6decadesbooks

Memorial Day Mash-up

2013-05-23T13:37:00.000-04:00

To kick the summer off right, we've prepared a seasonal picnic: a couple light bites, some comfort fare, and a few exotic delicacies, all in-season, locally sourced, sustainably harvested, free range, non-GMO, and hormone-free...
Click here for a catalog featuring works by Jenny Holzer, Jasper Johns, Martin Kippenberger, Jannis Kounellis, Living Theatre, Olaf Nicolai, Stephen Shore and LaMonte Young.

Memorial Day Mash-up

10 x 10 American Photobooks

2013-04-30T10:16:00.000-04:00

Our
selection for the ICP's 10 x 10 American Photobooks project is representative of the sort of artists’ books
that we focus on at 6 Decades Books. In each of these
titles, the artist has used photographic imagery in the process of making a
book which is itself an artwork, not a book where the main point is to
reproduce a series of individual images. These are all compelling photobooks,
but in several cases the artists who made them are not generally thought of as
photographers, or the photographic content consists primarily of pre-existing,
or anonymous images. Mike Kelley and Paul Schiek, whose titles are the
chronological bookends of the list, both created their works by editing and
curating images, rather than making new ones. It is not great photography that
interests me so much as the way an artist engages with the book as a medium,
using the form to shape content and convey an artistic vision so that the book
as a whole communicates in a way that no single image could.

Mike Kelley. The Uncanny. (Sonsbeek, 1993).

[link to Kelley's essay: Playing With Dead Things]

Ryan McGinley. Black Jack. (Self-published, 2007).

Jason Polan. The Land Can Handle It. (Parts & Labor, 2012).

Roe Ethridge. Spare Bedroom. (Self-published, 2004).

Jeff Brouws. Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations. (Self-published, 1992)

Shannon Ebner. Signature. (Wallspace, 2008).

Sam Falls. Paint Paper Palms. (Dashwood, 2011).

Wade Guyton. Zeichnungen für ein kleines Zimmer. (Walther König, 2011).

Paul Schiek. Dead Men Don't Look Like Me. (TBW, 2012).

Carrie Mae Weems. And 22 Million Very Tired & Very Angry People. (San Francisco Art Institute / Carrie Mae Weems, 1992).

March 2013

2013-03-17T22:22:00.002-04:00

We survived the Ides of March, and St. Patrick's Day... here's a brief listing of posters and ephemera by Duchamp, Kaltenbach, Kippenberger, Polke and Warhol.

February: New Location, New Catalog

2013-02-25T00:16:00.000-05:00

It was a busy January--two book fairs and a move--but we are happy to announce that our new location is now open for business. We didn’t move far, just down to the second floor in the same building: 265 Canal Street, suite #210. Click this link for our February catalog, a sampling of new things now available in the new space, including Inflammatory Essays by Jenny Holzer, two great Yves Klein items, a Paolozzi poster, more Mai ’68 material, and John and Yoko and Flux...

LA Art Book Fair

2013-01-31T11:34:00.001-05:00

Sunny and 75 degrees in Los Angeles today... sure glad we came out for Printed Matter's LA Art Book Fair. If you're in town, come join us. The Fair is at LA MoCA's Geffen Center. The opening is tonight (Thursday, Jan. 31) from 6-9 pm, and continues Friday, Saturday, with the big finale on Super Book Fair Sunday! (I don't know who is playing but I'm sure it'll be a helluva contest). We're in room J. Here's a preview of our booth:

Bi-Coastal Book Fairs

2013-01-20T22:43:00.001-05:00

6 Decades Books is kicking off the New Year by participating in two books fairs, in two weeks, on two coasts. This week come see us at the EAB Fair. Next week we're in Los Angeles for Printed Matter's first annual LA Art Book Fair at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. We have put together a brief catalog as a preview of a few favorites we will be showing.

EAB INFORMATION

24 - 27 January 2013

Thursday to Saturday 11 AM to 7 PM

Sunday Noon to 5:30 PM

LOCATION

The Altman Building, Enter 125 West 18th Street, NYC between Sixth and Seventh Avenue

L.A. ART BOOK FAIR INFORMATION

The fair is free and open to the public.

