Isotypes

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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.

ussr2ussr1Neurath 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

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Soviet Pavilion at 1939 New York World’s Fair

soviet aviation7“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.
soviet aviation6Constructivist 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.
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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 army1USSR, 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.
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Lady’s Almanac

lady's almanacThis 1857 almanac has advice for women who might want to travel abroad this summer.
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lady's almanac4Woman’s Sphere in Modern Life.

A woman’s true sphere is in her family, in her home duties which furnish the best and most appropriate training for her faculties, pointed out by Nature herself. And for those duties some of the very highest and noblest that are entrusted to human agency, the fine machinery that is to perform them should be wrought to its last point of perfectness.

The wealth of a woman’s mind, instead of lying in the rough, should be richly brought out and fashioned for its various ends, while yet those ends are in the future, or it will never meet the demand. And for her own happiness, all the more because her sphere is at home. Her home store should be exhaustless, the stores she cannot go abroad to see.

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Lady’s Almanac for … (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1857). Graphic Arts Collection, Hamilton SS 431s

Des Animaux

grandville23Thanks to the generous donations of Mary M. Schmidt, former art librarian of Princeton’s Marquand Art and Archeology Library, the Graphic Arts Collection is the proud new owner of eight 19th -century French illustrated books. Among them, J. J. Grandville (1803-1847), Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux: études de moeurs contemporaines (Scenes from the Private and Public Lives of Animals: Studies of Contemporary Manners) might be the most curious.
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The first question one might ask is who is responsible for this book?

Authors include Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850); George Sand (1804-1876); Charles Nodier (1780-1844); Jules Janin (1804-1874); Pierre Bernard (1810-1876); Émile de La Bédollière (1812-1883); Louis Baudet (1804-1862); Édouard Lemoine (1814-1868); Lhéritier (dates unknown); Paul de Musset (1804-1880); Louis Viardot (1800-1883); Marie Mennessier-Nodier (1811-18??); and Alfred de Musset (1810-1857).

Wood engravers include Louis-Henri Brevière (1797-1869); Louis Dujardin (1808-1857); Célestin Nanteuil (1813-1873); Adolphe-Jean Best (1808-1879); J.-H. Caqué (1820?-1885?); Pierre-François Godard (1797-1864); Henri Désiré Porret (1800-185?); Charles  Tamisier (1813-1855?); Brugnot (dates unknown); Saint-Elme Gautier (1849-1876?); François Rouget (1825?-18??); E. Bernard (dates unknown); Barbant (dates unknown); John Andrew (1800?-185?); Isidore Leloir (1802-18??); D. Thiébault (date unknown); Guibault (dates unknown) and Quichon (dates unknown).des animaux 4

The concept and original drawings were by J.J. Grandville (pseudonym for Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard, 1803-1847), however, according to Gordon Ray, “The moving force behind this book was its publisher P.J. Hetzel, who himself contributed many chapters under the pseudonym of P.J. Stahl. Though his model was Les Français peints par eux-mêmes, Hetzel’s primary objective, as he remarks in his preface, was ‘to give words to Grandville’s marvelous animals, and to join our pen with his pencil…'” Gordon Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, 1700 to 1914 (1982) Graphic Arts: (GARF) Oversize NC980 .R3 1982q

Grandville provided 232 illustrations, about 2/3 of which are full page plates, during the book’s serial appearance between 1840 and 1842.

des animaux 1Mary Schmidt’s gifts, for which we are extremely grateful, include the following;
Le Lithographiana. Recueil de caricatures amusantes; d’anas, de reparties, bons mots, plaisanteries et petites anecdotes (Paris: Aubert, 1835).

