Art Basel 2017 - Special selection

Toyokuni, Utamaro, Kunimasa
Yakusha Gakuya Tsu, Picture-book of Portraits: Actors behind the Scenes, 1799
3298-BK

10 7/8 x 7 3/8 in. (27.7 x 18.8 cm)

Thirty-six full color actor portraits are in Edo style accompanied by poems and a delightful double page print by Utamaro. "The large head and the half length type of actor print had been among the great innovations of the 1780s and 1790s and these two artists excelled in these striking forms of portraiture, which recalled Western prints from the time of Durer onward, focusing on the features of the person portrayed with close-up intensity."Hiller. pg. 573.

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Yves Tanguy
La Vie Immediate, 1932
4452-BK

7 7/8 x 6 1/8 in. (20 x 15.5 cm)

Paris, Editions des Cahiers Libres
First book with an etching by Tanguy (ref. Wittrock 1) for poems by Paul Eluard. There were only 22 copies of the book with the etching; 10 regular copies with text printed in the plate and 12 author’s copies on blue mauve paper with the etching on Japon nacré. This copy is one of the 12 author’s copies with a dedication by Paul Eluard to Theodore Fraenkel, a doctor and classmate of André Breton. Exceptional example of this rare book, bound in leather by A. Demules. Edition of 12.

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Alberto Giacometti
Douze Portraits du Celebre Orbandale, 1962
9563-BK

14 x 7 1/8 in. (35.7 x 18.4 cm)

Book comprising 12 original etchings on Rustic China paper.

Edition of 40 copies, numbered and signed by the artist and publisher, in it's original parchment cover. Published by Iliazd.

Reference: Lust No. 162-173



Alberto Giacometti's austere figures and portraits speak to human existence in a post-war era defined by alienation and uncertainty. Fascinated by the practice of representing the same sitter again and again to reveal the constant variability of a single person, Giacometti often took his wife, his mother, and his brother as subjects. In the series of 12 prints from which this work originates, the artist illustrates the Dada writer and editor Iliazd (Ilia Zdanevich), who was known as the architect, designer, and publisher of illustrated books of the School of Paris.

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Robert Breer
Image Par Images, 1955
4220-BK

4 7/8 x 3 5/8 in. (12.5 x 9.1 cm)

A unique flip book using only lines in movement dedicated to Robert Rauschenberg. Breer was best known for his films, which combine abstract and representational painting, hand-drawn rotoscoping, original 16mm and 8mm film footage, photographs, and other materials. Breer was an experimental filmmaker, painter, and sculptor. This unpaginated flip book is an experiment that helped him transit from painting to films. "I made a flip book of small paintings to try to understand how I arrived at making this final painting. I was working in very simple geometric forms, hard edge, conventional, you know, more or less conventional neo-plasticism. So, this first flip book then became the basis for a film on my next visit to America, which was that year, 1952, and yet I didn’t really use those original images. I had to invent my own system because I had no training in filmmaking at all and certainly none in animation. I only knew that I had to do one frame at a time."

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Marcel Duchamp
Roto Reliefs, 1953
9571-OR

7 3/4 x 7 3/4 in. (20 x 20 cm)

Series of six double sided circular offset lithographs from the 1934 edition, with a black cardboard stand and folding carton box, including instructions and printed signature.
Publisher: Enrico Donati, New York.
Edition of 1000 copies (ca. 600 destroyed).

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Dieter Roth
bok 2b, 1961
928

12 5/8 x 12 5/8 in. (32 x 32 cm)

Approx. 50 pages, letterpress on double sheets, monotype setting, spiral binding.

Printed by Prentsmioja Jons Helgasonar, Reykjavik.

Published by forlag ed, Reykjavik.

100 copies numbered and signed; approx 10 copies destroyed; this is copy 74.

Signed and dated Reykjavik, 1961. DR. CW. 20 # 8

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Dieter Roth
Book BB, 1964
7643-BK

15 3/4 x 15 5/8 x 5/8 in. (40.3 x 39.8 x 1.8 cm)

18 red and green sheets with hand-cut slots at 90 degrees in various sizes (0.2, 0.5, 1.0 1.5, 3.5 and 6.5cm). In black paper over board folder in publisher's black box with Diter Rot Edition MAT collection 64 on spine. "Diter Rot BOOK bb, IDEA 1958, sc. 1964 for MAT" with artist's fingerprint in black ink. This is copy 16 of the proposed edition of 50.

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Ed Ruscha
Set of 16 books from Henry Hopkins, 1963-78
4377-BK

Set comprises 16 seminal books by the artist: Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Various Small Fires, Some Los Angeles Apartments, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, Thirtyfour Parking Lots, Royal Road Test, Business Cards, Nine Swimming Pools, Crackers, Babycakes, Real Estate Opportunities, A Few Palm Trees, Dutch Details, Records, Colored People, and Hard Light. All signed or inscribed to Hopkins except Babycakes, which has the rare ”compliments of author card” signed "give to henry, Ed" from Ruscha enclosed. Hopkins was the curator at the LA County Museum in the 1960s and bought Ed's first painting for the museum. Henry Hopkins directed the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art before returning to UCLA, where he led the Wight Art Gallery and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Dimensions variable.

