Dieter Rot Sets In

by Alastair Johnston

wait, later this will be nothing: Editions by Dieter Roth, edited by Sarah Suzuki et al, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 2013, 96 pp., 108 illustrations, paperback.

    Funny how things come in threes. Last year I wrote on Booktryst about Ian Hamilton Finlay, the Scottish artist (concrete poet and landscape gardener). Finlay's son Eck got a laugh out of my review, calling my take, "IHF: the Dolce & Gabbana Years"! I noted that he had dismissed Dom Sylvester Houédard (ironically the first person to champion Finlay in print in Britain, in an excellent piece in Typographica 8) as "anti-culture" and "nonsense." Then I received a copy of Notes from the Cosmic Typewriter by DSH and reviewed it last week. Both of these pieces mentioned the publisher Hansjörg Mayer and both also mentioned the Icelandic concrete poet and book artist, Dieter Rot. So by some curious coincidence, Saturn cheap-day Return, or whatever you want to call it, I am back looking at the 1960s and the movements that promised so much then.

    It has been 50 years and those of us who remember the 60s are old codgers thinking nostalgically about the explosion of art, fashion and music that signaled our coming of age, and how much grimmer things got, from "Free Love" succumbing to AIDS, acid trips becoming the nightmare of drug wars with crackheads and cough-syrup slurpers pervading all corners of society, to the great liberating joy of rock-n-roll, punk & new wave, succumbing to disco then becoming the tired pablum of Justin Bieber  & Britney Spears. What went wrong? we cry. Stop babbling, gramps, say the youth, and drink your Ensure.

    Dieter Rot (or Roth as he is called here) was born in Germany in 1930. Though he operated at the same time as Op Art, Actionism and Fluxus, he went his own way and, like another German, Kurt Schwitters, he created his own one-man art movement. And he did it out of Germany, moving from Switzerland to Iceland in 1955. His biggest influence was Marcel Duchamp and he worked closely with British pop artist Richard Hamilton as well as the printer and typographer Hansjörg Mayer. There is one constant in Rot's output and that is editioned works, whether books or prints, but otherwise he changed means of expression constantly.

     The title of this monograph suggests the transience of all things, and points to the fact the Rot used cardboard, Sellotape, newsprint and other non-archival material to make his art. (Schwitters too liked bits of acidic newsprint and so many of his artworks are now uniformly brown whereas they once had sparkling red and yellow passages.) Rot's art or anti-art was ahead of its time, though obviously Duchamp and Cage are big influences. He took sheets of overprinted waste paper from a printshop floor and bound them into books. Of course there is an unconscious element in there and the random juxtaposition of fragmentary found images would be a constant in his work for the next two decades. He made masks out of black paper by cutting holes in a sheet at random then overlaying it on a printed page. He also die-cut holes in randomly assembled pieces of print matter.

   Rot's Daily Mirror Book of 1961 is a good example of his conceptual art: he cut random 2 centimetre squares out of the British tabloid Daily Mirror then perfectbound them -- the result is a "book" with pages, text, fragments of ads and imagery that is an archaeological slide of a moment. It also signals a new form: the Artist's Book. (Later he recycled this book, taking some of the pages and blowing them up to be much larger, for Quadratblatt, 1965.)

    Another artwork, less obviously a book, but no less an "artistsbook" is his Litteraturwurst, which he created in different incarnations throughout the 1960s. He took a book or newspaper and ground it up, added gelatin, lard and spices, and stuffed it into a sausage skin. You could slice your own text from it, like congealed alphabet soup (though not so vegetarian). He offered it to George Maciunas as a Fluxus publication but it was rejected. (Thus becoming another of many artworks misunderstood, even by their intended audience.) His point was, we consume literature like sausage and it too ends up as shit. He made litteraturwurst out of Marx, James Joyce, Goethe, Hegel, Günter Grass and many other authors he felt needed this treatment.

    Roth loved playing jokes on the artworld. Not like those clowns Richard Prince, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst who are merely naughty boys in art class saying "But Sir it is art, my mammy says so…," but in a more subversive way. He made a bunny rabbit shaped like a chocolate rabbit you might consume at easter. (Remember the Swiss love chocolate probably more than they love sausage.) It's called "Karnickelköttelkarnickel (Bunny-dropping-bunny)" -- which is amusing in itself. It was manufactured, out of rabbit droppings, in an edition of 250. Not only does chocolate resemble shit, but a lot of art is really shit, he seems to be saying. He called his collected poems The Collected Shit, forestalling any criticism, and retained all the errors in his German that his students at R.I.S.D. (who were tasked with assembling the work) introduced. He stepped in an artwork of his contemporary Joseph Beuys (a bucket of lard), but the more celebrated artist graciously allowed his action as a "collaboration." 

