6decadesbooks

Bruce Nauman CLEA RSKY and LAAIR

2012-02-02T18:30:00.000-05:00

NAUMAN, Bruce. CLEA RSKY. N.p.: Castelli Gallery, n.d. [1968].

Square 4to.; illustrated throughout in color; printed wrappers; staple-bound. Fine.

First edition.

[and]

NAUMAN, Bruce. LAAIR. New York: Multiples Inc., 1970.

Square 4to.; illustrated throughout in color; printed wrappers; staple-bound. Fine.

First edition; one of 1,200 copies.

CLEAR SKY was a way to have a book that only had colored pages--pictures of the sky. I like the idea that you are looking into an image of the sky, but it is just a page. LA AIR was the same idea, but it is also a response to CLEAR SKY using polluted colors instead. —Bruce Nauman

Few works of contemporary art have so intransigently defied exegesis as this pair of books, and despite the straightforward description of them quoted above, this unresolved quality seems to have been Nauman’s point. The words of titles are printed so they don’t immediately register (Clean? Risky? Lair?) and this potential for mis-reading suggests that one might just as easily mis-read the contents. Images of the sky? Or just swatches of color? This difficulty seems even to extend to the problem of describing the books bibliographically. For example, both were published with Nauman’s signature printed on the back cover, but one frequently sees them described as “signed” in catalogs or library citations. Different reference works render their titles variously as Clear Sky, Clearsky, Clear Sky, Clea Rsky, LA Air, L.A. Air, or Laair. Likewise, there seems to be no general agreement as to the publication date of CLEA RSKY, which different libraries and other reliable sources have listed as being anytime from 1967 to 1970. We think it’s 1968, but to be honest we’re not absolutely certain either…

$4,500 for the pair

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ARTISTS’ BOOK NOT ARTISTS’ BOOK

2012-01-14T16:26:00.002-05:00

6 Decades Books and Boo-Hooray Gallery present:

ARTISTS' BOOK NOT ARTISTS' BOOK

"Artists' book" is a troublesome term. There seems to be no single well-understood or generally-accepted working definition. Say "artists' book" in general conversation and you'll likely get a blank look, if not outright confusion; even with a specialized audience of bibliophiles, or art world cognoscenti, it may be necessary to clarify exactly what you mean...

Artists' Book Not Artists' Book is an exhibition co-curated by Johan Kugelberg and Jeremy Sanders. In it are about one hundred books and of course all of them either are, or are not, artists’ books, but whether it is even possible to say which ones fall into which category is a matter that's not entirely clear. And in any case, it's likely no two viewers would draw exactly the same conclusions.

Artists' Book Not Artists' Book includes work by Chris Burden, Ira Cohen, Richard Meltzer, John Baldessari, Seth Price, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Richard Hell, Tina Lhotsky, Sue Williams, Tom Sachs, Richard Prince, William Gibson, David Wojnarowicz, Dara Birnbaum, Jim Shaw, Ed Ruscha, Sean Landers, and many others (not to mention, Various, Anonymous, and Unknown).

Please join us for the opening reception January 18th from 6-9 pm. Thereafter the exhibition will be open seven days a week, 12-6pm, from January 19 to February 12. We are located at 265 Canal Street (between Broadway and Lafayette) on the 6^th floor.

Publication now available:
Click here for information
or email to purchase.

Sol LeWitt: Eighteen Artist-Designed Posters, 1967-1998

2011-12-31T00:41:00.000-05:00

A collection of eighteen posters by Sol Lewitt, dating from 1967 to 1998.

Lewitt, through his writing and work, did more to define Conceptual Art than any other individual. Simply put, it is art in which the idea is the primary thing; objects are secondary. Lewitt’s ideas found form in a diverse array of media, including wall drawings, structures (the term he preferred to sculpture), artists’ books, prints, posters, textiles, furniture, and assorted other objects and ephemera. No form was privileged over another, Lewitt’s methodology was rigorous and consistent, and as the art existed primarily in the idea, its realization (which was usually done by working with fabricators, assistants, printers, etc.) was simply a matter of dissemination--the process whereby the idea was made available. Thus this collection of posters is a compact retrospective, consisting of eighteen works spanning over thirty years, from the time of his earliest mature work to the point of international renown and acclaim as one of the true giants of contemporary art.

