Books On Books Collection – Honorine Tepfer

2022/04/072022/07/20Books On BooksLeave a comment

UN COUP DE DÉS JAMAIS N’ABOLIRA LE HASARD: POÈME (1989)

UN COUP DE DÉS JAMAIS N’ABOLIRA LE HASARD: POÈME (1989)
Stéphane Mallarmé (text); Honorine Tepfer (art & design)
Accordion fold with embossed paper cover. Cover – H325 x W255 mm; Book – H320 x W250 mm, 34 pages. Edition of 48, of which this is #5. Acquired from Studio Montespecchio, 2 February 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.

Before his sudden death in 1898, Stéphane Mallarmé was planning a deluxe edition of Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira le Hasard with Ambroise Vollard, an entrepreneur and publisher. A single-volume version of the poem did not appear until 1914. Issued under the direction of Mallarmé’s son-in-law Dr. Edmond Bonniot through the Nouvelle Revue de France (NRF), it omitted intended prints by Odilon Redon, used the typeface Elzevir rather than the Didot that Mallarmé preferred, and did not precisely follow his layout. We know all this because of correspondence between the poet, Redon and Vollard and because the Sorbonne’s Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet and Harvard’s Houghton Library hold proofs of the deluxe edition with Mallarmé’s handwritten corrections and instructions.

Mallarmé’s placement of words and lines was intentional and precise. Even before the planning for the deluxe edition, he wrote of what could be achieved with type size and layout:

Pourquoi — un jet de grandeur, de pensée ou d’émoi, considérable, phrase poursuivie, en gros caractère, une ligne par page à emplacement gradué, ne maintiendrait-il le lecteur en haleine, la durée du livre, avec appel à sa puissance d’enthousiasme: autour, menus, des groupes, secondairement d’après leur importance, explicatifs ou dérivés — un semis de fioritures. [Oeuvres Complètes, 2 227]

“Why — couldn’t a considerable burst of greatness of thought or emotion, carried in a sentence in large typeface, gradually placed with one line per page, hold the reader’s bated breath throughout the entire book by appealing to his or her power of enthusiasm: around this [burst], smaller groups of secondary importance, explicating or deriving from the primary phrase — a scattering of flourishes.” [Arnar, 234]

The NRF edition 1914 edition makes quite a few sad missteps as Robert Cohn pointed out in 1967. Tepfer’s inspiration to restore the intended layout follows in the footsteps of Mitsou Ronat & Tibor Papp (1980) and Neil Crawford (1985). She visited the Doucet library to examine the proofs and layout. Following the layout was not difficult, but with the scarcity of Didot, Tepfer needed to select another typeface. She chose Baskerville. Given that Firmin Didot was inspired by John Baskerville’s experimentation with thick and thin strokes, the choice adds historical interest, although Bodoni might have been nearer the mark. Below are Tepfer’s double-page spreads across which Mallarmé’s burst of thought appears one line per page among the “scattering of flourishes”.

The book’s central double-page spread, beginning with COMME SI / “AS IF”) in the upper left and ending with COMME SI / “AS IF” in the lower right, mimics the throw and fall of the dice and provides another example of the semantic and typographic play that Mallarmé describes above.

Like the artists before her — Redon (1897), André Masson (1961), Mario Diacono (1968), Marcel Broodthaers (1969), Jean Lecoultre (1975), Ian Wallace (1979) and Ian Tyson (1985) — Tepfer had to solve the puzzle of relating image to text. This is the difficult path of inverse ekphrasis: what and how the visual, tactile and conceptual works of art that come after Mallarmé’s text can be. We are more used to ekphrasis where the object, painting or sculpture comes before the text — like Achilles’ shield before Homer’s description, or the Grecian urn before Keats’ ode, or Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus before Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts. Homer, Keats and Auden vie with the art of the crafted object to put that object (and more) in front of us with words. With the inverse, the crafted objects vie without the words to put Mallarmé’s poem (and more — and sometimes less!) in front of us. Tepfer’s solution?