    A self-portrait has a Duchampian title, "P. O. TH. A. A. VFB." (written in Dymo tape on the pedestal), it stands for "Portrait of the Artist as a Vogelfutterbüste." His lumpy ugly sub-Giacometti self-portrait bust is made of chocolate and birdseed. His intention was that the work would be left in a garden to be consumed by the birds and vanish as the artist himself does. Of course it ended up in a museum being worried over by conservationists. From the gloom of Beckett to the exuberance of Paolozzi you can see a mirror of the times in his work.

    Rot's increasing use of food was problematic, not just for posterity, but even during its existence. Cupcakes in the shape of a motorcyclist were given out at a gallery opening … and eaten. An installation of pieces of cheese which were supposed to slide down a wall towards open suitcases became rancid and maggoty in a few days and eventually the gallerist's husband drove the art to the desert and abandoned it.

    Roth didn't like the Fluxus artists ("A good thing they are modest, he said, because they have no talent"); he doesn't seem to have liked anybody very much ("James Joyce is kitsch"), apart from his collaborators Hansjörg Mayer and Richard Hamilton, but he created some very amusing and provocative artworks, some in multiple editions, and many of which stretch our concept of what a book is or can be.
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Four Days of the Codex Book Fair 2013

by Alastair Johnston

"There is not a prophet in the Old Testament who would not be excommunicated from the modern Church for the vehemence of his opinions" -- John J. Collins

The 2013 CODEX book fair brought together makers of expensive books from all over the world to show their wares. CODEX is timed to coincide with the biennial visit of the California International Antiquarian Book Fair to San Francisco and for that reason (among others) I have never attended, being more interested in the old book I've never seen than the new book I cannot afford, but this time it had been moved to the week preceding the ABAA/ILAB event. It was also moved physically from Pauley Ballroom on the U C Berkeley campus to a former Ford plant in the wilderness of Richmond, California, where I agreed to help staff a friend's table.

The CODEX book fair is the baby of Peter Koch, who models himself after Andrew Hoyem of Arion Press, a grand bookman in the tradition of the Grabhorn Press, producing trouser-press editions of chestnut texts with an emphasis on the materiality of the book, rather than the originality of the work. In fact the typography and imagery generally reflect a style that was popular in the 1930s and is based on pattern-recognition, so people will look at it and think "Ah, a fine press book," rather than question the originality of the concept, production methods (increasingly faux letterpress from computer-generated plastic plates) or structure. Even the Codex fair "look" is based on Cassandre's eccentric Bifur typeface designed in 1929.

Perhaps the success of the fair is due to the "Kindle Effect" (like the "Connecticut Effect" which the NRA hopes will soon wear off). While there is a genuine nostalgia for "real" books after the sudden surge in the e-Book market, it is surprising to see these fancy books still hanging on to an audience, but at $800 for a table there were not going to be too many purveyors of medium-priced well-made books or "democratic multiples." But the fair has grown and consequently a second aspect of it, a morning-long symposium for some of the participants to discuss their work in detail, was sold out.

To accommodate those who missed out on the symposium, it was webcast live, which seemed like a good idea. However, the camera was at the back of the auditorium and the sound was picked up there, rather than fed from the podium, so you mainly heard coughing; the speakers were but a distant speck beneath the large blurry & skewed video screen on which they showed their work. One speaker I heard sounded very silly saying "balance of type image concept brought back into balance." Maybe I heard him wrong. And while it seemed a majority of the exhibitors were women, there was only one woman speaker in the symposium.

San Francisco skyline from Point Richmond

Point Richmond is a long drive from sillivization and not easily accessible by public transport unless you want to brave the environs of one of the scariest BART stations in the system. Exhibitors could buy a bus ticket (for an additional $50!) to get them there and back before and after the 4 long days of showing their work. It is a lovely setting though, in an old Ford tank factory right on the San Francisco Bay, next to the Rosie the Riveter museum. But once there, attendees are stuck. When it was held at Pauley Ballroom (currently being renovated) it was a short walk to the hotels, restaurants and bookstores of Telegraph Avenue. One woman's suggestion: since Peter is such a macho cowboy, he should hold the next one at the Cow Palace.

