Jean-Michel Frank (1895-1941) was the most influential French interior designer of the 1930′s. He is known for minimalist interiors decorated with walls of straw marquetry, sofas of creamy leather, screens of mica, and plain-lined but sumptuous furniture. Frank was inspired by the abstraction of primitive arts, bringing to the 1930s an original style whose elegance won him the loyalty of a wealthy and elite clientele. Frank’s style of understated luxury perfectly complemented the Picassos and Braques his clients hung on their walls.

In 1915 he was informed the death of his two elder brothers, French soilders on front line, and then his fathers subsequent suicide. Four years later he lost his mother who had been in an asylum for several years. In the first part of the 1920′s he traveled the world. It was in Venice that he first met the cosmopolitan society, and the Parisian decorator Adolphe Chanaux. Together in 1932 they opened their shop in Paris. During the winter of 1939 he left France for South America and the United States. Tragically in 1941, he committed suicide while in New York. His subtle sense of understatement and minimal design is still a influence on interior designers even to this day.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Limited printing, one of four thousand printed copies. 216 pages profusely illustrated in b&w and color. Text in English and French. Designed by Andree Putman, and with photographs by Jacques Boulay. A beautifully produced monograph authored by Jean-Michel Frank’s former studio Partner Adolphe Chanaux. Some wear and minor chipping to dust jacket, otherwise very good. A rare and sought after monograph.

Bookseller Inventory # 18331

$650

Jean-Michel Frank
Chanaux, Adolphe

Publisher: Editions Du Regard
Publication Date: 1980
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Design, Featured Items, Interior Design ·

Humes was a co-founder of The Paris Review in 1953, along with Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton. He studied writing with Archibald MacLeish at Harvard, graduating in 1954. A Scientist, novelist, activist, inventor, filmmaker, architect, prophet, healer, madman, Harold “Doc” Humes was, by all accounts, an exhilarating, infuriating and terrifyingly brilliant man. He participated in Leary’s LSD experiments and later continued his own experiments, guiding the first LSD experiences of several famous literary friends. He reinvented himself as a “guru on campus”, a self-appointed visiting professor, and spent the next 20-odd years living on or near-campus at Columbia, Princeton, Bennington, and Harvard.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. First printing of this now cult-classic title set during a build-up to an inevitable war, in which the US Navy assigns an all black crew to work under three white officers on an insanely dangerous munitions base located on a tiny Caribbean island. Wear and tanning to dust jacket edges. Previous owners stamp to front free end page, otherwise very good. A scarce copy from a legendary forgotten novelist!

Bookseller Inventory # 23011

$225

Men Die
Humes, H.L.

Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 1959
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Featured Items, Literary First Editions ·

Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy (born February 20, 1927) is a French aristocrat and fashion designer who founded The House of Givenchy in 1952. He is famous for having designed much of the personal and professional wardrobe of Audrey Hepburn, as well as clothing for clients such as Jacqueline Kennedy.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. SIGNED BY HUBERT DE GIVENCHY on the half title page! 208 pages. Profusely illustrated in full color. The house of Givenchy was founded in 1952 by designer Hubert de Givenchy. His style was marked by innovativeness, contrary to the more conservative designs by Dior. Audrey Hepburn, later the most prominent proponent of Givenchy’s fashion. Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, The Duchess of Windsor, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis were other famous customers of Givenchy’s. A very nice copy, bright and clean.

Bookseller Inventory # 23040

$600

The Givenchy Style
Mohrt, Francoise

Publisher: Vendome Press
Publication Date: 1998
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First U. S. Edition

· Category: Fashion, Featured Items, Recent Acquisitions, Signed & Inscribed ·

Richard Avedon revolutionized fashion photography starting in the post-World War II era and redefined the role of the fashion photographer. He became internationally recognised for his photography during his long career at Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, The New Yorker, and beyond. Although Avedon first earned his reputation as a fashion photographer, his greatest achievement has been his reinvention of the genre of photographic portraiture.  Avedon’s pictures continue to bring us a closer, more intimate view of the great and the famous. the portraits are often well lit and in front of white backdrops, with no props or extraneous details to distract from their person.