Virgil, Les Georgiques de Virgile, traduites en vers français par Jacques Delille; avec des notes et les variants (Paris: De l’imprimerie de P. Didot aîné, 1803)

Molière, Oeuvres complètes de Molière. Nouvelle edition (Paris: Laplace, Sanchez et Cie., 1871)

Alain René Le Sage, Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane (Paris: Paulin, Libraire-Éditeur, 1836)

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Torquato Tasso, La Jérusalem délivrée. Édition illustrée par MM. Baron et C. Nanteuil (Paris: J. Mallet et Cie, 1841)

Lodovico Ariosto, Roland furieux (Paris: Morizot, Imp. S. Bacon, 1864)

Jean de La Fontaine, Fables de la Fontaine (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1868)

J.J. Grandville, Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux: études de moeurs contemporaines (Paris: J. Hetzel et Paulin, Schneider et Langrand, Lacrampe et Cie, 1842)

 

Another good source of information on Grandville’s book, and the others, is H. Hazel Hahn, Scenes of Parisian Modernity: Culture and Consumption in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Firestone Library (F) HC280.C6 H34 2009
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Welcome back Friends and Alumni

friends of the libraryThank you to the Friends of the Princeton University Library who joined us last night, perusing a small selection of new acquisitions in the Graphic Arts Collection. We looked at graphic material from the 17th century to the present, including one project that is still being printed.  There are so many events taking place over this busy alumni weekend, we are doubly grateful that so many of the Friends of the Library stopped by!

In case you missed it, here’s a list of what we saw:

  1. Jean Dieu de Saint-Jean (1654-1695), [Collection of the Costumes of France] (Paris, 1678-1698). Spine title: Mode de France. All engraved, engravers identified in the plate are Gérard Scotin (1643-1715) and Franz Ertinger (1640-ca.1710). Graphic Arts Collection.
  2. “The Learned Antiquarians Puzzl’d (by an English Epitaph),” January 1, 1770. Etching. Published by Mary Darly in Darly’s Comic Prints. Graphic Arts Collection. Inscription reads: Beneath this stone reposeth Claud Coster, tripe-seller of Impington, as doth his consort Jane.
  3. Allegorical Map of the Track of Youth, to the Land of Knowledge (London: John Wallis, June 25, 1796). Engraved fan by Vincent Woodthorpe (ca.1764-1822) with hand coloring. Purchased with funds from the Historic Map Collection and Graphic Arts Collection and Exposition universelle [souvenir] Paris,1867. Designed by the French printer Charles Maurand (1824-1904). Wood engraved fan. Graphic Arts Collection.
  4. London Almanack for the Year of Christ 1816 ([London]: Printed for the Company of Stationers, [1815]). Miniature with original decorated red morocco binding, gilt, onlays in buff, blue and green and a central hot-air balloon. Matching slipcase. Graphic Arts Collection.
  5. Fore-edge paintings on: Lord Byron (1788-1824), The Works (London: Printed for John Murray, 1814-1824). Graphic Arts Collection.
  6. John Sartain (1808-1897), after a drawing by James Hamilton (1819-1878) after daguerreotypes taken on the spot by John M. Hewitt (active 1840-1860). Ashland. The Homestead of Henry Clay. Philadelphia: F. Hegan, 1853. Etching, engraving, stipple engraving with hand coloring. Graphic Arts collection.
  7. J. Wilkes Booth, The Assassin, 1865. Altered albumen photograph after Charles Deforest Fredricks (1823-1894). Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Donald Farren, Class of 1958.
  8. Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea (New York: Riverhead Books, 2014). Copy 471 of 500. Graphic Arts Collection. 3D printed slipcase designed by  art director Helen Yentus. Fabricated on the MakerBot® Replicator® 2 Desktop 3D Printer.
  9. Antonio Martorell, Las Antillas Letradas [The Lettered Authors of the Antilles], 2014. 27 multi-media prints. Copy 1 of 100. Graphic Arts Collection. Purchased with funds provided by the Program in Latin American Studies.

 

Portraits de Louis le Grand

Portraits de Louis le GrandThis engraving offers ten profile portraits of Louis XIV (1638-1715) at various ages, beginning with his childhood. Thanks to research by Professor Volker Schröder, we believe the engraver to be Charles Simonneau (1645-1728), after the painter Antoine Benoist (1632-1717); along with text by the poet Etienne Pavillon.

