“Until now, every magazine was a bunch of pages stapled together. It arrived in your mailbox folded, mutilated spindled — usually with more ads than editorial. Last year, a group of us enjoying the sun, skiing and unique cultural climate of Aspen Colorado, asked ourselves, ‘Why?’
Why, for example, couldn’t a magazine come in a box? Why shouldn’t an article exploring jazz be accompanied by an LP record illustrating in sound our words in print? Why couldn’t each article be a separate booklet, in the shape, color and paper most appropriate to the subject?
We kept asking why for months. Aspen magazine is the answer.” - August 1966 advertisement for Aspen
I'm not sure how I have never come to know of Aspen before. But I'm glad I have now. It was only around for a few years, but the contributors numbered such luminaries as Andy Warhol, John Cale, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, William Burroughs, Marcel Duchamp, Philip Glass, J.G. Ballard, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Hans Richter, John Lennon, Merce Cunningham and Willem De Kooning.
Obviously, picking up a copy is terribly expensive, but this website provides scans of all of them in entirety. So wonderful, as is the magazine that I learnt about it from, Dossier.
