THE ART OF ASSEMBLAGE
William C. Seitz
William C. Seitz: THE ART OF ASSEMBLAGE. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1961. First edition. Quarto. Black cloth titled in gold. Printed dust jacket. 176 pp. 1 fold-out. 146 plates in color and black and white. Jacket design by Ivan Chermayeff. Jacket lightly rubbed and edgeworn, with chipping to spine ends. Interior unmarked and clean. Out-of-print. A very good copy in a very good dust jacket.
8.75 x 9.75 softcover book with 176 pages and 146 plates, including one Marcel Duchamp fold-out. Accompanied an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts and San Francisco Museum of Art in fall 1961 - spring 1962. "An 'assemblage,' extending the method initiated by the cubist painters, is a work of art made by fastening together cut or torn pieces of paper, clippings from newspapers, photographs, bits of cloth, fragments of wood, metal, or other such materials, shells or stones, or even objects such as knives and forks, chairs and tables, parts of dolls and mannequins, automobile fenders, steel boilers, and stuffed birds and animals"--in short, a very eclectic and often three-dimensional collage.
This fully-illustrated catalog includes several informative essays by Seitz: "The Liberation of Words" focusing on the work of Andre Gide, Guillaume Apollinaire, Stephane Mallarme, and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti; the essay, "The Liberation of Objects" including Dada and Neo-Dada, Surrealism, Futurism as well as the works of Picasso, Braque, and Gris, and other essays pertaining to the realism and poetry of assemblage, collage art, attitudes/issues, and more. Includes artists associated with Dadaism, Cubism, and a few who would later be associated with the Fluxus movement.
- Foreword and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- The Liberation of Words
- Stephane Mallarme
- Guillaume Apollinaire
- Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
- Andre Gide
- The Liberation of Objects
- Picasso, Braque, and Gris
- Futurism
- Dada and Neo-Dada
- Surrealism
- The Collage Envrionment
- The Realism and Poetry of Assemblage
- Attitudes and Issues
- Notes
- Lenders to the Exhibition
- Catalogue of the Exhibition
- Assemblage: A Working Bibliography
- Index
Works by the following artists are included: Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Kurt Schwitters, Arman, Jean Arp, Georges Braque, George Brecht, Andre Breton, Bruce Conner, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Yolande Fievre, Juan Gris, George Herms, Jess, Edward Kienholz, Willem de Kooning, Rene Magritte, Landes Lewitin, John Latham, Kasimir Malevich, Marisol, Joan Miro, Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson, Alfonso Ossorio, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Mimmo Rotella, Lucas Samaras, David Smith, Daniel Spoerri, Richard Stankiewicz, Joseph Stella, Yves Tanguy and many, others.
Also included is a detailed listing of the 252 pieces of the 144 artists in this historic exhibit; a working bibliography, and a complete index.
From the book: "The Art of Assamblage is the first book to recognize collages, readymades, found objects, surrealist objects, combine-paintings, and the other varieties of assemblage as diverse manifestations of a common tradition which (though fascinating parallels and prototypes can be found for it in orimitive and popular art) is unique to the twentieth century."
"Through a broad selection of illustrations in color and black-and-white, an explanatory text, and statements by many artists and critics, this book gives a concise but rich account of this most recent of modern art forms."