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Friedlander, Lee (Photographer); Kitaj, R.B. (Artist/Subject) & Friedlander, Maria (Contributor) : Kitaj: The Limited Edition

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2002

ISBN 1881337154

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 115 pages. Retrospective collection of black-and-white photographs, presented as an Artist Book. One of Lee Friedlander's finest achievements. Limited Edition of 100 numbered and signed copies. Precedes and should not be confused with the regular trade edition, which was published simultaneously with it. They have the same ISBN. The Limited Edition is now rare. A brilliant production by Lee Friedlander and Fraenkel Gallery: Oversize-volume format. Pictorial hard boards with titles on cover and spine, as issued. Photographs of Kitaj by Lee Friedlander. Remembrances by R. B. Kitaj and Maria Friedlander. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper by Meridian Printing Rhode Island from duotone separations by Thomas Palmer to the highest standards. In glassine DJ, as issued. Presents, in its Limited Edition format, Lee Friedlander's "Kitaj". One of Friedlander's most moving books. It is "an intimate friendship of more than three decades that is chronicled here along with the aesthetic evolution of two major American artists. R. B. Kitaj's unusual, handsome, troubled, charismatic face has been a rich subject for Lee Friedlander's camera since the two artists became friends in 1970, when both were teaching at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). 'Kitaj' begins and ends with photographs shot in Los Angeles, and the artist's passage from raw and vigorous young man to grizzly, white-haired prophet is charted through more than 90 images. A frank and moving series of images from 1994, focused on Kitaj during the days following his wife Sandra's sudden and unexpected death, achieve a disarming intimacy that could only have been the result of a deep and trusting friendship" (Publisher's blurb). Both Jewish-Americans were restless spirits. Friedlander has travelled throughout America more than any other photographer, which is saying a great deal as every photographer is innately peripatetic. Kitaj spent much of his life abroad, as an expatriate artist in the United Kingdom, where he developed lasting friendships with artists, writers, and philosophers such as David Hockney and Richard Wollheim. His magnificent collage-paintings have had an immense impact on contemporary art even as his draftsmanship remains unsurpassed, not even by David Hockney, another Master Draftsman. Having embarked on a personal diaspora, he emphasized that more than being The Wandering Jew, he was a Diasporist, by which he meant that he identified with the majority of the world's peoples, who are exiled or self-exiled. "The Diasporist lives and paints in two or more societies at once. You don't have to be a Jew to be a Diasporist" (Kitaj). An absolute "must-have" title for Lee Friedlander and R. B. Kitaj collectors. This is a copy of the Limited Edition of 100 copies, indicated/numbered as such in black ink-pen on the title page. It is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen by Lee Friedlander and R. B. Kitaj. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. It is also signed in the same black ink-pen on the glassine DJ by both artists. This title is an art and photography classic. This is one of few copies of the Limited Edition still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. A rare signed copy thus. 94 duotone plates. Two of the greatest artists of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER LEE FRIEDLANDER TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 1881337154.

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