Reign of Narcissism: A Guidebook and Anthology from Ovid to Bruce Chatwin
Barbara Bloom
Published by Wurttembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich & Serpentine Gallery, London, 1990, 262 pp. with envelope insert (colour & b/w ill.), 14 × 20.5 cm, English/German
Price: €34 (Out of stock)

A compendium to the widely traveled installation of the same title, this book guides us through the “set” of a 19th century museum room where all aspects of what we see are covered with traces of the artist’s likeness. (Self) portraits which take the form of vanity mirrors, watermark porcelain tea cups, chocolates, cameos, designs for her tombstone commemorative stamps showing the hospital where the artist was born, even period chairs upholstered with a cloth pattern of the artist’s dental X-rays. The texts delve us into the worlds of Hegel on The Greek Profile, Virginia Woolf’s The Lady in the Looking Glass, Ovid’s myths of Echo and Narcissus, Bruce Chatwin’s Utz, and Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray. The overall effect of this elegant, subtle and ironic work is ultimately quite eerie.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

#1990 #barbarabloom #kunsthallezurich
Frauen und Film, Heft 48: Väter und Töchter
Published by Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, Frankfurt am Main, 1990, 112 pp. (b/w ill.), 16.8 × 24 cm, German
Price: €19

From daughter to woman—between the symbolic structures of patriarchy and libidinal-physical dependence on the father—Frauen und Film 48 explores this dual position of female socialization in various contributions.

Teresa de Lauretis proposes alternative readings of the Oedipus myth. Tanja Modleski examines the subtexts of femininity in Hitchcock’s shrill portrayals. Heide Schlüpmann demonstrates, in William Wyler’s film The Heiress , how technical and formal spatial constructions are mediated by the hierarchies of the father-daughter relationship. Renate Lippert takes up the incest motif in Polanski’s Chinatown.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

#1990 #film #filmtheory
Ronald Jones
Published by San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, 1990, 24 pages (b/w ill.), 18.7 × 26.5 cm, English
Price: €20

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Ronald Jones at the San Jose Museum of Art, February 10–April 22, 1990. With texts from I. Michael Danoff and Peter Halley.

Ronald Jones gained prominence in New York during the mid-1980s by using disparate formal and minimal languages to explore history as a medium. Through juxtapositions of historical events, innovations, discoveries, violence and fear, he explores the complex interrelation of events as they define our perception of ourselves and the world often through connecting seemingly unrelated occurrences.

#1990 #ronaldjones
Society Through Art
Stephen Willats
Published by Haags Centrum voor Aktuele Kunst, Den Haag, 1990, 32 pp. (b/w ill.), 18.3 × 28.5 cm, English
Price: €29

Stephen Willats has made work examining the function and meaning of art in society since the 1960s. His work has involved interdisciplinary processes and theory from sociology, systems analysis, cybernetics, semiotics and philosophy. This manifests in wall installations, project works, films & computer simulations, drawings & diagrams, bookworks and texts.

#1990 #stephenwillats
Defective Art 1986–1990
Jiří Kolář
Published by Albemarle Gallery, London, 1990, 24 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 21 × 25.5 cm, English
Price: €9

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Jiří Kolář: Defective Art 1986–1990 at Albemarle Gallery, London, 2–25 May, 1990. Jiří Kolář was a Czech poet, writer, painter and translator. His work included both literary and visual art.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

#1990 #jirikolar
Müllers Tochter
Rosemarie Trockel
Published by Kunstverein Schwerte, Schwerte, 1990, poster (colour & b/w ill.), 29 × 48 cm, German
Price: €38

Poster produced on the occasion of Rosemarie Trockel’s exhibition Müllers Tochter at the Kunstverein Schwerte, 7 December, 1990 – 13 January, 1991.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

#1990 #ephemera #poster #rosemarietrockel