Black Book, 1989 has been recognized for its influential role in Wool’s oeuvre and were prominently featured in the 2013 retrospective organized by the Guggenheim Museum, which traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago in 2014.

Black Book was published in 1989 in an edition of 350 copies, co-published by Thea Westreich (New York) and Gisela Capitain (Cologne), and printed at The Studley Press in Massachusetts. Each copy was signed and numbered by the artist. The works offered here are individual sheets from one of those original volumes, carefully preserved and presented as a complete portfolio removed from the bound book.

Silkscreen on smooth wove. 22¾ × 15⅞ in (57.8 × 40.3 cm).

The seventeen text works included in Black Book exemplify Christopher Wool’s early use of language as a visual structure — a strategy that would become central to his practice. Each page features a single, confrontational word stenciled in bold, all-capital letters:

PRANKSTER, PARANOIC, ASSASSIN, ASSISTANT, PERSUADER, EXTREMIST, AUTHORITY, CELEBRITY, HYPOCRITE, TERRORIST, COMEDIAN, CHAMELEON, ADVERSARY, INSOMNIAC, SPOKESMAN, PESSIMIST, and ACTIVIST.

These terms are deliberately ambiguous, evoking psychological, political, and cultural archetypes without offering narrative resolution. Their uniform presentation — black text on white paper, centered and unadorned — reflects Wool’s interest in typographic abstraction and the destabilizing potential of language removed from context.