Yoko Ono / Grapefruit

Yoko Ono. GRAPEFRUIT. ( Tokyo, Wunternaum Press 1964)
Current Selling Price
$9000 /£6000

Well-heeled collectors of early Beatles memorabilia ( signed programmes, posters, concert tickets, song lyrics written on napkins etc etc ) may not thank you for offering them a first of Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit, signed or otherwise, at a hefty price. Many fans still blame Ono for contributing to the splitting of the Fab Four and for taking John in a direction that would ultimately lead to his violent death.

Such narrow-mindedness seems absurd when we think of what Lennon achieved while with Ono. As for the woman herself, one art historian has called her ‘ one of the most daring , innovative and eccentric artist-performers of her time’.

Oko was a leading figure with the Fluxus art movement, which originated in New York City in the early sixties and eventually spread to Japan. Fluxus, according to one critic, ‘ encompasses a reductive gesturality, part Dada, part Bauhaus and part Zen, and presumes that all media and all artistic disciplines are fair game for combination and fusion ‘. John Cage was an early member of the movement and ‘do-it-yourself ’ music was often performed. As well as a performer, Ono sees herself as a musician and the instructions she and others issued for enacting the art work they called an ‘ event’ was called an ‘event score’. In Grapefruit she collects some of ‘ pieces’ ( such as ‘Clock Piece’ and ‘Laundry Piece ‘) that she enacted in galleries and concert halls, mainly in the USA. Here are some of the pieces/scores included in Grapefruit:


Imagine the clouds dripping.
Dig a hole in your garden to
Put them in.

Let people copy or photograph your paintings.
Destroy the originals.

Think that snow is falling. Think that snow is falling
Everywhere all the time. When you talk with a person think
Snow is falling between you and the person.
Stop conversing when you think the person is covered by snow.


One can see the influence of Japanese graphic art, the art of haiku and Zen in such ‘instructions ‘.

As you might expect, Grapefruit is as minimal in appearance as a piece of Raku pottery. In fact, from the outside it looks like nothing more than an artist’s sketchbook, square in shape and covered with a dull light brown or cream wrapper. Some way down on the left of the front cover Ono ( a fan of calligraphy ) has inscribed in black ink the single word Grapefruit. Inside, the instructions are printed in black ink using a number of subtly different typefaces.
There are conflicting accounts regarding the first meeting of John and Yoko, but it is generally accepted that the year was 1966, that soon afterwards Yoko sent John a signed copy of Grapefruit, and that the Beatle was intrigued by both book and artist. The rest is history.

The pre-publication price of Grapefruit was a mere $3; post publication it doubled. It is not known exactly how many of the edition of 500 were sold. I can’t imagine that Ono kept a list of buyers. It has been said that no copy has appeared at auction for thirty-five years and that this is because most remain with Japanese art collectors, who are hanging on to their copies. However, a well known London dealer has a nice copy for sale at £12,000, and there must be other Grapefruits circulating in the UK, perhaps bought in the era of Flower Power and forgotten about. One of these was acquired by a friend of mine, who now wishes to sell it (see me for details) at a price far below the £12,000 cited. A much expanded trade edition was published by Schuster and Peter Owen in 1970 and a year later Sphere brought out their own edition. These later copies range in price from $20 – $40, though one dealer wants a very un-Zen like £2,250 for one signed by both Yoko and John. [R.M. Healey}



Many thanks Robin. Hope that one finds a buyer-- it certainly should. I remember Yoko as an avant-garde artist before John loomed so large...She used to get people to cut bits off her clothes with scissors at the Round House. Fluxus surely. I always heard that they met at the Indica Gallery in Southampton Row, probably the most interesting thing to happen in that street since Maclaren-Ross moved out of the Bonnington. Meanwhile £2250 for a copy of the UK ed signed by Yoko and John may not be unbuyable - especially less 20 % and with 3 post dated cheques stretching into 2013. A better investment than Groupon shares.

Btw the plain white copy above is the true 1964 first, the title being always handwritten on the cover by Yoko. The b/w one is the USA first, John and Yoko are holding the UK first. Gorrit?

Give Puce a Chance

Forgive the pun, but it was suggested by the war theme of this (presumably) early 1914 pamphlet. Wyndham Lewis's Vorticist magazine BLAST (aka 'the puce monster') appeared in July of that year, the same month as war broke out and the pamphlet judging by the title appeared earlier that year. Was there a load of puce dye offloaded in London at that time, was it the colour of the moment? Is this really puce? The nearest dictionary (the big Bloomsbury) describes it as 'a brilliant purplish red colour.' Did Wyndham Lewis spot someone hawking the pamphlet in the street, it seems quite possible - even the typography is similar (at least the angular printing...)



The pamphlet (of which I have the cover only) is unknowable, no such title shows at WorldCat or Copac and the title page may have born a different title and possibly the name of an author. A colour that used to be seen in the 1990s 'hot pink' was similar to puce but rather cheap looking; the 1940s Elsa Schiaparelli colour 'shocking pink' is nearer to the mark but puce has a glamour all of its own. A fine copy of BLAST would be a thing to behold and I can think of two thousand reasons why I would like one. They usually turn up in distressing shape, as for the war pamphlet it is probably too rare to have real value - unless you found Lewis's or Pound's copy -- even Gaudier-Brzeska's, with a small sketch.

Below is a recently added and obviously modern puce publication - of which I know nothing, except it appears to be part of the enviable collection of kunstler Richard Prince.

Sven Berlin, The Dark Monarch 1962

Sven Berlin. The Dark Monarch: a Portrait from Within. The Galley Press, London 1962.

Current Selling Prices
$400+ /£250+

‘ I have sealed between two boards the names of folk I knew in Cornwall to be opened on my 100th birthday, September 14th 2011 ‘.

