"This ritual of calorie replenishment..."

This ritual of calorie replenishment...
a shortlist for Booth 102 at Rare Book Week Satellite Fair.
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"You see, our two strongest urges are survival and reproduction. Or, put more simply: eating and fucking. I'll leave it to others to develop on the question of sex. The problem of survival, its very necessity, and the aspects it must assume, has been for me the object of profound and lengthy reflection." — This confession from a 1970 toast by Daniel Spoerri, who was hosting a banquet to celebrate his new art-historical phrasing of "Eat Art;" a new genre through which he offered to make contributions to the histories of performance-art and radical phenomenology. Before this, Spoerri had worked as a professional dancer, and after this he would close his chapters as a Gardener. In between: he enjoyed a short stint as advertising executive, with accomplice Karl Gerstner. But his most sustained theme concerned his beloved Eat Art (both before and after he had named it), with which he questioned the 20th century rituals of nourishment that had become so standardized in Western routines; three meals per day, interspersed with work, toilets, and sleep. In response to this, Spoerri challenged himself—as well as the imaginations of his avant-garde fellows (e.g. Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Robert Filliou, Gerstner, Dorothy Iannone, Bernard Luginbühl, Robin Page, Dieter Roth, André Thompkins, Emmett Williams, etc.)—to explore the full spectrum of the cycle of nourishment, precisely as something that Art can think. From Richard Lindner's life-sized gingerbread angels (accompanied by certificates, should they become art-that-was-eaten) and Dossi's chocolate embryos, to Ben Vautier's hunger strike, in which he closed himself within a wooden box for 24 hours. From Karl Gerstner's attempt to synthesize the full range of possible tastes, so that food could be played like music. To Spoerri's film-in-reverse (Resurrection, 1969), in which a cow slowly reconstitutes itself from the flatness of a hamburger patty. On offer below: eleven samples from this avant-garde turn, with its spirited emphasis on the pleasurable sides of survival.

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This list is another collaboration between Jason Rovito and Tenderbooks. For full commercial terms please see final section below. For those in Manhattan for Rare Book Week, items from this list will be on display at Booth 102 of the two-day Satellite Fair (980 Park Ave, at 84th), with regular shuttles to/from the Armory show; Friday March 6th (from 9 to 5) and Saturday March 7th (from 8 to 4). For those who would like comp tickets, simply send request; quantities limited.

For those interested in further avant-garde materials: we have prepared another list documenting a small archive of radical performance materials from Aurelio Caminati; also on view at Booth 102.

LOT 01

Spoerri, Daniel

[Memento mori / tablecloth, from Restaurant Spoerri].
[Zurich]: Vontobel Druck AG, 1971.
450 USD
Large paper tablecloth (70 cm. square), with notable wear to lower left corner; corresponding tape repair to verso. Minor wear to other edges of print, which nonetheless remains bright and clean. Overall: a well-preserved specimen of this highly-ephemeral work. With colophon and 29-line artist statement from Spoerri printed to verso (in German). Preserved flat, without fold-lines; to be shipped in tube.

As a signatory member of Nouveau Realisme (1960), Spoerri chose not to reflect upon the nature of eating simply through its simulation. He did not wish to make paintings. Instead, exploring an aleatory solution, Spoerri invented the post-painterly form of the tableau-piège—literally "the trap picture" or "snare." Perfecting the use of preservatives and adhesives as his basic paints, Spoerri would affix the remnants of meals into their final positions, in that moment just-after diners had finished disrupting the original order of their table-settings. Thus frozen, the tables would then hang vertically on gallery walls or be offered to diners as left-overs to take home, as a kind of memento mori. Here, with this 1971 multiple (already in the second year of his Restaurant project), Spoerri acknowledged his desire to complicate his strategy even further—in a kind of mise en abyme—by commissioning a Swiss printer to produce an edition of 16,500 tablecloths, each reproducing a singular bluish tableau that would serve as a reminder to the diners eating upon them; a reminder "that this randomly fixed moment is but one from amongst thousands of meals that will be eaten by a single person, who is themselves only one of billions—all of them fated to repeat this ritual of calorie replenishment daily, with relative levels of success and pleasure, so that mankind may persist in its cycle between life and death, to persist with its same questions: what is good and bad, beautiful of ugly, true and false." Despite the large print-run, few of these prints survived their ephemeral function; an archival photograph captures Spoerri gluing dozens of these tablecloths together, to cover the banquet table that formed the basis for his Hommage à Karl Marx (1978).