$7,500 for the set. Inquire.

Click here for complete description with images and specifications.

Jason Polan on Roberta Smith's 10 Best list

2011-12-18T20:21:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Jason Polan on being named to Roberta Smith’s 10 Best of 2011 list in the New York Times today. If you missed the show, here is Smith’s original review of it, but make sure you don't also miss Polan’s new publication Every Counterfeit Handbag on Canal Street, a signed numbered edition that is available FREE, but only through December 23rd, exclusively at the 6 Decades / Boo-Hooray Holiday shop.

HOLIDAY SHOP: featured December 16

2011-12-16T10:30:00.000-05:00

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961.

8vo.; black cloth boards, spine stamped in gilt; a few marks to top edge of pages printed dust-jacket; faint tanning to edges of dust-jacket and along spine; price-clipped. Near Fine.

First edition. A very handsome copy of Jacobs’ classic study of cities and urban planning. The influence of this book is still being felt. Jacobs’ critique of hyper rational modernist city planning is credited by many with turning the tide against the worst excesses of “urban renewal” (and, not incidentally, with saving Greenwich Village from Robert Moses).

~~$500~~ now $300 inquire

Come by the 6 DECADES / BOO-HOORAY Holiday Shop. Every day till the 23rd there will be featured items announced on this site and in-store specials (such as Jason Polan’s FREE EDITION) as well as Dirk Westphal’s exhibition of nail polish Mondrians.

HOLIDAY SHOP: featured item December 15

2011-12-15T11:52:00.000-05:00

Fleming, Ian. The Man with the Golden Gun. London: Jonathan Cape, 1965.

8vo.; clothbound in illustrated dustjacket; price-clipped, else fine.

First edition. The thirteenth book in Fleming’s James Bond series, one of the most successful franchises in the history of publishing (not to mention cinema). This copy is a second printing--the first printing had an embossed golden gun on the front board but the design was problematic to produce and was discontinued after only a few copies were printed. Classic trompe l'oeil jacket design by Richard Chopping. ~~$500~~ now $250 inquire

Come by the 6 DECADES / BOO-HOORAY Holiday Shop. Every day till the 23rd there will be featured items announced on this site and in-store specials (such as Jason Polan’s FREE EDITION) as well as Dirk Westphal’s exhibition of nail polish Mondrians.

HOLIDAY SHOP: featured Dec. 14

2011-12-14T11:00:00.000-05:00

Bernd and Hilla Becher. Hochöfen / Blast Furnaces. Munich: Schirmer Mosel, 2003.

Large 4to.; illustrated throughout in b+w; clothbound; housed in cloth slipcase along with a silver-gelatin photographic print matted within cloth portfolio. As new, in publisher's original glassine.

Limited edition. No. 45 of 100 numbered copies. Silver-gelatin print numbered and signed by the Bechers. Photo dated 1996, printed 2003.

$~~4,000~~ now $3,200

Inquire

Come by the 6 DECADES / BOO-HOORAY Holiday Shop. Every day from now to the 23rd there will be featured items announced on the website and other specials, including Jason Polan’s FREE EDITION, as well as Dirk Westphal’s exhibition of nail polish Mondrians.

HOLIDAY SHOP, featured Dec. 13th

2011-12-13T11:30:00.000-05:00

Patrick Paine

Porcelain Book Display Bookends

This is a pair of bookends in white porcelain designed by Brooklyn-based sculptor Patrick Paine and produced in conjunction with 6 Decades Books. Each is cast and fired by hand and signed by Paine on the underside. If you are a book collector then you probably agree that there just aren't any decent bookends on the market. Everything is either too flimsy to support a row of heavy books, too poorly designed to do so without damaging them, or else too ugly to allow on the shelf in the first place. Paine's design has none of these issues. They are smooth white porcelain so they won’t damage even the most fragile dust-jacket, they are heavy with a wide stance to stand solidly on the shelf and firmly support even tall, heavy art books, and they are designed to display a book face-out so you can show off a prized volume (but are such beautiful sculptural objects in themselves that you could just as well leave them unadorned). They’re handmade so the dimensions vary slightly but each bookend is about 10 inches high, 7.5 in. wide, 6 in. deep, and weighs about 3.5 lbs. Ordinarily these bookends are $250 per pair but we now have a few available at a special price of $150 for a set of two. inquire

