Reconstructed History. Compiled by Mike Kelley.

New York; Thea Westreich / Köln; Gisela Capitain, 1990. First edition. 32x23,5 cm. (8, 2 blanks) pp. + 61 plates with tissue-guards. Original printed boards with transparent mylar jacket covered with ink doodles. A very fine copy. Published in a limited edition of 250 numbered and signed copies, and 12 artist's proofs. This is no. 41. The book, designed to resemble a highschool yearbook, consists of a series of iconic American photographs, on which crude drawings in the worst schoolboy manner have been made. Kelley states in the foreword, for instance that "Here we have a collection of grotesqueries, defacements of some of the most cherished images of our American past. Who could be responsible for such defilements? [.] Murder, war, the struggle for power, the desire for wealth, and the disruption of social order: all passions fired by the flesh, of no consequence today when peace and satisfaction are the rule. The past is where these things belong - adored but not emulated. [.] It is this childish resentment that is the cause of the defacements presented here. The inability to accept their lower position in in the order of things provokes these 'artists' to drag back to the surface garbage long buried - to sully, vandalize and make inoperable pictures of health. [.] They take their first toddling step toward the construction of a glorious future by this - their reconstruction of the past." From the library of Anders Tornberg Gallery in Lund, Sweden, and with a stamp confirming this on the last blank page.…