The words of Sven Berlin in 1998 regarding a legendary rarity and one of the most scandalous art books of the twentieth century. The Dark Monarch appeared a few years after Berlin (1911 – 1999) had left St Ives, where he had lived in an artistic community that included Barbara Hepworth, Bernard Leach, Ben Nicholson, Bryan Winter, Alfred Wallis, Roger Hilton, Terry Frost and Arthur Caddick. It was a satire on the behaviour of some of these characters and was written perhaps in revenge for the way in which he as a figurative painter and sculptor had been snubbed by some of the adherents of abstraction. Berlin’s error was to assume that his enemies would not recognise themselves in the ‘fictional' characters of the supposed novel. Perhaps he also felt that they wouldn’t have the money or energy to file lawsuits. But he was wrong. Berlin had portrayed the artists almost unaltered. They recognised themselves and Arthur Caddick, a close friend, was the first of four who filed for libel. The suit was settled out of court and Berlin lost £7,500 in damages. Not only that, but the court requested the return of any books sent to bookshops. Even those copies that had been sold were requested to be returned to the publisher. Luckily, the British book buyer doesn’t take too kindly to being told by a court that the ‘libellous ‘book they’ve bought must be destroyed. So, of the 575 copies of the Dark Monarch that had been sold or reserved , ‘no more than 100 copies escaped ‘ (according to one dealer ), and it is likely that most of these ended up in the bookshelves of many free-thinking north Cornish art lovers.

Berlin, nevertheless, was financially ruined by the action and was affected by his experience for the rest of his life. He became paranoid and only revisited St Ives once in 40 years. After a peripatetic existence he ended up in rural Dorset, where he died in 1999. But on the issue of The Dark Monarch he remained unrepentant up to the end. He insisted that his novel was a work of the imagination, rather than a factual document. He insisted that he had created real characters that belonged ’ to the world of imagination: who triggered them does not matter ‘.

Following the order for the scandalous novel to be withdrawn it became an instant collector’s item, especially in and around St Ives. Copies were paraded around; some changed hands for many times the cover price. Berlin himself, it would seem, died owning just a single copy, presumably because he gave away some of his complimentary copies to friends and relatives before the edition had been recalled. With the coming of the Tate to St Ives the market for copies was further boosted and Berlin, even taking into account his love of hyperbole, was probably not far wrong when he exclaimed to his publisher in 1992 : ‘My prices are rocketing up. The Dark Monarch is going for £500, if you can get it ‘.



Berlin won’t be around to celebrate his hundredth birthday on September 14, but friends and relations, and perhaps a few enemies, will surely enjoy the ritual opening of the sealed ‘ key ‘ to The Dark Monarch , which coincides with the publication of a new book on Berlin, Artist and Publisher. Both events are likely to ruffle a few feathers in Cornwall and there may be one or two raised voices in Tate Britain and Kettles’s Yard too, although the controversy is nearly fifty years old.

Even though the much-coveted Dark Monarch has recently been reprinted in a small edition, copies of the first are still very much sought after. There are three currently on ABE. Two are with a well known art gallery in St Ives, who want $763 for each (one is signed ); the third is elsewhere at a more sensible £250. Berlin’s other books are far less expensive. The autobiographical titles hover at around £8, while the more notable Alfred Wallis of 1949 comes in at a surprising range of prices, from an extremely reasonable $19 in the US to $80 in London and a frankly silly $254 from St Ives.
Meanwhile, why not browse a few junk shops in Cornwall for one of those elusive Dark Monarchs. Finding one could pay for the trip! [R. M. Healey]

Many thanks Robin. I am off to the Cornish Riviera as we speak...will also look out for his Alfred Wallis book.

Beefheart as Vorticist ?

The enthusiasm which has greeted the Vorticist exhibition currently at the Tate may be another sign that Wyndham Lewis is at last receiving the recognition he riches deserves as an artist and visionary. But is seems that the rebel and maverick in Lewis has always attracted admirers, particularly in the world of rock music. Brian Ferry is known to collect Lewis firsts and artwork, while the much wealthier David Bowie owns a number of paintings. Mark E Smith is another great fan and collector, as is Holly Johnson, late of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, whose solo album Blast, mimics the graphics of Lewis’s magazine.

According to art critic David Stoker, writing in a forthcoming issue of cult magazine The Lewisletter (available on ABE ) the recently deceased ( he died in December 2010) Don Van Vliet, better known as gravel-voiced oddball musician Captain Beefheart, was also an admirer. Although he boasted of never having been to school, never having read a book and being self-taught in art, the truth is a little more complex. The gallant Captain certainly had some sort of education, however sporadic, and the Muhammad Ali biography, Sting Like a Bee was his favourite book. He also attended art school, albeit for a short while. What he certainly didn’t have were music lessons---which may explain why his music, though memorably inventive and ground-breaking, can be difficult to like. And, though he was no formal collector of books by Lewis, he was a great fan of many Lewis books, especially Snooty Baronet ,which his manager Gary Lucas, himself an avid collector of Lewis’s art and first editions, read passages from while on the road. It comes as no surprise that Beefheart, whose work is shot through with wit and satire, took to Lewis immediately. Stoker argues a case for seeing the musician himself as a latter-day Lewis, in character and originality; and certainly if Lewis’s fiction can be seen in terms of visual satire, Beefheart’s music has been described by some as sculptural in quality---not surprisingly, as Van Vliet began his art career as a sculptor. Both were artists, Stoker argues, who saw beyond the limits of their particular art.

This music/art analogy might help bring people to the work of both men. Interestingly, back in October 1956, at the dawn of Rock, Lewis wrote a piece of social commentary on Bill Haley and the Comets for the young Henry Kissinger’s magazine Confluence. The piece was incoherent and wasn’t published. It would seem that the ageing and blind former Vorticist believed the band were black! Today Vorticism is becoming cool among young art lovers—and indeed young art collectors and book collectors. While Lewis’s prose works, with an aesthetic that is essentially cerebral and non-empathetic, might remain ‘difficult‘ to non-artists of any age—the art movement has a more direct appeal. And it’s the early Lewis stuff that’s being avidly collected today. Such is the demand that prices of the notoriously scarce Blast (1914, 1915), which was produced by a small printer in a back street of Harlesden, are at rock-star prices. Even ‘poor ‘copies ( detached covers and much rubbing )of both issues are on ABE for $4,500, and two in good condition, complete with fancy Sangorski and Sutcliffe box, is priced at £5,500. The Tyro (1922 ), though more common, ranges from $100 - $200, although my copy of this issue was rescued not long ago from a junk shop for £5. Copies of the three issue Enemy (1927 – 29), with their Vorticist-influenced covers, range from $60 - $150 ( issue 1 being the rare one ) and the striking jackets of Lewis’s masterpiece, The Apes of God, are a big selling point for what can be a big heavy lump of a book.

