Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an English author, feminist, publisher, and is regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society, and probably the best known member of the Bloomsbury Group. In 1917 along with Leonard Woolf she founded the Hogarth Press, which subsequently published Virginia’s novels along with works by T.S. Eliot, Sigmund Freud, and others. Throughout her life, Woolf was plagued by periodic nervous breakdowns and associated illnesses. Though this instability often affected her social life, her literary productivity continued with few breaks until her suicide on 28 March 1941.  After the final attack of mental illness Woolf put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse near her home where she drowned. Woolf’s suicide, like Sylvia Plath’s, have much colored the interpretation of both her work and her life.

Description:
Hard Bound In Black Cloth With Silver Titles. Missing original dust jacket. Wear To Boards With Spine Edges Chipped. Corners Bumped. Previous Owners Bookplate Affixed To Front Fixed End Page. A Comic Novel Of Manners Concerning Five Young People Struggling With Issues Of Love And Work, Engagement And Marriage, In London In The Early Years Of The Twentieth Century. It Is The Most Linear And ‘Plotted’ Of Woolf’s Novels. A Good Working Copy of Woolfe’s second novel. Scarce!

Bookseller Inventory # 24604

SOLD

Night And Day
Woolf, Virginia

Publisher: Duckworth, U.K.
Publication Date: 1919
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Jawaharial Nehru was was the first Prime Minister of India, serving from 1947 until 1964. Nehru was a charismatic and radical leader, who advocated complete independence from the British Empire. In the long struggle for Indian independence, Nehru was eventually recognized as Gandhi’s political heir.

Description: SIGNED BY NEHRU on the first white page “Jawaharial Nehru – Oct. 1949”. Hard bound with dust jacket. Charming illustrations by Shakuntala Masani throughout. First written for the children of India, this edition adapted for American children. The story of Nehru from the time he was a small boy until he became the first Prime Minister of India. Contents include chapters – Jawaharial Sees the World – Kamala and Kashmir – First Taste of Jail – President of the Congress – At the foot of the Himalayas – and others. Green cloth boards show some minor wear to corners and edges. Minor age toning to pages, otherwise fine with interior clean and binding tight. Dust jacket shows some wear and toning, with two small closed tears, otherwise very good. A increasingly scarce title and Quite rare signed by Jawaharial Nehru.

Bookseller Inventory # 26101

SOLD

Nehru’s Story
Masani, Shakuntala & Nehru, Jawaharial

Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication Date: 1949
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed by Author
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Erich Maria Remarque was a German author best known for his novel All Quiet on the Western Front. His was born on July 22, 1898, in Osnabrück, Germany, the only son of a bookbinder. The family was poor and moved at least eleven times during Remarque’s childhood. During World War I he was drafted into the army. While recovering in a German hospital from wounds suffered during the war, Remarque worked on his first novel. Like many other authors of his generation the horrors of World War would permanently alter his viewpoint. Around this time he switched to the original French spelling of his last name. The immense success of the landmark anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front in 1929 established Remarque as an author. This novel helped define a new genre of antiwar & anti-military fiction that grew rapidly in Germany in the late 1920s. The pacifism in his work and their strong sense of sadness & suffering made them very unpopular with the Nazi government, who subsequently banned his work in 1933. In 1938, in fact, Remarque was stripped of his German citizenship. Remarque arrived in the United States in 1939, and later became an American citizen.  Arc de Triomphe (1946), the story of a German refugee doctor in Paris, France, just before World War II, returned Remarque’s name to the best-seller lists. Remaque’s heartfelt indignation about human suffering made him a spokeman against fascism in all forms. His literary career opened the door of world of  Hollywood, where he worked briefly. His numerous lovers included Marlene Dietrich & Natasha Paley Wilson. He counted among his friends Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo, and many other Hollywood stars of the day.

Description: INSCRIBED BY ERICH MARIA REMARQUE on the front free end page “With all good wishes, Erich Maria Remarque – New York, 27 January 1946”. Hard bound, no dust jacket. Wear to blue cloth boards that show sunning and age toning to spine edge. Hinges weak, but holding well. interior clean. Previous owners book plate affixed to front fixed end page, otherwise very good. Translated from the German by Walter Sorell and Denver Lindley. Published in 1945, Arch of Triumph is a about stateless refugees  life in Paris before World War II. It was the second book of his, after All Quiet on the Western Front, to appear on bestseller lists worldwide. It was made into a feature film in 1948. A RARE signed copy!