SOLD

LOT 02

Spoerri, Daniel

... bis das Ei hart gekocht ist ... [Invitation].
Köln: Galerie Zwirner, 1963.
350 USD
Invitation, printed across a long scroll of paper (10 x 92 cm.), with Spoerri's name being the only element to break-out from a single line of text running horizontal across both recto and verso. Text in German. Despite some even-browning, the paper remains robust and fresh, with small square remnant of previous adhesive to one of the top corners. Preserved as scroll; to be shipped in small tube.

Primarily being reflections on the rituals of eating, the tableau pièges were also part of Spoerri's contribution to the avant-garde critique of the gallery as a static space, and the subsequent turn towards events and happenings. In what he would later recall as his first proper Eat Art performance (1961), Spoerri took produce from a supermarket, stamped it with his beloved "Attention—oeuvre d'art" stamp, and offered it for sale later that night, at the same supermarket price, within the setting of his show at Galerie Koepcke in Copenhagen. Here, in 1963, Spoerri disrupted the gallery space with a strategy of momentum: choosing to invite guests to his "Seven minute exhibition" with a frenetic narrative, printed largely without punctuation as single breathless line, across unfurling scroll: "Yes, so when I drove to Köln in my little Gourgonette with bad brakes about ten days ago to pick up the trap pictures from the former Dumont gallery, which they were liquidating via the law form Dr. Rudolf Boden Dr. Otto Komz D. Walter Oppenhoff Ellen Andreae Klaus Mathy...;" a group of tableau pièges that he then dashed to hang on Zwirner's walls. Invitees were thus welcomed to observe the salvaged art-works, on the evening of September 12, "in the time that it takes to hard-boil an egg."

SOLD

LOT 03

Spoerri, Daniel

Wissen Sie, was ein "Dorotheanum" ist?... [Invitation].
Frankfurt am Main: Galerie Dorothea Loehr, 1963.
350 USD
Invitation printed to single pale-green sheet (19 x 42 cm.), recto only, folded into four panels as continuous leporello. Red text composed into six vertical columns of individual words, fully-justified to margins, with Spoerri's name positioned exclusively at very centre of front panel. Text in German. With one manuscript correction, substituting "Unicafe" for the printed address of the venue that would host the post-vernissage "Schlackenfest" banquet. Some sunning to paper, with short tear to top margin of front panel; otherwise well-preserved.

Even when Spoerri wasn't exclusively thinking about eating, he was. With another of his 1963 exhibitions—this one at the innovative Galerie Dorothea Loehr in Frankfurt am Main—Spoerri would set-up a dozen rooms representing various methods of committing suicide (one of those including starvation), as an act of "public service." With this incredibly ambiguous invitation—in which he infers that he's not yet sure what his "Dorotheanum" installation will become; with no mention of its eventual subtitle: the "Institute for Suicide"—Spoerri invites visitors to grope their way around a dimly-lit attic preview, before attending an orchestra-accompanied banquet at the Unicafe location that's been added-in-manuscript to this copy; an ambiguously-named "Schlackenfest" that carries a loose connotation to the traditional act of feasting that followed the ceremonial slaughter of an animal. With single OCLC record discovered (Berlin).

SOLD

LOT 04

Spoerri, Daniel / Bischofberger, Bruno (gallerist)

Restaurant de la City Galerie... En vue de l'exposition de Daniel Spoerri. [Menu-invitation].
Zurich: City-Galerie, 1965.
500 USD
Printed in blue on tall cream sheet (41.5 x 27 cm.); illustrated in quasi-kitsch style, after 20th century French menus. Text in French. Very small coffee stain to verso, not showing through, with minor rounding to upper corner; otherwise, a very well-preserved copy.

