Book Detail
Art and Photography
Music
Warner Bros., 1968.
LP; sleeve lightly rubbed but still very good.
First pressing. Ruscha designed the cover art for a 1968 Mason Williams album with the plainspoken title Music. Ruscha and Williams were close friends from childhood in Oklahoma City and this utterly generic-looking cover was typical of the sense of humor Ruscha and Williams shared. Both went to Chouinard Art Institute, which later became CalArts. Williams became a comedy writer and musician but would also figure prominently in several of Ruscha’s later book projects—he appears in Royal Road Test and wrote the short story that was the textual inspiration for Crackers. On this LP Ruscha’s design credit reads, “Sorry, cover by Ed Ruscha,” but it seems no one at Warner Bros. was amused and few copies reached stores without the addition of a clear sticker reading “by Mason Williams” that was hurriedly put together after the fact and all later pressings also had this text.
$Sold
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
B-Car
Los Angeles: Choke Publications, 1977.
Oblong 8vo.; fully illustrated in black and white; illustrated wrappers; staple-bound. Fine.
First edition. Chris Burden created this book to document one of his most characteristic works, a project he explains on the introductory page:
During the two month period between August 24 and October 16, 1975, I conceived, designed, and constructed a small one passenger automobile. My goal was to design a fully operational four-wheel vehicle which would travel 100 miles per hour and achieve 100 miles per gallon. I imagined this vehicle as extremely lightweight, streamlined, and similar in structure to both a bicycle and an airplane.
Once the project was conceived, I was compelled to realize it. I set the goal of completing the car for two shows in Europe. I saw building the car as a means toward the end of driving it between galleries in Amsterdam and Paris as a performance. When I arrived in Amsterdam, I knew that the accomplishment of constructing the car had become for me the essential experience. I had already realized the most elaborate fantasy of my life. Driving the car as a performance was not important after the ordeal of bringing it into existence.
The car is not completely engineered; most of the parts are hand-made, and many of the decisions in design and construction were based on hunches. As I worked, I kept all the sketches and drawings as a record of the process. Displayed with the car, they became documentation of the construction. The car and drawings represent a vision - my fantasy as an artist of what a car should be.
$1,000
Art and Photography
Living Well is the Best Revenge
New York: The Viking Press, 1971.
8vo.; illustrated throughout in black and white photographs; green and tan boards; spine stamped in gilt; illustrated dust jacket; fine.
First edition. On Gerald and Sara Murphy, the wealthy American expatriates whose home in Antibes, on the French Riviera, was a gathering-place for artists and writers. F. Scott Fitzgerald's characters Dick and Nicole Diver (in Tender is the Night) were based on the couple. Gerald Murphy’s cubist-influenced paintings anticipate the imagery of Pop art.
$100
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
The Fashion Makers: An Inside Look at America’s Leading Designers
New York: Random House, 1978.
4to.; illustrated throughout in black and white photographs; black and tan boards; illustrated dust-jacket; near fine.
An inside look at the leading fashion designers of the 1970s.
$75
Art and Photography
Jean Cocteau: Erotic Drawings
Evergreen, 1999.
4to.; illustrated throughout in color; red boards; title stamped in white; illustrated dust -jacket.; fine.
First edition. Collection of mainly erotic, homosexual art by Cocteau, with English introduction by Margaret Crosland.
$60
Art and Photography
The Face of Love
South Brunswick, NJ/London: A.S. Barnes/Thomas Yoseloff 1972.
4to.; illustrated throughout in black and white; mauve boards stamped in pink; pictorial dust-jacket. Near fine, with faint wear at head and heel of the spine but altogether clean and bright.
First edition. A beautiful copy of a scarce book. Sanne Sannes was already approaching the status of legend in 1967 when, having just turned 30, he was killed in a car crash. Only one small book, Oog om oog, (Amsterdam, 1964) had been published in his lifetime, with his next book, Sex a gogo, appearing posthumously (Amsterdam, 1969). The Face of Love was the first publication outside Europe and it established his reputation. He is described on the dust-jacket as “the Marquis de Sade of Holland.” This is publisher’s hyperbole, but Sannes’ grainy, intimate portraits were achieved through intense engagement with his models and at their best his photos achieve an ecstatic eroticism that sets his work apart.
$1,200
Literature
Sanctuary
London: Chatto & Windus, 1931.
8vo.; burgundy cloth boards stamped in gilt; printed dust-jacket. Near fine.
First British edition.
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Art and Photography
In the American West
New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1985.
Folio; fully illustrated in black and white; brown cloth-covered boards printed in black with black and white plates affixed on front and back boards; fine.
First edition. Front endpaper: signed: Avedon 9.14.85. One of his most famous publications, Avedon went on location to Oaklahoma, Nevada and Nebraska to shoot working-class society, using a backdrop to enhance the formal aesthetic.
$1,500
Art and Photography
Worlds in a Small Room
New York: Grossman Publishers, 1974.
Oblong 4to.; fully illustrated in black and white; beige cloth boards stamped in black; illustrated dust-jacket; near fine.
First edition. Perhaps Penn’s most successful book. The photographs are taken from his "ambulant studio" on location at the edge of the Sahara, New Guinea, and the mountains of Nepal.
$450
Art and Photography
J.H. Boyhood Photos of J.H.Lartigue. The Family Album of a Gilded Age.
Zurich: Ami Guichard, 1966.
Oblong 8vo.; fully illustrated with tipped in black and white photos; burgundy boards stamped in gilt with small sepia photograph on front board; fine.
Inscribed by Lartigue on half-title page. Beautifully constructed book in the style of a home-made family album.
$1,250
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
Collecting Modern First Editions
London: Studio Vista, 1977.
4to.; blue cloth boards, spine stamped in gilt; illustrated dust-jacket; light edgewear; near fine.
First printing. A classic reference book spanning twentieth century American and British writers that is still useful relevant, though the guide to book prices circa 1977 can be either entertaining or agonizing, depending on how you look at it.
$100
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Chanel
New York: Rizzoli, 1987.
Folio; illustrated throughout in black and white and color with text; white cloth boards stamped in black; illustrated dust-jacket; held in cardboard slipcase; fine.
First American edition.By the choice and sequence of its illustrations, this book on the legendary fashion designer proposes an overview of her creative work in relation to the art world of her time.
$250
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Utility Furniture
London: His Majesty's Stationary Office, 1943.
Oblong 8vo; illustrated throughout with sepia toned photos; printed endpapers; staple bound printed wrappers, staples have rusted through and have been neatly replaced; near fine.
First edition. A clean copy of an important publication, the first to describe and depict the utility furniture made to conserve resources and manufacturing capacity during World War II. It includes an introduction by Hugh Dalton, President of the Board of Trade, and sets forth the aim of the regulations as being furniture that was “sound in construction, agreeable in design and reasonable in price. The Utility program was one of several government sponsored programs in the U.K. and the U.S. which, though concerned with the maximization of resources not issues of taste, nonetheless firmly established methods of fabrication and a modernist “good design” philosophy so that later when wartime restrictions came to an end there was not only the capacity to produce much of the furniture now seen as classics of mid-century design, but also a growing appreciation for it among the general public.
