First Edition Art & Design Books

John Thomson

(China) — John Thomson | One of the most extensive photobooks of China in the nineteenth century

Andy Warhol | Julia Warhola

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of Holy Cats by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Andy+Warhol&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Andy Warhol</a>'s mother Julia Warhola, <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> by Andy Warhol.<ul><li>Julia Warhola (Slovak-American).</li><li>Signed by Andy Warhol (American).</li><li>[New York]: [privately printed], [1954].</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>21 offset lithographs on various colored paper (including cover).</li><li>Signed by Warhol at the bottom of the front blank facing the title and with a hand drawn copyright symbol.</li><li>Original boards with offset lithographic covers.</li></ul> Julia Warhola was an accomplished artist in her own right whose whimsical style was an influence on her son. Her calligraphy was integral to Warhol's early work as a book designer and commercial artist, where it often appeared in his designs. Printed privately by Warhol in the early to mid 1950s while a commercial artist. Very scarce, particularly in good condition and rarely found signed.

Holy Cats First Edition, Signed by Andy Warhol

Robert Gober | Joyce Carol Oates

One volume of a two-volume set of Heat, Issued as the 7th volume of the Whitney Museum's Artists and Writers series.<ul><li>Joyce Carol Oates (American).</li><li>Design and illustrations by Robert Gober (American).</li><li>New York: Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of Art, 1989.</li><li>Text handwritten by Robert Gober and printed on Saunders paper at the Allethaire Press, Hadley, MA.</li><li>Hand-binding supervised by Craig Jensen at the Book lab, Austin, TX.</li><li>Edition of one hundred and forty copies.</li><li>Bound in white leather with gilt cover title and metal clasps.</li></ul>

Heat

Andy Warhol

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of From A to B and Back Again: The Philosophy of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Andy+Warhol&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Andy Warhol</a>.<ul><li>Andy Warhol (American).</li><li>London: Cassell, 1975.</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>241 pages.</li><li>Presentation copy, signed by author ‘To Ian / Dog / Andy Warhol, London 1975’. </li><li>With an original drawing of dog’s head on the half-title.</li><li>Publisher’s cloth, dust-jacket.</li></ul> With a very rare inscription in that Warhol has drawn a dog’s head, and not the familiar soup.

From A to B And Back Again: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol | Signed First Edition

Lotte Jacobi

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of the photobook by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Lotte+Jacobi&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lotte Jacobi</a>, with a signed photograph of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Albert+Einstein&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Albert Einstein</a> laid in.<ul><li>Lotte Jacobi (American).</li><li>Edited by Kelly Wise.</li><li>Danbury, New Hampshire: Addison House, 1978.</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>187, [5] pages.</li><li>Black-and-white photographs by Lotte Jacobi, printed in gravure.</li><li>Number 86 of 125 copies signed and numbered by Jacobi on the half-title, with a gelatin silver photograph laid in.</li><li>Signed in pencil in lower right of image, small area of mirroring in lower left quadrant.</li><li>White cloth-covered boards, spine and front stamped in brown, publisher's cloth-covered dropback box.</li></ul> With Jacobi's signed portrait of Albert Einstein.&nbsp;Deluxe issue, with the often missing original photograph, 'Albert Einstein, Physicist, Princeton, NJ., 1938.' Lotte Jacobi (1896-1990) was responsible for some of the most striking and enduring photographic portraits of the twentieth century. Her style, characterized by experimentation with unusual perspectives, cropped heads, and high or low angles, places her work in line with the Neue Sachlichkiet (New Objectivity) school of German photography. She was the fourth generation of her family to take up photography, following an apprenticeship with her father, she took over the 'Jacobi Studio of Photography' in Berlin. Between 1927 and 1935, she photographed many prominent figures from the arts and sciences, including Bertolt Brecht, Peter Lorre, Käthe Kollwitz, and Kurt Weill. John Heartfield was a customer of the studio from 1929 – 1932, and Jacobi made photographs for Heartfield's montages and book covers. After 1933, Jacobi concealed her Jewish identity by working under various pseudonyms, and in 1935, she immigrated to New York City, where she re-established a studio and successfully resumed her career. In 1938, she was the first woman to photograph on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange; her picture of the deserted floor was one of many of published in the New York Herald Tribune. Despite efforts to retrieve her archive, much of Jacobi's early work was lost when she left Germany.

Lotte Jacobi Signed First Edition

Alfred Stieglitz

An <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">inscribed</a> <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of America and <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Alfred+Stieglitz&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Alfred Stieglitz</a>.<ul><li>Alfred Stieglitz (American).</li><li>Edited by Waldo Frank, Lewis Mumford, Dorothy Norman, Paul Rosenfeld &amp; Harold Rugg.</li><li>Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran &amp; Company, 1934.</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>[ii], x, 339, [1] pages.</li><li>64 pages of black and white plates.</li><li>Presentation copy with a lengthy inscription in black ink on the first page;.</li><li>Black topstain, plain endpapers, black cloth-covered boards, titles in silver and design stamped to spine in blind, Stieglitz's monogram in blind to upper board, dust jacket illustrated with photographs and reproductions of artworks, printed in black and silver, text in black and white.</li></ul> &nbsp;A presentation copy, inscribed to abstract realist painter De Hirsh Margules and his sister Annette, both active in Greenwich Village social circles: 'Why am I asked to ruin this / nice clean book? And why do I / acquiesce? And why will the / printer turn out spotty pages of / illustrations? And why / must I when seeing them feel / impelled to "retouch" them / &amp; or cover up the faults of / one not caring? Oh why oh / why? - In spite of why, I / think this Book a Book - / It is a Book - so a / rare event - in my life / &amp; all the lives of those / who may see the Book / whether they know it or not. / [?]. For Margules - / him &amp; her — / [signed] Stieglitz / Dec. 2 1934 / An American Place'. De Hirsh Margules (1899-1965) was born in Romania and arrived in New York City with his parents aged ten months. In 1929, he met Alfred Stieglitz, who quickly became one of his most trusted friends and advisors. Between 1936 and 1937, Margules established 'Another Place,' an exhibition space set up in his New York City apartment at 43 West 8th Street, which showed fourteen solo exhibitions by Margules and other artists.