A simple line runs across the debossed front and back covers. As Tepfer wrote in June 1990 about her journey into Un Coup de Dés: La ligne d’horizon était un sujet de ma hantise / “The horizon line was my obsession”. As the folded paper cover opens, a single geometric, abstract image appears — debossed and embossed on blank paper. Except for a single round dot, everything is linear. Two separate lines angle across the space. One cuts through the debossed horizon line that lies beneath a series of closely spaced horizontal lines — suggesting clouds? The other, longer one cuts at a different angle, creating a foreground from two sets of parallel lines that have slipped or shifted like tectonic plates. Could the round dot be the single-dot side of a die rolling down a slanted deck or broken mast? Could the longer slanted line be a broken mast? Could the shifted parallel lines be a broken handrail?

Rather than trying to track back to verbal images in the poem, though, perhaps we should recognize Tepfer’s prefatory image as a kind of substitute for Mallarmé’s preface in 1897 — the one he preferred we not read. He wanted us to look. To see les blancs. To hold thought and emotion like our breath across the space of the book. With her simple rectangle of blank paper, with the absence of ink, with the geometric solidity of the horizontal and slanting lines, and with the velvet softness of the velin d’Arches across her version’s accordion folds, Tepfer encourages us to look, see, hold meaning in abeyance and sense it.

Books On Books Collection – Estelle J.

2022/03/312022/07/28Books On BooksLeave a comment

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ: Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (ND)

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ: Un coup de dés n’abolira le hasard (ND)
Estelle J.
Self-covering accordion format with three tipped-in pages. H245 x 185 mm closed, 2100 mm open. Twenty-four panels and flap-insert for closing. Edition of 6 variations, of which this #6. Acquired from Studio Montespecchio, 22 February 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Little information has emerged about this artist or her work that arrived in a shipment from a dealer based in Italy. He seemed to recall that she was young and at a table of her own at an exhibition in … was it Barcelona or Madrid? There is only the artist’s signature at the end of the work and an indication that it is the sixth of six copies. The dealer remembers that each of the six varied due to their handmade nature.

With its three tipped-in pages inside a double-sided accordion structure, with their mix of laser-cut and printed text, with the bright collage of abstract and figurative images (screen printed?), the work speaks for itself. But where in the collection does this work belong? First and foremost, it belongs among the many works of homage to Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira le Hasard such as those by Christopher Brennan or Benjamin Lord.

The cover gives the poem’s title in French, but the abridged text is in English, some of it laser-cut and some printed, all on tipped-in pages. The unhappy translation comes from the Oxford University Press’ World Classics. The cuts place it among the “works of homage by redaction”, for example, those by Jérémie Bennequin or Michel Lorand. As the burnt edges suggest, it comes chronologically after the adoption of laser cutting in artists’ books, which has growing representation in the collection, for example, in works by Jaz Graf or Islam Aly. In its combination of letter and geometric shapes, the work falls between Scott McCarney and Aaron Cohick.

A collage of abstract and figurative images, letters and numbers rolls across both sides of the accordion, structurally recollecting the works of Helen Douglas or Sibyl Rubottom and Jim Machacek.

The paper is a heavy card, susceptible to fine cuts and sturdy enough to hold them.Colors of black, yellow, orange, silver and red cover the inner side, while those on the outer side adhere to an orange-gold-yellow palette. Its bright colors place it among the bursts of color from Shirley Sharoff and Andrew Morrison.

Perhaps the mystery artist will stumble across this entry, have a view on where it belongs and share some of its background, technique, process and materials — and what the other five versions look like.

Books On Books Collection – Sibyl Rubottom & Jim Machacek

2022/03/312025/11/10Books On BooksLeave a comment

Spice Market: An Alphabetical Melange of Spices (2004)

Spice Market: An Alphabetical Melange of Spices (2004)
Sibyl Rubottom & Jim Machacek
Accordion fold book in drawstring bag with tag. 4.5 x 5″, 24 panels. Edition of 40, of which this is #34. panels. Acquired from Vamp & Tramp, 15 August 2021.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

The number of abecedaries from Sibyl Rubottom and Jim Machacek abounds. It is hard to choose among them. For this collection, Spice Market just nudges ahead of The Cosmic Sidereal Galactic Abecedarium of the Universe (& Other Tangential Star Ephemera)(2001), The Alphabet of Time (2002), O is for Opera (2006) and The ABC of Yiddish (2007).

