Artist’s book

Books On Books Collection – Louis Lüthi

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Infant A (2012)

Infant A (2012)
Louis Lüthi
Thread-stitched signature. H225 x W160 16 pages. Edition of 1000. Acquired from Torpedo Books, 8 January 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection

Infant A is part of a collection of essays commissioned by castillo/corrales and published by Paraguay Press under the series title The Social Life of the Book. Lüthi’s contribution fits the Books On Books Collection on several scores. First is the epigram’s invocation of the alphabet, which echoes the collection’s concentration of alphabet-related artists’ books and children’s books. See Alphabets Alive! Second is the epigram’s source: Wallace Stevens, whose poetry has inspired Ximena Pérez Grobet’s Words (2016). Would that other book artists be so inspired. Third is the narrator’s fictional conversation with Ulises Carrión in a celebration of all things A-related, in particular Andy Warhol’s novel a: a novel (1968), which finds analogues in Warren Lehrer’s A Life in Books: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley (2013) and Derek Beaulieu’s a, A Novel by Andy Warhol (2017) (entry in progress). Fifth is how the dialogue reminds me of Suzanne Moore’s A Musings (2015).

A Die With Twenty-six Faces (2019)

A Die With Twenty-six Faces (2019)
Louis Lüthi
Paperback. H200 x W130 mm. 104 pages. Acquired from Amazon, 18 September 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection

Walter Benjamin’ unpacking of his library has a lot to answer for. Not only do we have Buzz Spector‘s take on it in 1995, but Jo Steffens’ Unpacking trilogy of photos of architects’, artists’ and writers’ bookshelves, Alberto Manguel’s elegiac Packing My Library (2018), and here is Louis Lüthi’s.

Publisher’s website: In A Die with Twenty-Six Faces, the author — let’s call him L. — guides the reader through his collection of alphabet books, that is, books with letters for titles. Some of these titles are well known: Andy Warhol’s “a,” Louis Zukofsky’s “A”, Georges Perec’s W. Others are obscure, perhaps even imaginary: Zach Sodenstern’s A, Arnold Skemer’s C and D. Tracing connections between these books, L. elaborates on what the critic Guy Davenport has called the “Kells effect”: “the symbolic content of illuminated lettering serving a larger purpose than its decoration of geometry, imps, and signs.”

The title stirs thoughts of Marcel Broodthaers’ oracular statement in 1974 “I see new horizons approaching me and the hope of another alphabet”. An alphabet that unrolls across the twenty-six faces of a die would certainly qualify as another alphabet. Broodthaers and the die also stir thoughts of Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira le Hasard to which Broodthaers paid repeated homage. Throwing a twenty-six-sided die would certainly no more abolish chance than would a roll of Mallarmé’s six-sided die. Lüthi’s game, however, has little to do with chance unless we count his luck in finding the works to build his library of single-letter-entitled books. Even less to do with luck if some of the library is fictitious, a likelihood that the “publisher’s” statement suggests. Lüthi’s die is loaded!

A selection of Lüthi’s “alphabet” books on display. Courtesy of the author.
Photo: Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst Bremen

On the Self-Reflexive Page II (2021)

On the Self-Reflexive Page II (2021)
Louis Lüthi
Paperback. H200 x W130 mm. 304 pages. Acquired from Idea Books, 18 September 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

This is a peculiar book in its order and nature. After two variant half-title pages, it begins with a section entitled “Black Pages”. Only on flipping through the volume can we find the remaining front matter — just after page 208. There’s another half-title and then the Table of Contents. Reproducing the marbled page from Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–1767), the book’s cover gives a clue to this peculiarity. Sure enough, Lüthi spells it out later in the section entitled “On Drawing Pages”.

So much in Tristram Shandy is presented out of order: a second dedication comes not after the first but on page 27, the preface is not at the beginning of the novel but in chapter 20 of volume three, and chapters 18 and 19 of volume nine come not after chapter 17 but are inserted after chapter 25. In a similar act of transposition, we find a marbled page in volume three, even though hand marbling is customarily used to decorate covers and endpapers. As Viktor Shklovsky observed, “It is precisely the unusual order of even common, traditional elements that is characteristic of Sterne.” (p. 240)

This one paragraph confers on Lüthi’s entire book the very self-reflexivity that it explores across a range of literature and artists’ books. Reflecting the custom to which it refers, On The Self-Reflexive Page II carries Sterne’s marbled pages on its front and back covers. In the text before his marbled leaf, Sterne refers to it as the “(motly emblem of my work!)“. Lüthi has taken that exclamation to heart (and cover) as if it were advice in creating this hybrid, motley work of his own: “part artist’s book and part essay, part literary excavation and part typographical miscellany” as he calls it in his middle-of-the-book Foreword.

Lüthi’s work is just one in the Books on Books collection of several inspired by Tristram Shandy. There is Erica Van Horn’s Born in Clonmel (2011), Simon Morris’ Do or DIY (2012), Abra Ancliffe’s The Secret Astronomy of Tristram Shandy (2015), and Shandy Hall‘s The Black Page Catalogue (2010), Emblem of My Work (2013), Paint Her To Your Own Mind (2018) and The Flourish of Liberty (2019). Outside the collection, there is Brian Dettmer’s Tristram Shandy (2004), commissioned by Shandy Hall’s Laurence Sterne Trust, and also Sean Silver’s Shandean online venture called The Motley Emblem (2022~) celebrating Sterne’s marbled leaf and the analytical chemistry of marbling. The latter may become a book, even an artist’s books to add to the tally. In The Century of Artists’ Books, Johanna Drucker draws attention to Sterne’s novel twice as an example of self-reflexivity or self-interrogation, but in 1994 and 2004, Sterne did not rise to the same level of precursor to book artists as William Blake or Stéphane Mallarmé in Drucker’s view. With these later works of book art inspired by Uncle Toby’s nephew in the bag, a dozen or so more might nudge Sterne up the scale.

In the meantime, anyone interested in artists’ books could fruitfully apply to the medium Sterne’s exhortation to his own readers:

Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read, — or by the knowledge of the great faint Paraleipomenon — I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once; for without much reading , by which your reverence knows, I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motly emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unraval the many opinions, transactions and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.

Artists’ books are to be read, handled and digested, not stored away in the archives.

Further Reading

“The First Seven Books of the Papier Biënnale Rijswijk“. 10 October 2019. Books On Books Collection.

“Maureen Richardson“. 28 September 2019. Books On Books Collection.

Silver, Sean. 2022~. The Motley Emblem. Rutgers: Rutgers University. A website that celebrates Sterne, paper marbling and much more related to them.

Books On Books Collection – Vico’s Spiral: Half Century of Artists’ Books

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Vico’s Spiral: Half Century of Artists’ Books (2024)
Robbin Ami Silberberg and Carole Naggar, editors
Paperback. H210 x W150 mm. 256 pages. Acquired from Center for the Book Arts, 7 March 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

With Vico’s Spiral, Robbin Ami Silverberg, Carole Naggar, and Kinohi Nishikawa have made a significant contribution to how we can better appreciate artists’ books. The publication accompanied the exhibition by the same name celebrating the 50th anniversary of New York’s Center of Book Arts from 26 September through 14 December 2024.