America and Alfred Stieglitz Inscribed First Edition

Alec Soth

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of Broken Manual by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Alec+Soth&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Alec Soth</a>.<ul><li>Alec Soth [Lester B.Morrison] (American).</li><li>[Saint Paul, Minnesota] and (Göttingen), [Little Brown Mushroom] and Steidl, (2010).</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>First edition of 300 copies.</li><li>Signed and numbered in black ink on the lower cover.</li><li>Laid in color photograph signed and numbered on verso.</li><li>Color and black and white photographs.</li><li>Printed grey wrappers, cream cloth spine with title in black ink, housed in a hollowed out copy of The Nineteenth Century as issued, with a bi-fold leaflet and color photograph laid in to a pocket which is signed and numbered by Soth.</li></ul> Broken Manual was originally issued in an edition of 300 copies, each concealed within another hollowed-out book. Before being sold, all 300 copies were exhibited in an installation forming part of Soth's first US retrospective, 'From Here to There: Alec Soth's America' at the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis (12 September 2010 - 2 January 2011). Following the success of his first two books, Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004) and Niagara (2006), Soth began to explore the idea of 'a fantasy of retreat'. He created Broken Manual over four years, between 2006 and 2010; the genesis of the series stems from his fascination with the life of Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who, before he died in 1968, lived for almost three decades at the remote Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. This interest led to further investigations into the places where people go to escape civilization and those that go there to escape, including monks, survivalists, hermits, and runaways. Soth's alter ego, Lester B. Morrison, was borne out of this research and under this name, Soth created an underground instruction manual of sorts for those wishing to retreat from society and escape their lives. It includes suggestions such as '1. Change your appearance (beard)... 8. Create your own language... 7. Avoid women... 16. Get a dog.' Soth then travelled the country, taking photographs that illustrated the ideas found in the manual. Soth explains in Interview magazine how the project had its origin in a commission by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, to make work in the American South: 'I was working in Atlanta and wasn't interested in Atlanta, and then I remembered the Olympic bomber, Eric Rudolph. I poked around where he had been living and hiding out while the FBI was looking for him. I wasn't so interested in the politics of it, it was more the fantasy of the man on the run, something I have always been attracted, the fugitive, that kind of story... it got me thinking about how I wanted to get at that desire to run away, without it being a documentary essay on a specific ideology, outside of the documentary tradition.'

Broken Manual Signed First Edition

<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">First edition</a>, presentation copy of Andy Warhol's Exposures, <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Warhol&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Warhol</a> on the front and inscribed by him to curator Robert Rosenblum on half-title.<ul><li>Andy Warhol (American).</li><li>New York: Andy Warhol Books / Grosset &amp; Dunlap, 1979.</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>Black and white photographs by Warhol.</li><li>Printed endpapers, black cloth-covered boards, titles to spine in silver, pictorial dust-wrapper.</li></ul> Presentation copy inscribed to curator norman rosenblum.&nbsp; Andy Warhol's Exposures features his photographs and profiles of many of his famous friends and fellow '70s scenesters being famous, including Liza Minnelli, Steve Rubell, Bianca Jagger, Halston, André Leon Talley, and Diana Vreeland. This copy inscribed: 'to robert rosenbloom [Rosenblum] / love / Andy / [with a drawing of a heart].' Robert Rosenblum (1927–2006) was an art historian, curator, and professor based primarily in New York City. He is renowned for his innovative curatorial approaches, including the integration of non-canonical artworks and a deliberate move away from traditional chronological displays.

Andy Warhol's Exposures First Signed Edition

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Henry Moore

A limited <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of this artistic rendition of the French translation of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Goethe&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Goethe</a>'s unfinished play, with lithographs by renowned sculptor <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Henry%20Moore&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Henry Moore</a>.<ul><li>Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German).</li><li>Lithographs by Henry Moore (English).</li><li>Translated by Andre Gide.</li><li>[Paris]:&nbsp;Henri Jonquières / P. A. Nicaise,&nbsp;1950 (completed in 1951).</li><li>[2], 69 pages of loose folia.&nbsp;</li><li>Illustrated with 14 color lithographs.</li><li>Number 183 of 183.</li><li>Text in French.</li><li>Original brown pictorial wrapper, in original board clamshell box, with red lettering.</li></ul> Henry Moore created the lithographs for Prométhée at the height of his fame, as he began to take on more large-scale public works. Many of his illustrations feature a Dalí-esque stark landscape populated by abstracted epic figures, complimenting Goethe's retelling of the Greek creation myth — a fitting story to be executed by a sculptor.

Prométhée Limited First Edition

Walter Shaw Sparrow

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Subject=Fine%2520bindings" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">finely bound</a> <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of<a href="sothebys.com/en/search?query=Walter%20Shaw%20Sparrow&amp;tab=objects" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Walter Shaw Sparrow</a>'s British Sporting Artists.<ul><li>Walter Shaw Sparrow (Welsh).</li><li>London: John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd., 1922.</li><li>Small folio.</li><li>27 illustrations in color, and 76 in black and white.</li><li>Bound in full red morocco, ribbed gilt decorated spine, spine panels and covers tooled with sporting devices, covers tooled with multi-interlaced designs, multi color morocco onlay depicting a horse jumping event, gilt dentelles, all edges gilt, marbled pastedowns and endpapers, leather bookplate of Beeleigh Abbey, by Bayntun.</li></ul>

British Sporting Artists From Barlow To Herring First Edition

W.D. Campbell | Basil Ede

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first impression</a> of Birds of Town and Village, <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> by the illustrator <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Basil+Ede&amp;pfilters.dateRange=past" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Basil Ede</a>.<ul><li>W.D. Campbell.</li><li>Illustrated by Basil Ede (English).</li><li>Foreword by Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.</li><li>London: Country Life Limited, 1965. </li><li>Quarto.</li><li>[2] 156 [2] pages. </li><li>With a color illustration for each of the 36 birds. </li><li>Signed by illustrator in blue ink to title page. </li><li>Recently re-bound in green full morocco by Bayntun of Bath, with raised bands, gilt titles and decoration to spine, and further gilt decoration to boards, all edges gilt, with marbled endpapers.</li></ul>

Birds of Town and Village First Impression Signed by the Illustrator

Yasuhiro Ishimoto

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Yasuhiro+Ishimoto&amp;pfilters.dateRange=past" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Yasuhiro Ishimoto</a>'s Aru hi Aru Tokoro: Someday, Somewhere.<ul><li>Yasuhiro Ishimoto (Japanese).</li><li>Design by Yamashiro Ryoichi.</li><li>Tokyo: Geibi Shuppansha, 1958.</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>[168] pages (two of which are folding).</li><li>Color and black-and-white photographs printed in relief halftone, black-and-white photographs printed in gravure.</li><li>Texts by Watanabe Tsutomu and Ishimoto Yasuhiro in Japanese and English.</li><li>Signed by Ishimoto in pencil on title-page.</li><li>Imprint printed in black on yellow paper with Ishimoto's chop in red ink tipped on to final leaf as issued, yellow endpapers, navy cloth-covered boards, yellow cloth spine with titles stamped in black, color photo-illustrated dust-jacket printed in black, in dust-jacket, in a custom chemise and slipcase.</li></ul> Signed copy of the first major post-war Japanese photobook. Ishimoto participated in the first and third The Eyes of Ten exhibition in May 1957 and July 1959. In between, he published this, his first book and the first significant work to emerge from the group. Ishimoto occupies an interesting position in the history of Japanese photography and was another important link between the East and West. Born in San Francisco in 1921, he moved to Japan at age three with his family. After graduating high school, he returned to San Francisco to study. A year later, as a result of the war, he was sent to an internment camp in Colorado for Japanese citizens and those of Japanese descent. It was here that his interest in photography began. After the war, Ishimoto went to Chicago and studied at the Institute of Design under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. He graduated in 1952 and returned to Japan the following year, although he continued to travel between the two countries. Someday, Somewhere contains photographs from Chicago and Tokyo, clearly showing the influence of his time studying with Callahan and Siskind.

