As a passionate collector, my books have a secret and personal orbit. I sometimes feel they have meanings known only to me. Oddly, the meanings of some of my favorite books, the difficult and challenging ones, remain opaque to me - interesting not because of the knowledge I've gleaned from them, but from the anticipation of what I might come to know - if I could truly connect with them.

To hear someone praise any of my books is like a secret handshake - knowing looks are exchanged, hidden community revealed. A long time ago, Walter Benjamin observed that "the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories."¹² He continued, and wondered if his own library essentially represented "a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order?"³ Such apparent order can be quite lonely. Perhaps not surprisingly, my best collecting was pre-family and pre-marriage, done at a time with fewer demands on my time, income, and attentions, a time when selfishness was permissible and loneliness had a peculiar charm.

The collection I've submitted includes: outsider, avant-garde, brut, underground, punk, and mystic art; and, writings trying hard to explain the certain contemporary conditions, and trying even harder to explain artworks documenting and interpreting certain contemporary conditions. The collection's gravity draws toward it sensitive and uncomfortable individuals made that way by a culture pulled in too many directions at once. The collection hopes to display the imaginative options available to real people living in such circumstances. At times it is a incomplete worldview, at others, a catalog of a certain strain of unpopular culture.

Collecting books is a way of connecting directly with ideas outside my physical surroundings. The art-object and self-published books I possess connect most directly in this way. The artist and critic Anthony Elms⁴ has commented on this immediate aspect of artist books, observing that "immediacy of presence is the artist's book's most democratic feature. . . . an artist's book does not have [a] once removed effect. The art in an artist's book does not refer to a presence outside of the covers."⁵ I agree - such books are universes to themselves. I love looking at my books, showing them to others who might appreciate them, and knowing that I can look at them any time I want - because I have collected them.

¹Benjamin, Walter. Unpacking My Library from Illuminations, p. 60. New York: Schocken Books, 1968.
²Supposedly, the Chinese pictogram representing "personality" can be read as "what remains when that which was attached by chance is stripped away." Books that are kept and treasured reveal this kind of permanency.
³Id.
⁴And MSU alumni
⁵Elms, Anthony. Reshelved, essay from New Art Examiner.

ART BOOKS

Bonk, Ecke (Editor). Marcel Duchamp: The Box in a Valise. New York: Rizzoli, 1989.
The whole of Duchamp's output was miniaturized and made to fit in a suitcase. For people that can't get enough of the urinal, this book will surely satisfy. The musician and artist Brian Eno, who successfully incorporated surrealist technique into pop music, has challenged anyone to actually use the urinal while it is being displayed. So far, no one has accepted the challenge.

Burroughs, William. The Seven Deadly Sins. New York: Lococo/Mulder, 1991.
Burroughs spent the last years of his life painting. His technique was a derivative of the cut-up method employed famously in Nova Express and Soft Machine, Burroughs would use a shotgun to blast aerosol paint cans in front of wooden "canvases." The patterns were interesting and Burroughs believed them to be spirit filled. This book shows the paintings and includes a piece of one of the paintings affixed to the cover.

Beauchamp, Charles. Iguanas in the City. London: Gimpel Fils, 1986.
This has a lovely cover of iguanas crawling through London. Fantastic orange and green colors.

Beyer, Mark. Amy & Jordan. Paris: Sketch Studio, 1993.
Beyer, Mark. Agony. New York: Raw/Pantheon, 1987.
Mark Beyer is supposedly a naïve artist. This may be an affectation as all of his drawings are consistent internally and with each other. There seems to be a very personal set of technical rules operating within the drawings. The strange perspectives reinforce the highly alienated feelings of the characters Amy & Jordan. I saw the book Agony in high school, spent ten years actively searching for a copy, and finally bought a copy for $2 from an Arizona book store. It is somewhat beat-up but dear to me.

Bukowski, Charles & Crumb, R. Bring Me Your Love. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1992. Reprint.
Great, albeit depressing, story about a husband cheating on his committed wife. There are sympathetic illustrations by R. Crumb. Printed on very nice paper with a color cover illustration. It is obviously a labor of love.

Bourdon, David. Warhol. New York: Abrams, 1989.
Seems to be a complete overview of Warhol's artistic life. The pencil sketches are really interesting to look at because the viewer gets to see Warhol's hand at work - normally, the physical presence of Warhol was completely removed from the silkscreens.

