L.A. Air First Edition - Bruce Nauman

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1-800-99-BAUMAN

L.A. Air

Bruce NAUMAN

Item#: 64201 We're sorry, this item has been sold

NAUMAN’S L.A. AIR, 1970

NAUMAN, Bruce. L.A. Air. [New York]: Multiples, 1970. Slim quarto, original wire-stitched coated white self-wrappers.

First edition of this photographic satire of Los Angeles air quality, with ten full-page “images,” one of only 600 copies.

Bruce Nauman’s tongue-in-cheek L.A. Air consists of ten “superbly colored skies (already polluted?)” (Les Musées d’art et d’histoire, Geneve). It is Nauman’s contribution to Multiples’ Artists and Photographs portfolio of 1970, limited to only 600 copies, with the artist’s signature printed on the rear wrapper.

About-fine copy, with only lightest toning to original wrappers.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
Armorial Used to describe a binding bearing the coat of arms of the original owner, or with bookplates incorporating the owner’s arms.
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Chromolithograph Lithograph printed in colors, typically three or more.
Collation Process by which the contents of a book are inspected for completeness, checking against internal evidence, the table of contents and/or plate list, and reference works. Also a shorthand bibliographical description of a book’s composition by its leaves and signatures, rather than its pages. A-C, for example, would indicate a quarto volume composed of three signatures or gatherings of eight pages each for a total of 24 pages.
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Doublure Pastedowns made not of paper but of leather, for decorative purposes.
Duodecimo (12MO) Smaller than an octavo, typically less than six inches tall; smaller formats, such as 24mo and 32mo, are uncommon.
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Engraving Illustration produced by carving lines into a metal plate. This is an intaglio process, in which ink is poured over the plate, then wiped from the surface, leaving ink only in the recesses made by the engraver’s tools. The image is then transferred by pressing thick dampened paper against the metal plate with great force—requiring engravings to be printed on a separate stock and separate press from any text.
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Wood-Engraving Engraving made with the graver or burin on the cross-section of a piece of boxwood; the harder wood and finer tools allow for more delicate, finely detailed images, while the block can still be set in the page alongside text and printed on the same stock as the text. While much older, wood engravings enjoyed an important renaissance in the late eighteenth century through Thomas Bewick and continued in popularity thorugh the nineteenth century.
Wormhole Tiny pinhole-sized trails left by bookworms as they eat through a text block. Much more common in older books printed on handmade papers with a high rag content than in books printed on manufactured papers made from wood pulp with a higher acidic content.
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