Come by the Holiday Shop, open 11-6 Monday-Saturday through december 23rd. More special offers coming soon, Jason Polan's FREE edition is still available, and Dirk Westphal's exhibition is on view.

FREE: new Jason Polan edition

2011-12-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

Jason Polan

Every Counterfeit Handbag on Canal Street

Unlimited numbered edition, all copies signed

2011

In the neighborhood near the 6 Decades shop dealers in counterfeit handbags do a brisk business. It’s illegal, of course, and the actual bags are kept in a secret room somewhere out of sight, so if you want to see the merchandise you’ll first be shown a small laminated booklet filled with tiny images of the various models available. 6 Decades was (with some difficulty) able to obtain one of these booklets and Jason Polan has now used it as the basis of his latest artists’ book. In format it is a precise facsimile of the original, but in this version Polan has drawn every bag by hand. 6 Decades is pleased to announce that Every Counterfeit Handbag on Canal Street, a new publication by Jason Polan, is available beginning today. Each copy is signed and numbered and the book is FREE, but you must come by in person to pick it up at the 6 Decades / Boo-Hooray Holiday shop where it will be available exclusively, now through December 23. Sorry, no online ordering, not available on Kindle, no Fedex, no Priority Mail, one copy per person.

Come by the Holiday Shop; every day from now to the 23rd there will be new freebies, and/or featured items announced on the website and Dirk Westphal's exhibition of nail polish Mondrians will also be on view.

Holiday shop, featuring Dirk Westphal, opens Dec. 10

2011-12-03T14:32:00.001-05:00

One must speak reverentially of masterpieces, that’s well understood. But does the pleasure of aesthetic contemplation really compare to the satisfaction of knowing you’ve just scored a great bargain? We may praise works displaying outstanding artistry, skill, or workmanship, but when we vote with our feet it seems that what we really love is a cheap-knock off… Hey, no one needs to know you got your ‘Louis’ bag on Canal Street, right?

Canal Street Boogie-Woogie, Dirk Westphal’s new series of nail-polish Mondrians (more images), makes no attempt to resolve the internal conflict between high and low. The work plays on this tension; and, even better, it’s one of those beautiful things that let you have it both ways. Kind of like Jimi Hendrix playing The Star-Spangled Banner, which goes down like a frosty mug of patriotism but with a nice jolt of rebellion as a chaser, Westphal makes cover versions of works that aspired to Neo-Platonic purity out of tacky bargain bin materials. They’re clean and dirty all at once. You can high five yourself for being a culturally sophisticated art-world know-it-all and a savvy shopper who just got a bargain.

Works from Canal Street Boogie-Woogie and Westphal’s new artists’ book (in an edition of 50 signed and numbered copies) will be featured at the 6 Decades/Boo-Hooray Holiday Shop, open 11-6 Monday-Saturday from December 10th through the 23rd, with opening night festivities on Saturday, December 10, from 6-8pm.

Holzer: 'Use what is dominant in a culture to change it"

2011-11-14T13:41:00.001-05:00

Jenny Holzer

Truisms

Offset lithograph on paper

22 x 17 inches

Stamped “Jenny Holzer 1978”

1978

Jenny Holzer’s approach is, as she put it, to “use what is dominant in a culture to change it.” Though her art is almost entirely text-based, Holzer’s methodology is one of appropriation and thus runs in parallel to that of Richard Prince, Jack Goldstein, Dara Birnbaum, Cindy Sherman and others who gained prominence in the late 70s and early 80s, collectively defining a post-modern aesthetic. While they made use of appropriated imagery and photographic modes of working in order to examine and subvert standard ways in which the culture represented itself visually, Holzer was appropriating established linguistic tropes in order to distill received wisdom into a series of basic verbal constructions. Holzer has also been innovative in her use of non-traditional media and modes of exhibition, frequently installing her work publicly as posters, in paid advertising, artists’ books, or, more recently, by using electronic displays and projections, in order to reach an audience well beyond art’s usual museum and gallery settings.

