I’m having a bit of a clear-out. Here are some of the art books I’ve accumulated over the years. All priced to sell (I don’t think you’ll find any of them for less online) and all available for immediate purchase on eBay. Click the eBay links to see many more pages from each book.
The Futurist Cookbook – Marinetti
A splendid, beautifully reproduced edition of the weirdest (and perhaps most sinister) cookbook ever published. It was written/assembled by founder of Italian Futurism Filippo Thommaso Marinetti, who also wrote the more famous Futurist Manifesto (and Musolini’s 1919 Fascist manifesto, since you’re asking). Marinetti campaigned against pasta because “…it induced lethargy, pessimism, nostalgia, and neutralism”, which I guess might be true. David Runciman discussed this culinary curiosity in an episode of his podcast that was about the manifesto. The translation, by Suzanne Brill, is excellent. Read some of the recipes in the eBay listing. It seems to be a rarity and this first edition is selling for £200 and more. I’ve got it on eBay for £150, art/history/politics fans! Buy the Futurist Cookbook on eBay.
Hybrid Imagery – April Greiman
Anyone interested in digital art or design back in the early days worshipped April Greiman, a brilliant American graphic designer who adopted and invented new techniques for production in multiple media. It’s still a thrill to flick through the pages of this book and reminds me of the days we used to struggle to get this kind of exciting imagery out of our lovely new Macs. Buy Hybrid Imagery on eBay.
Barbara Kruger – We Won’t Play Nature to your Culture – 1983 ICA exhibition catalogue
Another exciting moment from the eighties. An ICA exhibition that anyone interested in photography, contemporary art or feminism rushed to. This is the original exhibition catalogue, the first edition bought from the gallery shop. On the eBay listing you’ll find more pages from the book. Buy We Won’t Play Nature to your Culture on eBay.
Bellocq – Photographs from Storyville, the red light district of New Orleans
One of the loveliest books here: a beautifully-printed, large-format collection of E.J. Bellocq‘s spontaneous, touching portraits from Storyville – and it’s in impeccable condition. The reproductions are based on the prints made by another American photographic legend Lee Friedlander and there’s a famous introduction by Susan Sontag. On the eBay listing you’ll be find lots more photographs from the book. Buy Bellocq on eBay.
The Sculpture Show – 1983 exhibition catalogue
This was an important show: identifying a generation of important artists, and a decade before the YBAs. It was a huge show, across the whole of the South Bank and the Serpentine Gallery. I was at St Albans doing a foundation course and we all trooped down to London to see this. It was a bit of a thrill. The catalogue comes with a flexidisc of ambient audio and sound art by some of the artists from the show which is a genuine rarity and sells on its own for a decent sum on Discogs. Buy The Sculpture Show on eBay.
Paul Graham – A1: Great North Road
Colour photography from a British master of the form, published in 1983 and thought of as very much a response to the hyper-saturated work of the American Ektachrome artists. It’s a beautiful, humane, melancholy work. Click the eBay link for more pics from inside. Buy A1 on eBay.
Gerhard Richter – 18. Oktober 1977
Richter belongs to the generation of West Germans that had been too young to serve in WW2 but had then had to metabolise and transcend the essentially untranscendable: the terrible crimes of their parents and of the criminal state they obeyed or at the very least tolerated. This book represents a series of paintings, from Richter’s photorealist practice. An extraordinary and chilling set of images based on photographs of the Baader-Meinhof group (alive and dead). Buy 19 Oktober 1977 on eBay.
Histoire(s) du Cinema – Jean-Luc Godard
Sold. Four hardback volumes and five CDs in a very solid slip-case. This is a splendid thing. The whole soundtrack of Godard’s amazing eight-part TV history of the movies (a project that some – including me, I think – consider to be his most interesting work) plus four beautifully designed books in a handsome slipcase. And it’s an ECM edition, which I guess makes perfect sense.
Semiotext(e) Architecture
One of the more bonkers Semiotext(e) editions: a three-foot, in-your-face, on-your-lap monster. Chaotic and frankly nausea-inducing design – kind of David Carson on acid. Complex texts struggling with graphic design that’s intended to give you a visual and conceptual headache. Inside you’ll find Atom Egoyan, Félix Guattari, Arthur Kroker, Catherine Ingraham and other members of the po-mo and theory elite, in a volume too big to open in most city flats. Buy Semiotext(e) Architecture on eBay.
From my Window – André Kertész
This is such a gorgeous book. I remember loving the fact that Kertész carried on taking photographs and making his beautiful art after he couldn’t get out so much by turning his camera to the view from the windows of his apartment in New York. Now that I’m older (still getting out, though!) I find this even more moving. A great artist who narrowed his focus so that he could stay productive. Wonderful. I also kind of love the fact that the cover is unevenly faded, presumably by the sunlight from the windows in my house. Buy From My Window on eBay.
Art and Its Double, A New York Perspective
This is a fascinating and quite rare thing. It’s the catalogue from a 1987 group show at the Fundació Caixa de Pensions gallery in Barcelona; a snapshot of a local art scene that went on to become essentially hegemonic, to define contemporary art since then. The artists: Ashley Bickerton, Sarah Charlesworth, Robert Gober, Peter Halley, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Matt Mullican, Tim Rollins & K.O.S., Peter Schuyff, Cindy Sherman, Haim Steinbach, Philip Taaffe. Buy Art and its Double on eBay.