Burns, Charles & Panter, Gary. Facetasm. Virginia: Gates of Heck, 1992. First Edition.
"Head shot" illustrations of aliens, humans, monsters, and robots. Spiral bound and physically cut into thirds - the reader can mix and match the faces.

Burns, Charles, DeHaven, Tom & Panter, Gary. Pixiemeat. New Haven: Water Row Press, 1990. First edition.
This is an oversized black and white graphic story. The collaborators really "let loose" on this one. Water Row spent a large amount of money to print this book properly.

Colvin, Calum. Works 1986-1988. London: Salama-Caro Gallery, 1988.
Technique plus. The artist builds 3-D "collages" and then photographs them. In the gallery, the photographs are giant. They take well to the book format.

Coe, Sue & Metz, Holly. How To Commit Suicide in South Africa. New York: Raw Books and Graphics, 1983. A Raw One-Shot/First Edition.
Not too long after this book, Sue Coe spoke at Kresge Art Gallery on the MSU campus. I was not yet an undergraduate student. This book is an oversized edition and very well illustrated. It stands apart from the larger swell of anti-apartheid pop culture works (i.e. Various Artists, We Won't Play Sun City: "We're rockers and rappers/United and strong/We're here to talk about South Africa/We don't like what's going on.) The book presents information journalistically and communicates evil more effectively.

Coe, Sue. X. New York: Raw, 1986. First edition (Raw One-Shot).
If I were a senior high school United States history teacher, I would spend a week using this book. Last Poets' CDs, and Cleaver's Soul on Ice to supplement the textbook. I bet some students would pay attention.

Destroy All Monsters. Geisha This (book and flexi-disc.). New York/Oak Park, Mi: DAP/Book Beat, 1996/7.
This book is hyper-collaged and printed in day-glo inks. Destroy All Monsters consists of the artists Carey Loren, Jim Shaw, and Mike Kelley. All three of them lived or were students in Ann Arbor in the early 1970s. Each of them has obtained some notoriety in art circles. To define the collective as "punk" wouldn't be misguided and illustrates how certain elements were in place years before the "official birth" of punk in 1977. There is a very Michigan feel to much of their work. In this book, there is an interview where they express their dissatisfaction with the Michigan counter-culture that came out of the 1960s. One of them disparagingly characterized the early 70s Ann Arbor scene in as "a sea of denim."

Ernst, Max. Une Semaine De Bonté: A Surrealistic Novel In Collage. New York: Dover, 1976 (reprint).
Ernst, Max. A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil. New York: George Braziller Inc., 1982.
These novels have illustrations at the top of each page and text at the bottom. Ernst seems to have used prints taken from old etchings as the source for his collages - this gives a much different feel than collages taken from magazines.

Eno, Brian & Mills, Brian. More Dark Than Shark. London: Faber and Faber, 1986. First Edition.
This book contains collage illustrations of Eno's songs. The book is large and was printed by people with an eye for detail. It came wrapped in a textured blue paper. It is gorgeous.

General Idea. General Idea 1968-1975: The Search for the Spirit. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1996.
This is an overview of the General Idea. This artists' collective apparently had a storefront on Bloor and was quite active. They had odd projects (like cataloging the orgasms of each of its members on accounting ledgers.) For some reason they produced an LP picturing their members exactly like the 3^rd Velvet Underground record. They lived in the Toronto that I would love to move to - if that makes sense. (As a side note, the individual artists produced compelling work about AIDS in the early stages of the epidemic.)

Gilbert and George. The Cosmological Pictures. Oversized book commemorating a series of 25 paintings. Publisher unknown, 1991.
Gilbert and George. New Pictures (Gallery Card). London: Anthony d'Offay Gallery, 1987.
Gilbert and George. For Aids (Exhibition Catalogue). London: Anthony d'Offay Gallery, 1989.
Gilbert and George. The Complete Pictures 1971-1985. London: Publisher Unclear, 1986.
This art team is great. They produce very large, Warholish paintings using a palate limited to primary and secondary colors. Supposedly this is very gay art - oddly, there is very little queer imagery in these paintings (other than the presence of clothed teenage boys and the absence of women). The paintings about AIDS and blood are really powerful.

Glover, Crispin. Rat Catching. Hollywood: Volcanic Eruption, 1988. Collaged book, personally (and cryptically) autographed. (888/1000.)
The author played the part of George McFly in the film Back to the Future. Originally this was a British book about catching rats. Glover has completely gone over it with a pen changing the meaning. If you have questions you can call the author at home, he lists his home phone number on his website.