Description: Hard bound limited edition with pictoral boards, no dust jacket as issued. Published on the occasion of the November – December, 2001 exhibition. Folio measuring 12 x 15 inches. The Avedon images presented here, many for the first time, were made in Paris for Harper’s Bazaar during the 1950s. What is particularly special about this presentation is that the images are being reproduced to the exact scale of the engraver’s prints made for Avedon by the master printer Andre Gremola, and are uncropped, on their original mounts, with all of the artist’s notations on both front and back. Thus, they provide a remarkable portrait of the working methods of one of the most influential fashion photographers in history. OUT OF PRINT AND SOUGHT AFTER!

Bookseller Inventory # 22483

$650

Made in France
Thurman, Judith and Avedon, Richard

Publisher: Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Publication Date: 2001
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, As Issued
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Fashion, Featured Items, Photography ·

Steve Wheeler was an American abstract painter who in part founded the movement known as the “Indian Space Painters”. The movement began in the 1930′s by a small group of painters living in New York, Steve Wheeler, Robert Barrell and Peter Busa, were among it’s earliest members. Steve Wheeler would go on to be the group’s most famous member. Influenced by Native American art and spirituality, much of his work is totally abstract with puzzle-like compositions and wild animation. In many ways the Indian Space Painters may be considered the forerunners of Abstract Expressionism.

Description:
INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY STEVE WHEELER to the Russian born painter, teacher and poet NAHUM TSCHACBASOV  “TO – NAHUM TSCHACBASOV : IN APPRECIATION OF OUR MUTUAL INTRESTS AND LONG FRIENDSHIP – STEVE WHEELER” Quarter-bound in blue/brown paper covered boards with red cloth spine. No jacket, in publishers slipcase, as issued. Front panel has multi-coloured silk screen decoration and gilt stamped titles. Gilt stamped titles on spine. Frontispiece and 13 photo-silk screen print & silk screened end papers. Glassine tissue guards. Preface by the artist. A work of prose by John Storck, and an essay by Adam Gates. #21 in a limited edition of 513 copies. Spectacular with rich photo silk-screen printing on heavy stock paper. A entirely beautiful edition! Rare!

Bookseller Inventory # 20947

$2500

Hello Steve
Wheeler, Steve

Publisher: Press Eight, New York
Publication Date: 1947
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, As Issued
Edition:

· Category: Art, Featured Items ·

Joan Miró was among the first artists to develop automatic drawing as a way to undo previous established techniques in painting, and thus, with Andre Masson represented the beginning of Surrealism as an art movement. However, Miró chose not to become an official member of the Surrealists in order to be free to experiment with other artistic styles without compromising his position within the group. He pursued his own interests in the art world, ranging from automatic drawing and surrealism, to expressionism and color field painting. Spanish painter, whose surrealist works, with their subject matter drawn from the realm of memory and imaginative fantasy, are some of the most original of the 20th century. Miró was born April 20, 1893, in Barcelona and studied at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts and the Academia Galí. His work before 1920 shows wide-ranging influences, including the bright colors of the Fauves, the broken forms of cubism, and the powerful, flat two-dimensionality of Catalan folk art and Romanesque church frescoes of his native Spain. He moved to Paris in 1920, where, under the influence of surrealist poets and writers, he evolved his mature style. Miró drew on memory, fantasy, and the irrational to create works of art that are visual analogues of surrealist poetry. These dreamlike visions, such as Harlequin’s Carnival or Dutch Interior, often have a whimsical or humorous quality, containing images of playfully distorted animal forms, twisted organic shapes, and odd geometric constructions. The forms of his paintings are organized against flat neutral backgrounds and are painted in a limited range of bright colors, especially blue, red, yellow, green, and black. Amorphous amoebic shapes alternate with sharply drawn lines, spots, and curlicues, all positioned on the canvas with seeming nonchalance. Miró later produced highly generalized, ethereal works in which his organic forms and figures are reduced to abstract spots, lines, and bursts of colors.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. First printing of the French edition with 11 ORIGINAL FULL COLOR LITHOGRAPHS, including 5 double page printed by Mourlot, Paris. 233 pages. Text in French. Cream cloth boards with title in black on spine edge. FOLD OUT LITHOGRAPH DUST JACKET in protective Brodart cover. RARE!.

