(ARION PRESS.) James, Henry. Ape & Cat and The Madonna of the Future. Introduction by Arthur Danto. 2 volumes. Text volume containing one photogravure and a tipped-in photographic plate; separate accordion-folded album containing 18 mounted photogravure prints, all by Jim Dine. Book is 8vo, cloth; portfolio is grey cloth; both laid into publisher's box with lead alloy inset bas-relief sculpture of the ape and cat cast at the foundry of M & H Type from mold made at the Walla Walla Foundry. Prospectus laid in. San Francisco, 1997
letter b of 26 lettered sets, both colophons signed by dine, and the copy belonging to arthur danto from a total edition of 75. This unusual limited edition came about by a remarkable coincidence. The artist Jim Dine had been inspired by a small porcelain figurine of a cat and monkey in human clothes. He enlarged and reinvented the couple for a major series of sculptures, paintings, and drawings. Friends of the artist and the publisher alerted them to a story by Henry James from 1873 that employed the same figurine for different ironic purposes. Dine photographed his clay maquette and bronzes, and publisher Andrew Hoyem arranged eighteen of the pictures as a narrative sequence, in which the romance of the two animals movingly evokes the human condition. The philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto wrote an essay on the James story and the Dine works. The book and the album of intaglio prints are enclosed in a box displaying a sculpture specially created by Dine for this edition. The book The Madonna of the Future is designed by Hoyem and printed by letterpress.