In 1963, Spoerri first experimented with his "Chef Spoerri 'Daniel'" persona—running a full restaurant in a gallery setting at Galerie J. in Paris. Here, in 1965, he repeated the same happening format in the Zurich gallery of Bruno Bischofberger, with both exotic and Romanian menus served by art critics, and the tables of invited diners serving as the foundation for the tableau pièges that would feature in his scheduled exhibition a few months later, in the same gallery. This version of the menu also served as invitation, with RSVP request printed at bottom. With only a single OCLC record discovered (Houston).

SOLD

LOT 05

Spoerri, Daniel / Baticheff, Kichka

Le petit colosse de Simi [/Symi]. The nothing else review. [Numbers 1-4].
[Greece / Switzerland]: Self-published, 1966-1967. All published.
1500 USD
Four volumes (25 x 17 cm.), each with contents of 32 pages. With no. 2 published first, and all but no. 3 (which is side-stapled) being composed from a single un-cut sheet (as intended); the first two printed on coloured stock (peach and pink). The third number in this set being signed by Spoerri to title page; minor soiling to rear cover.

"There is a break in my work, a 'before Symi' and an 'after Symi,' so to speak." From August 1966 through October 1967, Spoerri retreated with his partner Kichka Baticheff to the remote Greek island of Symi—without cars, buses, or tourists—where they lodged with the eccentric inventor/artist Kosta Kondos, who sometimes speculated on his own divinity. During this self-imposed exile, Spoerri and Baticheff fully embraced the Eat Art complex (although that moniker had yet to be coined). So that—working backwards from the tableau pièges Spoerri acknowledged his challenge: "I first had to discover how we reached this point; this mess on my table. I had to go back to the kitchen, I wanted to know how to cook. I even wanted to slaughter the chicken, which I afterwards ate—and so I realized that this one glued moment was only a flash in the course of a whole cycle, which means life and death, decay and rebirth." The couple produced a number of gastronomical publications during their 13 months on the island; including these four numbers of Le petit colosse, which were distributed by Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich—with a rumoured subscription base of no more than two dozen friends. Contributions to the first number (which was published after the second) included: George Brecht, François Dufrêne, Robert Filliou, Claes Oldenburg, André Thomkins, Jean Tinguely, Dieter Roth, and Emmett Williams—with the other three numbers dedicated to singular works from Baticheff or Spoerri. With number three (being signed in this set), Spoerri offered his gastro-philosophical treatise: Dissertation sur le ou la Keftédès ou Réflexions sur le prémâché ou Comment parler boulettes et non art avec Une excursion impréuve sur le sang, with a bibliography that referenced Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade, Claude Levi-Strauss, recipe books, H. G. Wells, Blaise Cendrars, Aragon, and Dostoevsky. With only 4 OCLC records discovered for this set outside the Continent (MoMA, SFMoMA, Getty, Princeton).

SOLD

LOT 06

Spoerri, Daniel / Thomkins, André

[The doilly invitation].
Köln: Galerie Art Intermedia, 1969.
240 USD
Paper napkin (27 x 18 cm.), with embossed texturing to verso, which features fourteen lines of text hand-stamped in purple ink. Text in German. Preserved in Fine condition.

Before agreeing to open-up Restaurant Spoerri in Düsseldorf (1968), with Carlo Schröter as his General Manager, Spoerri flirted with the idea of joining Karl Gerstner's advertising agency full-time. Here, with this delicate invitation, Spoerri shows his flair for (somewhat impractical) promotional strategies: promising on a napkin to offer gourmet soup for 3 Marks at a Köln vernissage for André Thomkins. A remarkably well-preserved copy; without blemish.

SOLD

LOT 07

Spoerri, Daniel (curator) / Roth, Dieter / Iannone, Dorothy / Various others

[Collection of fourteen invitation-posters from Spoerri's Eat Art Galerie].
Düsseldorf: Eat Art Galerie, 1970-1973.
2500 USD
Fourteen posters, the majority being 42 x 30 cm. (or the reverse); uniformly crisp and clean, with faint fold-lines to a handful of copies and minor sunning to the two smaller posters (30 x 21 cm.). Two posters printed on coloured stock (pink and orange), and a half-dozen boasting an Eat Art Galerie marquee printed in orange-to-purple gradient. For a full descriptive list, please send a request. Preserved within archival L-sleeves; to be shipped flat in archival binder. Accompanied by a second copy of the 1971 Dieter Roth poster (as mailer), within original envelope with letterpress Eat Art Gallery branding (16 x 22 cm.).