And with the rise in popularity of Vorticism can we at last expect the prices of two anti-Lewis pamphlets to rise in price too? On the occasion of a Lewis retrospective at the Tate in 1956 prickly ex-Vorticist William Roberts was so riled that Lewis had described Vorticism in the catalogue as ‘what I said or did at a particular time ‘ that he paid the excellent Favil Press to print two pamphlets,
the first of which violently repudiated Lewis’s claims. The Resurrection of Vorticism and the Apotheosis of Wyndham Lewis (1956) is cheap enough at around £16, while Some Early Abstract and Cubist Work, 1913 – 1920 (1957) is a little pricier at about £30. Despite their comparative rarity these have never been really appreciated. Perhaps they will be now!
[R. M. Healey. ]

Many thanks Robin --must get along to the Vorticist exhibition. Have always admired the movement -- when the shop was in Hammersmith in the late 1970s I was vaguely involved with a local bunch of malcontents 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 rare! Lewis is of course a difficult read and I was advised to start with 'Tarr'. A good choice, I seem to recall there is a character in there who gives up laughing...The Chatto 'Phoenix Library' series 1928 revised edition is the one you want and it can be had for a tenner. Lewis said of it --" I have throughout finished what was rough and given the narrative everywhere a greater precision. A few scenes have been expanded and some material added." The 1918 Egoist edition can cost £2000 in a jacket.

An Austin Osman Spare exhibition 1955

As someone who used to deal in Austin Osman Spare art and books I was intrigued by a rare exhibition catalogue that I discovered last week in a box. It was for a show at the Archer Gallery in Westbourne Grove (London) in October 1955, six months before Spare's death at age 70. The introduction is by Kenneth Grant, an occultist and writer who is himself highly collectable. Having written an introduction to an AOS art catalogue myself (early 1980s) it was fascinating to see how Grant went about it. Such pieces are without exception enthusiastic, even celebratory, sometimes with elaborate claims being made for the artist. I praised his 'courageous originality' and talked of comparisons with Durer, Goya, Rops and Hokusai. Grant goes somewhat further in his claims, as you will see...

Frank Lechford, an old dealer in military books and a friend of AOS, used to say that something weird always happened around Spare and sure enough at our 1980s exhibition a fight broke out, unpleasant but short. One wonders who attended the 1955 exhibition and what strangeness occurred there. Here is an abridged version of Kenneth Grant's introduction ('An Appreciation'):

The spirit which permeates the artistic creations of Austin Osman Spare may not be easily ensnared or examined, for it is exceedingly tenuous and elusive, as fugitive as the odour of a rose and as cloyingly nostalgic.

Those who would read into his flowing arabesque line and into his haunting modulations of light and shade the speech of usual things will step back baffled by the hint of wild and unknown things which are here presented to view. It is as if a corner of the veil of inscrutable mysteries were suddenly lifted before our eyes ...It is the nostalgia of remembered remoteness; the anguish of things lost and all but regained, but which slip yet again from the memory's grasp; the disquietude that comes from the knowledge that Spare has unerringly captured for us what we ourselves are unable to shadow forth from the dark deep confines of our latent being...

[talk of Atavistic Resurgence and of his Sidereal paintings…' peculiarly dynamic and enigmatic sidereal semblances…']

...here are not only the creations of an artist gifted beyond the normal, but these very creations themselves are the true delineations of a realm of being existing here and now at a level of awareness veiled to the uninitiated vision of the generality of men. One might almost say that far from being fanciful products of a highly trained and vivid imagination, these works represent faithful recordings of those latent levels wherein and wherefrom proceed the motivating causes of all the complex and inscrutable mentations, fragments of which only appear within the limited orbit of the so-called 'rational' activities of the mundanely conscious individual.



We have to understand not only the mysteries of dream and of sleep, of waking consciousness and the mechanism of desire, but also we should have direct experience of the 'knower' of all these various states of consciousness before we can begin to understand the fugitive essence of Spare's enchanted creations. For even as the universe is a glamour cast forth from and by the mind of man... so also these creations subsist as realities within a deeper consciousness than is manifest in the everyday waking activities wherein the human machine lives and moves. From regions which make these activities seem merely automatic reactions to external phenomena, Spare brings the tenuous thread of his dream into the reality of day, and makes the dream-intrusion into waking awareness a subtle perichoresis of two worlds as remote and apart from each other as the outward form and appearance of man himself is to the soul which exists in the veiled sanctuaries of his unknown realities.

This perichoresis is what Spare has achieved and it is the greatest witness to the power of his magic that such interpenetration does not result in confusion but in unity, not in distortion but in beauty, not in conflict and pain but in perfect balance and intensity of rapture. All these things form the thread of the bright tapestries wherewith these walls are hung. If we do not fail to lose the central thread of all, we shall pass from picture to picture as from delight to delight, relishing a bliss that is rarely given to mortal man in his hour of upheaval, disharmony and corruption. To Spare- as for the individual who is able to stay possessed of this central thread- none of these imperfections exist, and we are brought to a vision of transcending beauty, seeing the perfection of the whole in the true relation of its myriad parts. [Kenneth Grant 1955.]

As for 'perichoresis' (which Grant is using metaphorically) some definitions are the length of a short story and there is even a video about its meaning and pronunciation, but put simply it is a term used in the theology of the Trinity to indicate the intimate union, mutual indwelling, or mutual interpenetration of the three members of the Trinity with each other. By the way--the pamphlet must be worth £50+ and works by Grant can go for up to £400. The colour Goddess image was later used for 'Man Myth and Magic' in the 1970s. One of the few collectable part-works...The portrait of Freud was item 151 in this 1955 catalogue of 221 works and was priced at 10 guineas, probably worth a little north of 2000 guineas now (he's not Frank Auerbach) but a decent investment. Thanks to the Cabinet of the Solar Plexus who display this fine slightly sidereal painting.

Cover Art, a discovery...

A fellow dealer has this graphic artist's illustration for a lurid book cover pinned to the wall of his book storage unit. Dealers tend to accumulate book cover art, especially if they have been at it for a few decades. He thinks he may have bought it from someone selling a quantity of book cover illustrations on card (gouache, watercolour etc.,) by the railings on Bayswater Road about 30 years ago. Art (now mostly kitsch and worse) is still sold there every Sunday. Often these pictures have lettering so you can see the title, but not in this case, and no artist had signed either. When these collections turn up they are usually quite large and some of the images are hard to sell or unattractive and thus find very few takers, but this image was well above average.

