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CLIVE PIERCY: PRETTY VACANT; THE LOS ANGELES DINGBAT OBSERVED - DELUXE LIMITED SIGNED AND NUMBERED SLIPCASED EDITION WITH A PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT
(PIERCY, CLIVE). Piercy, Clive. San Francisco & Santa Monica, CA: Chronicle Books & Clive Piercy, 2003. First Edition 1/75 Deluxe. Stout Oblong 8vo. Pictorial Boards in Slipcase. Artist's Book. As New./No Jacket - As Issued. np (448pp), profusely illustrated in b&w and color. Designed by Ph.D. In essence a rectangular stucco box, the dingbat apartment building exploded in popularity during Los Angeles' housing boom of the fifties and sixties. Typically, they eschew ornamentation and details on three sides in order to focus the viewer's attention to the facade - often incorporating florid signage, elaborate window treatments, and carports. These now-decaying buildings are mostly ignored and/or reviled by locals, while revered by strangers to the city. Arriving there from the U.K. in 1982, Clive Piercy (a partner in the noted graphic design firm Ph.D), began traversing the city, and taking roll after roll of film of these unique monuments. Inspired by both Oklahoma native Ed Ruscha's "Some Los Angeles Apartments" and the late British architectural critic Reyner Banham's "Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies", Piercy has artfully combined his photo-documentation cum artist's book of these multi-unit dwellings (duly noting their often hilarious names) with a constantly changing, collage-like design ethos to create another great outsider meditation on L.A.'s urban sprawl. A brand new, pristine example of the author's exceedingly uncommon self-published deluxe edition of seventy-five copies BOLDLY NUMBERED AND SIGNED on a printed vellum insert housed in a printed orange silk slipcase along with a NUMBERED AND SIGNED 4 ¾ x 6 ¾" photographic print by Clive Piercy laid in, as issued. 0-8118-4024-7 Inventory Number: 014308