Aru hi Aru Tokoro: Someday, Somewhere Signed First Edition

Daido Moriyama

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Daido+Moriyama&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Daido Moriyama</a>'s Shashin yo Sayonara, <a href="First edition, signed in black ink on title-page; 4to (230 x 181 mm, 9 x 7¼ in); black &amp; white photographs printed in gravure, transcript of a conversation between Moriyama Daido and Nakahira Takuma; plain endpapers with small mark from bookseller's label, printed wrappers, black, grey, and blue, light reading crease, printed white dust jacket, text in black, blue, and grey, lightly rubbed and marked, light darkening to spine, an excellent copy in a custom drop spine box ; 308, [2]pp." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> by the artist.<ul><li>Daido Moriyama (Japanese).</li><li>Tokyo: Shashin Hyoron-sha, 1972.</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>308, [2] pages.</li><li>Black and white photographs printed in gravure.</li><li>Transcript of a conversation between Moriyama Daido and Nakahira Takuma.</li><li>Signed in black ink on title-page.</li><li>Text in Japanese. </li><li>Plain endpapers with small mark from bookseller's label, printed wrappers, black, grey, and blue, printed white dust jacket, text in black, blue, and grey, in a custom drop spine box.</li></ul> Shashin yo Sayonara is the central book of the Provoke movement, born out of Moriyama's perceived limitations of Provoke's manifesto and photography as a medium. The resulting combination of images re-photographed from newspapers, magazines, television screens, other people's negatives, and his own pictures composed mainly of out-takes, scratched frames, and blurred images was sequenced by two editors at Shashin Hyoron-sha in a seemingly random order to create a visual manifestation of the overpowering density of life in modern Japan.

Shashin yo Sayonara Signed First Edition

Robert Venturi | Muriel Cooper | Denise Scott Brown | Steven Izenour

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of Learning from Las Vegas.<ul><li>Robert Venturi (American).</li><li>Denise Scott Brown (American).</li><li>Steven Izenour (American).</li><li>Muriel Cooper (American).</li><li>Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1972.</li><li>Large quarto.</li><li>Color and black and white photographs, diagrams, plans and maps.</li><li>Plain endpapers, dark grey cloth-covered boards, titles stamped in gold on sides and spine, color photographic reproduction mounted on upper side, publisher's printed glassine dust-jacket, housed in a custom black cloth drop spine box.</li></ul> This early manifesto of postmodernism was designed by Muriel Cooper (1925-1994), a pioneering graphic designer and one of the first designers to see the potential of computers as tools for inventing new ways to organize visual information. She was the first design director of the MIT Press, cofounder of the Visible Language Workshop at MIT, and the first woman to be granted tenure at MIT's Media Lab, where she taught a new generation of designers. Her work spans print to software interfaces. Learning from Las Vegas is compiled from research materials gathered in 1968 by students of a third-year graduate class at Yale School of Architecture, taught by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. The class Learning from Las Vegas, or Form Analysis as Design Research, required the students to make a non-judgemental study of the city and how it functioned, and their research was documented through photographs, films, maps, and diagrams. Muriel Cooper was tasked with translating the diverse materials from the studio into a book, initially planning for the book to be protected by a bubble wrap dust-jacket, with fluorescent dots on the boards. 'The visual materials were not only graphically rich but as content-laden as the text, so the interdependent rhythms of those relationships were important. I wanted to arrange visual and verbal materials spatially in a nonlinear way to enhance the reader's comprehension.' Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown were unimpressed and enacted a complete, much more traditional redesign for the 1977 paperback second edition, dismissing Cooper's work in their preface. Cooper's reputation and legacy have grown and grown since.

Learning From Las Vegas First Edition

Arthur Rackham

<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Signed</a> limited <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a>, one of 1030 numbered copies signed by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Rackham&amp;pfilters.dateRange=upcoming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Rackham</a>.<ul><li>Illustrated by Arthur Rackham (English).</li><li>With an intro by Arthur Quiller-Couch.</li><li>London:&nbsp;William Heinemann,&nbsp;(1913).</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>Original white gilt-stamped cloth, top edge gilt.</li></ul> "[I]n this book Mr. Rackham, who has achieved much fame by illustrating the inventions of other men, has turned to illustrate himself; and the order of the drawings has been arranged so that you may follow, if you will, the liberation of his fancy." The book is divided into six thematic sections: "Of the Little People," with fairies, elves, etc.; "Classic," with mythological subjects; "Some Fairy Tales," including Jack and the Beanstalk and Puss in Boots; "Some Children,"; "Grotesque," with monsters like the Leviathan and dragons; and "Various," a selection of beautiful images not easily categorized. Illustrated with 44 fantastically beautiful mounted color plates with lettered guards and several charming black and whites.

Arthur Rackham's Book Of Pictures | Signed Limited First Edition

Salvador Dalí | TASCHEN

One of the titans of modern painting,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Salvador%20Dal%C3%AD&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Salvador Dalí</a>&nbsp;is the quintessential surrealist but also a performer, designer, and visionary; this publication presents his work in unprecedented size and detail, accompanied by a chronology following his path from Catalonia through Paris to Hollywood and back, with photos, sketches, and magazine pages.<ul><li>After Salvador Dali (Spanish).</li><li>Edited Hans Werner Holzwarth.</li><li>Cologne: TASCHEN, 2025.</li><li>Hardcover.</li><li>438 pages.</li><li>Part of an edition of 10,000 numbered copies.</li><li>Accompanied by a 40 page booklet with a catalog of illustrations.</li><li>Also accompanied by a hardbound chronology volume.</li><li>With gilt edges, fold outs, gold foil embossing on title and chapter pages, in a clamshell box bound in black velvet, with gold foil embossing and tip-in.</li></ul> Please note: This item is excluded from complimentary shipping. Shipping quote will be calculated at time of purchase.

