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BILLY - WITH A FLOCKED SANDPAPER COVER DESIGNED BY ED RUSCHA
(BENGSTON, BILLY AL) (RUSCHA, EDWARD). Monte, James. Foreword by Maurice Tuchman. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1968. First Edition 1/2500. Oblong 4to. Bolted Sandpaper Wrappers. Artist Monograph. Good +./No Jacket - As Issued.. np (64pp), 41 b&w and 10 color illustrations. With an exhibition history and bibliography. Designed by Edward Ruscha. In a custom protective clear acetate dustwrapper. "Billy" is the innovatively designed and bound catalogue published in conjunction with the first major Museum retrospective of the noted Venice surfer-cum-motorcycle-racer-cum artist Billy Al Bengston. Its covers are two sheets of 50 and 100 grit Garnet sandpaper with Ed Ruscha's emblematic "Billy" flocked in pink on the front, and clasped through the spine by two machine bolts with hexagonal nuts that also secure a pink satin ribbon page marker. Each of the forty-six exhibited works by the Ferus Gallery-affiliated artist is reproduced, including more than a dozen of his innovative "dento" paintings on aluminum. Bengston was the real life "Moondoggie" to Kathy Kohner's "Gidget" in the popular Frederick Kohner novel of the same name, and the frontispiece portrait of the artist as a young man is by Don Bachardy. The design and installation for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition was by Frank Gehry! A most presentable example of this uncommon, ultra-cool Ruscha-inflected objet with the publisher's pink silk ribbon bookmark still present showing mild overall wear, creasing and some trivial chipping to the sandpaper covers, and soiling to the edges of the textblock with the often missing "67X The Authorized Version / Bengston Bio" attributed to Alan D. Shean printed as a single tissue sheet laid in, as issued. It has been priced accordingly. LC 68-58669 Inventory Number: 025174