Poe's Tales of Terror Inspire A Royal Exhibit

By Nancy Mattoon

Ivor Abrahams.
Masque of The Red Death.
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.
(All Images Courtesy of Royal Academy of Arts.)

Two portfolios of prints, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's chilling and melancholy tales and Edmund Burke's study of the aesthetics of passion and terror, make up a fascinating new exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts. Ivor Abrahams: Mystery and Imagination, brings together, for the first time, two sets of screenprints completed in the 1970's, and considered to be among the finest works created during "the golden age of printmaking in Britain." Abrahams created the two groups of works on paper in response to Poe's definition of art as "the reproduction of what the senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul," and Burke's thesis that pleasure and pain form the emotional and psychological underpinning of all fine art.

Ivor Abrahams.
Untitled Print On Paper From:
15 Lithographs To Edmund Burke, 1979.

Ivor Abrahams is primarily a sculptor, and many of his prints have the depth and magnitude of sculptures. His works are almost always figurative, rather than abstract. According to the Tate Modern, "Portions of buildings, gardens, domestic interiors and people - usually active - inhabit [Abrahams'] works that are fundamentally collages. These are built of photographic images that are cut, altered, painted over and turned into three-dimensional form." Contemporary advertising, especially signs and placards, hold a fascination for Abrahams, and as a struggling artist he once took a job creating shop window mannequins and displays for Adel Rootstein.

Ivor Abrahams.
Untitled Print On Paper From:
15 Lithographs To Edmund Burke, 1979.

Many of the images used in Abrahams' prints are taken from photographs in inexpensive magazines, such as the weekly publication, Amateur Gardening. Less frequently, he appropriated and altered high quality illustrations found in glossy periodicals from the 1920's, such as Country Life. This use of second-hand source material links much of his printed work to the Pop Art movement. Abrahams has donated much of the source material for his printmaking, including magazine clippings, photographs, sketches, and acetate stencils, to the Tate Gallery Archive.

Ivor Abrahams.
The Domain of Arnheim.
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.

The history of the Edgar Allan Poe portfolio is especially interesting to book collectors and readers. In late 1973, Abrahams was commissioned by famed New York City gallery owner Bernard Jacobson to illustrate a volume of selected tales and poems by Edgar Allan Poe. The book was to be published as a fine press, limited, signed, and numbered edition of 500 copies, with sixteen illustrations within the text, and four loose prints per volume. It took two years for Abrahams to complete the final collection of twenty prints for publication. Jacobson exhibited the prints in 1976, and announced the impending publication of the book at the show's opening.

Ivor Abrahams.
The Raven.
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.

Abrahams had admired Poe's writings since he was a teenager. For the fine press book, he chose to illustrate those stories or poems he felt he "could put an image to." Some were among Poe's most well-known works, such as The Raven. Others were much more obscure, and he commented that he "had a difficult time finding a truly complete edition of Poe's writings." The edition he finally worked from was the three-volume Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Thomas Ollive Mabbott. (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969-1978.)

Ivor Abrahams.
A Dream Within A Dream.
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.

Noted British art-historian Norbert Lynton created an extended essay on Abrahams' illustrations intended as a preface for the book. In it he wrote, "I suspect that Poe's popularity through text, illustrations and films is part of his attraction for Abrahams. Yet, unlike all the films and most of the illustrations, his images show little desire to profit from the more thrilling aspects of Poe... Abrahams un-Hollywoods Poe but uses some of Hollywood's tricks to do so. His other means are astonishingly un-period, un-hagiographic, ahistorical - in short, devoid of nostalgia. He is a plastic artist, a sculptor whose primary means of expression are form and interval. His images show a marked response to the constructive artist in Poe and much less attachment to the incidents that others focused on."

Ivor Abrahams.
Ligeia .
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.

In what can only be seen as a tremendous missed opportunity, the planned limited edition of the works of Poe as illustrated by Abrahams was never published due to logistical and financial difficulties. A portfolio of the prints was produced, and it contained a few excerpts from Lynton's essay. In what seems to be the finally indignity related to the project, the manuscript of Norbert Lynton's essay has been lost, so only the brief passages of it included in the portfolio remain.

Ivor Abrahams.
The Conqueror Worm.
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.

Ivor Abrahams: Mystery and Imagination,The ‘Edgar Allan Poe’ and ‘Edmund Burke’ Print Portfolios, continues through May 22, 2011 at the Tennant Gallery of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Ivor Abrahams.
Silence, A Fable.
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.

Specifics of the published Poe portfolio:

Abrahams, Ivor.
E.A. Poe: Tales and Poems.
New York: Bernard Jacobson Ltd., 1976.
Portfolio of twenty screenprints, some with embossing and/or varnish, various sizes, on wove Crisbrook paper 495 × 362 (19 1/2 × 14 1/4); printed by Bernard Culls at Advanced Graphics and published by Bernard Jacobson Ltd in an edition of 100 plus 10 sets of artist's proofs, each inscribed ‘Ivor Abrahams 76’ below image...each stamped with the printer's stamp ‘ADVANCED GRAPHICS LONDON’ in circular device.

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