Peter is famous for his drinking stories, according to one Midwestern exhibitor. In December, I went to a talk at Moe's Books, advertised as a "preview of CODEX," as I was eager to learn about the fair and its attendance -- not just who is showing work, but what kind of numbers show up, if sales are made, or is it all window-shopping (Since the cost to exhibit is so steep it's not a light investment for most presses, never mind airfare and hotel). Instead I had to sit through a provincial account of "My big trip to Venice," telling how much of Peter's wife's money they spent. As you no doubt know, Prosecco flows like water in Venezia, and only rubes pay $15 for a glass of Prosecco, but that seemed to be the apogee of Peter's visit. That and the fact they spent $15,000 or was it 50,000? in pre-production costs for the reprint of the Joseph Brodsky book they produced there, Watermark, that retails for $6000. Unfortunately the fair suffers from being closely associated with Peter Koch though you cannot imagine all the exhibitors are so pretentious.

There was a lot to look at: too much in fact, and by the time people came around the nearly 200 tables, like yachts with luffing sails being pulled sideways into the Richmond dock, they had that glazed "museum-goer" look. I saw lots of "gratuitous structure": books that were in flag or accordion-spine formats for no reason other than it was a cool idea at the time (with of course no recognition for Hedi Kyle who originated those structures). But, warned Peggy Gotthold, as she showed me her elaborately constructed anthology "For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn," there are no new structures, only rediscovered ones.

I remarked on the one aspect of such fairs which always bothers me: the artists themselves are sitting behind their work, some looking more confident than others, but every person who walks by is seen to judge the work, with either an instant curiosity (sometimes simply "how did you name your press?") or instant indifference: "hmmm, whatever it is I don't wanna know!" One attendee said she felt guilty looking at the books because although she was fascinated, she couldn't afford them and maybe was preventing some librarian from getting in close to make a purchase.

Peter Koch printing the cruciform poster for CODEX 2013

In the valedictorian speech (on line) Koch said he welcomed criticism, as long as it was couched in flattering terms, so kudos to Peter and his son Max for pulling this off four times. While the real audience is rich collectors and librarians, the value of Codex is it enlarges the tiny pond of the Bay Area book arts scene. It's a chance for local enthusiasts to learn something, to get ideas or to meet artists and printers. But it is marred by the cowboy aesthetic. Many women exhibitors complained about the Wild West theme (which is inherent in Peter's typography -- he likes beat-up wood type and the bullets/lead analogy). The poster for the fair is a large Xtian cross with CODEX vertically and 2013 being the horizontal arms; then it has "Drawing a bead on the book" as a subtitle. Targets abound. We are not all hicks in shitkickers, these ladies complain, please leave the target practice out. 

Artist Cathy DeForest listening to dealer Donna Seager

The Bay Area and the bustling Santa Cruz book arts scene were well represented, and it spirals out from there to Ninja Press and Pie in the Sky in Southern California, to Inge Bruggeman (Ink-A! Press), Cathy DeForest, and Diane Jacobs (Scantronic) who work in Oregon. One reason to exhibit was to let people know you are still around. Though nonagenarian Jack Stauffacher was not present, his Greenwood Press was represented by one of his authors, photographer Dennis Ledbetter, holding down the fort. Walter Hamady's daughter, Samantha, showed his superlative Perishable Press work and reassured passersby that Walter is not dead -- in fact he is a sprightly 72, though he gave up printing two years ago to concentrate on sculpture and collage. His last book, A Timeline of Sorts, as well as copies of many of his other fine works, were on display at Codex for the first time.

Walter Hamady's parting gesture

M K Publishers from St Petersburg (Russia) were there and Vladimir Zimakov: I didn't know his name but did recognize his work. Mexico, alongside California, was well represented, but there was simply too much to take in. On Facebook people have posted amazing snapshots of things I missed. Nevertheless here is my hopefully constructive criticism: four days is too long (the first day could be a one-day symposium followed by a 3-day bookfair). The fair should end at dusk: since there are no lights in the Craneway Pavilion it was too dark to see the books for the last hour. One final idea: invite a taco truck to park outside.

