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154.
OZ #16 - The Magic Theatre (London: OZ Publications Ink Ltd., November 1968).
Unpaginated (48pp., including cover). Printed in colour and b/w.
The first purely visual issue of Oz, created by Martin Sharp at the Pheasantry with Philippe Mora, and conceived by him as an endless circle: “It’s a circular magazine. The back goes into the front and keeps going around” (quoted in Joyce Morgan's biography, p.136). Sharp’s reworking of Van Gogh’s self-portrait, which appears on page 42 in the magazine, is also accompanied by a brief quote from the artist: “Life is probably round”. In "Hippie Hippie Shake" (p.126), Richard Neville describes this issue as “a forty-eight page rush-hour of imagery, a cosmic conglomeration collaged from comics, headlines, art books, ads, Playmate centrefolds, the Muybridge human-animal-in-action photos - each page textured with multi levels of meaning.”
Both the magazine’s title and its front cover warning, “The price of admittance… your mind”, reference Hermann Hesse’s novel, 'Steppenwolf', which Sharp had read at the Pheasantry. Sharp and Mora were also influenced by Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the medium being the message, and the Magic Theatre Oz was probably the first solely visual issue of a commercial magazine. Robert Hughes, an early contributor to Oz, wrote that “Sharp has assembled one of the richest banks of images that has ever appeared in a magazine”, and Jonathon Green, a later contributor, hailed it as “arguably the greatest achievement of the entire British underground press”.
Short and unobtrusive top right front cover corner crease, o/w Near Fine.
