Antonio Lopez Garcia...Rare Rizzoli Art Book.

Michael Brenson & Francisco Calvo Serraller, Edward J. Sullivan. ANTONIO LOPEZ GARCIA.Rizzoli, NY 1990.

Current Prices
$1400-$2000 / £700-£1000 ISBN: 0847812499.

ART
Antonio López García, born 1936. Painter, sculptor, photorealist.'Post surreal apparition paintings' - highly regarded but not prolific artist much admired by difficult to please Aussie art bloke Robert Hughes. A seriously sought after art book, no copies on web and presumably every copy that comes up sells, some possibly at effoff prices. Who knows its real value, your guess is as good as mine etc., possibly that of a roadworthy used car, can't speculate much more than that. Sizeable art book. Rizzoli don't do flimsy.

VALUE? Rizzoli also published another unfindable book on the artist in 1986. Also of some significant value. Weberbooks.com speculate a value for Brenson's book of $177.50 and note there are 8 buyers waiting at Amazon, the most I have ever heard of. As Manuel might say 'I know nothing...' but suspect this might be worth quite a lot more. The only caveat is that all the wants could come from the same guy or the same petit coterie. It happens. One man or a couple can go round everywhere and ask for a book time and time again and eventually dealers get the false idea that the book is seriously wanted. It's called the Pat and Gerry factor. That's another story and I'll tell it one day...

STOP PRESS. Above was written in January 2007. This is a book that can now be found albeit at a price. There are now 3 copies on the web at $1750- $2100. Apparently the book is massive in size ( 13.5 x 12.5 x 1.5 inches) almost a doorstop.One dealer quotes from the d/w blurb-- "...forerunner of the realist movement centered in Madrid, Antonio Lopez Garcia"s work is among the most personal and intense to have appeared in post-war Spain. This book is the first to present all of his known work, and offers the most complete examination of his achievement to date..." I am not sure how long these copies have been there but I suspect that the book would sell fairly readily at $1300 and that $2000 is the 'stopper' price.

Pat and Gerry? They were a couple of collectors/ runners/ flaneurs who hunted down books and occasionally ran them. The writer/ dealer Iain Sinclair wrote about them and befriended them. At one point they decided to find all the books of Maclaren Ross, the Fitrovian writer. The fearless duo asked for his books in every shop in London and the outskirts. At the time they were the only known punters for his work (about 1980). After a while they found they couldn't buy his books because they had created what appeared to be a demand for his works. In fact by the late 1980s there was a considerable collecting cult around him, so Pat and Gerry were as ever ahead of their time. The same thing happened with the novelist John Lodwick and the poet ASJ Tessimond, except that in their cases the demand did not significantly materialise or spread. Below is a photo of the cover of this much wanted art book.

Ed Ruscha. Royal Road Test 1967.

"Good art should elicit a response of 'Huh? Wow! ' as opposed to 'Wow! Huh? ' Edward Ruscha (Ed-Werd Rew-Shay.)


Edward Ruscha, Patrick Blackwell & Mason Williams. ROYAL ROAD TEST. Los Angeles, 1967.

Current Selling Prices
$1200-$1800/£600-£900

ARTIST'S BOOK / CONCEPTUAL ART
I first saw Ruscha's work when staying in L.A. in 1975. Some friends were renting a studio from the artist on Western Avenue and Sunset. I never saw him but there were a few of his little artist's books kicking around and occasionally one saw his Rolls Royce --a late 1950s Burke's Law job with the USA plates over the British plates which was the Los Angeles style of the time. The books were amusing and stylish - conceptual art that also seemed to mock conceptual art. I have read since that Ruscha is a fan of Duchamp. Most people know his gas station and parking lot books and, of course, his 1966 'Every Building on the Sunset Strip' but 'Royal Road Test', a collaborative effort is less celebrated and possibly more interesting.