Bookseller Inventory# 28710

Arch of Triumph
Remarque, Erich Maria

SOLD

Title: Arch of Triumph
Signed: Inscribed by Author
Publisher: D. Appleton – Century Co., New York
Publication Date: 1945
Binding: Blue Cloth HC + Gilt Lettering
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Dj
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Ludwig Bemelmans was an Austrian-American author, an internationally known gourmet, writer and illustrator. He is remembered today for his Madeline books, six of which were published from 1939-1961. Throughout the 1920s Bemelmans struggled to become a recognized artist, while employed by the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. During this time he wrote and drew more than any other period of his life.  The Hotel Splendid, a thinly disguised version of the Ritz, defined him for an adult readership much the same way Madeline did for his younger audience. Besides his beloved Madeline books, Bemelmans was a contributor to Vogue, Town and Country, The New Yorker, Fortune, & Harper’s. Bemelmans also did many cover illustrations for The New Yorker, as well as Broadway set design, and several projects in Hollywood. He painted the murals at the New York’s Carlyle Hotel which are quite famous.

Description: HAND SIGNED AND NUMBERED BY LUDWIG BEMELMANS Hard bound “in the in the silk damask draperies of a famous New York Hotel”, with paste down title to spine edge. No dust jacket, as issued. #220 in a Limited First Edition of 245 numbered copies for sale. Some minor wear to edges and corners of silk cloth over boards, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight. The Hotel Splendide is a thinly disguised version of the Ritz Hotel, brimful of anecdotes, adventures, love tales, murder tales, and droll tales, from the limitless memory and imagination of a man who for many years looked out from his post behind the potted palms with the eyes of an artist and the heart of a poet. Illustrated throughout with the Author’s inimitable drawings. A scarce copy of the signed limited edition.

Bookseller Inventory # 27178

SOLD

Hotel Splendide
Bemelmans, Ludwig

Publisher: Viking
Publication Date: 1941
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, As Issued
Signed: Signed by Author
Edition: 1st Edition, Limited #220/245

· Category: Sold ·

Edward St. John Gorey was an American writer and artist noted for his macabre pen-and-ink drawings of beady-eyed Edwardian characters. He was first noticed in The New Yorker in 1959. His work has been described simultaneously as both an artist who wrote and a writer who drew. By the age of 20, Edward Gorey was studying French Literature at Harvard where he was befriended by future poet Frank O’Hara, who called Gorey  “the oddest person I’ve ever seen”. One thing that Edward Gorey was decidedly fond of was ballet. He spent 30 years attending very nearly every performance by the New York City Ballet. His costume design for the Broadway production of “Dracula” won a Tony Award in 1978. Mr. Gorey also wrote at least 90 books and illustrated 60 others. Gorey left the bulk of his estate to a charitable trust benefiting cats and dogs, as well as other species including bats and insects.

Description: A wonderful story about Jack from Cornwall, and how he defeated the giant that lived there. One single sheet of paper folded 9 times to form a 2 x 3 inch booklet. Volume four in the lucky mini-book series put out by Scholastic. A rare Edward Gorey title! Illustrated by Gorey in orange and black. Some wear and a small stain, otherwise fine.

Bookseller Inventory # 11635

SOLD

Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: 1973
Binding: Soft Cover
Book Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Walker Evans was one of the 20th century’s most influential photographers. For three years beginning in the winter 1938 he rode the Lexington Avenue Local along with the photographer Helen Levitt, 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 unique 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.

Description: First Edition. Hard bound in Dust jacket. Stated “First Printing R”on the copyright page. 178 pages. Published in association with the Riverside Press, Cambridge. Wear to dust jacket that shows several large chips and tears, now protected in clear removable Brodart cover. Introduction by James Agee. An important collection of Evans’ photographs taken on the New York subway. Errata slip present. Interior clean and binding sound. RARE!