Preview: Thursday, January 31, 6-9 pm

Friday, February 1, 11-5 pm

Saturday, February 2, 11 am-6 pm

Sunday, February 3, 12 pm-6 pm

LOCATION

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

152 North Central Avenue

Los Angeles, CA 90012

END OF DAYS

2012-12-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

As if there weren’t already enough to worry about, as 2012 draws near its conclusion, the Mayan long-count calendar predicts… The End. Sure, this interpretation has been debunked. But, still… In light of this, we at 6 Decades Books found ourselves compiling a list with a slightly apocalyptic undertow. So, whether you're concerned about the Mayan calendar, or the fiscal cliff, are still unsettled after recent anomalous weather events, or are just worried about the rapidly dwindling number of holiday shopping days, we hope you’ll find some brief solace as you look over our most recent listing. Enjoy! The End of Days…

BLACK FRIDAY!!!

2012-11-22T18:30:00.000-05:00

To honor the-day-after-Thanksgiving, aka Black Friday, the unofficial holiday on which Americans celebrate retail commerce with a variety of odd rituals (gathering in Wal-Mart parking lots at 3am, grappling with strangers over reduced-price cashmere, et cetera), 6 Decades has prepared a brief catalog in which posters, advertisements, magazines, and records meet Pop, Op, Punk and Pictures at the intersection of art and commerce.

Click the link above for the full listing. The catalog includes a poster from Barbara Kruger’s Pictures and Promises exhibition in 1981, four LPs designed by Andy Warhol, a complete run of Punk magazine (including two hard-to-find supplements), a poster each by Bridget Riley and Ray Johnson, and the advertisement Ruscha placed in Artforum to promote Twentysix Gasoline Stations.

Waiting for the lights to go back on...

2012-10-31T23:33:00.000-04:00

With most of lower Manhattan (including the 6 Decades shop) and the NYC transportation system at an unprecedented standstill, we are grateful to be among the lucky ones with electricity, heat, and wi-fi at home, enabling a semblance of normalcy, but our thoughts are with our friends and colleagues in Chelsea, the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, and elsewhere as they assess the damage to their homes and businesses.

This was supposed to be an email asking you to come visit our booth at the E/AB Fair this weekend, but with the flooding and power outages caused by Hurricane Sandy, the fair had to be cancelled. We look forward to the E/AB Fair every year, especially so this year because of the strong roster of booksellers mixed in with the print dealers. We have decided to issue an E/AB Fair preview catalog despite the cancellation. In putting it together we’re reminded how fortunate we are to be in a business that not only allows us to work with the books, art, and ephemera that we love, but to regularly mingle with the fellow book and art enthusiasts who are our colleagues and customers. We’re very sorry not to be seeing everyone in person this year.

Polan: Print Portfolio and Exhibition

2012-10-04T12:01:00.000-04:00

Polan: A Slow Walk. Press Release

PROSPECTUS: Print Portfolio info and images

Purchase the portfolio here

EXHIBITION list with IMAGES

NY Art Book Fair

2012-09-25T00:15:00.001-04:00

6 Decades Books will be at the NY Art Book Fair from September 27-30th. The fair opens Thursday evening with the preview from 6-9 pm. We'll be in the same spot as last year: booth P04 on the first floor. If you've been to NYABF before, you know it can get a bit insane, so here's a floor plan to help you find where you're going. Check out the fair's web page for hours, location, etc. Here are two links where you can preview of some of the things we'll be featuring this year:

NYABF preview catalog
Martin Kippenberger: Eleven Posters

"Scrappy!" --N.Y.Times

2012-08-17T04:28:00.000-04:00

6 Decades is featured in today's New York Times. Randy Kennedy's article takes a tour of NYC's art-focused bookstores, with nine stops along the way, including Printed Matter, Dashwood, Harpers' Books, and a "scrappy newcomer" by the name of 6 Decades. Hey Randy, Thanks! Glad you like our moxie. Pick up a copy of the August 17th issue and turn to page C20, or read it online here: Drop In, and By Appointment. And be sure to click on the slideshow that accompanies the article: Galleries of the Page.