The BFK tan pages, some of which had 14 runs through the press, were hand tinted with color and infused with curry, cinnamon, and paprika. Its fonts include Bernhard Modern & Tango and Albertus.

The double-sided accordion incorporates flaps that allude to gathering and selling.

The technique of collage and the variation of the botanical images are perfect for the theme of melange.

Likewise, the colors shifting across the panels.

The effect of the tinting is just as striking — perhaps more so — on the reverse panels.

Below, as displayed in the Bodleian exhibition “Sensational Books”, June-November 2022.

Books On Books Collection – Robert Filliou

2022/03/292023/04/14Books On BooksLeave a comment

Eins. Un. One. (1984)

Eins. Un. One. (1984)
Robert Filliou
Wooden die. 3 x 3 x 3 cm. Edition of 150 dice with handwritten signatures, signed ”r.f.’’. Edition by Armin Hundertmark. Acquired from Galerie van Gelder, 22 February 2022. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

This work first appeared in 1984 and has been displayed in several 21st-century exhibitions, including Robert Filliou’s first solo exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds in 2013. The constellation of 16,000 multicolored dice, each with all six sides bearing a single dot, delivers one of the more humorous works of homage to Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira le Hasard. With the guarantee of a single dot, it might be thought that chance has been abolished, whichever and however many dice are rolled. The multiple sizes and colors of the dice and the varied constellations into which they might fall per installation suggest otherwise.

Just a thought.

As Mallarmé’s last line — Toute Pensé émet un Coup de Dés — implies, even this thought emits a throw of the dice.

© Estate Robert Filliou. Photos: Ilmari Kalkkinen for Mamco, Genève; Matthew Noah Smith for University of Leeds; Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of Estate Robert Filliou & Peter Freeman, Inc., New York / Paris.

Books On Books Collection – Jean Lecoultre

2022/03/282022/07/28Books On Books3 Comments

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ, UN COUP DE DÉS JAMAIS N’ABOLIRA LE HASARD: POÈME (1975)

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ, UN COUP DE DÉS JAMAIS N’ABOLIRA LE HASARD: POÈME (1975)
Jean Lecoultre
Double canvas slipcase/folder enclosing a folded-paperbound book. Slipcase: 340 x 260 mm; Book: 330 x 250 mm, 62 pages inclusive of the 5 foldouts. Edition of 115, of which this is #78.
Acquired from OH 7e Ciel, 10 March 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of Jean Lecoultre

Among the many distinguishing features of Jean Lecoultre’s homage to Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem, three of the most striking are the typeface, the paper and the images. In deliberate ways, each differs from the deluxe edition that Ambroise Vollard and Mallarmé planned after the poem first appeared in 1897.

Sabon is the typeface, designed by Jan Tschichold in 1964 under commission from Walter Cunz of Stempel. The Linotype, Monotype and Stempel foundries released it jointly in 1967, which makes its use only eight years later a little bit daring. Only a “little bit” because anything more modern (say, Garamond) would have been preferable to Mallarmé rather than the Elzevir chosen by NRF when it published the 1914 edition. Lecoultre and the publisher Galerie Edwin Engelberts followed the 1914 layout but, thank goodness, not the typeface. Sabon’s thin and thick strokes do not contrast as much as those of Didot, and it does not have the same verticality. Although rooted in Garamond, Sabon comes closer than Garamond to the narrowness of Didot. Walbaum might have been a still closer option, but with its more substantial thin strokes, Sabon has to have been a more suitable choice for the handmade paper in this work.

Screenshots of adaptations: Didot © Apple; Sabon © Adobe, Linotype and ™Monotype; Garamond © Microsoft; Walbaum © Linotype and Monotype; comparisons made possible by Identifont.