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E/AB Fair

2011-11-04T01:19:00.001-04:00

6 Decades will be at the Editions andArtists' Books Fair this weekend so please come visit us. The E/AB fair is located at 548 West 22nd street and is open 11-7 Friday and Saturday and 11-4 Sunday. Ours is booth number 1, just to your left when you enter the third floor. If you're not in NYC or unable to make it to the fair but are interested to see what we are showing there, email us and request our new catalog of recent arrivals and other highlights. The catalog can be sent as a print copy (include your mailing address) or a PDF.

E/AB Catalog

Franz Erhard Walther

2011-10-25T10:31:00.000-04:00

Franz Erhard Walther.

Objekte Benutzen.

Cologne: Walther Konig, 1968.

8vo.; illustrated throughout in black and white; pictorial wrappers. Near fine.

First edition. Franz Erhard Walther’s publication is a kind of instruction manual or guidebook to the revolutionary interactive works that he had begun creating in the early 60s. Walther insisted that these objects were not sculptures in themselves, but were activated through the participation of a viewer, becoming artworks only through use. Thus they embody Walther's concept that art is an act of "doing" that is necessarily temporal, subjective, and open to interpretation. Most of the pieces in Objekte Benutzen are made from fabric and are designed for simple physical actions (pressing, folding, unfolding, covering) by which they occupy and define space and time. When exhibited (as a number of them currently are at the Dia Center in Beacon,NY) they are intended not merely to be viewed, but to be unfolded, used and worn, all according to the artist’s instructions but also incorporating the input of the viewer/participant.

$450 inquire

Paul Thek: An Experiment in Collective Art-Making

2011-10-12T19:00:00.000-04:00

Thek, Paul. A Document made by Paul Thek and Edwin Klein. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1969.

Folio; illustrated throughout in black and white; pictorial wrappers backed with printed stiff wrappers; some light wear and age toning at extremities. Near Fine.

First edition. This publication, made by Paul Thek for his 1969 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum (and later Stockholm’s Moderna Museet) is not so much a performance document as it is a kind of performance in book form. Newspaper clippings, performance photos, source materials, champagne bottles, lighting equipment, ashtrays, and other random objects (not to mention occasional glimpses of the hands and faces of the artists themselves) are spread out and piled up atop a full page spread of the International Herald Tribune and photographed from above creating a sequence of still lifes that builds up in incremental layers and ever-shifting arrangements as items are added, shifted or removed page after page. The book, like the exhibition it accompanied and so much of Thek’s work in this period, was undertaken as an experiment in collective art-making. Wim Davits, Edwin Klein, Tom Lenders, Max Natkiet, Jean-Paul Vroom, and others all participated in its creation.

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Richard Hamilton: 1922-2011

2011-09-14T10:09:00.000-04:00

Richard Hamilton, the British artist widely considered to be the father of Pop art, died yesterday, September 13, 2011. Today, with numerous obituaries appearing in newspapers throughout the world, it is worth remembering the autobiography he himself wrote, with a Polaroid camera and a little help from 128 of his friends:

HAMILTON, Richard. Polaroid Portraits. Vol. 1, 2, 3 and 4. London/Stuttgart: Edition Hansjorg Mayer, n.d. [1972, 1977, 1983, 2002].

12mos; fully illustrated in b&w and color; cloth boards; printed dust-jackets. Near fine.