Bookseller Inventory # 49259

· Category: Sold ·

William Klein is often cited as among the fathers of street photography. Klein is a New York born photographer and film-maker, who in the 1950s and ’60s, used unconventional techniques that jolted the photography world. Klein’s work was considered revolutionary for its extensive use of wide-angle and telephoto lenses, natural lighting and motion blur. He worked as a fashion photographer for Vogue throughout these years, thereby financing his personal projects – photography books and film. In 1956, a 28-year old William Klein arrived in Rome to assist Federico Fellini on his film Nights of Cabiria. Filming was delayed, and so Klein instead strolled about the city in the company of Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Moravia and other avant-garde Italian writers and artists who served as his guides. It was on these walks that Rome, a pioneering and brilliant visual diary of the city, was born. It has gone on to become one of the most celebrated photography books of the twentieth century.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Black cloth-covered boards with title stamped in white on spine edge. Photographs and text (in English) by William Klein. Includes notes on the plates. 192 pages with numerous black and white photogravure plates richly printed in France. 11-1/8 x 8-7/8 inches. Divided into five sections (Roman Citizens, The Street, the Eternal City, Youth, and the Catholic World), Klein’s Rome is a collective and definitive portrait of a living, yet ancient city. This is William Klein’s second book, and one of his five signature ‘city books. Minor wear to corners and edges of boards. The edges of dust jacket show a few small chips and tears, no in clear mylar protective cover. Rare and sought after!

Bookseller Inventory # 26002

SOLD

Rome
Klein, William

Publisher: Viking Press
Publication Date: 1959
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Description: Hard bound, missing original plastic dust jacket . Burlap-covered book with text and design by Kaprow. Pages 145-208 are entirely text, printed on brown paper, while the rest of the 341 pages consist entirely of photographs printed on white. This scarce and important book, out of print for about 30 years, seriously examine and records the emergence of assemblage, environment and happening arts practiced in New York in the 1950’s through the mid 1960s. Allan Kaprow, one of this loose art movement’s seminal artists , edited the contents and designed the book as a reflection of the wild creativity of the Happenings. Lavishly illustrated with black and white photographs of the live events, the pictures appear both candid and documentary in nature and the pages are handsomely designed with an unorthodox graphic sensibility. Features Kaprow’s theory of the evolution of abstract expressionist painting into Proto-Pop, Neo-Dada, assemblage, environments and Happenings of the early 1960s. Documents works by Kaprow, Jean Follett, Robert Rauschenberg, Gloria Graves, Red Grooms, Robert Whitman, Jackson Pollock, Renee Miller, Martha Edelheit, Jim Dine, Clarence Schmidt, Yayoi Kusama, Claes Oldenburg, George Segal, Ay-o, George Brecht, Robert Watts, Jean Tinguely, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Wolf Vostell, Ken Dewey, Milan Knízák & othrers.  Extensive photographs of works and performances by photographers Robert R. McElroy and Peter Moore. A critical volume documenting the precursors of contemporary performance art. This copy shows wear to boards and some minor chipping to spine edges. A scarce and sought after volume!

Bookseller Inventory # 29406

SOLD

Assemblage, Environments & Happenings
Kaprow, Allan

Publisher: Abrams
Publication Date: 1966
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Missing original dust jacket
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Joe Brainard (1941–1994) was an American artist and writer of the 1960s New York School (an informal group of American artists active in the late 1950s & 1960s in New York City). Postmodern by nature, his work has a certain affinity with early Pop Art. Brainard’s work transformed the everyday into something revelatory. His prodigious and innovative body of work included assemblages, collages, drawing and painting, as well as designs for book and album covers, theatrical sets and costumes. Brainard moved to New York City in the early 1960s, he quickly met a galaxy of literary and artistic stars who became his friends, such as Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, Alex Katz, James Schuyler, Larry Rivers, Fairfield Porter, Andy Warhol, John Ashbery, Jasper Johns, as well as younger poets later associated with the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, such as Anne Waldman & Tom Clark. The breakthrough moment for Joe came when Larry Rivers picked him as a companion artist for a group show. His work is now held in the Permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Yale University Art Museum and many other major institutions. Brainard’s writings fall into several categories: memoir, diaries, Pop Art, short essays, and verbal-visual collaborations with himself. His I Remember has been described by Paul Auster as “a masterpiece . . . one of the few totally original books I have ever read,” a judgement shared by the many admirers.

Description: Paperback copy. Peach colored paper wrappers with title in navy blue. Designed by Ron Padgett. This is a collection of nearly fifty of the late Joe Brainard’s poems, essays, musings, and diary entries dating from between 1969 and 1971. Some minor damp staining, and sunning to spine edge. Wear to wrappers, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight. A scarce early book of Brainard’s writings!