Georges Duchêne (1926-2012) (Moulin de Larroque and Moulin de Pombié) fabricated the paper (vélin de cuve) especially for the project. The paper bears Duchêne’s watermark as well as a rough “tooth” (surface texture that grips the ink) and uneven deckled edges. With his semantic and typographic innovation, Mallarmé intended to draw attention to les blancs (the spaces around the lines, phrases and single words). With its smoothness interrupted by bumps, its simultaneous softnesss and stiffness, the paper draws the eye and touch even more to the space around the verses.

The surface must have presented a challenge for the technique of “soft varnish” etching used by Lecoultre. Crown Point Press defines it this way:

A process that involves applying a beeswax ground made soft by the addition of tallow or petroleum jelly evenly over a heated plate with a brayer. After the plate has cooled, the artist draws on paper laid over it. The soft wax comes off on the back of the paper exactly where the artist has pressed, exposing the metal in the pattern of the grain of the paper. More pressure in drawing removes more wax and produces a darker line after the plate has been bitten. In general, soft ground lines look like lines made by the drawing instrument, usually a pencil or crayon. Soft ground can also be used to take a direct impression of any flexible material—a fingerprint, a leaf, a piece of cloth, for example.

The technique resonates metaphorically with Mallarmé’s dictum peindre non la chose mais l’effet qu’elle produit (“to depict not the object but the effect the object produces”). The technique allows Lecoultre to depict the fine details of easily identifiable objects (a stone, fingerprints, a rope and more) and less easily identifiable ones (a blurred wall and windows, a pair of draped rectangular columns being sliced by a cheese-cutter-like cable and so on). Identifiable or not, the objects yield to the effects their juxtaposition, layering and blurring produce.

Lecoultre is also Mallarméan in his mastery of the technique. In an invitation booklet included with the book, Pietro Sarto, who pulled the prints, points out that, due to its delicacy, the soft varnish technique is most often associated with spontaneity and the chance effect. In Lecoultre’s case, Sarto makes the startling revelation that, for some of the images, the plates went through thirteen states. Thirteen chances for precision to be marred. Lecoultre even extends his chance-taking to the paper in pursuit of effect: note how the image of the rock bleeds across the deckle edge. The strange juxtaposition of objects and the way some objects seem to float on the page (or fall off it) — these also mirror Mallarmé’s arrangement of words and lines among les blancs of the pages, the precision of his images and the suggestiveness of his metaphors.

Finally Lecoultre and his publisher strike out in a novel direction with the number and placement of the prints. Unlike Mallarmé/Vollard’s plan to segregate the poem from Odile Redon’s three to four images, Lecoultre integrates his seven with the poem. This entails “bookending” the poem with two double-page spreads, each taken up entirely by a print: one spread before the half-title and one after the final page of the poem. For the remaining five prints to appear on double-page spreads, the publisher urged the use of five foldout pages. This solution, which Lecoultre approvingly embraced, simultaneously challenges and celebrates Mallarmé’s unit of the double-page spread.

Books On Books Collection – Tauba Auerbach

2022/03/222023/08/28Books On BooksLeave a comment

How to Spell the Alphabet (2007)

How to Spell the Alphabet (2007)
Tauba Auerbach
H255 x W220 mm, 112 pages. Acquired from Zubal Books, 26 October 2021.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.

Auerbach writes in her preface:

The intention of this work is to take an inquisitive look at language, and to apply the unique properties of the system to the system itself. Subjecting language to its own idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies in iteration after iteration in turn brings about major changes and remarkable patterns. … My focus on the flaws or glitches of language is not in the spirit of criticism, but in the interest of cultivating a new idea of possibility or perfection.