Chris Marker – Staring Back
Lovely book of black and white photos by the great Chris Marker. I guess we knew he was an obsessive photographer of his world: his first feature, a film I’ve always found to be so unsettling I can barely watch it, was made entirely from still photos. This is a gentle book, maybe not so hard-edged as the movies. It’s beautifully printed, in the way photography books ought to be, and it’s in a lovely approximately 35mm aspect ratio, which make it even more treasurable. Click the link to see more of the photos. Buy Staring Back on eBay.
Ralph Gibson – Syntax
A beautiful and quite rare collection of photographs by American art photographer Ralph Gibson. I loved this kind of cool abstraction when I was trying to get started with photography. In fact I still find the camera roll on my mobile to be full of squared-off urban scenes, grids, shadows and so on. Gibson’s obviously still lodged in my brain somewhere. The book is in beautiful condition and the photographs, printed in the highest quality, are among the most distinctive of their era. A treasure. Buy Syntax on eBay.
Branded Youth and Other Stories – Bruce Weber
Sold. It’s a beautifully-printed, heavy hardback published for Bruce Weber’s popular exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 1997. The title refers to a story of some wild-child teenagers Weber met in Montana, who in an act of teenage bonding had branded each other on the shoulder with the heated blade of an army bayonet. It’s a bit of a gay classic and long out-of-print.
Sol LeWitt – PhotoGrids
Sorry, this one’s gone. A beautiful and quite rare paperback from an important phase in Sol LeWitt‘s career. Over 400 photographs of found grids from his travels around the world: doors, windows, fencing, gratings and manholes. Photographs of grids laid out in grids, a visual exploration of the grid’s organizing influence on our everyday lives. The cover is scuffed but the interior is perfect.
Allan Sekula – Fish Story
Sold. Sekula spent his whole career trying to invent and then popularise a politicised, realist art photography. He was a kind of photographic Brecht. This book is typical – the tip of a vast iceberg. Fish Story wasnt’t just a book of photos or an exhibition, it was a huge, multi-year, documentary project that traced the entire fishing supply chain. This book documents the project. This edition was specially printed to coincide with a show at the Marian Goodman Gallery in London and comes with the original printed material from the exhibition. It also has an updated foreword by Laleh Khalili, an academic who has studied global supply chains. Fascinating and beautiful.
Bernard Tschumi – Event-Cities
One of a famous architecture series created for MIT Press. This one’s now quite rare as far as I can tell. It’s a double-phone-book 600-page collection of Bernard Tschumi‘s most important projects. Gorgeous, head-spinning 1990s design (very MIT), packed with provocative illustrations and texts. A po-mo jewel. Buy Event-Cities on eBay.
Gilles Deleuze – Francis Bacon: Logique de la Sensation
I remember spotting this in the Pompidou bookshop and being brought up sharply by an unexpected collision of Bacon’s decadent London modernism and glamorous French philosophy – I didn’t know these worlds had ever met, or that they could. It’s all aesthetics, objects of perception (‘percepts’) and sensation.
It’s a beautifully packaged two-volume set in a slip-case. Volume 1 is the paintings and volume 2 is Gilles Deleuze’s essay on the painter and his work. I bought this edition during the gallery’s 1996 Bacon exhibition. It’s in essentially perfect condition. Buy Francis Bacon: Logique de la Sensation on eBay.
Bill Brandt – Portraits
This is the catalogue from a landmark 1982 exhibition. Brandt was an enormous inspiration to me when I was beginning as a photographer – something about the unlimited possibilities of a wide-angle lens and a roll of HP5. This is a lovely, slim introduction to his portraiture. From the gallery’s description of the show: “Bill Brandt has for some time been recognised as one of the established masters of British photography. This exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery is the first major retrospective devoted entirely to his portraits: from the earliest, taken while an assistant to Man Ray in Paris in the late 1920s, to the famous series of poets photographed for Lilliput and Picture Post in the war years. There are also examples of his later work, and many recent portraits which will be seen for the first time.” Buy Bill Brandt: Portraits on eBay.
Gerhard Richter – Atlas
This is a mighty tome – one of the many clever and beautiful editions the Richter machine seems to produce. It’s a pretty special and quite rare edition of a career-spanning collection of sketches, collages and photographs from Gerhard Richter, who must be one of the most collected contemporary artists (imagine how rich he must be!). This material has been collected by the artist since he was a young man (click the eBay link to see some of the book’s layouts). It’s a beautifully-produced, oversized (34x24x3.5cm, 388 pages) monograph that’s considered rare (and the marks on the cover, like a artist’s accidental marks, are all part of the design). Buy Atlas on eBay.
Ava Hofman – poems
This is a lovely, slim paperback that’s somewhere between a collection of poems and an artist’s book. A self-consciously visual collection that’s really charming. More pics from inside the book in the eBay listing. Buy Ava Hofman – Poems on eBay.
Gerhard Richter – Tate Gallery 1991
I bought this at a big Richter show at the Tate in 1991 (this is before the power station was converted so we’re in Pimlico). It’s mainly the gorgeous and quite haunting abstract paintings, reproduced beautifully. Buy Gerhard Richter on eBay.
Bani Abidi – the Speech Writer
And this is an actual artist’s book. I should say I don’t think I’ve ever been very sympathetic to the idea of an artist’s book: “artists, you do the art; authors, you focus on the books.” Maybe I’m just being pedantic. I mean this one is nuts, though. Click through to the eBay listing and you’ll see that it’s substantially more than a book – more of a puzzle or a card game embedded in a book. I can’t actually remember where I acquired this but it’s genuinely unique. Buy The Speech Writer on eBay.