Beni Boschof draws wild and intuitive on everything within reach of his hands. In this manner he compiled several thick books, all unique, each page an original. Mysterious structures, cross-eyed figures and words, that somehow sound strangly familiar… Cillit Bang, Dash, Omo and Friends combines a selection from the original books into a singular new publication.

Table bombs, ice cream and balls of lights in nebulous doom and gloom: Artist Gil Pellaton places his grotesquely twisted figures in imaginary scenes that hover between scenery-like reality and bizarre exaggeration. The large-scale oil paintings are dynamic and as specific as dreamlike worlds can be. On Vient Quand Meme! is his inaugural publication, combining his most recent works in a small but mighty volume.

Hop Step Jump brings together portraits of colorful, eccentric figures that interpret “Life and Hereafter”, essential truth and source of inspiration to Keiichi Tanaami. Tanaami’s vivid and highly surreal drawings are often considered psychedelic. However, a closer look reveals that his drawings go far beyond psychedelic trops. They have their roots in his tense personal recollections: memories, dreams and nightmares.

The Master Builder: Talking with Ken Briggs by Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge, is a slim (28 pp. plus covers) volume, the size (and look and feel, with coated and uncoated stocks) of a typical Briggs NT programme. It comprises an interview with Briggs, a short biography and portrait, plenty of pictures (24 in colour) of his pioneering posters and programmes for the theatre in the 1960s and 70s, and a detail of Briggs’ slide archive, carefully labelled with Dymo tape.

When asked about his structured, asymmetrical booking forms for the theatre, Briggs claims ‘I didn’t care about beauty or the lack of it. They are purely typographic,’ then goes on to explain his colour system: ‘from warm colours in winter to cool colours in summer: red, ochre, purple, bright blue and so on.’ Which is why he was known as the colourist.

The hallmark of Saul Steinberg’s art is the inked line, always drawn with a spare elegance that expresses the semiotic richness of the line itself. As it shifts meaning from one passage to the next, Steinberg’s line comments on its own transformative nature.

The Line, the original a 10-meter-long drawing with 29 panels that unfold, accordion fashion, is Steinberg’s manifesto about the conceptual possibilities of the line and the artist who gives them life. His drawing hand begins and ends the sequence, as the simple horizontal line that hand creates metamorphoses into, among other things, a water line, laundry line, railroad track, sidewalk, arithmetic division line, or table edge; near the end, the curlicues etched by the iceskater’s blade remind us of the role calligraphy plays in Steinberg’s art.

The Line was designed for the Children’s Labyrinth, a spiraling, trefoil wall structure at 10th Triennial of Milan, a design and architecture fair that opened in August 1954. The drawing, photographically enlarged and incised into the wall, was one of four Steinberg conceptions used on the labyrinth.

When someone as peaceful as Emanuel Halpern (Zurich, 1948) draws an apocalypse, things must be pretty bad with the world. His fifty large-scale coloured pencil drawings telling the story of the destruction of Dieselbrugg confirm this prediction. This is his comic version of Dürrenmatt‘s valley of confusion. Reality, which is usually slouching towards tragedy, can be described only by comic means. Both talented storytellers subscribe to this truism. They give us solid citizens with image and text collages that are almost excessively artistic and hypertrophic. But the images underline the fact that this is the only way that we can tackle and escape from the mess.

In the Dieselbrugger Apokalypse, Halpern manages to move between pilgrimage and the misery of refugees with the sure-footedness of a somnambulist. “You can‘t really be as dozy as that” he seems to be muttering. “Come into my yurt In here you will hear peace bells ringing, you‘ll see bathing towels fluttering. This is Dieselbrugg.”

— Guido Magnaguagno

condition: very good, some wear on cover, interior unblemished, fifth edition, excellent reference copy.

Mr. Bumba was a painter of pictures. One day he wanted to make a picture of a kitten. But he could not remember just how to do it.

Copyright 1966 by Lerner Publications Company; fifth edition published in 1974. The type used in this book is Mr. Bumba Text set in 16 point.

condition: very good, shelf wear, interior unblemished, first edition, excellent reference copy.

Before Christopher Nance arrived in 1985 at NBC-TV in Los Angeles, he began his career as a weathercaster and television personality in 1979 in his hometown of Monterey, California. Since 1982, Nance has talked to over 450,000 students with his self-designed program, offered at no charge, called Let’s Talk Weather. Nance was fired from his job at NBC in 2002 after developing “a reputation for profane and menacing off-air behavior, marked by sexual innuendo and violent outbursts.”

“To my mother Sarah, my daughter Noel and to all the boys and girls who dream the wonderful dreams. You are the future.”

— Christopher Nance, 1995

condition: fine, shelf wear, interior unblemished, first edition, excellent reference copy.

Before Christopher Nance arrived in 1985 at NBC-TV in Los Angeles, he began his career as a weathercaster and television personality in 1979 in his hometown of Monterey, California. Since 1982, Nance has talked to over 450,000 students with his self-designed program, offered at no charge, called Let’s Talk Weather. Nance was fired from his job at NBC in 2002 after developing “a reputation for profane and menacing off-air behavior, marked by sexual innuendo and violent outbursts.”

“My new motivation is my God, my wife Nicholette, my family and friends.”

— Christopher Nance, 1998

This summer, inspired by a cultural exchange program with the Caucasus,
I travelled by land from Zurich to Baku and back. My objective was to document the journey with pen on paper. Though the culture exchange eventually did fail, the experience was intoxicating to my pen and I. The drawings capture the gradual change of scenes from Switzerland through the former Yugoslavian states, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia before finally arriving in Azerbaijan (to travel back again just see the book backwards). This is my statement to go out, see the world and avoid airplanes. Take your time and enjoy the view on your train ride.

—Ingo Giezendanner