It is also in the spirit of artistic playfulness. “How to Spell the Alphabet” is the title of one of Auerbach’s best-known works. A work of ink and pencil on paper (2005), it begins “EY BEE CEE DEE” and was featured in MoMA’s “Ecstatic Alphabet” exhibition (6 May – 27 August 2012). That shows just one way in which How to Spell the Alphabet‘s artistic playfulness makes the letters of the alphabet ecstatic (“to stand outside themselves”). In keeping with the book’s cover and the name of Auerbach’s publishing operation established in 2013 (Diagonal Press), each of those ways adds another angle, another way into, another perspective on her work. This entry, however, deals with only one of them: what Auerbach calls “letter worship”. Expanding on that, she writes:

These pieces are an exaggeration of the slowness of hand-drawing letters. Taking several weeks to draw, each one is a meditation on the form of a single letter on its own, isolated from meaning or context. … These specific letters are inspired by a German alphabet designed by Paulus Franck in 1601. In the tradition of illuminated manuscripts, such an ornamental font treats each letter both as an object of worship and as a means of expressing worship towards what is written. But … they are also an expression of the idea that celebration — in this case, through embellishment — can lead to obliteration. They are meant to teeter on the edge of decipherability, oscillating between legibility and abstraction.

“A” by Tauba Auerbach (left) and Paulus Franck (right). Photos: Books On Books Collection.

“E” by Auerbach (left); “E” and “F” by Franck (center); “F” by Auerbach (right).

“I” by Auerbach (left) and by Franck (right).

“Q” by Auerbach (left); “Q” and “R” by Franck (center); “R” by Auerbach.

That reference to oscillation between legibility and abstraction also draws attention to Auerbach’s fascination with helix-like and chiral (handedness) images and phenomena, which lies at the heart of her major 2021-22 exhibition and even finds expression in its title SvZ. Auerbach’s work oscillates between the world of the alphabet and the world of science and math, just as the letter and the world oscillate when we grasp at the meaning of their relationship.

NO (2005) (left); Stacking (NO) (2007) and Stacking (YES) (2007) (center); YES (2005)(left).Photos: Courtesy of Tauba Auerbach.

Books On Books Collection – Paulus Franck

2022/03/222023/08/28Books On BooksLeave a comment

Schatzkammer Allerhand Versalien (1601/1995)

Schatzkammer Allerhand Versalien (1601/1995)
Paulus Franck
Facsimile edition created by Joseph Kiermeier-Debre and Fritz Franz Vogel as part of the boxed set Alphabets Buchstaben Calligraphy, published by Ravensburger Buchverlag (1998). Hardback. H275 x W255 mm, 80 pages. Acquired from Antiquariat Terrahe & Oswald, 14 March 2021. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Little is known of Paulus Franck himself (although the editors reveal a Caravaggesque manslaughter charge in his home town of Memmingen), so the focus rests mainly on Schatzkammer, Allerhand Versalien Lateinisch vnnd Teutsch: allen Cantzleyen Schreibstuben Notaren Schreibern vnd denen so sich des zierlichen schreibens befleissigen zudienst vnd wolgefallen von neüen in Druckh also verferttiget (as the full title goes). The editors position Franck’s Treasury in the context of the phenomena of the writing master, penmanship and calligraphy from 1500 to 1800, even regaling the reader with tales of poor Franck’s castigation by Nuremberg’s calligraphic dynasty the Neudörffers. The editors neatly use the margins of their book to add to the historical context. Below, on the verso page, they have the geometrically controlled design of Albrecht Durer (1525), and on the recto, the exuberance of John Seddon (1695).

One element not extolled by the editors is the printing from woodcuts. The quality of the woodcuts can be better appreciated by looking at the scanned original available from the Bayerische Staats Bibliothek (BSB). Conveniently, the site BibliOdyssey has downloaded the letters and provided additional links. At his Type Design Information Page, Luc Devroye also reproduces Franck’s ornate letters from the 1601 manual as well as from a later volume produced by Paul Fürst (better known for his print “Der Doctor Schnabel von Rom“) and printed by Christoph Gerhard in 1655.

This facsimile of Franck’s Treasury makes up one of four volumes in a box set, edited by Joseph Kiermeier-Debre and Fritz Franz Vogel. The other three present works by Antonio Basoli, Johann Theodor de Bry and Johann David Steingruber. To see Franck’s continuing influence, visit the collection entry on Tauba Auerbach.

