Haskins, Sam

Cowboy Kate and Other Stories

New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1965. Folio; illustrated throughout in black-and-white; green cloth; pictorial dust-jacket. Price clipped; closed tear to front upper edge; else near fine.

$1000

A beautiful copy of the elusive first edition. The groundbreaking Cowboy Kate is as revered today as it was when published over forty years ago. A lyrical tale of the triumph of youth played out by cowgirls in the Wild West, Haskins reinvented the genre of the nude with stunningly well-executed photographs with a cinematic approach and arranged in montaged, full-bleed layouts. The book embodied a watershed moment in the history of photography books, riding a cresting wave of sexual liberation and standing at the threshold of the countercultural revolutions that shaped the sixties. Its’ layout and subject matter, both innocent and sophisticated, reflected the profound sexual energy unleashed in the realm of underground film, the hippy summer of love and the psychedelic revolution. 

Its layout and production, borrowing from pioneers like Alexey Brodovitch, included the bold gravure reproductions, full bleed layouts and daring montages that became standard trademarks of the photographic “novel”.  As one of the first photography books to tell a story in images exclusively (the text in the book is merely illustrative, reversing the usual relationship of word and image), Cowboy Kate showed the world of photographic books and graphic novels the new possibilities of an aggressively expressive graphic language.  A slew of imitators cropped up after its publication: indeed, it single handedly invented a new genre of “classy” erotic photobooks. However, none has approached the deftness of the original, nor its’ innocence, flirtatiousness, and outright visual innovation.

Polke, Sigmar

Day By Day...They Take Some Brain Away

Sao Paulo: XIII. Bienal de Sao Paulo, 1975. Small folio; unpaginated; unbound; offset printed on color paper;; illustrated wrappers. Bifold crease; near fine with scarce printed yellow belly band.

$2500

First edition, limited to 800 copies. Polke’s most visually engaging artist book, published on the occasion of his participation in the Sao Paulo Biennial. With a strong emphasis on the salacious, the book reads as a cross-pollinated encounter between Germanic order and Brazilian libindinal energy.

Daze

The Mission

[New York]: Appearances Press, 1986. 8vo.; threadbound; illustrated throughout with 11 full color silkscreens; letterpress interleaf; illustrated silkscreened wrappers. Fine.

$500

Limited edition of 100 by New York-based street artist Daze. The first book from Appearances, printed at the Lower Eastside Printshop in New York City in the year it was founded. This artist book represents the dynamic convergence of street art and small production publishing utilizing letterpress and vivid silkscreen images that capture the energy of New York urban street culture in the 1980.  The images achieve a powerful level of aesthetic expression and an energizing social meaning interwoven with references to graffiti, the self propagating cycles of drug use and crime waves, racial tensions, and a celebration of black culture including musical heroes such as Lightnin’ Hopkins. This project was funded in part by John Ahearn, a New York artist associated since 1977 with Colab (Collaborative Projects, Inc., a group of young dissident artists who came out in favor of art as a radical communications medium rather than as a circular dialogue with the traditions of the past).

Close, Chuck

Chuck Close

New York: PaceWildenstein, 2002. Folio; 59 pp.; illustrated throughout in color and mononchrome; illustrated wrappers. Corners bumped; near fine.

$3500

First edition. Boldly inscribed by Close to Jasper Johns on the inside front wrapper: For Jasper with great respect and thanks, Chuck. A truly eminent and collectible copy, with a warm inscription between two modern masters.

Attali, Marc and Delfau, Jacques

Les Erotiques du Regard

Paris: Andre Balland, 1968. Folio; fully illustrated in black and white; pictorial boards. Very nice condition for this fragile publication.

$750

First edition. Perhaps the most unapologetically voyeuristic of any book of erotic photography, Les Erotiques du Regard is a collaboration combining Attali’s photos with Delfau’s poetry. Attali rarely pictures the full figure of a woman but rather peeks at the bits he finds most exciting: breasts in tight shirts, short skirts hiked up to reveal garters and underwear, legs in schoolgirl socks. Delfau’s poems are rendered in a riot of colliding typefaces and lines that cascade messily down the page, all of which conveys a shortness of breath that corresponds exactly to the feel of Attali’s photographs.  Delfau’s last line on the last page conveys the attitude of the book best: “adieu a l’hypocrisie.”

Walls, Jack

The Ebony Prick of the White Rose's Thorn

Troy, NY. The Troy Book Makers, 2010. 8vo.; 92pp. photo printed paper covers.