As his self-exile in Symi drew to a close, Spoerri declared that he would return to the Continent not as an artist, but as restaurateur. In the Fall of 1968, the multi-floored Restaurant Spoerri properly opened in Düsseldorf, providing him with the ideal environment from which to explore the full spectrum of the Eat Art paradigm, where he could encourage diners to experiment with exotic meals (e.g. grilled ant omelette, python stew, bear's paw), develop a small factory for the production of tableau pièges, and experiment with the general aesthetics of the dining experience (e.g. providing a reference library to assist in inevitable meal-time debates). "On the ground floor there's a beer bar (the bladder), the floor above is the restaurant (the stomach), one flight up is the Eat Art Gallery (the so-called lung, as it sucks in all the money) and way up-top is the studio—for the creator of food art—and a permanent showroom (this is the head)."

Embracing the role of Curator as well as Chef, Spoerri was able to use the upper-floor gallery at the Restaurant as the incubator for a series of Eat Art multiples, as an organic development of his earlier Editions MAT (Multiplication d'art transformable). Launching the series himself in 1970, with Brotteigobjekte—in which he baked various objects into loaves of bread (with the corresponding poster reproducing a photo of his stomach featuring a drawing by Topor)—other contributors would include Dieter Roth (on multiple occasions), Dorothy Iannone, Richard Lindner (with his gingerbread angels), Robert Filliou, George Brecht (with a portrait of Spoerri made from licorice), and Antoni Miralda and Dorothée Selz, who used artificial colouring to produce a surreal spread of edibles. Present here: a group of 14 posters announcing vernissages for these editions at the Eat Art Galerie (1970-1973); triangulating various catalogues, it appears that there were at least 24 such posters created, with the Fondazione Bonotto presently holding seventeen.

PURCHASE / INQUIRE

LOT 08

Gerstner, Karl

Taste-perceptor (süß/sauer/bitter/salzig). 13 Essenzen und ein Text, in einem Kasten 40 x 40 x 20 cm.
[Düsseldorf]: Daniel Spoerri presents "Eat Art," 1970.
450 USD
Group of A4 copied sheets secured in duo-tang with transparent cover. Contents: title page followed by 12 sheets (printed rectos only), followed by concluding certificate sheet, unsigned. With inscription to title page, dated December 1972.

One of the key figures to convince Spoerri to choose Düsseldorf after Symi was Karl Gerstner, for whose advertising agency Spoerri briefly worked. Here: the textual supplement to Gerstner's 1971 contribution to the Eat Art Galerie, which takes the form of a facsimile of his December 1970 proposal for the work; an artist statement in 29 aphorisms, addressed to "Dear Daniel." Of an entirely different tone to the "gingerbread women" interpretation of Eat Art, Gerstner is quite militant in his proposal that he is more excited by that which he does not yet know, than dipping that which he does know into chocolate. He thus proposes a science-fiction project: to discover the mathematical essences of taste—composed of the four basic notes of sweet, sour, bitter, salty— so that a full range of possibilities could be composed from a crate of 12 essential vials of fragrance. A comparable copy to this text is preserved in the Daniel Spoerri Archive at the Swiss National Archive; otherwise not located.

SOLD

LOT 09

Vostell, Wolf / Niehörster, Thomas

Vostell-Antwort-Happening.
Stuttgart: junge presse d, 1973.
400 USD
With vibrant silk-screened wrappers (29.5 x 21 cm.), designed and printed by Dietrich von Oppeln. Very minor scuffing to wrappers and small bump to corner; a well-preserved copy, hand-numbered as 61 of 100 to colophon. This copy also inscribed and dated by Vostell to the title page, in black marker, and accompanied by one of Vostell's "with compliments" cards (5 x 10.5 cm.). Contents: [88] pages of facsimiles of correspondence, artist statements, posters and publicity, reviews, drawings, etc.