The exhibition’s curators — Silverberg and Naggar — chose their organizing metaphor well. The 16th century philosopher Giambattista Vico proposed that history did not proceed in a straight line but instead spiraled, with patterns of events recurring with near similarity in different periods and even different regions. Naggar writes, As in Vico’s Spiral, artists’ books disregard linear chronology and geographies. Based on recurrent concepts and forms, they “meet” in vastly different time-spaces.

To prove the aptness of Vico’s model of history for book art, the curators paired art works from different times and places. For example, New York-born Warren Lehrer’s French Fries (1984) is paired with Israeli-born Uriel Cidor’s Greetings from America (2018).

Lehrer’s satiric take on “what is America” aims to visualize the text of a ten-part play set in a DREAM QUEEN restaurant with its “core of regulars: four faithful customers, three employees and one mobile juke-box on wheels”. He calls it a “psycho-acoustic” translation in which “each character is typecast into a distinct color and typographic arrangement”. On the pages, “an array of images and marks accompany the text, evoking an appropriate ambiance, and further serving to chart the cacophony of shifting internal projections that make up the characters’ collective consciousness”.

If the satiric target of French Fries isn’t clear, consider the A assembled on the double-page spread by the text’s layout and the stars-bars-and-stripes.

Cidor’s abecedary is populated with words that are the artist’s answers to the question “what is America?”. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet appears on a recto page, and a word beginning with that letter is worked into an abstract image on the facing verso page. At a further level of abstraction, all the letters are formed with Cidor’s stylized Hebrew font Octavk’tav.

From right to left, the Octavk’tav version letter ayin (ע‎) is for shem’at ha’omes (שְׁעַת הַעוֹמֶס) or “rush hour”. The words’ letters sprawl in brown across an intersection gridlocked with ayins.

As Lehrer does in French Fries, Cidor uses the arbitrary abstraction of letters and page order along with not-so-arbitrary typographical layout and words in translation (for example, Resh for the Hebrew for Rocknroll and Ronald Reagan, Tsade for Extra large Cheezburger with fries and a soda) to capture his satirical target: the big Aleph (New York and America).

Above or beside each work displayed, a vertical time scale showing the exhibition’s span (1964-2024) was repeated on the walls. A red pin designated the nearby item’s year of publication, and a red thread ran from pin to pin around the room. Along with the spiral of tables displaying past exhibition catalogues, this fluctuating red line evoked Vico’s Spiral for visitors.

“Vico’s Spiral” at the Center for Book Arts, New York. Photo: Daniel Wang.

“Vico’s Spiral” at the Center for Book Arts, New York. Photo: Daniel Wang.

The exhibition’s catalogue emulates some of this design across pages 17-120, and what can be seen more clearly is how the curators daisy-chain their pairs with the headings used on the exhibition walls. Below are the two pairs that follow Lehrer, whose heading is “Challenging typography … to comment on America”, and Cid0r, whose heading is “Using American culture … to transform letterforms”. Foxcroft’s Square Route picks up the chain …

Pages 66-69. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Pages 70-73. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Kinohi Nishikawa’s essay “Strange Loops” brings a related metaphor to the party. He begins with another anniversary: the 2oth anniversary edition of Douglas R. Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid (1979/1999).

At the heart of GEB, as devoted readers call it, is an exploration of how selfhood emerges from repeating patterns of cognition that mirror repeating patterns of the natural world, only for the cognitive patterns to turn inward and mirror themselves. GEB’s thesis is derived from Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, which contends, “All consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions.” Gödel’s theorem defines the constitutive externality of any set and, in so doing, identifies the minimal gap within a system for self-awareness to emerge. Crucially, Hofstadter does not limit his account of selfhood to the operation of cognitive processes. The metaphor of strange loops suggests how patterns that fold on themselves are perceived, felt, and, indeed, experienced by an embodied being. (p. 175)

Nishikawa’s immediate task in Vico’s Spiral is to survey the CBA’s previous half century of exhibitions, and he uses the strange loops metaphor to understand the CBA through the “set” of its exhibitions. All well and good, it is a brilliantly written and insightful essay. But if only he had also been asked to apply the metaphor to the set of artists’ books in the CBA’s archive or the set selected by Silberberg and Naggar!

In The Century of Artists’ Books, Johanna Drucker highlighted the self-interrogatory nature of the artist’s book as its defining characteristic. The application of these metaphors of Vico’s Spiral and strange loops to the history of artists’ books adds a new sense to that. The self-interrogatory nature of the artist’s book is a pattern recurring similarly but differently across time and space in those works of art created by artists who play with the book whether as material object as a whole or in its parts, as vehicle, as site of performance, as a tool-made and tool-making technology, or as concept. As each of those aspects yield fresh artists’ books with differences, we have new opportunities to perceive, feel, and experience an artwork’s pursuit of its self, the artists’ pursuit of their selves and our pursuit of our selves.

Nishikawa comes tantalizingly close to applying the strange loops metaphor to the domain of artists’ books when he writes, “Book arts is about discovering the self at the edge (fold, seam, spine) of insight and creation” and, when he writes, “… the essential question of selfhood isn’t What? or Why? but How? How do these patterns work, how do I know myself better through them?”

Indeed, “how?” is the question to be brought to each artist’s book. How do I encounter this artwork? How is it manifesting its patterns? And then to bring ourselves full circle back to Vico’s Spiral, How are those patterns manifest in other works in other times and other places?

Nishikawa’s approach to the CBA’s catalogues also offers a baton that we can hope others will carry forward. The CBA’s exhibitions provided not only a way into understanding the CBA itself but one into researching the world of artists’ books. Aware of this opportunity, Silberberg concludes the volume with a listing of artists’ books exhibitions from around the world. Who will grasp this baton next in the race along Vico’s Spiral?

Further Reading

“Johanna Drucker“. 28 May 2024. Books On Books Collection.

“Warren Lehrer“. 28 May 2024. Books On Books Collection.

“J. Meejin Yoon“. 12 January 2017. Books On Books Collection.

Books On Books Collection – Sarah Matthews

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The Negro Is Still Not Free (2022)

The Negro Is Still Not Free (2022)
Elaina Brown-Spence, Meera Mittari, Erica Honson, Jingnan Cheng, Xue’er Goo, Bryn Ziegler, Grace Johnson, Amanda D’Amico, and Sarah Matthews
Double-sided single-page book in a pants fold. 152 x 152 mm. Acquired from Sarah Mathews, 6 August 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection

The Negro is Still Not Free was created by Elaina Brown-Spence, Meera Mittari, Erica Honson, Jingnan Cheng, Xue’er Goo, Bryn Ziegler, Grace Johnson, Amanda D’Amico, and Sarah Matthews at the Borowsky Center for Publication Arts at the University of Arts in Philadelphia, PA during the month of February 2022. In its color and style, it reflects the influence of Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. Its double-sided single-sheet pants-fold book structure, cleverly fuses the traditions of poster and book (or zine).

