Category Archives: Books

books

Vladimir Mayakovsky Celebrated

The 2013 publishing and exhibition project Mayakovsky—Manifesto marked the 120th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1930). Produced by the State V.V. Mayakovsky Museum and curator Mikhail Karasik, the exhibit was presented at the PROUN gallery in the Vinzavod Centre for Contemporary Art (Moscow) from December 2013 to January 2014.

After the show closed, the exhibition was editioned and mounted in large orange boxes holding the 13 works by 13 artists, each a personal homage to Mayakovsky. The project has a print-run of 27 numbered copies (boxes) signed by the artists and Princeton has acquired no. 17. The artists include Stas Bags, Alexander Djikia, Mikhail Karasik, Grigory Katsnelson, Alexander Lavrentyev, Kira Matissen, Ilya Obukhov, Alexei Parygin, Mikhail Pogarsky, Victor Remishevsky, Dmitry Sayenko, Taras Sgibnev, and Vasily Vlasov.

The project website states, “Mikhail Karasik, a St Petersburg artist, graphic designer and book expert, has been a popularizer of this genre for the past quarter century and the present action is a logical continuation of the large-scale project that he carried out a decade ago: in 2003, the authorial publishing house Kharmsizdat produced four striking box books: Russian Dada, Oberiu Box, Literary Constructivism, and The Leningrad Literary Underground.”

Mikhail Karasik and Andrei Rossomakhin, Mayakovsky-Manifesto (Moscow: Timofei Markov, 2013). 1 case (13 works) Contents: 1. Stand up / Stas Bags. Accordion book, 10 leaves — 2. Twosome / Alexander Djikia. 2 sheets in cover — 3. Mayakovsky ticket / Mikhail Karasik. 11 leaves in cover — 4. Shackled by film / Grigory Katsnelson. 18 sheets in cover — 5. Mayakovsky : calling cards / Alexander Lavrentyev. 10 leaves in a folder — 6. Rezche cherez / Kira Matissen. 3 newspapers in a folder — 7. V. Mayakovsky : a cloud in trousers / Ilya Obukhov. 16 pages in a cover — 8. V. Mayakovsky : night / Alexei Parygin. 6 leaves in a cover — 9. Beyond the Rosta windows / Mikhail Pogarsky. 12 pages in a cover — 10. Mayakovsky : 150000000 ; Mayakovsky : the bathhouse / Victor Remishevsky. Installation and object — 11. Sanitary book / Dimitry Sayenko. 16 pages in cover — 12. A face of our time / Taras Sgibnev. 12 pages in a cover — 13. The heart of cinema ; How are you? / Vasily Vlasov. 2 posters. Copy 17 of 27. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

Les Ballets suédois

Michel Fokine (1880-1942), et al., Les Ballets suédois dans l’art contemporain (Paris: Editions du Trainon, 1931). Texte de Fokine, Hedvig Nenzén-Haquinius, Rolf de Maré; Georges Rémon; Alexandre Tasman; Pierre Tugal; Contributions de Claudel, Casella … [et al.]; hors-texte en couleurs de: Pierre Bonnard; Giorgio De Chirico; Paul Alfred Colin; Fernand Léger; along with Dardel, Foujita, Gladky, Hellé, Hugo, Lagut, Laptade, Murhpy, Nerman, Parr, Perdriat, and Steinlen. Copy 292 of 1000. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process

The year 1920, in which the Ballets Suédois made its debut in Paris, was not a good year for Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes. His tours were not successful, and his financial situation was complicated by theft and lawsuits. … Rolf de Maré and his Ballets Suédois would, for the next five years, produce modern theater works incorporating dance, mime, painting, and music that would rival anything Diaghilev had created in terms of their avant-garde aspirations. It was perhaps partly due to Diaghilev’s reaction to the success of the Ballets Suédois that the Ballets Russes began to turn away form Russian painters and composers and instead employ the newest French artists as collaborators. — Sally Banes, Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism (2011) GV1623 .B36 1993

Graphic Arts is fortunate to have acquired this limited edition compendium, with covers designed by Fernand Léger (1881–1955). A suite of fourteen plates are colored by pochoir (stencil) and the volume includes sixty-four heliogravures, with text contributions by Luigi Pirandello, Jean Cocteau, and Frances Picabia. The colorful pochoirs feature costume design by Léonard Tsugouharu Foujita (1886–1968) and set designs by Léger and Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978).