First Edition. Started in 1968, finished in 2001, Richard Hamilton’s “self-portrait” project spanned five decades and eventually comprised four volumes. The concept was simple: when Hamilton visited another artist (or an artist came to see him) he asked them to take his picture with a Polaroid camera. When he had collected 32 such Polaroid portraits he published a volume in the series and listed the artists names on the cover. All together these books contain a very effective self-portrait of Hamilton, encompassing his life and travels, the way he aged, and the people that he knew…

After even the briefest perusal of these books it becomes clear that Richard Hamilton knew just about everyone. Roy Lichtenstein took the first picture; Toronto-based designer Bruce Mau, took the last. Artists in between included Andy Warhol, John Baldessari, Man Ray, Francis Bacon, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Joseph Beuys, and Gerhard Richter (not to mention, on separate occasions, John Lennon and Paul McCartney).

In conception these books recall Lewitt’s Autobiography, Hans-Peter Feldmann’s All the Clothes of a Woman, and other conceptual photobooks in which an individual’s identity is conveyed obliquely, through an inventory of images. In this case, though, the outlook is quintessentially Pop: it is the inventory of bold-face names that forms identity.

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Warhol: My Hustler(Sin in the Summer on Fire Island)

2011-09-02T06:25:00.000-04:00

Andy Warhol

Poster for My Hustler

22 x 14 inches

Letterpress on poster board

1966

Warhol: Sin in the
Summer on Fire Island

Andy Warhol's My Hustler consists of two 33-minute long takes, each a full 1,200 foot reel of 16 mm film exposed continuously. It was filmed on Fire Island in 1965 in a shoot that is notorious because just about everyone on set had taken LSD. Apparently someone had spiked either the scrambled eggs or the orange juice and though Warhol himself denies having been affected, there are wildly differing accounts of the day and few, if any, are completely reliable. The plot of the movie, such as it is, is that an old homosexual brings a beautiful, blond, butch hustler, played by Paul America, to Fire Island for the weekend only to have all his neighbors try to lure him away. Paul America had been discovered at a discotheque in 1965 and brought to the Factory. Born Paul Johnson, accounts also differ as to how he acquired his stage name, though as Warhol said, "he was unbelievably good-looking, like a comic-strip drawing of Mr. America, clean-cut, handsome, very symmetrical. He seemed to be exactly six feet tall and weigh some nice round number." America wound up living at The Factory from 1965 to 1968 where he was, according to Ondine, "everybody's lover.... He was the personification of total sexual satisfaction. Without a brain in his head. Just beautifully vapid."

My Hustler was one of the few early Warhol films that was actually successful commercially. It premiered at the Film-makers' Cinematheque in April, 1966 and this poster was one of ten printed to advertise its run. Its release came during an extraordinary period for Warhol: as My Hustler was showing on 41st street, the Velvet Underground was downtown at The Dom playing its first shows with the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and on East 77th street Warhol's silver clouds and cow wallpaper were being shown at the Castelli Gallery. (click here for full size image)

POR

TAUBA AUERBACH: A BOOK IS NOT AN X

2011-08-04T15:15:00.003-04:00

The Tauba Auerbach exhibition that I am curating opens Friday, August 12. The press release with full details on the show is below. If you will be in East Hampton, please come to the opening or go see the exhibition sometime before it closes on September 20. If you're not able to make it in person, here are images and installation views. (Or, if you will be in Norway this Fall, you can see this work as part of the upcoming Tauba Auerbach show at the Bergen Kunsthall). In the meantime, here is an image of the pop-up invitation Tauba designed for the exhibition.

Press Release:

John McWhinnie and Glenn Horowitz are pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Tauba Auerbach at their East Hampton bookshop and gallery. The exhibition, entitled A Book is Not An X, has been curated by Jeremy Sanders. It opens Friday August 12th with a reception from 6-8 pm and runs through September 20th.

Tauba Auerbach is a polymath and her work spans a wide variety of both traditional and non-traditional media, encompassing everything from paintings and photographs, to prints, films, and musical instruments. Since the very beginning of her artistic career she has been devoted to the creation of inventive artists’ books. Whatever the medium, Auerbach is drawn to patterns, orders, and systems and her work frequently explores language, typography, mathematics, and other such tools for communicating or recording information. Her methodology resembles that of scientific inquiry and the works themselves are often like thought experiments. What makes the work so compelling is the extraordinary formal clarity with which she renders ideas into images and objects.

