Item #CL199-144 The Art Of Rosaleen Norton: With Poems By Gavin Greenlees [Book]
The Art Of Rosaleen Norton: With Poems By Gavin Greenlees [Book]
The Art Of Rosaleen Norton: With Poems By Gavin Greenlees [Book]
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The Art Of Rosaleen Norton: With Poems By Gavin Greenlees [Book]

1952. Hardcover quarto in red cloth boards with gilt title and spine, deckled edges, illustrated endpapers and original bookmark ribbon, inscribed “To Rose, all the best” and signed by Rosaleen Norton and Gavin Greenlees in ink on prelim, 32.5 x 25.5cm. Scuffing and stains to boards, water damage to prelim pages including staining from cloth boards.

Published by Walter Glover, Sydney, first edition, 79pp. Limited edition of 1000, this being numbered “37” in ink, 29 illustrated plates (of 31). This scarce book, which features artwork by Norton and poems by her lover Greenlees, was banned in NSW “on the grounds of obscenity”, and copies exported to the USA were destroyed. The publisher Walter Glover was charged with obscenity and subsequently filed for bankruptcy. Norton was called into court to defend her art, which she did “in terms of Jungian archetypes.” The judge ruled that two of the images in the book, The Adversary and Fohat “had to be removed from all existing copies of the book. Glover ‘blacked out’ the two ‘obscene’ plates in a few copies, but most were unaltered.” This copy still contains one banned plate, Fohat, but is missing Qlipha (p43–44) and The Adversary (p47–48). Ref: Wiki; Sydney University Library.

Several images and creatures in this book are most likely inspired by the work of Austin Osman Spare.

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Item #CL199-144

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