Inspired by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s celebrated “I Have A Dream” speech from August 28, 1963, the work was created to support the Youth Art & Self Empowerment Project in Philadelphia, PA. Their mission is to “provide space for incarcerated young people to express themselves creatively and to develop as leaders both within and beyond prison walls.”

SPACE: Known/Unknown (2022)

SPACE: Known / Unknown
Lauren Emeritz & Sarah Matthews
Box with pastedown title enclosing softcover book. Box: 237 x W157 x D50 mm. Book: H230 x W150 x D25 mm. 48 pages and loose 4-page colophon in envelope attached to inside back cover. Edition of 15, of which this is #5. Acquired from Sarah Mathews, 6 August 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

A collaborative project between Lauren Emeritz & Sarah Matthews, SPACE: Known/Unknown features three telling quotations:

“Open a book, open the universe”– Unknown
“We are made whole by books, as by great space and the stars” — Mary Carolyn Davies
“The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you” — Neil deGrasse Tyson

The universe of this artist’s book is that of letterpress, handcarved letters, wood and metal type, embossed printer labels, multiple inks and foil stamping, die cuts, paper engineering, and multiple binding structures. This and its crazy quilt imposition make it a lively universe to explore, and it certainly lives up to deGrasse Tyson’s quip.

Does this book subscribe to the “argument by design” made by Socrates and St. Thomas Aquinas?

A universe in which page layout turns one way and then another is under no obligation to make sense.

A Turkish fold of constellations.

The artists must have traveled back in time to include one of these embossed sticky labels.

The universe and title page can appear in multiple places — even in the middle.

A sunburst — and then star label in case we missed it?

A multi-color galaxy of ink leads to die-cut black stars (or holes?).

Not exactly a dwarf red star, but it’s the artists’ universe, they get to decide.

The colophon at the end of the universe.

For additional pop-up extravaganzas, see also David A. Carter’s Le sculture da viaggio di Munari (2019), Kevin M. Steele’s The Movable Book of Letterforms (2009) and “Movables Now and Then” in Bookmarking Book Art (31 August 2024).

Further Reading

“Tia Blassingame“. 17 August 2020. Books On Books Collection.

“Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.“. Books On Books Collection. In progress.

“Arial Robinson“. 15 May 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“Clarissa Sligh“. 2 September 2020. Books On Books Collection.

“Kara Walker“. Books On Books Collection. In progress.

“Carrie Mae Weems“. 14 February 2025. Books On Books Collection.

Books On Books Collection – Barbara Beisinghoff

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Tau blau / Dew Blue (2013)

Tau blau / Dew Blue (2013)
Barbara Beisinghoff ; Solander box in linen, handbound Vera Schollemann; Flax paper, handmade by John Gerard.
Solander box: H240 x W200 x D32 mm. Flagbook: H220 x W180 mm. Edition of 38, of which this is #22. Acquired from the artist, 30 December 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Familiarity with Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale Hørren /The Flax enhances appreciation of Barbara Beisinghoff’s Tau blau / Dew Blue. Andersen gives a voice to the plant that expresses its joy, pain, hope and observations at each stage of its blooming, being harvested, turned into linen and clothing then paper, and finally consigned to flames. The H.C. Andersen Centre offers Jean Hersholt’s translation of it here.

Only the opening paragraph of the story appears in Tau blau / Dew Blue, but Beisinghoff documents and illustrates the stages from her own cultivation of flax, observation of its growth and preparation of its processing. And with the etching, drawing, watermarking, handmade papers, linen cloth and thread, and binding structure, Beisinghoff suffuses the spirit of the tale’s metamorphosizing plant throughout the whole of Tau blau / Dew Blue.

From the blue of the plant’s blossoms to the white of its change into linen and paper to the red, burnt orange and black of its sparks and ash when it is consumed by fire in the end, all of the story’s colors are replayed across Tau blau / Dew Blue from its Solander box to its covers and spine like motives in a Baroque musical piece.

In a concerto, motives play off one another and develop. In Tau blau / Dew Blue, the motif of nature (the plant) plays off the motif of artifice and the manmade (the fairy tale, music, linen, paper, etc.). On the front cover (above), a young girl, surrounded by large damselflies, plays a fiddle or violin and seems to hover above a silver foil image of flax thread and tools for making it. In the spread above alongside the front cover, the specks rising over the staves and musical notes (a recurring motif in itself) recall the tale’s final passage in which the bundle of papers (made from linen rags) is cast into a fire:

“I’m going straight up to the sun!” said a voice in the flame. It was as if a thousand voices cried this together, as the flames burst through the chimney and out at the top. And brighter than the flames, but still invisible to mortal eyes, little tiny beings hovered, just as many as there had been blossoms on the flax long ago. They were lighter even than the flame which gave them birth, and when that flame had died away and nothing was left of the paper but black ashes, they danced over the embers again. Wherever their feet touched, their footprints, the tiny red sparks, could be seen.

Images of tools — whether for preparing flax or for making the products from it — also recur on the inside of the front and back covers and throughout the book. The human figures alongside the tools, however, appear engaged in more than manufacturing. Elsewhere in the book, they dance, they sit and meditate or write, they row on ponds beside the growing flax. The fairy tale, too, has these Romantic juxtapositions of nature, art and craft. So, again, the spirit of Andersen’s tale finds another way into Tau blau / Dew Blue.

Inside front and inside back covers.

The front cover also announces another motif in those coils of thread below the young girl’s feet. Within the coils is the image of a Fibonacci spiral, which appears on the back cover and throughout the book in different ways. It can be found drawn and printed. It can be found in watermarks in the handmade paper. It can be found in the arrangement of florets in flax. Being a composite flower, flax blossoms display the spiral based on the Fibonacci sequence 1, 2, 3, 5 … 233, and so on. These numbers are waterjet-drawn on the pure flax paper below and explained in an entry printed on the adjacent plain handmade paper folio. By appearing on the book’s front and back covers, the spiral echoes the beginning and ending cycles of birth and rebirth the flax goes through in the folktale.

The Fibonacci spiral on the front and back covers.

The sequence of Fibonacci numbers 1, 2, 3, 5 … 55, 89, 144, 233 … watermarked on handmade flax paper with a water jet.

Description of the Fibonacci spiral side by side with quotation from Thompson’s On Growth and Form (1917), drawing on Leibniz’s Rationalist philosophy.

To organize and weave her motives together, Beisinghoff uses an accordion spine to whose peaks eleven sets of folios are sewn with linen thread. Three of the eleven are 4-page folios consisting of blue handmade paper. Another three 4-page folios consist of pure flax paper (handmade by John Gerard). The remaining five gatherings have 8-page folios, each consisting of a pure flax paper folio around a blue or plain one.

Side and top views of the accordion spine.