Browsing in the gloaming

The best looking book I saw was one with five pochoir plates from Shanty Bay Press of Canada, but it is not even for sale, being out of print.

There were many international book artists, like <usus>(Stoltz & Schneider), the lexikon gang "Zweite Enzyklopädie von Tlön", and Veronika Schäpers from Germany, the latter now working in Japan. Italians, French and Brits were there too, from Whittington Press who do traditional Monotype work and publish Matrix magazine, to Susan Allix who presents her fine art in quirky formats, but always impeccably presented.

And surprisingly there was one genuine literary publisher of affordable books there: The Brother in Elysium from Brooklyn, New York, who had a new folder of Ed Sanders' Glyphs and a witty packaging of a Ted Berrigan work in a library binding with a big "WITHDRAWN" stamp and library pocket stuck in. He may have broken even, but only because he was visited by librarians from The Bancroft, Simon Fraser, Florida State University and Stanford. Many of the exhibitors were breathlessly awaiting the arrival of Mark Dimunation of the Library of Congress, hoping he would bestow a purchase order on them. Meanwhile there was plenty of schmoozing to go around.
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William Blake Meets Batman

by Stephen J. Gertz

Garden of Love by Delphi Basilicato.

 In 2007, Letterpress II students at the Center for Book Arts in New York, under the direction of master printer Barbara Henry, produced Songs, a collaborative artist book in a portfolio of nine loose letterpress and hand-colored folded sheets that reimagined William Blake, excerpting twelve poems from his Songs of Innocence and Experience and illustrating them anew. The edition was limited to thirty-nine copies.

The poems included in this Songs for the modern age are: The Garden of Love; The Fly; A Dream; The Human Abstract; The Laughing Song; The Poison Tree; The Shepherd; The Tyger; The Blossom; The Sick Rose; Infant Joy;  Infant Sorrow. The compositor-printers were Delphi Basilicato, Amy Bronstein, Bonnie McLaughlin, Amber McMillan, Sarah Nicholls, Michelle Raccagni, Rosie Schaap, Louisa Swift, and Barbara Henry. Each sheet was signed by the individual printer.

Title-page.

William Blake's conceptual collection of poetry, Songs of Innocence and Experience, first appeared in 1794, a marriage of Songs of Innocence (1789), comprised of nineteen poems celebrating the human spirit when allowed to be free as in childhood, and Songs of Experience, twenty-six later poems in which he demonstrates what happens to the human spirit when the real world of adults intrudes and shackles us by rules and religious doctrines. He considered these to be the two states of the human soul. He illustrated the collection with his own engravings.

Blake's title page engraving sums it up: Adam & Eve in and out of the Garden of Eden. Blake was besotted by God and the Bible but not by the Church of Endland, nor any religion, for that matter. Influenced by the American and French revolutions, freedom of thought and imagination drove him; to him imagination was the body of God, the basis of human existence. It is unfettered creativity and imagination that bring us close to God, for that is what God is, the font of all creative endeavor. The mystic streaks through his work. He was the forefather of Romanticism.

Blake's original title-page engraving.

The conflict between spiritual freedom and imprisonment by religious dogma remains a constant. In Delphi Basilicato's contribution to Songs, a trio of superheroes, including The Dark Knight, confront a scolding priest with verses adapted from Blake's Garden of Love:

Priest: Thou Shalt Not!!! Thou Shalt Not!!! Thou Shalt Not!!!

Flash: Bloody fuckin' Christ...
           I went to the Garden of Love,
           And saw what I never had seen:
           A chapel was built in the midst
           Where I used to play on the green.

Green Lantern: And the gates of this chapel were shut,
                         And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
                          So I turn'd to the garden of love
                          That so many sweet flowers bore;

Batman: And I saw it was filled with graves,
               And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
               And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
               And binding with briars my joys and desires.

To Blake, it was the Church that corrupted the Garden, not Adam and Eve, and the Garden became a graveyard littered with broken spirits. To Dephi Basilicato, in Songs, superheroes - crusading, Christ-like angels, seraphim in capes and tights - are the only thing that stand between us and The Dark Church, saviors against those who would save our souls by crushing them.

In Basilicato's image artists are culture's superheroes, keeping repressive forces in check, the A-Team in battle against the bad guys, and Blake is Charlie, these angels' unseen, anti-Establishment chief, pointing the way toward enlightenment and resolution of the case.