$20

John McWhinnie at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller is very pleased to host a reading by Jack Walls from his recent publication, The Ebony Prick of the White Rose’s Thorn. Walls’s book takes the form of a rhapsodic prose poem recounting a headily romantic response to the vicissitudes of life and love, the unquenchable thirst for intimacy, and the dark waters it leads us toward.

Drawn from the varied life of a sometime Chicago ghetto street gang member, naval service man, lower east side junkie, happening scenester, artist’s model, lightening quipster, muse, and god father to a new generation of artists, Walls’s voice may baffle in its insistence on a poetic experience of life. An admirer of Genet and Rimbaud, his prose maintains an elegant, sensually rich tone even as it invokes the deeper sorrows of lost allure and fading idealism. T.E.P.W.R.T. is published in an edition of 500 by Troy Book Makers. This first edition, in photo printed paper covers, includes an introductory essay by Carl Waldman entitled The Astute Aesthete.

In addition the gallery will be displaying excerpts from a handwritten version of the book the author has made with ink and brush on individual sheets of Arches paper. Executed in a simple, elegant hand, these scripts shed light on Walls’s artistic sensibility, and further promote the idea that artistic vision is enhanced by a direct, full-blooded engagement with life.

Born in Chicago in 1957, at 14 Walls became a member of a street gang known as the Morgan Deuces. Following the death of his brother through gang activity, he left to join the Navy and place some distance between himself and the experience. Following years in the Navy he moved to New York and became a downtown fixture of the lower east side, pursuing a life of creative self expression and debaucherous excess. In 1981 he met Robert Mapplethorpe and they commenced a love affair that lasted until the photographer’s death in 1989. Walls was active in drawing artists and models into the orbit of the late photographer and his magnetic charge attracted the attention of other notables including Patti Smith, Jean Michel Basquiat, Ryan McGinley, and the late Dash Snow. Snow and McGinley formed close creative bonds with Walls and he has been involved in various performances and staged events by the photographers. McGinley has sighted him as a role model and inspiration for his continued photographic practice. In recent years Walls has begun exhibiting art works at various galleries in New York City. Presently he lives and works in Cherry Valley, NY.

Bourke-White, Margaret

Eyes on Russia.

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1931. 4to.; photographically illustrated throughout in sepia; beige boards; pictorial dust-jacket. In custom red cloth slipcase and box.

$6500

First edition.  Inscribed on first free endpaper: For Felix Feist who has given me an idea.  Sincerely, Margaret Bourke-White.  A prominent association, with an allusion to a potential collaborative relationship between photojournalist forerunner Margaret Bourke-White and film and television director Felix Feist.  Inscribed at the height of Bourke-White’s career.  Feist is best remembered today for Deluge (1933), for writing and directing the film noirs The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947) and The Threat (1949. Bourke-White is a woman of many firsts: the first photographer for Fortune magazine, in 1929, the first Western photographer allowed into the Soviet Union in 1931, the first female photojournalist for Life magazine, soon after its creation in 1935, the first female war correspondent and the first to be allowed to work in combat zones during World War II, and one of the first photographers to enter and document the concentration camps.

Seuphor, Michel

Piet Mondrian

New York: Abrams, 1956. Large 4to.; illustrated throughout in b&w, with tipped in color plates; illustrated red and white cloth boards; illustrated dust-jacket; original material inserted; held in custom blue quarter-morocco slipcover with cloth case.

$12,500

First edition of the Abrams monograph by Michel Seuphor. From Arnold Newman’s personal library and holding an original b&w photographic portrait of the artist taken by Newman, signed and numbered 1 of 2. With personal notes by Newman in some margins. Lovely association copy held in stunning custom case, along with inserted catalogue from the Sidney Janis Gallery exhibition of 1953 featuring blue page inserts in same shade as custom-made case. Near fine with chipped dust-jacket.

First edition. Arnold Newman’s copy; docketed “Arnold Newman” on the front endpaper, beneath a photograph of Mondrian taken by Newman, with Newman’s autograph notations throughout.

[with]

Piet Mondrian. New York: Sidney Janis, 1953.

Square 8vo.; illustrated throughout in black-and-white on white and blue paper; printed wrappers.

First edition, exhibition catalogue.

Moriyama, Daido [et al]

Provoke: First Abandon the World of Certainty

Tokyo: Tabata Shoten. 1970. 8vo.; perfect bound; illustrated throughout in b&w; burgundy endpapers; pictorial wrappers; held in custom cloth slipcover and case.