We are also releasing our August email list of books and ephemera today. There are flyers from the 1980s East Village art scene, a scarce New York Dada periodical, two Bruno Munari books, and a notorious Ed Sanders/Andy Warhol publication with a title that's not-fit-to-print (at least not in the Times, that is).

Click here for the PDF: August listings
more images here: August photo set

Ryan McGinness. Women: Sun-Stained Symbols

2012-07-25T11:36:00.000-04:00

Please come see the exhibition I have curated: new work by

Ryan McGinness.

> Exhibition images

> McGinness: recent press

Nine artists' books (and records)

2012-06-08T11:30:00.000-04:00

6 Decades first online catalog includes work by Jack Goldstein, Bruce Nauman, Chris Burden, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, and others. Click here: 6 DECADES CATALOG, JUNE 2012

Warhol's first piece of Pop ephemera

2012-05-14T16:59:00.000-04:00

Andy Warhol
Soup Can Pin
[NY: Self-published/Stable Gallery],1962

Warhol's first New York gallery exhibition of his Pop work was at the Stable Gallery. It opened November 6, 1962 and included such now iconic works as Do It Yourself, Baseball, Marilyn Diptych, Gold Marilyn Monroe, 129 Die, Close Cover Before Striking, Red Elvis, Troy Donahue, and Dance Diagram as well as paintings of Soup Cans, Coke Bottles, and Dollar Bills. This pin was given out to guests on opening night, and is thus Warhol's earliest piece of Pop ephemera. It was both an act of shameless self-promotion--the sort of thing that would have been expected at a sales convention or grocery store product launch but jarringly out of place at an uptown gallery, and, given the derisive response the Soup Can paintings had received when shown at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles a year before, a deliberate provocation.

The show attracted considerable attention--Henry Geldzahler hosted a party in Warhol's honor after the opening, attended by Norman Mailer and other notables, but critical response generally ranged from those who were appalled, to those who found the work effective, though essentially lightweight, as in Michael Fried's write up in Art International:

"Of all the painters working today in the service - or thrall - of a popular iconography Andy Warhol is probably the most single minded and the most spectacular. His current show at the Stable appears to have been done in a combination paint and silk-screen technique... The technical result is brilliant, and there are passages of fine, sharp painting as well... At his strongest - and I take this to be in the Marilyn Monroe paintings - Warhol has a painterly competence, a sure instinct for vulgarity (as in his choice of colors) and a feeling for what is truly human and pathetic in one of the exemplary myths of our time that I for one find moving; but I am not at all sure that even the best of Warhol's work can much outlast the journalism on which it is forced to depend."

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Ray Johnson: A Book About Death

2012-05-01T23:25:00.000-04:00

Johnson, Ray. A Book About Death. Page 3: 8AbABY, September 10, 1963. New York: Ray Johnson, 1963.

Single leaf printed in black, lightly toned. Near fine.

First edition. A page from Ray Johnson's legendary A Book about Death, which was issued in single pages over the course of three years, from 1963-1965, and (usually) mailed to a friend. Page 3 depicts an unbuckled watchband placed across one shear of a pair of scissors, a negative rendering of a 'Nancy' comic strip, and the inscrutable text 8AbABY (apparently a complex wordplay based on the Ukrainian word for "dance," which frequently appeared on posters in the Lower East Side neighborhood where Johnson lived in 1963).

Johnson, Ray. A Book About Death. Page 9: "Cara Men Mara Nda," July 8 1964. New York: Ray Johnson, 1964.

Single leaf printed in black, thrice folded. Fine.

First edition. Page nine from A Book about Death, is dated July 8, 1964; it depicts a man holding binoculars, a Carmen Miranda-type, and (again) some intriguing, though ultimately inscrutable, wordplay…

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Polke, from Sao Paulo Bienial, 1975

2012-04-06T17:07:00.001-04:00

Sigmar Polke

Day by Day They Take Some Brain Away.