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BLAKE, William. Songs. New York: Center For Book Arts, 2007. No. 12 of 39 copies. Nine folio sheets, each signed by the artist. Loose, as issued, in orange paper portfolio with white paper title label to spine.
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Internal images courtesy of The Kelmscott Bookshop, currently offering this item, with our thanks.

Image of binding courtesy of Center for Book Arts, with our appreciation.

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The Wearable Artist Books of Johanne Renbeck

by Stephen J. Gertz

Water Is the Blood of Earth

"I make artist books about the woods and the moon, about wetlands and frogs, about how it feels to be surprised by a certain light and see my shadow cast across a field of grass. I follow deer in my dreams. In meditations, I am eaten by bears. I pledge my heart to red osier dogwood. Visions and dreams come from the earth and flow into my work" - Johanne Renbeck

I Rise Up From the Water.

The wearable artist books of Johanne Renbeck walk the runway at the Book Arts Summer in Salem (NY), the annual festival that opened this year on July 11 and continues through September 3, 2012.

If Vogue's Anna Wintour does not attend, it's okay. The devil may wear Prada but it's unlikely she's into reading what she's wearing. And Kate Moss is just as unlikely to model Renbeck's books even though they were purposely designed to hang on a stick.

On Breezy Hill.

Johanne Renbeck holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Rochester.  She studied painting, drawing and sculpture in continuing education programs at Rochester Institute of Technology and Bard College and with Helen Frankenthaler at the Santa Fe Art Institute. Interest in the world of nature and how it nourishes language and myth has prompted extensive independent study as well as courses in Egyptian hieroglyphics.  Ongoing studies in the field of book arts have led her to workshops with Susan King, Daniel Kelm, Sarah Langworthy, Carolyn Chadwick, Ed Hutchins, Robert Walp, Pamela Moore, Pamela Spitzmeuller & Mary Hark.

Snake Journal.

Book artist Paula Beardell Krieg's Bookzoompa work is also on display during the Books Arts Summer In Salem, held at the North Main Gallery and Annex, as well as an exhibit of visionary tunnel books created by student artists. Book artist Ed Hutchins curated the exhibition.

Roots Wait.

These may be the only books that, rather than shelved, must be either hung on a wall, or in a closet above the rack of wearable book shoes, an as yet unexplored form of artist book with fertile creative opportunities for literature always at your feet. The chance to say to someone, "Read any good shoes lately?" is, for me at least, an irresistible possibility. There's  poetry in hoofwear for the discriminating  book lover with sensitive soul and instep.

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See more of Johanne Renbeck's wearable books here.
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Collecting Souvenir Postcard Books

Please welcome printer, author, and Poltroon Press co-publisher Alastair M. Johnston to the Booktryst roster - SJG.

By Alastair Johnston

It seems that the Post Office will soon vanish into history, and along with it the art of writing letters. Gone too will be whole legions of postcard collectors, first day covers, humble cancel collectors, and the 150-year old profession of stamp collectors, who should have learned long ago that Philately will get you Nowhere.

Time was when you could put a postage stamp on just about anything and it would get to its addressee. Now the sour rule-abiding clerks at the Postal Orifice size up your mail and tell you it’s too big to go one way or too heavy to go another, that your return address is in the wrong place and on and on. So before they vanish into the dustbin of time here are some postal curios. 

The postcard booklet is either a set of cards in a folder or a single accordion-fold booklet that folds up into a cover. Such photo-illustrated books are a wonderful adjunct to books with other types of imagery. Everyone has family photo albums and scrapbooks, although today more and more people have folders of digital images precariously perched on their desktop. I found* a copy of Tugby’s Illustrated Guide to Niagara Falls, from 1890, printed on newsprint. 

It contains a booklet mentioning all the suicides and so forth that make this such a romantic spot, and a fold-out section of photographic views, but they too are printed on newsprint and not marked for mailing. Also, some folding postcards were printed on both sides so were not meant to be detached but kept as a surprising fold-out that echoed the journey through changing landscapes. 

The Scenes along the Ogden and Shasta Routes is postmarked 1914. 

The folder containing loose cards is a popular souvenir, so many people have them stashed away with views of places they’ve visited, or reproductions from museums. 

Tiny Badlands souvenir, made by the Rise Studio, Rapid City, South Dakota.
21 miniature photos by Carl Rise (?) in die-cut folder, no date, ca 1930.

