Fizzles, First Edition (15 results)

Condition: Very Good +. 1st Printing. Square tight copy with light wear to covers. "Incredible inventions actually patented long ago that didn't quite make it." Cartoon drawings with brief text, was a syndicated newspaper item. "Backward" by Charles M.Schulz.

Hardcover. Condition: Fair. Doty, Roy (illustrator). Stated First Edition. Scuffs, significant soils, edge chips, shaken spine, etc. A reading copy only. 40 pages. Book.

Paperback. First Printing. Very Good to Near Fine Condition. Tight Bright Attractive Copy With No Markings To The Book.

Hard Cover. Condition: Good. Roy Doty (illustrator). 1st Edition.

Cloth over boards. Condition: Very good. First edition. 4to. 322 pp. Illustrated throughout with over a hundred b/w and full colour reproductions of John's artwork ranging in size from thumbnails to full-page, with two full colour fold-outs. No d/j. Purple endpapers. An exhibition catalogue for a traveling show of the same name that originally took place at the Wight Art Gallery, University of California (LA) from September 20 - November15, 1987. Pages clean and bright. Binding strong and square. Boards and spine lightly bumped and shelf worn. Small green mark on the spine and small brown speckle on the foot edge.

Hardcover. Condition: Fair. First Edition. With dust jacket. The item might be beaten up but readable. May contain markings or highlighting, as well as stains, bent corners, or any other major defect, but the text is not obscured in any way.

Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Please contact O'Connell's Bookshop Adelaide (est. 1954) to check availability etc. We have many thousands more books in our shop than appear on line. No inscriptions, names, etc. No creases. Looks unread. (in Paul) First ed. paperback.

Paperback. Condition: Near fine in wraps. First Edition. 18 x 26cm unpaginated one of 500 copies, exhibition ctalogue Japanese text with colour and black and white reproductions.

Condition: Near Fine. First edition, 8vo., pp.54, dark orange hardcover, gilt; slight foxing to edges, a fresh and near-fine copy, in a very good+ unclipped dust-jacket.

Couverture rigide. Condition: Bon. Dust Jacket Condition: Bon. Edition originale. James Cuno. Fiorades/ Fizzles: Echo and Allusion in the Art of Jasper Johns. Bon état. Jaquette légèrement abimée par le temps. Texte en anglais.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition.

First edition. 61 pages. Hardbound in very good condition in a very good dust jacket.

Hard Cover. Condition: As new. First Edition. First edition. Black cloth, fine, dust jacket. Pages clean and bright, binding firm. Excellent copy. Not part of Collected Works edition. It precedes it. Very scarce.

First edition. Signed by the author and the artist. Limited edition. "This cerebral volume that provokes more questions than it answers is considered one of the greatest artists' books of the second half of the twentieth century" (Johnson and Stein: Artists' Books in the Modern Era 1870-2000). Complete. Five texts by Samuel Beckett in both French and English. Illustrated with 33 etchings by Johns (including 26 lift-ground aquatints, five etchings with mixed media, one soft-ground etching, and one aquatint), together with two colour lithographs used as endpapers. Tissue guards present. The plates were drawn by Johns and proofed and printed by hand at the Atelier Crommelynck in Paris between 1975 and 1976. The paper, watermarked with Beckett's initials and Johns' signature, was handmade by Richard de Bas in the Auvergne. The type, set in Caslon Old Face 16-point, was hand-printed by Fequet and Baudier in Paris. Housed in the original grey linen portfolio case with purple silk tassel, the interior lined with a colour lithograph. A fine copy. The binding square, clean and bright. The contents, with some offsetting from a couple of the darker plates to the opposite page (as in all copies seen), are bright and fresh throughout. Issued in a limited edition of 250 copies, this example is numbered 105 and signed by Samuel Beckett and Jasper Johns on the limitation page. The five prose texts that comprise Foirades were written by Samuel Beckett in French in 1972 and translated into English by the author in 1974 specifically for this collaborative publication. In response, Jasper Johns produced a suite of 33 etchings derived from his four-panel painting Untitled (1972), now held in the collection of Museum Ludwig in Cologne. As the critic Christian Geelhaar noted, Johns had already developed "a set of images unsurpassed in their intuitive realisation of Beckett's texts", despite not yet having read them. The four panels introduced imagery new to Johns' practice. The left panel features a field of stripes or cross-hatching, recalling markings he once observed on a car passing along the Long Island Expressway. The two central panels derive from a wall he had seen on a building in Harlem, painted with rock-like forms in red, white and black. The final panel incorporates wax casts of fragmented body parts affixed to wooden boards. These motifs are developed across the prints through combinations of etching, aquatint and drypoint, rendered predominantly in black and grey. Johns' characteristic stencilled numerals precede each of Beckett's texts, while the endpapers, depicting cross-hatching and rock or flagstone imagery, are printed in colour. The project also marked a technical shift in the artist's printmaking practice. Having previously worked largely in lithography, he was encouraged by Paul Cornwall-Jones, founder of Petersburg Press, to experiment with etching. Cornwall-Jones introduced Johns to the master printer Aldo Crommelynck, who had collaborated almost exclusively with Pablo Picasso during the previous decade. Following Picasso's death in 1973, Crommelynck's Paris studio became a centre for artists associated with Petersburg Press, including Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin and Jim Dine. Johns first visited the studio in 1974, and their collaboration over the next two years resulted in the extraordinary etchings encountered here. Further details and images for any of the items listed are available on request. Lucius Books welcomes direct contact with our customers.

