Category Archives: Events

Cultures of the Book: Science, Technology, and the Spread of Knowledge


The website and program is now available for the upcoming conference “Cultures of the Book: Science, Technology and the Spread of Knowledge,” Wednesday-Thursday, November 6-7, 2019 at University of Chieti-Pescara (Map).

This conference is subsidized and so, registration is free (opening soon). Here is the preliminary program for the two days:  https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55c341d8e4b0e961f8bed261/t/5d650c2492d4f30001766e66/1566903332726/Culture+of+the+Book-+Programme.pdf

The focus is broad but there is a nice attempt to include Eastern European and Arabic material along with the usual. “This conference will be of interest to historians of the book, printing and print culture, scientists and technologists who are interested in the book, bibliographers, librarians, conservationists, bibliophiles and book collectors and practitioners including printers, binders and type designers. It is not looking at books from aesthetic or literary perspectives but how science and technology have been deployed in book production and how the book itself has been a vehicle for the promotion of science and technology. We are covering all periods, regions and cultures and interpreting the ‘book’ widely to include clay tablets, codices, printed texts and electronic media. Both the physicality and culture of the book are explored. The conference is not only looking at the word, but images as well, including woodcuts, engravings, photographs and digital images.”

Subjects include: Science, technology and the making of the book, before and after the printing revolution, for example, writing instruments, substrates, ink, punches, presses, type, bindings; The relationship of technology to the appearance of letter forms and images; Science, technology and book conservation; and more.

This event is being organized by the joint Centre for Printing History and Culture at Birmingham City University and University of Birmingham, United Kingdom and the Department of Language, Literature and Modern Culture, University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy. [Pictures added by me]

 

 

NY Art Book Fair 2019

2019 Art Book Fair https://nyabf2019.printedmatterartbookfairs.org/

Ariane Mayer, Poèmes à brûler [Poems to Burn] (Paris: Lairie un regard modern, no date).

The cigarette package is handmade with images from 1950s magazines. The individual cigarettes are rolled poems.  https://www.leslivresdariane.com/

Till the Last Gasp, A Graphzine History 1975-2005. Three hundred zines, books, and posters from a largely undocumented movement of independent artists’ books and fanzine publications called Graphzines, which emerged in France beginning in 1975.

Sable Elyse Smith and Cal Siegel, In that Empire (New York: Pacific City, 2019)

… In that Empire is a conversation, an experimental cartography bound by each initial decision. Jorge Luis Borges’ story “On Exactitude in Science” frames the encounter: each “L” and “R” within the text creates a list of sixty-one positions. Using these directionals, the artists took sixty-one photos in West Newbury, Massachusetts and Harlem, New York, respectively. The reader is invited to access the book through multiple entry points, from front to back, in any order. No matter the beginning, a turn of the page becomes an act of continuing the conversation of experimental cartography established in the making of this book.

A Single Drop of Ink for a Mirror

George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), Adam Bede (Chapter 2, page 1 of 7):

With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799.

This interdisciplinary conference will focus on intersections between literary and visual art in the 19th century. A group of 21 literary scholars and art historians will present new work on the often neglected links between text and image in the long nineteenth century, from Blake to early- twentieth century photography. A small exhibition in the Princeton Art Museum will accompany the conference.

Friday, 4 October 2019
https://princetonartlit2019.princeton.edu/
9:00 Welcome: Deborah Nord and Rebecca Rainof
9:15 Plenary Panel 1
Tim Barringer (Yale University), “Livingstone and the Lion: Image and Text in Victorian African Exploration Literature”
Ruth Yeazell (Yale University), “Words for Vermeer”
Chair: Anna Arabindan-Kesson (Princeton University)
10:30 Break
11:00 Illustrations, Prints, and Prophecies
Rosalind Parry (Princeton University), “Clare Leighton’s British Pastoral”
Joseph Viscomi (University of North Carolina), “Authenticating Blake: Life-time Impressions, Posthumous Prints, and Forgeries; or, Printing Blake: William, Catherine, and all the others”
Robyn Warhol (Ohio State University), “Reading Victorian Novel Illustrations in the Serial Moment”
Chair: Meredith Martin (Princeton University)
12:30 Lunch Break
1:45 Visit to Exhibition, Princeton Art Museum
Rosalind Parry and Ariel Kline, Curators
3:00 Childhood and Self
Aileen Farrar (Nova Southeastern University), “F.D. Bedford’s Childhood in a Drawer: The Illustrated ‘Lost’ Realities of Peter Pan”
Alexandra Neel (Loyola Marymount University) , “Jane Eyre’s Selfie”
Linda Shires (Yeshiva University), “Image><Text: Kipling’s Just So Stories”
Chair: Jeff Nunokawa (Princeton University)
4:30 Break
4:45 Keynote Address
Caroline Arscott (The Courtauld Institute of Art), “Picture Posies: Illustration and the Idyllic Mode, 1860-1875”
Introduction: Bridget Alsdorf (Princeton University)
6:30-8:30 Reception (Chancellor Green Rotunda)

