Tomkins, Calvin — The Bride and the Bachelors

New York, The Viking Press, 1965. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. Hardcover. White cloth spine with black titles over teal paper boards in white paper jacket with color highlights and black titles/illustration. 246 pages illustrations, portraits 22 cm. Very scarce first edition of one of the essential art books of the last half-century. Its witty and readable accounts of the lives and work of Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Jean Tinguely, Robert Rauschenberg, and Merce Cunningham reveal the ways in which they influenced one another, and opened the way to new perspectives on the nature and purpose of art. VG-. G+. Unclipped jacket is toned, rubbed and shows general signs of wear including small chips, closed tears, some with creases, around the edges and a small star stamp on front flap. Boards have some light corner bumping and another small star stamp inside the front board.