THE BOOK STRIPPED BARE: A SURVEY OF BOOKS
BY 20th CENTURY ARTISTS AND WRITERS
Arthur A. Cohen [introduction], and Susie R. Bloch [text]
Robert R. Littman [preface], Arthur A. Cohen [introduction], and Susie R. Bloch [text]: THE BOOK STRIPPED BARE: A SURVEY OF BOOKS BY 20th CENTURY ARTISTS AND WRITERS. Hempstead, Long Island, New York: Hofstra University, 1973. First edition. A very good staple-bound soft cover book with thick printed wrappers and minor shelf wear. Easily eraseable iny pencil notations to text throughout. Offset shadow to rear inner panel from laid-in newsclipping. Catalog design by Elaine Lustig Cohen [uncredited].
Laid in review clipped from the New York Times [October 7, 1973] as well as a three-page typescript press release on Friends of the Hofstra Museum of Fine Arts letterhead.
8.5 x 9.5 staple-bound soft cover book with 28 pages and 29 black-and-white illustrations. Printed in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name: The Emily Lowe Gallery and The Hofstra University Library, Hempstead, Long Island, New York [Sept 17 - Oct 21, 1973].
From the preface: "Typography, calligraphy and design can transform a word to emphasize its meaning and its relationship to neighboring words. The artists, authors and publishers selected took an interest in the possibilities of these variations of standard, linear texts and it is their experiments and achievements which are here demonstrated."
Artists, authors and publishers include Guillaume Apollinaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Raoul Dufy, El Lissitzky, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Sonia Delaunay, Blaise Cendrars, Fernand Leger, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters, Kasimir Malevich, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Picabia, Matisse, Lise Hintz, Joan Miro, Hans Arp, Lothar Schreyer, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, André Breton, and Marcel Duchamp.
Ex Libris Rare Books was founded in 1973 by Elaine Lustig Cohen and her husband Arthur A. Cohen (1928-1986). She was a graphic designer of no small renown, and he was a theologian, novelist, art and literary critic, who wrote extensively on Modern Art. The couple dealt in important and rare printed material and graphic documentation of International 20th-Century art. Much of their early inventory is now in Museums and international private collections. Many items that in these illustrated catalogues are impossible to find today, making these catalogues invaluable to collectors, dealers and scholars alike. They remain exceptional research tools overflowing with important objects and information, include scholarly listings, descriptions, photographs and (1980's) prices of all kinds of early 20th-Century ephemera including posters, letterheads, magazines, reviews, brochures, books, stationery, correspondence, posters, advertisements and much more. You have been warned.