Traité d’enluminure d’art au pochoir par Jean Saudé

This stencil reemerged recently, mixed in with our extensive collection of blocks, plates, and stones. Thanks to researcher Kitty Maryatt of Scripps College for bringing it to our attention.

The pochoir stencil is one, we believe, of many that accompanied Jean Saudé’s book Traite d’enluminure d’art au pochoir when it was published in 1925. What is interesting is that the design on the metal stencil is reproduced as a background color to several pages in the book, much larger than this stencil and often upsidedown. See below.

Jean Saudé, Traité d’enluminure d’art au pochoir par Jean Saudé; précédé de notes par mm. Antoine Bourdelle, Lucien Descaves ; aquarelles de Beauzée-Reynaud, [et al.]; reproductions d’après Jean Fouquet, A. Besnard; image de Georgin (Paris: Editions de l’ibis, 1925). Copy 194 of 500. Princeton copy is no. 1 in the Charles Rahn Fry Pochoir Collection. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2004-0096Q
Another wonderful element of the volume is the use of sequential images to show the painting of the stencils onto a collotype to create a fully painted or printed image.

Louis XIV visits the Royal Academy of Sciences

In this fictitious scene, Louis XIV is visiting the Royal Academy of Sciences, where a group of academicians are gathered to watch the dissection of a fox.

The engraving is posted in conjunction with an exhibition being organized for the main gallery of Firestone Library, Princeton University, to coincides with the tercentenary of the death of Louis XIV (1638-1715). Versailles on Paper: A Graphic Panorama of the Palace and Gardens of Louis XIV opens on February 13 and runs through July 19, 2015.

Sébastien Leclerc (1637-1714), [Louis XIV Visiting the Royal Academy of Sciences], engraved frontispiece in Claude Perrault (1613-1688), Memoires pour servir a l’Histoire Naturelle des Animaux (Paris: Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy for the Imprimerie royale, 1671-1676).
Rare Books Ex Oversize 8807.707e

“In 1671 and 1676,” writes Anita Guerrini, “the royal printing office in Paris published two volumes of a sumptuous elephant folio titled Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des animaux. Emblazoned with a large royal emblem encompassing a crown, scallop shells, and fleurs-de-lis proclaiming the volumes to be a product of royal patronage, the 1671 title page named no author, although the 1676 volume did name the physician and architect Claude Perrault as ‘compiler.’ The books were printed on fine paper and were illustrated with numerous engravings by Sébastien LeClerc, one of the best known of Louis XIV’s stable of court artists and engravers.”

“…The volumes were obviously meant to showcase Louis XIV’s patronage of the sciences and perhaps also to guarantee its continuation; the front matter included an illustration of a visit of the king to the Paris Academy of Sciences—a visit that had not yet taken place at the time of publication.”

“The project was one of several of the Paris Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV’s minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert and supported by the crown. Early in 1667, Claude Perrault announced a project of “anatomical observation” at one of the first meetings of the academy.”–Anita Guerrini, “The ‘Virtual Menagerie’: The Histoire des animaux Project,” Configurations 14, no. 1-2 (winter/spring 2006): 29-41 (Firestone PN55 .C66)

The Golden Book of Portuguese Tinned Fish

When the Instituto Português de Conservas de Peixe (Portuguese Institute of Canned Fish) was established in Lisbon, a search was made for an ingenious writer/artist to convey the beauty and drama of tinned fish.

The Portuguese writer, painter, and film director José Leitão de Barros (1896-1967) took on the project organizing and directing an ensemble of visual artists including photographer Manuel Alves San Payo (1890-1974), painter José de Bragança, as well as Raúl Reis, Mário Novais, Raimundo Vaissier, Ferreira da Cunha e Almeida Graça and many others.