The Yangtse River Bridge at Nanking has an interesting set of views of this splendid product of the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. Indeed, we learn about the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the construction of the bridge, between Mao’s thought and the “counter-revolutionary revisionist line represented by the renegade, hidden traitor and scab Liu Shao-chi” whose “line became totally bankrupt.” I wonder what became of him. 

The city of Reno came up with a novel idea: a “bonus album” of miniatures, so you could mail 20 postcards and keep the stapled stub which had miniature versions of the cards you’d sent. The Convention Center and Airport (if not the whole place) qualify for the “banality” collection. 

From 1972 comes a folder containing Russian Gingerbreads in the Collection of the Ethnographic Museum of the Peoples of the USSR. The collection spanned over 60 years of inedible artifacts. 

Accordion-fold postcard booklets were popular from the 1940s through the 1970s. Instead of choosing a card, you could send someone a dozen cards all folded up to the size of one card, in a printed cover, for the price of a first class stamp (which was 1 and a half cents). Curt Teich & Co, Chicago, who used a technique called Art-Colortone (unreal flat hand-coloring: see the views of Oakland below), seem to have printed many of these. There was also Stanley Piltz & Co of San Francisco and the king of picture postcards, Mike Roberts Litho of Emeryville, California. Color printing was always a step ahead of color photography for the first half of the twentieth century. 

A few years ago there was a vogue for banal postcards: drear motelscapes & similar blots on the landscape. The most banal set in my collection is a six-card promo for Alamo and their General Motors rental cars. It also features dull (as in lifeless printing) views of Yosemite, the Palace of Fine Arts and the “World’s Crookedest Street” in San Francisco. The cover shot has a modest 1970s Chevy and a couple at the beach in Southern California. There’s no cover, and the printer’s scoring rules were not equally spaced so the folded cards are not square, suggesting a quick and cheap job. 

Gatefold souvenir booklets are not necessarily intended to be torn apart for mailing as you may want to keep all the views for yourself. An example is the set from Le Jardin de Nos Deux, the environment built by Charles Billy in Civrieux d’Azergue, France. 

My trip to a similar spot, Bomarzo in Viterbo, Italy, in 1985 was typically memorable for the effort involved in getting there as much as the experience. I couldn’t get my companions moving and by the time we got there, after detours and delays, we only had an hour to explore while they complained, Why didn’t you tell us it was this magical? Sadly, after our visit the park was closed then changed hands and has since been “restored” in the worst possible way.

The park was begun by Count Orsini in 1552 who commissioned Pirro Ligorio to adorn it. Incredibly it lay unknown for 400 years when it was purchased by Giovanni Bettini who cared for it until his death. There are 24 major works of art — buildings, grottos, fountains, fantastic sculptures — set in a Bosco Sacro, or Holy Grove: it’s a kind of Disneyland for fans of the Italian Renaissance. In addition to the elephants, ogres and other mythical beasts there is a temple dedicated to Orsini’s wife and a tilted house. Now all we have are these photos to recall what it looked like then. 

Bomarzo Souvenir booklet (cover detached), 18 leaves, accordion fold.
Rome, Italy, De Cristofaro Editore, ca. 1978.

As a form for artists books I must mention Jaime Robles’ version of this. While living in Venice, Los Angeles in 1984, Robles created a spoof version of the “Homes of the Stars” postcard book with photos of her and her friends’ homes and quips about them:

“I just love high tech,” chirps songstress Lana Adohr, “It’s so much more American than Bauhaus. And a home is so much nicer than the Chateau Marmont.”

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*Thanks to Frances Butler for allowing me to rummage in her collection.
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"One Of The Most Beautiful Books Ever Created" Reaps $415,937 At Sotheby's

by Stephen J. Gertz

CENDRARS, Blaise & DELAUNAY, Sonia.
La Prose du Transsibérian et de la Petite Jehanne de France.
Paris: Editions des Hommes Nouveaux, 1913.

Box (above) by Paul Bonet after Sonia Delaunay.

Est. at 40,000 - 60,000 EUR ($53,173 - $79, 972).
Sold for 312,750 EUR ($415,937, incl. premium).

Four twentieth century illustrated books, in astonishing bindings, out of a total of 190 lots, sold for over $100,000 each at Sotheby's - Paris in their Livres Illustrés de la Biblioitheque R. & B.L. sale, March 28, 2012.