Grushkin, Paul. The Art of Rock: Posters from Presley to Punk. New York: Artarbas, 1987.
This book represents a huge effort. As the title suggests, there are hundreds of rock posters inside. Most are color reproductions and real eye candy. I am partial to the new wave and punk posters.

Max, Peter. Superposter Book. New York: Crown Publishers, 1971.
I prefer these cheap mass-produced posters to the high-end prints that played such a part in the resurrection of Max's career in the 90s. I can almost smell the patchouli.

Ohrt, Roberto (Editor). Raymond Pettibon: The Books 1978-1998. New York: DAP, 2000.
This is a thousand page book of Raymond Pettibon artworks. Pettibon was the house artist for SST records in the 1980s and his graphics were everywhere. His non-record-cover drawings from the 1970s drew upon the alienation he felt from the youth/counterculture of Los Angeles (see the "sea of denim" remark above). As a "hardcore" artist (referring to music not pornography) he drew captioned illustrations that captured America changing through the "Reagan revolution" of the 1980s. The tone and texture is much different than the San Francisco art of the same period. During this time, his little illustrated books were easy to find even in East Lansing. Only a few years ago, I worked with a Californian of roughly the same age as Pettibon. He had gone through the LA school system (apparently as Pettibon had). When I mentioned this book to him, he stated that he believed that Pettibon's art was highly influenced by being repeatedly beaten-up going to and coming from school on the bus. These are important drawings.

Pachniche, Peter and Honnef, Klaus (Editors). John Heartfield. New York: Abrams, 1992.
A Dadaist and communist working in Germany in the late 30s, Heartfield took risks that other artists might not take. You can see his jacket collage for the German version of Upton Sinclair's Alcohol without visiting too many special collections. Heartfield's influence on punk art is absolutely clear - that is to say that you can see it in the work of the punk artists who have really studied.

Panter, Gary. Dal Tokyo. Paris: Sketch Studio, 1992.
Panter, Gary. Invasion of the Elvis Zombies. New York: Raw, 1984. First edition (Raw One-Shot).
Panter, Gary. Cola Madnes [sic]. New York: Funny Garbage, 2000.
Panter, Gary. Burning Monster. Paris: Le Dernier Cri, 2000(?).
Many people have seen Panter's work without realizing it - he won Emmy awards for his set designs for Pee Wee's Playhouse. Panter has been illustrating using a very personal set of symbols since the early 70s. His "scratchy" style obscures his mastery of technique. The Dernier Cri's printing of Burning Monster is gorgeous - a beautiful object. The story of Cola Madnes needs to be read to be believed. Panter is another American artist who is celebrated overseas and virtually unknown at home. America doesn't know what it is missing.

Smith, Winston. Act Like Nothing's Wrong. San Fransisco: Last Gasp, 1994. First Edition.
Smith is responsible for the Dead Kennedy covers. His collages exhibit a special west coast sensibility. He uses a lot of "happy 1950s" imagery as source material and twists it around.

Steadman, Ralph. The Big I Am. New York: Summit Books, 1988. First Edition(?)
A full-color book about God. Steadman did the pen and ink drawings for the (sadly deceased) Hunter Thompson. The Criterion Edition of the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas includes a film, shot from a top-down angle, of Steadman working at his drawing table. It is instructive to see the process that produces the result.

Stooss, Toni and Kellein, Thomas (General Editors). Nam June Paik: Video Time - Video Space. New York: Abrams, 1993.
Paik is the best. In the 1960s, he had done a sculpture of the Buddha meditating in front of a camera showing the image of the meditating Buddha. In the 1980s, he glued a gift store statuette of Rodin's Thinker onto a portable Sony Watchman.
Talking Heads and Olinsky, Frank. What the Songs Look Like. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. First Edition.
Graphic artists interpret the songs of the Talking Heads - a particularly deep well.

Thompson, John. Book of Thoth. California: Adler Photo-Graphics, 1969(?). Signed, Edition of 1000 (980/1000).
Thompson was a very underground illustrator of the Berkeley variety. This is a large unbound "deck" of Tarot cards. There is a dark current here. Hippies high on illicit substances would be well warned to stay away from this work until the drugs wear off - it could be a "bummer."

