Alphonse Allais: Album Primo-Avrilesque (1897) [French]

“The title of French writer, playwright and entertainer Alphonse Allais’ small book Album Primo-Avrilesque refers to April 1st, or Fools Day. But far from considering it as a prank, 20th century painters and musicians found in it the seed for monochrome painting, silent music and conceptual art. Indeed, this modest, 28pp book contains 7 monochrome prints (black, blue, green, yellow, red, light grey and white) and the Marche Funebre, a silent music score composed for the death of a deaf man.” (source)

Publisher Paul Ollendorff, Paris, France, 1897
28 pages
via Continuo Docs

Allais at Wikipedia

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PDF (different scan, added on 2016-9-25)

Gary Garrels (ed.): Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective (2000)

“Sol LeWitt, one of the most important American artists of this century, has spent the past four decades creating artworks that explore the potential of ideas for the making of visual forms. LeWitt transforms these ideas into objects of exquisite beauty and elegance, deliberately introducing elements of chance, intuition, or irrationality into the systems that govern the creation of his works. LeWitt’s delicate balancing act between thought and form, between order and disorder, between authorship and anonymity, has exerted an enormous influence on artists of subsequent generations. This book, the first retrospective of LeWitt’s work in more than twenty years, fosters a deeper understanding of the artist’s career and its significance to American art and thought.

Including essays by Gary Garrels, Martin Friedman, Andrea Miller-Keller, Brenda Richardson, Anne Rorimer, John S. Weber, and Adam D. Weinberg, the book charts the evolution of LeWitt’s art from his groundbreaking work in Conceptualism during the early 1960s through his turn toward a more lyrical and sensual form of abstraction around 1980. With more than 350 images, the book provides a stunning visual survey of LeWitt’s oeuvre from 1960 to the present, including sumptuous wall drawings, three-dimensional structures, and works on paper.”

Publisher San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2000
ISBN 0300083580, 9780300083583
416 pages

PDF (128 MB)

Jan Verwoert: Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous (2006)

Bas Jan Ader disappeared at sea in 1975 while attempting to sail from the east coast of the United States to Europe as part of a project titled In Search of the Miraculous.

The circumstances of his disappearance have led many interpreters to identify Ader with the role of the tragic romantic hero. This identification has obscured the fact that Ader’s art was a critical investigation of precisely those romantic motives his persona has now come to be associated with. In this book, Jan Verwoert highlights the specific ways in which Ader’s cycle of works explores those motives with an artistic approach that is as conceptual and analytic as it is poetic and existential.

Publisher Afterall Books, 2006
ISBN 9781846380020
62 pages
via f-f-t-t.com

Publisher

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More writings on Bas Jan Ader, 2, 3