Fluxus artist Dick Higgins’s first collection

Higgins, Dick. What Are Legends: A Clarification. New York: Paper Editions Corporation, 1960.

8vo.; 44 pages; age-toned; small stain on edge of text block; perfect bound in white paper wrappers stamped in red and black. 

First edition, the full edition.

Most famous for his work in the Fluxus art movement of the 1960s, Dick Higgins also coined the term “intermedia” to describe the group’s cross-genre artworks. Along with his wife Alison Knowles, he was an early proponent on the use of computers in poetry, and was fascinated by the works of Giordano Bruno on memory.

The first book by Higgins, What Are Legends, was printed by Higgins himself at the Manhattan School of Printing using a found hand lettered text and images by Maine artist Bern Porter. An experiment in visual poetry and word art, the repurposed cut-up words and images are formed into often repetitive “stanzas” and pages. As explained by Higgins in his 1984 essay, “The Strategy of Each of My Books”:  “[What Are Legends] exemplifies my near-obsession with unifying my theory and practice, written as it is in my “legend” style; this style uses few verbs in the indicative mode, substituting participles wherever possible, in order to get a pictorial effect in words.”

Held with:

Higgins, Dick. What Are Legends: A Clarification. New York: Paper Editions Corporation, 1960.

8vo.; unbound in uncut signatures; 4 leaves; age-toned. No cover present. 

First edition, the full edition.