Ruscha books are hardly asleep pricewise, and it is hard to find them anywhere undervalued, every two bit scout looks for them. They are constantly traded on Ebay. At the moment, in fact, they seem overvalued as they have risen on the great photo tide that has floated every 'photobook'. It is hard to see them with original eyes. I guess the books I saw in L.A. were all signed and inscribed but I was unaware of them having any value.



Basically some time in 1966 the artist Ed Ruscha, his buddy writer and musician Mason Williams ('Classical Gas') and the photographer Patrick Blackwell took Highway 91 out of Los Angeles into the desert in a a 1963 Buick LaSabre. Getting up to 90 miles per hour on a deserted road with Ed Ruscha driving, Mason Williams (designated thrower) ejected a Royal Typewriter from the window and Patrick Blackwell photographed the incident including shots of the scattered parts and the keys. As I recall there is one shot off a letter draped from a cactus in the desert scrub. The core of the book is a photographic examination of the wreckage of the typewriter strewn over many square yards; it is done in an ironic, deadpan Consumer Report, forensic documentary style with times and wind speed etc., There is a vague suspicion that one or two shots may have been set up or 'improved'. One cataloguer notes that it 'is all done with a species of quasi-scientific gravitas...' A great and influential 'artist's book' - one day another trio may retrace their steps and throw another Royal, or possibly a Dell, into the Californian desert. Or the now grizzled threesome will do it again like a Crosby, Stills and Nash reunion concert.

VALUE? One signed copy of the first on the web at $3000, unsigned early reprints at about a tenth of that. A nice first now has to be a four figure dollar book. The top Ruscha item is his first book 'Twentysix Gasoline Stations' (1962) which at auction has made $16000 unsigned and sits on the web (signed) at the fuckoff price of $35000. You can buy good Ruscha wall art for way less. At that kind of price the fun and the whimsy are over, however it is not unthinkable that such a price could be achieved. Ruscha's books can mostly be bought as late reprints for bearable amounts. Photo below from his 1974 work 'Thirty-Four Parking Lots in Los Angeles.'

Austin Osman Spare. Earth Inferno. 1905.

"Life is haunted- I see the faces of the so-called dead everywhere...etched and glyptographed on things." A. O. Spare 1887-1956

Austin Osman Spare. EARTH INFERNO. London: Co-operative Printing Society, 1905.

Current Selling Prices
$1250-$2000 /£650-£1000

ART/ ILLUSTRATION/ OCCULT
Artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare's first book written at the age of 18 with drawings somewhat in the style of Beardsley but with a power all of their own. A very large book in printed brown paper wraps; 17.75″ x 13.5″ with a few copies in vellum and some in green boards. 265 signed copies in all. The vellum copies were supposed to have a colour print in them but no copies ever have it and presumably it wasn't inserted. A glorious vellum copy turned up 12 years back at Sotheby's with an original watercolour bound in (made £1500.)

In the mid 1980s I walked into the bookshop of an old pal of AOS and bought about a dozen Spares. It was the Bohemia bookshop on St. Leonards, mostly military books, run by a great character named Frank Letchford. He impressed me by knowing a lot about rock music, unusual in those days among septuagenarians. He had known Spare and also Henry Miller. In fact I bought a Spare portrait of Miller which thereafter seemed to spend its life in auction. It was done from a photo. Soon after with art connoisseur and boulevardier James Birch I put on a show of Spares' work at his gallery in Fulham. At the time James had Nico (Velvet Underground) staying in his spare bedroom. Every one seemed to be dressed in black. Boho days. I wrote the intro in the catalogue and it went like this:

"Some see Spare's paintings as the work of an advanced occultist (reputedly a member of "The Golden Dawn') others see the work of a superb draughtsman, an unashamed Cockney artist who went back to Southwark and painted the ordinary people- whelk-girls, barrow boys, spivs and tramps. Certainly his life divides neatly into two periods. By the age of fourteen, possibly inspired by Beardsley and Ricketts, he was producing work of a high technical order. A fellow student at the Royal College described Spare as 'a fair creature resembling a Greek god, curly-haired, proud, self-willed, practising the black arts and taking drugs.' At his first one-man show in 1914 he was showing 'psychic' drawings later developed into his 'automatic' drawings. In the 1920s Spare was at the height of his powers, intensely active, producing books, magazines, objects and becoming briefly the darling of Mayfair. He appears to have reacted against the false values of his patrons and admirers in the Smart Set. His book 'The Anathema of Zos: A Sermon to the Hypocrites'- a work of 'automatic writing' excoriates the self- pity and smugness of the mid-1920s. He was seen as a degenerate and crank; little bothered by this Spare headed back to South London, seldom to be seen again in the purlieus of Bond Street. He found peace and obscurity among the lower classes- the whores and sneak-thieves, many of whom he used as models.



His portraits from this latter period of his life show that he was still primarily a visionary. Even in straightforward works like his portrait of a Southwark tramp, something shines out beyond the technique. Spare said that 'the portrait of a person should be more like them than they are themselves...seldom complimentary.'

Spare kept open house in his Kennington flat. Often surrounded by models young and old, he would receive critics and buyers, showing them his latest pictures in the living room, bedroom and kitchen. Spare liked to meet the people who wanted to buy his work, rather than have his pictures sold in a gallery in an impersonal way. Thus he carried on for years selling works for trifling sums, sometimes reduced to decorating radio sets and even mending them. Spare wrote that he had turned his back on fame, money and comfort '...and continued unmolested my quests into the unknown realms, my natural stoicism supporting me in times of want.'

After his injury in World War II when he temporarily lost the use of both arms, Spare's memory was also affected. It was not until 1946 in a cramped basement in Briton that he began to paint again. His 1947 exhibition in Westbourne Grove attracted many people and sold well. The paintings of this last period were some of his finest and most innovative. By the time he died in 1956 he had created an impressive range of work showing throughout a singularity of vision. The original idea of the automatic drawings of' living beyond thought in courageous originality' never left him. Comparisons with Durer, Goya, Rops and Hokusai although well meant and occasionally illuminating miss the point. Spare was unique- nothing but himself.

The private view was well attended and the cheap wine flowed. At one point a fight broke out but was fairly quickly quelled, a few girls screamed, voices were raised. Some of the paintings had been donated by an old cove who had known Spare and were for sale. The son, who felt they should be his eventually, objected quite forcefully and attacked myself and James. In dealing with older owners, even with books, there are often problematic offspring in the background but it seldom leads to fisticuffs. However these day unless the books are demonstrably valuable, they are not coveted -in fact they are a nuisance.



VALUE? No copies for sale at present, auction records show copies making £500 twenty years ago. The market has not moved on vastly but a decent, clean copy would now fetch about £1000. They can turn up in truly lousy condition and being large and thin they can get bent. Although Spare now has a large fan base they are not generally the 'loadsamoney' crowd. Many good facsimiles have been produced. The excellent publishing company Fulgur has reproduced many of Spare's works and some are now out of print and eagerly sought after. Ebay sees much trading in Spare drawings ,books and art. It is worth remembering that Spare was prolific and there are many works of his art around --the very finest of his paintings can top £3000. He is not Lucian Freud when it comes to value but you get a lot more for your money. Above is a superior later work in his 'sidereal' style.[ W/Q * ]

Creative Illustration. Andrew Loomis, 1947.

Andrew Loomis, CREATIVE ILLUSTRATION. Viking, NY 1947.

Current Selling Prices
$250-$450 /£120-£220



ART / ILLUSTRATION
From the blurb to later editions: 'Intended for the artist who wishes to make illustration a career, rather than for the early efforts of the beginner or for those who draw for a hobby, Creative Illustration is a real professional course in the subject, worth many times its price.' 300 pages divided into seven sections: Line, Tone and Color were the three introductory parts. Then 4 sections - Telling the Story, Creating Ideas, Fields of Illustration, and Experimenting and Studies. The Color section was in colour - not common in 1947. The book is filled with instructions, tips, insider experiences, and vivid illustrations.