Bookseller Inventory # 20795

$650

Joan Miro Lithographies
Leiris, Michel  &  Mourlot, Fernand

Publisher: A. C. Mazo
Publication Date: 1972
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Art, Featured Items ·

Description: Visionaire is a multi-format album of fashion and  art produced in exclusive numbered limited editions. Visionaire has always offered a forum for famous and emerging artists from around the world, as well as personalties, designers, art directors & image makers. THE PREMIER ISSUE OF THIS ICONIC ART & DESIGN MAGAZINE Complete folio in original plastic envelope. Contributions by Stephen Gan, Ruben Toledo, Bill Cunningham, and others. Fashion design by Dirk Van Saene, Todd Oldham, Geoffrey Beene, Claude Montana, Isabel Toledo, Marc Jacobs, Randolph Duke, Martine Sitbon, Isaac Mizrahi, Helmut Lang, and others. Photography by Dean Chamberlain, Stephen Gan, Josef Astor, Bill Cunningham, Pierre & Gilles. The wrapper shows minor creasing to the spine & is slightly cocked, all inserts near fine & complete. Handsomely produced & now scarce

$2000

VISIONAIRE : SPRING

Publisher: Visionaire
Publication Date: 1991
Binding: Folio
Book Condition: Very Good

-VISIONAIRE HOME-

· Category: Art, Fashion, Featured Items ·

For three years beginning in the winter 1938 Walker Evans and Helen Levitt rode the Lexington Avenue Local, Evans with his 35mm camera hidden between the buttons of his coat. He surreptitiously photographed the subway passengers in his quest to document the “real”. Evans had developed his style of photography while working for the Farm Security Administration, photographing the rural poor of the deep south. Like Dorothea Lang and Margaret Bourke White, Walker Evans created some of the most iconic images of the depression era. He attempted to show his subjects without their “mask on”, in the still moments of quiet introspection when their guard was left down.
The photographs lay unpublished for 25 years. In 1966 ninety were chosen from over six hundred and paired with an essay written by James Agee in 1941. Evan’s body of work went on to inspire a generation of photographers. Each portrait captures a real person within a singular moment, as unique as a thumb print or a snowflake. Together they represent Evan’s objective view of reality, preserving these lost moments in time.

Description: Hard bound first printing, no dust jacket. Black cloth boards with titles in white. 178 pages. Text by James Agee. Some minor rubbing to boards, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight. One of the most important pgotography books of the 20th century. Scarce!.

Bookseller Inventory # 17149

· Category: Featured Items, Photography ·

Gerhard Richter began working with artists such as Sigmar Polke and Georg Baselitz. Their work, and Richter’s in particular, began to have an impact in Germany, and eventually international art circles. Richter’s beliefs are credited with refreshing art and rejuvenating painting as a medium during a period when many artists chose performance and ready-made media. Together with Polke and Fischer-Lueg, Richter formed a group called the Capitalist Realists. The Capitalist Realists were satirical, often deriving subject matter from print media. Richter began to see art as something that had to be separated from art history; he believed that paintings should focus on the image rather than the reference, the visual rather than the statement.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Published on the occasion of the April 22, 1991 exhibition. 91 pages. A very nice copy od a scarce exhibition catalogue.