Dali | Baby Sumo Edition

John Gossage

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of LAMF by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=John%20Gossage&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">John Gossage</a>.<ul><li>John Gossage (American).</li><li>[Washington D.C.], [Self-published], [1987]. </li><li>48 pages.</li><li>26 mounted gelatin silver photographs, each numbered with a red or black ink stamp.</li><li>Number 14 of 100 copies.</li><li>Signed by the artist.</li><li>With a mounted sealed letter of introduction.</li><li>Blue cloth-covered boards, title stamped to upper side in gold, original dustjacket made from a contemporary Berlin newspaper, title stamped in black and red on upper panel and in black on spine.</li></ul> Each copy of LAMF contains a different selection of 25 and 30 photographs chosen from the complete series of around 100 images. In 1982, Gossage was invited to exhibit and give a workshop at the Werksatt für Fotgrafie in Kreuzberg, Berlin, founded in 1976 by Michael Schmidt. In the early 1980s, Schmidt invited several American photographers, including Lewis Baltz, William Eggleston and Gossage, to exhibit and teach workshops. These cultural exchanges greatly informed the work of all who took part. Gossage made many subsequent visits, and it was here in Berlin, where the past was manifestly visible, that he began making photographs that would inform all of his subsequent work. Gossage took these photographs in Berlin using a telephoto lens and surveillance film. The series title relates to Gossage’s memory of a graffiti warning he often saw whilst growing up in New York City in the 1950s and ‘60s. LAMF (Like a Mother Fucker) was an acronym used by street gangs to mark their territory. However, when Gossage saw the same letters on walls in Berlin, it seemed more likely that they were written in homage to Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers’ 1977 album, which had the same name. When prompted some twenty-five years later, he offered ‘Lost Angels and Missing Friends’.

LAMF [Lost Angels and Missing Friends or Like a Mother Fucker] Signed First Edition

Masahisa Fukase

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Masahisa%20Fukase&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Masahisa Fukase</a>'s Karasu / Ravens, a cornerstone in the history of Japanese post-war <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?Book%20Subject=Photography" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">photography</a>.<ul><li>Masahisa Fukase (Japanese).</li><li>Edited and with an essay by Akira Hasegawa in Japanese and English.</li><li>Design by Kazuyuki Goto.</li><li>Tokyo: Sokyu-sha, 1986.</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>132 pages.</li><li>Black and white photographs.</li><li>Black endpapers, black cloth-covered boards with an image of a raven stamped to the sides in blind, publisher's card slipcase with printed label wrapping around spine on to sides.</li></ul> Karasu / Ravens is Fukase’s masterpiece, a cornerstone in the history of Japanese post-war photography. Masahisa Fukase (1934-2012) was born in Bifuka in Nakagawa District, Hokkaido, where his grandfather owned and operated a photographic studio. As a child and adolescent, Fukase assisted his father, who had inherited the family business. At the age of 18, he left Bifuka to study photography at Nihon University in Tokyo, graduating in 1956. His parents had expected that after completing his studies, he would return to Hokkaido to take over the family business. Instead, Fukase took a job with a commercial advertising agency in Tokyo so that he could be with his partner Yukiyo Kawakami, who later became his first wife. Their marriage ended in 1962, and the following year, he met Yohko Wanibe, whom he married in 1964 and who became the subject of much of his work over the next decade. In 1971, Fukase began to make regular trips back to Hokkaido to visit his family. In 1975, with his marriage to Yohko under increasing strain, Fukase made the journey from Tokyo to Hokkaido by train, finding himself drawn to the flocks of ravens which he saw and photographed through the train window. He and Yohko divorced the following year, and Fukase spent much of the following decade working on this series in Hokkaido, Kanazawa, and Tokyo. Popular superstitions in Japan associate ravens with misfortune, and Kurasu | Ravens has been read as much as an allegory for the post-war collected Japanese psyche as for its representation of Fukase’s mental state, foreshadowing the further deterioration in Fukase’s personal life. In the years following the completion of the project, Fukase suffered a decline in both his physical and mental well-being. In 1991, he fell down a flight of stairs in his favourite Shinjuku bar and suffered severe brain damage, which left him with impaired speech and memory function. Unable to live independently, he was placed in a care home, where he died in 2012, almost certainly unaware of the vital contribution he had made to the history of photography.

Karasu / Ravens First Edition

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of Homo Ludence by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Masahisa%20Fukase&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Masahisa Fukase</a>.<ul><li>Masahisa Fukase (Japanese).</li><li>Tokyo: Chuo-Koron-sha, 1972. </li><li>Quarto.</li><li>Black and white photographs.</li><li>Texts by Inada Nada and Yamagishi Shoji in Japanese and English.</li><li>White endpapers, white paper-covered boards, titles in black, dust-jacket printed in purple and black, publisher's white wraparound band printed in black.</li></ul> Homo Ludence contains six of Fukase’s early photographic series: Slaughter, Congratulation, Frolic, Memento, Mother, and Music. In his afterword, Yamagishi Shoji writes: ‘Generally speaking, modern formativism has greatly influenced most photography and accounts for its "reportage" quality. That type of photography emphasizes the cameraman’s viewing rather than viewed position. In sharp contrast, for the last decade, Fukase has stressed photographic reality by revealing himself physically and metaphysically.’ It was published as number 4 in the important Eizo no Gendai 10-volume series of monographs by contemporary Japanese photographers.

Homo Ludence First Edition

Robert Frank

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Robert%20Frank&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Robert Frank</a>'s <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?Book%20Type=Art%2520and%2520Design" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">photobook</a> The Americans.<ul><li>Robert Frank (American).</li><li>New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1959.</li><li>170 pages.</li><li>First American edition.</li><li>83 black and white photographs printed in gravure.</li><li>Plain endpapers, black cloth-covered boards, titles to spine in gold, white photo-illustrated dust-jacket printed in black, black and red collage by Alfred Leslie on the lower panel.</li></ul> The first American edition of Frank's masterpiece, after Robert Delpire's Les Américains, was published in France the previous year. The Americans follows a careful and complex sequence, with four chapters, each introduced by a photograph of the American flag. In his successful application for the Guggenheim grant that allowed him to make this work Frank wrote: 'The project I have in mind is one that will shape itself as it proceeds... The material is there; the practice will be in the photographer's hand, the vision in his mind!' Between April 1955 and June 1956 he set out on a series of trips across America. His aim was to complete a body of work that would be 'a broad, voluminous picture record of things American, past and present... A visual study of a civilisation.' For this, the defining edition, Frank stripped the texts which appeared opposite the photographs in Delpire's edition and added an introduction by Jack Kerouac, who writes, 'What a poem this is, what poems can be written about this book of pictures some day by young new writers.... Whether 'tis the milk of humankind-ness, or human-kindness, Shakespeare meant, makes no difference when you look at these pictures. Better than a show... Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world!' Like Vladimir Nabakov, Frank saw 1950s America as no American could have seen it, 'the loneliness, alienation, rootlessness, and sadness of automobile-happy mid-century America.' David Levi Strauss referred to the French edition as sociology, whereas the American edition is poetry. And as Kerouac writes 'Anybody doesn't like these pitchers don't like potry, see?' With this book, Frank galvaniZed photography for his generation and has influenced, in some way, every other generation since.

