Item #39794 A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.
A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.

110.

A complete set of catalogues issued by the Anti-University of London, including all three colour cover variants of the first.

i) Spring Quarter. London: Trigram Press, c. late 1967/early 1968. Sm. 4to. Slim wrps., stapled (8pp.). Designed and printed by Asa Benveniste, with illustration of a hand-drawn map to front cover. Edited by Stuart Montgomery. One copy of each of the three variant colour covers - pink, plum and pale brown; since it was printed slightly later, the contents of the pale brown variant differ from the first two. Originally distributed for free via sympathetic bookshops. Contents include the anti-institution’s founding statement and a proclamation of its aims: “The Antiuniversity of London has been founded in response to the intellectual bankruptcy and spiritual emptiness of the educational establishment both in Britain and the rest of the Western World… [it] will be a meeting ground for discussion, discovery, rediscovery and revelation… intended as an on-going experiment in the development of consciousness and will be related to other revolutionary experiments in universities, communities, communes and direct action now taking place in Europe and America.” Also includes registration information (printed forms, one of them slightly creased, loosely inserted in two copies); a list of of 37 different courses with brief biographies of and/or personal statements from the faculty (Roy Battersby, Joseph Berke, Cornelius Cardew, Steve Abrams, Barry Flanagan, Bob Cobbing, Ed Dorn, David Cooper, John Latham, RD Laing, Barry Miles, Jeff Nuttall, Allen Krebs, among others); a list of visiting faculty (William Burroughs, Jim Dine, Richard Hamilton, Allen Ginsberg, Aage Neilson, Cedric Price, Carolee Schneemann, Susan Sherman, and Simon Vinkenoog); a list of associated Free Universities in Europe and America; and news of the creation of ‘spontaneous universities’ in England. All three copies Fine.

ii) Catalogue of Second Quarter. 4to. Slim wrps., stapled (20pp.) + registration form + printed list of supplementary courses loosely inserted (April 1968). By this point the number of students enrolled was in the region of 300, an increase of about one third from the first term. Prints a detailed description of the courses offered in the second session, now expanded to 60, which began on May 6. These included Cornelius Cardew (experimental music), Bob Cobbing and Anna Lockwood (composing with sound), Richard Hamilton (Marcel Duchamp), Jim Haynes (“Dialogues about relevant and irrelevant matters”), new teachers Gustav Metzger (“Theory of Auto-destructive Art”) and CLR James, and Yoko Ono with a weekly course, “The Connection” (see item #112). Further courses were taught by Julian Beck and Judith Malina; Obi Egbuna; Roberta Elzey; Ruth First; Francis Huxley; Harvey Matusow; Juliet Mitchell; Harold Norse; and Alexander Trocchi, among others, while the list of the visiting faculty was expanded to include Adrian Henri, Gary Snyder and Stokely Carmichael (though Carmichael never returned to the UK after his expulsion in 1967). The catalogue’s closing statement, reiterated from the previous term’s, announces that “The Antiuniversity of London is in contact with antihospitals, communes, communities, etc. in London and elsewhere. We ally ourselves with these groups and seek to interdigitate our functions in confronting the stagnation and dehumanization of life in the West.” Fine.

iii) Catalogue of Courses. 8vo. Slim yellow wrps., stapled (16pp.). Course catalogue for the third quarter. Probably printed by Writers Forum (c. June 1968), though not included in the WF checklist featured in Ceolfrith #26. Includes a 1pp. text titled “About the Antiuniversity”: “… we must do away with artificial splits and divisions between disciplines and art forms and between theory and action” (prefiguring Joseph Beuys’ later FIU [item #32]). Names added to the faculty for this third session include the American sculptor, John Chamberlain; Roland Krausen (“Sensitivity Training Group”); and Brother Young (“African politics and Ibo language”). Together with: a loosely inserted flyer announcing a “Kip-In”, July 12-14: “Spend the weekend at the Anti-U - meet people - get together - groove - discuss what to do with the Anti-U - plan a Hyde Park Rally!... There will be a PARTY Saturday night… The session on eroticism will take place as scheduled”; and below, a further announcement for an “Anti-U Course Creation Rally” invites “EVERYBODY who wants to run a course or attend a course from 22 July onwards” to a meeting at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park on July 21. This event signified the breakdown of the existing structure of the Anti-University, the abolition of student fees and teachers’ pay, and the development of a new decentralised and non-hierarchical system that blurred the divisions between student and teacher. Very Fine.

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