A fine, first edition copy of Blaise Cendrars' collaboration with artist Sonia Delaunay, La Prose du Transsibérian et de la Petite Jehanne de France, in a chemise and box by Paul Bonet, brought the highest price.

It was estimated to sell for $53,173 - $79, 972 (40,000 - 60,000 EUR).

It fell under the hammer at $415,937 (312,750 EUR, incl. premium).

Cover.

 Called "one of the most beautiful  books ever created" when Yale University Press reissued it in 2008, and a milestone in the evolution of artists' books by Joanna Drucker in The Century of Artists' Books (p. 50), it is "a sad poem printed on sunlight," according to Cendrars, who published it under his New Man Editions imprint.  Comprised of four sheets glued together to form an accordion (fold-out) binding 199 centimeters tall when opened, only sixty copies out of a planned 150 were issued, and of those sixty only thirty are believed to have survived.

BONNARD, Pierre. VERLAINE, Paul. Parallélement.
Paris: Ambroise Vollard, 1900.

Binding by E.-A. Séguy.

EST. 30,000 - 40,000 EUR ($39,901 - $53,173).

Sold: 78,750 EUR (($104,673, incl. buyer's premium).

A copy of Paul Verlaine's Parallélement, illustrated by Pierre Bonnard, and in an stunning binding by E.-A. Séguy, was estimated at $39,875 - $53,173.

It fell under the hammer at $104,673 (incl. buyer's premium).

It was issued in an edition of 200 copies featuring 190 lithographs by Bonnard. Of the twelve copies, in original wrappers or rebound, that have come to auction since 2000, the highest hammer price was  $44,500 at Sotheby's June 11, 2002 for a copy bound by J. Anthoine Legrain. The scarce binding by the great Séguy accounts for the $60,000 difference.

Decorator and designer, Eugène-Alain Séguy (1890 - 1985), produced only a few bindings during his career. He is best known for his work in the graphic arts and textile design, including folios of Art Nouveau and Art Deco-inspired design models in lush pochoir that he published 1910 - 1930.

TEMPLE, Guillaume. ERNST, Max. Maximiliana.
ou L'Exercise Illégal de L'Astronomie.
Paris: Le Degré Quarante-et-un, 1964.

Binding by P.-L. Martin

Est. 50,000 - 70,000 EUR ($66,501 - $93,104).
Sold 84,750 EUR ($112,733).

One of seventy copies on Japon Ancien paper, each signed by the artist and editor, Maximiliana, Max Ernst's collaboration with Guillaume Temple, is graced with thirty-four watercolors by the Dada pioneer. This copy, in a binding by P.-L. Martin,  contained an extra, unpublished watercolor by Ernst. 

Estimated at $66,501 - $93,104  it fell under the hammer at $112,733 (incl. premium).

DALI, Salvadore. LAUTREAMONT, Comte de.
Les Chants de Maldoror.
Paris: Skira, 1934.

Binding by George Leroux (1993).

Est. 40,000 - 60,000 EUR ($53,173 - $79, 972).
Sold 78,750 EUR ($104,673, incl. buyer's premium).

Salvadore Dali's illustrations to Le Comte de Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror are considered to be his best book work. Issued in a total edition of 200 copies on vélin Arches, this copy, in a masterful, 1993 binding by Georges Leroux, is one of forty signed by Dali and containing an extra-suite of illustrations.

Estimated to sell for $53,173 - $79,972, it realized $104,673 (incl. premium).

BRAQUE, Georges. APOLLONAIRE, Guillaume.
Si Je Mourais La-Bas?
Paris: Louis Broder, 1962.

Binding by George Leroux after Braque.

Est. 40,000 - 60,000 EUR ($53,173 - $79, 972).

Sold 60,750 EUR ($80,812, incl. premium).

Many of the remaining lots realized five figure prices, not the least of which was a copy of the Georges Braque-illustrated edition of Apollonaire's Si Je Mourais La-Bas?, its eighteen colored woodcuts considered to be Braque's most important book illustrations. Issued in a total edition of 180 copies, the copy above, bound by Georges Leroux after Braque motifs, is one of forty with an extra suite of color woodcuts, each signed by Braque.

Estimated at $53,173 - $79,972, it sold for $80,812 (incl. premium).