One seller, who claims thah he has sold more art books by Loomis than anyone else says:' Every chapter, every page, every picture is prime information for the artist and Loomis manages to convey it clearly and concisely. Creative Illustration is a dynamite book!' Art students and designers used to bring Loomis books back from America years ago, more as a period piece or as kitsch and I had thought it passé but it's still going strong. In this Post Modern age no style ever seems to go out of fashion - somewhere people are still going crazy about Art Deco or Memphis or muttering about Wiener Werkstatte, so Loomis is still as wanted as he ever was.



VALUE? A copy sits at ebay right now as a BIN at $329 sans d/w. Copies on abebooks of the first in jacket at $400+. People selling 7th eds, no copies cheaper than £100 of any edition , one dealer has this sad note: 'Loomis' family are Quakers and would not allow his books to be reprinted after his premature death in 1959 because of depictions of the naked human body.' Odd because in UK Quakers are usually models of broadmindeness. [ W/Q ** ]

This is Tomorrow. Whitechapel Art Gallery 1956

Lawrence Alloway (ed.,) THIS IS TOMORROW. Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 1956.

Current Selling Prices
$1000- $2000 / £500-£1000

Small blue catalogue of an important exhibition -"This is Tomorrow" -variously described as 'seminal' 'landmark' 'watershed' and 'groundbreaking.' Something of a sleeper - in the sense that it can be cashed in with almost any art reference dealer for $1000 but to the unhip eye looks like a $15 fifties art catalogue. Not impossible to find, it was a popular exhibition, we have had 3 copies in the last 10 years. We desrcibed the last thus:

'8vo. Unpaginated--about 60 pages and some product ads. Illustrated throughout. Groundbreaking exhibition devoted to the possibilities of co-operation between architects, painters, musicians, graphic designers and sculptors. 4 pages of poems by Reyner Banham. Exhibition featured work by Erno Goldfinger, Victor Pasmore, Paolozzi, Anthony Jackson, Germano Facetti, Theo Crosby, John Ernest, William Turnbull etc., Highly important and difficult to find, especially in this condition. Small oblong rung bound catalogue; slight spotting to covers, one corner sl creased ; vg+.'

Sold it for about £400 in 2002. For some reason we forgot to mention the early appearance of Richard Hamilton, curently selling for mindblowing sums. His room was the most visited of the show-- he shared it with John Voelcker and John McHale, with collaboration from Magda and Frank Cordell. It included the Op Art Dazzle panels, and Pop Art readymades of a film advertising billboard of the Forbidden Planet, Robby the Robot and a Jukebox that were provided by McHale.

It can be found reproduced at thisistomorrow2.com. There is thus no need to buy it - but it has become an iconic object marking the beginning of a great new spirit in art.



VALUE? A book dealer from the NY art /vernissage coterie had a copy at $5000 in late 2006, possibly a 'having a laugh price' aimed at a hedge fund art trendy or super rich artist/collector like Richard Prince--anyway it went or was not there a week later. Likely to have been an "I saw you coming" price - while on the subject of comedians note the resemblance of the stout artist Paolozzi to comic and hoaxer Dom Joly (above) + those are not Ipod earphones Smithson is wearing but the drawstrings of a sort of khaki army pullover affected by cool Bohemians of the 1950s. TRIVIA. One wonders whether architect Erno Goldfinger's name was the inspiration for Ian Fleming's 1959 novel. [ W/Q ** ]

Interaction of Color. Josef Albers, 1963.

Josef Albers. INTERACTION OF COLOR. Yale University Press, 1963.

