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BLAST AND PRAISE!

Charles Asprey is a publisher and, along with Simon Grant, he co-founded PICPUS Press in 2009 which publishes a quarterly pamphlet from a sheet of A2 paper folded to A6 size. The press emerged out of the desire for a pocket-sized vessel in which to publish art writing from “in-between” the headlines. It is distributed for free around the UK and further afield. Since 1994, Asprey has collected both artwork and art books. For this issue, he took TANK through some of the key works in his library.

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BLAST, 1914–1915. Edited (mostly) by Wyndham Lewis

The art historical equivalent of a Commando comic. You learn about this one at school, and owning an original makes me insanely happy. This legendary periodical, a raging manifesto second to none, was compiled principally by Wyndham Lewis to promote the Vorticist Movement, a powerful but short-lived element of British Modernism that was, like many of the journal’s contributors, killed off in the trenches. Other key contributors included Ezra Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, Jacob Epstein, Edward Wadsworth and T.E. Hulme. The first issue has Sex Pistols pink covers – the true colour of the avant-garde!

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Felix Gonzalez-Torres, self-titled, 1995 (Guggenheim Museum NYC)

Perhaps the first art book I ever bought and really treasured. Gonzalez-Torres died the year after this was made. I knew him, having worked at Andrea Rosen Gallery, and he was a charming, generous man, even to me as a lowly 22-year-old intern. My copy comes with an A6 insert; black-and-white images of gulls in a stormy sky that is crushingly melancholic and portentous.

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Matt Mullican, That Person’s Workbook, 2007 (Ridinghouse + MER Paper Kunsthalle)

From Karsten Schubert’s imprint Ridinghouse, and I remember it being one of his favourites. Again very much made as a scrapbook using images directly from Mullican’s own notepads. It feels a bit supernatural dipping into this book and getting sucked into the less-visited hemisphere of the artist’s brain whilst he was under the influence of a professional hypnotist.

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Antje Majewski, Teenage Pantomime, 2002 (aspreyjacques/Charles Asprey)

I commissioned this from Antje having seen the astonishing still images taken by her from the age of 13 that record her and her sisters growing up and transitioning to womanhood. I’m still so proud of this one and in awe of people who can have such a sophisticated vision while so young.

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Amelia Barratt A.B., 2023 (Charles Asprey)

How do you celebrate an artist whose work is spoken word/performance, without those words going into a book to die on the page? We came up with what I think is an elegant solution, namely to have a bespoke website linking the book to ten exceptional recordings made at Abbey Road Studios so that you can read and listen at the same time. The book cover is PVC and the inside flaps each hold a flexi-disc (which used to be given away on the covers of music magazines in the 1970s and 1980s), each containing around two minutes of recording which you can play on a turntable.

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Tenant of Culture, self-titled, 2020/21 (Charles Asprey with Soft Opening, London)

This is a special one not only for being the artist’s first-ever publication at a pivotal time in her career but because it was somehow produced during lockdown; rules had to be slightly bent (secret layouts on kitchen floors) and the fear of cross-contamination meant couriers delivered proofs and edits of the book in sanitised bags. Each participant then made changes, then re-sanitised pens, bag and papers to send the proofs onward. This project without doubt kept Antonia Marsh and myself sane during those awful months – and we ended up winning the Best Swiss Book Award 2021,with our designer Guillaume Chuard of Studio ARD. Yay!

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Merlin James, self-titled, 2023 (Kerlin Gallery, Dublin; Sikkema Jenkins & Co, NYC; P420, Bologna)

Merlin is one of those lynchpin figures who is beloved by other artists for his work, his historical curating and his writing. There’s not much to say about this mighty tome which has images only. Not a word of text. Works spanning more than 25 years, all reproduced perfectly – it says it all, really.

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Ian Kiaer, What Where, 2010 (Archive Books; the GAM Underground Project, Turin)

The paper for this book was chosen by Kiaer because it was uncoated and its sponge-like softness soaks up the colours and reflects the soft forms present in many of the artist’s works, conveying as much as possible the timbre of his practice. More artists should consider doing this. The equally soft cover was intended to very quickly bear the marks, scuffs and traces of its use, allowing for a more sensory encounter.