The first pure flax folio begins the book, displaying two title pages (German and English) and two etchings on its first and last pages. In the center spread, two more etchings appear. A watermark symbolizing phyllotaxis shows through in the upper left, balanced by a watermark with a cross section of a flax stalk in the upper right of the center spread. The texture and weight of the flax paper allows the impress and shadow of the etchings to stand out on both sides against the inking and watermarks.

Inside front cover and Tau blau title page and etching.

Center spread of first flax paper folio. Note the watermarks in the upper left and right corners.

Dew Blue title page and etching, loop of flax fibers, first page of blue handmade paper folio; note its boating image repeated from the prior center spread.

Following the pure flax folio, the first all blue folio gives us that introductory excerpt from Andersen’s fairy tale. Next comes a description of flax comes from Leonhart Fuchs’ Book of Herbs (1543), then the series of planting and harvesting observations from Beisinghoff, then the refrain from Clemens Brentano’s poem “Ich darf wohl von den Sternen singen” (1835), then philosophical observations drawing on G.W. Leibniz from D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s On Growth and Form (1917), a much-quoted theorem of musical composition from Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Intervall und Zeit (1974), and finally (below) a passage of text by Gottfried Benn from the Hindemith oratorio Das Unaufhörliche / The Neverending (1936). In the valleys of the accordion spine, some of the lines from Andersen, Fuchs, Beisinghoff and Been appears handwritten in orange paint.

Translated fragment of Benn’s lyrics for Paul Hindemith’s oratorio Das Unaufhörliche / The Neverending (1936).

Even with these additional texts, Andersen’s fairy tale remains the most central text in Tau blau / Dew Blue, despite the brevity of its excerpt. Brentano’s Romantic/religious expostulations (“O Star and Bloom, Garb and Soul, Love, Hurt and Time for evermore”) sound like those of the plant in the story’s final passage. The occurrence of Fibonacci’s spiral in the plant may be a physical fact, but Beisinghoff turns it into something more mystical by placing the description of phyllotaxis next to Leibniz’ and Thompson’s transcendental view of mathematical science and natural philosophy. Likewise she links the texts from Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Gottfried Benn to the fairy tale by placing them beneath the etching that captures the flax plant’s singing and dancing into its transformation by fire.

Below is the final folio of the work. Like the first, it is made completely of flax paper, but its center spread offers a fuller image: flax blossoms and stalks float in the foreground, and in the background is a sketch of Beisinghoff’s residence where she grows her flax. Like the Fibonacci spiral on the front and back covers, the first and last flax folios round out the work. But go back and listen for the hidden sound installations accompanying Dew Blue. Noticing Beisinghoff’s abstract musical notation, indulge yourself with recordings of a Swedish folk song (“Today is supposed to be the big flax harvest” here or here) to which the notation and phrases allude, and as the flax papers turn and wave on their accordion peaks, listen carefully for their musical rustle.

The final pure flax paper folio.

Tule Bluet damselfly perched on flax leaf. Photo: John Riutta, The Well-Read Naturalist (2009). Displayed with permission.

Die wilden Schwäne (2001)

Die wilden Schwäne (2001)
Barbara Beisinghoff
Box with embossed cover holding folios wrapped in chemise. H35o x W250 mm. 18 folios. Edition of 25, of which this is #6. Acquired from the artist, 20 December 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Barbara Beisinghoff’s Die wilden Schwäne is an exemplar of collaboration and craft. In it, she even requires collaboration between Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. Andersen’s Die wilden Schwäne and the Grimms’ Die sechs Schwäne are based on the same tale of brothers turned into swans who are saved by their sister Elisa’s diligent and mute harvesting, pulping, spinning and sewing of stinging nettles into shirts that break the spell when donned. H.C. Andersen, however, is verbose and elaborate in his telling (even including vampires!), and Beisinghoff has done a bit of nipping and tucking with the more succinct Brothers Grimm to create a version more suited to the artist’s book she creates.

To match Elisa’s effort with stinging nettles, Beisinghoff enlisted the collaboration of Johannes Follmer, the owner of a paper mill. Together they obtained cultivated stinging nettles from the Institute for Applied Botany in Hamburg, cut the fibers, left them to rot, boiled them into a pulp, mixed that with water in a vat, scooped up layers in a sieve embroidered with illustrations, couched the sheets, then pressed and dried them into paper. Beisinghoff applied further drawings with a water jet, watercolor and pencil to the watermark-embossed sheets to illustrate aspects of the tale. To present the Andersen/Grimm “collage”, Beisinghoff had the type set and printed at the Gutenberg Museum. Andersen is printed in light green and Grimm in light red on seven numbered translucent sheets and interleaved with the nine folios of paper art (two more translucent sheets carry the cover page and colophon). To wrap the folios together, Beisinghoff made an embossed chemise or “feather dress” of pure nettle fiber, which could represent Andersen’s description of the brothers’ blowing off each other’s feathers every evening when the sun has set or one of the shirts that their sister makes to break their spell.

The “feather dress” of stinging nettle fiber.

“The King’s little daughter was standing in the cottage room, playing with a green leaf, for she had no other toys. She pricked a hole right through the leaf, looked up at the sun, and there it was, she saw the clear eyes of her brothers, but every time the warm rays of the sun shone on her cheeks, she thought of all their kisses.” Translation with DeepL.

“When she had fallen asleep, it seemed to her as if she were flying high through the air, and she met a fairy, beautiful and radiant, yet she looked very much like the old woman who had given her berries in the forest and told her about the swans with gold crowns on their heads.” Translation with DeepL.

“The swans swooped down to her and lowered themselves so that she could throw the shirts over them: and as she touched them, the swan skins fell off, and her brothers stood before her in the flesh, fresh and beautiful.” Translation with DeepL.

“Barbara Beisinghoff (head in the background) covers the frame with this transparent, embroidered and sewn gauze, which is used to scoop and emboss her nettle papers. This is how her large-format watermark illustrations end up on the sheets.” Translation with DeepL.
Peter Holle. 30 August 2001. Frankfurter Rundschau. Photo: Oliver Weiner.

This art by watermarking recalls that of other artists in the collection: Fred Siegenthaler and Gangolf Ulbricht, in particular. The technique of pulp painting also finds other practitioners in the collection: Pat Gentenaar-Torley, John Gerard, Helen Hiebert, Tim Mosely, Maria G. Pisano, Taller Leñateros, Claire Van Vliet and Maria Welch. Beisinghoff’s blend of embroidered watermarks, waterjet marking and pulp painting, however, creates a bas relief effect that is echoed only in the collection’s works by Mosely, Taller Leñateros and Van Vliet, albeit achieved differently. These workings of the substrate — as material, color, surface, and even narrative — with the workings of book structure is one of the more magical locations of book art. It is perfect for Beisinghoff’s metamorphical interpretation of the Andersen/Grimm fairy tale.

Further Reading

“The First Seven Books of the Rijswijk Paper Biennial“. 10 October 2019. Books On Books Collection.