This is also confirmed in the Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’le-de-France, “Le Cabinet des Médailles de la Bibliothèque nationale possède une double série de portraits en grisaille de Louis XIV à différents âges et de membres de la famille royale, qui ont été exécutés par Antoine Benoist, selon toute vraisemblance, en 17o4. Ces miniatures sont réparties dix par dix en deux cadres pareils; le premier, intitulé: Portraits de Louis le Grand suivant ses âges; le second, Portraits de la maison royalle. Le premier de ces cadres a été reproduit, à de très légères variantes près, sans doute au lendemain de la mort de Louis XIV, en une gravure attribuée à Charles Simonneau et dont on a plusieurs exemplaires au Cabinet des Estampes.”

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The Bibliothèque nationale de France owns Benoist’s beautiful set of portraits, painted in grisaille on paper pasted on metal and mounted within a gilt frame.

Charles Simonneau (1645-1728) after the painter Antoine Benoist (1632-1717), Portraits de Louis le Grand graves suivant ses differents âges MDCCIV [1704]. Text by the poet Etienne Pavillon.  Engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012.01433

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More Horrors 1815

rowlandson corsican2Attributed to Thomas Rowlandson (1756 or 1757, died 1827), The Corsican and His Blood Hounds at the Window of the Thuilleries Looking over Paris, April 16, 1815. Etching with hand coloring. GC112 Thomas Rowlandson Collection. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895.

On 6 April 1814, Napoleon abdicated his throne, leading to the accession of Louis XVIII and the first Bourbon Restoration. The defeated Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba, where he lived for almost a year before returning to Paris in March 1815.

In Rowlandson’s caricature, we see Napoleon back in Paris, looking out over the city from a parapet labeled ‘more horrors’ and ‘death and destruction.’ At his sides are Death and the Devil. The sand in an hourglass is running out and the sun is setting. The bloody hounds mentioned in the title are his four marshals: François Joseph Lefebvre, Dominique Joseph Vandamme, Louis Nicolas Davout, and Michel Ney.

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Photography and the Princeton Print Club

ppc81The Princeton Print Club (PPC) was established in October 1940 by Princeton University’s newly christened Research Associate in Graphic Arts, Elmer Adler (1884-1962) with exhibitions, a print lending collection, and annual print publications, among other events. Two months later, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) held its first exhibition of photography. Although there were no classes in photography at Princeton, through the PPC the undergraduates began studying and exhibiting contemporary American photography.

ppc82Little more than a year after the club was established, an exhibition of twenty exceptional color photographs of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico by David Hare (1917-1992) opened in January 1942 at the PPC’s headquarter at 40 Mercer Street. The son of Elizabeth Sage Goodwin, an art collector and a backer of the 1913 Armory Show, Hare grew up in a house filled with artists. As a professional photographer, he was an early practitioner in color photographic processes. This led to an assignment for the American Museum of Natural History to make photographic portraits of Hopi, Navajo and Zuni Indians in the Southwest. Hare exhibited the color-dye transfer prints in 1939 and then, published twenty of them in a limited edition portfolio. Adler introduced his students to Hare’s work and helped them borrow the portfolio for an exhibit (WA Oversize 2005-0041F).

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The return of many young men after WWII reinvigorated the club with a strong focus on modern technologies, in particular the photographic arts. In April of 1947, the PPC announced an exhibition of photographs by Brett Weston (1911-1993) of scenes in and around Princeton. The photographs were loaned by David H. McAlpin, Class of 1920, an early supporter of contemporary photography, only recently returned to his Princeton home from service as a Navy commander. Before the war, McAlpin had commissioned and purchased Weston’s work and it is possible that McAlpin was hoping the PPC would select one of Weston’s campus photographs for their annual print (they chose to publish George Jo Mess’s acquaint “Stanhope Hall, Princeton University”).

