Detail from a unique copy of Spiritual America, Richard Prince's retrospective artist's catalogue (1989); one of six joke drawings executed by Prince in black marker, with matching collage elements to facing pages. See number 11 below.

Booth Highlights: 2025 Armory Book Fair (Booth B29)

Below, some highlights from our booth at next week's New York International Antiquarian Book Fair (Park Avenue Armory; Thursday, April 3 through Sunday, April 6). You'll find us at booth B29. Some complimentary tickets still available. During the Fair, our Chelsea bookshop will be open regular hours (Wednesday through Saturday, 11-6) at 504 West 22nd Street.

1. BASQUIAT, Jean-Michel

Jean-Michel Basquiat (Signed)

Hannover: Kestner-Gesellschaft, 1986. First Edition. Small quarto. An elegant catalogue designed for Jean-Michel Basquiat's solo exhibition at the venerable Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hannover (Nov. 28, 1986 - Jan. 25, 1987); featuring 62 of his works, at only 25 years-old. This copy boldly SIGNED by Basquiat in black marker and simply inscribed to "Hans." Well-illustrated, with 27 color plates of Basquiat's paintings, along with an additional 4 plates reproducing his collaborative works with Andy Warhol and Francesco Clemente. Further illustrated with three black-and-white portraits; two of Basquiat and one of the collaborative trio. Introduced by curator Carl Haenlein, with an essay from Robert Farris Thompson, on Basquiat's "art of conjuring," translated into German. Minor edge-wear to illustrated wrappers; near fine.

$4500.00

2. BROODTHAERS, Marcel and Stéphane Mallarmé

Image: Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard (Translucent Edition)

Antwerpen: Galerie Wide White Space / Köln: Galerie Michael Werner, 1969. Limited Edition. Slim quarto. Landmark artist's book from Marcel Broodthaers, in which he translates one of the key texts of European modernism by redacting it completely; the rhythmic spacing of Broodthaers' black bars transforming the 1914 version of Mallarmé's "poème" into its own "image," as per the modification to the work's title. This being one of 90 copies printed to translucent tracing paper (in addition to 10 printed on aluminum plates and 300 on wove paper); arguably the preferred version, as the resulting superimpositions allow the reader to experience Mallarmé's poetic structure with even more simultaneity. SIGNED by Broodthaers to colophon and hand-numbered as no. 29 of 90 copies. Marginal toning to printed wrappers, with minor creasing; else a near fine copy, with sturdy binding and bright contents. Includes one of the original cardstock backing sheets, to render the translucent pages solid when desired. Notably uncommon in North America, with only three OCLC records located for this version.

$30,000.00

3. EGGLESTON, William

Morals of Vision (One of 15 Copies, Signed)

New York: Caldecot Chubb, 1978. Limited Edition. Oblong quarto. A stunning copy of William Eggleston's second artist's book; one of only 15 published by Caldecot Chubb, in the same year as the complementary volume Flowers. Contents: 8 color-coupler prints (8 x 5.5 inches, or the reverse), mounted to heavy Johannot paper. The near-spiritual colors of these landscapes and still lifes underline the work's grandiose title; more than just a collection of photographs, Eggleston here offers us a series of lessons on seeing, and seeing well. SIGNED by Eggleston to colophon and hand-numbered as copy 3 of 15. A fine copy with unfaded prints, bound in three-quarter morocco with gilt lettering to front cloth panel and spine. Housed in matching cloth slipcase, with minor fraying. Famously scarce, with no OCLC records located. A rare pleasure.

$60,000.00

4. HAYASHI, Miyori

[Small Archive Documenting Miyori Hayashi's Performance and Conceptual Art]

Tokyo and Okayama, 1963-1973. Small archive. A rare collection of printed, photographic, and archival materials from the first decade of the career of Japanese conceptual and performance artist Miyori Hayashi (1933-2000). An associate of both Yoko Ono and Mieko Shiomi, Hayashi has largely remained off-the-radar in avant-garde histories of Japan, likely owing to her commitment to pursuing a "regional" practice in her birth town of Bizen (Okayama Prefecture). In 1964, after twice installing her philosophical BOX structures in Tokyo galleries, Hayashi re-oriented her practice to organize events, performances, and instruction-based works—a turn well-represented by this cache of materials, which includes documentation of her radical Green Revolution campaign (1971-1972), for which she hired a plane to drop Myor. Hayashi Seed Co. packets over Okayama City, with accompanying cannabis sativa leaflets providing practical—and poetic—growing instructions ("grow it with a dream, then cut the leaves, stems, and roots into grass-like pieces, and smoke them to have another dream"). Also here, amongst 22 total entries: her mimeographed artist's book Happening in the Mt. Fuji, a series of four instructional works exploring existential themes of dates, time, and action (1971-1972), and an editioned poster emerging from her destructive Event We're Going Into (It's a Beautiful Car), for which she hired a crane to lift—and drop—a car in the parking lot of the newly-opened Okayama Cultural Center, with an accompanying series of archival photographs documenting the process. A full descriptive list is available upon request.

