Ronald Brooks Kitaj Still-life Prints

Initialled signed in pencil From R. B. Kitaj, In Our Time: Covers for a Small Library After the Life for the Most Part, screenprint 1969 edition of 150 photo screenprint. A cover of the infamous Henry Ford book from the Dearborn Independent "The Jewish Question". Printed by Kelpra Studio, London, published by Marlborough AG, Schellenberg, Florida. The Jewish Museum. a cover related to Russian Soviet cinema and film. Stylistically, these are hybrid works, influenced by Pop art and the modernist tradition of the Readymade, a work of art created when a mundane found object is named as an artwork and set in an art context. This avant-garde concept was originally invented by the Dada master Marcel Duchamp early in the twentieth century. In the 1960s it received renewed attention at a time when artistic norms were again being questioned. Reacting to Andy Warhol’s Pop imagery, Kitaj poignantly called his repurposed book covers “his soup can, his Liz Taylor.” The blatant use of images taken directly from commercial sources situates In Our Time as a precursor of appropriation art. In turning book covers into works of art, Kitaj is offering fragments of a history of knowledge, in which the content of each volume is at once mysterious and absent. Coming from this passionate bibliophile, the series is nothing less than an intellectual self-portrait. R.B. Kitaj, in full Ronald Brooks Kitaj . Ron Kitaj...

The Most Important Film Ever Made, 1972 Color screen print and collage, from the edition of 70. 15 x 17 in 38.1 x 43.2 cm Published by the artist with Marlborough Graphics at the Kelpra studio in 1972. This work is also in the collections of TATE London and the Victoria & Albert Museum. the price reflects the fact that there is no backing page. Stylistically, these are hybrid works, influenced by Pop art and the modernist tradition of the Readymade, a work of art created when a mundane found object is named as an artwork and set in an art context. This avant-garde concept was originally invented by the Dada master Marcel Duchamp early in the twentieth century. In the 1960s it received renewed attention at a time when artistic norms were again being questioned. Reacting to Andy Warhol’s Pop imagery, Kitaj poignantly called his repurposed lithograph and silkscreen book covers “his soup can, his Liz Taylor.” The blatant use of images taken directly from commercial sources situates In Our Time as a precursor of appropriation art. In turning book covers into works of art, Kitaj is offering fragments of a history of knowledge, in which the content of each volume is at once mysterious and absent. Coming from this passionate bibliophile, the series is nothing less than an intellectual self-portrait. R.B. Kitaj, in full Ronald Brooks Kitaj . Ron Kitaj...