Alphabet pour Gratte-Ciel 1970-1985 (1991)

Alphabet pour Gratte-Ciel 1970-1985: L’alphabet latin : quelques possibles: livres inédit (suggestions pour architectes) à monter pour gratte-ciel (1991)
Henri Chopin
Slipcased, paper-covered folios. H337 x W260mm. 29 folios. Edition of 27, 20 of which were numbered and signed by the artist, this being #7. Acquired from Librarire de Livres Rares (Ozanne), 3 March 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Henri Chopin’s collection of thirteen architectural shapes, “typewriter poems” are each composed with a pair of letters from the alphabet and followed by a short ode to the two letters used in the composition.

The caption begins like an abecedary’s text: “J is for le jour (‘day’), also Kafka’s astonishing Joseph”. What’s astonishing is that le jour and Joseph have absolutely nothing in common except the letter J. It looks like Kafka’s Joseph (Josef K. from The Trial) is simply Chopin’s way of slipping in the letter K. His longtime fascination with the letters, presumably for the superb geometries of their shapes, is just as arbitrary a justification for choosing them. Perhaps arbitrariness is the point. How letters’ shapes came to be associated with certain sounds was an arbitrary process of social convention. Poor Josef K’s situation is the height of arbitrariness. Is it any less or more arbitary to build a skyscraper on paper with the “dances and harmonies” of the typewriter’s two adjacent letters J &K?

And why stop there? For the construction of the folio’s thirteen typewriter skyscrapers, the twenty-six letters of the alphabet are paired, only once in alphabetical order (Y & Z; but then alphabetical is an arbitrary order anyway) and only with one pair’s having a non-arbitrary justification (A & O; the alpha & omega placed at the end, of course).

Loosely and whimsically translated, the caption for the letters C & S reads, “the curves in the counters of the letters C & S can turn into hooks, able to weave a building, and I invite you to make a “Manhattan” from their patterns; skyscrapers need to natter”.

“the curves in the counters of the letters C & S can turn into hooks, able to weave a building, and I invite you to make a “Manhattan” from their patterns; skyscrapers need to natter”.

An artist’s book, or folio, can have an easily overlooked tactility. There’s always a reluctance to touch a print for fear of smudging it, and their loose gathering nudges the owner toward framing them. Chopin’s Alphabet pour Gratte-Ciel, however, speaks to what Anni Albers called “tactile sensibility”. In On Weaving’s chapter by that title, she includes plates of studies of typewriter weaving alongside studies made with grass, metal shavings and even corn kernels. Those high-resolution images almost leap off the pages of her book. Chopin’s blind-embossed segments within his type”woven” skyscrapers do leap off the page.

With these thirteen images and mini-odes to the pairs of letters composing them, Chopin articulates the fun to be had with the overlaps between architecture and the alphabet. In case we miss the fun, Chopin rounds off his portfolio with a “conclusion in the form of a foreword” (also a reminder of the concluding alpha & omega skyscraper”) that pokes us in the ribs.

The expression culs-de-lampe is one of the more pointed pokes. Look it up and you find that it has the typographic and architectural meanings illustrated below (visually all are inverted skyscrapers). Following his thirteen skyscrapers, Chopin is calling for millions of these supporting ornaments to the word, these perspectives parlantes.

Cul-de-lampe: A finishing ornament to fill out a page; or, the ornamental corbels forming an inverted pyramid under a turret; or a vault ornament resembling a hanging church lamp. Le Maréchal de Mac Mahon (1894), A. de Montbrillant. Dictionary of French Architecture from 11th to 16th Century (1856), Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. La Science illustrée No. 594 (15 April 1899), reproduced in Gloubik Sciences: L’histoire des sciences au travers des revues scientifiques.

The phrase perspectives parlantes (“perspectives speaking”) alludes to architecture parlante (the idea that a building somehow shows its purpose), which Chopin uses both to evoke the old idea that the shapes of letters somehow show meaning in their appearance or sound and to encourage us to see his skyscrapers as “articulate vantage points”. What they “articulate” is a complex poetic syllogism:

That without a skeleton there is no human; that without an alphabet there are no words; that just as a strawberry bears its origins on the outside; that just as a crab bears its skeleton on the outside; therefore, humanity itself, like words, has a formative inner skeleton. And so when I display these thirteen skyscrapers, I am showing the interior of the Word, I am exteriorizing an inner voice; When I set letters in motion, unlock architecture, give voice to angles and curves (geometry), and single out and replicate alphabetical characters, I am compounding flesh and word; Which is what the word wants because IT’s VERY HUMAN.

Books On Books

Curated by Robert Bolick

Books On Books Collection – Henri Chopin

Alphabet pour Gratte-Ciel 1970-1985 (1991)

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Alphabet pour Gratte-Ciel 1970-1985 (1991)

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