an exceptional copy

This publication, the quintessential exhibition catalogue-as-artists' book, was issued to accompany Warhol's first major European retrospective, held at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in February and March 1968. The design and Warhol's themes of media culture and consumer society were hugely influential, particularly for Daido Moriyama and other Japanese photographers during the Provoke era of the late 1960s and 1970s. Kaspar König, working as an intern for the Moderna Museet in New York, developed the initial concept for the book, which Warhol approved. Warhol's dealer Leo Castelli then gave König access to the gallery's documentation archive and their Xerox machine, with which König produced a dummy.

In place of an introduction, the first section comprises a small selection of Warhol quotes and aphorisms, including the first appearance in print of the likely misattributed quote: 'In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes.' The following section reproduces photographs, reproductions of Warhol's artworks and installation views, and a series of photocopies of documentation from Leo Castelli's archive. Two large groups of photos of Warhol and his associates in and around the Factory follow, the first by Billy Name and the second by Stephen Shore, who each composed their sequences. Stephen Shore befriended Warhol as a teenager and frequently visited his studio between 1965 and 1967. Shore has acknowledged Warhol's pivotal influence on him at such a formative age.

The book was printed on newsprint on the rotary presses of the Sydsvenska Dagbladet newspaper. Using newsprint helped reduce the costs, but it also gave the book an ephemeral quality that appealed to the editors. The photocopies of documentation material from Leo Castelli's archive play heavily with the repetition and seriality of the imagery, with some images copied multiple times. The book's status as an 'object' stems from its method of production and final form mirroring procedures and ideas used by Warhol at the Factory at the time.

First edition; (268 x 208 mm, 10½ x 8¼ in); black & white photographs by Billy Name and Stephen Shore, quotes and aphorisms by Warhol in English and Swedish, edited by Warhol, Kasper König, Pontus Hultén and Olle Granath, design by John Melin, Gösta Svensson and Stig Arbman; pages lightly toned as always on account of the use of newsprint, adhesive-bound colour illustrated wrappers after Warhol's 'Flowers' silk-screen, white spine with titles in black, in the publisher's printed mailing box, an exceptional copy; [644]pp.

The Open Book: A History of the photographic book from 1878 to the present pp238-9; The Photobook: A History II, pp144-5; 802 photo books from the Auer Collection p480.