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Art and Photography
Fine Art, Wine & Spirits
New York: Sherry Wine & Spirits Co., 1962.
Oblong 4to.; illustrated throughout with seven color linoleum prints; illustrated wrappers; general sunning to edges; order form inserted loosely; held in custom brown cloth box; spine stamped in gilt; near fine.
Oversized softcover catalogue of wines and spirits. A lively production, unusual for a series of Picasso linoleum prints, and an article of Picasso's graphic art by Dr. Albert Frankfurter. Picasso began his foray into linoleum-block prints around the age of eighty; these are among his first published efforts. As was his style, he transformed an essentially 'school-craft' into a serious, professional endeavor by introducing new refinements and techniques. He printed from only one black the two or three colors chosen for his prints. The major subject matter for this series is the corrida, or bullfight, a subject laden with intrinsic associations to Spanish culture. Throughout his career, Picasso used elements of the bullfight as a prism, through which to explore greater existential themes of love, loss, power, and the relationship between man and the sublime. Here, Picasso's matador is led on an existential quest for "The Eternal Feminine," or the Unknowable, a concept elaborated on n Goethe's peroration to Faust, and quoted in Frankfurter's accompanying essay.
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Art and Photography
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again.)
New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
8vo.; black endpapers; yellow boards backed with orange cloth; stamped in black and white.
First edition. Signed on the half-title page by Warhol with a drawing of a can of Campbell’s soup. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol was written with Pat Hackett and compiles Warhol’s thoughts written on love, money, sex, business, beauty, work, success and fame. It is part guidebook and part memoir and by turns anecdotal or aphoristic and throughout it is at once totally lightweight and oddly profound in that peculiar mixture that can only be called Warholian.
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Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Theaters and Motion Picture Houses
New York: Architects Supply and Publishing Co., 1916.
8vo.; illustrated with photographic frontispiece and line drawings throughout; faint foxing to endpapers; green cloth boards stamped in black; spine worn and frayed; very good plus.
First edition of 2,000 copies. A practical treatise on the proper planning and construction of such buildings containing useful suggestions, rules and data for the benefit of architects, prospective owners, etc. It was an influential publication in an era when the first of the country’s grand old movie theaters were being built.
$650
Art and Photography
Immediate Family
New York: Aperture, 1992.
4to.; fully illustrated in black and white; grey cloth boards; illustrated dust- jacket; fine.
First edition. Mann is perhaps best known for Immediate Family, her third collection, published in 1992. The NY Times said, “Probably no photographer in history has enjoyed such a burst of success in the art world.” The book consists of 65 black and white photographs of her three children, all under the age of 10. Many of the pictures were taken at the family's remote summer cabin along the river, where the children played and swam in the nude. Many explore typical childhood themes, but others touch on darker themes such as insecurity, loneliness, injury, sexuality and death. The controversy on its release was intense, including accusations of child pornography.
$200
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo
San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1972.
8vo.; brown boards stamped in gilt; illustrated brown dust- jacket; fine.
First edition. Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano layer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo," a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge. Written with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this book is Acosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic sixties, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all the rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark of contemporary Hispanic-American literature, at once ribald, surreal, and unmistakably authentic.
$250
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Stanley Morison
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972.
8vo.; red cloth boards; spine stamped in gilt; illustrated dust- jacket.
First U.S. edition of the definitive work on the influential typographer.
$125
Art and Photography
Goodbye Baby & Amen. A Saraband for the Sixties
New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1969
Small folio; illustrated throughout in black and white photographs; black boards stamped in silver; illustrated dust-jacket; fine.
First American edition. Rare copy in this condition of the work of photographer David Bailey. Bailey is said to be the inspiration for Antonioni’s film Blow-Up.
$800
Art and Photography
Donald Judd: Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings, Objects, and Wood-Blocks, 1960-1974
Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1975.
4to; illustrated throughout in b&w; orange endpapers; orange wrappers printed in black. Near fine.
First edition. Donald Judd listed the qualities he thought were characteristic of his work: a non-European look; three dimensions; unmodulated color; new materials; and “singleness.” In one of his fundamental statements, the essay “Specific Objects” Judd explained that his work is in no way minimal, reductive, “anti-art,” “ABC art,” or any of the other terms that had been applied to it:
It isn't necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting. The main things are alone and are more intense, clear
and powerful.
This iconic publication is a record of an exhibition and a catalogue raisonné documenting 355 paintings, objects, and wood-blocks created between 1960 and 1974 but is also a sculptural object that was designed by Judd and fabricated to his specifications in much the same way as the rest of his work. With its bright orange wrappers, spare look and perfectly proportioned typeface it is the embodiment of Judd’s aesthetic, as “clear and powerful” as anything he made.
$3,500
Gastronomy, Earth Sciences and Gardening
Serve It Forth
New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1937
8vo.; orange boards; title stamped in gilt; illustrated dust-jacket, slight chipping to dust jacket; near fine.
First edition of Sontag’s first book. Fisher stakes out what was to be her territory for he next 60+ years: the history of food and food preparation obviously, but not so obviously human wants and needs, hungers and satisfactions.
$1,250
Art and Photography
New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape
Rochester, NY: International Museum of Photography, 1975
Oblong 4to.; illustrated throughout in color and black and white; printed wrappers. Near fine.
First edition. For the exhibition that came to define an important photographic tendency, curator William Jenkins selected ten photographers (Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel, jr.), represented each of them with ten photographs and introduced the catalog with an essay that described a common aesthetic in the work that consisted of being “stripped of any artistic frills and reduced to an essentially topographic state, conveying substantial amounts of visual information but eschewing entirely the aspects of beauty, emotion and opinion.”
$Sold
Art and Photography
Document Tsukin Densha (Document Express Train)
Tokyo: Hama Shobo, 1982.
4to; photographically illustrated throughout in b&w; black endpapers; pictorial wrappers; Fine.
Chikan is a Japanese vernacular term for men who grope women in crowded public places. The practice reached epidemic proportions in the early 2000s causing rail officials to have separate women only train cars during the rush hour. In Document Express Train Kagari uses infrared film and surveillance techniques to catch the Chikan in action. It is unclear whether the photographer is documenting a social trend or is simply a voyeur attempting to satisfy his own sexual frustration.
$1,000
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Xerografia
[N.d.]: Rank Xerox, [1972].
4to.; illustrated throughout in b&w; illustrated dust jacket; fine.
In the late 1960's the Xerox machine was a relatively new mechanism for reproduction, and Bruno Munari, who was always interested in new possibilites of bookmaking, was one of the first artist to experiment with the medium. This book demostrates Munari's playful investigation of the Xerox machine, and includes gorgeously rendered images of his experiments.