“Pat Gentenaar-Torley“. 8 October 2020. Books On Books Collection.

“John Gerard“. 13 August 2020. Books On Books Collection.

“Helen Hiebert“. 18 June 2021. Books On Books Collection.

“Werner Pfeiffer and Anselm Kiefer“. 17 January 2015. Bookmarking Book Art.

“Warja Lavater“. 23 December 2022. Books On Books Collection.

“Tatyana Mavrina“. 24 February 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“Tim Mosely“. 23 August 2024. Books On Books Collection.

“Maria G. Pisano“. 15 August 2021. Books On Books Collection.

“Fred Siegenthaler“. 10 January 2021. Books On Books Collection.

“Taller Leñateros“. 19 November 2020. Books On Books Collection.

“Gangolf Ulbricht“. Books On Books Collection. In process.

Brentano, Clemens. 1970. Clemens Brentano’s Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Christian Brentano. Bern: Herbert Lang. See also “Nach großem Leid“. Wikisource.

Fehn, Ann Clark. 1977. Change and Permanence : Gottfried Benn’s Text for Paul Hindemith’s Oratorio Das Unaufhörliche. Bern ; Peter Lang.

Feneyrou, Laurent. 2009.”Survey of works by Bernd Alois Zimmermann“. ircam. Paris: Centre Pompidou.

Fuchs, Leonhart, Klaus Dobat, and Werner Dressendörfer. 2016. The New Herbal of 1543 = New KreüTerbuch. Complete coloured edition. Köln: Taschen.

Holle, Peter. 30 August 2001. “Sie schöpft aus Brennnesseln Papier und druckt daraus ein Buch”. Frankfurter Rundschau. Photo: Oliver Weiner.

Rienäcker, Gerd. 2012. “Musizieren über Traditionen. Die Soldaten von Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Einstein von Paul Dessau” in Musik und kulturelle Identität, Vol. 2, edited by Detlef Altenburg and Rainer Bayreuther. Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag.

Thompson, D’Arcy Wentworth. 1917. On Growth and Form . Cambridge: University Press.

Books On Books Collection – Fortunato Depero

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Depero Futurista: Imbullonato (the “Bolted Book”) (1927/2017)

Depero Futurista: The Bolted Book (1927/2017) and Reader’s Guide (2017)
Fortunato Depero and Designers & Books (Steve Kroeter, editor-in chief)
Bolt-bound loose folios between textured, colored card stock. H242 x W320 mm. 240 pages. Edition of 2500, of which this is #. Purchased from Designers & Books, 18 October 2016. © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Fortunato Depero’s Depero Futurista: Imbullonato (the “Bolted Book”) stands at the center of an uneasy off-rhyming of history. Where Depero and the avant-garde Futurists of the early 20th century rode the waves with Benito Mussolini and fascism, this 2016/17 facsimile edition of Depero Futurista coincided with the emergence of America’s “Tangerine Mussolini” and his MAGA movement.

In 2024, the original and facsimile editions of Depero Futurista appeared in an exhibition at the American Academy in Rome just as Trump was elected as the first Convict-in-Chief. And five days before he was sworn in, the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in London presented its copy of the original edition in an exhibition devoted to the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, leader of the Futurist movement, good friend of Depero, and peripatetic pal to Mussolini.

Depero Futurista’s peculiar off-rhymings in history prompt questions about the intersection of art and our social contract. How is it that fascism weighs on Depero’s art but has not suffocated it, even when the association peeps out as it does in Imbullonato? How is it that communism weighs on El Lissitzky’s About Two Squares (1922) but has not buried it?

Günter Berghaus’ Futurism and Politics provides a nuanced view of Futurism, Marinetti, Depero and their links with fascism. Fabio Belloni traces the rise, fall and rise of Depero in his essay “The Critical Fortune and Artistic Recognition of the Work of Depero“, which appeared in the journal of the now defunct Center for Italian Modern Art. Gianluca Camillini’s 2020 doctoral thesis traces the disconnects and remaining connections with fascism in Depero Futurista after the 1924 break between Futurism and Mussolini.

Perhaps Depero’s case contrasts helpfully with that of Ezra Pound. Like Depero, Pound was an enthusiastic supporter of Mussolini. Pound coopted Marinetti’s and Depero’s Futurism into his and Wyndham Lewis’ Vorticism. Unlike Depero Futurista, however, Pound’s poetry — especially the Cantos –foregrounds that enthusiasm. The frequency of its appearance in Pound’s poetry and its ugliness weigh more heavily than the few mentions of Mussolini in Depero Futurista. Depero’s and Marinetti’s hero-worship appears mostly in their poetry and prose but without Pound’s anti-semitism. The connection with fascism that remains in Depero Futurista, however, appears in the bellicosity and glorification of war by this “book machine”.

In the American Academy’s exhibition, Depero Futurista sits alongside the anti-racism of William Kentridge’s Portage (2000) and Kara Walker’s Five Poems Rainmaker (2002). How does (can?) art deliberately associated with fascist, statist or authoritarian movements rise above them to be celebrated and fruitfully juxtaposed with the works of today’s artists more associated with progressive causes?

For the Books On Books Collection, Depero is also an important figure in the overlap of typography and the alphabet with architecture and the artist’s book. Depero defined typographic architecture as

that special architectural form suggested by typographie types which has been used with great efficacy in advertising artistic constructions, in pavilions, kiosks and advertising plastics of national and international exhibitions of decorative art and in industrial and commercial exhibitions. The painter Depero created, in 1927, the book pavilion of the Bestetti- Tumminelli and Treves publishing house at the international exhibition of decorative art at Monza, inspiring his work to this conception of typographie architecture.(p. 18)

And he reproduced an image of it in Depero Futurista.

From Depero Futurista: “Padiglione del Libro” (1927).

The book pavilion is not bellicose. It is bombastic as is much of what is in Imbullonato. The blast of its typography has much in common with that in Kurt Schwitters’ Die Scheuche Märchen (1925) and other artists’ works not associated with fascism, authoritarianism or statism. To focus on Imbullonato‘s innovation, technique, typography or cross-fertilization with architecture and compare and contrast them with that of other artists is not to forget its entanglements. In fact, the difficulty in focusing is a reminder of how art, too, can be bolted to the shameful.

Further Reading

“American Academy in Rome: Artists Making Books“. 11 December 2024. Bookmarking Book Art.

“Celebrating the 250th Anniversary of Steingruber’s “Architectural Alphabet”. 1 January 2023. Bookmarking Book Art.

“Kurt Schwitters“. 23 June 2024. Books On Books Collection.

Belloni, Fabio. January 2019. “The Critical Fortune and Artistic Recognition of the Work of Depero“. Italian Modern Art: Fortunato Depero. No. 1. New York: Center for Italian Modern Art.