While Spoerri was the epicentre of Eat Art, with his Düsseldorf restaurant and gallery, others in the Fluxus network were also exploring this theme. In 1970, Wolf Vostell tested one of its minimalist borders with Salat, an ambitious happening—and naturalist dé-coll/age—in which the same crates of cabbage were shipped back-and-forth between Köln and Aachen for a year. Each day, the further decomposition of the produce was measured, with the results finally exhibited at at Berlin's Galerie René Block. Here, in 1973, Thomas Niehöster published an hommage to Vostell (both as conceptual artist, and graphic designer), by compiling this lovingly-printed collective memoir on Salat; composed from commissioned responses by "young authors, photographers, and graphic artists from the scene." Printed in a run of 100 copies out-of Stuttgart, with only 3 OCLC records discovered. This inscribed copy—complete with a Vostell "with compliments" card—issues from the library of Dr. Wilhelm Salber, founder of the "morphological" school of psychology, which considers phenomenological elements as always already in-flux.

SOLD

LOT 10

Schröter, Carlo / Schröer, Rolfrafel / Spoerri, Daniel

Acht nonsensische suppenlieder von Rolfrafael Schröer zu Acht suppenkreationen von Carlo Schröter. Tierisch ernst zu singen. [Supplement to Suppen-curriculum].
[Düsseldorf], 1977.
250 USD
Illustrated wrappers (15 x 11 cm.), with front cover reproducing b&w photograph of a stairwell-view from Restaurant Spoerri. Rear cover featuring simple line illustrations of eight of the animals for whom soups are sung. Perfect-bound, with ribbon strung through corner punch, by which it was originally attached to hanging multiple. Contents: [38] pages, illustrated with drawings and facsimile manuscript notes.

"But people were reluctant to trust an artist who'd taken it into his head to open a restaurant. How could a man who wasn't even capable of washing up the pots on his paintings make a good restaurateur? I also had to find a partner who would see to the management of the place because I was far too fond of my freedom to imagine doing that myself. So I was the 'artistic director' of the restaurant that bore my name, and Carlo Schröter was the manager." While Carlo Schröter's name appears on each of the Eat Art Galerie posters, there are few traces of his output as the General Manager at Restaurant Spoerri. One exception is this curious "song-book" from 1977, which was originally attached to the hanging multiple Suppen-Curriculum, that featured a framed group of eight soup cans; a cross between a tableau-piège and a supermarket display. Hanging from that frame, via blue elastic ribbon, was this collection of "nonsensical soup-songs," in which the writer Rolfrafael Schröer crafted lyrical interpretations of the (decidedly non-vegetarian) manuscript recipes provided in facsimile from Schröter—for such soups of leopard, bison, camel, goat, bear, antelope, and lion. Of note, the front cover reproduces a detailed photograph of the walls at Restaurant Spoerri, which were wallpapered with Spoerri's own correspondence. With no comparable OCLC records discovered.

SOLD

LOT 11

Thomkins, André / Spoerri, Daniel

Eine getreue hete heuerte genie / 25. Jahre Eat Art... [Invitation].
Düsseldorf: Hete A. M. Hünermann, 1995.
150 USD
Narrow glossy sheet, folded into six panels (12 x 23 cm.). With an André Thomkins palindrome from 1968 reproduced white-on-blue, in street sign style, across the full width of the recto. German text to verso features a biography of Spoerri, and an extract from his speech at the christening banquet for Eat Art (October 29, 1970).

A clever invitation to a retrospective exhibition, after 25 years of Eat Art, reproducing one of André Thomkins idiosyncratic palindromes; a number of which had been installed on the sides of Restaurant Spoerri, after the azure style of street signs. This one: about a genius with faith.

SOLD

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TERMS

For those in Manhattan for Rare Book Week (NYC), items from this list will be on view at the two-day Satellite Fair, at the booth of Jason Rovito, Bookseller (#102). Prices are listed in USD. Items are guaranteed to be described and delivered to the collector's satisfaction; returns are accepted within 10 days of receipt, with notice. Reciprocal terms are extended to the trade; institutional policies are accommodated. For North American purchases, please email jason@paperbooks.ca or phone +1 416 729 7043. In Europe, please contact mail@tenderbooks.co.uk or +44 207 379 9464. Priority is given to first interest. To receive advance copies of future lists, subscribe to our mailing list. Specific wants are always welcome, from both new and established collectors.

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