The Americans | First American Edition

A group of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?Book%20Subject=Association%2520items" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">association copies</a> of the work of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Robert%20Frank&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Robert Frank</a>, including <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first editions</a> and <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> books.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 4 volumes.</li><li>Robert Frank (Swiss-American).</li><li>Les Américains [with] New York Is; [and] The Americans; [and] London / Wales.</li><li>Paris: New York; New York; Zurich, 1958; [1959]; 1969; 2003.</li></ul> Includes the following: <ul><li>Les Américains. Photographies de Robert Frank.</li><li>Paris: Encyclopédie Essentielle, Robert Delpire Éditeur, 1958.</li><li>First edition.</li><li>Inscribed in black ink on half-title.</li><li>Oblong octavo.</li><li>172 pages.</li><li>Black and white photographs printed in gravure by Draeger Frères, Montrouge.</li><li>Texts by various authors selected by Alain Bosquet.</li><li>Occasional minor spotting.</li><li>Plain thick endpapers, sewn headband, laminated white paper-covered boards illustrated with an illustration by Saul Steinberg printed in light blue, black, and red, lightly toned, light creasing to upper joint.</li><li>Motomura Kazuhiko’s card sleeve titled in black ink on upper side.</li></ul> <ul><li>New York Is.</li><li>Introduction by Gilbert Millstein.</li><li>[New York], [New York Times Company], [1959].</li><li>First edition.</li><li>Signed in black ink on verso of front free endpaper.</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>56 pages.</li><li>Black and white photographs.</li><li>Light toning to edges.</li><li>Black front and red rear endpapers, printed paper-covered boards, white, titles in black, light toning to edges, light wear to head and foot of spine, top corner bumped, without the laid in letter from the advertising director.</li><li>Motomura Kazuhiko’s card sleeve titled in black ink on upper side.</li></ul> <ul><li>The Americans. Photographs by Robert Frank. </li><li>Introduction by Jack Kerouac.</li><li>Afterword by Robert Frank with details of the four films he made 1959- 68.</li><li>New York: An Aperture Book, Grossman Publishers, 1969.</li><li>Oblong octavo.</li><li>182 pages.</li><li>Second edition, revised and enlarged.</li><li>Inscribed in black ink.</li><li>Black and white photographs printed in ‘stonetone’ offset by Rapoport Printing Corp., New York.</li><li>Occasional light spotting, light marking to edges, printer’s ink mark to one page.</li><li>Plain endpapers, light spotting, black cloth-covered boards, titles to spine in gold, photo-illustrated dust-jacket, white, text in black, minor toning, lightly marked.</li><li>Motomura Kazuhiko’s card sleeve titled in black ink on upper side.</li></ul> <ul><li>London / Wales. </li><li>Zurich, Berlin, New York: Scalo, 2003.</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>126 pages.</li><li>First edition.</li><li>Inscribed in black ink on half-title.</li><li>Black and white photographs printed in offset.</li><li>Plain endpapers, black cloth-covered boards, titles to spine in grey, photo- illustrated dust-jacket, white, text in black.</li><li>Minor shelfwear.</li><li>Motomura Kazuhiko’s card sleeve titled in black ink on upper side.</li><li>Photocopy of list exhibited works shown at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington laid in.</li></ul> Motomura Kazuhiko was a civil servant who grew up watching Akira Kurosawa films, which led to his interest in visual art and black-and-white photography. He was an important collector of photographs and photography books and a tireless champion of Japanese photographers, promoting their work and supporting their books and exhibitions. He published four books over a 37-year period: Robert Frank’s The Lines of My Hand (1972), Flower Is (1987), and The Americans: 81 Contact Sheets (2009); Jun Morinaga’s River, its shadow of shadows (1978); and helped organize or distribute others, including Mochizuki Masao’s Television (2001) and Suzuki Kiyoshi’s Tenmaku No Machi [A Town of Tents]: Mind Games (1982). In 1960, Motomura worked as a tax officer. While still employed, he enrolled in the Shashin Sōgō Senmon Gakkō (now Tokyo College of Photography), where he was taught by Ishimoto Yasuhiro and Shigemori Koen. After participating in the demonstrations against the 1960 renewal of the US Japanese security treaty, Motomura resigned from his position, fearing that his employers might penalize him. While studying photography, Motomura was introduced to Robert Frank’s work when he saw the portfolio of thirty-eight photographs in US Camera Annual 1958 (of which twenty-three would appear in The Americans). Ishimoto Yasuhiro recommended that he buy Les Américains instead of The Americans because he thought the printing was better. Motomura met and befriended Morinaga Jun at the Tokyo College of Photography. Morinaga assisted W. Eugene Smith on a commission for Hitachi that would become Japan: Chapter of Image (1963). Through Morinaga, Motomura met W. Eugene Smith, who introduced him to Robert Frank as a favor in return for Motomura helping Smith to organise a retrospective exhibition in Tokyo. In October 1970, Motomura and his classmate Hataya Norio travelled to New York to meet Robert Frank. During this trip, Motomura also visited W. Eugene Smith and his fiancé Aileen, and they discussed the idea of travelling to Minamata in Southern Japan to photograph the devastating effects of mercury poisoning on the local populace. In 1971, Smith and Aileen moved to Minamata, where they spent three years photographing and researching the devastating effects of mercury poisoning on the local populace. While working on the Minamata project, Smith’s initial living costs in Japan were covered by Motomura Kazuhiko. When Motomura first met with Frank, Aileen acted as an interpreter. Frank recounts this first meeting in the preface to The Lines of My Hand, in which he writes of how he was visited by two Japanese editors and inspired by their respect for his art and their eagerness to publish his book in Japan, a project he describes as reviving his interest in photography at a time when he had abandoned it for filmmaking: ‘Well, one evening early late or middle last November, two Japanese gentlemen rang my bell on the Bowery. Mr. Kazuhiko Motomura and Mr. Toshio [Norio] Hataya did not speak any English or where [sic] too shy to try. They brought a girl who translated... I remember the evening very well. They said that they had always liked my photographs. They came to New York to ask my permission to have a book published of my work. Something like that had never happened to me. I was impressed and happy. They also gave me a small excellent taperecorder [sic] on which part of our conversation was recorded. Then they apologized that they hadn’t given me a brand new one. When the two gentlemen left I said to June, I’m really going to work on that and try to make it good. It was the right time for me, I was just finishing my last film “About me... A Musical”. I had gone to Nova Scotia in the summer and bought a place in order to get away from it all and to see the clear ocean and to be more alone. So once more, I go back to look at all these exposed memories, all these buildings, skies and people – lost and saved up...’

Les Américains [with] New York Is [and] The Americans [and] London / Wales First Editions

Robert Doisneau | Blaise Cendrars

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of the <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/art-&amp;-design" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">photobook</a> La Banlieue de Paris by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Robert%20Doisneau&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Robert Doisneau</a>.<ul><li>Robert Doisneau (French).</li><li>Text by Blaise Cendrars (Swiss-French).</li><li>La Banlieue de Paris. Texte de Blaise Cendrars sur 130 photos de Robert Doisneau. </li><li>Paris: Pierre Seghers, 1949.</li><li>First French edition.</li><li>Octavo.</li><li>55, [1], 135, [5] pages.</li><li>Black-and-white photographs printed in gravure.</li><li>Photo-illustrated endpapers, cream printed paper-covered boards, photo-illustrated dustjacket.</li></ul> Doisneau’s first book is an unsentimental and affectionate look at the lives of the working class in and around the suburbs of Paris, photographed just before the old districts were to change or disappear altogether. At the time of publication, Doisneau was not well known, though he had already taken several of what were to become his most famous photographs. He met Cendrars whilst on assignment for L’Album du Figaro; the two began a correspondence which, with Cendrars’s support, culminated in this book. This is the preferred edition. La Guilde du Livre in Lausanne issued a pre-publication version without a dust-jacket, which, while taking precedence, is less desirable.

