Black Cat Books

Now Located @ #2491 Main Street Bridgehampton
(across the street form Starbucks @ the monument intersection of the Sag turnpike, Route 27 and Ocean road)
I would like to thank all of our customers for their patronage over the last 10 years and hope they will join us in Bridge.

· Category: About ·

Andy Warhol was a painter, printmaker, filmmaker and the leading figure in the POP Art movement. Appropriating images from popular culture, Warhol created many paintings that remain icons of 20th-century art, such as the Campbell’s Soup Cans, Disasters and Marilyns. He was known in the late sixties and early seventies as resident host at his studio, The Factory. Warhol also made several 16mm films which have now become underground classics. The core of his autobiography reads like a collection of sound-bites, moving amongst the anecdotes and aphorisms. His descriptions of inner thoughts and perceptions are candid and unblinking, ranging from moments of elucidation to mildly eccentric digressions on the seemingly trivial and banal. Warhol talks about love, sex, beauty, fame, work, money, success, New York, Americana; and mostly about himself.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. SIGNED BY ANDY WARHOL in black marker with his initials on the front free endpage. Quarter orange cloth over yellow paper covered boards. Some minor edge wear, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory # 19310

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From a to B and Back Again
by Andy Warhol

$250

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Publication Date: 1975
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Featured Items, Signed & Inscribed ·

Christian Dior was arguably the most important fashion designer of the twentieth century. One of a handful of designers who dominated 20th century fashion along with Coco Chanel, Paul Poiret & Yves Saint Laurent. His career was launched in 1947 with his very first collection, in which he introduced the “New Look“. Featuring rounded shoulders, a cinched waist, and very full skirt, the New Look celebrated ultra-femininity and opulence. After years of military and civilian uniforms, sartorial restrictions and shortages, Dior offered not merely a new look but a new outlook. While the House of Dior is still a thriving business today, Dior’s untimely death in 1957 left the fashion world without a great dictator of style. Christian Dior designed under his own name for only a decade, but his influence will be felt for many years to come.

TRUE FRENCH FIRST EDITION INSCRIBED BY CHRISTIAN DIOR!
( and signed with his customary “Tian Dior” )

Description: Hard bound with 1/2 jacket wrapped around, as issued. 238 pages with 12 B/W photographs. Text in French. Moire-type pink endpapers. Gray cloth boards with title stamped in black to upper spine edge. Preface de Pierre Gaxotte de l’Academie Francaise. Some minor soiling and wear to edges of cloth boards. Band shows two minor chips, otherwise good. A RARE COPY - inscribed by one of the most influential designers of the last century!

Bookseller Inventory # 19327

Price $950 | BUY NOW

Christian Dior et Moi
Dior, Christian

Publisher: Editons Amiot-Dumont, Paris
Publication Date: 1956
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Fashion, Featured Items, Recent Acquisitions ·

Irving Penn’s images have defined several generations of fashion and portrait photography. Penn is perhaps best known for his fashion photography beginning with his notable 1950s series of the Paris fashion collections. He came to define the new look for magazines. By placing models against plain backdrops, Penn removed the familiar indicators of space or scale and allowed fashion to stand alone as the subject of his images. Many fashion photographs point to changes in aesthetic sensibilities as well as to changes in fashion itself, and Penn’s routine use of minimal, flat backgrounds can be viewed as the introduction of the modern age of fashion photography. Penn, who was born in 1917 in New Jersey, worked in New York as a graphic artist in the 1930s, and spent a year painting in Mexico before starting work at Vogue magazine in the early 1940s. His photographs have been widely exhibited, included in major retrospective exhibitions, and are in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Irving Penn’s work cn be defined by his unique sophistication shot with a soft natural light. He has also become known for his unusual arrangements, photographed with great detail and clarity. While his prints are always clean and clear, Penn’s subjects vary widely. Many of his photographs have now bwcome important works within the modernist photography canon. His still life compositions are skillfully arranged assemblages of food or objects; at once spare and highly organized, the objects are raised to a graphic perfection, articulating the abstract interplay of line and volume.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Published on the occasion of the June 19, 2205 exhibition held by the National Gallery of Art. Beautifully produced tritone plates! A very nice copy, bright and clean.

Bookseller Inventory # 18342

SOLD

Irving Penn
Greenough, Sarah

ISBN: 0300109067
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication Date: 2005
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket, missing original slipcase.183 pages. Introduction by Alexander Liberman. Romemary Blackmon collaborated in the writing of captions and text. First Edition of Penn’s first book. Eight essays in photographs and words by Irving Penn. A nice copy of a scarce photography monograph.