$25,000.00

5. KELLY, Ellsworth and Stéphane Mallarmé

Un Coup de Dés... with Lithographs by Ellsworth Kelly (Signed)

New York: LEC, 1992. Folio. Limited Edition. Hand-numbered as copy 190 of 300 and SIGNED by Kelly to colophon. When Ellsworth Kelly was asked by The Limited Editions Club to illustrate Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, he declined—and instead insisted that they republish Stéphane Mallarmé's Un coup de dés, for which he would create 11 black-on-white lithographs, to be precisely placed as interventions to the original French text; a kind of "choreography of [Mallarmé's] thoughts," as the accompanying LEC newsletter suggests. (Pichler, p. 115). A remarkably fine copy of this impeccably-designed edition, coordinated by Kelly's future husband Jack Shear. Bound in full goatskin, with bright gilt lettering to spine. Housed in original cloth clamshell, with suede lining and leather lettering piece to spine; the latter slightly faded. Complete with LEC newsletter and 24 pp. string-bound booklet, which reproduces Daisy Aldan's English translation of Mallarmé's poem, with complementary typography.

$4500.00

6. KIRKEBY, Per and Various Others

Billedkunst / Arkitektur og Billedkunst / A + B (All Published)

Copenhagen, 1966-1970. Artist's magazine (all published). Small quarto. An entire run of 17 volumes from this pioneering Danish arts journal, co-edited by the hyper-disciplinary artist Per Kirkeby; one of Denmark's most celebrated painters. Emerging as an illustrated review of post-War painting, sculpture, and cinema (e.g. Mark Tobey, Alberto Giacometti, Sergei Eisenstein), the journal gradually came to embrace avant-garde tendencies from both Europe and America (e.g. Joseph Beuys, John Cage, Henry Flynt, Guerilla Art Action Group), with a growing appetite for architecture and new media. So much so that the annual 1969 issue, which broke from the journal's quarterly structure, explicitly adopted architecture as part of its new title (Arkitektur og Billedkunst), with its contents arranged into three broad themes: Utopia, Escapism, and Reality. Notably, in addition to an essay by Nam June Paik on the emergence of digital culture, as well as a rich representation of Archigram projects, this issue featured arguably the earliest articulation of cyberspace—more than a decade before William Gibson—from the artist/architect duo Susanne Ussing and Carsten Hoff ("Form, Rum, Natur, Computer"). By the final year of publication (1970), as themes became more political (e.g. Situationism, radical urbanism, post-structuralism), Per Kirkeby had officially joined the editorial board—having earlier contributed an impressive range of content: a psychedelic cartoon interpreting Henry David Thoreau's Walden, a photographic essay on Copenhagen's bus network, an exploration of arctic geology, and a treatise on Pop Art as History. Contents thoroughly illustrated, often in color, including installation and performance views. Text in Danish, with some English. This set accompanied by prospectus materials and/or press releases from 1966, 1967, 1969, and 1970, as well as the folded color poster (Fisse Er Godt Nok) designed by Bjørn Nørgaard and Erik Hagens for the final issue. Minor scuffing to some of the illustrated wrappers, with scattered foxing to their versos, else a near fine set. An impressive chronicle of the international avant-garde of the 1960s, situated within its broader post-War contexts.

$5000.00

7. MACIUNAS, George

Flux Stationery (Three Editions)

New York: Wooster Enterprises, circa 1975. Three editions of offset-printed stationery reflecting George Maciunas' clever take on functional design: "The envelopes were like gloves and the letters were like hands... Same function: the glove encloses the hand." Designed by Maciunas for sale by Wooster Enterprises—the experimental stationery firm created by Soho artists Jaime Davidovich and Judith Henry—as well as for inclusion within Fluxpack 3 (Flash Art Edizioni). This group including: Foot in Shoe: Writing Paper with Coordinated Envelope, with 12 illustrated envelopes and matching stationery sheets, remarkably preserved in original Wooster Enterprises packaging; [Torso in Fur Coat], with 4 envelopes and corresponding sheets, accompanied by boldly-lettered cardboard backing; and [Hand in Glove], with 8 illustrated envelopes, 12 sheets, and lettered cardboard backing. (Silverman, nos. 283-285). All scarce, with only Bard and Yale showing OCLC holdings in North America; copies also preserved at MoMA, the Whitney, Walker Art Center, and Harvard Art Museum.