In October of the same year, again thanks to McAlpin, the PPC sponsored a large exhibition of photography by Ansel Adams (1902-1984). The photographer himself accepted an invitation to visit Princeton and give a talk about his work on October 23, held at the PPC’s new headquarters at 36 University Place. Adams told the students how he intended to have a career as a concert pianist, but a six weeks’ walking trip through the Sierra Nevadas turned his interest toward photography. When MoMA formulated plans for a photographic wing, Adams was appointed vice-chairman of the photographic committee, which also included McAlpin.newhall

Student photographers were encouraged to enter their prints the following April 1948, when McAlpin sponsored a photography contest “under the auspices of the Princeton Print Club.” Each print was to focus on the theme of roofs and chimneys found on the Princeton campus and prizes included both cash and photographic equipment. So successful was the event that another contest was held the next November, and each semester that followed.

Fifty student photographs were exhibited by the PPC in the fall semester and the Daily Princetonian announced that prizes would be awarded during a lecture by Beaumont Newhall, although it was in fact Nancy Newhall who had been invited and spoke to the students. As MoMA’s curator of photography during the war, Nancy Newhall was active in assembling the museum’s photography collection. She focused her remarks on the cross-section of contemporary camera work currently on exhibit at the print club.

ppc100Also during the fall of 1948, the students of the PPC were invited up to MoMA and allowed to personally select a group of photographs for a Princeton exhibition. Photography: Works of the Greatest Contemporary Masters included “a variety of artistic nude studies and the works of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston [Brett’s father], and Alfred Stieglitz.”

In conjunction with this exhibition, a lecture was given by color photographer Eliot Porter (1901-1990). The Daily Princetonian reported that Dr. Porter told the students that as a young man he was an enthusiastic birdwatcher. However, his love of nature and photography did not seem suitable for a career and so after majoring in chemical engineering at Harvard, he went on to earned an M.D. at the Harvard Medical School.

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Porter never lost his fascination with birds, however, and continued to photograph them. “Encouraged by the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who presented a show of Mr. Porter’s photographs at his New York gallery, he finally gave up teaching and started work full-time as a freelance photographer in 1939.”

“The Exact Instant,” was the title of a lecture given to the PPC in March of 1949 by Edward Steichen (1879-1973), curator of photography at MoMA. Several years earlier, a group of photographs taken by the U.S. Navy’s photography unit in the Pacific, under the direction of Captain Steichen, had been held by the New Jersey State Museum and Adler had selected a group for Princeton’s Graphic Arts Collection. The PPC made a selection of these prints and in conjunction with this exhibition welcomed Steichen to the Club.

In the same month, Adler announced the gift of 72 photographs by Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) including portraits of Katherine Cornell, Salvador Dali, Theodore Dreiser, Joe Louis, and Gene Tunney, among others. The Van Vechten collection was to be used in connection with Princeton Print Club activities and the students complied immediately by mounting an exhibition.

ppc99On October 31, 1949, photographer Ralph Steiner (1899-1986) wrote to his old friend Elmer Adler, “this afternoon at the Modern Museum picking prints for your show. There will be 25 in all.” Once again, MoMA had approved a loan for the PPC and the museum prints were carried to Princeton by Steiner on New Jersey Transit.

He stayed to deliver the Spencer Trask Lecture entitled simply, “Photography.” That evening prizes were also delivered to the winners of the photo competition, including first prize to Arthur D. Haas, Class of 1951, and second prize to William B. Hall, Class of 1947, and special mention was given to A. Perry Morgan Jr., Class of 1946, along with $5.00.”

One final photography show was arranged under the PPC before Adler left Princeton and the graphic arts collection moved into Firestone Library. For this April 1952 event, Edward Steichen personally selected the work of 44 young and upcoming photographers in MoMA’s collection, most only a few years older than the Princeton students. Nine of the men and women whose work was shown at the PPC were winners in Life magazine’s recent “Contest for Young Photographers,” certainly an inspiration to the young men of the PPC.

