DESTROY ALL MONSTERS / Geisha This

Destroy All Monsters
Geisha This, 1997
Softcover with French flaps, 96 pages
28 x 22cm
Third edition of 2000
Book Beat Gallery, New York

Condition: Near Fine. The wrappers remain bright and clean, with only light shelf wear and a few minor rubs to the extremities. Binding is firm and the interior is clean throughout. Complete with the original bound-in flexi-disc, which appears unused. A remarkably well-preserved example of this increasingly scarce publication.

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Published to accompany the 1995 Destroy All Monsters exhibition at Book Beat Gallery, Geisha This is the definitive document of one of the most influential artist collectives to emerge from the American underground. Formed in Detroit in the early 1970s by Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Cary Loren and Niagara, Destroy All Monsters dissolved the boundaries between visual art, experimental music, comics, performance and self-publishing, leaving a lasting impact on contemporary art, punk and DIY culture.

Designed by Cary Loren, the publication brings together photographs, flyers, drawings, collages, correspondence and rare ephemera, tracing the group's evolution from art-school experiment to cult phenomenon. A bound-in flexi-disc featuring recordings by Destroy All Monsters reinforces the book's hybrid identity as both publication and artist's multiple.

Originally issued in a relatively small edition and increasingly difficult to find complete with the flexi-disc intact, Geisha This remains the essential publication on the collective and a landmark document of Detroit's underground art scene.