$5000

First edition. Signed by Moriyama on the first page. A lovely copy of this seminal Provoke publication. As Kotaro Iizawo explains in The History of Japanese Photography, the aim of the enormously influential Provoke movement was to “rethink the rigidified relation between word and image, and to create ‘new language, in short, new thought.’” Founded by Koji Taki and Nakahira Takuma in late 1968 (Daido Moriyama joined the group for their second issue), the group produced “fragmented images that completely demolished the established aesthetic and grammar of photography.” In keeping with the tumultuous events of that year, the artists of Provoke were fierce in their desire to do away with received ideas and meanings (“the world of pseudo-certainty”). And, in true avant-garde spirit, theirs was a frontal assault on the medium and the institutions in which they were working. As individuals, however, they were constantly at odds with one another; Provoke, their house organ, ceased publication in August 1969 after only three issues. This volume, published a year after the dissolution of the group, represents their final statement. It contains five portfolios, Provoke 1-5, and six texts, Predict 1-6. The portfolios are by Nakahira, Moriyama, Takanashi, Taki, and Taki & Moriyama. The texts are by Taki, Okada, Moriyama, Amano, Takanashi and Nakashira.

Prince, Richard

Nurse Paintings

New York, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, 2003. 80pp with 38 color illus. 4to with illus. color wrappers. Fine.

$2000

True first edition, one of 26 signed and lettered copies (this is letter “B”). This is the rectified first edition of the 2003 catalogue, published in conjunction with a Gladstone exhibition. The first edition contains two errors: the colors of the paintings are reproduced poorly, and there is a typographical error in the acknowledgements. The first line of the first edition acknowledgements reads: “I’d like to thanks my family…”. As a result of the errors, Prince had the entire edition recalled and reportedly pulped the remainder. This is one of 26 copies he signed and lettered, reissuing it as a limited “Thanks” edition.

Eluard,Paul and Man Ray

Les Mains Libres

Paris: Jeanne Bucher, 1937. 4to.; illustrated with 67 monochrome plates; printed wrappers.

$7500

First edition. One of 675 copies, this is number 482. Title page: To Stanly (sic) Hayter, homage from Man Ray. This copy was inscribed by Man Ray to his friend, fellow Surrealist and occasional artistic collaborator Stanley William Hayter. It is an extraordinary association copy that evokes the tumultuous Parisian art world of the 1930s. Though nominally Surrealists at the time of publication, both Hayter and Man Ray soon found themselves embroiled in Surrealism’s internecine politics after Andre Breton expelled Paul Eluard from the movement in 1938. Subsequently Hayter abandoned the group as a show of solidarity, while Man Ray found himself in the awkward position of having recently collaborated on books with both of the antagonists. Man Ray published a book of photographs with text by Andres Breton, La Photographie n’est pas l’art, which also came out in 1937.
Les Mains Libre consists of Paul Eluard’s poetry accompanied by Man Ray’s drawings. Typically, Man Ray’s drawings vary in style from image to image and bear little direct relation to the content of the poem they accompany. Instead word and image combine as a Surrealistic montage designed to allow underlying meanings and associations to emerge.  Following page 176 Man Ray has added several portraits including drawings of Andre Breton, Picasso, and Eluard himself.

Hayter was an English printmaker who moved to Paris in 1926 and began working in a Surrealistic vein upon meeting Yves Tanguy and Andre Masson in 1929. The print studio he founded, Atelier 17, was a center of Surrealist activity throughout the 30s. Atelier 17, through both Hayter’s technical innovations (he developed a simultaneous color printing process called viscosity printing) and his wide ranging contacts in the Parisian art world (in addition to Man Ray and the Surrealists he worked with Miro, Giacometti, Chagall, and others) has become known as one of the 20th Century’s most significant printmaking studios.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

On Certainty

San Francisco: Arion Press, 1991. Folio; diagrammed throughout in black and red; printed endpapers; illustrated gray cloth boards; embossed with dark gray and red; held in gray cloth slipcase.

$7500

Lettered edition.  One of 26 lettered copies, this one is J.  This one is inscribed on the second free endpaper to philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto, from Mel Bochner, with an original drawing on the following page: For Arthur Danto/with respect + friendship/Mel Bochner/18 June 1991.  A major association copy, marking the literary collaboration between Danto, who wrote the introduction to this edition of On Certainty, and Bochner, who provided twelve prints.

On Certainty, a philosophical text written by Ludwig Wittgenstein, was published posthumously in 1969 from his notebooks. The series of notes contain thematic elements related to knowledge, doubt, skepticism, and certainty. Although the notes are not organized into any coherent whole, certain themes and preoccupations recur throughout.  The importance of Wittgenstein’s philosophical contributions is evident in this magnificent volume, and his writings are enhanced through the collaborative efforts of conceptual artist Mel Bochner and art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto for this unique lettered edition.