SOLD
Literature
Cheri
New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1929.
8vo; grey boards stamped in red; illustated dust jacket; near fine.
1st Edition. Chéri tells a story of the end of a six-year affair between an aging retired courtesan, Léa, and a pampered young man, Chéri. Turning stereotypes upside-down, it is Chéri who is the object of gaze, and Léa who demonstrates all the survival skills which Colette associates with femininity.
$500
Gastronomy, Earth Sciences and Gardening
Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine
New York: Doubleday Press, 1978.
8vo.; teal cloth boards stamped in gilt; pictorial dust jacket;
First edition. A clean, bright copy. Written in the era of Roots, the authors seek to trace their family history through the collection of recipes. The book is richly researched and evocative with information on many striking and unique dishes, not least the titular strawberry wine Papa Darden once sold for five cents a glass out of his general store.
$250
Art and Photography
Suicide Notes by Brice Marden
Lausanne: Editions Des Massons, 1974.
4to; fully illustrated in b&w; pictorial wrappers with some age toning at extremeites, otherwise tight and bright. Near Fine.
First edition. Issued simultaneously by Paul Bianchini in New York. Signed B. Marden on first preliminary page. Marden’s artist’s book begins on the cover with his name and address and the handwritten statement ‘these are […] suicide notes. I don’t know what my mind means!?’ where a dense black ink drawing blots out the words between ‘are’ and ‘suicide’. The book then proceeds with a series of similar dense black abstract squares and rectangles from his notebooks. It is almost entirely wordless, with the exception of a few pages in which Marden has scrawled notes, dates or inscriptions. Marden’s mute planes seem to take the place of words, blocking communication yet effectively expressing the difficulty of clear communication. A spare and beautiful book, rarely seen signed.
$Sold
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
Prayers and Poems
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944.
8vo; Grey cloth stamped in gilt; illustrated dust jacket; near fine.
First Ediition. Inscribed by author to Jack Kennedy: "with admiration and prayerful good wishes/F. Cardinal Spellman" A collection of prayers and poems, many of which are in response to the Second World War. Inscribed to friend and fellow Massachusetts native John F. Kennedy, who at the time was a newly elected member of the U.S. Congress. Spellman had been a long time friend of the Kennedy family, but eventually had a political falling out with JFK, and supported Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. Inscription reads “Jack Kennedy with admiration and with prayerful good wishes F. Cardinal Spellman”.
$7,500
Art and Photography
Autobiography
New York/Boston: Multiples Inc. /Michael K. Torf, 1980.
Square 4to.; illustrated throughout in b&w; perfect-bound wrappers; pictorial jacket.
First edition.An unusually clean, tight and bright copy of one of the most influential artist's books ever published. Lewitt famously defined Conceptual Art as that work in which the idea or concept, and not the visual appearance, is of foremost importance: “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” Of all his artist’s books, Autobiography is arguably Lewitt’s most compelling. The book is a portrait of the artist in 124 photogrids. Nine photos to a grid, 1,116 images in all, but not one image of Lewitt, the putative subject of the autobiography. Instead it is a life presented as an archive of visual information, loosely organized into typologies. The book is an inventory of Lewitt’s loft—the photographs depict books, brushes, pencils, posters, plants, light fixtures, pots, pans, dishes, family photos and keepsakes, all the things in drawers and items on shelves, the everyday possessions that, in aggregate, define a life and work.
$3,000
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
I Lost It At The Movies
Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1965.
8vo.; brown cloth boards, spine stamped in gilt; illustrated dust jacket; chipping to extremities of dj; very good plus.
First edition. Pauline Kael changed film criticism and with this, her first collection of reviews and essays, she emerged as the most articulate critical voice writing on film in America and the must-read reviewer for cinephiles just an unprecedented period of American cinematic creativity was dawning. In this collection she praises and deplores films of the Hollywood Golden Age and comments on the French New Wave, among other things. It is possible to disagree wholeheartedly with her points of view, yet still be charmed by the vitality of her prose.
$150
Art and Photography
A Loud Song
New York: Lustrum Press, 1971.
Square 8vo.; illustrated in b&w, with full page bleeds; staple bound pictorial wrappers; very light sunning to wrappers; spine a bit rubbed; else a fine copy.
First edition. A beautifully preserved copy of one of the most successful photobooks of its era. A Loud Song was the first publication issued by Ralph Gibson’s short-lived Lustrum Press and like the few others with the Lustrum imprint (Tulsa, and Somnambulist especially), it is a classic. Danny Seymour died young but despite leaving relatively little work behind, he is a favorite among photographers and connoisseurs of the artists’ book. This, his only book, is scarce and has never been reprinted, but has exercised a significant influence well out of proportion to its fame. With its diaristic approach, laid out with Seymour’s photographs
accompanied by ephemera, family artifacts, typewritten poems and handwritten notes, it is both aesthetically innovative and an intensely personal, lyrical document in which Seymour dealt frankly with, among other things, his struggles with addiction, and estrangement from his family. After its release Seymour went on to work on films with Robert Frank; he was the soundman on Frank's notorious documentary about the Rolling Stones, Cocksucker Blues, but it was also a period of increasing personal turmoil for him. He died of an overdose in 1973.
$Sold
Literature
Tripper
New York: Exposition Press, 1973.
8vo.; minor waterstains on first pastedown endpaper; red cloth boards stamped in gilt; pictorial dust jacket; wear to edges and spine; very good plus.
First edition.Vanity press novel about the sixties drug experience wherein"Tripper and her tribe got zonked on peyote" in the Arizona desert.
$300
Literature
Dewdrops
London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1928.
8vo.; paper boards, spine backed in blackcloth, stamped in gilt; printed dust jacket; sunning and wear to extremities of dj; very good plus.
Limited edition of 525. This one is number 320. Signed on edition page.
$85
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
The Big Heart
San Francisco: Fearon Press, 1957.
4to; illustrated throughout in b&w and text; gray boards stamped in black; illustrated dust-jacket; fine.
First edition. A beautiful copy of Melvin van Peebles first book, published when he was 25 using just the name "Melvin Van", it is about his experience as a cable car conductor in San Francisco. The book is a love note in the form of a photo-book to the city where Peebles spent his early adulthood. The images within are all by Ruth Bernhard. Peebles later evolved into a filmmaker and is best known for Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, one of the earliest and best-known of the so-called “Blaxploitation” films, which in the early 70s ushered in a new era of movies geared toward an African American audience.
$Sold
Literature
The Library of Frederick W. French
Boston: F.F. Libbie & Co. Auctioneers, 1901.
8vo.; printed wrappers; edgewear to exremities, with soiling to cover; some chipping to spine; very good.
A catalogue of the very private library of Frederick W. French of Boston, member of the Grolier Club, and the Club of Odd Volumes.