Williams, Robert. The Art and Imagery of Robt. Williams. California: Schanes & Schanes, 1982. Signed, Edition of 2000 (1428/2000).
Williams, Robert. Visual Addition: The Art of Robt. Williams. California: Last Gasp, 1989.
The artist came out of the Southern California hot-rod, comix, and art scene. An artists' artist, he is said to be able to paint chrome better than anyone.

Various Artists. Bad Influences. Los Angeles: Otis/Parsons, 1987.
This catalog remembers a show of underground artists including Georgeanne Dean, Mark Mothersbough, and others. It is noteable for the inclusion of very primitive computer illustrations where the artist squeezed everything possible out of a not-quite-ready technology.

Various Artists. Sag; Die Puppe; Caroline Et Ses Amis; Cassas; Disaster Boy. Paris: Le Dernier Cri, 2000(?).
This is a set of several independent minded, well drawn, and perfectly printed books by a French art collective. Produced in small batches, these labor intensive books are small wonders.

Various Artists. Corpsemeat. London(?): Savage Pencil Publishers, 1989. First edition.
This is the best book I own. The cover illustration to this oversized, silkscreened book shows Pan (a half-man/half-goat) playing the pipes - the slightly evil image is done in a perfect Disney style. The insides of the book get better with each turned page.

Various Artists. Exit. New York: George Petros, 198(?). First Edition.
Oversized comic book. Representative of a certain punk ethos of the late 1980s.

Various Artists. Glamour International Magazine. Italy: Publisher Unknown, 1985. First edition.
An Italian comic collection. It features a lovely pen drawing by Liberatore of a very muscular woman on the cover.

Various Artists. Retina Damage. New York: Jim Blanchard Publications, 1991. First Edition.
Similar to Exit above.

VanVliet, Don. Stand Up to Be Discontinued: The Art of Don VanVliet. Berlin: Cantz, 1993.
Better known as Captain Beefheart, these are abstracted oil paintings of farmyard scenes.

Ware, Chris. Jimmy Corrigan, or, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Publishing information is unclear, circa 2000.
Every inch of this book has been designed (including the back of the dust jacket). There is a sense that Ware is challenging other comix artists to raise the bar. There is a crispness to the draftsmanship that is uncommon. Oh, the story is touching, too.

Warhol, Andy. America. New York: Harper & Row, 1985. First Edition, papberback.
This is a softbound book of photos taken by Warhol in the 80s. Very unassuming.

69 Artists. The Narrative Corpse. Virginia: Gates of Heck, 1995(?). First Edition.
A whole bunch of artists collaborated on this book and the results are impressive. Many of the artists on this list are included here.

CRITICISM & ART HISTORY

Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. New York: Noonday Press, 1988. (Originally published in 1977.)
Barthes, Roland. A Barthes Reader. New York: Noonday Press, 1991.
There was a time where I understood Barthes better than I do now. The "grain of the voice' is a concept that isn't really that hard to understand and useful. Do you know that he is a kind of celebrity in France (even in death)?

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, 1968.
Benjamin, Walter. Reflections. New York: Schocken Books, 1978.
One of Benjamin's gifts is his ability to communicate in very digestible paragraphs. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is understandable to anyone and really can teach something to regular people interested in art. Perhaps he would be sad that after identifying "aura" so plainly, that it would continue to have so much power. (In my note about Peter Max, I assert that his cheap and widely available posters are aesthetically superior to his expensive lithographs. I would love to see well reproduced photography widely and cheaply available to the general public. It would not be technically difficult to do this, but because it would devalue the scarcer "original" photographs there is little motivation for galleries and artists to make such copies available.) Incidentally, Benjamin's essay, Unpacking My Library, was what I first thought about when reading the flyer for this contest.

deCerteau, Michel, Giard, Luce, & Mayol, Pierre, The Practice of Everyday Life. Volume 2: Living & Cooking. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.
This book was recommended to me as useful in understanding J.G. Ballard's novel Crash. Crash digs into the mundane details of day-to-day life and infuses them with meaning.

Elderfield, John. Kurt Schwitters. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985.
This is a art historians account of Schwitters that won some prizes in its day. I like it for the pictures. I need to see the collaged wall in England before I die.

Ford, Simon. Wreckers of Civilisation: The Story of Coum Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle. London: Black Dog Publishing, 1995(?).
Coum Transmissions seemed to take its cue from Hermann Nitsch and Viennese Actionism and anticipated the "industrial" strain of punk prior to '77. Coum did performances with their bodies that pushed taboos. (Serras' Piss Cross was very clean and unoffensive in comparison.) Very little has written about them but surprisingly accurate rumors made it to my ears when I was in high school and was into Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. The book has a quote about Coum from the performance artist that had himself crucified on a VW Beetle: "That's not art."