Leitão de Barros was a talented film director and designer, whose work began in 1918 with LeitMal de Espanha; O Homem dos Olhos Tortos; and Malmequer (1918); followed by Nazaré, Praia de Pescadores (1929); Festas da Curia (1927); Lisboa (1930); Maria do Mar (1930) and dozens of others. He also published and illustrated a variety of newspapers and magazines under another career as a photojournalist.

In 1940, he was named the Secretary General of the Exposição do Mundo Português (The Portuguese World Exhibition) held in Lisbon under President Oliveira Salazar. Three years later, he was chiefly responsible for the government supported “Peoples Fair” and went on to become director of the National Society of Fine Arts.

José Leitão de Barros (1896-1967), compiler, The Golden Book of Portuguese Tinned Fish (Lisbon: Instituto Português de Conservas de Peixe, 1938. Graphic Arts Collection GAX in process

Several of Leitão de Barros’s films are available online. Here is a sample:

Isotypes

From 1925 to 1934, Otto Neurath (1882-1945) was Director of the Gesellschafts-und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Vienna, where he and his team produced informational charts using a system of pictorial statistics. Neurath referred to them as Isotype (International System Of TYpographic Picture Education). This series of pictograms presents dry statistics in colorful, easy to understand visual images.

Neurath was invited to help establish an institute for pictorial statistics in Moscow, that became known as The All-Union Institute of Pictorial Statistics of Soviet Construction and Economy or the Izostat Institute.

“The most notable English-language Izostat publication,” writes Emma Minns, “is an album produced for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, the design of which was overseen by the artist [El Lissitzky], USSR: An Album Illustrating the State Organization and National Economy of the USSR.”

“…The use of only photographs and Isotype charts brings an air of authority and gravitas to the books, and gives the impression that these are objective works concerned with facts, rather than anecdotes or points of view.” — Emma Minns, “Unity in Difference: The Representation of Life in the Soviet Union through Isotype,” A People Passing Rude (2012).

El Lissitzky (1890-1941), USSR. An Album Illustrating the State Organization and National Economy of the U.S.S.R., edited by Ivan V. Sautin and Ivan P. Ivanitsky (Moscow: Scientific Publishing Institute of Pictorial Statistics, 1939). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

Soviet Pavilion at 1939 New York World’s Fair

“Russia to Spend $2,000,000 on Exhibit at Fair” proclaimed the New York Herald Tribune in 1938. “Plans for the pavilion of the Soviet Union at the New York World’s Fair 1939 have been approved by the Fair’s board of design, Vasily V. Bourgman, Soviet commissioner to the exposition announced yesterday at the Soviet Consultant. ‘Russian,’ Bourgman said, ‘will spend more than $2,000,000 on its building and exhibit.’” A year later on May 1, 1939 the paper reported that over 600,000 people had visited the fair on the first day.
Constructivist artists Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) and his wife Varvara Stepanova (1894-1958) were commissioned to photograph and design a number of books for the Soviet pavilion. They worked on issues on the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (Vsesoiuznaia sel’skokhoziaistvennaia vystavka) and the photograph albums Soviet Aviation, Procession of the Youth, and The Red Army and Navy, among others.

Thanks to Marquand librarian Sandra Brooke, we found that Princeton had these rare volumes in their original covers on the open stacks and moved them into the Graphic Arts Collection.

Soviet Aviation. Designed by Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova (Moscow, Leningrad: State Art Publishers, 1939). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

USSR, The Red Army and Navy. Designed by Alexander Rodchenko and Stepanova Varvara Stepanova (Moscow and Leningrad: State Art Publishers, 1939). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process. Original red leatherette boards, lettered in red and cream and with large stamped red star on cover.

Weeds and Wild Flowers

When the Grolier Club presented an exhibition of the best books created in the twentieth century, Weeds and Wild Flowers was included among the exemplary volumes (Martin Hutner, A Century for the Century, David R. Godine, 2004. Annex A Z1033.F5 H87 2004q).

Armida Maria-Theresa Colt wrote the text, subtitled Some Irreverant Words and George Mackley (1900-1983) created wood engravings, which were printed by William Carter (1912-2001) at Rampant Lions Press in Cambridge, and published by Two-Horse Press in London. A second volume includes a suite of 11 wood engravings without the text, covered with yellow Tatsumaki Japanese handmade paper.