$75
Literature
English Books 1475 - 1900 Volume 1 and 2
Westminster: Chas J. Sawyer, Ltd., 1927.
8vo.; original glassine preceding title page; red leatherette boards, spine stamped in gilt; sunning to extremities of pages; small close tear to edge of spine; very good plus.
First edition, one of 2,000 copies. Two volumes on collectible English literature—still valuable as a reference and now quite collectible itself.
$300
Gastronomy, Earth Sciences and Gardening
The Sea Around Us
New York: Oxford University Press, 1951.
8vo.; illustrated endpapers; pictorial boards; pictorial dust-jacket; green cloth slipcase stamped in gilt; fine copy.
Title page: inscribed, "To Doris Thompson who sells the right kind of books! Rachel L. Carson."Rachel L. Carson (1907 - 1964) was an admired biologist, writer and ecologist. She worked for fifteen-years in the federal service as a scientist and editor in 1936 and, rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In her free time, she began to turn her government research into lyrical prose. One of these experiments became The Sea Around Us, Carson's prize-winning study of the ocean. It is a biography of the ocean and it made Carson famous as a naturalist and science writer for the public. In 1952, Carson retired from working for the government and began to focus on her writing.
Carson's great passion for all that is natural, specially the ocean, is evident within the first sentence of The Sea Around Us. "Beginnings are apt to be shadowy, and so it is with the beginnings of that great mother of life, the sea."
$1,500
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
The Outsider
London; Victor Gollancz, 1956.
8vo.; blue cloth boards; illustrated dust jacket; near fine.
First Edition. Through the works and lives of various artists - including H. G. Wells (Mind at the End of its Tether), Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Harley Granville-Barker (The Secret Life), Herman Hesse, T. E. Lawrence, Vincent Van Gogh, Vaslav Nijinsky, George Bernard Shaw, William Blake, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky and G. I. Gurdjieff - Wilson explores the psyche of the Outsider, his effect on society, and society's effect on him. Written when Wilson was just 24 and sleeping in a public park.
$400
Literature
Bonjour Tristesse
New York: Dutton,1955
8vo; red boards; illustrated dust jacket; fine.
Published in 1954, when the author was only eighteen, Bonjour Tristesse caused an overnight sensation. The title is derived from a poem by Paul Éluard, "À peine défigurée," which begins with the lines "Adieu tristesse/ Bonjour tristesse..."
$200
Art and Photography
The Sex Book: A Modern Pictorial Encyclopedia
New York: Herder & Herder Inc., 1971.
4to.; text with b&w illustrations throughout; red cloth boards; red illustrated dust jacket; near fine.
Written and compiled by doctors and experts of the field, this book was an open and thoroughly modern encyclopedia on sex—it now seems very rooted in its time, but remains a classic for its design, especially the beautiful black and white photographic images with which it is illustrated throughout.
$85
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
Twiggy
London: Grenada Publishing, Ltd., 1975.
8vo.; yellow cloth boards; pictorial dust jacket; near fine.
First edition. The autobiography of Lesley Hornby, better known as Twiggy, whose slender build, short hair and boyish look made her the iconic fashion model of the 1960s.
$150
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
A Miniature History of the English House
London: The Architectural Press, 1960.
8vo.; illustrated throughout in b&w; white paper boards; illustrated dust jacket; light foxing to boards and dj; with several chips; very good plus.
Much of the illustrations in this book were taken from Nathaniel Lloyd's "History of the English House," with brief notes added to help them tell the history of domestic English architecture.
$50
Literature
Catalogue of John A. Rice’s Library
New York: Sabin & Sons. 1860.
8vo.; printed on large and thick paper, ruled in and and price in manuscript throughout; half green morocco, gilt paneled back, gilt top; near fine.
This splendid collection of Americana was at the time the finest ever to come up for auction in the United States, the sale being brought about by Rice’s need to pay off debts accumulated by over-investment in the grain market. Joseph Sabin, from whom Rice had bought previously, catalogued the books and conducted the sale in New York: “With a return of more than $42,000, the Rice sale was one of the most profitable held in the United States up to that time.” (Dickinson).
$350
Art and Photography
The Autobiography & Sex Life of Andy Warhol
New York: Other Scenes, 1971.
4to; illustrated throughout in b&w; illustrated wrappers, slightly worn at edges and spine; small closed tear on top edge; near fine.
First Edition. This book consists of a series of interviews about Warhol with his associates and friends recorded by John Wilcock over the course of five years in the late 60s and presented, very lightly edited, in this compendium. Wilcock was a British journalist and co-founder of the Village Voice whose column was staple therein from 1955-1965, when he left to edit The East Village Other. Charles Henri Ford, Nico, Gerard Malanga, Paul Morrissey, Marisol, Taylor Mead, Brigid Polk, David Bourdon, Lou Reed and Leo Castelli are among those interviewed.
$Sold
Gastronomy, Earth Sciences and Gardening
Consider The Oyster
New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1941.
8vo; Grey boards stamped in white; illustrated dust jacket; slight chipping to edges of dust jacket; price clipped; very good.
1st Edition. The third book by America's finest writer on food. "Here is the story of the oyster's dreadful but exciting existence, its disconcerting sex life, and, far most important of all, its various and delicious ways of dying."
SOLD
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Thoughts on Design
New York: Wittenborn and Company, 1947.
4to.; illustrated throughout in b&w and color; black cloth boards, spine stamped in gilt; illustrated dust jacket; several minute closed tears to spine of dj; condition of dj very good minus; interior of book and boards near fine.
First edition. Among the most notable graphic design books ever published. After a decade of establishing himself as the wunderkind of American graphic design, Paul Rand released this treatise on his princicples and working methods. It has been reprinted on several occassions and remains a standard. Copies of the first edition in the iconic jacket are increasingly scarce.
SOLD
Art and Photography
Derriere Le Miroir, No. 149. Ellsworth Kelly
Paris: Maeght Editeur, 1964.
Folio; color lithographs and text with black and white illustrations printed on folded leaves of Rives paper; unbound; housed within boards chemise and slipcase.
Deluxe edition, one of 150 copies signed on colophon by Kelly. One of the most beautifully realized editions published by Derriere Le Miroir—it includes three double-page, three-color lithographs. They are original works created by Kelly for the edition and documented in Axsom’s catalogue raisonne. An especially bright and eye-catching example of his artwork—with text (in French and English) by Dale McConathy and a poem by William Carlos Williams.
$Sold
Literature
Lolita
The Olympia Press, (1955).
12mos.; green wrappers; spines very slightly cocked with some toning and a few tiny scuffs at spine edges. Very good..
First edition. With original 900 franc price printed on bottom panel. Precedes the American edition with several slight variations from the final text of that edition, from a print run that is unknown but generally agreed to have been fewer than 5,000 copies.