 

Fête de l’estampe

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Self-portrait by Robert Nanteuil

On May 26, 1660, twenty-one year old Louis XIV signed the Edict of St-Jean-de-Luz, pronouncing the art of engraving free and distinct from the mechanical arts and declaring that all French engravers were henceforth entitled to the privileges of other artists. Many believe that the young king was inspired by the beauty of the engravings by Robert Nanteuil (1623–1678), his royal engraver, and wished to give the talented printmaker equal rank with the portrait painters.

canva4sThanks to the wonderful donation of Princeton resident and Francophile John Douglas Gordon, Class of 1905, the Graphic Arts Collection holds 134 seventeenth-century engravings by Nanteuil, given in memory of his wife, Janet Munday Gordon. We are grateful to the Gordons and to Louis XIV on this monumental day.

To celebrate the promotion of engravers everywhere, museums and galleries throughout France are opening their collections to the public on Monday, May 26, 2014, for a day they are calling Fête de l’estampe: http://www.fetedelestampe.fr/page/manifestampe

Included will be nearly 150 events across the entire country, including exhibitions, performances, open artist studios, museum tours, interviews, films, printing demonstrations, and much more.  In Paris alone, there will be 23 events, with an additional 30 in the Île-de-France. If you can get there, everything will be free and open to the public.

Vive le roi!     Vive la France!     Vive l’estampe!

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Princeton Group Arts exhibits at the Princeton Print Club

ppc85In 1946, a group of Princeton University professors along with members of the Jewish and Quaker communities decided to form a racially and religiously integrated arts organization that would serve the cultural needs of Princeton. They called it Princeton Group Arts and in January 1947, Rex Goreleigh (1902-1986) became its first director. Sadly the organization closed after only eight years.

“Rex Goreleigh was a talented artist with a social conscience,” wrote Jorden Hillier, journalist for The Crisis. “For almost 40 years, he made and taught art in Princeton, first as Executive Director of Princeton Group Arts … and subsequently through his own Studio-on-the-Canal. … In 1933, while waiting on Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, then working on his controversial frescoes in Rockefeller Center, Goreleigh was invited by the artist to watch him work.  It was an experience he would later say ‘put him on the road to becoming an artist.'” (The Crisis 58, no 1, Jan 1951)

ppc92Soon after Goreleigh came to Princeton, Elmer Adler (1884-1962) and the all-white, all-male students of the Princeton Print Club, housed at 36 University Place, offered him one of their galleries for what would become annual exhibitions by the racially and sexually integrated Princeton Group Arts.

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The first show, entitled Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture. Work of Instructors of Princeton Group Arts Program, was held in January 1948, sponsored by the Princeton Print Club. Alden Wicks, Peter Cook, Rex Goreleigh, Joseph Brown, Eileen Hamilton, and Mr. and Mrs. H. Lester Cooke were among the artists whose work was shown. To open the exhibition, Adler arranged a tea for Goreleigh and the other artists, together with his students. The novelist, screenwriter, and feminist Ida Alexa Ross Wylie (1885-1959), who lived in nearby Skillman, New Jersey, was invited to give a talk focusing on the need for community participation in the arts.

In February of 1949, the second annual exhibition held at the Princeton Print Club included the work of Margot Einstein (wife of Albert Einstein), Janet T. Rogers, Francis Adams Comstock, Andre Girard, and many others. Posters for these exhibitions were serigraphs, each printed by hand. Several are preserved in the scrapbooks of the Princeton Print Club (seen here).

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In 1951, shortly before Adler closed 36 University Place and left Princeton, the Princeton Print Club sponsored a Princeton Group Arts show that featured the work of William Seitz (1914-1974). At the time, Seitz was enrolled in the University’s M.F.A. program, scandalously studying the contemporary movement known as Abstract Expressionism. He went on to become the first professor of modern art history at Princeton and later, curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions, Museum of Modern Art, New York from 1960 to 1970.
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