$2500.00

8. MALLARMÉ, Stéphane and Georges Leroux

Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard (Original Appearance in Custom Binding)

London: Cosmopolis (T. Fischer Unwin), 1897. First Edition. Octavo. The first and only lifetime appearance of Stéphane Mallarmé's paradigm-shifting poem, as it appeared in the May 1897 issue of Cosmopolis: An International Review (pp. 417-427), a year before his death. Although differing from the definitive edition published by NRF in 1914—as supervised by his daughter and son-in-law—this "pre-original" version preserves the radical boldness of Mallarmé's vision: to explore a post-literary understanding of language; printed alongside texts by Nietzsche, John Stuart Mill, Joseph Pennell, and Anatole France. For this copy, the master bookbinder Georges Leroux—who began his career as a poet—offers his own contribution to the long tradition of Coup de dés iterations (cf. Broodthaers, Kelly), with the titles rhythmically set to both front and rear panels of this impressive goatskin binding. Signed and dated by Leroux (1987) to lower dentelles of the varnished blonde boards, with gilt edges and suede endpapers. In addition to the original Cosmopolis wrappers, title page, and table of contents, the extract bound here includes Mallarmé's introduction/manifesto ("Observation relative au poème"). Housed in marbled slipcase with matching clasped chemise. Some flaking to page edges, with repair to preliminary title page, but an overall remarkable copy of this work; one of the first dominos to fall in the migration of poetry into contemporary art.

$9500.00

9. PARR, Martin

Home Sweet Home

York: Impressions Gallery of Photography, [1974]. Limited Edition. Small portfolio. The first publication from photobook legend Martin Parr, designed to mimic the photo wallets that one received when developing film at the local drugstore. Contents: 10 gelatin silver prints in the form of photo-postcards (3.25 x 5.5 inches, or the reverse), with nine of them signed by Parr to versos, 4 chromogenic prints of similar size (two with hand-stamps), and two index cards with printed text, including an artist's statement that anticipated the trajectory of Parr's career: "The excitement I feel can be for many diverse and bizarre reasons and often involves the contradictions of modern day society. People often talk about the communication aspect of photography, but I offer my photographs to the viewer in the hope that he or she can share my excitement." Very minor foxing to rear panel of screenprinted portfolio, with some curling to prints; else near fine. Scarce, with purportedly fewer than 15 copies produced; no OCLC records located.

$22,500.00

10. PETTIBON, Raymond

Thinking of You (Special Edition with 78 Unique Drawings)

Chicago: Renaissance Society, 1998. Special Edition. Quarto. SIGNED and dated by Pettibon to front pastedown. For his first museum show in North America (Sep. 13 - Nov. 8, 1998), Raymond Pettibon produced a compendium of illustrated phallic meditations—sometimes crass, sometimes poetic, often philosophical; playing with the trope of "thinking with one's head." For an unspecified number of Special Edition copies, Pettibon reworked some of the facing blank pages in pencil and gouache, with additional phallic illustrations and (often lengthy) manuscript reflections; this copy featuring an impressive 78 such interventions, far surpassing the three other such copies that have reached auction (with 4, 46, and 54 interventions). The front endpaper features an especially elaborate ink-and-gouache climax drawing, accompanied by a bold Pascalian inscription: "Perhaps at least the soul will come to know itself." Minor soiling to cloth-backed boards, with slight bleeding to front endpaper from the climax drawing; else near fine. An insightful window into Pettibon's process.

$15,000.00

11. PRINCE, Richard 

Spiritual America (Unique Copy with 6 Original Joke Drawings)

Valencia: IVAM Centre del Carme, 1989. Artist's catalogue designed by Richard Prince for his early retrospective at the modern art museum in Valencia; a thrilling remix of his rephotographs, jokes, hoods, and birdtalk—as well as the debut of his fictious 1967 interview with J. G. Ballard—all under the Spiritual America banner that he'd appropriated from Stieglitz's castrated horse. This unique copy having been reworked by Prince with 6 original joke drawings executed in black marker—the final one SIGNED—paired with collage elements to facing pages, which especially reflect his passion for publicity photos. One final intervention to the front cover, with pink lozenges applied to the Trix cereal bunny. Near fine in illustrated wrappers with French flaps. A remarkable volume; Prince, in a nutshell.