Like Ulysses, with which it vies for status as novel of the century, Lolita was first published in Paris, was deemed pornographic by some, and engendered both legal battles and critical controversy before finding a respectable English or American publishing house, and achieving popular success and lasting acclaim. It helped make the iconic green wrappers of the disreputable Olympia Press iconic; in two volumes, as issued.
SOLD
Literature
Peyton Place
New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1956.
8vo.; black leatherette boards; printed, price-clipped dust jacket; very light edgewear to extremities of dj; near fine.
First edition. This novel, the story of three women in a New England town, was shocking in it’s time because of the way it dealt with adultery, incest, murder, social class and moral hypocrisy, but also extraordinarily successful commercially. It sold briskly, remained on the bestseller list for over a year, and convinced many publishing houses to reconsider the sort of material they were willing to issue.
$1,250
Art and Photography
New Realists
New York: Sidney Janis Gallery, 1962.
4to.; illustrated throughout in b&w with several colored pages of text; illustrated wrappers; small tear along edge; near fine.
"New Realists," was an epoch-making show which featured the work of Claes Oldenberg, Robert Indiana, Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol. The exhibition helped define the emerging Pop generation and, significantly, was the first appearance of Warhol’s work in a blue chip New York gallery.
$500
Art and Photography
Gus Van Sant: 108 Portraits
Santa Fe: Twin Palms Publishers, 1992.
4to.; illustrated throughout in black and white; black cloth board stamped in black; black dust jacket with white text. Fine.
First edition. Full-page black and white photographs made from polaroids Van Sant used in casting his early films, inluding Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, and Mala Noche. Includes portraits of River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, Ken Kesey, Annie Leibowitz, Sofia Coppola, David Byrne, David Bowie, and Matt Dillon.
$Sold
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
David Adler: The Architect And His Work
New York: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1970.
4to.; illustrated throughout in b&w; blue boards stamped in gilt; printed dust-jacket; fine.
First Edition. Beautiful copy of the first edition.
$1,500
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Visual Design in Action
New York: Hastings House, 1961.
4to.; illustrated throughout in color; black boards; illustrated wrappers.
First edition. Though no edition was specified, there were likely fewer than 1,000 copies printed. With design and typography throughout by Sutnar, this is both a statement of design principles by one of the 20th century’s acknowledged masters, and a visual demonstration of these principles in action. It was lavishly produced, printed in both offset and letterpress, and has unusually bright and saturated color illustrations. This copy belonged to Paul Rand, and bears his Ex Libris stamp on the last free endpaper.
$3,000
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
TYPO-FOTO. Elementaire Typografie in Nederland 1920-1940
Antwerp: Veen/Reflex, 1990.
4to.; fully illustrated in color; blue endpapers; black blind stamped cloth boards; pictorial dust-jacket. Fine.
First edition. Text in Dutch, but an extraordinary visual reference and probably the best anthology of Dutch avant-garde typography from 1920-1940 and graphic design available. Includes individual sections and biographies devoted to Piet Zwart, Paul Schuitema, Gerard Kiljan, Cesar Domela Nieuwenhuis, Dick Elffers, Wim Brusse, Cas Oorthuys, Henny Cahn and Willem Sandberg.
$400
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
[sic]
New York: Publicsfear, 1993.
8vo.; pictorial wrappers.
First edition, one of 250 signed and numbered copies, of which this is number 40.
Named for the copyeditor’s term “sic,” derived from the latin for “as it was written,” Landers’ book reproduces his handwritten, stream-of-consciousness studio writings as they were written; that is, scrupulously unedited and replete with not just the artist’s misspellings and grammatical errors, but his agonizing insecurities, his sexual fantasies, his delusions of grandeur, as well as his pointless ramblings and banal trivialities. One contemporary commentator called the work, “humorous, prattling, seriously insincere, self-deprecating nihilism.” [Sic] struck a nerve in the early 90s. It is an aggressively self-indulgent work—writing as id-driven performance—which was both a product of, and a commentary upon the times in which it was produced; the book seemed to neatly encapsulate the ambivalence and apathy of the era. As such, [sic] has the distinction of being one of the very few artists’ books ever to have been picked up by a mainstream publisher, though the edition Riverhead Books released in 1995 had—for legal reasons, of course--a few names changed and other expurgations.
An epochal work, and now quite scarce in the first edition.
SOLD
![[sic]](http://www.ghbookseller.com/images_books/lg_sic.jpg)
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Asymmetric Typography
New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1967.
8vo.; illustrated throughout in b&w and color; lavender endpapers; black boards; printed wrappers; fine.
A beautiful copy of the first English language publication by Tschichold, whose typographic principles, developed at the Bauhaus in the 20s, did much to define the Modernist look in printing and book design.
$350
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
The Hour
Boston: The Riverside Press, 1951.
8vo.; text with some b&w illustrations throughout; tan boards stamped in gilt, spine backed in red; illustrated dust jacket; extremities of the jacket a bit worn, but altogether a very good copy of a book scarce in the jacket.
A book on the cocktail, humorously written in the style of a faux-manifesto devoted to the hope of America, “those who cherish our two most magnificent indigenous products—American whiskey (rye or bourbon) and the Dry Martini.”
$150
Art and Photography
Greenwich Village: Today &Yesterday
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949.
8vo.; text with b&w photographs throughout; black cloth boards; illustrated dust jacket; edgewear to dj, with small chips to spine; spine slighlty cocked; else a tight, very good copy.
First edition. Signed by Berenice Abbott on title page with her photographs throughout.
SOLD
Art and Photography
Horst. Patterns from Nature
New York: J.J. Augustin Publishers, 1946.
4to.; fully illustrated in b&w; brown cloth boards stamped in gilt; illustrated dust jacket; extremities of dust jacket edgeworn, with slight chipping at corners; a very good copy.
First edition. Horst’s book of botanical studies proves that he is far more than a glamour photographer—a beautiful copy of a title that is very scarce in dust-jacket.
SOLD
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Linotype Faces
New York: Mergenthaler Linotype Company, [circa 1930's].
Stout 4to.; illustrated text throughout in b&w and color; photographic endpapers; red cloth boards, blind stamped and printed in black; spine and extremities a bit rubbed but altogether a very good copy.
A specimen book, circa 1930s, from a Brooklyn printer based near what is now known as the Clinton Hill neighborhood. Such books were a resource for the printer’s trade and, as working documents, rarely survive in good condition. This a particularly dynamic and visually compelling example of the genre.
SOLD
Art and Photography
All of a Sudden
New York: powerHouse Books/ Thea Westreich, 1995.
4to; fully illustrated in color; illustrated endpapers; illustrated boards; slight edgwear; near fine.
First Edition.
$250
Art and Photography
Bruce Nauman
New York: Leo Castelli Gallery, 1968.
Thin 4to; illustrated throughout in b&w; staple bound printed wrappers; sunned spine; slightly rubbed wrappers; near fine.
