems and found imagery printed on a series of transparent acrylic pages which rest in a Lucite base. Rauschenberg's design encouraged the viewer to remove and read the various pages and re-arrange them in novel combinations, thus altering the object's appearance and meaning. For him, the work's evocative power was magnified by incorporating the idea of chance, which in this case is provided by the viewer's active participation. Reflecting on the work's content and meaning, Rauschenberg noted that "Spiritually and factually, [Native American] drawings improved the hunt and chronicled their history both generally and personally so that it could be understood by other tribes and other generations. It could be read or felt at one instant. [Art] should be a form of therapy."

- artsmia.org

Robert Rauschenberg | Shades

Robert Rauschenberg
Shades
West Islip, USA: Universal Limited Art Editions, 1964
35.5 x 35.5 cm.
Edition of 24

Six lithographs on Plexiglas panels: one mounted permanently and five interchangeably in a slotted aluminum frame, which is illuminated by an intermittent light bulb.