Trbuljak, Goran.

[YUGOSLAVIAN NEO-AVANT-GARDE – FLUXUS – CONCEPTUAL ART – HAPPENING – ARTIST'S BOOKS] Neobjavljene stranice iz zapisa jednog umjetnika (Les pages non-publies des ecrits d'un artiste) 1968-1978 [Unpublished pages from the notes of an artist, 1968-1978].

Zagreb: Galerija Studentskog Centra, 1978. Octavo (17 × 12 cm). Original printed wrappers; 63, [5] pp. with numerous faksmiled notes and sketches. Wrappers are slightly discolored; else very good. Item #54373

First edition of the artist book, printed in an edition of only 500 copies, which is part of a group of works by the Yugoslav conceptual artist Goran Trbuljak in which he critically examines the artist subject. Even the title reveals the program. Instead of the artist's name, the title page merely reveals that it is a drawing by “an artist” (d'un artiste). As in a catalog raisonné sorted by year of creation, the leaves contain individual, seemingly casual notes and only a few small, quickly executed everyday sketches. Both the casualness and the anonymity of the artist were part of the programmatic concept. After Goran Trbuljak and Braco Dimitrijevic founded the group "Penzioner Tihomir Simcic" in Zagreb (named after a person the two had met by chance), Trbuljak worked on the question of what an artist actually is, what makes him one. Like other artists of the time in Yugoslavia, he exhibited at pop-up exhibitions outside the usual art context. However, Trbuljak not only experimented with art outside the art world system, but also made its institutions themselves his subject. One of his posters shows a photographic image of the building of the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zagreb with the following words underneath: "the fact that somebody has a chance to hold a show matters more than what will be in that show." Also in the present publication, Trbuljak explores the questions that were raised by Duchamp at the latest and became the main subject of art theory in the post-war period. (Cf. (Impossible histories: historical avant-gardes, neo-avant-gardes, and post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918–1991, pp 27, 223 and 288.)

As of April 2024, OCLC lists only 2 copies in North America (MoMA and Getty).

Price: €800.00

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