Bookseller Inventory #008730

SOLD

Selected Writings 1962 – 1971
Brainard, Joe

Publisher: The Kulchur Foundation
Publication Date: 1971
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Paul Rand is acknowledged as one of the greatest graphic designers of all time. He began his career in an era when working by hand was a given. He developed a fresh and individual design language drawn from European art movements including Russian constructivism, de Stijl, and the Bauhaus. He is probably best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, and ABC. He taught design at Yale University, and was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1972.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Stated First edition. Illustrated with 94 half tone illustrations and 8 color plates. Intro by E. McKnight Kauffer. Some wear and age toning to dust jacket, now protected in removable Brodart mylar cover. Black cloth boards show some minor wear, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding sound.  A scarce and sought after design monograph!

Bookseller Inventory# 29409

SOLD

Thoughts On Design
Rand, Paul

Publisher: Wittenborn and Company
Publication Date: 1947
Binding: Hard bound with dust jacket
Book Condition: Very Good
Jacket Condition: Good

· Category: Sold ·

Peter Newell built a reputation in the 1880s and 1890s for his humorous drawings and poems. He often illustrated the works of other authors, most famously Lewis Carroll. Charles Ludwige Dodgson, better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician and photographer. He is best known for his famous writings, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, & The Hunting of the Snark.

Description: ALL 3 PETER NEWELL ILLUSTRATED LEWIS CARROLL EDITIONS! All First Editions of the Peter Newell illustrated edition. Hard bound with dust jackets in publishers box, as issued. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Published by Harper & Brothers, October 1901. Through The Looking Glass – Published by Harper & Brothers, October 1902. The Hunting of the Snark and Other Poems – Published by Harper & Brothers, October 1903. Ivory paper covers and olive green dust wrappers, with both lettered in gilt front and spine, with a small figures in gilt lower front. Gilt top stain and deckled page edges. Each a beautifully designed volume, with page borders decorated in sage green. Text block and illustrations clean and crisp. Very minor foxing to boards. Some fading to olive green dust jackets. Wear and foxing to publishers box, otherwise very good. It’s quite unusual to see all 3 of Lewis Carroll’s classics for sale together. Rare!

Bookseller Inventory # 28699

SOLD

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Through The Looking Glass
The Hunting of the Snark and Other Poems
Carroll, Lewis; Newell, Peter

Publisher: Harper and Brothers
Publication Date: 1901 -1903
Binding: Hard Bound with jackets in Publishers Box
Illustrator: Newell, Peter
Book Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Printings of the Peter Newell Edition

· Category: Sold ·

David Garnett was British Writer and a prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group. He ran a bookshop near the British Museum with Francis Birrell during the 1920s. He also founded (along with Francis Meynell) the Nonesuch Press. Garnett had relationships with several members of the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group including Francis Birrell & Duncant Grant. As a child, he had a cloak made of rabbit skin and thus received the nickname “Bunny”, by which he was known to friends and intimates all his life.

Description: Hard bound in dust jacket. First printing of the First U.K Edition. Some wear and age toning to dust jacket, otherwise very good, with interior clean and binding sound. A wonderful collection of notes from a diary kept while learning to handle an airplane. Rare!

Bookseller Inventory # 30053

SOLD

A Rabbit in the Air
Garnett, David

Publisher: Chattos & Windus, London
Publication Date: 1932
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First U.K. Edition

· Category: Sold ·

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 previous owner and dated June 29, 1966. Quarter-bound in blue/brown paper covered boards with red cloth spine. No jacket, in publishers slipcase, as issued. Front panel has multi-colored 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. #114 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

SOLD

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: Sold ·

Roy DeCarava, the child of a single mother in Harlem, turned that neighborhood into his canvas. He went on to become one of the most important photographers of his generation by chronicling the lives of its ordinary people and its jazz giants. DeCarava was the first African American photographer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest award given to artists by the United States Government. In one of the longest careers in the field of fine art photography, DeCarava produced five major books, including The Sound I Saw and The Sweet Flypaper of Life as well as landmark museum catalogs and retrospective surveys from the Friends of Photography and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Description: INSCRIBED BY ROY DECARAVA on the title page “August 21, 1982 For Cecil and Mercedes B__ Best Wishes and Thanks  Roy DeCarava”. Hard bound with dust jacket. Oatmeal cloth boards in full binding with black lettering on front and spine. 1982 Roy DeCarava book party and signing  card Laid in. Some wear to dust jacket edges, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding sound.

