Mr. Bumba Draws a Kitten

Pearl Augusta Harwood, Mr. Bumba Draws a Kitten
Hardcover, 32 pp., offset 3/2, 8.25 x 9.25 inches
Fifth edition
ISBN 0-8225-0107-4
Published by Lerner Publications

$11.00 ·

condition: very good, some wear on cover, interior unblemished, fifth edition, excellent reference copy.

Mr. Bumba was a painter of pictures. One day he wanted to make a picture of a kitten. But he could not remember just how to do it.

Animals, Cats, Illustration, Joseph Folger, Kittens, Lerner Publications, NOS, Pearl Augusta Harwood, Typography

The Portable John Latham

Antony Hudek and Athanasios Velios, The Portable John Latham
Softcover, 112 pp., offset 2/1, 170 x 250 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-9562605-5-0
Published by Occasional Papers

$22.00 ·

This book features a selection of documents from the personal archive of the late British artist John Latham (more information here), presently maintained in his last home and studio in Peckham, South London. Through reproductions of letters, invitation cards, exhibition reviews, performance scripts and images, the publication retraces Latham’s pioneering practice over six decades, from the late 1940s to his death in 2006. Published on the occasion of John Latham: Anarchive in association with Whitechapel Gallery, the book also includes an interview by Charles Harrison from 1968 and a glossary section.

Edited and introduced by Antony Hudek and Athanasios Velios.

In the painting and sculpture for which he is best known, Latham’s primary materials included glass, books, canvas and the spray gun. Developing alongside this concise visual language, from the mid-1950s onwards, was a cosmological theory, formulated through his art-making discoveries, that considered time and event to be more primary than the established means of understanding, based on space and matter. Termed Time-Base Theory (sometimes Flat Time Theory or Event Theory) it offers an ordering and unification of all events in the universe, including human actions, and allows an understanding of the special status of the artist in society.

Latham looked at the way in which human knowledge has become fragmented over time; split by divergent religions, ideologies and world-views. He identified the way in which the fields of science and art, despite emerging from a common root, have become separate and operate in isolation of one another: even within a field such as physics, there exist a large number of schisms and specialisations that further fragment our knowledge and understanding of the universe. John believed that this endless division would eventually lead to a kind of entropy and from that state, to a disintegration of society.

Antony Hudek, Art, Athanasios Velios, Charles Harrison, Criticism, Culture, Distribution, John Latham, Occasional Papers, Sara De Bondt, Science, Theory, Typography

General Idea, AIDS Stamps

General Idea, AIDS Stamps
Perforated paper, offset 3/0, 210 x 255 mm
Edition unknown, unsigned
1988 / 8804
Published by General Idea

$150.00 ·

Produced as a insert for Parkett No. 15 (1988, pp. 117-127). The artists also signed and numbered an edition (8805) of 200 off-prints of the AIDS Stamps as a fundraiser for amfAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research).

AA Bronson, amfAR, Art, Criticism, Felix Partz, General Idea, Jorge Zontal, Michael Tims, Parkett, Ronald Gabe, Slobodan Saia-Levy, Typography

I like your work: art and etiquette

Paper Monument, I like your work: art and etiquette
Softcover, 56 pp., offset 1/1, 4.25 x 8.5 inches
Second edition
ISBN 978-0-9797575-2-5
Published by Paper Monument

$8.00 ·

Paper Monument publishes its first pamphlet, I like your work: art and etiquette, with contributions from 38 artists, critics, curators, and dealers on the sometimes serious and sometimes ridiculous topic of manners in the art world.

The art world is now both socially professional and professionally social. Curators visit artists’ studios; collectors, dealers, and journalists assemble for a reception and reconvene later for dinner; everyone goes to parties. We exchange introductions and small talk; art is bought and sold; careers (and friendships) brighten or fade. In each situation, certain behaviors are expected while others are silently discouraged. Sometimes, what’s appropriate in the real world would be catastrophic in the art world, and vice versa.

Making these distinctions on the spot can be nerve-wracking and disastrous. So we asked ourselves: What is the place of etiquette in art? How do social mores establish our communities, mediate our critical discussions, and frame our experience of art? If we were to transcribe these unspoken laws, what would they look like? What happens when the rules are broken? Since we didn’t have all the answers, we politely asked our friends for some help.

A.S. Hamrah, Amanda Trager, Andrew Berardini, Angie Keefer, Art, Bob Nickas, Criticism, Culture, Dan Nadel, David Levine, Dike Blair, Distribution, Dushko Petrovich, Ethan Greenbaum, James Bae, Jason Murison, Jay Batlle, Jessica Slaven, Kaspar Pincis, Maria Elena González, Matthew Brannon, Michelle Grabner, n+1, Naomi Fry, Paddy Johnson, Pam Lins, Paper Monument, Prem Krishnamurthy, Project Projects, Rachel Uffner, Richard Ryan, Roger White, Ryan Steadman, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Sari Carel, Steffani Jemison, Theory, Typography, Wendy Olsoff

The Form of the Book Book

Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge, The Form of the Book Book
Softcover, 96 pp., offset 2/1, 140 x 230 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-9562605-1-2
Published by Occasional Papers

out of print

A collection of essays on book design by Catherine de Smet, James Goggin, Jenni Eneqvist, Roland Früh, Corina Neuenschwander, Sarah Gottlieb, Richard Hollis, Chrissie Charlton, Armand Mevis.

