ON CERTAINTY. ILLUSTRATED WITH TWELVE PRINTS BY MEL BOCHNER. 1991. ONE OF ONLY 300 COPIES. SIGNED & NUMBERED BY BOCHNER. EX LIBRIS VAN DER MARCK – IMPORTANT ASSOCIATION COPY.

San Francisco : Arion Press, San Francisco, 1991
38.7 x 34.5cm, 148pp plus cloth boards. Printed on French mouldmade Rives heavyweight paper. Text in German and English translation. The relief prints are printed in black, red, and blue. The binding is cloth over boards with inset cloth titling panels on the covers, the all in slipcase. Numbered and signed by the artist. Edition of 300 copies. On Certainty was the last work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. The profound influence of his thought on the art of Mel Bochner, a highly regarded New York artist, was manifested in the “Wittgenstein Illustrations”, a series of Minimalist drawings from 1971 of arabic numerals over grids that were the basis for the prints herein. The prints from On Certainty were exhibited at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York in 1992.

This copy has the Ex Libris of Jan Van der Marck. Having collaborated with Bochner since the 1960s ( see Art by Telephone ), curator and art historian Van der Marck first wrote on the connections between Bochner and Wittgenstein in Art Forum, April 1986, making this an interesting association copy.

In very good ++ condition. A beautiful book.