Bookseller Inventory #30343

Roy Decarava: Photographs
Alinder, James; Decarava, Sherry Turner

Publisher: Friends of Photography
Publication Date: 1981
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition:Very Good
Signed: Signed & Inscribed by Roy DeCarava

· Category: Sold ·

Frank Budgen was an English painter who might best be remembered for his friendship with the author James Joyce. Frank Budgen the English Painter and the Irish writer James Joyce met almost daily to walk, talk, and drink wine; their talk, among other things, was of the complex novel Joyce was then writing. This captivating study is the record of these conversations, and of a continuing friendship, as well as an acute critical commentary on the work itself. The Irish novelist and poet James Joyce is considered to be one of the most influential modernist writers of the first part of the 20th century. Ulysses is his landmark work in which the episodes of Homer’s Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominently the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. His fictional universe does not extend beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city.

Description: Hard bound in dust jacket. First printing of the First U.S Edition. (James Joyce and the Making Of Ulysses, With a portait of James Joyce and four drawings to to Ulysses by the author). Some wear and age toning to dust jacket. Minor chipping to edges of dust jacket, otherwise very good, with interior clean and binding sound. The only first-hand account available of the growth of Ulysses. An important work for Joyce collectors.

Bookseller Inventory # 30054

SOLD

James Joyce and the Making Of Ulysses by Frank Budgen
Budgen, Frank

Publisher: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas
Publication Date: 1934
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Helen Frankenthaler was an American Abstract Expressionist painter. She began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in important contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. She was included in the 1964 Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition curated by Clement Greenberg that introduced a newer generation of abstract painting that came to be known as Color Field. In 2001 she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. 

Description: SIGNED AND INSCRIBED TO PREVIOUS OWNER BY FRANKENTHALER. 1st Edition. Hardbound in dust jacket. Previous owner’s stamp on front free end paper. Dust jacket shows minor shelf wear, otherwise in very good condition. Rare!

Bookseller Inventory # 42921

Frankenthaler
John Elderfield

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·

Irving Penn defined several generations of fashion through his unique approach to 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 can 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 become 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: SIGNED by IRVING PENN on the Title page. Hard bound in dust jacket. Some minor wear to dust jacket, otherwise very good. A nice copy of a scarce signed photography monograph.

Bookseller Inventory # 61634
Passage
Penn, Irving

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are a married couple who create environmental installation art. Their works include the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, the 24-mile-long curtain called Running Fence in Marin and Sonoma counties in California, and most recently The Gates in New York City’s Central Park.

Although their work is visually impressive and often controversial as a result of its scale, the artists have repeatedly denied that their projects contain any deeper meaning than their immediate aesthetic. The purpose of their art, they contend, is simply to make the world a “more beautiful place” or to create new ways of seeing familiar landscapes. Art critic David Bourdon has described Christo’s wrappings as a “revelation through concealment.” To his critics Christo replies, “I am an artist, and I have to have courage … Do you know that I don’t have any artworks that exist? They all go away when they’re finished. Only the sketches are left, giving my works an almost legendary character. I think it takes much greater courage to create things to be gone than to create things that will remain.”

The temporary large-scale environmental works (both urban and rural environments) have elements of painting, sculpture, architecture and urban planning. Once the work of art has been read for what it really is, then the process preceeding the completion is easily understood. Nobody discusses a painting before it has been painted. Our projects are discussed and argued about, pro and con, before they are realized. To understand our work one must realize what is inherent to each project However there is an important diffrence between our works of art and the usual architecture and urban planning, we are our own sponsors and we pay for our works of art with our own money, never accepting any grants nor sponsors.

Description: SIGNED “Christo and Jeanne-Claude” on the half titlepage. Paperback copy with text in German and English. The Umbrellas, Wrapped Reichstag, and the Wall all reproduced in photographs and sketches. 160 pages. Minor wear to wrappers, otherwise very good.

Bookseller Inventory # 15401

SOLD

Christo and Jeanne-Claude Gasometer, Oberhausen 1999
Christo & Jean-Claude

· Category: Sold ·

Joan Didion  is best known for her literary journalism and memoirs. In her novels and essays, Didion explores the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos; the overriding theme of her work is individual and social fragmentation.  Slouching Toward Bethlehem is a collection of her feelings about the counterculture of the 1960s. The New York Times referred to it as “a rich display of some of the best prose written today in this country.” It has gone on to achieve a kind of “cult” status. A rare and sought after Modern first edition.

