ARTISTS’ BOOK NOT ARTISTS’ BOOK

6 Decades Books and Boo-Hooray Gallery present:

ARTISTS' BOOK NOT ARTISTS' BOOK

"Artists' book" is a troublesome term. There seems to be no single well-understood or generally-accepted working definition. Say "artists' book" in general conversation and you'll likely get a blank look, if not outright confusion; even with a specialized audience of bibliophiles, or art world cognoscenti, it may be necessary to clarify exactly what you mean... 

Artists' Book Not Artists' Book is an exhibition co-curated by Johan Kugelberg and Jeremy Sanders. In it are about one hundred books and of course all of them either are, or are not, artists’ books, but whether it is even possible to say which ones fall into which category is a matter that's not entirely clear. And in any case, it's likely no two viewers would draw exactly the same conclusions.

Artists' Book Not Artists' Book includes work by Chris Burden, Ira Cohen, Richard Meltzer, John Baldessari, Seth Price, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Richard Hell, Tina Lhotsky, Sue Williams, Tom Sachs, Richard Prince, William Gibson, David Wojnarowicz, Dara Birnbaum, Jim Shaw, Ed Ruscha, Sean Landers, and many others (not to mention, Various, Anonymous, and Unknown). 

Please join us for the opening reception January 18th from 6-9 pm. Thereafter  the exhibition will be open seven days a week, 12-6pm, from January 19 to February 12. We are located at 265 Canal Street (between Broadway and Lafayette) on the 6^th floor.

Publication now available:
Click here for information 
or email to purchase.

Sol LeWitt: Eighteen Artist-Designed Posters, 1967-1998

A collection of eighteen posters by Sol Lewitt, dating from 1967 to 1998. 

Lewitt, through his writing and work, did more to define Conceptual Art than any other individual. Simply put, it is art in which the idea is the primary thing; objects are secondary. Lewitt’s ideas found form in a diverse array of media, including wall drawings, structures (the term he preferred to sculpture), artists’ books, prints, posters, textiles, furniture, and assorted other objects and ephemera. No form was privileged over another, Lewitt’s methodology was rigorous and consistent, and as the art existed primarily in the idea, its realization (which was usually done by working with fabricators, assistants, printers, etc.) was simply a matter of dissemination--the process whereby the idea was made available. Thus this collection of posters is a compact retrospective, consisting of eighteen works spanning over thirty years, from the time of his earliest mature work to the point of international renown and acclaim as one of the true giants of contemporary art.

$7,500 for the set. Inquire.

Click here for complete description with images and specifications. 

Jason Polan on Roberta Smith's 10 Best list

Congratulations to Jason Polan on being named to Roberta Smith’s 10 Best of 2011 list in the New York Times today. If you missed the show, here is Smith’s original review of it, but make sure you don't also miss Polan’s new publication Every Counterfeit Handbag on Canal Street, a signed numbered edition that is available FREE, but only through December 23rd, exclusively at the 6 Decades / Boo-Hooray Holiday shop. 

HOLIDAY SHOP: featured December 16

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961.

8vo.; black cloth boards, spine stamped in gilt; a few marks to top edge of pages printed dust-jacket; faint tanning to edges of dust-jacket and along spine; price-clipped. Near Fine.

First edition. A very handsome copy of Jacobs’ classic study of cities and urban planning. The influence of this book is still being felt. Jacobs’ critique of hyper rational modernist city planning is credited by many with turning the tide against the worst excesses of “urban renewal” (and, not incidentally, with saving Greenwich Village from Robert Moses).

$500 now $300   inquire

Come by the 6 DECADES / BOO-HOORAY Holiday Shop. Every day till the 23rd there will be featured items announced on this site and in-store specials (such as Jason Polan’s FREE EDITION) as well as Dirk Westphal’s exhibition of nail polish Mondrians.

HOLIDAY SHOP: featured item December 15

Fleming, Ian. The Man with the Golden Gun. London: Jonathan Cape, 1965.

8vo.; clothbound in illustrated dustjacket; price-clipped, else fine.

First edition. The thirteenth book in Fleming’s James Bond series, one of the most successful franchises in the history of publishing (not to mention cinema). This copy is a second printing--the first printing had an embossed golden gun on the front board but the design was problematic to produce and was discontinued after only a few copies were printed. Classic trompe l'oeil jacket design by Richard Chopping. $500 now $250 inquire

Come by the 6 DECADES / BOO-HOORAY Holiday Shop. Every day till the 23rd there will be featured items announced on this site and in-store specials (such as Jason Polan’s FREE EDITION) as well as Dirk Westphal’s exhibition of nail polish Mondrians.

HOLIDAY SHOP: featured Dec. 14

Bernd and Hilla Becher. Hochöfen / Blast Furnaces. Munich: Schirmer Mosel, 2003.

Large 4to.; illustrated throughout in b+w; clothbound; housed in cloth slipcase along with a silver-gelatin photographic print matted within cloth portfolio. As new, in publisher's original glassine.

Limited edition. No. 45 of 100 numbered copies. Silver-gelatin print numbered and signed by the Bechers. Photo dated 1996, printed 2003.

