| Notes: [ART]. Richard Oviet Tyler (1926-1983), Dorothea Baer Tyler (1929-2012). "Uranian Press Art Envelope Containing 4 Zines, 2 Exhibition Posters, 1 Sculpture with Broadside, 1 Press Release, and 1 Business Card, including The Schizophrenic Bomb, Stolen Paper Review 3, and Liberty Long Cut." New York: Uranian Press. Printed at the Sign, October 31, 1977. Envelope and much of its contents numbered in ink 80/100 and stamp dated. The envelope was packaged for the October 31, 1977, opening of Tyler's art exhibition "Liberty Long Cut" at Hunter Arts Gallery at Hunter College. Schizophrenic Bomb (12 pp.) and Stolen Paper Review (8 pp.), both also initialed and numbered in ink, are rarer reissues of only 100 copies than the initial releases published in 1959 and 1961 in editions of 300. Both feature off-set images of Tyler's distinctive woodcuts. Liberty Long Cut, a 38 pp. mimeographed zine of Tyler's collage art, is embossed with the press's logo, and stamped in red on the front wrapper; stamped in blue is a 2 pp. piece on the Gnostic Lyceum Temple's theory of incantatory music. One exhibition poster, stamped by Tyler on recto and verso, uses Tyler's letter of dismissal from Lehman College to promote his show at Hunter College. Another Xeroxed or mimeographed exhibition flyer promotes an extension of Tyler's show at Off the Walls. An included standard press release from Hunter Arts Gallery calls Tyler's show "highly ingenious" and Tyler a "most unusual artist." Most interesting and entertaining of the packet's contents is a playful sculpture of a cigar, wrapped in a stamped broadside that warns of the dangers of smoking, that opens into a papier-mache flag, perhaps first developed for the American Bicentennial, which was a preoccupation of Tyler's. A finely printed business card for the Uranian Press rounds out the collection. The 13 x 10-inch envelope, which is 8 oz when full, is itself stamp dated, numbered in ink, and was originally priced $7. All items in Very Good Plus to Near Fine condition, though the envelope shows toning, shelf-wear, and has some spotting. See: Printed Matter 95491 B, 108388 B, 95490 B, 108386 C, 108387 C, and the exhibition "The Schizophrenic Bomb: Richard Tyler and the Uranian Press." "Richard and Dorothea Tyler, two artists who met while attending SAIC in 1956, established the Uranian Phalanstery in 1974. The organization has its roots in the late 1950s, when the couple first moved into two adjacent buildings in LES. These buildings housed their press and organization for over 30 years. The Phalanstery itself was influenced by a diverse range of texts, religions, and spiritual practices, specifically the teachings of Fourier, who recommended the reorganization of society into small communities, living communally. The Phalanstery was concerned with confronting the dominant ethos of society, interjecting spiritual aspects into everyday life, and pioneering what is now referred to as 'New Age' ideas. Richard Tyler viewed creativity as 'a mantic procedure of the intuitive function' and was dedicated to merging life with art by building a supportive, nurturing community of like-minded artists. To spread the message of the Phalanstery, Richard Tyler would sell publications as The Uranian Press, along with political trinkets, from a pushcart which he would walk from his basement studio on 326 E. 4th Street to the corner of Judson Church, at Lafayette and E. 4th Streets." |