Devo and the Punks of Letterpress

We finally were able to track down a complete set of this collection of broadsides issued for the Kent State Creative Arts Festival. I'd been searching for it for several years. We'd wanted to include it in our Art Terrorism in Ohio exhibition, but weren't able to find a copy in time, which is a shame. Not only does the portfolio link the underground poetry scene in Ohio to the Bay Area poetry scene via the Zephyrus Image, it also connects it to the New Wave and avant punk scene, featuring perhaps the earliest printed work by a band that was still a few years away from taking over the world.

Devo - The Waltz. 1, 2, 3. . .

The members of Devo were closely linked the poetry scene in Ohio. Various members contributed to different little magazines, especially the great Shelly's, which was published from Shelly's Book Bar and which acted as a magazine incubator for the group [Art Terrorism in Ohio #25]. Bob Lewis also had a book published by Tom Beckett's Viscerally Press. 


The Kent State Creative Arts Festival was created as a reaction against the Kent State shootings, which is often cited as the formative impetus for Devo. The band's first public performance had been at the festival the year prior, and their performance at the festival in 1974 was one of their earliest, featuring the line-up of Bob Lewis, Mark Mothersbaugh, Jim Mothersbaugh, and the Casale brothers. 


The Michael Myers bee linocut which graces this and several of the other broadsides was created in San Francisco and brought to Kent, where the broadsides were printed. Zephyrus Image were probably involved in the event due to the agency of Ed Dorn, who was on faculty at the time. The pairing of Myers' delicate and inimitable linocut work with the quirky pathos of Devo is sublime. The text instructs the viewer to supply their own waltz rhythm as the piece is read, making it a DIY performance piece - a broadside where you, the reader, are the band. 


The portfolio also contains broadsides by Jennifer Dunbar, Ines Brolaski, Joanne Kyger, Barbara Einzig, Ed Dorn (2), Joel Oppenheimer, and Samuel Fuller. All are beautiful, especially those by Dorn, where each line of the work is typeset in a different font, and film-maker Samuel Fuller, who contributes a haunting text on the relationship between between typography and cinema which begins, "The language of type moves with flesh today." The text is overlayed onto a photograph of someone pushing a lawnmower (Johnston identifies the figure as Bing Crosby).

Samuel Fuller

In the past I've often been dismissive of fine printing, thinking that it couldn't match the immediacy of mimeograph or xerox. After the recent exhibition we did on the Zephyrus Image, and after spending time with Alastair Johnston's excellent bibliography of the press, I've had to revise my opinion. Myers and Teter were masters of their craft, but were able to employ it to react with quickness and humor to the political and social events of their day, and in the case of this portfolio, were even able to take the show on the road. Were Michael Myers and Holbrook Teter the first punks of letterpress?


Zephyrus Image. 19 Kent State 74 Creative Arts Festival. Kent, Ohio: Zephyrus Image, 1974. First edition. 9 1/2 x 13 5/16" folder, illustrated at the front panel after a photograph by Eileen Mann, housing 9 broadsides of varying dimensions. Broadsides all fine; folder near fine with some light marginal creasing and a couple of small faint stains to rear panel. Johnston pp. 199-200, 79-81. SOLD. 

The Irritable Tribe of Poets

Only three issues of Theo were published, but it still took me a couple of years to track down a complete set. I'd been fascinated by the magazine ever since I first ran across a copy of number 2, which has a rather unique design; the covers are stapled off center, so that the fore edge is layered; the front wrap ends before the first leaf, so that the name of each contributor is visible, and the rear wrap extends past the text block. 

The editors had a sly sense of humor. The foreward to no. 1 notes that the name of the magazine "derived not from theology, but from Theo van Gogh, the tolerant brother of the insane artist." After the demise of Theo, co-editor Murphy went on to edit a magazine called "Vincent: The Mad Brother of Theo."