Wrappers and box. Condition: Very Good. First edition. UNIQUE MAQUETTE FOR ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED ART BOOKS OF THE 20TH CENTURY. With all the etchings, aquatints, and lithographs of the completed book, plus additional versions of the double-page illustrations. From the estate of Rudolf Rieser who designed and created the binding for Fizzles. Fizzles, the magnificent collaboration between Samuel Beckett and Jasper Johns, was recognized early as one of the most beautiful and significant artists' books of the 20th century. It was exhibited in 1977 (only a year after publication) at the Whitney Museum of American Art and included in the landmark 1994 -1995 Museum of Modern Art exhibit: A Century of Artists' Books. The first edition, limited to 250 numbered copies (plus 30 artist's proofs and 20 HC copies), was issued with original prints by Johns, comprising 33 etchings and aquatints in- and hors-texte, including two double page color illustrations. This maquette was the copy used by Rudulf Rieser for the Petersburg Press, as a model for the published copies. (As noted in the colophon: "The binding was conceived and executed by Rudolf Rieser in Cologne.") It contains all the text and illustrations, with the individual sheets loose in folders. The printed texts are laminated and pasted on the correct pages, with notes, corrections, and annotations in Rieser's hand. The book is very much in an "assembly" stage, with the in-text illustrations on loose slips, titles on each folder identifying the pages and illustrations inside, and glue residue on the slips and paper folder edges giving insight into how the book was assembled. The hand-written titles supplied by Rieser for the illustrations are particularly helpful for understanding John's somewhat abstract images. (The titles were not included in the published version.) There are some notable differences between this maquette and the published book: The box pastedowns and first color spread of the final published Fizzles contains a beautiful double-page lithograph by Johns of multi-colored lines at different angels perhaps the most famous image in the book. In this maquette there are three such spreads. Two are somewhat larger than the ones in the published book and box, with lines extending beyond the borders of the final images and one is much larger, with many additional lines visible. There are two versions of the double-page color lithograph featured at the end of the book (only one in the published book), both larger in the maquette one significantly larger, with the individual shapes larger and richer in color. While the text appears mostly the same, it is not exact: there is at least one place with a different word choice. Also, one page of text is repeated in the maquette (on an extra sheet, with a few tears) and the date is excised on the English title page. Like the published edition, the maquette contains the colophon; it does not, however, have a limitation page signed by Beckett and Johns. Instead of the canvas box with tassel of the original, the maquette is housed in a hard chemise of thick board. London, Paris, New York: Editions de Minuit and Petersburg Press S.A., 1976. (The maquette, though, is pre-publication.) Oblong folio (13 x 10 in.; 330 x 254 mm); loose sheets in board chemise. A UNIQUE ITEM, OFFERING INSIGHT INTO THE CREATION OF A LEGENDARY ART BOOK.