In a 2010 Artforum review of German artist Carsten Nicolai’s book, Grid Index, Auerbach wrote that, “a book is an X-axis. The format is almost always linear; the content, bound in a prescribed order, marches single file.” The title of the exhibition riffs on the first line of her review and hints that Auerbach’s impetus to create this body of work was a desire to assert a far more open-ended conception of a book. The notion of an axis remains in play, but is variously collapsed, rotated, or fractured.

Auerbach has created six new works, each made in an edition of ten or fewer copies. The creation of these books, and indeed all of Auerbach’s recent work, has been driven by her interest in topology. Topology is a branch of mathematics that inquires into the basic characteristics of surfaces and objects in order to understand the range of incarnations the form can take while still retaining its defining properties. Thus, each of these books is an experimental object, and a radical reconsideration of what a book may be. Each was conceived in order to uncover possibilities within the book form and as a way of seeing how form, once reinterpreted, could be used to contain or convey content. Several of the books rely on tomography (the practice of using cross-sections to visualize the internal structure of an object or volume) to transmit information, others reimagine the binding and other structural elements of a book so that they become central to its meaning, still others further develop ideas that Auerbach first began to explore in creating a much anticipated series of pop-up books for Printed Matter. Altogether the exhibition demonstrates categorically that a book need not be merely “an X.”

Tauba Auerbach lives and works in New York City. She is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery. Her first one-person museum exhibition opens this November at the Bergen Kunsthall in Norway.

POP ART 1965

2011-07-29T12:05:00.003-04:00

Dietrich, Hans Joachim. Happenings (and Actions), U.S. Pop Art, Nouveau Realisme, Etc. Dusseldorf: Verlag Kalender, 1965.

12mo.; illustrated throughout in color and black and white; illustrated boards. Fine.

First edition; one of 300 copies printed. This catalog, with text in German and English, was issued by artist and publisher Han Joachim Dietrich and was among the first publications to document the new art of the 1960s. It's notable that the book recognizes such movements and styles as Fluxus, Pop, Nouveau Realisme, etc., little attempt is made to differentiate the various artists or movements into separately defined categories. Rather, the book has a perspective that treats all the work within as elements of the dynamic explosion of new media and new forms that had arisen in the United States and Europe during the several years leading up to its publication. There are reproductions of works as well as writings and instructions for happenings by over twenty artists (several of whom were still virtually unknown at the time) including Joseph Beuys, Allan Kaprow, Dick Higgins, Nam June Paik, Emmett Williams, Stanley Brouwn, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Yves Klein, Edward Kienholz, Mel Ramos, Dieter Rot, and Gerhard Richter.

Gerhard Richter paintings

The graphic black and white design of the book follows that of Verlag Kalender’s 1963 publication, Pop Art: Do It Yourself, a catalog/artists’ book featuring the work or Dieter Rot, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Claes Oldenburg and others, while it’s form--card stock pages, cloth spine and glued binding--anticipates the form that Andy Warhol’s publication for his exhibition at the Philadelphia ICA which would take later the same year.

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Carl Andre: Five Postcards

2011-07-27T13:08:00.001-04:00

Andre, Carl. Five Postcards. Los Angeles: Otis Art Institute, 1977.

Five 4 x 6 inch postcards offset printed in black and white with original mailing envelope. Fine.

Alistair Rider, author of the new definitive monograph on Carl Andre recently published by Phaidon, uses this sequence of postcards as the introductory image of the book, describing them at length and concluding that, “there are few other sets of images that clarify more succinctly or so effortlessly the salient characteristics of Andre’s art.” Andre’s most characteristic sculptures, metal grids placed on the floor, are universally regarded as immensely influential and important works of contemporary art, yet Andre’s body of work is surprisingly little know beyond these iconic sculptures. This is especially true of his various publications, yet his writings, poetry, photographic books, and other ephemeral works (such as this set of postcards) are an essential part of his output. They set the stage for other work, drawing attention to such issues as materiality, sequencing, and concern for space that are fundamental to Andre’s aesthetics, while (uniquely in his work) providing a glimpse into the mental processes and personal history underlying his art. This sequence of images is a clear and concise statement that belies the commonplace format in which it appears.

sold inquire

FREE MONEY!!!