By the second issue the tagline evolved into "An honest collection from the irritable tribe of poets" (a nod to Horace). The description is an apt one. Much of the work in Theo shares something of a common rough-and-tumble aesthetic,
 and there seems to be a definite focus on poets working away from the more urbane coastal scenes, including the Cleveland Scene. There is also work by a significant number of female poets. Number 1 includes a contribution from the African American artist Hart Leroi Bibbs, who will be the subject of an upcoming exhibition at Division Leap.

Other contributors include George Bowering, Kirby Congdon, Judson Crews, John Keys, Gloria Tropp, Jack Micheline, Erik Kiviat, Irene Schramm, Gerard Malanga, Duane Lock, Serge Gabronsky, George Dowden, William Wantling, Walter Lowenfals, Carol Berge, Paul Blackburn, Larry Eigner, Lynne Banker, Fred Bannon, Bob Blossoms, C. C. Chamberlain, Matteo Degennaro, Carl Ginsburg, Barbara Holland, Allan Katzman, Andrew Keiser, K.K., Amon Liner, Jim Mosley, Wayne Oaks, S. A. Osterlund, D. M. Pettinella, Ottone Riccio, Rai Saunders, Sid Shapiro, Susan Sherman, John Tagliabue, Tracy Thompson, L. S. Torgoff, Stephen  Tropp, & Alex Weiner. 

Issue no. 1 is an association copy, inscribed by George Montgomery to Joan Jonas. Montgomery was a contributor to all three issues of the magazine, and the afterword to no. 1 thanks him for making the publication possible. 


Murphy, Frank & Jonas Kover, editors.  Theo Nos. 1-3 [All Published]. New York: Theo Publications, 1963-65. First edition. 8vo. Mimeographed; saddle-stapled wraps. Association copy, with issue no. 1 inscribed by George Montgomery in the year following publication, with a Chinese character drawing. Some soiling,especially to no. 2, and some minor insect damage to the cover of no. 1, still a very good set. $250. Inquire. 

Mimeo Mimeo

I might be preaching to the choir here, as I bet that most readers of this blog already read or subscribe to Jed Birmingham and Kyle Schlesinger's Mimeo Mimeo, but if you haven't seen issue 6 buy it now, here. 

The conceit behind this issue is deceptively simple. It prints new work by eight poets, all of whom were associated with the Mimeo Revolution to some degree - Bill Berkson, John Godfrey, Ted Greenwald, Joanne Kyger, Kit Robinson, Rosmarie Waldrop, Lewis Warsh, and Geoffrey Young. After I sat down and read through it, I was struck by how well these poets rub shoulders under these covers. I thinking the grouping is quietly provocative, because it forced me to see a commonality between these writers I had missed before. I call this quality consistency only for the lack of a better word. Out of the ephemerality and immediacy of the Mimeograph Revolution, all these writers have forged remarkably durable and ongoing bodies of work, and the work benefits from being presented together in this context.
Also, laid into this issue is a multiple entitled Manufact Hologram by Robert Strong. I won't say anything about this piece, except that it is very, very cool and worth the price of admission alone.

Lucky Catalog #13

Catalog 13. Stab-stapled in sandpaper. The Division Leap crew no longer have fingerprints.

Our lucky catalog #13 has just been issued. Highlights include art by Joe Brainard and Ray Johnson, Ray Johnson's first artist book, the flier for Andy Warhol's film Empire, signed by the cameraman, the first book ever designed to be a weapon, complete runs of several zines and magazines of the Mimeograph Revolution, Ed Sander's Fuck You Press, Graffiti, the student movements of 1968, Chicano low rider magazines, the Red Army Faction, Hip Hop, the Kommunication Liberation Front, No Wave, Hacktivism, and the Symbionese Liberation Army. 

The pdf can be accessed here. 

There are a handful of printed copies available, which are bound in sandpaper (apologies to Jorn and Debord). Email me if you'd like to receive one.