The book joins 40 others printed by the Rampant Lions Press, founded in 1924 by William Carter and continued by his son, Sebastian, until 2008 when the press was closed. The elder Carter described his work as “a matter of seeing the simplest way of doing something, which is usually the best.” (The Guardian, 21 March 2001)

Armida Maria Theresa Colt, Weeds and Wildflowers, Some Irreverent Words, with wood-engravings by George Mackley (London: Two-Horse Press, 1965). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

The Chimera and The Princeton Print Club

Guy Crittington MacCoy (1904-1981), Abstraction #2 [later called Yellow Heads], 1937. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 3 (winter 1943). Serigraph. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01781.
Leo John Meissner (1895-1977), Oyster Shells, 1933. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 2 (autumn 1942). Wood engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01851.

In the February 4, 1943 Daily Princetonian Bulletin it was noted that beyond the exhibitions and lectures sponsored by the Princeton Print Club (PPC), “the Club is endeavoring to produce a silk screen lithograph for each issue of the newly formed publication, Chimera.” When the little magazine began in the spring of 1942, Elmer Adler was asked to join the publication’s advisory board and Kneeland McNulty, Class of 1943 and the second president of the PPC, was made art editor. For the second issue, Adler arranged for a wood engraving by Leo Meissner (1895-1977) entitled Oyster Shells, to be printed for the Princeton journal.

In October of 1942, the PPC mounted an exhibition of 40 prints by contemporary American artists, to be sold for $5 each to benefit the club and to enrich the lives of the students. Adler arranged for the prints, including Meissner’s Oyster Shells. Highlighted were a number of serigraphs, which was a new variation in screen printing Adler wished to promote. A Princeton reviewer wrote, “A group of serigraphs make Guy MacCoy the find of the show.” The Chimera published MacCoy’s Abstraction in their winter 1943 issue with a note, “It is the belief of the editors that this is the first serigraph to appear in a widely distributed magazine.”

Although Adler hoped the students would print a new serigraph for each issue of Chimera, only one other print was ever included. The book illustrator E. McKnight Kauffer (1893-1954) often created designs to be reproduced in pochoir or stenciled prints. For Chimera’s spring 1943 issue, he designed a portrait of Homer, which was presumably printed at Princeton for the magazine. Seven years later, Kauffer was given an exhibition of his work by the PPC in their new headquarters in 36 University Place.

E. McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954), Homer, 1944. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 4 (spring 1943). Serigraph. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01503

Next year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of The Princeton Print Club. If you or your father were members, please let us know. We are gathering stories and memories.

Les portraits de quelques personnes signalées en piété

Les Portraits de quelques personnes signalées en piété … de l’ordre des minimes, avec leurs éloges tirez des historiens et des chroniques du mesme ordre (Portraits of some people reported in the pious order of the Minimes. Praised by historians & chronicles of this order), ([Paris?]: 1668). 18 engraved plates engraved by Etienne Picart (1632-1721); Jean Boulanger (ca. 1606-ca. 1680); Gérard Scotin (1643-1715); and others. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process

Bound with: Antonio Tempesta (1555-1530), Vita et miracula D. Bernardi Clarevallensis abbatis (Rome, 1587) and Les figures et l’abrégé de la vie, de la mort et des miracles de S. François de Paule (Paris, 1664). More about these two in other posts.

Although canonized by Pope Leo X in 1519, St. Francis of Paula (1416- 1507) was never ordained a priest. He founded the order of Minims and this volume is a graphic record of Francis and other friars in that order.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “In 1474 Sixtus IV gave him permission to write a rule for his community, and to assume the title of Hermits of St. Francis: this rule was formally approved by Alexander VI, who, however, changed their title into that of Minims. After the approbation of the order, Francis founded several new monasteries in Calabria and Sicily. He also established convents of nuns, and a third order for people living in the world, after the example of St. Francis of Assisi.”

Other notable Minim friars are Charles Plumier (1646-1704); Louis Feuillée (1660-1732); Louis Feuillée (1660–1732); Marin Mersenne (1588–1648); Jean François Niceron (1613–1646); and Charles Plumier (1646–1704).