Cologne: Weinand KG, 1975.

4to.; printed in color throughout; unbound sheets, folded; printed bellyband. Very good.

First edition; one of 800 copies. This artist's book is formatted like a broadsheet newspaper and was published in conjunction with Polke's participation in XIII Bienal de São Paulo, in 1975. Polke was West Germany’s representative to the Biennial and was awarded the its grand prize for his work, which included this publication as part of a mixed media series of paintings and prints entitled Day by Day. The series drew upon imagery from German mass media, especially photos that were politically charged, risque, or which evoked popular notions of “the primitive.” Polke combines it all into a kaleidoscopic swirl of heavily manipulated and overprinted imagery. It is the collective consciousness portrayed as a sickly and overheated delirium.

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Mike Kelley: The Uncanny

2012-03-20T20:42:00.000-04:00

Mike Kelley: The Uncanny. Arnhem: Sonsbeek, 1993.

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

First edition. Signed and inscribed by Mike Kelley in year of publication. For his contribution to Sonsbeek 93 Kelley chose not to create an installation, but to curate an exhibition, albeit an exhibition bearing all the hallmarks of Kelley’s aesthetic. It included artworks by Duchamp, Nauman, Bellmer and many others alongside waxworks, medical and scientific photographs, and anonymous objects with both high and (mostly) low cultural pedigrees. This book accompanied the exhibition and includes Kelley's extraordinary essay, Playing with Dead Things. The Uncanny became a legendary work and was later restaged in London and Vienna, confirming its status as one of the epochal exhibitions of the past 20 years. Alex Farquharson, writing in Frieze about this second staging called Kelley’s essay, “a remarkable piece of cultural synthesis that makes most academic writing on art seem pale, confined and reiterative.” Following his tragic suicide it was this book I kept thinking about. I found the essay and read it again--though not intended as an explication of his own work, it is, in terms of Kelley’s thinking and his essential concerns as an artist, perhaps his most revealing piece of writing.

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First Publication of Richter's Atlas

2012-03-08T16:33:00.001-05:00

Gerhard Richter.
Atlas van de foto's en schetsen.
Utrecht: Hedendaagse Kunst, 1972.

8vo.; fully illustrated in b+w; printed leaf with exhibition information loosely inserted; printed wrappers.

First edition. The original publication Richter’s Atlas accompanied the first exhibition of what has become perhaps his single most significant artwork, the evolving, ever-expanding compendium of imagery that Richter began to amass in 1964 by collecting photos printed in newspapers, magazines and commonplace sources. Richter’s process gained momentum as he added new categories of material, including his own photos and drawings, as well as postcards, anonymous snapshots, landscape images, historical likenesses, pornography, architectural renderings, technical drawings and much else, all in an effort to encompass the vast array of visual data that has become increasingly ubiquitous. These images, affixed to a few hundred panels and arranged on the wall in grids, comprised the first exhibition of Atlas and this artist’s book--which consists of page after page of visual information without any text, even page numbers, to guide the viewer--was its first published form. Atlas has been exhibited on numerous occasions throughout the world and new publications have also followed, but even as the number of panels and images has expanded tenfold, both the form of the installation and of the book has remained essentially that which was set forth her by Richter in 1972.

Richter has stated on several occasions that Atlas is governed by no overriding logic or polemical position. It is not an image bank, an archive, or a system of typologies. It is, as the name implies, a cartographic effort. Yet it is a mapping project that remains necessarily unfinished. For Richter, this incompleteness is key; as he sees it, the central dilemma confronting the contemporary artist is the Sisyphean inevitability with which any aesthetic vision will ultimately fail to transform a world that is increasingly defined by the massive proliferation of visual imagery. Thus Atlas is both the visual and the existential context that frames Richter’s artistic output and, as such, it is one of the truly crucial documents of contemporary art. [Number 49, Butin. Gerhard Richter: Catalogue Raisonné of the Editions, 1964-2004. Hatje Cantz, 2005].

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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…

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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.