Art Metropole

#06125

Allen Ruppersberg: Collector's Paradise

Artist

Allen Ruppersberg

Price

$56.00

Date

2012

Publisher

New Directions

Format

Artists' Books

Size

21.5 × 28 × 0.7 cm

Length

80 

Collector’s Paradise is Allen Ruppersberg’s unique narrative of the history of rock and roll and a rich reflection on the history of popular American music. The product of years of combing flea markets and yard sales in search of both the visual and recorded history of rock and roll, this book traces R ‘n’ R back to the Minstrel days and American popular song post Civil War and includes a chronological list of 1,500 key recordings and over 300 color illustrations of material all from Ruppersberg’s collection. Included in each book is one loose image, a reproduction of one of the “pages” that Ruppersberg created from the material in his collection. There are a total of nine created for this project with each book containing one of these nine images.

In his introductory essay, Ruppersberg talks about his own musical history and the urgency he feels in creating this narrative of a common musical history before it is lost: “In some cases, if you live long enough you begin to see the endings of the things in which you saw the beginnings. It seems as if worlds disappear before your eyes and ears have a chance to take them in…. It seemed to me at the beginning of this project that this was the last possible moment to be able to gather any of this material in the manner I did and I am even more convinced now that I was right.”