Phil Weidman, Slant Step Book, The Art CO, 1969, Near Fine with 3 pieces of ephemera

Weidman, Phil, Slant Step Book, Sacramento: The Art CO, 1969.

English, first edition softcover, Near Fine 8vo, 6" x 9", 36 pp.

Near Fine octavo softcover with black-and-white photograph and black title to front, blank spine, minor bruising to head, minimal shelf wear, previous owner's name written in pen on title page, tightly bound, . Black-and-white photographs and illustrations throughout. Includes interview between Frank Owen, Phil Weidman, and Bruce Nauman, The Slant Chant by William Witherup, a poem by Lawrence Dean Philips, and a letter to Weidman from Peter Saul. 

 Ephemera 1: Typed copy of essay The Slant Step Saga by The Richard T. Nelson Gallery, complied by Cynthia Charters Foley. Double-sided, stapled at top left corner, 16 pp., including bibliographical references. Describes the history of the Slant Step through 1982.

 Ephemera 2: Coffelt, Beth, The Life and Times of Slant Step. San Francisco: California Living Magazine, July 24, 1983. 

 Ephemera 3: The Slant Step Revisited, January 13 through February 13, 1983. Promotional postcard with black-and-white photograph of the original work. Very Good, foxing to front. 

The original 1969 publication about a quasi-functional object that confounded and inspired artists for 50 years. In 1965, William T. Wiley found a strange step stool with a slanted step covered in green linoleum in a secondhand store and showed it to his student at UC Davis, Bruce Nauman. Fascinated by its unusual construction, the artists bought it for 50 cents and brought it back to Nauman's studio. This mystifying object ignited a flurry of variations and exhibits among artists in the Bay Area, giving rise to the Funk Movement, further influencing artists like Robert Arneson, Ray Johnson, Stephen Kaltenbach, and Richard Serra. Scarce in the trade in such excellent condition.