Bookseller Inventory # 17021

$400

Gerhard Richter: Mirrors

ISBN: 0947564349
Publisher: Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London
Publication Date: 1991
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

· Category: Art, Featured Items ·

Before her suicide in 1971 Diane Arbus was pioneering a new documentary approach to photography. Her subject was to come from the fringes of society – nudists, transvestites, giants, midgets, and those who have by their very nature have been marginalized by the greater society.  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 freakish her subjects might seem, 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 

Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph

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 ·

Raphael Mazzucco spent the first several years of his career shooting in Milan and Paris before moving to New York. His arrival onto the fashion scene was heralded by immediate attention from such clients as Bergdorf Goodman and Ralph Lauren. Raphael has shot for Elle and Vogue magazines, as well as Dutch, Io Donna, Spoon, Arena, Marie Claire, GQ, Playboy and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit. His photographs have appeared on the cover of four consecutive Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues. His Guess campaigns over the past several years have been regarded as some of the most successful advertising that Paul Marciano has commissioned to date. Raphael continues to define the look of popular culture, shooting recording artists for Sony Music, Atlantic Records, EMI and Capitol Records. In 2005, Victoria’s Secret commissioned Raphael to shoot their 10 year anniversary coffee table book entitled Sexy. His 2006 editorial cover story for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit entitled Cover Girl Beach Party has been the inspiration for their 25th Anniversary hardcover image book entitled Exposure. American Photo has hailed him as “One of the top 50 photographers in the world to watch” Raphael’s groundbreaking work is known for its diversity of style and its richly textured lighting and composition. His vision extends beyond photography; painting and sketches often make their way into his photographs.

Description: Hard bound in black cloth. In publishers slipcase, as issued. Photographic paste down to both front and rear boards of book and slipcase. Text by Carine Roitfeld of Paris Vogue. Limited edition of 1000 printed copies. LIMITED EDITION of 1000 printed copies. A very nice copy with only the most minor edge wear.

Bookseller Inventory # 18451

$375

Raphael Mazzucco Collected Art
Roitfeld, Carine and Mazzucco, Raphael

Publisher: Red World Editions
Publication Date: 2007
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, As Issued
Signed: Signed by Photographer
Edition: First Edition

Watch the Movie @

· Category: Featured Items, Photography ·

Lothar Baumgarten is a combination anthropologist, photographer, poet, storyteller, and installation maker. He has traveled in many a remote and outwardly inhospitable part of the world, aiming to live among its inhabitants as a concerned but invisible presence. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles commissioned Baumgarten to create a work that incorporated photo documentation. The focus was the artist’s research of the American railroad system. The work takes material form by integrating given structures into a complex whole and by creating a canon of references among individual, site-specific elements. — its tracks, bridges, signals, locomotives, rolling stock, stations, marshaling yards, logos, names and crossings on remote country roads. The photographs were later published along with eleven short stories in an artists’ book titled “Carbon.”

Deascription: Hard bound in dust jacket. 118 b&w and white color photographs. Published on the occasion of the Apr. 8 – Jun. 17, 1990 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles exhibition. INSCRIBED BY LOTHAR BAUMGARTEN in pencil on the limitation page ” For  H_ S_  21.7.93  N.Y.C  Lothar Baumgarten”.  Limited printing, 1 of 1750 copies. SIGNED Text pamphlet laid in at the rear.  Very minor wear to corners and edges of boards. Dust jacket shows wear , a few small chips and closed tears, otherwise very good.

A RARE MONOGRAPH!

$1500

Carbon
Baumgarten, Lothar

Publisher: Pentti Kouri / The Museum of Contemporary Art, L. A.
Publication Date: 1991
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Signed: inscribed by Photographer
Edition: First Edition

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

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

$1600

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.

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 ·

Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) photographer & teacher, achieved international recognition for his almost 6,000 micro photographs of plants taken around 1890. His teacher, Moritz Meurer, assigned him to make a collection of natural forms as inspiration. He wanted to show that all forms in art have their beginning in the natural forms of nature. He considered his work as a teaching tool, not as independent work of art. Each photograph was taken with the same clinical manner to provide a clear and objective documentation of structure. The objectivity and lack of sentimentality in his work readily connect him to such New Objectivity photographers as August Sander, Albert Renger Patzsch, The Bechers, Andreas Gursky and others.