[BRAQUE, Georges]. TUDAL, Antoine. Souspente.
Avec Une Lithographie en huit Couleurs de Georges Braque.
Paris: Robert Godet, 1945.

Binding by Thérèse Moncey.

Est. 2,500 - 3000 EUR ($3,325 - $3,990).
Sold 5,000 EUR ($6.650, incl. premium)

Even the stragglers - those modern illustrated books that sold below $10,000 - were impressive.

Braque's contribution to Antoine Tudal's Souspente is a lithograph in eight colors that is considered Braque's best such. This copy is one of an edition of 125.

Not much is known about the binder, Thérèse Moncey, beyond that she worked in Paris 1945-1965, and won a grand prize of French binding in 1950.

Estimated to sell for $3,325 - $3,990, it sold for $6.650 (incl. premium).
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Images courtesy of Sotheby's, with our thanks.
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An Art-Box Fit For Moby Dick

by Stephen J. Gertz

Illustration to Moby Dick by Rockwell Kent.

In 1926, the Lakeside Press of Chicago, established in 1903 as a division of industrial printer R.R. Donnelly, commissioned Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) to illustrate a new edition of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Published in 1930 and limited to  1000 copies, the edition has been hailed as a masterpiece, and is credited with a renaissance of interest in the novel.

Hayo Hans Hinrichs bought a copy. A friend and important  patron of Rockwell Kent, Hinrichs was a major collector of all the artist produced - paintings, engravings, drawings - which he proudly displayed in his homes in Staten Island, NYC and Quogue, Long Island, NY. Later, in 1947, he commissioned Kent to write and illustrate, To Thee!, A Toast in Celebration of  a Century of Opportunity and Acoomplishment in America 1847-1947, a corporate promotional volume limited to 500 copies for the Rahr Malting Company, of which Hinrichs was a senior executive.

Two generations hence, Hinrichs's granddaughter, Julie H.B. Stackpole,  now in possession of the book and a fine bookbinder, set out to create an appropriate environment for this copy to rest in, protected and at peace. The fact that her husband, Renny, and father-in-law, Edouard A. Stackpole of Nantucket, came from whaling families, were  preeminent maritime historians, and recognized authorities on the whale trade only provided additional inspiration and insight into the project. And oh,  not so by the way,  the initial "B" in Julie H.B. Stackpole  stands for "Beinicke." Walter Beinecke Jr., the heir to the S&H Green Stamp fortune and savior of Old Nantucket, was her step-father; his father and uncles, all graduates of Yale, provided the funds to build and endow the university's  Beinicke Library.

If the pedigree to this copy and box were any finer they'd have to register it with the Westchester Kennel Club. Though oh so far from a dog it's definitely Best in Show material. Completed in 1972 as a gift for Edouard A. Stackpole, the case is one of the most dramatic art boxes you'll ever see.

Bound in gray morocco with onlays in shades of blue and gray of Niger and Levant morocco goatskin and white kid, embossed with linoleum cuts  on the two side panels and the front covering flap taken from Kent illustrations, and with a fine scrimshawed button from Edouard A. Stackpole's collection used to seal it, this deluxe case is a sight to behold.

Accompanying this copy is a 1972 First-Day-Issue of the Herman Melville/Historic Preservation cover and stamp with an original whaling watercolor by Massachusetts artist Eunice Alter with an attached sperm whale tooth. 

This copy in this box, is, as far as I'm concerned, the most stunning and desirable out there. Its provenance is impeccable, the connection to Kent sterling, and the box-binding solid gold. Three generations of Kent enthusiasts, the first closely associated with Kent, have husbanded and lovingly nurtured this copy for over eighty years. The box is a love letter in fine leather to Kent and Melville. 

Call it Ishmael or whatever you wish, this copy of this edition in this box will be a significant addition to any Kent collection and certainly a shining highlight to any  collection of Melville. You don't have to be Ahab to harpoon this great whale.
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[KENT, Rockwell, illustrator]. MELVILLE, Herman. Moby Dick: or, The Whale. Chicago, IL: The Lakeside Press, 1930. First Edition Thus, limited to 1000 copies. Three small quarto volumes. 280 black & white woodcuts as full page plates, head- tailpieces, and text illustrations. Publisher's original black cloth, silver-stamped. Top edge black, others untrimmed.  This copy housed in full leather custom box.
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Images courtesy of Lux Mentis, currently offering this copy, with our thanks.
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