The Birth of An American Prayer

The original poster for this May 1969 reading at the Sacramento State College Gallery, which featured Jim Morrison of the Doors along with Michael McClure and D. R. Wagner. This was the first public reading of Jim Morrison's long poem "An American Prayer." It documents a watershed moment in Morrison's career as a poet, and is also a fascinating link between Morrison and the poetry of the Mimeograph Revolution. Around the time of this reading Morrison, after being shown some of Wallace Berman's publications by McClure, was inspired to publish his first poetry book, the Lords, in a loose leaf folder format. One has to assume that the publication was Semina. [Reference: Davis, Stephen. Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend pp. 130-1]

Yet another post in which I obsessively mention Wallace Berman. 

Morrison, Jim and Michael McClure, D. R. Wagner. Reading and Show. Sacramento: SSC Gallery, nd. [1969]. 16 1/2 x 21 3/4", offset printed. Folded twice, with some toning along fold lines, else fine. SOLD.

From our upcoming lucky catalog no. 13, out in a matter of hours.

Wallace Berman, Lenny Bruce and Dinner with the Cops

The Digger Papers was the final Diggers publication. The entire contents also appeared as issue no. 81 of Paul Krassner's The Realist, but this edition was printed separately for free distribution in San Francisco, as had their previous leaflets - some of which are reprinted here, along with new material. 


All the work in the Digger Papers is uncredited, in keeping with the Diggers non-attribution policy. I already knew that the book contained work by Gary Snyder and Richard Brautigan, but I was surprised to see a collage I recognized on one of the pages.

"Untitled" (Lenny Bruce) by Wallace Berman

I recognized this Wallace Berman collage, having seen it in the excellent 2009 exhibition at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery. It is also reproduced on p. 17 of Semina Culture. It accompanies a poem called "Take a Cop to Dinner". The poem is probably a reaction to a proposal by the Haight Independent Proprietors (HIP) to improve communication between the police and members of the Haight Community by having dinner with a cop. There is an account of this meeting, and the reaction of the Diggers to it on p. 292 of Emmet Grogan's Ringolevio, which I've been reading along with Peter Coyote's Memoir Sleeping Where I Fall. 


It is a fascinating and beautiful page. Wallace Berman and Lenny Bruce both had problems with censorship and police response to their work. In Berman's case, the seizure of copies of Semina in the Ferus Gallery raid led to him withdrawing from the art world of the "City of Degenerate Angels." I wasn't aware of any connection between Wallace Berman and the Diggers. From reading Peter Coyote's memoir, I know that Billy Jahrmarkt (of Batman Gallery infamy) was associated with the Diggers - perhaps there are other links as well. The Diggers produced some of the most beautiful radical publications of the sixties, and this is a fascinating association with the Semina Circle and their work. 


The Digger Papers. [San Francisco]: Free City, nd. [c. 1969]. Some spotty foxing and staining to the wraps, but very good. 


From our upcoming lucky catalog no. 13, out in a matter of hours.

"The Hand Becomes a Framing Window"

Danieli, Fidel, ed. L.A. Artists' Publication Nos. 1-4 1/2 [All Published]. 


Los Angeles: L. A. Artists' Publication, 1972-73. Five numbers, each an unbound assemblage of posters, textpieces and pageworks housed in a printed envelope. 


The entire run of this formally inventive artists' periodical from Southern California. Each artist was responsible for the printing of their own piece; they submitted their work along with a list of 25 people (later, 10 people) whom they thought would be interested in receiving the magazine. Includes contributions from the great Eleanor Antin (her piece 'Renunciations' in no. 1, and 'Domestic Peace' in no. 2), Betye Saar, Bob Haas, Jim Edson, Caroline Kent, John Beckman, and a variety of Mail Artists, including The Northwest Mounted Valise, John Dowd, Lowell Darling, and Dana Atchley. With it's unusual form of production and distribution the magazine provided a fascinating template for artists to communicate their work with each other and interested parties outside of the gallery system, somewhat in the spirit of other "newsletter" artists' periodicals such as Floating Bear and Semina - in fact, no. 2 contains a very cool homage to Wallace Berman by the editor. 

"Wallace Berman: A Portrait" by Fidel Danieli

Contents fine: envelopes addressed and mailed, and in some cases opened roughly, but very good. SOLD. 

From our upcoming lucky catalog #13, out this week.