“The plant never lapses into mere arid functionalism;
it fashions and shapes according to logic and suitability,
and with its primeval force compels everything
to attain the highest artistic form.”
-Karl Blossfeldt

Description: Hard bound in green cloth with title stamped in gilt on front cover and spine and missing original dust jacket. The first edition published 1928 was in a smaller format, this 2nd edition is considered the most attractive. Photographs by Karl Blossfeldt. Introduction by Karl Nierendorf. Text in German. 148 pages, with 120 black and white plates printed in rich photogravure. Limited edition of 6000 hardbound copies. Blossfeldt’s photobook masterpiece(Archetypes of Art). Some wear and minor soiling to cloth boards. Foxing to endpages. Sunning to spine edge, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding still strong.

RARE HARD BOUND FIRST PRINTING OF
A SOUGHT AFTER PHOTOGRAPHY CLASSIC!

“Urformen der Kunst” is one of the most influential photographic books ever to have been published!

$1500

Urformen Der Kunst
Blossfeldt, Karl

Publisher: Verlag Ernst Wasmuth, Berlin
Publication Date: 1929
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket
Edition: First Printing of the Second Edition

· Category: Featured Items, Photography ·

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

$1650

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 ·

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.

Description: Dior Autobiography. 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 wear to edges of cloth boards, otherwise good.

Bookseller Inventory # 20780

$200

Christian Dior et Moi
Dior, Christian

Publisher: Bibliotheque Amiot Dumont
Publication Date: 1956
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Fashion, Featured Items ·

Kenro Izu used special large format cameras of his own design, and carried over 200 pounds of gear into the still-treacherous Cambodian jungle. He created rich platinum prints, printing directly from his own large scale negatives. The reproductions in this book are themselves rich, the blacks saturated and gradation of grays without limit. Profusely illustrated with beautiful printed photographs of the architecture of Angkor.

Description: SIGNED AND DATED on the title page by Kenro Izu. Paperback copy with some tanning to the edges white wrappers. Previous owners name to front fee end page, otherwise fine. Interior clean and binding tight. A very scarce signed edition.

Bookseller Inventory # 17073

$500

Light Over Ancient Angkor
Izu, Kenro

Of the many sacred sites that Kenro Izu has photographed, Angkor Wat has undoubtedly become his most significant spiritual and psychological subject. During a series of photography trips to Cambodia’s Angkor monuments, Izu became deeply moved by his encounters with children disfigured by landmines and desperate need of medical care. As a way of returning something to Cambodia he founded a not-for profit organization, Friends Without A Border and built Angkor Hospital for Children in 1999. He has been responsible for its operation since.

Publisher: Friends Without a Border
Publication Date: 1996
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed

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

New York based photographer Bruce Davidson began his career as a freelance contributor for Life Magazine in the 1950′s. In Paris met Henri Cartier-Bresson, later Davidson would join him as a member of Magnum Photos. Throughout the 1960′s he helped document the civil rights movement, but it was in 1963 when he was awarded the first grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for photography that his status as a great photographer was crystallized. He spent the next several years documenting the human struggle within one city block in Upper Manhattan; East 100th street in Harlem.

He senses things others have no time or inclination to bother with, and he is driven to set down before others what he senses, by no means do these photographs take advantage… instead they show daily effort that human beings make to get by, to find food and love and yes, find a kind of meaning in the midst of ruinous social and economic circumstances.”

This copy was inscribed by Davidson to the photographer Paul Ickovic for his help and oversight in the publication process. A nice warm inscription from one esteemed photographer to another.

Description: Hard bound first printing with unclipped dust jacket. Inscribed by Bruce Davidson to the photographer Paul Ickovic on the half titlepage ” To Paul Thank you for making this book reproduction possible Bruce Davidson 79′ “. Very minor tanning to spine edge of white dust jacket, otherwise very good. A nice photographic association copy.