Berghaus, Günter. 1996. Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909–1944. Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Camillini, Gianluca. 2020. “Fortunato Depero and Depero futurista 1913–1927“. Dissertation thesis. Reading: University of Reading. “In the two reprints of Depero futurista 1913–1927 (1978 and 1987 by SPES Firenze), Luciano
Caruso also repeatedly writes ‘libromacchina imbullonato’ (bolted machine-book, Caruso, 1987, 36).” (p. 14).

Caruso, Luciano (ed.) and Fortunato Depero. 1987. Depero Futurista. Firenze: Studio per Edizioni Scelte Salembeni.

Caruso, Luciano (ed.) and Fortunato Depero. 1978. Fortunato Depero Futurista. Firenze: Studio per Edizioni Scelte Salembeni.

Depero, Fortunato, and Raffaella Lotteri. 1947. So I Think, so I Paint : Ideologies of an Italian Self-Made Painter. Trento [Italy]: Mutilati e Invalidi.

Lissitzky, El, and Patricia Railing. 1922. About 2 [Squares]. 1st MIT Press ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Tsimourdagkas, Chrysostomos. 2014. Typotecture: Histories, Theories and Digital Futures of Typographic Elements in Architectural Design. Doctoral dissertation, Royal College of Art, London.

Books On Books Collection – Avant Kinema

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Every Thought Generates a Throw of the Dice (2021)

Every Thought Generates a Throw of the Dice: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Translating Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés (2021)
Avant Kinema (Sarahjane Swan & Roger Simian)
Booklet self-covered, full-color glossy stock, saddlestitched with staples. H210 x W148 mm. 58 pages, including inside front and back covers. Acquired from Avant Kinema, 17 February 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Sarahjane Swan & Roger Simian (the strangely named duo behind Avant Kinema) were responding to an invitation from the AHRC-funded project Imprints of the New Modernist Editing in 2019, which would have resulted in an exhibition at Shandy Hall, home of the Laurence Sterne Trust, but the Covid-19 pandemic intervened. Their response consisted of “visual artworks, photography, poetry, fiction and Tarot style card designs featuring ‘twelve virgin symbols extracted from Un coup de dés‘” (Swan & Simian, “Introduction”). This booklet captures those works and concludes with a new translation of the poem.

The subtitle characterizes the works as an interdisciplinary approach to translating the poem, but Dick Higgins’ term “intermedial” might be a more apt description.

Swan’s substitution of feathers and shells for Mallarmé’s words, Broodthaers’ redactions and Pichler’s excisions brings a new form of materiality to Un Coup de Dés. It recalls the similar playfulness of other artists such as Clotilde Olyff with the alphabet.

From an image sequence by Swan, the artists pull together a set of Tarot-like cards to introduce a new angle on the poem’s invocation of chance.

Avant Kinema’s homage is a collage or assemblage of different media distilled in this booklet. The preempted installation might have echoed that of Marine Hugonnier’s The Bedside Book Project (2006-07).

Further Reading

“Alphabets Alive! – Alphabets All Around“. 19 July 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“‘Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira l’Appropriation’ — An Online Exhibition“. 1 May 2022. Bookmarking Book Art.

“David Dernie and Olivia Laing“. Books On Books Collection. Bodleian Libraries.

“Jean Lecoultre“. 28 March 2022. Books On Books Collection. Bodleian Libraries.

“Bernadette O’Toole“. 1 May 2022. Books On Books Collection. Bodleian Libraries.

Books On Books Collection – J. J. Abrams & Doug Dorst

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S: Ship of Theseus (2013)

S: Ship of Theseus by V.M. Straka (2013)
J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst
Printed card slipcase. Casebound stamped and printed cloth over boards, gray doublures, yellow head- and endbands. H242 x W162 mm. 472 pages. 22 inserts (postcards, photocopies, photo, prayer card, circular cipher device, campus café napkin, etc.). Acquired from AbeBooks, 5 March 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown. The book: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V.M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey. The writer: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world’s greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him. The readers: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they’re willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.— Publisher’s description on the slipcase.

Most of the reviewers’ and libraries’ summaries of Ship of Theseus describe it as a traditional narrative with a second story in the form of marginal notes, letters and objects left by two readers of the main narrative, but I count five, possibly six, narrative lines or plots in this strange book. First is the story of the main character “S”, the shanghaied man with no past. Second is the story of the author V.M. Straka and his mysterious identity told by the fictitious translator F. X. Caldeira in his “Translator’s Note and Foreword” and footnotes. Third is the story of the two readers, Jennifer Heyward and Eric Husch, and their pursuit of Straka’s identity and his novel’s “meaning”. Fourth is Jennifer’s and Eric’s personal narratives of their academic lives to be found in their notes and left objects. Fifth is their love story that unfolds in the margins and objects as they discover each other’s identity and share their stories.

As for the sixth, in his Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (1986), the scholar D.F. McKenzie writes: “every book tells a story quite apart from that recounted by its text”. Of course, McKenzie means the historical and social story told by the font, typesetting, binding, paper and so on. So the story of the production of Ship of Theseus would be its sixth narrative to be deduced from the book as object. Fortunately, Abrams and Dorst were interviewed in 2013 by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker and told him a large part of that story. Sociologists of the book will revel in Abrams’ comparison of the book’s creation with that of a screenplay and movie, and they will marvel that, with all of its of seemingly one-off insertions and its realistic appearance as a used library book, it was produced as a trade book. A decade later, there are still copies available for purchase online. Speaking of online, S: Ship of Theseus has its own Wikipedia page and countless fan sites (academic and non-academic).

Like many artist’s books, S; Ship of Theseus has layers of self-referentiality “interrogating” the nature of the Book. Like many artist’s books, it challenges the act of reading — in this case with narrative frames, parallel color-coded narratives and objects of evidence each related to different narratives. The verisimilitude of its inserts and used-book appearance speaks to levels of craft and craftiness offered by many limited-edition works of book art. Like many artist’s books, it is the result of an intricate collaboration. But somehow it bulges the genre of the artist’s book.

After acquiring it, I came across Brian Davis’ two essays for the College Book Arts Association, which comment on S: Ship of Theseus. He must have felt the same “bulge” and found a sufficient number of similar works to coin a name for them: “Multimodal Book-Archives”. Yes, more academic jargon, but with a genre of art that has had its troubles with apostrophes and coinages such as “bookwork”, can we complain? Probably not, but we can cavil.

“Archives”can be temporally and spatially open ended without even hinting at boundedness. Works like S: Ship of Theseus and Warren Lehrer’s A Life in Books (2013), among others, do seem to “exploit the material and expressive possibilities of the book” through documentation, curation or compilation and preservation of artifacts. These two works, however, have not only a trade book boundedness, even allowing for loose inserts, but also a sense of narrative closure that makes “archives” not quite on the money. Faced with an artist’s book relying on narrative framing, documentation, and loose artifacts, we usually fall back on the terms of collage and assemblage to describe them, but then neither of the two examples has the pasted-down single view of collage or the sometimes disjointedness of assemblage.

Narrative closure: “END” and “Hey, put the book down. Come in here & stay.”

