This week on Tumblr: Bruno Munari

Books (and an edition or two) by Bruno Munari on Tumblr, here:

http://artistsbooksandmultiples.tumblr.com/tagged/Bruno-Munari

Brian Kennon | Secession - Christopher Wool [Josh Smith]

Brian Kennon
Secession - Christopher Wool [Josh Smith]
Los Angeles, USA: Self-published, 2011
48 pp., 20.3 × 29.8 cm., softcover
Edition size undefined

The third volume in Kennon's series of altered Christopher Wool facsimile reprints (see below posts) is subtitled Josh Smith and features images of works by the New York painter, who collaborated with Wool on the bookwork Can Your Monkey Do The Dog? (named after this excellent Rufus Thomas song).

The title is available for €55.00, from Motto, here. Visit the artist's website, here:

http://www.briankennon.com/

Brian Kennon | Secession - Christopher Wool [Polaroids #2]

Brian Kennon
Secession - Christopher Wool [Polaroids #2]
Los Angeles, USA: Self-published, 2011
48 pp., 20.3 × 29.8 cm., softcover
Edition size undefined

The second in a series of three altered Christopher Wool catalogues (see below posts).

Brian Kennon | Secession - Christopher Wool [Polaroids #1]

Brian Kennon
Secession - Christopher Wool [Polaroids #1]
Los Angeles, USA: Self-published, 2011
48 pp., 20.3 × 29.8 cm., softcover
Edition size undefined

The first in a series of three facsimile reprints of Christopher Wool's Secession book (see below post),  in which Kennon substitutes the polaroid images of Wool's paintings for polaroids found online (mostly nudes, but also some Warhol self portraits, etc.). Published in conjunction with an exhibition titled Get In at Ltd Los Angeles (below), the books are produced in an 'undefined' edition size.

"If pictures give us an out, it also gives us an in. There are innumerable strange and usual sex practices, for example, that curiously get looked up online by teenagers and others, but never actually engaged in, from transsexuals to fun with fruit. We're curious, but perhaps shy or afraid of what things are, the pictures allow us in to the fantasy to see if it suits us, the picture allows us to discover ourselves with enough distance to feel safe.

Isn't critiquing a work of art a way of “getting into the picture? ” Appropriation a way to make the art your own, whether that's snapshots of art in the homes of fancy art collectors (Louise Lawler) or outright knock-offs (Sherrie Levine) or Prince rephotographing ads, each claims previous territory or in the limitless countries of meaning, we don't even say it has to be reclaimed, but is simply new territory whose existence like a peninsula depends on the mainland to exist, but is still wholly separate. Even the act I'm performing now, writing about art, let?s me get into the picture, become a collaborator with its meaning, to be owned by it as something that perplexes or engages me, to own it by making my own meanings for it, even those hewn out of simple biography. Though you wouldn't know this looking at most art writers (or what they write for that matter), but writing about art can feel sexy."

- Brian Kennon, exhibition press release

Available from Motto, for €55.00, here.

Christopher Wool

Christopher Wool
Christopher Wool
Vienna, Austria: Vienna Secession, 2001
48 pp., 21 x 30 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown

Published on the occasion of Wool's exhibition, which ran from September 14th to November 11th, 2001, this slim artist book/catalogue hybrid features 240 color reproductions of Polaroids of Wool's paintings, gridded six per page. Wool is credited with both the photography and the book’s graphic design. The title also inclides an essay by Vienna Secession director (and artist) Mattias Herrmann, in both German and English.

Abebooks.com has the volume listed at $75 and $150 US, but is still available from the publisher for € 13,50, here.

Yoko Ono LPs

In November of last year, three early Yoko Ono LPs were reissued on vinyl and compact disc by the Secretly Canadian label, partnering with Ono's own Chimera Music. The albums Two Virgins and Life with the Lions (both made in collaboration with John Lennon) and Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band (originally released alongside Lennon's Plastic Ono Band/Primal Scream LP) were made available on vinyl for the first time in decades. All three came with bonus tracks and 'rare photos'. 

Today the second series of three has been released: Fly (1971), Approximately Infinite Universe (1972) and Feeling the Space (1973). 

Fly is one Ono's best. The double LP includes the twenty-two minute soundtrack to the film of the same name, the 16-minute track "Mind Train" (which would later inspire Stereolab's best song), and "Don't Worry Kyoko [Mummy's Only Looking For Her Hand in the Snow]", a pain-cry for Ono's kidnapped daughter. The record also features contributions from Fluxus colleagues George Maciunas (the cover design) and Joe Jones (the self-playing music machines on "Airmale", "Don't Count The Waves" and "You").

On Approximately Infinite Universe Ono is accompanied by the NYC band Elephants Memory, a Greenwich Village politically active street band who had worked with Lennon and Ono on Sometime in New York City and the live performance that was later released as Lennon's Live in New York City. While their blue-rock stylings are ill-suited to Ono's music, there are some stand-out tracks on the double LP, such as "Death of Samantha" and "Yang Yang". The latter closes with a call to "join the revolution" but the lyrics that precede it seem to suggest it's a personal cry to her husband, who spends all of his time on the phone and whose "chord's never long enough to reach your mommy's trick." 

"I Want My Love To Rest Tonight" offers a gentler look at both interpersonal and revolutionary politics: 

Sisters, don't blame your man to much,

You know he's doing his best.

You know his fear and loneliness,

He can do no more, no less.

He was told by his mothers to never trust girls,

He was told by his fathers to never shed tears.

The feminist themes continue on Feeling the Space, Ono's last recording for Apple Records, and her last solo record for eight years (she returned in 1981 with the brilliant Season of Glass, which included many songs that addressed Lennon's murder the year before). 

Pitchfork reviewed all three LPs today, assigning ratings of 8.7, 8.2 and 7, respectively. The first two were awarded the site's "Best New Reissue" accolade. 

Buy the disks from Bandcamp, here, and read the Pitchfork reviews here.

Update: I just noticed that the Apple logo on the disc label has been replaced with what looks like a grapefruit. This is not likely a slight to the Beatles' label, which I've always assumed was named Apple after Lennon's early encounter with Ono's Apple, below.

Barbara Kruger | Untitled (Stamps)

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Stamps)
Los Angeles, USA: East of Borneo Editions, 2013
29.2 x 29.2 cm.
Edition of 35 signed and numbered copies

A variation on an earlier work from 1990, this set of 81 postage stamp-sized images repeats the words: Happy, Sad, Awake, Asleep, Hopeful, Doubtful, Relaxed, Tense, Alive. Offset lithograph on perforated dry gum paper.