Current Selling Prices
$3500-$6000 /£1800-£3200

ART / COLOR THEORY
A copy we sold in 2003 we descibed thus:-'Small folio. 1963. 2 volume set in dark brown textured cloth original printed slip case. Two folio volumes: Volume One contains 80 pages of Albers poetic text. Volume Two contains 80 serigraph colour plates (complete) loosely inserted in a folder. They are arranged to show the effects a variety of colours have on each other, together with these is a 48 page 'Commentary' in plain black wraps. Among the 'authors' of the serigraphs is the US poet Mark Strand, a pupil of Albers who contributes 2 serigraphs. Books are also bound in dark brown textured cloth and are near fine , as is the slip case..'

I see this slip-case sometimes described as a box (a 'cloth drop-back box' on one occasion.) It can show up with less than its compliment of plates - one seller explains (he had 79 out of the 80) - 'Apparently it was common for the publisher to miscount in this particular book and not include all of the screen prints.' All copies in auction have had 80, although I have seen people selling the Mark Strand ones separately but only for a few hundred dollars. Not sure how many were printed but copies seem to show up almost every year, none on net at present, although Google reveals a dealer with one with 'price on demand' - usually means an unpalatable sum.



VALUE? Our copy sold after about 6 months at circa $3800. A copy (the one with 79) seems to have shifted in 2006 at $5500 and another copy at Swann in NY in 2005 made $7500, although in 2006 a copy made $3000, possibly in lesser condition. A slightly volatile book that can dip beneath $2500 and scale $7K, condition, as always, a factor. Most copies seem to go through Swann, possibly Albers in original state is a New York taste. The book has been much reprinted as a paperback and is used in art schools throughout the world. [ W/Q ** ]

Blast. Review of the Great English Vortex 1914 - 1915

Wyndham Lewis (edits.,) BLAST. Review of the Great English Vortex [numbers 1 and 2]. John Lane, the Bodley Head, London, 1914 - 1915

Current Selling Prices
$650-$3000 /£320-£1600



ART / LITERATURE / VORTICISM
The great (and only) literary manifestation of Vorticism, the short lived English art movement. Two art book size magazines published a year apart, the first breath of modernism on our island shores. Showing some influence from Futurism (especially Marinetti's Zang-tumb-tuuum) and arising about the same time as Dada but distinctly London based. Wyndham Lewis called his baby 'the puce monster' and most copies unless hopelessly tarnished still have that Pepto Bismol puce that must, in 1914, have been to current art like Punk Rock was to popular music in 1977*.

The English are not given to manifestos but this is what a manifesto shoud look and sound like. At first sight it seems totally original but there are precedents for the look of the thing in 19th century wall posters, proclamations, evangelical tracts and the style of electioneeering handbills and circus and theatre adverts. For the benefit of Mr. Kite etc., The 1914 issue has articles, and poems by Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, Rebecca West, Edward Wadsworth, Gaudier Brzeska, illustrations by Edward Wadsworth, Wyndham Lewis, Frederick Etchells, William Roberts, Jacob Epstein, Gaudier Brzeska, Cuthbert Hamilton and Spencer Gore.

The second and final number (The War Number) came out in July, 1915 with articles by Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, Gaudier-Breska, Ford Madox Hueffer, T. S. Eliot, Jessica Dissmorr, H. Sanders, 17 woodcut illustrations by Dismorr, Etchells, William Roberts, Gaudier-Brzeska, Kramer, Nevinson, Roberts, Cuthbert Atkinson, Helen Saunders, Dorothy Shakespear, Edward Wadsworth. Spelling and grammar have been criticised - Lewis was a poor proof reader, but the brazen Nietzschean energy behind the project can be felt even today. [Want level 15-25 Moderate ]

Blast was a direct attack on Victorianism, Salon Art, the Georgians, English snobbery, French especially Parisian art, English humour ('putrefaction of Guffaws') 'cosmopolitan sentimentality', 'feeble Europeanism' and the nascent Bloomsbury Group inter alia, advocating in their place abstract, geomentic and mechanical elements in art, and precision and concision in poetry. The Imagist school of poetry had some of the same members and is closely related. The implacable Lewis would return to satirising and attacking the Bloomsburys in 'The Apes of God' (1930).

