Best of
Art

1923

Flower Fairies of the Spring


Cicely Mary Barker - 1923
    Suitable for all Flower Fairy enthusiasts, this title celebrates the annual rejuvenation of the natural world at spring and introduces children to the season's flowers by making them magical.

Ecce Homo


George Grosz - 1923
    First published in 1923 but suppressed, the collection offers an unsparing vision of human nakedness, lust, greed and cruelty. The 16 watercolors reveal artist’s perception with particular clarity.

The Ship That Sailed to Mars


William M. Timlin - 1923
    The Ship That Sailed to Mars has a legendary reputation, and the original edition is much sought after by an ardent cult of collectors. Its author, William Timlin, was an obscure South African architect who, in a singular burst of creativity, brought forth a magical intertwining of science fiction and fantasy, a kind of Burroughs meets Tolkien. With 48 pages of calligraphic text — in Timlin's hand — and 48 color plates, it is a work of stunning design, illustration, calligraphy, and overall conception. The Calla Edition also features a new introduction by John Howe, one of the two chief conceptual designers for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. The reappearance of this much-discussed title will be applauded by many fans of science fiction, fantasy, and book illustration.

My Life


Marc Chagall - 1923
    Although long out-of-print, it remains one of the most extraordinarily inventive and beautifully told of all autobiographies. The text is accompanied by twenty plates which Chagall prepared especially to illustrate his life story. Together, the words and pictures paint an incomparable portrait of one of the greatest painters of this century, and of the now vanished milieu which inspired him.

Dances of Vice, Horror, and Ecstasy


Sebastian Droste - 1923
    However, the book is far more than that; and is really a 'gesamskunstwerk' ('total work of art') of drug suffused, morbid, decadent and homo-erotic Expressionist poetry, prose and imagary. It also includes essays, stage designs for projected works and a series of extraordinary photographs commissioned from Madame D'Ora (Dora Kalmus). The finished product should be seen as much as decadent literature as it is a landmark text of dance history and document of Weimar period excess.