Swann Galleries Auction Preview Modern Illustrated Books & Livres d’Artiste Pt 1
Posted on August 17th, 2009 by admin
The books offered in this auction were acquired by West Coast collector Mel Ritter over several decades. Forty-six of his exemplary livres dartiste formed the basis of an exhibition at The University of Arizona Museum of Art in 2006. Now the entire collection is being sold at Swann.
The genre of books designed and illustrated by fine artists took shape in 20th-century France and blossomed into a vibrant art form throughout Europe and beyond. The modern masters of art featured in this sale include Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, and Pablo Picasso. The publishers who championed their work and produced some of the most exquisite livres in the collection include Maeght, Gallimard, Tériade, and Louis Broder, among others.
Modern and contemporary variations of the artist-illustrated book are well represented with works by Patrick Caulfield, Jim Dine, David Hockney, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Carlos Mérida, Robert Motherwell, and Antoni Tápies. Surrealists like Enrico Baj, Jose Luis Cuevas, Max Ernst, and Roberto Matta appear throughout the catalogue, as do American artists like Leonard Baskin, Fritz Scholder, Ben Shahn, and Bernard Solomon.
Beyond traditional livres dartiste there are fine publications by such distinctly American presses as Arion, Brighton, Gehenna, Cheloniidae, Pennyroyal, and the popular Limited Editions Club. Ritters sense of humor and love of whimsical constructions and bindings can be seen in works by contemporary modern book artists including Julie Chen of Flying Fish Press, Mare Blocker of The M Kimberly Press, and the ever-creative Edward Hutchins.
Duration : 0:9:0
Clayton Patterson and Elsa Rensa his wife life partner partner in art made these amazing wearable art hats before it became mainstream and marketed by corporations. Among move and shakers that have bought them are Jack Nicholson, Jim Dine, Matt Dillon, Gus Van Sant, Rob “Meathead” Reiner who later when on to become a famous film director, Mekons, and Clayton explains his art–a jack back for Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones too so check it out and enjoy some of the Lower East Side before it became gentrified supersized and turned in to a generic shopping mall and one big college dorm.
Artist Prof Harry Ally – a clip from an informal discussion on film of Jim Dine’s Impermanent Wall Drawing Exhibition in Germany. http://harryally.com
Jim Dine, one of the most innovative artists of the post-1960s era, talks with Ann Shafer, the BMA’s istant Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs at The Baltimore Museum of Art on September 10, 2008. 
In 2008, artist Jim Dine created an installation for the Museum at the Getty Villa. The first contemporary art project at the Villa, the work presents new sculpture and poetry by Dine inspired by ancient objects in the Museum’s collection. Two ancient Greek statuettes of dancing women, are magnified in Dine’s four eight-foot-high painted wood female figures. Their arrangement around a seven-foot-high self-portrait head echoes the sculptural group Poet as Orpheus with Two Sirens. The artist’s highly personal vision finds further expression in a poem drawn on the walls, with its Orphic themes of travel, loss, and the possibilities of art. Dine describes his creative process in this documentary.
Artist Jim Dine shows TateShots around his exhibition at Pace Wildenstein gallery. Part of our New York special issue. http://www.tate.org.uk/tateshots/issue17802/default.htm