Catalog for Bruce Nauman's first New York City show, at the legendary Leo Castelli Gallery. Nauman's work was difficult, often unfinished looking, or unpleasant in effect and throughout the 60s and 70s Nauman’s work sold slowly and was often harshly received by critics, especially in the Unites Sates. Artists, and a few critics, notably Peter Schjeldahl recognized its importance early on. Most importantly, Castelli himself believed in the work and kept showing Nauman.
SOLD
Art and Photography
American Bricolage
New York: Sperone Westwater, 2000.
4to.; illustrated throughout; pages encased in laminate; cardboard wrappers; fine.
Edition of 885. This one is number 772.
Book constructed and designed by Tom Sachs using coardboard and duct tape, each one unique. Made in conjuction with an exhibition at Sperone Westwater in 2000 featuring the work of 12 bricoleurs from Alexander Calder to Tom Friedman. The text of publication defines a bricoleur as one "who cobbles together functional contraptions out of already given or collected materials which he re-tools and re-signifies into new objects with novel uses," a definition neatly reinforced by Sachs’ design.
$350
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Eero Saarinen On His Work
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962.
Folio; illustrated in b&w; black cloth boards, spine backed in tan cloth; original glassine dust-jacket; dj loose at spine; black slipcase, b&w photograph tipped in on front panel; edgewear to slipcase; very good plus.
A selection of buildings dating from 1947 to 1964, with statements by Saarinen.
$400
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
21 Recettes Pratiques de Mort Violente: Petit Manuel du Parfait Suicide
Paris: Se Trouve, 1926.
8vo.; hand-colored illustrations throughout; white textured endpapers; brown cloth boards; title printed in black on cover; some sunning to extremities of pages; else a fine copy.
First Edition. Inscribed to Russ from Sally: "Russ- Un petit livre pour rifirence - Sally 1926."
The title roughly translates to "21 Practical Recipes for violent death: Small Handbook of the Perfect Suicide." This macabre and darkly humorous manual illustrates a variety of methods for offing oneself, ranging from lying on railroad tracks and smoking dynamite, to sticking ones head into a lion's jaws. Brightly illustrated with a Fauveist palette—very droll.
SOLD
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
Joy Division/ New Order: A History in Cuttings (1977-1983)
[1984].
4to; illustrated throughout in b&w; staple bound wrappers; illustrated wrappers. fine.
Any afficionado of the post-punk scene will revel at the attention to detail of this book. Contains an ephemera of rarely seen band photos, set lists, album and show reviews (some positive, others viciously negative), a gig/tape guide and countless articles published all over the world. A coveted publication. This is an especially clean and bright copy. (6162)
SOLD
Literature
Project For A Revolution in New York
NY: Grove Press, 1972.
8vo; black cloth stamped in red; illustrated dust-jacket; near fine.
First Printing. In the new novel by the leading French writer of nouveau roman, New York City becomes the chief protagonist in a book in which he creates the mythology of the great American city with it's paroxysm of wonder and terrors, it's underground world of vice, crime, and drugs. (5930)
$250
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
The Ethics of Fasting
Lahore: Indian Printing Works, 1944.
8vo; green endpapers; printed boards; housed in specially made red cloth portfolio box with black leather label stamped in gilt. Previous owner’s neatly written title on the spine but a very good copy despite this; a fragile book and copies in collectible condition are scarce.
First Edition. Gandhi, spiritual leader and political liberator of India, remained committed to non-violence in even the most extreme circumstances. He used rigorous fasts, for long periods, for both self-purification and protest. The Ethics of Fasting sets forth the philosophy that informed this practice. An iconic book, representing an important piece of 20th century political philosophy. (2891)
$Sold
Literature
The Valachi Papers
New York: G.P.Putnam's Sons, 1968.
8vo.; illustrated throughout in b&w; orange endpapers; black cloth boards stamped in gilt; near fine.
Front endpaper: inscribed, "For Burt- who's at the center of the real Mafia, Best Peter Maas." In the 1960s, Joseph Valachi, a disgruntled soldier in New York's Genovese crime family decided to spill his guts. Daring to break the Mob's code of silence for the first time, Valachi detailed the organization of organized crime, providing chilling details that make for a great read as well as evidentiary facts that led to the arrest and conviction of several major criminal figures. Maas would later go on to author non-fiction crime classics Serpico and Underboss. It is inscribed to Burt Britten, who ran a much-missed New York literary institution, Books & Company, the Madison Avenue bookshop which closed its doors in the mid-90s. (1526)
$300
Literature
The National Pastime
Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1982.
8vo; green illustration on titlepage; beige cloth boards illustrated in blue and red; a fine copy.
Limited Edition. One of 330 copies signed. Colophon: signed, "John Cheever." Endpaper: inscribed, "To Ann and Bernard with warmest regards, Mary." When Cheever was a child, his father, who felt the writer was the cause of his misfortunes, accidentally knocked him unconscious with a baseball. The memory lingered painfully in the writer's mind until the day he took his 5 sons to see their first baseball game. This work of short fiction originally appeared in the New Yorker and was later reprinted in this handsome limited edition pressing. (2809)
$450
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Functional Graphic Design in the 20's
New York: Reinhold Publishing Company, 1967.
Square 8vo.; illustrated throughout in b&w and color; grey cloth covered boards; illustrated dust jacket; dj lightly soiled; near fine.
Documents the way avant-garde visual idiom, including Cubism, Futurism, Russian Modernism and Bauhaus, effected design in the 20s. (6875)
$Sold
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
Regime Vegetalien
Paris: Editions d'Art Edouard Pelletan, n.d. [1914].
Stout 8vo; illustrated throughout; illustrated wrappers in glassine cover; fine copy.
First Edition. This visually striking volume is and early work devoted to vegetarian cookery. It was issued by noted art publisher Edouard Pelletan, designed and printed in Art Noveau style with illustrations by Henri Bellery-Desfontaines throughout. (1763)
$650
Art and Photography
Donald Judd: Ecrits 1963-1990
Paris: Daniel Lelong Editeur, 1991.
8vo; illustrated wrappers; near fine.
Limited edition of 750 copies. This number 55, signed on the first free endpaper by Judd. Judd sought to write with the same rigor and clarity that characterize his art work. The most complete volume of his writings is this French language volume, which includes both his early reviews and critical writings as well as later aesthetic explorations and philosophical statements that developed out of his own artistic practice. (6418)
$Sold
Art and Photography
The Friendly Way
New York: Joe Brainard/Siamese Banana Press, 1972
Thin 4to; staple bound illustrated wrappers; a fine copy.
Book of quotations, probably from fellow friends and artists of the New York School. (6912)
SOLD
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Style 1930: Elegance and Sophistication in Architecture, Design, Fashion, Graphics and Photography
New York: Universe Books, 1971.
8vo.; illustrated throughout in b&w; blue cloth covered boards, spine stamped in silver; illustrated dust jacket; near fine.