La Banlieue de Paris First French Edition

Alvin Langdon Coburn

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Alvin%20Langdon%20Coburn&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Alvin Langdon Coburn</a>'s <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/art-&amp;-design" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">photobook</a> New York.<ul><li>Alvin Langdon Coburn (American).</li><li>With a foreword by H. G. Wells.</li><li>London and New York: Duckworth &amp; Co, Brentano’s, [1910].</li><li>Folio.</li><li>12, [40] pages.</li><li>20 hand-pulled photogravures printed under Coburn’s supervision from plates prepared by him.</li><li>Grey endpapers, olive morocco-backed grey boards with gilt lettering on upper side, publisher’s grey printed dust jacket with letterpress titles in dark blue on upper side, in a custom drop spine box.</li></ul> In 1909 and 1910, Coburn produced two books, London and then New York. While the photographs in London reach back to the nineteenth century and beyond, New York is the more proto-modernist work, with this most modern of twentieth-century cities pushing Coburn towards a more radical way of seeing. In Camera Work 36 (October 1911), Coburn wrote: ‘It has been said of me... that I work too quickly, and that I attempt to photograph all New York in a week. Now to me New York is a vision that rises out of the sea as I come up the harbor on my Atlantic liner... I can do only the creative part of photography, the making of the negative, with the fire of enthusiasm burning at the white heat; but the final stage, the print, requires quiet contemplation, time, in fact, for its fullest expression. That is why my best work is from American negatives printed in England... it is only at twilight that the city reveals itself to me in the fullness of its beauty, when the arc lights on the Avenue click into being.'

New York First Edition

Claude Cahun

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a>, presentation copy of Le Coeur de Pic, <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">inscribed</a> by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Claude%20Cahun&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Claude Cahun</a>.<ul><li>Claude Cahun [pseudonym of Lucy Schwob] (French).</li><li>Lise Deharme (French).</li><li>Preface by Paul Eluard.</li><li>Le Coeur de Pic. Trente-deux poèmes pour les enfants illustrés de vingt photographies par Claude Cahun.</li><li>Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1937.</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>60 pages.</li><li>20 photographs printed in relief halftone.</li><li>Inscribed by Claude Cahun in different colored pencils on first page.</li><li>Red cloth-covered boards over green cloth spine, titles in black on upper side, color photographic reproductions on upper and lower.</li></ul> Presentation copy, inscribed by Claude Cahun: 'á Germaine [Hennes] et J. Euzenat / Bien amicalement / Claude'. Deharme and Cahun, who were both active in French surrealist circles, envisioned Le Coeur de Pic as a cohesive artwork. Cahun’s photographs brought inanimate objects to life and encouraged older viewers to see the world through a child’s perspective. ‘Beyond its visual accomplishments, Le Coeur de Pic is also noteworthy as a collaborative project between two women artists. Well into the 1930s, surrealist women were still perceived as muses rather than creators, a realty that complicated collaborative projects between female artists and often resulted in the critical dismissal of their work’ (What They Saw 94).

Le Coeur de Pic Inscribed First Edition

Hans Bellmer

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of La Poupée by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Hans%20Bellmer&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Hans Bellmer</a>.<ul><li>Hans Bellmer (German).</li><li>Paris: GLM [Guy Lévis-Mano], 1936.</li><li>44 pages.</li><li>Number 76 of 100 copies with 5 hors commerce, this being one of 80 copies on papier rose.</li><li>10 mounted gelatin silver photographs.</li><li>Text translated by Robert Valençay.</li><li>Pink wrappers, peach printed folding cover with titles on upper side in black, in a custom box by Devauchelle.</li></ul> La Poupée evolved out of a series of events in Hans Bellmer’s personal life: his cousin, Ursula Naguschewski, moving from Kassel to Berlin in 1932; an encounter with renowned dollmaker Lotte Pritzel and his attendance of a performance of Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann, in which the protagonist falls in love with an automaton; and his mother shipping him his old toys. Bellmer constructed several dolls, the first dating from 1933, which he assembled and photographed in strange and disquieting configurations. Ten of these photographs were published in Germany as Die Puppe (1934). It was Bellmer’s cousin Ursula who, while studying at the Sorbonne in 1934, apparently first brought Bellmer’s photographs to the attention of André Breton in Paris. In 1934, the Surrealist journal Minotaure published a portfolio of these images, and in 1936, one was published in an issue of Cahiers d’art devoted to the Surrealist object. Guy Levis Manos published this expanded French Edition with an introduction by Bellmer, translated by Robert Valencay. In February 1938, Bellmer left Berlin for Paris.

La Poupée First Edition

Richard Avedon

<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">First edition</a> presentation copy of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Richard%20Avedon&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Richard Avedon</a>'s autobiography, inscribed to Elaine Kaufman.<ul><li>Richard Avedon (American).</li><li>New York: Random House, 1993.</li><li>Presentation copy inscribed to Elaine Kaufman.</li><li>Black and white photographs.</li><li>Plain endpapers, brown cloth-covered boards with titles to spine in red and to upper side in red and burgundy, black and white reproduction of Avedon's self-portrait to lower side, in publisher's plastic dust jacket.</li></ul> A presentation copy inscribed to Elaine Kaufman, proprietor of the legendary Elaine’s bar on the Upper East Side, where Avedon was a regular: ‘Dear / Elaine / “Jesus, The days / that we have / seen. Come, come ….” / Justice Shallow / Henry IV Part II / with love / Dick / 1993.' In his introduction, Avedon writes, ‘This book tracks the path of three crucial illusions in my life. The first section is about the illusion of laughter, and a young man’s discovery of the fine line between hilarity and panic. The second section is about the illusion of power. The third section is about the loss of all illusions... The interweaving of elements from my life’s work - out of chronology, as echoes and foreshadowings - is true, I think, to the inner shape of any life, but sometimes I’ve found the image of a later event in an early photograph, and once or twice a late picture was made in the grip of a lost emotion.’

