Birds of the West Indies
Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2013. 1st Edition. Thick quarto, publisher's chartreuse cloth, spine and upper board stamped in black, original printed dust jacket, original acetate over-jacket.
First edition of multidisciplinary artist Taryn Simon’s two-part conceptual taxonomy examining repetition, substitution, and memory, published in conjunction with an exhibition held at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh in 2013. Working across photography, text, performance, and sculpture, Simon is primarily interested in critiquing institutionalized forms of power through her engagement with classification and categorization. In a sly nod to the real James Bond's ornithological taxonomy Birds of the West Indies (1936), Simon assembles a visual database of the weapons, cars, and women ("birds") that appear across the fifty-year British spy franchise originated by Ian Fleming and based on his novels (Simon reproduces a list of birds originally cataloged by Bond in an appendix. Fleming, an avid bird watcher, borrowed the ornithologist's name for his character, favoring its genericism). Illustrated with color plates; with an introduction by Daniel Baumann and a list of Simon's exhibitions and publications. Fine in unclipped dust jacket. Item #12669
$75.00