Books On Books Collection – Étienne Pressager

2022/03/172024/06/18Books On BooksLeave a comment

Mis-en-pli (2016)

Mis en pli (2016)
Étienne Pressager
Monotype, inked, folded in half lengthwise and unfolded. H840 xW570. Edition of 16, of which this is #12. Acquired from the artist, 22 April 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection, and courtesy of the artist. Displayed with permission of the artist.

The alphabet loves a mirror, and like many artists’ books that comment on themselves or the Book, Étienne Pressager’s monotype is self-regarding — in its process, its result and its title. A large sheet is folded lengthwise and unfolded. Ink is arranged just so in the center and to the right. The sheet is folded, pressed and unfolded to reveal the mirrored alphabet. Voilá, a single-fold book. Mis en pli or “Set in fold”.

Quelques îles en formation (2007)

Quelques îles en formation (2007)
Étienne Pressager
Handsewn booklet. H210 x W170 mm, 30 pages. Edition of 10, of which this is #9. Acquired from the artist, 8 March 2022. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Quelques îles en formation consists of fifteen single-fold folios handsewn with black thread. The first and last folios serve for the front cover/title page and colophon/back cover, respectively. The thirteen folios between them constitute the îles/”islands” being formed by the encircling letters of the alphabet and the encircled masses laser-printed on the translucent paper. But why “some islands”/quelques îles and not just thirteen? As the reader/viewer moves through this work, it dawns that there are far more than thirteen ways of looking at these blackbirds.

Spine, showing the single-fold folios.

To talk about the folios (and since the pages are unnumbered), let’s name them “Island AB”, “Island CD” and so on. So the work’s second folio would be Island AB (below). If we go round the island clockwise from Z, we are reading the alphabet in reverse. This doesn’t seem right (although we are reading à droite/”to the right”). But to follow the Latin alphabet aright, we are forced into reading right to left. Once we reach letter C, the Western norm of left-to-right reading asserts itself — even if bumpily so — but with letter P, we are back to the Middle/Far East direction of reading. At least, in either direction, the dark gray body of land is clear enough. Or is it?

Folio “Island AB”: first, second and third pages displayed. The fourth page appears below.

When Island AB’s first page turns, the black letters separate from the body they define. They float in reverse on the second page (above) even more black. The dark gray body now becomes a separated mass of black on the third page (above). It looks like an abstract image or a skyline, but here and there, the island’s contour shows just enough parts of the absent island-forming letters to make out the Y, X, F, K and M. When the third page turns, Island AB’s “underside” appears on the fourth page of the folio (below). The reversed black letters on the second page lighten to gray as the translucent paper falls over them, but the black abstract or skyline or island printed on the third page shows through just as black as before.

Island AB’s fourth page; Island CD’s first, second and third pages.

In an installation setting, three of these bodies of black become the work Îles capitales, a standalone large-scale hanging made from industrial plywood covered with thin black melamine. In contrast, the book form layers the islands, adding yet another layer in the process of îles en formation. The islands beneath cast shadowy outcroppings upwards around the island covering them. Indeed, as pages turn, outcroppings disappear, replaced by others from islands further underneath. Look again at Islands AB and CD above.

Gallery view of Îles capitales (center) in “Bertrand Gadenne/Étienne Pressager: A,B,C,D, Etcaetera”, a joint exhibition at Lieu d’Art et Action Contemporaine (LAAC), Musée de France, Musée de la Ville de Dunkerque, 2007. Photo: Courtesy of Étienne Pressager.

Another element of the layering comes into play as pages turn. It comes just as a page is lifted. Below, on the left, the letters around Island GH lift away leaving a blurred outline of the island beneath; on the right, the island becomes more sharply defined as the page begins to turn. Calling further attention to the layering, each folio is folded offset, the first and second pages always being wider than the third and fourth, which facilitates turning the slippery translucent pages but highlights the work’s in-betweenness, its gradations of gray, black and white.

Island GH: with its first and third pages being turned.