Armand Mevis, Calverts Printers, Catherine de Smet, Chrissie Charlton, Corina Neuenschwander, Criticism, Distribution, Fraser Muggeridge, James Goggin Jenni Eneqvist, Occasional Papers, Richard Hollis, Roland Früh, Sara De Bondt, Sarah Gottlieb, Typography

Performance

Harsh Patel, Performance
Cotton tote bag, screenprint 1/0, 297 × 420 mm
Published by Harsh Patel

$25.00 ·

Made in a small, but unknown, quantity.

Calligraphy, Germany, Harsh Patel, Latin, Tote, Typography

Annotated Catalogue Raisonné of the Books by Martin Kippenberger 1977-1997

Martin Kippenberger, Annotated Catalogue Raisonné of the Books by Martin Kippenberger 1977-1997
Softcover, 368 pp., offset 1/1, 8.25 x 11 inches
Edition of 5000
ISBN 9781891024658
Published by Distributed Art Publishers

$55.00 ·

Roberta Smith called him the “madcap bad boy of contemporary German art” and also “one of the three or four best German artists of the postwar period.” Martin Kippenberger disrupted the status quo throughout his brief, excessive life, not just by making art of every variety and medium but also by conducting an extended performance in the vicinity of art that involved running galleries, organizing exhibitions, collecting the work of his contemporaries and overseeing assistants. He published books and catalogues, played in a rock-and-roll band and cut records, ran a performance-art space during his early years in Berlin, became part owner of a restaurant in Los Angeles during six months he spent there preparing for an exhibition, and collaborated extensively with other artists. This particular volume considers his output of artist’s books, as well as his exhibition catalogues and all the publications whose content he either created or edited. More than just documentation, this publication makes accessible for a wider public the multiple aspects of Kippenberger’s books, with all the complexity and consequence of his oeuvre intact.

Alex Katz, Art, DAP, Diedrich Diederichsen, Distributed Art Publishers, Martin Kippenberger, Roberto Ohrt, Typography, Uwe Koch

Karel Martens: Counterprint

Karel Martens: Counterprint
Softcover, 32 pp., offset 4/4, 210 x 297 mm
Edition of 4000
ISBN 978-0-907259-25-1
Published by Hyphen Press

$35.00 ·

Throughout his career as a designer, Karel Martens has made artistic (uncommissioned) work. In his early days he used sheets of paper, cut to make reliefs. Then he began to make prints from Meccano, metal plates and washers, and other found objects. These prints were made in very small numbers, or were perhaps one-offs. They were studies in form and colour, done as experiments or intended as gifts to friends. The work was very much in the Dutch tradition of experimental printing (the artist H.N.Werkman is the great exemplar here). But Martens kept this work largely apart from his graphic design work. He has occasionally shown it in exhibitions, and some pieces were published in the book Karel Martens: printed matter / drukwerk.

This is the first publication devoted to Martens’s prints. It is made in association with the printer Lecturis, in Eindhoven, and is produced to the highest quality. Bound in Chinese/Japanese fashion, like the first Martens book, it has a strong quality as an object. The main text in the book is an essay by the English designer Paul Elliman: ‘The world as a printing surface’. Dutch critic and teacher Carel Kuitenbrouwer provides a short introduction. The book is designed by Hans Gremmen, under the supervision of Karel Martens, at the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem.

Carel Kuitenbrouwer, Graphics, Hans Gremmen, Hyphen Press, Karel Martens, PAP, Paul Elliman, Typography, Werkplaats Typografie

Paul Renner: the art of typography

Christopher Burke, Paul Renner: the art of typography
Softcover, 224 pp., offset 4/1, 170 x 240 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-0-907259-12-1
Published by Hyphen Press

$35.00 ·

German culture in the twentieth century moved quickly and intensely, bound up with the politics of the country. Paul Renner (1878–1956) lived and worked through constituent episodes of this history, both embodying the patterns of his times and providing a critical commentary on them. In this book Christopher Burke provides the first extended account of an essential and still underrated figure.

