Untitled Multiple from S.M.S. (Shit Must Stop) No. 4, August 1968

Double-sided lithograph on card, cut and folded as the portfolio for the fourth installment of S.M.S. (Shit Must Stop), the short-lived though much-admired alternative publication. 11 x 7 inches folded, extends to 13.75 x 20 inches.Very Good with light staining and soil, unfolds nicely, a good candidate for float framing. Co-conceived by William Copley and Dimitri Petrov, The Letter Edged in Black Press produced six issues S.M.S., each with around one dozen painstakingly produced multiples by artists and writers including Joseph Kosuth, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Diane Wakoski, Ray Johnson, Bruce Nauman and Yoko Ono. In a letter to Joseph Cornell, dated June 26, 1968, Copley described S.M.S.’s mission: “As you will see it is a mixture of many things. We are not trying to push any kind of art but rather to suggest how many different ways ideas can go. So we include the old and the new in a context that is meant above all to surprise and make of the box itself a sort of adult joy.”