Edgewise Press, in collaboration with Paolo Torti degli Alberti of Turin, is proud to publish a special limited edition of Richard Milazzo, JONATHAN LASKER: EXPRESSIONS BECOME THINGS — FROM SKETCH TO STUDY TO PAINTING. It contains a hardbound book by Richard Milazzo, which analyzes, for the first time, the role Lasker’s sketches play as preparatory work in relation to the studies and the paintings; and four prints by the artist based on the sketches. They are encased in a handmade box, in and edition of 25, with five artist’s proofs. They will be presented for the first time at Franco Masoero Edizioni d’Arte, Turin, in October 2005.
To commemorate the Jubilee 2000, Edgewise Press, in collaboration with Paolo Torti degli Alberti of Turin, published a special limited edition of The Gifts / I Doni: Gold / Oro - Frankincense / Olibano - Myrrh / Mirra. It is a bilingual English and Italian three-volume set in three individual slipcase editions (bronze, terra cotta, paper), with sculptures and drawings by Saint Clair Cemin, Not Vital, and Alessandro Twombly, texts by Nanni Cagnone, Demosthenes Davvetas, and Richard Milazzo, and a slipcase sculpture by Abraham David Christian. The myth of the Three Wise Men seeking the Holy Child or Savior and bearing gifts has been recast here into humankind’s general search for meaning as it is rendered symbolically or aesthetically through the creation of works of art and literature. Like the voyage through a desert, the search is not an easy one, and the creation of art or a literary work, often an arduous one, becomes, like the journey itself, its own gift. About the project a critic has written, using the words of an ancient Roman philosopher: “White, milky, caught between the silhouette of an oriental temple and the stylization of a classical column; that is, it is a real meeting between the oriental and occidental. The effect, at any rate, is one of elegant simplicity.” The Gifts / I Doni, along with all the other Edgewise Press regular and special editions and Editions d’Afrique du Nord titles, were presented at the International Book Fair in Turin (Italy), May 2001, at the Esso Gallery in New York, October 2001, and at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2003.
We are also pleased to bring out a second printing of Rackstraw Downes's In Relation to the Whole: Three Essays from Three Decades 1973, 1981, 1996 and Bruce Benderson’s book-length essay, Toward the New Degeneracy. In Relation to the Whole is the book that asks the seminal question: What happens to the artist when he does not find himself at the center or does not choose to participate in the official art movements of his time? Downes’s essays, like his own practice, show us what it means for art to find and go its own way. Degeneracy was nominated for the 1998 Lambda Literary Award, and Rolling Stone included the book on their 1998 “Original Hot List” with a glowing review. The Rolling Stone writes: “A call to arms for everyone looking to break out of the middle class, this essay by Bruce Benderson, a novelist and a veteran of the gay-liberation movement, gives a rousing history of bourgeois hatred of the poor and other ‘degenerates,’ then recommends that anyone serious about becoming an artist kiss off the pursuit of security and feed on the chaotic, alienated energy of the urban underclass. Benderson decries the homogenization of culture as the ‘Disney class’ swallows the adjacent classes, and obliterates their perspectives.” Rivages Poche also issued the book in a French edition.
Edgewise Press books are available at Museum of Modern Art Bookstore, Three Lives & Company, St. Mark’s, Ursus, Gotham Book Mart, Dia Foundation (NY), Strand Art Books, 192 Books (NY), Spoonbill Booksellers (Brooklyn), City Lights Bookshop (San Francisco), Duthie Books (Vancouver, B.C.), Librairie des Colonnes (Tangier), Llbreria de Metronom (Barcelona), Feltrinelli (Parma), Librairie Fueri-Lamy (Marseille), Posada Art Books (Belgium), Tropismes Libraires (Belgium), Libreria Umberta Saba (Trieste), Librairie Fischbacher (Paris), Galignani (Paris), La Hune (Paris), Village Voice (Paris), TPH — Tokyo Publishing House (Japan).