Description: Hard bound in dust jacket. First printing of the first edition stated on the copyright page. A nice copy with only the most minor wear to dust jacket edges. RARE!

Bookseller Inventory # 60541

Slouching Toward Bethlehem

Joan Didion

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·

David Hockney is considered one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. A painter, photographer, designer, he was also an important contributor to the Pop art movement of the 1960s. In the early 1980s, Hockney began to produce photo-collages, which he called “joiners”, first of Polaroid prints and later 35mm. His subject matter ranges from portraiture to still life, his style from representation to abstraction.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Stated first American edition. White cloth-covered boards with title stamped in black on spine; with photographically illustrated dust jacket. Photo-collages by David Hockney. Text by Lawrence Weschler. 288 pages with 122 four-color plates. Very minor edge wear, otherwise fine.

Bookseller Inventory # 46302

SOLD

Cameraworks
Hockney, David

Publisher: Alfred A Knopf
Publication Date: 1984
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First US Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Bruce Weber is widely known for his fashion ad campaigns and his collectible photography books.   His clients include Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Fitch, Versace … as well as Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Elle, Life, Interview, and Rolling Stone. Weber’s photographs are occasionally in color; however, most are in black and white or toned shades. They are gathered in limited edition books, that are rare and sought after.

Description: Paperback copy. True first edition. This book is by far the most sought after Bruce Weber title! A richly produced oversize elephant folio with pictorial printed wrappers, Rio is packed with Weber’s distinctive photographs from fashion to the erotic, all printed in a variety of colors and duo tone. unpaginated – 130 plates, including several gate-folds, & with drawings by Richard Giglio. On the beach, in restaurants, at nightclubs, in their rooms, Weber’s subjects exude a beauty which is at the same time casual and self-possessed. Many of these photographs were shown in a major exhibition at the Robert Miller Gallery, New York, in September of 1986. Some edge wear to wrappers, and rubbing to spine edge, otherwise a very nice copy. Interior clean and binding tight. Scarce!

Bookseller Inventory # 49124

SOLD

O Rio De Janeiro: A Photographic Journal
Weber, Bruce

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf
Publication Date: 1986
Binding: Soft cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: True First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Description: A classical & beautifully illustrated monograph, describing in detail the art of traditional Japanese packaging. Hard bound with original white glazed boards and dust jacket. Double-spread and tinted endpaper maps. Foreword by George Nelson. 203 pages profusely illustrated with rich black&white plates after photos by Michikazu Sakai. Text on the plates by Hideyuki Oka at end (also illustrated)

Bookseller Inventory # 44525

SOLD

How To Wrap Five Eggs: Japanese Design in Traditional Packaging
by Oka, Hideyuki

Publisher: Weatherhill
Publication Date: 1967
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First U. S. Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Irving Penn defined several generations of fashion through his unique approach to 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, 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 # 48437

SOLD

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: Sold ·

J. M. Barrie was a Scottish novelist, playwright, and the creator of Peter Pan. Peter and Wendy, his most famous work, was first published in the form of a 1904 play and again as a 1911 novel. Both versions tell the story of Peter Pan, a mischievous yet innocent little boy who can fly, and has many adventures on the island of Neverland that is inhabited by mermaids, fairies, Native Americans and pirates. An enduring children’s classic, rare and sought after.

Description: True 1st Edition with Scribner’s seal and “published October 1911” on copyright page. Hard bound. No dust jacket. Illustrated by F. D. Bedford. Boards show wear. Missing upper 1/3 of the back-strip. Pages show some toning. Previous owner’s inscription on front free end paper, otherwise in very good condition. Rare!

Bookseller Inventory # 48604

Peter and Wendy
J. M. Barrie

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·

Jack Kerouac was a pioneer of the Beat Generation, and a counterculture icon. He is remembered for his method of spontaneous prose. His novel On the Road was groundbreaking, and captured the spirit of its time as few others had. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drugs. Key figures in the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx) and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) are represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise. A rare and sought after modern classic!

Description: True 1st Edition. Hard bound. No dust jacket. Pages show some age toning. Boards show minor wear, otherwise in very good condition. Rare!

Bookseller Inventory # 48593

On The Road
Jack Kerouac

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·