Saturday, October 5
9:00 The PRB: A Family Portrait
Jeremy Melius (Tufts University), “Ruskin Undone”
Natalie Prizel (Princeton University), “Pre-Raphaelite in Black”
Jason Rosenfeld (Marymount Manhattan College): “Family Man: John Everett Millais’s Illustrations of Paternal Affection in the 1860s”
Chair: Anne McCauley (Princeton University)
10:30 Break
10:45 The Condition of England at Home and Abroad
Emily Madsen (University of Alaska, Anchorage), “Ghost in the Palimpsest: Missionary Revision”
David Pike (American University): “Nineteenth-Century Slum Imaginaries Then and Now”
Rebecca Rainof (Princeton University), “Van Gogh and the Victorians”
Chair: Natalie Prizel (Princeton University)
12:15 Lunch Break
1:30 Kate Flint (University of Southern California), “Snails, Slugs, and Scale”
Introduction: Deborah Nord
2:30 Picturing Modernism
Sophia Andres (University of Texas), “Virginia Woolf’s Pre-Raphaelite Incongruities in Orlando”
Maria DiBattista (Princeton University), “Taken from Life: The Modernist Portraits of E. O. Hoppé”
Ariel Kline (Princeton University), “The Minotaur”
Chair: Rebecca Rainof
3:45 Break
4:00 Plenary Panel 2
Elizabeth Helsinger (University of Chicago), “Ekphrastic Questions: Keats, Rossetti, and Field”
Rachel Teukolsky (Vanderbilt University), “Ruskin’s Media: The Cathedral and the Machine”
Chair: Rachael DeLue (Princeton University)
5:15 Summing Up: Jonah Siegel (Rutgers University)

Image credit: William Blake, “Eternally I labour on.” William Blake Collection (GC115); Graphic Arts Collection, Special Collections, Princeton University Library.
https://library.princeton.edu/find/all/william%20blake

A Day of Printing Arts

Tag der druck kunst, the first national Day of Printing Arts held last March in Germany was a tremendous success and a call has gone out for a European Day of Printing Arts, to be held March 15, 2020. Initiated by the Berlin-based “Bundesverband Bildender Künstler” (the German Artists Association) all graphic artists, along with as museums, galleries and art institutes are being called to participate. The date was selected to celebrate the anniversary of the recognition of printing techniques as intangible heritage by the German Council of Unesco.

https://www.aepm.eu/publications/conference-proceedings-2/safeguarding-intangible-heritage-passing-on-printing-techniques-to-future-generations/towards-a-european-lobby-for-intangible-printing-heritage/

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if members of the printing community in the United States were to join our colleagues and hold an international day of printing arts? APHA? Grolier? STA? Ladies of Letterpress? CBAA? Guild of Bookworkers? APA?

VISAPUR 2019


https://plas.princeton.edu/people/visiting-scholars-artists-puerto-rico


The Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS) is once again hosting members of the academic and artistic communities of Puerto Rico as visitors at Princeton University in summer 2019. The program continues to provide relief to scholars, students, and artists affected by the catastrophic aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 by allowing them to continue their work at Princeton on a temporary basis.

The VISAPUR program provides a range of support including a stipend to cover living expenses, office space, access to libraries and other scholarly material, and an opportunity to engage with colleagues at Princeton.

Endorsed by the Princeton Task Force on Puerto Rico, PLAS manages the program with co-sponsorship from the Office of the Provost. Additional support has been provided by, the Firestone Library, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Office of the Dean of the Faculty, Office of the Dean of the College, Graduate School, Office of the Registrar, and Housing and Real Estate Services. Special thanks to professor emeritus Arcadio Díaz Quiñones, former PLAS director and professor of Spanish and Portuguese, for his leadership and commitment to the project.

See pictures from last year’s program also: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/08/16/welcome-visiting-scholars-and-artists-from-puerto-rico/

Among the many treasures pulled to show our visitors was this new acquisition: Luis Lloréns Torres (1876-1944), Valle de Collores; grabados por Consuelo Gotay (Puerto Rico: Gotay, 1991). “Trabajaron en la tipografía, la impresión y la encuadernación, Consuelo Gotay, Rafael Orejuela, and Víctor Rodríguez Gotay.” Copy 44 of 100. Inscribed to Arcadio Díaz Quiñones from the artist. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

 

Public Typewriter


Now through July 27, 2019, is the exhibition “New Typographics: Typewriter Art as Print,” featuring Lenka Clayton, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Gustave Morin, Elena del Rivero and Allyson Strafella, at the Print Center, 1614 Latimer Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103: http://printcenter.org/100/siena-and-new-typographics/

The exhibition highlights work by artists who use the typewriter as a matrix for forming text into image. Typically referred to as typewriter “art” or typewriter “drawings,” this exhibition posits that artworks created with a typewriter should be recognized as prints, in light of the mechanism and process of their production.

