Art & Architecture Collections

Notable Acquisitions: 1999-2000

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1. Mulier, E. Lettres et Enseignes Art Nouveau. Dourdan (Seine-et-Oise): Ch. Juliot, 1901?

Green Library, Special Collections NK3625 .A73 M85 1900Z F

A rare and lavishly illustrated volume on Art Nouveau typefaces along with designs for common business signs. These typefaces, with their characteristically ornate and asymmetrical qualities, enjoyed a revival in the 1960s, and continue to influence the work of type designers today.

2. Museo Español de Antiguedades bajo la Direccion del Doctor Don Juan de Dios de la Rada y Delgado, con la Colaboración de los Primeros Escritores y Artistas de España. Madrid: T. Fortanet, 1872-1880. 11 v.

Art Locked Stacks Large DP44 .M87 1872 F

These extremely rare volumes constitute a monumental survey of Spanish art in museums and private collections throughout Spain. The set includes essays by leading Spanish writers and artists of the day, along with hundreds of very fine lithographs and chromolithographs showing works of decorative and fine art and architecture from antiquity to the nineteenth century. This acquisition is interesting from historiographic and book arts perspectives, since it reveals the canonical aesthetic sensibilities of the 1870s, while also embodying Spanish ideas about the presentation of art works in the form of a deluxe catalogue.

3. Marlès, J. de. Paris Ancien et Moderne, ou Histoire de France Divisée en Douze Périodes Appliquées aux Douze Arrondissements de Paris, et Justifiée par les Monuments de cette Ville célébre... Paris: Parent-Desbarres, 1837-1838.

3 v. and an atlas.

Art Locked Stacks Medium DC707 .L25 1837

This set provides a major source of information on the city and architecture of Paris before it underwent an enormous modernization campaign orchestrated by urban planner Baron Georges Eugéne Haussmann. Each volume features copious notes, and the atlas includes hundreds of finely executed engraved and aquatint plates with drawings of theaters, schools, hospitals, churches, and museums. Miniature drawings of Parisians in nineteenth-century garb are integrated into the urban surroundings, adding a humanizing perspective to the architectural renderings.

4. Robert, Philippe. Feuilles d’Automne. Ried, Switzerland : Edition Ph. Robert, [1909].

Art Locked Stacks Large NK1560 .R63 1909 FF

In this rare limited edition volume, Philippe Robert, a Franco-Swiss painter (1881–1930), discusses color theory in his decorative paintings. The text appears with lavishly colored borders, inspired in part by Art Nouveau ornamentation. Each plate appears with a guard sheet with descriptive letter press, and several photoengraved color plates show botanical studies of autumn leaves from a variety of trees and plants.

5. Lasinio, Carlo. Pitture a Fresco del Campo Santo di Pisa. Florence: Bernardini, 1828.

Art Locked Stacks Large ND2757 .P57 L37 1828FF

This finely illustrated volume contains large engravings with some aquatint showing interior and exterior views of frescoes at the Campo Santo di Pisa, a structure which served as the burial grounds for the cathedral complex at the Piazza del Duomo. The subject matter of the frescoes, the earliest of which date from approximately 1330, include scenes from the Old Testament, as well as the Adoration of the Magi and the Annunciation, the Story of Cain and Abel, and the Story of Noah. The frescoes at the Campo Santo are generally not well known due to the extensive damage the structure suffered in WWII. The excellent quality of the plates that illustrate the fresco cycles, each annotated in Italian and French and ornamented with armorial emblems, make this volume an invaluable resource.

6. Duchamp, Marcel. Rotorelief: Disques Optique. [Paris]: Published by the author in his studio, 11 rue Larey, n.d. First, unnumbered, unsigned edition of 500 copies.

Green Library, Special Collections XX(4245697.1) RARE-BOOKS

Rotoreliefs are six double-sided cardboard discs printed in color with 12 different compositions and titles and numbers printed in hand at the edges. With a lifelong interest in visual perception, optical illusions, and mechanical contraptions, Duchamp first presented his Rotoreliefs at an inventors’ fair in Paris in 1935. When viewed with through a special viewer, or on a record player rotating at a speed of 40-60 rpm, the disks reveal an optical illusion of depth, or suggest three-dimensional objects such as a balloon and a fish. The Rotoreliefs appear in Hans Richter’s film Dreams That Money Can Buy and in Jean Cocteau’s film, The Blood of a Poet, and in Duchamp’s seminal 1941 work, Bôite en Valise.

7. Ed Ruscha. Babycakes with Weights. CA: Ruscha, 1970.

Art Locked Stacks Small N7433.4 .R951 B11 1970

Billy Al Bengston and Ed Ruscha. Business Cards. Venice, CA: Billy Al Bengston and Edward Ruscha, Inc., 1968.

Art Locked Stacks Small N7433.4 .B46 A4 1968

Ed Ruscha. Dutch Details. Stichting Octopus, 1971.

Art Locked Stacks Small N6537 .R8 A325 1971

Ed Ruscha. Records. Hollywood: Heavy Industry Publications, 1971.

Art Locked Stacks Small N7433.4 .R87 A4 1971A

Twenty Six Gasoline Stations. 2^nd edition. Alhambra, CA: Cunningham Press, 1962.

Art Locked Stacks Small TR647 .R87 T84 1967

These five artists’ books by Ed Ruscha, document an important segment (1960s through the early 1970s) of this widely acclaimed conceptual artist’s career. Twenty Six Gasoline Stations (1962), created in a style contrary to livres de luxe (limited-edition luxury books) produced by artists earlier in the century, paved the way for the consideration and acceptance of mass-produced artists’ books as a genre. Its straightforward series of black and white photographs documenting gas stations on Route 40 between Los Angeles and Oklahoma, is somewhat replicated in the equally characteristic depictions of vinyl records and their covers in Records (1971), babies and a variety of cakes and snack foods in Babycakes with Weights (1970), bridges in Dutch Details (1971), and business cards and photographs of people socializing in Business Cards (1968).

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