Foster, Hal. The Return of the Real. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
Foster, Hal (Editor). The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. New York: The New Press, 1998 (reprint).
Very well written and easy reading art criticism. The essays about Warhol's disaster series are eye-opening.

Glass, S. (Editor). Bananafish. San Francisco: Tedium House, 1990s.
An absolutely hilarious magazine about "noise" music. The record reviews have almost nothing to do with the records reviewed. A window into a music scene that many have no idea ever existed.

Negativland. The Letter U and the Numeral 2 (book and CD). California: Seeland, 1993(?).
The band Negativland produced a record that could be confused with a U2 record. This magazine details all of their legal troubles that stemmed from decision to release the record. The magazine presents an artist's view of what constitutes "fair use" under the Constitution. Since the DMCR Act, the scope of what can be "sampled" fairly has been significantly reduced. BTW, the CD itself has smuggled recordings of Casey Casem (the top 40 dj) cursing a blue streak and berating his staff mixed in with the U2 song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." They had to have known that they'd get sued.

Vaneigem, Raoul. The Revolution of Everyday Life. London: Left Bank Books, Rebel Press, 1983.
This book discusses what it calls the "spectacle" and is interesting reading because it relates to media culture. The rumor is that the phrase "Think Globally, Act Locally" was coined by Vaneigem or one of his associates.

Venturi, Robert, Brown, Denise, & Izenour, Steven. Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977.
Suggests that central planning is not such a great idea and that interesting things happen when cultures are allowed to grow without interference.

Young, Elizabeth & Caveney, Graham. Shopping in Space: Essays on America's Blank Generation Fiction. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press/Serpent's Tail, 1992.
A wonderful book of essays about young American writers of the 1980s. Sadly, Elizabeth Young died a year or two ago.

SELF-PUBLISHED ART BOOKS

Brandou, Andrew. The Anatomy of a Secret. Los Angeles: Otis/Parsons, 1991.
Brandou, Andrew. Passport. Los Angeles: Otis/Parsons, 1990.
The Anatomy book looks like the "invisible man" game from long ago. The pages are clear plastic and the illustrations are collages in the silhouette of a man. The book unfolds like an accordion. The Passport appears as a counterfeit passport. The first clue is that there is a skull and a snake on the cover of the little blue book. The inside is filled with clever visa stamps and seals.

J.T. Coca Cola: An Extended Thought. Pennsylvania: self-published, date unknown.
J.T. Chainletter. Pennsylvania: self-published, date unknown.
J.T. Tab. Pennsylvania: Bedlam, 1992.
J.T. Golf My Way: A Guide to Life. Pennsylvania: self-published, date unknown.
J.T. Like Father Like Sun: A Subconcious [sic] Autobiography. Pennsylvania: self-published, date unknown.
These are photocopied books that J.T. wrote with a typewriter, drew in some illustrations, and produced at Kinkos. Not to far from the Raymond Pettibon books that I wasn't smart enough to keep.

Muldowney, Suzanne. Underdog. At 25: Then & Now. Self-published, no date.
The author really likes Underdog. This has caused problems for her relationship with her family.

Olson, Aaron. Dead Nuts. San Francisco: self-published, 1992.
Mine has a blue, red, and purple silkscreened cover. This is the sad story of a man that goes to use a port-o-john and is drawn into a subatomic universe.

Various Artists. Buy. Mail art project, 1990.
A small, hardbound book that has traveled from artist to artist and been transformed by each. It looks like it was once a red cross training guide.

Various Artists. How The Clown Got His Teeth. Mail art project, 1992.
This is in the process of being transformed. It started as a colorful 1950s children's book. Now Bosco the Clown has teeth that will scare the children.

Werner, Byron. Famous Potatoes: the Magazine for Modern Morons (many issues of the series). Los Angeles: Self-published, 1979(?).
This is a collaged book that is too much fun to look at. It reminds me of Devo for some reason. Werner has a picture in the Bad Influences book mentioned above.

Woodring, Jim. Frank. Washington: Self-published, 1993.
Woodring has a comic called "Jim." I had a candy bar from Europe called "Jim." I mailed it to him. About a year later, his wife mailed me this little book along with a nice note.