“Archives” may not hit the mark, but Davis is right that these two works are multimodal. And/or, maybe they are instances of Dick Higgins’ “intermedia”, in which case I am reminded of his closing caveat:

And with this I would leave the matter of intermedia. It is today, as it was in 1965, a useful way to approach some new work; one asks oneself, “what that I know does this new work lie between?” But it is more useful at the outset of a critical process than at the later stages of it. Perhaps I did not see that at the time, but it is clear to me now. Perhaps, in all the excitement of what was, for me, a discovery, I overvalued it. I do not wish to compensate with a second error of judgment and to undervalue it now. But it would seem that to proceed further in the understanding of any given work, one must look elsewhere—to all the aspects of a work and not just to its formal origins, and at the horizons which the work implies, to find an appropriate hermeneutic process for seeing the whole of the work in my own relation to it.

Below are a few images of S: Ship of Theseus and its types of media. Below that is the product of “a poor devil of a Sub-Sub” librarian at the Fleet Library of the Rhode Island School of Design, who took the trouble to list all of the inserts and describe them as well as the features of the slipcase, spine, title page, etc., that contribute to its success.

Konfidentiell letter (2 leaves) [insert between pages viii-ix] + Pollard State University : VMS accused of … (1 leaf) [insert between pages 10-11] + Xerox copy of journal article (1 leaf) [insert between pages 20-21] + Newspaper clipping (2 pages) [insert between pages 32 -33] + Telegram (2 leaves) [insert between pages 54-55] + 1 newspaper clipping/memo (1 leaf) [insert between pages 68-69] + Letter from Desjardins (1 leaf) [insert between pages 86-87] + Letter from Jen (4 pages) [insert between pages 100-101] + 1 Brazil postcard [insert between pages 112-113] + 1 photograph of stone wall [insert between pages 130-131] + 1 Birds of Brazil postcard [insert between pages 178-179] + 1 postcard of palms [insert between pages 190-191] + 1 postcard of a beach [insert between pages 192-193] + 1 Pictorial Brazil postcard (20 April near Marau) [insert between pages 200-201] + So … My Uncle Zeke (5 pages) [insert between pages 202-203] + 1 photograph of woman [insert between pages 242-243] + 1 newspaper clipping within 1 greeting card [insert between pages 256-257] + 1 map on napkin [insert between pages 306-307] + 1 in memoriam card [insert between pages 360-361] + Letter from J (4 pages) [insert between pages 376-377] + Letter from Esmerlinda Pega (1 leaf) [insert between pages 416-417] + 1 decoder wheel [insert between end leaf and pages 3 of cover]. Altered book. Issued in slipcase. Title and statement of responsibility from slipcase.”Bad Robot, Melcher Media.”–Spine of slipcase. Title page and cover title of volume inside slipcase: Ship of Theseus / V.M. Straka. Imprint on title page: Winged Shoes Press, New York, 1949. Title page and page [3] of cover printed with “stamps” of Laguna Verde High School Library; spine includes a Dewey call number label. Includes 23 items purporting to be documents concerning the “author,” V.M. Straka, and his “translator,” F.X. Caldeira from the Straka Arkiv; decoding wheel, letters, postcards and notes by the “readers,” Jennifer and Eric; and other related materials.Marginalia printed in various colors. Description from Fleet Library Special Collections, Rhode Island School of Design.

Further Reading

“Warren Lehrer“. 28 May 2024. Books On Books Collection.

Davis, Brian. 1 May 2024. “Part One: The Rise of Multimodal Book-Archives“. Book Art Theory. Starkville, MS: College Book Arts Association.

Davis, Brian. 15 May 2024. “Part Two: Warren Lehrer’s Life in Books“. Book Art Theory. Starkville, MS: College Book Arts Association.

Higgins, Dick and Hannah Higgins. 2001. “Intermedia“. Leonardo 2001; 34 (1): 49–54. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

McKenzie, D. F. 1986. Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. London: British Library.

Rothman, Joshua. 23 November 2013. “The Story of ‘S’: Talking With J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst“. The New Yorker.

Books On Books Collection – Michael J. Winkler

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word art/art words (1985)

Word Art/Art Words (1985)
Michael Winkler
Booklet of 29 folios, including front and back covers, held in a white plastic clip. H73 x W288 mm. 27 folios, printed on recto only. Edition of 500. Acquired from Printed Matter, Inc., 23 September 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.

Among all the works of book art related to the notion of alphabets and signs in the Books On Books Collection, Michael Winkler’s word art/art words is one of the more unusual. Winkler’s view of the alphabet varies from traditional linguistic and semiotic theories that families of language arose from ur-languages and that letters evolved from pictographs into increasingly abstract abstractions arbitrarily associated with sounds by social convention. Winkler celebrates a different mystery.

Each of twelve folios has a phrase taken out of context from an art review or essay about art and printed on one side. Above each word, Winkler presents the word’s transformation into an image by drawing lines from letterpoint to letterpoint in a circularly displayed alphabet. Here is the first folio that performs that transformation:

After each of these word-image folios, Winkler adds another folio with various images “based on the visual aspects of, or the implications of the meanings inherent in,” the preceding folio’s sequence of word/images. Below is the folio that follows the word/images above:

Notice that, just under the label “gray area”, the word/image for “content” is reproduced from the preceding folio but with the dictionary-definition of “content” (as meaning “satisfied”) collaged into the triangular space of the image. Text generates image, image captures text. To the left of the gray block, the lower arc of the image for “meaning” appears within the rectangular window of the doorframe. If we miss the point that geometric representation of text and meaning is linked to geometric definition and measurement of shape, there is the traditional image of circle, circumference, diameter, radius, segment and chord displayed just above the doorframe to remind us. If we miss the point that the “content” referenced by a circle can be empty or full of meaning, there are the closed and open portals as well as a cross section of rooms labeled “empty” and “full” to remind us. The ambiguity of the word “content” shows up in the section of a Table of Contents, whose reference to the paired opposites of expansion and contraction is reinforced by the metaphorical equation set up by ibid. (the “same source”) between the twice-repeated Contents section on the one hand and the open and closed portals on the other. The manifoldness of “meaning” as well is represented by the semantic diagram on the right.

And so it goes, folio after folio, which are otherwise loose but bound only by virtue of the plastic clip and meaningfulness of sequence. The plastic clip, the loose folios and the oblong shape contrary to expectations for a codex — they obliquely reprise Winkler’s suggestion of what meaning/making (or making meaning) is about. Circularly represented, the loose letters of the alphabet nevertheless combine in words and linear images in which meaning inheres.

But isn’t meaning associated with words arbitrary (as hinted at by the allusion to the mysterious Wellesian “Rosebud” from Citizen Kane)? Winkler’s circular word-decoder (or rather image-encoder) implies that it only seems so. The mystery doesn’t lie in arbitrariness, rather it lies in Nature. In Winkler’s view, language is a product of a Nature that is meaningfully patterned. If consciousness and language are products of Nature, the associations that he finds between the abstract linear images and external figurative images argue for an inherent meaningfulness perhaps resident in some “ancient forgotten alphabet”.

