PLANTS & MAMMALS / TWENTIETH CENTURY NARCISSUS by Carol Bove

Horticultural Society of New York, 2009, First edition, Accordian folded with color photograph and poster laid in, 5 1/2" X 8 1/4", Softcover in slipcase

As new (Still in publishers shrink wrap)

 Published to accompany Carol Bove’s 2009 exhibition Plants and Mammals at the New York Horticultural Society, this catalogue features an accordion-folded book produced in collaboration with horticulturalist Janine Lariviere, a photograph of Bove’s sculptural installation, and a full-sized reproduction of a collage featured in the exhibition. The botanical book, titled Twentieth Century Narcissus, is a pictorial record of different varieties of Daffodil cultivars that were introduced over the last century, compiled from bulb catalogs that were sent to Lariviere’s house. The small photograph depicts a grouping of elegant and carefully composed sculptures crafted from driftwood, peacock feathers, silver and industrial debris. The collage includes a poem for the deceased Marilyn Monroe written by Michael McClure, and frames his farewell to the "perfect mammal" with William Blake etchings and antique woodcuts of animals. Bove juxtaposed these three elements in an exhibition that critically reflected on romanticism, objects of beauty, and the human urge to give tangible form to our desires.