Each island is shaped by the same 26 letters, but the contours of each island differ. An infinite number of varied archipelagoes could be derived from Pressager’s ourobouros-like alphabet, just as an infinite number of words can be generated from the alphabet, which in turn can be used to define, delineate and bridge domains or islands limited only by our imaginations. Confronted by such infinities, what can a finite human do but offer up quelques îles en formation?

Books On Books Collection – Pierre di Sciullo

2022/03/152022/03/15Books On BooksLeave a comment

L’Après-midi d’un Phonème (2019)

L’Après-midi d’un Phonème (2019)
Pierre di Sciullo
Greyboard on drawn-on-solid paper wrapper. H240 x W150 mm, 256 pages. Special edition of 40, of which this is #40. Acquired from ~zeug, 25 March 2020.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

The pun on Mallarmé’s L’Après-Midi d’un Faune certainly captures Pierre de Sciullo and his endeavors. He plays with typography as a medium, delving into letter forms and phonemes — drawing, writing and piping them into posters, signs, building façades, apps, stage designs and this book. The book is an extended and illustrated interview with di Sciullo, as faun of design, conducted by its publisher’s founders Sandra Chamaret and Julien Gineste (~zeug). The colophon credits the book’s design to Grand Ensemble, the design studio managed by Chameret and Gineste. Simon Renaud, author of the introduction and previously a student of di Sciullo, is also credited with involvement in the typography.

Physically this work’s first gesture toward playfulness is di Sciullo’s design for the jacket, which unfolds to a poster in two-color printing on Hahnemühle Natural 120 gsm. Then comes the binding (see above): embossed and inked text on greyboard glued to a drawn-on-solid wrapper of Munken Pure 300 gsm to which the sewn folios are glued.

Dust cover unfolding to poster

The colors blue and gold play a unifying role across the structure of the book and the text of the interviews that took place from July 2016 through July 2019. The colors of the paper and type play off each other and draw together the shift of double and single columns of text and the mix of full-color bled-off photos, single- and multi-color illustrations placed in the inner and outer margins, and single- and multi-color half-tones appearing in a variety of positions, nevertheless balanced.

The interviews roughly follow the chronology of di Sciullo’s career and naturally refer throughout to his serial publication Qui? Résiste, now in its 14th number. The discussion and illustrations demonstrate how his talents apply across numerous media, but always in the service of type and an offbeat representation of sound. Most of his experimental typefaces are covered: Minimum (1986), made of vertical and horizontal lines only; Quantange (1989), the phonetic alphabet named after the question Qu’entends-je? (“What do I hear?”); followed by Épelle-moi/Spell me (1998), in which each letter’s pronunciation is spelled out; in turn followed by Kouije (2005), “a flexible tool to embody the voice in writing” — to name but a few.

The phonetic is by no means the only note that the faun of design plays. “Visually haptic” describes this book as well as his sculptural typography. The eye feels the Bing/Bong versions of Minimum’s letters dancing in the signage of the Centre national de la Danse. “Semantically haptic” may be the best way to describe Floating Words, where the signage interacts with its surroundings to convey the meaning of the sign (which may, in fact, only allude to the place to which it points).

The Afternoon of a Phoneme also provokes socially and politically. It airs di Sciullo’s reactions to Chernobyl, the first Iraq war and the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina — reactions expressed in his publications or typography: Qui? Résiste No. 7, Qui? Résiste No. 8 and Sintétik. Of the latter, he says in one interview, “So since the world tolerates ethnic cleansing, I am going to conceive of an alphabetic cleansing. I am going to shoot off a part of the letters, which will allow me to shoot away a part of the words …. It is a purification of the language, with abuse of the language at every level!” (p. 105). A less futile gesture (though not addressed at any length) are his typefaces based on the Tifinagh script of the Tuareg — Aligourane (1995) and Amanar (2003) providing access to printed matter and the screen.

And in the end, L’Après-midi d’un Phonème embodies di Sciullo’s typographic reaction to the world. In that same interview he says,”My aim is to create a writing style that is made to be read if one is very very patient, …” (p. 107). The reader/viewer/holder of this book might be reminded of that experience of learning to read — or perhaps the experience of tending to a child. What you have in your hands squirms, turns this way and that, makes you laugh and cry out, hurts your head and warms your heart.