Focuses on design and the New Objectivity from 1927 to 1934. Plates by Herbert Bayer, Edward Steichen, Le Corbusier, Fritz Lang, et at. (6882)
$Sold
Literature
Tropic of Cancer
New York: Grove Press, 1961.
4to; blue cloth boards stamped in gold; printed dust-jacket.
First U.S. edition. Review Copy. First published in France in 1931, Grove Press' edition was the first publication of Miller’s novel in the United States. Despite thirty intervening years, and overwhelming critical judgement that the book was a classic, publication still led to an obscenity trial upon release. Grove appealed all the way to the Supreme court and finally won a pioneering judgement in 1964. (804)
SOLD
Art and Photography
The 1967 Game Calender
[New York]: Self-published, 1967.
Thin 4to.; illustrated throughout in b&w; staple bound illustrated wrappers; fine.
A book of calendar girls each with illustration by Brainard and bawdy quatrains, as below, by Elmslie.
May's favorite game is the fan tan
She always wins the antes
By gooping herself up with man tan,
After she takes off her scanties. (6913)
$125
Literature
The Same Door
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959.
8vo; brown boards backed in green cloth, stamped in silver; illustrated dust-jacket. Near fine, a few instances of very light wear.
First Edition, first state dust-jacket. First edition of Updike's first collection of short stories, published one year after his debut novel, The Poorhouse Fair. The book consists of 16 stories, all previously published in The New Yorker between 1954 and 1959, divided into stories with a boyish protagonist set in an unnamed small town or in Olinger, Pennsylvania, the fictional name Updike gave to his hometown, and stories set mostly in New York and other cities, including London, with a young adult man often the main character. (1451)
$850
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Alvar Aalto: Architecture and Furniture
New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1938.
8vo.; illustrated throughout in b&w; blue cloth covered boards stamped in white; original glassine dust jacket; some sun fading and edgewear; very good.
Edition of 3,000. Furniture and architecture catalogue from MoMA, post- WW1. (6884)
$250
Art and Photography
Rooms P.S. 1
New York: Institute for Art and Urban Resources, Inc., 1977.
Square 4to.; illustrated throughout in black and white; illustrated wrappers; near fine.
The P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center grew out of an organization, The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, Alanna Heiss had founded years earlier as an urban renewal effort that would turn abandoned and underutilized buildings in New York City into artist studios and exhibition spaces. This catalog documents the first exhibition in P.S. 1’s current location, a former public school shuttered in the sixties due to diminishing enrollments. Work of all sorts—from text pieces on doors, excavations in the cellar, painted chalkboards, wall drawings, and more traditional canvases, or sculptural pieces—was installed throughout the yet-to-be-refurbished structure. Seventy-eight artists participated and the list of their names reads like a who’s who of the mid-seventies American avant-garde: Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Carl Andre, Jennifer Bartlett, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, Gordon Matta-Clark, Michelle Stuart, Colette, Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth, and Robert Ryman, et cetera. The group photo at the beginning of the book, showing most of the artists together in the gymnasium, posed as if for a class portrait, is an extraordinary document in itself. The book is a fascinating record of a time and place in New York City and of the founding of one of the city’s most important arts institutions. (6980)
$75
Art and Photography
High Performance: The Performance Art Quarterly
Los Angeles: Linda Burnham, 1979.
4to.; illustrated throughout in b&w; staple bound illustrated wrappers; top portion of spine very lightly nicked; else a fine copy.
This issue of the avant-garde periodical most notable for the in-depth interview with Chris Burden, who became famous for "Shoot," in which he was shot in his left arm by his assistant from 5 meters away, and another where he was crucified to a running car. More interviews with performance artist Barbara T. Smith, as well as conversations with Anne Bean and Charles Christopher Hill. (6904)
$50
Art and Photography
Leslie Krims: Eight Photographs
New York:Doubleday & Company, 1970
Folio: b&w photographs laid loose in portfolio; beige printed slipcase; extremities lightly sunned; spine lightly bumped; very good plus.
Includes original stamped invitation to a William Larson show at Light Gallery in NYC. Introduction by A.D. Coleman. Krims was prominent among a group of young photographers who devised fictional scenes for the still camera, which were directed and shot in sequence as in films and as such is a pioneering figure in territory later explored by Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson and others, but Krims has a particularly over-the-top sensibility so that the surrealistic tableaux he creates, alternately inspired by advertising, americana, kitsch and pornography, are unmistakably his own. (6901)
$150
Literature
The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby
New York. Farrar , Straus and Giroux, 1965.
8vo.; b&w illustrations throughout; orange endpapers; white cloth illustrated boards stamped in gilt; illustrated dust jacket; dust jacket edgeworn; front cover lightly stained; very good plus.
First printing. Tom Wolfe's first collected book of essays, published in 1965. The book is named for one of the stories in the collection that was originally published in Esquire magazine in 1963 under the title "There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhhh!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh!) Around the Bend (Brummmmmmmmmmmmmmm)..." Wolfe's essay for Esquire and this, his first book, are iconic early examples of New Journalism. (6863)
$400
Literature
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities
Norfolk: New Directions, 1938.
8vo; black boards stamped in gilt; near fine.
First edition, a review copy. Based on his parents' disastrous marriage, the title short story of this collection was published in 1937 in the first issue of the Partisan Review. Schwartz became a well known figure in New York intelectual circles and became an influential mentor to Lou Reed as a professor at Syracuse. Alchoholism and mental illness became a problem later in life and this downward spiral became the basis of Saul Bellow's novel, Humbolt's Gift. (1421)
$100
Literature
An Adventure Of The Thought Police
London: Ferry Press, 1971.
Oblong 8vo.; illustrated wrappers; near fine.
A volume of poetry by a writer now known primarily for being among the most insightful and influential art critics currently at work. (1425)
$100
Literature
In Memory of My Feelings
New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1967.
4to.; illustrated in color and b&w throughout; grey textured boards; reinforced tan cloth spine; held in tan slip cover; title printed on gray paper tipped in on cover; signatures held loosely by slip cover and boards; a fine copy.
First edition of 2500 copies. This one is 1027. from the library of photographer Arnold Newman. (6905)
$300
Literature
Midnight Cowboy
New York, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1965.
8vo.; blue cloth boards, blue illustrated dust jacket, slight edgewear, near fine.
First printing. The novel chronicles the naïve Texan Joe Buck's odyssey from Texas to New York, where he plans on realizing his dream of becoming a male prostitute servicing wealthy ladies. Joe fails at this and winds up on the streets serving a gay clientele, but he does make a human connection with Rico "Ratso" Rizzo, his roommate and would-be pimp. The novel was made into the classic 1969 movie starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight as Joe. (6864)
$250
Gastronomy, Earth Sciences and Gardening
Silent Spring
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962.
8vo; illustrated throughout in b&w; pictorial endpapers; green boards stamped in gilt; illustrated dust-jacket; slight edgewear; very good.