Recently he called me up to say that he had found the actual book that had used the illustration - in a box of SF, fantasy and horror paperbacks. A mild Eureka moment, celebrated with a cup of PG tips finest. The book was Horror in the Night by Richard Macgregor published by Digit in London in 1963. Not a lot is known about Macgregor, these were 5 short horror stories and he seems to have written 5 other books between 1963 and 1964 for Digit. Titles like The Deadly Sun, Creeping Plague, The Day a Village Died --- a category that came to be known as Doom Watch fiction, possibly post apocalyptic in content. Not much more is known of Macgregor (possibly a pseudonym) --you can buy the five titles available for about £30. A further book Taste of the Temptress came out in Sydney in the mid 1960s published by Eclipse, so he could have been Australian or have turned to porn or both...As for the artist it could be one R.A. Osborne (1923 - 1973) art director of Digit at the time and responsible for many of their covers including Macgregor's Day a Village Died, the story of a village plagued by killer ants.



Such cover art is quite collectable and has a ready audience on Ebay but does not command life or even week changing sums -but this sort of discovery, this matching up, is a rare delight, even at second hand.

Book Collections we would like to buy... 1. Karl Lagerfeld

It is variously reported that the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld has between 60,000 and 230,000 books--- mostly art books. At one point they were housed at his Paris studio but  the report below indicates that they have been boxed and moved to the West of France: 

 "Karl Lagerfeld is going underground — to find creative storage space for his sprawling 230,000 volume book collection. "It’s a big problem, no?" asks the passionate bibliophile, ever the master of understatement. His solution: a storage facility at his house in Biarritz — underneath the tennis court. The 20,000-square-foot, climate-controlled subterranean complex will also include a photo studio, but the centerpiece of the project is a 10,000-square-foot, 20-foot high space where he plans to erect a library. What’s next, the return of the sexy librarian at Chanel?"

Last week a report on him from The Observer  turned up in Private Eye's witty Pseud's Corner column ('When his desk gets a bit messy, he buys a new one. He matches his gloves to the colour of the French daily sky...').

The interesting revelation in the Eye piece was that when Karl reads a paperback, he rips out the pages as he goes. Possibly he read the last page of A La Recheche de Temps Perdu as a single sheet before binning it with the other two thousand pages. Gianni Versace appears to have made his way through Proust without ripping a single page out. One could conclude from this that Karl's library will be mostly hardbacks. He has 350,000 followers on Twitter but follows no-one. In an industry not noted for selflessness he is the supreme solipsist. His observations on Twitter are not without merit, mostly sub-Wildean apercus - 'Throwing money out the window brings money back in through the front door…Don't look to the approval of others for your mental stability…My greatest problem in life is my indifference to the outside world...the most important piece of furniture in a house is the garbage can."

We have bought very large collections of art books -we cleared the Highgate mansion of Thames and Hudson founder Eva Neurath and the Earls Court flat of the art critic Mario Amaya but have had nothing on the scale of the Lagerfeld library. Few things sell as well as art books if you get the price right. Art books are often very heavy and many of these are of surprisingly low value, but quite frequently an unexceptional looking tome proves valuable. In a modest art book collection bought at auction last month we found the difficult T & H art monograph Francis Bacon by Ronald Alley and De Faucigny-Lucinge's fabulous coffee table book Legendary Parties (Vendome Press 1987) - together they will give little change from a $1000 bill. Several of Lagerfeld's own books are in the $100 class including his two Steidl photobook titles from the late 90s Casa Malaparte and The House in the Trees. He also produced issue 23 for the de luxe fashion victim magazine Visionaire (NY 1997) The Emperor's New Clothes. This appeared in a wooden box in 5000 only copies and is a portfolio of celebrity nudes shot by him of Rupert Everett, Demi Moore, Julie Delpy, Minnie Driver, Lisa Marie Presley, Amber Valetta, Linda Evangelista, Alex Lundqvist, Karen Elson etc.,. This can go for £300+ unless the box is damaged (it often is.)

He shelves his books sideways (as shown) which mimics the piles of art books one sees on tables in interior design magazines. It is a flashier way of showing books but hell when you want to get one out from the bottom of the stack. Last word on books from Karl “I’m mad for books…It is a disease I won’t recover from. They are the tragedy of my life. I want to learn about everything. I want to know everything, but I’m not an intellectual, and I don’t like their company. I’m the most superficial man on Earth.” Karl -when you tire of them utterly email us and we will show up with a dozen strong men and women in a Volvo semi truck and trailer, with 10,000 flat boxes and at least a 100 rolls of tape.

Collecting Eric Ravilious

Current selling prices £2 - £3000

Arguably the most fashionable twentieth century English artist of the present day—more trendy than either Bacon or Freud, but appealing to a very different audience. Ravilious’ ascent to star status possibly began with the publication of Freda Constable’s The England of Eric Ravilious in 1982. Since then, a number of studies focussing on various aspects of his work have appeared, most notably Alan Powers Imagined Realities. The appeal for his admirers lies in his peculiar vision of England in peace and war, captured in intense wood engravings that take their inspiration from Blake and Bewick, in spirited lithographs that owe something to continental surrealism and English folk art, but more brilliantly still in pallid watercolours informed by the artist’s early training as a wood engraver, but taking their palette from the English tradition in watercolour and the decorative motifs of, among other things, late eighteenth century Wedgwood creamware. In this world planes and tanks are reduced to toy-like dimensions and people, where they are present at all, become mere dolls --part of a play world of empty landscapes and interiors that exude a sense of dream-like menace. Ravilious, like his friend Edward Bawden, is the archetypal artist as designer- and- decorator and his work chimes in with the modern liking for irony and playfulness, and for interior design. His vision is the classical counterpoint to the sturm und drang romanticism of his exact contemporary, John Piper.



