1973, The Liber Studiorum.
I had a retrospective at the SFMOMA in 1973. There was a catalog, but I wanted more than the usual book that is only a book, not a work of art in itself. It was in the air to use the mass media mediums—like offset printing, for example—to break down the traditional shibboleths about “fine” art. I decided to make a Liber Studiorum (Turner had made one of his work, suggested by Claude Lorraine’s of his) that would sum up my work to that time. The result was a set of twenty 24 x 36 inch offset lithographic prints. Each print was to sum up a time of my art.
Of the three examples below, Plate 3 was an evocation of the period of my work concerned with the dying city and the blood flower; Plate 17 is a transcription of all of the mountains and many of the pyramids, palm trees and cannons from the Carpenter paintings; and Plate 19 is for art historians who wish to research my influences up to that point: it shows my birth-chart and names all of the things that had affected me to then—leaving out only what I later learned was the most important… my family.
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 Liber Studiorum, Plate 19
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| Click here for the entire series of twenty prints. | |