First Printing. First printing of this hugely influential book widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement. The book documented detrimental effects of pesticides on the environment, particularly on birds and helped facilitate the ban of the pesticide DDT in 1972 in the United States. (4386)
$450
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Tadao Ando
Naoshima: Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum, [n.d.]
Oblong 8vo.; fully illustrated in b&w and color; glassine laid over endpaper; pictorial wrappers; cardboard slipcase; fine.
First edition. Signed by artist on first free endpaper in blue crayon. (6893)
$750
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Scandinavian Design
Stockholm: Gyldendal, 1961.
8vo.; illustrated throughotu in b&w; blue cloth covered boards stamped in gilt; illustrated dust jacket; edgewear to extremities; very good.
Includes textiles, metals, furniture, ceramics, etc. (6886)
$150
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
The Moods of Type
New York: Barnes & Noble, 1947.
4to; illustrated throughout in b&w; red boards stamped in gilt; illustrated dust jacket; slight chipping to dust jacket; very good.
first edition. The Moods of Type analyzes and interprets the great creative periods of civilization from classical Greece through the Renaissance until the present day in terms of the alphabets and types which were at the same time their expression and part of their basic structure. (6876)
$200
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Mercedes-Benz: a cura di Jurgen Lewandowski
Milan: Automobilia, 1985.
Two volumes; 4to.; illustrated throughout in b&w; blue cloth board stamped in white; grey illustrated dust jacket; blue slipcase with bellyband; slight edgewear; near fine.
This is complete catalogue raisonné of all models manufactured by Mercedes-Benz in the first century of the company’s existence. It is the definitive publication on the brand with extensive information on some of the celebrated automobiles in history. It includes photographs, diagrams, and technical specifications throughout and is a must-have for any Mercedes enthusiast. This copy virtually as new and very scarce thus. (6866)
$Sold
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Seven Designers look at Trademark Design
Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1952.
4to.; illustrations throughout in b&w and color; red endpapers; bare stamped yellow cloth boards; red printed dust jacket; edgewear to extremities of dust jacket; chipping to corners of dust-jackt; very good.
First edition. Design book with contributions by seven well-known figures offering both general thoughts on good design and specific guidance on particular problems associated with trademarks. Contributors include Herbert Bayer, Alvin Lustig, Paul Rand, and Bernard Rudofsky. (6874)
$Sold
Architecture, Graphics, Design and Fashion
Type: For Books and Advertising
New York: Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1947.
4to.; illustrated throughout in b&w; red cloth boards; printed dust jacket; extremities of dust jacket worn with a small open tear to top right corner of dj; interior remains clean and bright; good.
A beautifully printed and still-useful book of typographical theory and practice. (6873)
$150
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
The Ascent of Western Civilization: American Independent Rock, 1976-1991
New York: Thread Waxing Space, 1997.
8vo.; illustrated throughout in b&w; illustrated wrappers; light bumping to front and back cover; near fine.
A tight copy of an experimental art zine, this issue focusing on underground music. Thread Waxing Space has always been an arena for provocation and innovation; a place to stimulate the discourses on issues in contemporary art production and culture. This issue celebrates an exhibition curated by Michael Azerrad with Douglas Wolk, which presents itself in the title. Includes articles and pictures of everyone from The Ramones and Mission of Burma to Sonic Youth and The Butthole Surfers, and interview with The Germs which involves a rather relevant conversation on Scientology. (6903)
$75
Art and Photography
Dyn: Review of Modern Art
[First three issues, Spring, Summer and Fall, 1942]. Mexico City: Wolfgang Paalen, 1942.
4to.; illustrated throughout in in b&w and color; yellow illustrated wrappers; very good.
The first three issues of arts publication published by the [ex] surrealist Wolfgang Paalen was issued from Paalen’s new home in Mexico and sought to fill a void of serious reviews of art and literature created by the turmoil of WWII. Paalen used the magazine as a platform to support art of his liking (for the most part post-surrealist abstraction with strong biomorphic qualities, like that made by Henry Mooore, Alexander Calder, and himself), and to air his provocative views on politics and society (with particular emphasis on the relationship of art to science, the philosophical inconsistencies of Marxist dialectics, and the future of modernism). Color tipped-in plates and black and white illustrations throughout. (6916)
$300
Art and Photography
The Record as Artwork from Futurism to Conceptual Art
Fort Worth, TX: The Fort Worth Art Museum, 1977
Square 8vo; illustrated throughout in b&w; illustrated wrappers; slight wear to spine; slightly creased corners on back cover; near fine.
Catalogue of exhibition that presented the extensive art record collection of Germano Celant. Celant has been an immensely influential figure over the past four decades and his writing and curatorial work has been especially important to in creating a critical framework for both conceptualism and Arte Povera. He has also championed new media, especially broadly available, democratic media such as multiples, artists’ books, and artist-made records. An important publication, well ahead of its time. (6414)
sold
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
Fresh: Hip Hop Don't Stop
NY: Random House/ Sarah Lazin Book, 1985.
Square 8vo; illustrated throughout in b&w; illustrated wrappers; light edgewear; near fine.
First Edition. Literary agent Sarah Lazin (formerly of Rolling Stone magazine, where she founded both the research department and Rolling Stone Press) in joint publication with Random House. A thorough look at hip hop subculture, specifically in nyc. Features major designers that took hip hop fashion to main stream, notably Stephen Sprouse. Engaging photos of breakdancers, musicans (Grandmaster Flash), and instructions on how to wear the hip hop style and accessories. Scarce. (6249)
sold
Music, Film, Pop Culture, Politics and Society
Gay Semiotics [together with] Castro St. x 24
San Francisco: NFS Press, 1977, 1978.
Gay Semiotics.
8vo.; illustrated throughout in b&w; grey printed wrappers; edgewear to extremities and spine; near fine.
Castro St. x 24. San Francisco: NFS Press, 1978.
Oblong 12mo; Illustrated throughout in b&w; blue printed wrappers; slight edgewear to spine; near fine.
First edition. One of 1,600 copies.
Made by a participant in the scene which he documents, Fischer’s two books are an odd melding of impulses: almost anthropological on one hand, but filled with first-person subjectivity throughout. Together they are an extraordinary record gay culture in San Francisco during a period it when it was expanding rapidly and no longer seeking to conform to mainstream societal norms. Gay Semiotics is a photographic study of visual coding among homosexual men with annotated photographs detailing the placement of earrings, hankerchiefs and keys as signifiers, as well as codifying different styles (Western, Jock, Leather, etc.). For Castro St. x 24 Fischer photographed a bench in the heart of a Castro Street cruising grounds once an hour for a full day and captions each photo with his diaristic account of his own experience with his documentary project (“a handsome boy with short, dark curly hair smiles at me…”).
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![Gay Semiotics [together with] Castro St. x 24](http://www.ghbookseller.com/images_books/lg_castro.jpg)