It only takes one look through Dash Snow's big book from Berlin 'The End of Living, The Beginning of Survival' to realize how incredible it is, what a great artist he is (and is going to be), and how desired it's going to be in a few years. For around $120 from Germany (if you can find it), it's a steal. On the other end of the spectrum is a solid $1250 investment in 'Particulars', David Goldblatt's 14 plate masterpiece - printed in an edition of 400, only 200 with dustjackets. It has otherworldly lush, smooth, and crisp images - partly due to the heavy uncoated paper but mostly to the printing technique: it's the **ONLY** book I've ever seen that was printed in 5 colors of black for it's black and white images. Duo-tone (2 b/w inks) is standard; art books that matter tend to be printed in tri-tone (3 b/w inks), and there are a few special books that are printed gorgeously in quadra-tone (4 b/w inks). Those books that come to mind in quadratone are Avedon's 'Made in France' and Sugimoto's 'Theaters' -- both classics. Well, Particulars has 5 b/w inks - nearly indistinguishable to me from a good matte silver gelatin print. Also - Christopher Lingg did an incredible job with the large clamshell portfolios of 'Shut Down'- only the trade edition is shown (still great), Diane Waldman's Guggenheim catalogue from 1993 on Roy Lichtenstein is maybe the best I've ever seen, and Lichtenstein's exhib. catalogue for 'Mirror Paintings' has the coolest 3d boards just like I'd hoped.
What else? Oh, thank you Ivory Press for 'Blood on Paper' - a large linen-bound box, blind stamped and inked in red, containing a piece of linen that holds 40 gate-fold sheets of heavy paper - each a different color and related to a different artist, showing from 1-4 of their artists books. The sheets are not bound, so when you lift them up they look like a huge rainbow - it's gorgeous, so well produced, and worth so much more than the $80 list price. Expect to see it ten times that in a few years.
Email me if you want to know how to find any of these books.
In no particular order:- Blood on Paper
- Dash Snow - End of Living, Beginning of Survival
- David Goldblatt - Particulars
- Francis Bacon - Triptychs Portfolio
- Roy Lichtenstein - Mirror Paintings
- Roy Lichtenstein 1993 Guggenheim
- Christopher Lingg - Shut Down Portfolio
- Rinko Kawauchi - Semear
- Risaku Suzuki - Yuki Sakura
- Robert Frank - Peru
- James Rosenquist - Time Dust
- Terry Richardson - Feared by Men, Desired by Women
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