But unlike both Bawden and Piper, Ravilious died before he could fulfil his true potential. An aviator lost at sea at just 39 in 1942 —he left behind designs that were used years later, and now anything with a Ravilious motif on it is sought after —from the posthumous fifties meat plate, lemonade or milk jug by Wedgwood, the 1953 Coronation mug, to his four hundred plus wood engravings scattered around various publications. He it was who designed the logos of The Cornhill Magazine in 1929 and of Wisden, and a set of wood engravings for the Kynoch Press Notebook and Diary for 1933 that deserve comparison with those of William Blake. His most famous book is High Street, which the Curwen Press printed for Country Life in 1938. This collection of 24 brilliant and quirky lithographs of shop fronts and interiors mainly in London (including furrier, second-hand dealer, undertaker and oyster bar ) which accompanies a text by architectural historian J. M. Richards, has now become, without question, the most sought after English illustrated book of the twentieth century. Only two thousand copies were issued, but many of these have been broken up for their plates and thus copies in good condition are rare.

At ABE you can find perfect or near perfect ones at up to £3, 250. The book’s rarity is compounded by the fact that the original lithographic stones were destroyed during the blitz. But with demand for High Street so great, it was only a matter of time before some sort of reprint appeared and in 2008 Alan Powers ( who used to execute exquisite watercolours of shop fronts himself ) brought out a history of the book ,The Story of High Street . which attempts, among other things, to identify the shops featured. This limited edition itself has now become a collector’s item for those who cannot afford the original book. Copies now trade at $238 or more.



For Ravilious fans with lower horizons, issues of Wisden and the post-1929 Cornhill Magazine can easily be obtained for a pound or two. However, anyone wanting a copy of the very scarce Kynoch Press Notebook and Diary for 1933 will probably have to be content with the reprint published in 2003 by the Incline Press, copies of which can be had for £48, though the ‘deluxe ‘ issue is quoted at £280. [R.M.Healey]

Many thanks Robin. More trendy than Freud and Bacon, cooler than Koons and Emin - I hadn't realised. I used to see High Street round the bookfairs in the 1980s priced in the low hundreds and often a bit shaken. When it became a four figure book it disappeared and I had the odd email offering me a copy at over a £1000. Because of my curious need to make a profit I did not buy, but sadly I have never found a copy asleep. The highest auction record for the book is £1200 + premium for a copy at Winter in 2008, slightly chipped at spine. £3250 is what you have to put on it to stop it selling. Also desirable is his 1929 Almanack for Lanston Monotype Corporation (12 wood engravings) -a copy made £400 4 years ago. His Writings of Gilbert White of Selborne from Nonesuch in 1938 (44 woodcuts) can command £600 or more. Sellers sometimes claim it was his finest work; certainly It was his final great work before he met his death off Iceland in 1942.

Manet and the Post-Impressionists (2)

Fry had doubtless predicted an outcry when the exhibition opened and he was right. The comments from the old guard of British art can be imagined. One visitor—rumoured to be the reactionary Orientalist, Wilfred Scawen Blunt –went as far as warning one young man not to enter the gallery for fear of being horribly corrupted by what lay within. The popular press almost to a man supported this view. To many the exhibition was dangerous. The artists couldn’t draw or paint; the colours were obscene and decidedly not to the taste of the great British art lover.



But takings were excellent. Some pictures were even sold, and Fry, though stung somewhat by the comments left by visitors and by the press reaction, was sufficiently encouraged by the response of the cognoscenti, to organise a second exhibition in 1912, which he imaginatively entitled ‘The Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition’.

A century on, Post Impressionism has become part of the history of art and it is the Edwardian Academicians that tend to be dismissed . Consequently, the catalogue of this first brave statement in defence of modern art is eagerly sought after. But where can one find one ? My own ‘ Under Revision ‘ copy, which had once belonged to Antonia Forest’s father and was rescued from a job lot, is similar to the copy the Tate was boasting about online. But try as I might I couldn’t find another for sale anywhere. I contacted one dealer specialising in catalogues, who thought it was ‘ the rarest of the rare’, but had never handled one . Sims Reed didn’t have one. There was no copy on ABE. Crispin Jackson, then Head of Books, couldn’t say if a copy had ever been sold at Christie’s, but phoned back much later to say that if it ever turned up it would probably fetch £250. Bloomsbury couldn’t help either. Eventually, a copy did end up on ABE about seven months ago, in worse condition ( ‘ fair ‘ and spine lacking ) than my own, priced at £1,100, but this too has now disappeared .

But we do know just what someone is willing to shell out for this most modest looking catalogue without illustrations of an exhibition that changed the face of art for ever. [R.M.Healey]

Thanks Robin. I have been pondering values of this catalogue and thinking of other valuable 20th century exhibition catalogues. There are rare Dadaist and Surrealist catalogues, some guy, possibly deluded, at ABE wants £2K+ for Gerhard Richter Venice Biennale catalogues, last week a 1920s Picabia catalogue made 10000 euros (it had a drawing by him, but so did all 200 issued) and then there is that common rare catalogue 'This is Tomorrow.' A copy surfaced at £30 on the net a month back and sold in its first hour of life. Decent copies still find end-users at £1000.

I did actually find an auction record, albeit a buy-in, for the Fry/ Manet catalaogue. A copy with covers detached failed to make its £700 reserve in Christie's 2006 dispersal of Library of Lady Ottoline Morrell. The cataloguer made a good fist of it, even coming up with some gossip - often needed to clinch a big sale of a Bloomsbury item:

'Ottoline Morrell had been closely involved in its organization, inspecting the Cezannes and Van Goghs in Paris with Fry and Desmond MacCarthy. Roger Fry, who had met the Morrells in 1909, wrote to Lowes Dickinson on October 15, 1910: 'Lady Ottoline was with us in Paris. She is quite splendid ... The show will be a great affair. I am preparing for a huge campaign of outraged British Philistinism.' In a letter to her, Fry wrote, 'I can't tell you how it helped me to have you at such a difficult time, to help and advise. I don't think I could have done it without you.' Yet they were soon to quarrel - each accusing the other of gossiping - and the friendship was never again so strong and purposeful.'

Gossip about gossip, in fact. Christies barked: 'A FINE ASSOCIATION COPY OF THE CATALOGUE TO ONE OF THE MOST MOMENTOUS EXHIBITIONS HELD IN BRITAIN IN THE 20TH-CENTURY.' The trouble was that Lady O had not written her name in the thing and Christies did not make up a posthumous ex libris so the association would be pretty much lost once the book left the room, also the sale was mainly literature, and art stuff may have gone over the assembled punter's heads.