VALUE? Even distressed and lived in copies especially of the puce issue go for £200. Fresh, bright and clean sets are blasted rare and can make over £2000. A reasonable copy with some palpable wear is on sale in Ireland at £450, we moved a half decent slightly restored 1914 copy on the mighty ebay at about $1100 in 2006.

The first issue is more vulnerable than the second, it is also more desirable. It's the puce. There is a very interesting set on sale at present which were Lewis's own copies and although in somewaht bohemian condition are priced at $6500. A very good reprint came out in the 1980s from Black Sparrow with a third issue in homage and even a record.

The whole of the first issue can be found at the Norton College site. Here is a sample, the Vorts are having a go at Paris:

BLAST APERITIFS (Pernots, Amers picon)
Bad change
Naively seductive Houri salon-
picture Cocottes
Slouching blue porters (can
carry a pantechnicon)

Stupidity rapacious people at
every step
Economy maniacs
Bouillon Kub

(for being a bad
pun)
PARIS
Clap-trap Heaven of amative German
professor.
Ubiquitous lines of silly little trees.
Arcs de Triomphe.
Imperturbable, endless prettiness.
Large empty cliques, higher up.
Bad air for the individual.
BLAST
MECCA OF THE AMERICAN
because it is not other side of Suez Canal,
instead of an
afternoon’s ride from London.

As well as blasting the Vorticists could also bless, here is a long list of those blessed (some online versions have a few footnotes)

BLESS
Bridget
Berrwolf
Bearline
Cranmer Byng
Frieder Graham
The Pope
Maria de Tomaso
Captain Kemp Munroe
Gaby
Jenkins
R. B. Cuningham Grahame (not his brother)
Barker (John and Granville)
Mrs. Wil Finnimore
Madame Strindberg
Carson
Salvation Army
Lord Howard de Walden
Capt. Craig
Charlotte Corday
Cromwell
Mrs. Duval
Mary Robertson
Lillie Lenton
Frank Rutter
Castor Oil
James Joyce
Leveridge
Lydia Yavorska
Preb. Carlyle Jenny
Mon. le compte de Gabulis
Smithers
Dick Burge
33 Church Street
Sievier
Gertie Millar
Norman Wallis
Miss Fowler
Sir Joseph Lyons
Martin Wolff
Watt
Mrs. Hepburn
Alfree
Tommy
Captain Kendell
Young Ahearn
Wilfred Walter
Kate Lechmere
Henry Newbolt
Lady Aberconway
Frank Harris
Hamel
Gilbert Canaan
Sir James Mathew Barry
Mrs. Belloc Lowdnes
W. L. George
Rayner
George Robey
George Mozart
Harry Weldon
Chaliapine
George Hirst
Graham White
Hucks
Salmet
Shirley Kellogg
Bandsman Rice
Petty Officer Curran
Applegarth
Konody
Colin Bell
Lewis Hind
LEFRANC
Hubert
Commercial Process Co.

* In fact there was something of a revival of Vorticism at this time with a coterie based in Fulham loosely known as the Neo-Vorticists who produced the fanzine 'Dat Sun' which blasted and blessed current London figures such as Malcolm McLaren, Emperor Rosko and Monty Modlyn. Now highly uncommon.

The Art of Stoneworking. A Reference Guide.

