Selections from the Sackner Archive of Concrete & Visual Poetry

Lot 418: Timothy Ely, Consider Your Phantom Replies, hand-illustrated throughout, New York, 1982.
Lot 418: Timothy Ely, Consider Your Phantom Replies, hand-illustrated throughout, New York, 1982. Sold for $5,750.

Before being moved to its permanent home at the University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections, a choice selection of works from the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry—the most comprehensive collection of its kind—was offered at Swann Galleries on October 10, 2019.

The archive was founded by Marvin and Ruth Sackner in 1979 in Florida. It includes more than 75,000 annotated volumes, artists’ books, book objects, periodicals, drawings, print portfolios, ephemera and manuscripts. It represents the creative pinnacle for many significant artists and poets working in the genre, alongside documentation that reveals their processes, with preparatory notes, letters and studies. The vast majority of this material will be available to scholars and the public in January 2020 at the University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections.

The books selected for auction at Swann included portfolios by notable American artists and writers, foundational European Avant-Garde material, sculptural works and artists’ books that celebrate the vast range of language-based artworks and push the boundaries of what gets defined as a book. At turns humorous and sublime, kitschy and contemporary, these works were selected by our specialists as a representative offering of an outstanding collection.


Artists’ Books

Lot 401: Lucas Samaras, Book, color illustrated die-cut boards with 18 lithographed and collage-mounted plates, New York, 1968.
Lot 401: Lucas Samaras, Book, color illustrated die-cut boards with 18 lithographed and collage-mounted plates, New York, 1968. Sold for $2,125.
Lot 411: Joni Mabe, The Elvis Presley Scrapbook, Athens, GA, 1982.
Lot 411: Joni Mabe, The Elvis Presley Scrapbook, Athens, GA, 1982. Sold for $2,750.
Lot 431: Tom Phillips, Café Society III, micrographic diary with manuscript annotations, drawings and collage in Humbert Wolfe's Cursory Rhymes, London, 1993.
Lot 431: Tom Phillips, Café Society III, micrographic diary with manuscript annotations, drawings and collage in Humbert Wolfe’s Cursory Rhymes, London, 1993. Sold for $3,000.
Lot 420: Tom Phillips, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Inferno, three volumes, one of ten sets from the editions de tête, London, 1983.
Lot 420: Tom Phillips, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Inferno, three volumes, one of ten sets from the editions de tête, London, 1983. Sold for $21,250.

American Visual Artists

Lot 425: Christopher Wool, Black Book, 17 screen prints, 1989.
Lot 425: Christopher Wool, Black Book, 17 screen prints, 1989. Sold for $20,000.
Lot 406: Samuel Beckett's Foirades with mixed media illustrations by Jasper Johns, signed by Beckett and Johns, 1976.
Lot 406: Samuel Beckett’s Foirades with mixed media illustrations by Jasper Johns, signed by Beckett and Johns, 1976. Sold for $8,750.
Lot 415: Emmett Williams, 10 Auto-Biographical Sketches, stencil and spray paint, 1979.
Lot 415: Emmett Williams, 10 Auto-Biographical Sketches, stencil and spray paint, 1979. Sold for $1,500.
Lot 206: Vito Acconci & Bernadette Mayer, 0 to 9, complete run, New York, 1967-69.
Lot 206: Vito Acconci & Bernadette Mayer, 0 to 9, complete run, New York, 1967-69. Sold for $2,750.
Lot 433: Arne Wolf, From Samuel I: 17 - The Battle Between David and Goliath, 15 relief woodcuts and typeprints, 1993.
Lot 433: Arne Wolf, From Samuel I: 17 – The Battle Between David and Goliath, 15 relief woodcuts and typeprints, 1993. Sold for $3,250.

European Avant-Garde

Jozef Peeters & Michel Seuphor, Het Overzicht, No. 23-24, Antwerp, 1925. $4,000 to $6,000.
Lot 389: Jozef Peeters & Michel Seuphor, Het Overzicht, No. 23-24, with annotations by Peeters, Antwerp, 1925. Sold for $6,000.
Lot 390: Guillermo de Torre and Jorge Luis Borges, Ultra, two volumes, Madrid, 1921-22.
Lot 390: Guillermo de Torre and Jorge Luis Borges, Ultra, two volumes, Madrid, 1921-22. Sold for $2,000.

Miniature Books

Lot 440: Julie Chen, Life Time, Flying Fish Press, Berkeley, 1996.
Lot 440: Julie Chen, Life Time, Flying Fish Press, Berkeley, 1996. Sold for $375.

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