Among the Van Gogh's in the catalogue were the following:

Garden of Daubigny in Auvers-sur-Oise
Orchard in Provence
Paysage
View of Arles
Iris
Le Postier
Jeune fille au bleuet
Pont d'Asnieres
Les Usines
Les bles d'or.
Cornfield with blackbirds
Les soleils
Dr Gachet
Pieta (after Delacroix)
Resurrection of Lazarus
La Berceuse
Le gardeur d'oies
Arles
Cypres
Evening landscape
Tournesols

Current value of this lot must be way over the billion pound mark. As I recall Lord Andrew Webber paid £100 million just for the Dr Gachet. Vincent, once an art dealer himself, could have used the money when he was around... 'Cornfield with Blackbirds' is shown above--it is not hard to see how this might have flummoxed an Edwardian stuffed shirt...

Above left is the jacket of 'Roger Fry, A Biography' by Virginia Woolf (Hogarth Press, 1940). 2,530 copies printed and not at all scarce although sharp copies wearing clean jackets can make £500 on a good day. The portrait is by Vanessa Bell. Virginia said of her book - “I can’t help thinking...I’ve caught a good deal of that iridescent man in my oh so laborious butterfly net.”

Manet and the Post-Impressionists (1)

Manet and the Post-Impressionists (London, Ballantyne & Company Ltd, 1910)

Current Selling Prices
$1500+ /£900+



MODERN ART / EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
If there is a Holy Grail among exhibition catalogues this is it. ‘Manet and the Post Impressionists’ is arguably the most significant and the most controversial exhibition of paintings ever to be held in the UK. It was an exhibition which put modern art on the map. Indeed, it actually defined what modern art was, and those who saw it went away either enraged or inspired.

When the 46 year old artist, curator, writer on art, but not yet Bloomsburyite, Roger Fry began to assemble paintings by the greatest names in the modern French school, the work of Cezanne, Seurat, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso and the rest had never been exhibited in the UK. Some of their names were known to art lovers, but a trip to the continent was necessary to view paintings by them. Fry meant to change all that with a show that would rock the staid world of salon art and Royal Academy annual exhibitions. With his many contacts in the art world he asked leading collectors in Europe and beyond to lend him their paintings. Many works were for sale. Dealers in modern art were more than eager to break into the British market.

For want of a name to describe such a disparate group Fry coined the term Post-Impressionism, and so as not to scare away potential visitors he attached to this new word the name of the respected Manet. Fry needn’t have worried. Once the doors of the trendy Grafton Galleries opened on 8 November 1910 word got around quickly and in days, thanks partly to some negative press publicity, everyone was soon talking about the show.

Fry had prepared the ground. He had recruited two committees of the great and good in the Arts and had persuaded the respected critic Desmond McCarthy to come on board as Secretary for a fee of £400 and to contribute a short preface to the catalogue, based on his notes. As for this catalogue itself—it was the dullest thing imaginable-- a 40 page octavo job priced at one shilling and made of thick paper with muddy brown paper covers and, bizarrely, no illustrations whatsoever.[R.M. Healey]

Thanks Robin, wise words indeed and to be continued.... I know that H.M. Bateman did a cartoon of visitors to the exhibition (so far unfindable) probably showing shocked faces and people keeling over in front of the strange art that had invaded London. If anyone has an example of it please dispatch it to us! It was reviewed by Rupert Brooke, Charles Ricketts, Arnold Bennett (as Jacob Tonson) Holbrook Jackson (in an article called 'Pop Goes the Past') and the fascist Ludovici. There is an entire book devoted to the critical reception the Post Impressionists received in Britain (by J.B. Bullen). Values will be discussed in the next part--the only British catalogue of comparable value that I can think of is that of the 1929 Bruno Hat exhibition ( a surrealist hoax/ lampoon) at Bryan Guinness's house at 10 Buckingham Street, London SW1. The introduction to the catalogue ('Approach to Hat') is by Evelyn Waugh under the pseudonym A.R. de T. Also on the subject of Fry one must not forget 'The Roger Fry Memorial Exhibition' catalogue by Virginia Woolf (1935). Only 125 copies were produced and it can go for than Bruno and the above combined. Oddly enough I need a copy at the moment so ship and bill, please.

Collecting John Piper

Frances Spalding’s long awaited twin biography of John and Myfanwy Piper is being reprinted less than a month after its appearance. This is something almost unheard of in the small world of art history books. So either there is currently a Piper resurgence, or the OUP has badly underestimated the demand, or both. Or perhaps people want to discover more about the hitherto neglected Myfanwy, who among things, was Betjeman’s muse. But there is no doubt that John Piper has some incredibly dedicated fans. The Net is full of them. One of the most devoted is Ken Hayes, whose John Piper site is admirably comprehensive.

People who can’t afford paintings by Piper tend to collect the books written, designed or illustrated by him. I’ve already dealt with the Shell Guides series in an earlier blog, but there are so many other Piper items worth collecting. Some are very obscure and very expensive indeed. Take his first book, published when he was just 18-- The Wind in the Trees. I’ve never seen a copy of this book of verse which Piper’s dad got the Horseshoe Publishing Company of Bristol to bring out in 1921. Even Hayes admits to not having found a copy. Presumably they exist somewhere, or is this another et tu Healy situation ?

Piper’s second slim volume, The Gaudy Saint, which appeared 3 years later from the same publisher, is only slightly less scarce. Blackwell’s have a copy at a hefty $942. Then in 1925 Piper senior paid the Curwen Press to publish his memoirs. Sixty-three Not Out would be unremarkable without the 19 tiny vignettes by the twenty-two year old artist, by then planning to leave his post as a clerk in his father’s law firm for art school. About 20 years ago I actually found a copy marked at £10 in the basement of a shop in Cecil Court ( I forget which one ), but rejected it as a bit peripheral. What an idiot I was! I’ve never seen another copy since, but Maggs now have one priced at $707. Drat it !

