ASPEN (December 1966, Vol. 1 No. 3)
"The Fab Issue" of this elaborately produced and hugely influential artists' magazine, one of the defining publications of the 1960s.
Contents generally near fine to fine in a good box.
Price: $1,500.00
ASPEN (December 1966, Vol. 1 No. 3)
"[W]e are harking back to the original meaning of ['magazine'] as 'a storehouse, a cache, a ship laden with stores.' That's what we want each issue to be. Since it comes in a box, our magazine need not be restricted to a bunch of pages stapled together."
Intricate and ornate, ASPEN ("The Magazine in a Box") appeared irregularly over the second half of the 1960s and through ten issues assembled one of the most impressive rosters of writers and artists to appear in any magazine of the time. Contributors to this installment, also called the "Pop Art Issue," include: Lou Reed, Bob Shelton, Bob Chamberlain, Gerald Laing, Jasper Johns, John G. Powers, Peter Walker, Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Ernest Trova, Kenneth Noland, and James Rosenquist. Yet where ASPEN truly excelled was in its innovative design: "Commissioning contemporary artists to design and guest-edit the magazine, [Johnson] transformed ASPEN into a miniature traveling gallery [that attested] to the potential of the magazine as a new kind of artistic medium" (Allen 43). Johnson described ASPEN as "the first three-dimensional magazine"; issues came in a variety of elaborate enclosures and formats, and this issue is no exception. While never a financial success (what little advertising sold was relegated to entirely separate portions of each issue and hence easily overlooked by readers), ASPEN has gone on to wield enormous influence on subsequent publications, from NEST, to AVALANCHE, to MCSWEENEY'S. It remains an important document of "minimalism, conceptual art, and related practices" (ibid). A quintessential magazine of the era.
Read more: Allen, Artists' Magazines, 43-67.
The Object
First edition. (New York): (Roaring Fork / Aspen Magazine), (1966). 12.5'' x 9.5'' (box). Original color Andy Warhol-designed hinged box with printed interior. Containing: 1) Velvet's Underground's The Plastic Exploding Inevitable underground newspaper. 2) Jack Smith's "Buzzards Over Bagdad" flip book. 3) Berkeley Conference on LSD "Ten Trip Ticket Book" (complete). 4) Portfolio of "12 Paintings" of pop/op art (complete) 4) Aspen "Greeting Card Company" "Homeward Bound" booklet. 5) "Music, Man, That's Where It's At!" folder containing "three views" on rock & Roll by Lou Reed, Robert Shelton, and Bob Chamberlain (complete) with: 6) Velvet Underground "Loop" flexidisk. 7) Aspen subscription form. 8) Ad for Paraphernalia boutique. 9) Ad for "Folk Music on Vanguard." 10) Ad for Guild Instruments. Lacking only ad poster for Fladell, Winston, Pennette. Else complete. Box rubbed with some splitting, but largely sound.
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