An Autobiography Inscribed First Edition

Henri Cartier-Bresson

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of Images a la Sauvette by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Henri%20Cartier-Bresson&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Henri Cartier-Bresson</a>.<ul><li>Henri Cartier-Bresson (French).</li><li>Paris: Éditions Verve, 1952.</li><li>Large quarto.</li><li>154 pages.</li><li>Black-and-white photographs printed in gravure by Draeger.</li><li>Text in French, by Cartier-Bresson.</li><li>Design by Tériade and Marguerite Lang.</li><li>Plain endpapers, printed white paper-covered boards illustrated after a design by Matisse in black, blue and green.</li></ul> Images à la Sauvette was conceived by Tériade (pseud. of Elfstratios Eleftheriades), editor of Minotaure and founder of Verve, who made a number of deluxe illustrated books with artists such as Matisse, Miró, and Léger. The photographs in this collection perfectly illustrate Cartier-Bresson’s notion of ‘l’instant décisif’. In his preface Cartier-Bresson writes ‘To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression... if the shutter was released at the decisive moment, you have instinctively fixed a geometric pattern without which the photograph would have been both formless and lifeless.’

Images a la Sauvette: Photographies par Henri Cartier-Bresson First Edition

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of Les Européens by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Henri%20Cartier-Bresson&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Henri Cartier-Bresson</a>.<ul><li>Henri Cartier-Bresson (French).</li><li>Paris: Éditions Verve, 1955.</li><li>Large quarto.</li><li>136 pages.</li><li>Black and white photographs printed in gravure by Draeger.</li><li>Text is in French, by Cartier-Bresson.</li><li>Design by Tériade and Marguerite Lang.</li><li>In presentation dust-jacket.</li><li>Bound in printed paper-covered boards illustrated after a design by Joan Miro in yellow, blue, red, and black; in a cream dust-jacket printed in grey.</li></ul> One of a small number of copies issued in a presentation dust-jacket with the printed name of the recipient, this example designated ‘à Monsieur Roger Loubry, européen...’ Roger Loubry was chief pilot, captain, and co-founder of the airline Union Aéromaritime de Transport (UAT). He made the first commercial air link between Paris and New York in 1946 and two years later was pilot for the first non-stop flight between the two cities. Les Européens is identical in format to Cartier-Bresson’s first book, Images à la Sauvette (1952). Both were published by Tériade (pseud. of Elfstratios Eleftheriades), editor of Minotaure and founder of Verve, who made a number of deluxe books with artists such as Matisse, Miró and Léger. The photographs in the present work were taken between 1950-5 and show ordinary people going about life in post-war Europe. In his introduction Cartier-Bresson sums up his role as a photojournalist simply by saying ‘I was there and this is how life appeared to me at that moment.’

Les Européens First Edition

KAWS

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of KAWS Exposed, <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=KAWS&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">KAWS</a>' artist monograph.<ul><li>After KAWS (American).</li><li>Paris: Colette, 1999.</li><li>Softcover.</li><li>30+ pages.</li><li>Unsigned from an edition of 2000.</li><li>Offset printed.</li><li>Cover image: KAWS' Running Chum.</li></ul> A photo-book of KAWS 1990s street art - this publication uniquely stands out as the artist’s first monograph; featuring brilliant photos of 31 of KAWS’ ‘augmented’ posters – the original phone-booth and bus-shelter posters that would first put the artist on the map. KAWS is an American graffiti artist and designer known for his toys, paintings, and prints.

KAWS Exposed

Yayoi Kusama

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Kusama&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Kusama</a> <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=exhibition%20catalog&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">exhibition catalog</a> marking the turning point of Kusama’s international stardom.<ul><li>After Yayoi Kusama (Japanese).</li><li>Tokyo: 1992.</li><li>Published on the occasion of the retrospective: Yayoi Kusama Sogetsu Art Museum Tokyo / Committee of the Exhibition of Yayoi Kusama.</li><li>Hardcover.</li><li>Bound in bright green felt, with a silver stamped front title area and spine.</li></ul> Yayoi Kusama Sogetsu Art Museum Tokyo / Committee of the Exhibition of Yayoi Kusama: Sept. 21 – Oct. 31, 1992. One of a series of retrospectives in the 1980s and 1990s which brought the artist back into international prominence, following a period of inattention as a result of Kusama departing New York in 1973. 20 years later, this exhibition at the Sogetsu Museum became a historical step towards Kusama's representation at the Venice Biennale in 1993.

Yayoi Kusama Sogetsu Art Museum Exhibition Catalog

Glenn O'Brien

<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Inscribed</a> by early Basquiat champion &amp; historic downtown art scene critic and curator, Glenn O’Brien, New York Beat brilliantly documents the production of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Downtown%2081&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Downtown 81</a>, director Edo Bertoglio's seminal take of New York's Downtown scene, featuring a turn, 19 year old J<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=ean-Michel%20Basquiat&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ean-Michel Basquiat</a> as semi-biographical protagonist.<ul><li>Glenn O'Brien (American).</li><li>Photographs by Bertoglio and Maripol.</li><li>Tokyo: Petit Grand Publishing, Inc., 2001.</li><li>112 pages.</li><li>Hardcover book with dust wrapper.&nbsp;</li><li>Reverse of interior jacket forms a striking vertical poster featuring Basquiat's portrait.</li><li>Text in English and Japanese.</li></ul> "Shot as New York Beat in 1980-1981 but completed for release only last year, Downtown 81 emerges as a nostalgic portrait of pre-Giuliani Manhattan, an unruly place full of garbage, graffiti, rubble-strewn lots, unlicensed after-hours clubs and highly idealistic kids eager to make their mark as avant-garde artists and musicians. The film's central figure is Jean, a young Bohemian engagingly played by a not yet famous Jean-Michel Basquiat. Jean survives mainly by relying on the worldwide network of hip: there will always be another bar to go to, another gig to Crash, another wealthy European to write a check, another gorgeous model in a Cadillac convertible to give him a ride home. The script, by the rock critic Glenn O'Brien, also the film's co-producer, follows the basic day-in-the-life format, beginning with Jean's release from a hospital. Jean returns to his Alphabet City tenement to find an angry landlord demanding his back rent, and departs with a painting he hopes to sell. The day brings many disappointments but also many fortuitous encounters. He meets assorted new-wave musicians (Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Tuxedomoon, James White and the Blacks, DNA, the Plastics, and Walter Steding, most of whom perform); go-go dancers; and street people, among them Deborah Harry, who plays a bag lady with magical powers. It's as a documentary that Downtown 81 is most successful, particularly at those moments when the somewhat unfocused filmmaking allows us to look past the foreground characters and catch glimpses of a vanished cityscape: the pornography shops and grind houses of West 42nd Street, the greasy spoons and outlet stores of East 14th Street, the labyrinthine interior of the Mudd Club in what was then the largely uncharted territory south of Canal Street." (New York Times, 7/13/01) Glenn O'Brien, an American writer and art/fashion critic, was a close friend, confidante and early champion of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

New York Beat: Jean-Michel Basquiat Downtown 81

TASCHEN | Ellen von Unwerth | Ingrid Sischy

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of Fräulein, <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">inscribed</a> by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=ellen%20von%20unwerth&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ellen von Unwerth</a>.<ul><li>Ellen von Unwerth (German).</li><li>Ingrid Sischy (South African).</li><li>Cologne:&nbsp;TASCHEN,&nbsp;2009.</li><li>Elephant Folio.&nbsp;</li><li>482 pages.</li><li>Collector's edition, number 546 of 1,500 numbered copies (nos. 201–1,700), signed by the photographer.</li><li>Half simulated lizard-skin leather spine and printed paper covered boards, in matching drop box, which is a bit shaken from the size of the production.</li></ul> Inscribed by Ellen von Unwerth to Christ Zois, with a Happy Birthday! exclamation in New York 2003. Zois is a screenwriter, famous for his collaborations with Abel Ferrara.