Brighton Aquatints (1939), Piper’s first important book, is not seriously scarce but is always sought after. There is a tale that Betjeman coloured in some of the aquatints, but I’ve never actually seen a coloured version. Incidentally, Piper also contributed an aquatint as a frontispiece to S John Woods excellent John Piper: Paintings, Drawings and Theatre Designs (1955) and this too I have seen coloured in, though it looks better uncoloured. Myfanwy once gave me one of these prints from a pile hanging around at Henley Bottom Farmhouse after Piper’s death. A few years earlier she had very kindly presented me with a whole run in mint condition of the incredibly scarce Axis, the avant garde art magazine she had edited in the thirties. For this I will be eternally grateful. I would never have been able to afford such a treasure otherwise.



Another great scarcity is Colour in the English Country House, which appears in the bibliographies, but which few, including myself, have seen. It’s possibly the sort of booklet that might have been discarded with annual spring-cleanings and could be worth having if it turned up in a box of books somewhere. Most other Pipers are nothing like as rare. Books with wrapper designs by him shout out Piper and are common enough, as are books containing his illustrated. Piper’s own title in the Britain in Pictures series, British Romantic Artists, comes up all the time. On ABE at present there are 62 copies, all hovering around £6- £20, but for some reason one chancer in Santa Barbara ( about as far away from Piper country as you can be ) has stuck a price of $250 on a copy. The thing doesn’t seem to have an original Piper abstract or postcards from Betjeman loosely inserted. It’s just a perfectly ordinary copy of a common book in a standard wrapper printed with printer’s ink, rather than painted by Piper himself in an idle moment. But on this particular subject, Piper did on one occasion reproduce in ink the cover of his Buildings and Prospects for a friend who had lost the wrapper of his own copy. Now that would be a book to covet. [R.M. Healey]

Thanks Robin. I sympathise with your annoyance at having let go 63 Not Out ('a bit peripheral'). I have done this with other books and regretted it and gone back only to find "the swifter glove of another hunter" has nabbed the book (Javier Marias.) Hells, bells and buckets of blood! A trivial point about Piper is that sartorially he was similar to Anthony Powell - they both wore non v-neck pull overs over shirt and tie with the tie plumping out the at top of the pullover like a second Adam's apple - to me it tends to signify the chap will not put up with any nonsense. James Lees Milne also affected this style (are there others?) I guess it's an upper class thing and you seldom see it anymore. I am not sure if Piper is a long term investment and whether succeeding generations will discover his art. Given the enthusiasm with which his bio has been received he is probably sound. Because he has never been trendy it is unlikely that he will go out of style...

Below is a splendid Piper painting - Gordale Scar, Yorkshire, 1943.

Zang Tumb Tuuum! (1914)

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. ZANG TUMB TUUM (Adrianopoli, Ottobre 1912 : Parole in Libertà.) Poesia, Milan, 1914.

Current Selling Prices
$3000+ /£2000+

SOUND POETRY/ FUTURISM / ARTIST'S BOOK
The kind of book you could theoretically find in the foreign language section of a doltish bookseller ignorant of modern art, poetry and European literature - plenty of chaps like that + the book is not on the net. This might trigger some sort of high pricing response and they might go for something extravagant like $375, a fairly typical bookseller's price for a book that is 'not on net.' Of course it's a marvellous piece of work by the great Italian futurist (alright he was a bit of a fascist) and remarkable for 1914. At 225 pages it is not a pamphlet but not a fat book. The BM lists two sizes 19cms tall and 28 cms tall.

The book had appeared in excerpts in journals between 1912 and 1914 and is one of the very first manifestations of the modernist avant-garde, well before the Cabaret Voltaire bunch launched DADA in 1916 and even the Vorticists and their fabulous puce BLAST manifesto (1914.) In FUTURISM by Caroline Tisdall & Angelo Bozzolla (T & H 1977) they say this of it:-

"[The] masterpiece of Words-in-freedom and of Marinetti’s literary career was the novel ‘Zang Tumb Tuuum’... the story of the siege by the Bulgarians of Turkish Adrianople in the Balkan War, which Marinetti had witnessed as a war reporter. The dynamic rhythms and onomatopoetic possibilities that the new form offered were made even more effective through the revolutionary use of different typefaces, forms and graphic arrangements and sizes that became a distinctive part of Futurism. In ‘Zang Tumb Tuuum; they are used to express an extraordinary range of different moods and speeds, quite apart from the noise and chaos of battle.... Audiences in London, Berlin and Rome alike were bowled over by the tongue-twisting vitality with which Marinetti declaimed ‘Zang Tumb Tuuum.’ As an extended sound poem it stands as one of the monuments of experimental literature, its telegraphic barrage of nouns, colours, exclamations and directions pouring out in the screeching of trains, the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire, and the clatter of telegraphic messages"

OUTLOOK/VALUE? Futurism was in the doldrums for a while but recent records show some highish prices. An inscribed 'Zang Tumb' in slightly shabby shape made £2600 at Bloomsbury last May, a better inscribed copy sold in 1993 also at Bloomsbury (to a dealer called Gidal) for a paltry £250. Before that the Tate Gallery bought a copy for £65 just 30 years ago (also inscribed-- Marinetti was a great signer.) Meanwhile the chef d'oeuvre of Futurism, albeit after the event (1932) 'Parole in Liberta Futuriste Olfattive Tattili Termiche' sometimes known as 'the tin book' (see below) made $70,000 in 1993 and the BM bought a copy this year for a generous £83000. It consist of 15 thin metal sheets in various colors and will be on display. This price was paid to another institution and rather like collector-to -collector sales may have been toppish especially in these times. 25 years ago it sold for £4000- a sound investment.

Marinetti's 'La Cucina Futurista' (also 1932) is not without interest -full of outlandish ingredients and bizarre combinations. He even dared to attack pasta - he insisted that it induced 'fiacchezza, pessimismo, inattività nostalgica e neutralismo' ('lethargy, pessimism, nostalgic inactivity, and neutralism'). This anti - pasta cookbook might also be found in our imaginary doltish bookshop in the cookery section for $10 but it can make $1000 + for smart copies. I have a customer for one...

Damien Hirst. I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere...1997

Damien Hirst. I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now. Booth-Clibborn Editions, London, 1997.

Current Selling Prices
$900+ /£500+


ARTIST'S BOOK
The last copy we sold was signed and we described it thus:

Large 4to. As new in publishers cloth in like dustjacket (taken out of the publishers shrink wrapping merely to check signature was present). Original faux leather boards embossed and gilt decorated. 334pp. Illustrated throughout in colour including 7 pop-ups, gatefolds, die cuts and other special features including ephemera laid in and poster at rear. SIGNED by Hirst; highly collectable in its signed form as Hirst (the Duchamp of our time?) has become unapproachable especially with a big book under your arm.