$4,000 now $3,200

Inquire

Come by the 6 DECADES / BOO-HOORAY Holiday Shop. Every day from now to the 23rd there will be featured items announced on the website and other specials, including Jason Polan’s FREE EDITION, as well as Dirk Westphal’s exhibition of nail polish Mondrians. 

HOLIDAY SHOP, featured Dec. 13th

Patrick Paine

Porcelain Book Display Bookends

This is a pair of bookends in white porcelain designed by Brooklyn-based sculptor Patrick Paine and produced in conjunction with 6 Decades Books. Each is cast and fired by hand and signed by Paine on the underside. If you are a book collector then you probably agree that there just aren't any decent bookends on the market. Everything is either too flimsy to support a row of heavy books, too poorly designed to do so without damaging them, or else too ugly to allow on the shelf in the first place. Paine's design has  none of these issues. They are smooth white porcelain so they won’t damage even the most fragile dust-jacket, they are heavy with a wide stance to stand solidly on the shelf and firmly support even tall, heavy art books, and they are designed to display a book face-out so you can show off a prized volume (but are such beautiful sculptural objects in themselves that you could just as well leave them unadorned).  They’re handmade so the dimensions vary slightly but each bookend is about 10 inches high, 7.5 in. wide, 6 in. deep, and weighs about 3.5 lbs. Ordinarily these bookends are $250 per pair but we now have a few available at a special price of $150 for a set of two. inquire

Come by the Holiday Shop, open 11-6 Monday-Saturday through december 23rd. More special offers coming soon, Jason Polan's FREE edition is still available, and Dirk Westphal's exhibition is on view. 

FREE: new Jason Polan edition

Jason Polan

Every Counterfeit Handbag on Canal Street

Unlimited numbered edition, all copies signed

2011

In the neighborhood near the 6 Decades shop dealers in counterfeit handbags do a brisk business. It’s illegal, of course, and the actual bags are kept in a secret room somewhere out of sight, so if you want to see the merchandise you’ll first be shown a small laminated booklet filled with tiny images of the various models available. 6 Decades was (with some difficulty) able to obtain one of these booklets and Jason Polan has now used it as the basis of his latest artists’ book. In format it is a precise facsimile of the original, but in this version Polan  has drawn every bag by hand. 6 Decades is pleased to announce that Every Counterfeit Handbag on Canal Street, a new publication by Jason Polan, is available beginning today. Each copy is signed and numbered and the book is FREE, but you must come by in person to pick it up at the 6 Decades / Boo-Hooray Holiday shop where it will be available exclusively, now through December 23. Sorry, no online ordering, not available on Kindle, no Fedex, no Priority Mail, one copy per person. 

Come by the Holiday Shop; every day from now to the 23rd there will be new freebies, and/or featured items announced on the website and Dirk Westphal's exhibition of nail polish Mondrians will also be on view. 

Holiday shop, featuring Dirk Westphal, opens Dec. 10

One must speak reverentially of masterpieces, that’s well understood. But does the pleasure of aesthetic contemplation really compare to the satisfaction of knowing you’ve just scored a great bargain? We may praise works displaying outstanding artistry, skill, or workmanship, but when we vote with our feet it seems that what we really love is a cheap-knock off… Hey, no one needs to know you got your ‘Louis’ bag on Canal Street, right?

Canal Street Boogie-Woogie, Dirk Westphal’s new series of nail-polish Mondrians (more images), makes no attempt to resolve the internal conflict between high and low. The work plays on this tension; and, even better, it’s one of those beautiful things that let you have it both ways. Kind of like Jimi Hendrix playing The Star-Spangled Banner, which goes down like a frosty mug of patriotism but with a nice jolt of rebellion as a chaser, Westphal makes cover versions of works that aspired to Neo-Platonic purity out of tacky bargain bin materials. They’re clean and dirty all at once. You can high five yourself for being a culturally sophisticated art-world know-it-all and a savvy shopper who just got a bargain.

Works from Canal Street Boogie-Woogie and Westphal’s new artists’ book (in an edition of 50 signed and numbered copies) will be featured at the 6 Decades/Boo-Hooray Holiday Shop, open 11-6 Monday-Saturday from December 10th through the 23rd, with opening night festivities on Saturday, December 10, from 6-8pm. 

Holzer: 'Use what is dominant in a culture to change it"

Jenny Holzer

Truisms

Offset lithograph on paper

22 x 17 inches

Stamped “Jenny Holzer 1978”

1978

Jenny Holzer’s approach is, as she put it, to “use what is dominant in a culture to change it.” Though her art is almost entirely text-based, Holzer’s methodology is one of appropriation and thus runs in parallel to that of Richard Prince, Jack Goldstein, Dara Birnbaum, Cindy Sherman and others who gained prominence in the late 70s and early 80s, collectively defining a post-modern aesthetic. While they made use of appropriated imagery and photographic modes of working in order to examine and subvert standard ways in which the culture represented itself visually, Holzer was appropriating established linguistic tropes in order to distill received wisdom into a series of basic verbal constructions. Holzer has also been innovative in her use of non-traditional media and modes of exhibition, frequently installing her work  publicly as posters, in paid advertising, artists’ books, or, more recently, by using electronic displays and projections, in order to reach an audience well beyond art’s usual museum and gallery settings.

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