Although the preface to word art/art words signals the clinching argument that Winkler presents, it has to be experienced from front to back and back to front to appreciate it. The final page compiles all of the previous twelve phrases into a single paragraph of four sentences: a sort of textual collage that presents a syntactically and semantically coherent manifesto.

The seamlessness of the collaged paragraph implies a vision just waiting for discovery through application of the artist’s word/image technique. Albeit out of context and somewhat disparately sourced, though, the phrases were selected and combined to produce that articulate statement of artistic vision. The artistry in doing so is what celebrates the mystery of language and representation that Winkler finds in Nature.

Further Reading

“Alphabets Alive!“. 19 July 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“Alberto Blanco“. Books On Books Collection. In process.

“Karen Shaw“. Books On Books Collection. In process.

Winkler, Michael Joseph. 2021. The Image of Language : An Artist’s Memoir. [North East, NY]: Artists Books Edition.Download the chapter “A Major Challenge“.

Winkler, Michael Joseph. 2018. Matters of Context. [Millerton, New York]: SignalGlyph Media.

Winkler, Michael Joseph. 1989. Extreme Measures. New York: [Michael Winkler].

Winkler, Michael Joseph. 1987. Equivalents. New York: M. Winkler.

Four of Winkler’s works can be found at Printed Matter, Inc.

Books On Books Collection – Alberto Blanco

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In this ode to the letter X, Mexico and language itself, Alberto Blanco and Nacho Gallardo Larrea brilliantly show how the artist’s book can translate word and image from one to the other and back and, at the same time, soar over the challenge of translating poetry.

Book of X (2012)

Book of Equis (2012)
© Alberto Blanco and Nacho Gallardo Larrea (“El Nacho”).
Slipcase paper-covered spine and edges, and leather Intagrafía insignia on cover panel; enclosing a casebound hardback, monotype over boards, and black doublures. H15 x W7.5 in. [18] pages. Letterpress printed with Bembo Roman and Bembo Roman Italic types. Printed on Rives BFK paper. Bilingual text of Spanish and English. Edition of 50 plus 15 artists’ proofs (P.A. 1-15), of which this is #11; 5 binding workshop copies (P.T. 1-5); and 3 print proofs (P.I. 1-3).
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of Alberto Blanco.

The Spanish and English versions of Blanco’s text shape, and are shaped by, the bilateral symmetry of the letter X and the codex form of the book. Spanish on the left, English on the right: the imposition of type and the ghostly images of the X play with one another. The two texts delight in the crossover between similarity and difference, knowingly in the white space at the exact center of the X in the double-page spread below. How better to use the notion that, for all letterforms, space counts as much as line?

Sometimes the language on one side completes a thought or expression before the language on the other side can do so, a natural phenomenon in translation in which one language needs fewer or more words than the other. See above, for example, the passages beginning “La equis del volcán” and “X of the volcano” that do not quite align in the legs of the X. The Spanish sentence trails off in a fragment to be completed on the following verso page, but the English sentence is already half way there on the recto page above.

As the shaped poem continues in the pages below, and the number of words in one language exceeds those on the other creating lines asymmetrical to one another, the poet and artist use the X shape in whole and parts and the diametrical placement of text in the last double-page spread to reflect the crossing dance of similarity and difference, asymmetry and symmetry, that they find in X across languages, generations and country.

Interpersed between the pages of text, the late El Nacho’s monotypes make color, shape and space play with one another to mirror — not merely illustrate — the thrust of the language. If ever there were a collaborative work that distinguishes the artist’s book from a livre d’artiste, this is it. Alberto Blanco has also created solo artist’s books, which enjoyed an exhibition at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, La Jolla, California, February 19-March 26, 2011. Stylistically they are distinct from The Book of Equis, which underscores its collaborative originality.

Colophon: “The Book of Equis was designed and printed in Intagrafía, located in San Jose del Cabo under the direction of Peter Rutledge Koch, with monotypes created by El Nacho. Printed under the supervision of Lenin Andujo Fajardo by Ivonne Rivas.”

ABC (2008)

ABC (2008)
©Alberto Blanco and Patricia Revah
Softcover, saddle stitched H230 x W170 mm. 32 pages. Acquired from The Book Depository, 11 July 2021.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of Alberto Blanco.

Rhyming poetry often raises the already high bar to translation. The literal English translations that follow Alberto Blanco’s charming abab Spanish poems do not attempt to substitute suitable rhymes. The textile art in this abecedary, however, wraps a comforting quilt around the challenge of translating poetry in a way that appeals to children.

The Blank Page (2020)

The Blank Page (2020)
©Alberto Blanco and Rob Moss Wilson
Jacketed, casebound, illustrated paper over boards. H224 x W252 mm. 32 pages. Acquired from The Monster Bookshop, 1 July 2021 1 Jul 2021.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of Alberto Blanco.

Who would think it possible to introduce children to the ideas of Stéphane Mallarmé? Alberto Blanco for one, albeit without mentioning the French poet.

Further Reading

“Abecedaries I (in progress)“. Books On Books Collection.

“Alphabets Alive!” 19 July 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“‘Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira l’Appropriation’— An Online Exhibition“. 1 May 2022. Books On Books Collection.

Blanco, Alberto. 2011. Visual Poetry/Poesía Visual. La Jolla, Calif.: The Athenaeum Music & Arts Library.

Blanco, Alberto. 1995. Dawn of the Senses : Selected Poems of Alberto Blanco. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

Blanco, Alberto. 2007. A Cage of Transparent Words : A Selection of Poems = Una Jaula de Palabras Transparentes. First edition. Fayetteville, N.Y.: Bitter Oleander Press.

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Books On Books – Thomas A. Clark and Diane Howse

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A Slow Air (2016)

A Slow Air (2016)
Thomas A. Clark and Diane Howse
Perfect bound softcover. H200 x W150 mm. 64 pages. Edition of 750. Acquired at the Small Publishers Book Fair, London, in 2018.
Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.

If you live where red kites thrive, you will see them most often singly, in pairs or threes. If you are lucky, you may see as many as eight or ten at a time. Near Harewood House in West Yorkshire where red kites were reintroduced in 1999, there are hundreds. In 2016, photographer/artist Diane Howse (Countess of Harewood) and poet/artist Thomas A. Clark collaborated on an exhibition at Harewood House: the grove of delight.  Using objects, words and images, the exhibition turned the house’s Terrace Gallery into a symbolic grove; also displayed was a series of 15 photographs by Howse of red kites over Harewood. For the exhibition and under the direction of Peter Foolen, the diligent Dutch publisher of herman de vries, Peter Liversidge and others, A Slow Air (the book) was produced and published by Harewood House. Foolen and the artists have assembled and manipulated the photos in a sequence of color and image that exerts a forward movement like a film or narrative. Like a real sighting of these birds circling and banking as if to a slow musical air, the book mesmerizes.

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