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Jochen Klein, self-titled, 1998 (Koenig Books). Edited by Wolfgang Tillmans

Klein was a key figure in German art of the 1990s and another who spent time in NYC where he was part of Group Material (1979-1996). This book was made the year after the artist’s passing by his partner Wolfgang Tillmans in conjunction with Klein’s estate; inevitably, it feels like a celebration of a life cut short, and a private journal mourning a great love.

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Mark Leckey, On Pleasure Bent, 2015 (Wiels Brussels). Edited by Patrizia Dander and Elena Filipovic.

If you’re going to make a mid-career survey book then you may as well really go for it, and if you’re arguably the most important artist of your generation then you really, really can’t disappoint.

This stunner has chromed pages, a golden Benson & Hedges trope cover and probably the best printing I’ve ever seen in a contemporary artist’s monograph. The show in Brussels that accompanied this book was also pure gold.

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Tom Burr: Extrospective, 2006 (JRP Ringier, Musée de Beaux-Arts Lausanne and Florence Derieux)

JRP Ringier made some of the great catalogues of the 2000s and this is a favourite of mine because it was the first book of Burr’s that really covered all his key works from the early 1990s onwards, with images on glossy lux paper, and text in a fantastic milky coffee shade. Burr is a seminal artist from the 1990s New York stable of gallerist Colin de Land (1955-2003) as American Fine Arts, and together they have been deeply influential to so many artists, and dealers.

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In Praise of Patterned Papers: a collection of essays, 1997 (Incline Press at Printer Street in Oldham, UK). By Paul Nash, Phyllis Barron, Enid Marx, Alan Powers, Sebastian Carter, Victoria Hall, Graham Moss; with an introduction by Tanya Schmoller.

This collection combines key texts by artists who were at the forefront of pattern-making in the early 20th century – Enid Marx, Althea Willoughby, Eric Ravilious and Paul Nash amongst others – with reprints of the greatest patterned papers produced in the post-William Morris; new Modernist era alongside some contemporary practitioners. The Curwen Press was at the zenith of it all. This book is in two parts. The first is bound in wood with paper inserts and hessian backing and contains text and tipped-in inserts, a masterpiece by bookbinder Stephen Conway of Bradford. The second volume is basically a sample binder with about 30 exquisite folded papers. If you’re a fan of Bonnard, Vuillard, Edward Bawden or Chaimowicz, this one’s for you. It fills in the gap between the decorative and the fine arts that were so inseparable then and should be still.

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Isa Genzken, self-titled, Museion Bolzano, 2010 (Mousse Publishing and Koenig Books). With contributions by Monica Bonvicini, Simon Denny, Liam Gillick, Jutta Koether, Mark Leckey, Nick Mauss, Elizabeth Peyton, Lawrence Wiener and Cerith Wyn Evans.

It’s hard to settle on just one Genzken book. They are all exceptional, from the classic slim gallery catalogues from the late 1970s & 1980s to the double epics of I Love New York: Crazy City (2006) and Mach Dich Hübsch! (2015), both facsimiles of her original scrapbook artworks. I’ve chosen this one from the Museion in Bolzano: clear plastic covers, green elastic-bound inserts and an impressive roster of artist admirers makes for a joyful and revelatory publication.

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Atelier E.B, Passer-by (2019). Edited by Beca Lipscombe and Lucy McKenzie, co-published with Lafayette Anticipations, Paris.

The art world’s most stylish and self-assured craft project from the Scottish duo, channelling historical modes of display, exploring taste and, crucially, designing clothes and merchandise that keep small fabricators afloat. Their store is online but they go on tours with new-season collections, exquisitely blurring the edges of what we understand as showroom and exhibition. This is a particularly successful publication of their work, full of generous source material and celebrating their shared love of feline muses.

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Wolfgang Tillmans, Wako Books series, 1999–2020 (and hopefully ongoing…)

There are now six Tillmans books made with Wako Books of Tokyo. Each is the same format (21.9 x 15.9 cm, not typical in Europe), some with translucent paper covers. The perfect illustration of an artist’s mind, presented like a scrapbook cross-section of his studio practice. Intensely personal and intimate. Japanese perfection.

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BLAST AND PRAISE!