2011-07-12T12:44:00.000-04:00

RUSCHA
DARBOVEN
WARHOL
CAGE
ROT

Announcing 6 Decades BOOK NOTES. In order to spread the word about the newly opened shop at 265 Canal Street, 6 Decades is releasing a series of five BOOK NOTES this week. Each book note is uniquely rubberstamped and features a pioneering artist—John Cage, Hanne Darboven, Dieter Rot, Ed Ruscha, or Andy Warhol—whose work in the 1960s helped to create the medium of the contemporary artists’ book as we know it today. Book Notes are the size of a dollar bill and can be spent just like cash so put them in your wallet and come to the 6 Decades store or save it to spend at our booth at the upcoming NY Art Book Fair (Sept. 29 to Oct 2 at P.S.1). Each book note is worth $10 or 10% off (whichever is greater) any item in stock at 6 Decades Books. Book Notes are being sent in the mail this week, but if you’re a new customer, or would just like to make sure you’re on the mailing list, please send an email with your mailing address and we’ll be sure to send you a couple.

Liberate Berkeley

2011-06-30T21:25:00.000-04:00

Michael Myers and Holbrook Teter

Liberate Berkeley

11 x 6¼ inches

Letterpress on paper

San Francisco, Zephyrus Image, 1970.

Michael Myers and Holbrook Teter

Untitled [All Power to the People].

11 x 6¼ inches

Letterpress on paper

San Francisco, Zephyrus Image, 1970.

Michael Myers and Holbrook Teter were the principal artist/activist/printers of Zephyrus Image, a radical press that operated in San Francisco and Berkeley through the 70s and as active in arts, poetry, politics and protest. Their workmanship was impeccable with a great graphic quality, good paper, and all the hallmarks typical of “fine printing” but Zephyrus Image was the furthest thing from some highbrow poetry press churning out stuffy chapbooks. Much of their work was distributed directly to public as a kind of dada-inflected street performance or disguised as "real" products or advertisements and surreptitiously placed on racks in stores or slid into stacks of yet-to-be sold newspapers. Their work has a directness and clarity that pointedly contrasts with the loose trippiness of the psychedelic era and both Myers and Teter were equal opportunity satirists who clearly enjoyed tweaking the freaks as much as the squares. Myers’ linocut image of a fist rising from a tableau of Molotov cocktails, dynamite and machine guns is among the most famous images produced by the press, and was worked in to various other designs later as a kind of calling card for the press. Myers’ intent using this incendiary imagery was at least partly ironic, obliquely pointing out that the ubiquitous calls for liberation issued from Berkeley were almost always seeking armed struggle in someplace far away. Liberate Berkeley is one of the imprint’s earliest printings, so early in fact that Myers and Teeter had not yet finally settled on the spelling of the press’s name, which is printed “Zephyrous” here. Untitled [All Power to the People] was printed not long after.

$250 each or $400 for the pair. Inquire

BABYCAKES

2011-05-26T09:47:00.003-04:00

RUSCHA, Ed. Babycakes. New York: Multiples Inc., 1970.

12mo.; illustrated throughout in black and white; hole punch bound with pink ribbon; green velour letter on blue wrappers. Fine.

Huh?

First edition; one of 1,000 copies. Ed Ruscha’s contribution to the Artists + Photographs box set published by Multiples Inc. in 1970 is one of his most perfectly realized books. Babycakes begins with an image of a baby captioned with its weight and then continues with a series of snapshots of cakes, all likewise captioned with their weight. Ruscha takes the convention of listing a newborn’s weight in announcing the birth of a child and skews it so it becomes a kind of tongue-in-cheek information art, then wraps it up in a cute blue, pink, fuzzy-lettered package. It is not only the odd mixing of the vernacular with the conceptual that is so characteristic of Ruscha, but the attention paid to the book as a physical object, and the typically deadpan delivery of it all. The book has that inexplicable thing, that “kind of Huh?,” that Ruscha said he was always looking for.

