New Titles

 

New titles: review copies, things we were gifted, and things we bought, including a title from the Halifax Art Book Fair, which took place this weekend. I’ll try to get to all of them in the coming weeks. 

Geoffrey Hendricks | Taschengewitter (Pocket Storm)

Geoffrey Hendricks

Taschengewitter (Pocket Storm)

Eschenau, Austria: the eschenau summer press & temporary travelling press publications, 1991 

[4] pp., 21 × 14.8 cm., string-bound

Edition 150 numbered copies

Similar to Willem de Ridder's Paper Constellations and Martin Creed’s crumpled balls of paper, this book consists of a single sheet of wrinkled and folded paper. Given Hendrick’s lifelong interest in painting the sky [see below] - and the title - one can assume the paper is intended to represent a cloud. 

The work is published by herman de vries, who has been publishing artist’s publications with his eschenau summer press & temporary travelling press publications for over fifty years. There are 78 titles so far in the series, many by de vries himself. Other artists include Melanie Bonajo, Marinus Boezem, James Lee Byars, Eugen Gomringer, Maurizio Nannucci, Paul Panhuysen, Dieter Roth, Wolfgang 

These artists are given carte blanche, which results in striking experiments in form and content. More than 75 editions have now appeared in the series, ranging from a radio play with sound recordings of bumblebees to a glass slide that allows the sun to be viewed. All editions are shown in full in herman de vries - publisher and clarified by RKD curators Lynne van Rhijn and Ton Geerts.

herman de vries

herman de vries was born on this day in 1931.

Herman de Vries | Random Objectivations

Herman de Vries

Random Objectivations 

Brescia, Italy: Edizioni Amodulo, 1972

222 pp., 24 x 27 cm., softcover

Edition of 1000

"objectivation is important as a part of my occupation with 'visual information'. 'visual information' is here used in the sense of hans sleutelaar [Hans Sleutelaar at the vernissage of the exhibition 'anno 62', 't Venster, Rotterdam 1962] who thought the term more appropriate to the new conception than the term 'art'. as an extreme consequence of objectivation i tried to eliminate the personal - not the human! - element in my compositions by way of the random method.

the word random here implies the purely haphazard treatment of the experimental material. therefore it is desirable to ensure that the events in question are sufficiently random by using some special technique [N.T.J. Bailey, Statistical Methods in Biology (London 1959)].

the true meaning of randomness has profound philosophical aspects, but there is no reason to go into these here.

various sources of random numbers are available, but the most convenient is table XXXIII in fisher and yates [Statistical tables for biological, agricultural and medical research / edited by R.A. Fischer and F. Yates (Edinburgh 1953)]. the first six pages of the table contain 15.000 numbers arronged in pairs. these numbers have been generated so as to be on effectively random or haphazard series of digits. without embarking on any detailed logical analysis, we can loosely define what we mean by 'random' in this context as follows. each of the digits 0, 1, 2, ... 8, 9 ought to appear in a long series with approximately equal frequencies; so would all possible pairs 00, 01 , 02, ... 99, and all possible triplets, etc. in fact any specific pattern of digits ought to appear with approximately its calculable chance of occurence. the tables have been tested to make sure they have these properties.

carrying out my compositions called 'random objectivations', i started reading the numbers from a haphazardly chosen point of the table, and gave a 'value' to each digit. value here means: a colour, gluing on a square or leaving it out, etc. in this way i obtained results which were acceptable for the spectator and gave the impression that they were intended as art. i would like to point out that all compositions are of equal quality if they are sufficiently large i.e. made with more than 20 or 30 numbers.

the 'random objectivations' i started in 1962. other things i am doing are white collages (first in 1958, continued in 1960); white paintings (since 1959); reflecting objects and surfaces, made with glass granuals (since 1960); objects in the form of blocks and columns, mostly of wood pointed white, and also of such materials as glass und steel (since 1960); white books (1961 and 1962) objectivations is an important element common to all these activities. the choice of the depersonalized act is as important as the creative act itself.”

- Herman de Vries

Herman de Vries | On the Beach

Herman de Vries

On the Beach

Tokyo, Japan: Limart, 2007

66 pp., 22.5 × 33 × 4.8 cm., boxed

Edition of 36 signed and numbered copies

Thirty-three tipped-in colour photographs illustrating the beach near Agadir, Morocco from February 2006. Printed and bound by boekdrukatelier het y, in Amsterdam, the work is signed in graphite pencil and housed in a white cardboard box with the title printed on the spine. 

Herman de Vries

Herman de Vries was born on this day in 1931.

Herman de Vries | Rationele Structuren 1969

Herman de Vries

Rationele Structuren 1969

Apeldoorn, Gemeentelijke: Van Reekum Galerij, 1969

12 pp., 22 x 16.5 cm., staple-bound

Edition size unknown

A rare early exhibition brochure by Herman de Vries, published to coincide with the show Random Objectivations which was held in early 1969 at the Gemeentelijke van Reekum Galerij in Apeldoorn. The twelve-page booklet is illustrated with eight sculptures of objectivations and a portrait of the artist. It also includes a list of the artwork featured in the exhibition. The text is in Dutch. 

Available from The Idea of the Book, here, for £131.33.