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. 

Christian Boltanski

Christian Boltanski was born on this day in 1944. 

Paula McCartney | Bird Watching

Paula McCartney

Bird Watching

Rosendale, USA: Women's Studio Workshop, 2006

34 pp., 25.5x20 cm., hardcover

Edition of 40 signed and numbered copies

"This artist book combines photographic recordings of my bird sightings with specimen labels, field notes and diagrams to mirror a personal bird watcher’s journal. Both the photographs and text are a mix of truth and fiction. The images combine varied natural settings with carefully placed craft store songbirds to create an enhanced landscape, allowing the viewer to consider the landscape and the ways it can be elaborated upon. “

- Paula McCartney 

Joe Jones | Solar Music No. 8-9

Joe Jones

Solar Music No. 8-9

Cologne, Germany: Edition Hundertmark, 1983

12.5 × 10.5 × 3.5 cm.

Edition of 10 signed and numbered copies

The 90th publication by the legendary Armin Hundertmark is a wooden box housing a colour photograph, an audio cassette, and a photo album with six colour photographs and eleven text pages. The wooden box and the photo album are held together in a slipcase.

Exceedingly rare, the publisher has one example available for1800 Euro, here. 

Hanne Darboven | Ausstellung Mit 6 Filmprojektoren Nach Büchern Über 1968

Hanne Darboven

Ausstellung Mit 6 Filmprojektoren Nach Büchern Über 1968

Monchengladbach, Germany: Städtisches Museum, 1969

16.5 x 20.5 cm

Edition of 440 numbered copies

A cardboard box containing two booklets and a gridded drawing pad, issued as an exhibition catalogue for solo show of Darboven's which ran from February 25 to April 7, 1969. With text (in German) by curator and museum director Johannes Cladders.

"The reader may, for example, turn to box number six, the catalogue that accompanied Hanne Darboven’s 1968 exhibition. This white laminated cardboard box was printed with an enlargement of Darboven’s distinctive handwriting. It contained a booklet with information about the exhibition—the artist’s first at a museum—along with two short essays by Cladders, six cards reproducing Darboven’s mathematical calculations, and a blank graph-paper notebook, possibly to be used by the recipient of the box catalogue for their own calculations. For those interested in Darboven’s early career, this is an invaluable resource, a sort of treasure trove; Cladders’s lucid writing on her work and explanation of her eccentric arithmetic provided a crucial introduction to her methods and goals. His text holds up today, even after so much ink has been spilled in the elucidation of Darboven’s concepts and constructions.”

- Lucy Ives

Geoffrey Hendricks | All American Flux Safety Matches

Geoffrey Hendricks

All American Flux Safety Matches

New York City, USA: Self-published, 1973

6 x 3.8 x 1.7 cm. (matchbox), 7.5 x 6 x 2.2 cm. (plastic box)

Edition size unknown

A found box of matches, with the matches burnt, to which the artist has added the word “Flux” on the front and his name and “1973” on the verso, both in white dry transfer text. 

Using the same Canal Street surplus store plastic boxes that Maciunas used for Fluxus publications, but without a title graphic. 

The edition size is unknown, but two copies appear in the The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection now housed at MoMA, and both the Jean Brown and Fransceco Conz archives include the work. Additionally, a copy was sold at auction four years ago. 

Wendy Gomoll

Happy Birthday to Wendy Gomoll, of Paul+Wendy Projects.