Fräulein | Inscribed by Unwerth

Marc Chagall | William Shakespeare

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a>, limited folio of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=The%20Tempest&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Tempest</a>, with 50 lithographs, each <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Chagall&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Chagall</a>.<ul><li>Marc Chagall</li><li>After William Shakespeare.</li><li>Monte Carlo:&nbsp;Andre Sauret,&nbsp;1975.</li><li>Folio.&nbsp;</li><li>Fifty lithographs overall, with original tissue guards.</li><li>Limited edition of 250 signed and numbered copies (this is #96), 270 the entire edition.</li><li>Original glassine wrappers; loose signatures, as issued, printed on Arches wove paper, in a cream vellum box, stamped in gilt on cover, held in original publisher's cardboard shipping box with label.</li></ul> A wonderful and evocative series of lithographs, produced when Chagall was 88 years old, and all signed by him. When Raymond Levy of Editions André Sauret first approached the artist about illustrating Shakespeare's Tempest, Chagall initially hesitated because he was afraid he might not do justice to the text, but then between March and May 1975, he produced fifty drawings on tracing paper, which were transferred onto zinc plates and sent back to Chagall for final retouching (Sorlier S. 17f.).

The Tempest | Signed by Chagall

Weegee

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of the <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/art-&amp;-design/photography" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">photography</a> book <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Weegee&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Weegee</a>'s People.<ul><li>Weegee (Ukrainian).</li><li>New York:&nbsp;Duell, Sloan and Pearce, Essential Books,&nbsp;[1946].</li><li>Small quarto.</li><li>Photographs by Weegee.</li><li>Rust cloth.</li></ul> More of the full-flash nighttime snapshots by this paparazzo of the proletariat. Less bloody than Naked City, and more joyous: Weegee’s People is a celebration of a city and its people. From Metropolitan Opera dames to all-night basement jazz jam sessions, the photos here make for a vital book. From the Brassai of New York and one of the first to popularize photojouranlism.

Weegee’s People First Edition

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Andy%20Warhol&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Andy Warhol</a>'s Index, <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> eleven times by the artist.<ul><li>Andy Warhol (American).</li><li>New York:&nbsp;Random House,&nbsp;1967.</li><li>Quarto.</li><li>Profusely illustrated from "Factory Fotos," with all pop-ups and inserted items, as issued.</li><li>Number 26 of 355 copies signed by Warhol on the cover.</li><li>The first fifty copies included a slipcase and Warhol's autograph initials on all ten pop-up segments.&nbsp;</li><li>Half cloth and paper covered boards with holographic cover.</li></ul> One of the most iconic photobooks ever printed. Completed with the assistance of Factory regulars Stephen Shore, Paul Morrissey, Ondine, Nico, Christopher Cerf, Alan Rinzler, Gerald Harrison, Akihito Shirakawa and David Paul, with photographs by Nat Finklestein and Billy Name. The special sections are all initialed by Warhol, as issued: 1) castle pop-up; 2) red accordion; 3) bi-plane pop-up; 4) Chelsea Girls disk on a spring; 5) polyhedron on the string (pages still sealed shut); 6) Lou Reed record; 7) the triple-page fold-out nose; 8) Hunt's Tomato Paste can pop-up; 9) Andy Warhol tabs; 10) balloon, melted and sealing together facing pages, as usual. "Index (Book) is one of the important and exuberant Pop art objects ever published. From its holographic bubble-wrap cover to the various pop-ups and 'gifts'... it is also on of the most ultimate photobooks-as-objects. It is, in addition, the primary Factory photo album, one of the most authoritative biographies of Warhol" (Parr/Badger).

Index Signed First Edition

Joseph Cornell

A scarce <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of Maria, privately printed by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=joseph%20cornell&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cornell</a> in an edition of about 100 copies and given away to his friends as presents, augmented with a collaged element to the last page.<ul><li>Joseph Cornell (American).</li><li>[Queens, NY]:&nbsp;Salamander Editions [Joseph Cornell],&nbsp;(1954).</li><li>Small collaged element to last page (postcard detail of skyline of lower Manhattan).&nbsp;</li><li>Original printed stapled wraps, original blue tissue still present.</li></ul> This work was inspired by nineteenth-century opera singer Maria Malibran-Garcia and was produced with the same precision and care Cornell brought to his other productions. It is in many ways a Cornell work in book form, not only due to the collaged element present, but also in the appropriation of text, the use of a decorative headpiece from yet another book, and focusing on one of Cornell's signature obsessions. A box of leftover copies of Maria was discovered with Cornell's estate and are seen on the market with some regularity. These are identifiable, however, by a lack of any collage element in the rear of the book, no blue tissue (which according to his diaries, Cornell labored to find just the right color of), and their generally fine condition (having been stored in a box for years). This copy, however, is one of those augmented and circulated by Cornell himself -- and genuinely scarce as such. OCLC locates one holding (Utah, though another lies among the Donald Windham and Sandy Campbell Papers at Yale) and only one additional among museum collections (the Smithsonian). A curious entry in a curious career and an early and under-appreciated artist's book, rare in this state altered by Cornell.

First Edition Art & Design Books

Filters

Way to Buy

Author

Price

Book Subject

Book Special Feature

Book Language

Era

Materials

Color

Region of Origin

Country of Origin

Item Location

Available for International Shipping

John Thomson

Andy Warhol, Julia Warhola

Robert Gober, Joyce Carol Oates

Andy Warhol

Lotte Jacobi

Alfred Stieglitz

Alec Soth

Andy Warhol

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Henry Moore

Walter Shaw Sparrow

W.D. Campbell, Basil Ede

Yasuhiro Ishimoto

Daido Moriyama

Robert Venturi, Muriel Cooper, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour

Arthur Rackham

Salvador Dalí, TASCHEN

John Gossage

Masahisa Fukase

Masahisa Fukase

Robert Frank

Robert Frank

Robert Doisneau, Blaise Cendrars

Alvin Langdon Coburn

Claude Cahun

Hans Bellmer

Richard Avedon

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson

After KAWS

After Yayoi Kusama

Glenn O'Brien

TASCHEN, Ellen von Unwerth, Ingrid Sischy

After Marc Chagall, William Shakespeare

Weegee

Andy Warhol

Joseph Cornell