$25,000.00

12. SNOW, Dash

My Mind Has Finally Accepted That It Is Right. Volume One (Association Copy)

New York: Self-published, 2005. Zine (100 pp.). Limited Edition. Hand-numbered as copy 22 of 25 and INSCRIBED by Snow to title page: "For King Solomon. From the Snowman. 2005 August 05." One of the first artist's books from Dash Snow; essentially a gallery space for his most recent pursuits in Polaroid photography—"the [97] pictures in this were taken in may and june of 2005."Accompanied by a number of matchstick-texts, and other collaged elements (e.g. hair, razorblades), Snow's Polaroids are mostly paired together in two-page spreads, creating evocative (and often quite tender) tableaux of a rebellious, post-9/11 New York; an almost obverse practice to his graffiti writing. This copy notably inscribed by Snow to fellow IRAK graffiti crew member King Solomon. Loose folio sheets, lacking the original string-band, with rubbing to spine-fold. Overall a near fine copy of an early Snow work; scarce, with no OCLC records located.

$7500.00

13. SNOW, Dash

Broken Bottle! Broken Dreams! (One of 25)

New York: Self-published, circa 2005. Zine (36 pp). Limited Edition. Hand-numbered in black marker to rear cover (21/25). An early, neo-Dada example of Dash Snow's collage aesthetic—arguably most impressive when he approached the photocopier as canvas (cf. Zine Masters of the Universe). With Broken Bottle! Broken Dreams!—stapled, unlike his more perishable band-bindings—Snow deftly juxtaposed dozens of the libertine Polaroids that chronicled his Downtown scene with sensational press clippings—of John Wayne Gacy, the Menendez Brothers, and Rod Ferrell's 1990s vampire cult—and underworld imagery from 20th century pulps; all these elements richly layered with vertiginous graphical elements. A close to fine copy, with only minor scuffing to the stunning cover design. Scarce, with no OCLC records located.

$5000.00

14. STURTEVANT, [Elaine]

Studies for Warhols' Marilyns, Beuys' Actions and Object, Duchamps' Etc. Including Film (Inscribed Copy)

Syracuse, NY: Everson Museum of Art, 1973. First Edition. Quarto. A brilliant artist's catalogue from Sturtevant (i.e. Elaine Frances Horan), published on the occasion of her first museum show in the United States (Everson Museum of Art, Nov. 16 - Dec. 12, 1973). Sturtevant's conceit for the catalogue, realized by Judson Rosebush, was to simulate poor xerographic copies of her exhibited appropriations of Warhol, Beuys, and Duchamp. According to the Everson's Director James Harithas, "the works in the show were not copies; the works in the catalogue were." This copy of the catalogue later INSCRIBED by Sturtevant—using her given name—to one of the curators she worked with following her retreat from the artworld in the 1970s; a remarkable inscription given that she famously avoided references to her real-life persona. Save for bump to lower margin, a near fine copy; remarkably bright.

$4500.00

15. WONG, Martin

WACO: Free Art Show (Exhibition Poster)

Eureka, CA, 1974. Screenprint (17.5 x 11.5 inches). An exhibition poster designed by Martin Wong, announcing a group show to be held at his WACO studio loft in Eureka (April 27, 1974). Strikingly illustrated after Wong's Blind Duckies painting. Very minor surface wear to print; near fine. Not in Stanford's catalogue raisonné.

$2500.00

16. WOOL, Christopher

Empire of the Goat (One of 33 Copies, Signed)

New York: Self-published, 1985. Limited Edition. Quarto. SIGNED and dated by Wool in pencil to bottom of title page; hand-numbered as no. 17 of 33 copies. Christopher Wool's second artist's book—and arguably his first foray into experimental exhibition design—featuring 77 direct photocopies of his early, pre-stencil paintings, which Jeff Perrone aptly described as communicating "a chemical peel, a deep etching, some microscopic pitting that could also be read as cosmic, astronomical." The red goat hand-stamped to the front cover—which also appears within the corners of each image, in various states of decay—is purported to have been crafted as Wool's personal symbol at the time. Minor scuffing to plain stab-bound wrappers; near fine, with remarkably crisp interior. Scarce, with no OCLC records located.

$22,500.00

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