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Marcel Broodthaers
La Conqu√™te de l'espace, Atlas √”  l”šÁ„Á´usage des artistes et des militaires, (The conquest of space, atlas for the use of artists and the military), 1975
6343-BK

1 7/16 x 15/16 in. (3.8 x 2.5 cm)

38 pages in slipcase, offset lithograph, containing silhouettes of a selection of 32 countries of the world shrunk to the same scale as Belgium, with no difference in size, arranged alphabetically. Published by Edition Lebeer Hossmann, Brussels and Hamburg. A tiny and most rare important final artist's book by Broodthaers that plays on language, scale, and function—it is transportable, but useless. This book was published shortly before the artist's unexpected death in 1976 thus all copies remain unsigned and are stamped “Estate M Broodthaers” and numbered by the publisher. Number 17 of 50 copies.

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Brigid Berlin
Untitled, 1972
4219-BK

6 1/16 x 4 5/16 in. (15.4 x 11 cm)

Former Warhol Factory acolyte, Berlin narcissistically documented her life via Polaroid photographs. This book is a unique example from a series of “tit paintings”—colorful prints made by pressing her painted or inked breasts on paper. Inscribed “For Bob with love, Brigid.” Ex-collection Robert Rauschenberg.

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Cy Twombly
Octavio Paz, Eight Poems, Cy Twombly, Ten drawings, 1993
5653-BK

13 1/8 x 10 in. (33.4 x 25.7 cm)

Complete set of four unsigned heliogravures in color by Cy Twombly and eight poems by Octavio Paz, hors-texte, title, justification, colophon, and reproductions of the artist's drawings, text in English and German, on smooth wove and laid papers, signed on the colophon by Paz and Twombly.
Published by Udo and Anette Brandhorst, Cologne.
100 copies of the Special Edition (the total edition was 1,000), bound in two volumes (as issued), with full margins, in excellent condition, original paper-covered portfolios, and original paper covered slipcase.

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Louise Bourgeois
ODE A LA BIEVRE, 2007
1669

Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911. In 1919, her family moved to the Parisian suburb of Antony where the Bièvre River "cut across the garden in a straight line". The river was key to their relocation as it was imperative to the family's business of tapestry restoration for the washing of the tapestries. In 2002, Bourgeois would distill her emotions and memories of the river and the garden in an important unique fabric book entitled ODE À LA BIÈVRE. In the book she reminisces through images and text, "With the soil from that river we planted geraniums, masses of peonies, and beds of asparagus ...and honeysuckle that smelled so sweet in the rain." Using her own garments as raw material to make sewn fabric collages, she evoked feelings and memories through lines, shapes and colors. Years later, Bourgeois was to go back to the house with her own family only to find the river to no longer exist, "only the trees that my father had planted along its edge remained as a witness". This 2007 book faithfully reproduces that original fabric work. Each book is signed and numbered on the colophon and includes two signed photographs digitally printed on Verona paper and mounted on 300 gram watercolor paper with the respective titles: "The garden in Antony, 1921" and "The Bièvre River, 1951." Housed in a blind embossed slip case each book is uniquely bound with hand dyed and distressed linen.

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Pia Camil
Xiuquilla/Blue milk weed, 2017
09891-BK

19 5/8 x 19 5/8 in. (50 x 50 cm)

Hand sewn cotton leporello book, with screenprinting, in cloth box with colophon.

Published by Zucker Art Books, NY. Edition of 8 variants, with 2 AP.

Each copy is signed and numbered.



Each book is handmade from repurposed fabrics the artist found in Mexico City. Camil’s interventions include cutting shapes common in cloth making such as sleeves, collars, torsos, and recombining them in a colorful array, hand sewn into a double sided sequence. She designed small buttonholes in between the panels so the work can be hung as a banner as well, choosing either side. This sort of interaction between the work and the viewer is a key element throughout Camil’s oeuvre, which even includes works to be worn or walked on.



Pia Camil (b. 1980) lives and works in Mexico City. She has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with recent solo-exhibitions including A Pot for a Latch, New Museum, New York (2016); Skins, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2015); The Little Dog Laughed, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2014); and Cuadrado Negro, Basque Museum Centre for Contemporary Art, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (2013).

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Kate Shephard
Steiner Book Series 2, 2017
09811-BK

11 x 8 in. (27.9 x 20.3 cm)

16 pages of hand inked paper with 8 hand drawings Edition 1 of 1. Signed and numbered on back cover.

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