“I use the typewriter against itself. It was built to draft first chapters of novels and resignation letters; I use it to draw my son’s eyelashes and knitted socks . . . . I really enjoy that this process allows me to focus on those very simple forms and moments that are, perhaps, usually overlooked.”–Lenka Clayton

While you are there, you can “Create Your Own Typewriter Print.” The Print Center will host a “Public Typewriter” as part of Philly Typewriter’s “Philadelphia Public Typewriter Program.” Philly Typewriter is a retail typewriter store located in Philadelphia that also repairs typewriters and hosts classes and events. A temporary loan of a manual typewriter prepared for use by typewriter restoration classes at Philly Typewriter will allow visitors to make their own typewriter prints.

On Thursday, May 2, at 6:00 p.m. curator Ksenia Nouril will give a talk on the history of typewriter prints, highlighting key moments and artists that were influential to the thinking around the exhibition.

Concrete poets Dom Sylvester Houédard and Gustave Morin highlight the typewriter print’s immense potential for both visual and linguistic communication. In concrete poetry, the representation of language supersedes its legibility and even meaning. The results are wildly whimsical and fantastically funny renderings that allude to historical and imaginary people, places, and things.

Houédard, whom Morin calls “The Great Typewriter Poet,” was a Benedictine priest in post-World War II England. His typewritten visual poems, which he named “typestracts,” were developed together with leading conceptual writers and artists of the period, including but not limited to William S. Burroughs, Bob Cobbing, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Allen Ginsberg and Yoko Ono.–Press release

http://printcenter.org/100/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/TPC_Siena_Typewriter_Gallery-Notes-1.pdf

Dom Sylvester Houédard

Photo Book Show

Only one more day left to attend The Photography Show at Pier 94. The longest-running and foremost exhibition dedicated to the photographic medium, the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) has mounted the 39th edition of the show featuring nearly 100 of the world’s leading fine art photography galleries.

Each year the photobook portion of the show has grown larger and more international, including the U.S., Europe, Asia, Canada, Mexico, the Middle East, and South America. Book dealers, publishers, and photography-related organizations include:

10×10 Photobooks, New York
21st Editions, South Dennis, MA
AKIO NAGASAWA Gallery | Publishing, Tokyo
American Photography Archives Group, APAG, New York
Aperture Foundation, New York
Artbook | D.A.P., New York
Benrido, Kyoto
Brilliant Graphics, Exton, PA
Candor Arts, Chicago, IL
Citizen Editions, Brooklyn, NY
Conveyor Editions, Jersey City, NJ

DAMIANI, Bologna, Italy
Daylight Books, Durham, NC
Dust Collective, Stow, MA
GOST Books, London
Harper’s Books, East Hampton, NY
KOMIYAMA TOKYO, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
KGP – Kris Graves Projects, Long Island City, NY
L’Artiere, Bologna, Italy
Light Work, Syracuse, NY
MACK, London
Minor Matters Books, Seattle, WA
Nazraeli Press, Paso Robles, CA
photo-eye, Santa Fe, NM
Photograph Magazine, New York
Saint Lucy Books, Baltimore, MD
STANLEY/BARKER, Shropshire, UK
SUPER LABO, Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan
Steidl Publishers, Göttingen, Germany
TBW Books, Oakland, CA
The Classic, Arnaville, France
TIS Books, Brooklyn, NY
Yoffy Press, Atlanta, GA
Zatara Press, Richmond, VA

International Kerouac Poetry Festival

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), The History of Bop. Introduction by Mark McMurray (Montclair, NJ; Canton, NY : Caliban Press, 1993). One of 200 copies. Graphic Arts Collection 2004-3446N

In conjunction with the 4th annual International Kerouac Festival in New York City, we pulled Kerouac’s biography of Bop. Originally published in Escapade magazine in April 1959 as “The Beginning of Bop,” Kerouac’s text was also included on the Verve record album Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation (1960). Over 30 years went by before Mark McMurray printed a limited edition at his Caliban Press. http://www.northcountryartists.com/mark-mcmurray/

 

“Bop began with Jazz,” writes Kerouac, “but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or [Thelonious] Monk was walking down past a men’s clothing store on 42nd Street, or South Main in L.A. and from the loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head. and that is a new art. Bop.

https://www.festivalkerouac.com/

The Kerouac Festival began in Vigo, Spain, seven years ago and only recently opened a satellite event in New York City during the first week in April. Performances, readings, and discussions in English and in Spanish are being held in various locations throughout the city.