Bookmarking Book Art – Mario Diacono

2022/03/032022/07/04Books On BooksLeave a comment

a METRICA n’aboolira (1968)

a METRICA n’aboolira (1968)
Mario Diacono
Papercover, stapled. H x W mm, unnumbered pages.
Photos: Arengario, displayed with permission of the artist.

Besides being first out of the gate with an “homage by redaction” of Un Coup de Dés, Mario Diacono is perhaps the first hommageur to give a sociopolitical cast to the effort. In an interview in Ursula, Diacono comments

1968 was a year in which many things were abolished, or felt tempted to be abolished. Language was one of them, at least the traditional language of poetry, but also the language of ‘bourgeois/capitalist’ society. Berkeley is also present in the book through the reproduction of three frames from a cartoon in a local magazine, which functions as a kind of preface. The title alternates not only colors, black and orange, but also uppercase and lowercase letters. The wordplay in essence says: the absence of metrics, of language, will not abolish poetry. Neither will the American taboos.(Nickas, 2019).

Those comments align with the element of “pop” art and the underground comic in this homage.

Later in the 1970s, Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub would pick up the thread of social critique by staging and filming a choral reading of the poem on the lawn of the Père Lachaise cemetery,

where there are the great memorials of the concentration camps: Ravensbrück, Auschwitz… it is in the corner of the cemetery where you can guess something about the city. Under this hill are buried the last members of the Paris Commune, who were shot in that same place. – Jean-Marie Straub

And then just after the turn of the next century, Didier Mutel extended the critique with his three-volume Four Speeches by George Walker Bush [together with] Four Speeches by Tony Blair [together with] Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard.

These three connected volumes explore graphic transpositioning from oral speeches to a visual representation. Though a new way to read/experience the speeches–to visualize their patterns–you can [still] not tell the truth from fiction. You can not tell what you are reading. “In the 3-part, 4 Speeches/Coup de Des, the images of audio waves are the same—but one purports to be a group of speeches by Bush 43 ; another, a group by Tony Blair; and the last—the real thing—is an unidentified man reading Mallarme’s “Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard”, that modern masterwork that launched a thousand artists’ books. The concept is trenchantly funny; the books are beautifully executed. [from the preface to Didier’s Manifesto by Tim Young]

Like Huillet, Straub and Mutel, Diacono is trying to balance his socio-political drive with the visual and historical homage to Un Coup de Dés. Huillet/Straub’s performative vocalization delivers its message only through the visual of its location. Mutel delivers his message by muting the poem with its sonographic visualization and sleight-of-hand substitution for political speeches. a METRICA n’aboolira delivers its message by balancing the textual and the visual, reminding us that Mallarmé wanted Un Coup de Dés to be looked at as well as read.

The entire work has been digitized here.

Books On Books

Curated by Robert Bolick

Books On Books Collection – Honorine Tepfer

UN COUP DE DÉS JAMAIS N’ABOLIRA LE HASARD: POÈME (1989)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Estelle J.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ: Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (ND)

Books On Books Collection – Sibyl Rubottom & Jim Machacek

Spice Market: An Alphabetical Melange of Spices (2004)

Further Reading and Viewing

Books On Books Collection – Robert Filliou

Eins. Un. One. (1984)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Jean Lecoultre

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ, UN COUP DE DÉS JAMAIS N’ABOLIRA LE HASARD: POÈME (1975)

Further Reading and Viewing

Books On Books Collection – Tauba Auerbach

How to Spell the Alphabet (2007)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Paulus Franck

Schatzkammer Allerhand Versalien (1601/1995)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Étienne Pressager

Mis-en-pli (2016)

Quelques îles en formation (2007)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Pierre di Sciullo

L’Après-midi d’un Phonème (2019)

Further Reading

Bookmarking Book Art – Mario Diacono

a METRICA n’aboolira (1968)

Further Reading