You really need brand new copies as the parts often fall out or quickly get defective. We sold another copy still in its shrink wrap with a 'signed' label -- some collectors prefer their books untouched and still sealed 'like a virgin' ( e.g. Madonna's Sex always worth more unopened.) The full compliment is 7 gatefolds, 23 die-cuts, 7 pop-ups, ephemera and other special features, plus one folded poster laid in. 'Extravagant' 'innovative' and 'provocative' are words frequently used around this book. I have heard it said that some books have different ephemera...

The Hirst industry started to get slightly silly last year. Below are the contents of a goody bag (aka 'doggie bag') given out at his 2007 party/preview ('Beyond Belief') at the Dorchester to launch his $100,000,000 diamond encrusted skull sculpture. Diamonds are a skull's best friend (tabloid headline.) One delaer wanted £700 for his night's haul, another a risible £375 for the chocolate skull covered in silver sparkle ('one of the few that got away uneaten.') The seller assures us that 'they taste terribly good.' At the Lyon and Turnbull sale of 27/9/08, the first of the sales of recent British art to significantly bomb, a goody bag and book were offered described thus:

GOODIE BAG + BOOK
Complete 'Goodie Bag' given out by Damien Hirst and White Cube at Hirst's 'Beyond Belief' exhibition. It contains a 'For the Love of God' T-Shirt, a Smythson customised leather skull note book, a CD of The Hours, a white chocolate and glitter skull sweet and five pairs of HoloSpex glasses to view the artist's diamond encrusted work - 'For the Love of God'. Sold with a signed and inscribed copy of Damien Hirst's book, 'The Death of God'.

They failed to reach a reserve of £600. The earlier £100,000,000 sale of Hirst art at Sotheby's also in September is now being seen as the apex of a market in swift decline, a sort of dead cat bounce deftly directed by Jopling and Hirst. Real artistry there.

OUTLOOK. Hirst is unlikely to suddenly implode, too many people are invested in him and he is still the greatest talent of the Brit Art crowd. Hard to buy a signed one at less than £1000. A copy at £1600 has been on the web now for 3 years. Prices will probably remain good for unmolested examples of the book. Even though the Gordon Burn essay is of a high order it is best to read it elsewhere or with great care. 'Goody bags' are best avoided -many major stars would not have been to a reception this century where there wasn't a goody bag and might require sessions of therapy if the goody bag wasn't good enough, as it were. I haven't heard of significant collectors of the items-- they may well be traded on Ebay?

Arson 1942 / Toni del Renzio

Toni del Renzio. ARSON. AN ARDENT REVIEW. Part One of a Surrealist Manifestation. London, 1942.

Current Selling Prices
$250-$600 /£120-£300

SURREALISM / MAGAZINE
Although billed as 'Part One' this was the only issue of this surrealist magazine of 'incendiary innocence' ever to appear. Several other magazines, mostly smaller in format and associated with E.L.T. Mesens appeared and all have become quite hard to find and consequently expensive. Del Renzio was a key figure in British Surrealism, never a burgeoning movement but oddly attractive and now quite collectable. Under the headline 'SUPERDAD' the art journal 'Studio' published this obituary for him in Febuary 2007:-

Toni del Renzio has died aged 91. Truer than life always, he was born to a landed Italian family outside St Petersburg, where his father was a diplomat to the Tsarist court. He had a legendary and varied life, not least in contributing to Studio International, with whose editor, Peter Townsend, he established a natural rapport. Fluent in several languages, he had fought in the Spanish Civil War but ended up in the lap of the Surrealist movement in Paris. On eventual arrival in London, he founded the Surrealist magazine Arson. In 1951 he joined the Institute of Contemporary Arts and was involved on exhibition panels and juries. For a time back in Italy, he became the Fashion Editor for Harpers Bazaar, and then reorganised the Milanese magazine Novita as Vogue Italia. He staggered his friends and acquaintances much later on by becoming, at the age of 70, the father of quadruplets, two sons and two daughters: and then wrote about it as if it was the most natural thing in the world, which for del Renzio, it was. His métier was the surrealist collage. He became distinguished as a teacher, both at Bath and subsequently at Canterbury, where he was Head of Art and Design History. Vale, ti saluto, Toni del Renzio, maestro.

Antonio Romanov del Renzio dei Rossi di Castelleone e Venosa (to give him his full name) was a mercurial character and as a surrealist spent a lot of time engaged in aesthetic and political arguments, being at one time being considered a monster by the Mesens crowd. His key work 'Arson' was partially financed by Ithell Colquhoun whom he married in 1943 and divorced in 1948. He was also, briefly, the lover of the surrealist painter Emmy Bridgwater. In 1942 he also mounted a London exhibition entitled Surrealism resulting in more general recognition for the movement. 'Arson' was printed on turquoise stock and decorated on the front cover with surrealistic appropriations of steel engravings, printed in purple. Collage was a favourite medium for del Renzio. Contributors included Robert Melville, Giorgio de Chirico, Conroy Maddox, Nicolas Calas, Pierre Mabille + an interview with André Breton. Books by TDR are quite collectable--his 1968/ 1969 paperback on hippies 'The Flower Children' (no copies anywhere) must be worth £30 by now and his 1971 book 'After a Fashion' is highly elusive.

VALUE? A copy of Arson, not nice but complete, went through Ebay earlier this year at $199. There are 2 copies at ABE as we speak at £300 (call it $600) neither fine and one with chips at the edges. It probably sells easily at $300. £300 may be achievable as you have to have it if you collect British surrealism. The entire printed output of the British cadre of the movement would probably fit in one regular book box. I guess the top book would be Nancy Cunard's 'Salvo for Russia' also London, 1942. It was co-edited by the artist John Banting. 100 copies printed, last auction record £130 in 1976. I want it.

Outlook? Unknowable, search me guv etc., Pressed for an opinion I would say healthy - because it's quirky, visual and ephemeral. Below is a pic (mixed media and watercolour on paper) by the equally longlived (Birmingham) surrealist Conroy Maddox from 1940, that gives a flavour of the movement.

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 * ]