Bookseller Inventory # 17803

Price $350 | BUY NOW

Moments Preserved
Penn, Irving

Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Publication Date: 1960
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Featured Items, Photography ·

click on the image to link

· Category: About ·

Before her suicide in 1971 Diane Arbus was pioneering a new documentary approach to photography. She has become an important figure in the photography world based on her intimate and sympathetic images of the fringe members of our society. Her portraits of freaks, dwarfs, twins, transvestites, nudists, and even the mentally retarded, shocked an audience in the 1970’s the same way Robert Frank had done in the 1950’s. Her portraits have the power to both provoke and disturb. We are drawn in, brought to stare, though we feel we should not. The viewer soon realizes that no matter how much her subjects seem not to fit in, they are in fact uniquely perfect in their own way.

Description: Hard bound with price clipped dust jacket. Meets the point of issue - ” 2 girls with identical raincoats “. White boards show some foxing near edges and corners. Minor tanning to edges of jacket. Previous owners gift inscription on front fixed endpage, and hidden under inside flap of dust jacket ” For my mother who understands”. An important monograph on a photographer who is still gaining in popularity.

Inventory # 16730

$2500 | BUY NOW

Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph

“For my mother who understands”
-Previous owners gift inscription to front fixed end page

ISBN: 0912334401
Publisher: Aperture, Millertown, New York
Publication Date: 1972
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition:Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Featured Items, Photography ·

Internationally recognized photographer Peter Beard first visited Africa in 1955. After graduating from Yale, he returned to Africa and worked at Kenya’s Tsavo Park, during which time he photographed and documented the demise of over 35,000 elephants and 5000 Black Rhinos. The work done there led to the publication of The End of the Game books.

“When I first went to Kenya in August 1955, I could never have guessed what was going to happen. Kenya’s population was roughly five million, with about 100 tribes scattered throughout the endless ‘wild—deer—ness’ - it was authentic, unspoiled, teeming with big game - so enormous it appeared inexhaustible. Everyone agreed it was too big to be destroyed. Now Kenya’s population of over 30 million drains the country’s limited and diminishing resources at an amazing rate: surrounding, isolating, and relentlessly pressuring the last pockets of wildlife in denatured Africa.” —Peter Beard

Description: INSCRIBED BY PETER BEARD WITH DRAWING. No Jacket, as issued. First printing of the 1977 revised edition published on the occasion of the I.C.P. exhibition in New York. Very good hardback as issued without dust jacket. The gray boards have some sunning and wear. This is a lovely edition of this rare Beard classic & the most difficult Beard title to find SIGNED & INSCRIBED!

Bookseller Inventory #19114

Price $1600 | BUY NOW

The End of the Game: The Last Word from Paradise A Pictorial Documentation of the Origins, History and Prospects of the Big Game in Africa
Beard, Peter H.

ISBN: 0385131240
Publisher: Viking
Publication Date: 1977
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed by Author
Edition: 1st Edition Thus

· Category: Featured Items, Photography, Signed & Inscribed ·

John Chamberlain after serving in the navy attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1951 to 1952. At that time, he began making flat, welded sculpture, influenced by the work of David Smith. Starting in 1955 Chamberlain studied and taught sculpture at Black Mountain College, near Asheville, North Carolina, where most of his friends were poets, among them Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Charles Olson. By 1957, he began to include scrap metal from cars in his work, and from 1959 onward he concentrated on sculpture built entirely of crushed automobile parts welded together.

Chamberlain’s work was widely acclaimed in the early 1960s. His sculpture was included in The Art of Assemblage at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1961. From 1962, Chamberlain showed frequently at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, and in 1964 his work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale. While he continued to make sculpture from auto parts, Chamberlain also experimented with other mediums. From 1963 to 1965, he made geometric paintings with sprayed automobile paint. In 1966, the same year he received the first of two fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, he began a series of sculptures of rolled, folded, and tied urethane foam. These were followed in 1970 by sculptures of melted or crushed metal and heat-crumpled Plexiglas. Chamberlain’s work was presented in a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1971.
In the early 1970s, Chamberlain began once more to make large works from automobile parts. Until the mid-1970s, the artist assembled these auto sculptures on the ranch of collector Stanley Marsh in Amarillo, Texas. These works were shown in New York, and in 1973 and at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, in 1975. His next major retrospective was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 1986; the museum simultaneously co-published John Chamberlain: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculpture 1954–1985

Description: Hard bound first printing with dust jacket. Catalogue raisonne to the year 1985. Over 800 pieces! 239 pages profusely illustrated. Published in association with the Museum of Contempoary Art, L.A. A very nice copy of a scarce hard bound edition, bright and clean. Bookseller

Inventory # 16413

$600 | BUY NOW

John Chamberlain: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Sculpture, 1954-1985
Sylvester, Julie

ISBN: 0933920571
Publisher: Hudson Hills Press
Publication Date: 1986
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Art, Featured Items ·