Bookseller Inventory # 13746

$900 

Bruce Davidson Photographs
Davidson, Bruce

Publisher: Agrinde
Publication Date: 1978
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Inscribed by Photographer
Edition: 1st Edition

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

Paul Ickovic was born in Czechoslovakia in 1944. He has traveled the world extensively; recording his story through the photographs he takes. Ickovic returned to his homeland as a boy, only to leave again for Canada and Latin America before finally moving to the United States, where he acquired his education and found his calling as a photographer.  His photographs are included in many prestigious collections including the Museum of Modern Art and International Center of Photography in New York, the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris, and the National Gallery in Prague.

Description: Boldy signed by Ickovic on the titlepage. Lavishly illustrated with full page (14 1/2” x 10”) photographs. Foreword by David Mamet. Photographs in the tradition of Josef Koudelka and Henri Cartier – Bresson.  This copy as new still in publishers box, as issued.

Bookseller Inventory # 007480

$650

Kafka’s Grave and Other Stories
Ickovic, Paul  &  Mamet, David

Bibliographic Details

Publisher:  Okapi Editions, New York
Publication Date:  1987
Binding:  Hard Cover
Book Condition:  As New
Dust Jacket Condition:  No Jacket, As Issued
Signed:  Signed by Author
Edition:  First Edition

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

Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely began experimenting with movement in space, and in 1944 he began equipping machine-like sculptures with electric motors and making them spin around at high speed. He moved to Paris in 1951, where he participated in Robert Rauschenberg’s international happenings and associated with the casual artist group ‘Nouveaux Réalistes’, exhibiting works in their exhibitions. He had his first one-man exhibition three years later, in 1954, at the Galerie Arnaux. Tinguely’s fantasy machines with pre-programmed elements of chance, the so-called ‘Métamatics’, are quite spectacular. His welded iron constructions represent ironic attacks on the purpose of the era of technology.

Description: Paperback published on the occasion of the opening of the 1987 art exhibition held by the Palazzo Grassi, Venice . Foldout from the exhibition in pocket affixed to inside of rear wrapper. Profusely illustrated, with many plates in full color. Some very minor wear to wrappers, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory #12475

$200

A Magic Stronger Than Death
Pontus, Hulten and Tinguley, Jean

Publisher: Bompiani, Milano
Publication Date: 1987
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Art, Featured Items ·

Sarah Moon, who was born in Britain has worked as a model, film-maker, and lastly a fashion photographer. Her carefully staged images are mysterious, nostalgic, and surreal. Her photographs often utilize sepia tones or muted color, diffused by heavy grain. Her work evokes a fairy tale, encapsulated within a dream like softness.

Description: Hard bound first printing inscribed on the half title page by Sarah Moon to the photographer Paul Ickovic and his wife “To Paul and Sarah These IMPROBABLE MEMORIES as a souvonier. with love Sarah Moon”. Some very minor wear to dust jacket, otherwise very good. A nice association copy!

Bookseller Inventory # 13777

$900

Improbable Memories
Moon, Sarah

Publisher: Matrix
Publication Date: 1981
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First U.S. Edition

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

The Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was, from 1732 to 1917, the official residence of the Russian Tsars. Situated between the Palace Embankment and the Palace Square, adjacent to the site of Peter the Great’s original Winter Palace, the present and fourth Winter Palace was built and altered almost continuously between the late 1730s and 1837, when it was severely damaged by fire and immediately rebuilt. The storming of the palace in 1917 became an iconic symbol of the Russian Revolution.

Description: Hard bound in publishers pictoral clam shell box. No dust jacket, as issued. 299 pages profusely illustrated with watercolors from the collection of the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. Aqua boards show minor rubbing. Interior clean and binding strong. Wear to edges and corners of publishers clam shell box, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory # 18823

$500

The Winter Palace: Saint Petersburg
Alain De Gourcuff Editeur, Paris

ISBN: 2909838137
Publisher: Alain De Gourcuff Editeur, Paris
Publication Date: 1995
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket

· Category: Architecture, Featured Items ·

Description: Hard bound in blue cloth with mylar dust jacket. (missing original dust wrapper) 136 pages. Illustrated with over 100 black & white portraits taken in rural Arkansas by the native photographer Mike Disfarmer. Born Mike Meyer he was an eccentric recluse who was taken by the idea that at birth a tornado had carried him away from his birth parents only to deposit him in Arkansas with the Meyer family. Since he was not a Meyer or a farmer, he explained, he would be a “dis” farmer, and so he legally changed his name. His work is a unique and quite remarkable set of portraits from the period. Some minor wear to boards, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory # 18490

$250 

Disfarmer: The Heber Springs Portraits, 1939-1946
Scully, Julia

ISBN: 0891690034
Publisher: Addison House
Publication Date: 1976
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Featured Items, Photography ·

Ellsworth Kelly studied at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, from 1941 to 1943. After military service from 1943 to 1945, he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1946 to 1947. The following year, Kelly went to France and enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under the G.I. Bill. In France, he discovered Romanesque art and architecture and Byzantine art. He was also introduced to Surrealism which led him to experiment with automatic drawing and geometric abstraction.

Kelly abstracts the forms in his paintings from observations of the real world, such as shadows cast by trees or the spaces between architectural elements. In 1950, Kelly met Jean Arp and that same year began to make shaped-wood reliefs and collages in which elements were arranged according to the laws of chance. He soon began to make paintings in separate panels that can be recombined to produce alternate compositions, as well as multipanel paintings in which each canvas is painted a single color. During the 1950s, he traveled throughout France, where he met Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Alberto Magnelli, Francis Picabia, and Georges Vantongerloo, among other artists. His first solo show took place at the Galerie Arnaud, Paris, in 1951.

Kelly returned to the United States in 1954, living first in a studio apartment on Broad Street, and then at Coenties Slip in lower Manhattan, where his neighbors would through the years include Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, Fred Mitchell, James Rosenquist, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. Kelly continued to develop and expand the vocabulary of painting, exploring issues of form and ground with his flatly painted canvases. His first solo show in New York was held at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956, and three years later he was included in Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1958, he also began to make freestanding sculptures. He moved out of Manhattan in 1970, set up a studio in Chatham, and a home in nearby Spencertown, New York. Kelly’s first retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1973.

Description: Papeback catalogue raisonne 1949 – 1985. Published on the occasion of the 1987 touring exhibition. 201 pages, profusely illustrated.

Bookseller Inventory # 17354

$125

The Prints of Ellsworth Kelly: A Catalogue Raisonne, 1949-1985
Axsom, Richard H.

Publisher: Hudson Hills Press, Manchester, Vermont, U.S.A.
Publication Date: 1987
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Very Good

· Category: Art, Featured Items ·

Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) was the premier style arbiter of the 1930s – a favourite designer for women who made the best-dressed list, of female sports heroes, and of film and theatre actresses. This book takes a comprehensive look at the work of this startling and innovative Paris fashion designer. “Shocking!” explores the Italian-born designer’s career from its modernist beginnings in the 1920s to the closing of her salon in 1954. Author Dilys Blum discusses in detail Schiaparelli’s impact on and relationship with the American fashion industry, the foundation of her great success. She also addresses how Schiaparelli’s early designs were acclaimed for the architectural quality of her silhouettes and her use of unconventional materials. After 1935 the designer’s collections took on a new identity, partly from her close relationship with the Parisian artistic community, which included Man Ray, Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau, and Alberto Giacometti.Illustrated with over 300 captivating reproductions of Schiaparelli clothing and accessories, this book also includes contemporary photos of her designs by such key fashion photographers as Horst and Cecil Beaton and sketches and stills from the films and plays with which she was associated. Together the text and illustrations celebrate a masterful designer who defined dressmaking as an art rather than a profession.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Illustrated with over 300 captivating reproductions of Schiaparelli clothing and accessories. This book also includes contemporary photos of her designs by such key fashion photographers as Horst and Cecil Beaton and sketches and stills from the films and plays with which she was associated. A very nice copy, bright and clean.

Bookseller Inventory # 22490

$195

Shocking: the Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli
by Blum, Dilys E.

Publisher: Rizzoli, New York
Publication Date: 1986
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Fashion, Featured Items ·