Beginning his career in the thick of the Munich cultural renaissance, Paul Renner worked as a ‘book artist’, applying values he had learnt as a painter to this everyday item of multiple production. An early and prominent member of the Deutscher Werkbund, he was committed to the values of quality in design, always tempered by a certain sobriety of attitude and style. In the 1920s Renner engaged with the radical modernism of that time, briefly in Frankfurt, and then in a more extended phase at the printing school at Munich. Under Renner’s leadership, and with teachers such as Georg Trump and Jan Tschichold, the school produced work of quiet significance. In those years Renner undertook the design of the now ubiquitous typeface Futura. Christopher Burke’s analysis of the design process reveals the characteristic Renner approach: he took up with current tendencies, but through an extended process of finely judged development, helped to deliver a product that has long-lasting quality. In the Nazi seizure of power of 1933, Renner was dismissed from his teaching post — in days recounted here in dramatic detail — and entered a state of ‘inner emigration’. Burke’s account of the Nazi years shows Renner negotiating events with dignity. After 1945, Renner lived in retirement, but entered public discussion of design issues as a voice of experience and sanity.

Paul Renner is a work of discovery. As part of its fresh narrative and analysis, it includes much new illustrative material and the first full bibliography of Renner’s writings.

Christopher Burke, Criticism, Georg Trump, Hyphen Press, Jan Tschichold, PAP, Paul Renner, Theory, Typography

Detail in typography

Jost Hochuli, Detail in typography
Softcover, 64 pp., offset 2/2, 125 x 210 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-0-907259-34-3
Published by Hyphen Press

$25.00 ·

Detail in typography discusses in simple steps the factors that make text easy to read and good to look at. Hochuli starts by describing what we know about the reading process. Then he looks at the letters of the Latin alphabet: what is good form in letters? How has script and type developed? How do letters work as visual elements? He goes on to discuss words: how do they hang together? How do we recognize them? Next, he looks at lines of words, and thus at the space between words. Also here he considers punctutation as an element of the line. Then there is the question of the space between lines (‘leading’): what are the factors there? The book is rounded off with a look at typefaces and their properties.

Detail in typography, designed by its author, is printed and bound in Switzerland to the best standards. It provides, in its own form and manufacture, a demonstration of how books can be made.

Hyphen Press, Jost Hochuli, PAP, Typography

Modern typography: an essay in critical history

Robin Kinross, Modern typography: an essay in critical history
Softcover, 272 pp., offset 4/2, 125 x 210 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-0-907259-18-3
Published by Hyphen Press

$27.00 · out of stock

A brisk tour through the history of Western typography, from the time (c.1700 in France and England) when it can be said to have become ‘modern’. A spotlight is directed at different cultures in different times, to trace the developments and shifts in modern typography. Attention is given to ideas, to social context, and to technics, thus stepping over the limited and tired tropes of stylistic analysis.

This history of typography starts with the early years of the Enlightenment in Europe, around 1700. It was then that typography began to be distinct from printing. Instructional manuals were published, a record of the history of printing began to be constructed, and the direction of the printing processes was taken up by a new figure: the typographer. This starting point gives the discussion a special focus, missing from existing printing and design history. Modern typography is seen as more than just a modernism of style. Rather it is the attempt to work in the spirit of rationality, for clear and open communication. This idea is argued out in the introductory chapter.

The chapters that follow trace the history of typography up to the present moment. Different cultures and countries become the focus for the discussion, as they become significant. In the nineteenth century, Britain provides the main context for modern typography. In the twentieth century, the USA and certain continental European countries are prominent. Kinross provides concise accounts of modernist typography in Central Europe between the wars and in Switzerland in the 1950s and 1960s. Traditionalist typography in the USA, Britain, Germany and the Low Countries is also discussed sympathetically. A concluding chapter considers ‘modern typography’ in the light of the social, political and technical changes of the recent period.

Criticism, Hyphen Press, PAP, Robin Kinross, Theory, Typography

Invisible Language Workshop

Not Equal, 2009, Plywood, wood glue and enamel paint, 13.1 x 17.75 inches

Shannon Ebner
Invisible Language Workshop
30 October — 19 December 2009
Opening Reception: Friday 30 October, 6-8pm
Wallspace

Images point to what is in the world; that is the problem with representation. I think that is why there has been so much activity around abstraction — it offers one possible way around the problem of pictures. I am looking for a way out of the problems of representation but I am not satisfied to leave the world of representation all together. I am somehow looking to stay in the world of depictive images by simply asking for more from them through developing a different system, idea or model of how they might function.

—Shannon Ebner

Art, Photography, Shannon Ebner, Typography, Wallspace

The Other Side of A Cul-De-Sac

Lawrence Weiner: The Other Side of A Cul-De-Sac
Hardcover, 48 pp., offset 3/1, 185 x 225 mm
Edition of 900
ISBN 9781894212250
Published by The Power Plant

$35.00 ·

Very red and very shiny, this artist’s book–also the catalogue for Lawrence Weiner’s show at the Power Plant in Toronto — collects a variety of sentences and statements by the veteran Conceptualist, typeset with Weiner’s customary care, and accompanied by a text by poet Wystan Curnow, and an essay by Gregory Burke. It is printed in a limited edition of 900.

Art, DAP, Gregory Burke, Lawrence Weiner, The Power Plant, Typography, Wystan Curnow

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