Beloved by collectors and scholars alike, Steven Leiber’s beautiful bookseller catalogs shaped the canon of publications by artists
Steven Leiber was a pioneering San Francisco art dealer, collector and gallerist who specialized in the dematerialized art practices of the 1960s and 1970s and the ephemera and documentation spawned by conceptual art and other postwar movements. To sell this material, Leiber produced a series of 52 iconic catalogs between 1992 and 2010. Far from your ordinary dealer catalog, Leiber’s catalogs paid homage to the kind of historic printed matter that he bought and sold, mimicking iconic publications like Wallace Berman’s Semina journal and the exhibition catalog for Documenta V (1972). Leiber’s reputation spread via these unique volumes, which included works by John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Ray Johnson, Lucy Lippard, Allan Kaprow, Yayoi Kusama, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha, Lawrence Weiner and many more. Across 252 pages, this book documents the full set of 52 dealer catalogs produced by Steven Leiber between 1992 and 2010. Inspired by Leiber’s often humorous borrowing for his catalog designs, the book’s format references Sol LeWitt’s Autobiography and includes an essay and contextual notes by SFMOMA Head Librarian David Senior. Additional contributors include Ann Butler, Christophe Cherix, Marc Fischer, Adam Michaels, Tom Patchett, David Platzker, Marcia Reed, Lawrence Rinder and Robin Wright. Steven Leiber (1957–2012) began to buy and sell ephemera while working as a private dealer selling prints, drawings and multiples in the early 1980s. Scrupulously organized and cataloged, Leiber’s collection―housed in his grandmother’s basement―became an important resource for scholars, curators and other enthusiasts. The collection included the work of some 1,000 artists and represented practically every major movement within late 20th-century avant-garde practice, including Fluxus, conceptual art, land art, mail art, performance and video.

Steven Leiber: Catalogs

Arts & Photography

Rinder, Lawrence

Patchett, Tom

Fischer, Marc

FITZPATRICK, Chris

Butler, Ann

History & Criticism

Inventory Press/RITE Editions

A detailed account of Ant Farm's 1975 Media Burn performance, a legendary act of consumerist critique This book examines the complex set of cultural references and art-making strategies informing Ant Farm's seminal 1975 performance Media Burn in which a customized Cadillac, dubbed the Phantom Dream Car, was driven through a wall of burning television sets. Originally conceived as a conceptual architectural practice, Ant Farm evolved into a full-service art collaborative, culminating in such notable works as House of the Century (1971-73), Cadillac Ranch (1974) and The Eternal Frame (1975). In Media Burn the artists flourished in a rich tumult of ideas that engaged contemporary media theory, an oddly complicated aesthetic spectacle, textual appropriation and an all-encompassing branding effort. Written by Steve Seid (Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive), and drawing upon a rich visual documentation, this book delves into the little-known critical backstory to this influential performance (and video work) involving a massive effort to mount a subversive critique of media hegemony while continually re-imagining the crux of the performance itself.

Media Burn: Ant Farm and the Making of an Image

Seid, Steve

Performing Arts

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Inventory Press/RITE Editions publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Inventory Press/RITE Editions