$3,500 inquire

Warhol: S + H Green Stamps poster

2011-05-23T10:01:00.019-04:00

Andy Warhol

S + H Green Stamps

22 ¾ x 22 ¾ inches

Offset print on paper

Philadelphia ICA, 1965

A perfectly preserved copy of the folded poster invitation Warhol created for his first museum exhibition. The exhibition was organized for the Philadelphia ICA by its new curator, Sam Green, who until a few months earlier had been a frequenter of Warhol’s Factory and a young gallery director at Dick Bellamy’s legendary Green Gallery in New York. That Green and the gallery had the same name was purely coincidental, but Green was happy to let people think he owned the place and the famously shy Bellamy didn’t mind either if it meant he was called upon less often to leave his back office and schmooze with the clientele. Green’s gregariousness, combined with the impression he gave of being a young gallery owner, rather than mere employee, allowed him to advance quickly in art and society circles and this in turn helped him get the ICA job while still only 25-years-old.

Warhol had made several paintings with S+H Green Stamps as a motif in 1962 and one of these works was included in the ICA exhibition, but it was primarily as a sly nod to the resourceful young curator that Warhol chose to use the image again as the invitation for the show. Green seized the opportunity and with his natural gift for self-promotion, used it for all it was worth. He had 6,000 copies of the invitation printed, an extravagant number, given that the space could hold only 300, and used some of those that were not mailed out as wallpaper, and as the backdrop for pre-exhibition publicity photos. Then, on the day of the opening, Green made a grand entrance alongside Warhol and Edie Sedgwick wearing a tie silk-screened with the same S+H Green Stamp motif.

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NEW LOCATION: 265 Canal Street

2011-05-18T16:53:00.000-04:00

6 Decades Book opens this weekend at its new location, a loft space at 265 Canal Street on the sixth floor. The space will be shared with the Boo-Hooray Gallery (currently featuring a sound installation by Angus MacLise). To those who read this site regularly, apologies for the recent lack of new content--we've been preoccupied moving the shop, but in the new space there will be a great deal of new material and selected pieces will be featured here in coming weeks. In the meantime, please drop by the shop. We are open Thursday-Saturday 11-6 (additional days coming soon).

ZAJ: Ephemerality as a Means of Resistance

2011-04-15T11:19:00.000-04:00

Hidalgo, Juan. Viaje A Argel. Madrid: Zaj, 1967.

8vo; illustrated throughout with montages of photo and text printed in green monochrome; printed wrappers; spine and front cover a bit age toned. Near fine.

First edition. Inscribed on the eleventh page to an American fan Juan Hidalgo had met during a concert and performance tour of North America in Spring, 1973: Para Bob, Maria y Sam, Desde Batalla Del Salado, 1. Con Amor, Juan. Madrid, 18-5-73.

Juan Hidalgo and Walter Marchetti (who is credited as editor of this volume) were avant-garde composers and intermedia artists who, along with writer Jose Luis Castillejo, were the leading figures in the Spanish ZAJ movement. ZAJ was closely aligned with the ideas of John Cage (who was in turn ZAJ's biggest supporter) and loosely affiliated with such parallel movements as Fluxus in the United States and Gutai in Japan. In Spain, which was under Franco's fascist rule, ZAJ's avant-garde aesthetics also developed, by necessity, a political dimension not present elsewhere. ZAJ's devotion to chance, to unscripted and unrepeatable modes of working, and to radical combinations of media which blurred the line between performance and reality, made for an art that could elude authoritarian constraint. ZAJ performances were underground events, staged "without permission" on trains, in public squares, private homes, and other improvised settings. Ephemerality became a means of resistance. This book combines graphics, photos, and text (in Spanish, Italian, English, Arabic and other languages) into a whole that is part concrete poem, part musical composition. Its blank areas are meant to represent the censorship of the fascists while also evoking Cage's concept of Silence--the conflation of these ideas is quintessentially ZAJ.

A very scarce publication, and genuinely rare inscribed.

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