Cubism and Abstract Art: Painting, Sculpture, Constructions, Photography, Architecture, Industrial Art, Theatre, Films, Posters, Typography.

[Barr (Alfred H., Jr)]

Published by The Museum of Modern Art MoMA, 1936

About this Item

FIRST EDITION [ONE OF 3,000 COPIES], 223 monochrome reproductions of various artists in the exhibition, errata slip following title-page (once tipped-in, but the adhesive now browned and dried, showing slightly to inner margin), pp. 249, 4to, original beige cloth, lettered in black to backstrip and red to upper board, a couple of tiny faint spots to edges, the first-state dustjacket (with the arrow between 'Machine Esthetic' and 'Futurism' added by hand) in superb shape, minor scrape to rear panel, backstrip panel gently browned and a couple of tiny nicks, very good. A lavish catalogue for an important exhibition - the publication principally of note from a design point of view for the curator's diagram on the dustjacket's front panel, charting the development of abstract art from the 1890s through to the present day. Edward Tufte, assessing it from an infographic point of view, writes: 'Arraying words and arrows in an art historical 2-space, Alfred Barr's famous diagram [.] simultaneously served as a beautiful cover for the catalog, a table of contents for the show, an organizing history of the art displayed in the museum, and a symbol of the entire enterprise. Barr [.] imaginatively replaced the conventional typographic catalog-cover with a provocative flow chart, a didactic genealogy of interacting isms' (p. 65). This is the best example we have seen.

Seller Inventory # 79044

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Cubism and Abstract Art: Painting, Sculpture, Constructions, Photography, Architecture, Industrial Art, Theatre, Films, Posters, Typography.
• Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art MoMA
• Publication Date: 1936