Peter Russell. THE ART OF STONEWORKING.A REFERENCE GUIDE. Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Current Selling Prices
$350-$750? / £200-£400? ISBN 052141332X

ARTS AND CRAFTS
A curiously difficult book to find. There was a copy on ABE at $1600 from a notorious venturesome re-lister which is hard to imagine sold but ain't there any more, but certainly a decent copy would command a pretty penny.Well illustrated, quarto, 320 pages. The author (son of artist Norman), in a communication with us, hoped that CUP would republish it and said he had done the occasional xerox of the book for friends. He was flabbergasted by the dealers price. His more recent 'Compleat Marble Sleuth' covers some of the same territory and can be found for $90 or less. I believe I have a copy. [Want level 25-50]

John William Godward: The Eclipse of Classicism

Scarce art book. To call this artist the Thomas Kinkade of his day would be a little unfair, Godward could paint beautifully...Antique Collectors' Club, books are usually small quarto hardback art books, some much collected, always excellent productions, this is probably the most valuable. Worth more until this very year was George White's English Lantern Clocks but the 2007 reprint has put the kibosh on that. Art reference is a bit of a minefield...


Vern Swanson. JOHN WILLIAM GODWARD.THE ECLIPSE OF CLASSICISM. Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge, 1988. ISBN 1851492704


Current Selling Prices
$800-$1200 /£450-£650


ART
A Catalogue Raisonné (magic words - basically meaning a definitive catalogue of the artist's work) attractively produced book on the artist with over 150 colour illustrations. Godward is a still revered British painter (1861-1922) of classical themes with amusingly kitsch, predictable subject matter and titles which must have seemed dated even then. Not laughably kitsch in the Bouguereau league but up there with high camp painters like Edward Longsden Long.

The Edwardian painter mentioned in Powell's 'Music of Time' the Academician Horace Isbister is possibly based on Godward. Isbister's old friend St. John Clarke was writing an art book about him for Jenkin's firm that never got finished. A ghost. Godward was a 'beauty painter' of the Graeco Roman post Alma Tadema variety-- usually lightly draped women, coloured marble and the Med in the background with titles like 'In the Tepidarium' and 'With Violets of Saffron Hue'. He was in fact Tad's protegé. 'Violets' sold last year for £250,000 and with prices like that no one is laughing anymore - except the consigners. Godward's career went into reverse with the coming of modernism and he killed himself, apparently leaving a note to the effect that the world was not big enough for him and Picasso. Munnings felt the same. The sad end of the last 'High Victorian Dreamer.'


VALUE? A very hard book to find. Catalogue Raisonnees are often needed by the owners of paintings by the artist to sell or authenticate them and with Godward making serious money the book is important. There is one at Half.Com at $1500 and the 2 that were on the web at $950 and $1600 3 months ago appear to have sold. The latter was amost certainly a relister. The one presently at half.com is also that of a relister so it may not exist but merely be the ghost of a cheaper copy that has sold. Smoke and mirrors -- this is why it is unwise to take an artificial and inflated price as the true value of a book.
A valuable art book anyway (unless it gets reprinted and ATG do reprint and revise; they are a lively firm just down the road from where I am sitting.) The NY art critic Grace Glueck visiting the Russell Cotes in Bournemouth does quite a good demolition job on the genre. That being said if you are ever near Bournemouth go there. [Want level 15-30 Quite High]

The Age of the Marvelous by Joy Kenseth.

A marvelous art catalogue, resolutely unfindable but could turn up with some indifferent art books and catas, library sale special...

Joy Kenseth. THE AGE OF THE MARVELOUS. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, USA.1991 .ISBN 0944722091 or 0944722105

Current Prices$150-$300? /£70-£160?

ART
Out of print, very hard to find and much wanted. An exhibition catalogue of Renaissance and Baroque Art and the origins of the museum. Joy Kenseth teaches at the Ivy League Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. When an exhibition is dispersed all that remains is the catalogue and if a cult then grows around the departed show the catalogue becomes much sought after. If, like this, it is very hard to find, the price could be quite stroppy.

VALUE? No idea of true value but it might get listed by a sober seller at $100, a greedy one who sees how many want it will price it just beyond the pocket of the whole field which could be a surprising amount. All bets are off if it gets reprinted which is quite possible. The 2 ISBNS for the book are a puzzler, I thought it was a softback but one of them could be for a hardback. Neither bring up a damn thing at addall or bookfinder.

Want level 25-50 Highish