Poets at the Festival will include Wöyza, Marina Oroza, Ana Vidal, Alberto Avendaño, Bob Holman, Rocío Cerón, Abraham Chavelas, Jani Rose, Keila Vall, Chris Campanioni, Francisco Álvarez Koki, E.A. Pulgar, Kathryn Strobel, Vanesa Álvarez, Courtney Surmanek, Mariana Sofía Lima, Rachel Kara Pérez, Salomé Egas, Anthony Mcperson, Lisa Markuson, José Lameiras, Celia Parra, and Marcos De La Fuente.

Tag der Druckkunst

Congratulations to our colleagues in Germany for the enormous success of their first “Tag der Druckkunst“ (National Day of Printing Arts) on March 15, 2019. Scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the inclusion of artistic printing techniques in the nationwide directory of the Intangible Cultural Heritage by the German UNESCO Commission, the day included more than 250 events held nationwide.


Their website notes, “Artists, print shops, museums, galleries, art societies and many others contributed to the preservation and development of artistic printing techniques with a multitude of activities and to draw attention to the importance of printing for culture in Germany.” https://www.bbk-bundesverband.de/veranstaltungen/tag-der-druckkunst-15-maerz-2019/veranstaltungen-zum-tag-der-druckkunst/

This follows on the success of a smaller event in 2018: https://www.unesco.de/en/artistic-printing-techniques-relief-gravure-planographic-pressure-printing-and-their-mixed-forms

Germany’s national celebration is not unlike the Fête de l’estampe held each year in France on May 26 in honor of the recognition engravers received from Louis XIV: https://www.fetedelestampe.fr/

Perhaps some year the United States will follow their lead.
https://www.halle365.de/veranstaltung/tag-der-druckkunst

Swarthmore College’s Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary project

Visitors to the Book and Ephemera Fair in New York City today were treated to a preview of Swarthmore College’s Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary project, supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. http://fps.swarthmore.edu/

The two-year project brings renowned book artists into conversation with Syrian and Iraqi individuals who have resettled to Philadelphia. Driven by questions about displacement and refuge, history and experience, the project explores art’s capacity to build empathy and create a deeper sense of belonging.

Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary culminates in a series of exhibitions beginning this month at McCabe Library, Swarthmore College; three locations in Philadelphia throughout the summer;  and Brooklyn, New York City in the fall. Included will be artists books by Islam Aly, Maureen Cummins, Erik Ruin, Courtney Bowles and Mark Strandquist that weave archival research of refugee and migrant experiences with contemporary Syrian and Iraqi narratives.

Their works will be exhibited alongside works by Syrian and Iraqi project collaborators that were produced throughout a series of workshops led by the artists, as well as archival materials related to displacement from Swarthmore College’s Friends Historical Library and Peace Collection.

افتتاح معرض الأصدقاء والسلام والملاذ والعشاء المحلي

Join them at the exhibition opening and a Friends, Peace, & Sanctuary communal dinner on Friday March 29, 2019 beginning at 4:00 p.m.

٢٩ مارس ٢٠١٩
٤ إلى ٨ مساء
كلية سوارثمور: مكتبة مكايب و قاعة كلوثير
نرحب بكم في احتفال ختام مشروع الأصدقاء، السلام، والملاذ الآمن الذي امتد على عامين و ايضا ندعوكم في المشاركة في عشاء اجتماعي لكي تصبحوا جزءا من المحادثة في مشروع الأصدقاء، السلام، والملاذ الآمن.
تفضلوا معنا في احتفال ختم مشروع الاصدقاء، السلام والملاذ الآمن و افتتاح معرض الأول للفنانين إسلام علي، مورين كومينز، إيريك روين، كورتني بولز و مارك ستراندكويست، الذين تضمنوا أبحاث المحفوظات عن تجارب اللاجئين والمهاجرين مع التجارب السورية والعراقية المعاصرة لإعادة التوطين في فيلادلفيا. وسيتم عرض أعمالهم جنباً إلى جنب مع الأعمال التي يقوم بها متعاونون من المشاريع السورية والعراقية التي تم إنتاجها خلال سلسلة من ورش العمل التي يقودها الفنانون، بالإضافة إلى مواد أرشيفية متعلقة بالنزوح من مكتبة أصدقاء كلية سوارثمور التاريخية ومجموعة السلام.
بعد تجربة المعرض، اجتمع مع جميع المتعاونين والفنانين وأعضاء فريق المشروع الذين جعلوا هذا المشروع ممكنا في عشاء يقدمه مطبخ “أريا”. توقع الطعام اللذيذ وحفز المحادثة بينما نواصل بناء المجتمع معًا.

The initial exhibition will be up through April 24, 2019, at McCabe Library at Swarthmore College. A complete list of books and those for sale will be available soon. https://www.swarthmore.edu/libraries/mccabe-library