Egon Schiele (1890–1918) (pronounced SHE-luh) was an Austrian painter, protégé of Gustav Klimt, and a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. Schiele’s work is noted for its intensity, twisted body shapes and expressive line. His paintings and drawings mark the artist as an early exponent of Expressionism. His work is often erotic or pornographic, sometimes with a disturbing focus on sex & death. His life was marked with controversy. In 1911, Schiele met the seventeen-year-old Valerie “Wally” Neuzil, who lived with him in Vienna and served as model for some of his most striking paintings. Schiele and Wally left Vienna and went to a small town in southern Bohemia. Soon however they were driven out of the town by the residents, who strongly disapproved of their lifestyle. In 1912, the artist was imprisoned for a short period of time because of his way of painting very young nude models that was thought to be immoral. The magistrate made a point of personally burning one of Schiele’s drawings before the assembled crowd. 1915 marked a turning-point in Schiele’s life. Some time in the previous year he had met his future wife Edith, and by April 1915 he was engaged to her. In the fall of 1918 Edith fell ill with Spanish influenza and died. Almost immediately Egon came down with the same sicknes and died three days later, he was only 28.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. An exhaustive work - 718 pages, with over 3275 illustrations! Previous owners name in ink, otherwise fine.

Bookseller Inventory # 18731

SOLD

Egon Schiele the Complete Works Including a Biography and Catalogue Raisonne
Kallir, Jane

ISBN: 0810938022
Publisher: Abrams
Publication Date: 1990
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition:Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition:Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Recently Sold ·

Walter Gropius belongs to the select group of architects that massively influenced the international development of modern architecture. With the Bauhaus in Dessau, Gropius created one of the most influential architecture and design schools of the 20th century. During the few years of its use as a school, until it was closed down by the Nazis in 1932, it had also become a center for the creative forces of its time. The rise to power of Hitler drove Gropius out of Germany. He eventually settled in Boston, where he taught at Harvard and MIT. Born and educated in Germany, Walter Gropius worked under the German architect Peter Behrens from 1907 untill 1910, his fellow employees at this time included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. As the founding director of the Bauhaus, Gropius made inestimable contributions to his field, to the point that knowing his work is crucial to understanding Modernism. His early buildings, such as the Bauhaus Building, with it’s use of glass and industrial features, are still indispensable points of reference. The Bauhaus revolutionized art training by combining the teaching of the pure arts with the study of crafts. Gropius aimed to unite art with technology, and he educated a new generation of designers and architects to reject historical precedents and adopt the ideology of modern industry. For the Bauhaus, Gropius wrote the curriculum, designed the building, and he assembled its faculty: an extraordinary group that included Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer.

Description: Hard bound first printing bound in yellow cloth with red lettering. No dust jacket. Text in German. 221 pages, profusely illustrated. #12 in the series -bauhausbucher. Very progressive architecture for the time, showing the most early ideas of modernism in architecture. The most sought after title in the series. Some wear and minor soiling to cloth boards. Interior clean and binding tight. RARE hardbound copy!.

Bookseller Inventory # 16908

Price $1650 | BUY NOW

Walter Gropius : Bauhaus Bauten Dessau
Gropius, Walter

Publisher: Albert Langen Verlag
Publication Date: 1930
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition:Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Architecture, Featured Items ·

What is most memorable about the austere, white-walled villas that he built after World War I in and around Paris is their cool beauty and their airy sense of space.
-Witold Rybczynski

Le Corbusier was a visionary. He believed that architecture had lost its way. Art Nouveau, all curves and sinuous decorations, had burned itself out in a brilliant burst of exuberance; the seductive Art Deco style promised to do the same. The Arts and Crafts movement had adherents all over Europe, but as the name implies, it was hardly representative of an industrial age. Le Corbusier maintained that this new age deserved a brand-new architecture. It was to become known as the International Style : raise the building on stilts, mix in a free-flowing floor plan, make the walls independent of the structure, add horizontal strip windows and top it off with a roof garden.

In 1907, he traveled to Paris, where he found work in the office of Auguste Perret, the French pioneer of Reinforced concrete. Between October 1910 and March 1911, he worked near Berlin for the renowned architect Peter Behrens where he met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. His career spanned 8 decades, with his buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, and one each in North and South America. He was also an “Urban planner, painter, sculptor, writer, modern furniture designer.

Description: Hard bound first printing with dust jacket. A very nice copy, bright and clean.

Bookseller Inventory # 13600

Price $500 | BUY NOW

The Villas of Le Corbusier, 1920-1930: With Photographs in the Lucien Herve Collection
Benton, Tim

ISBN: 0300037805
Publisher: Yale
Publication Date: 1987
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Architecture, Featured Items ·