Congratulations to our colleagues at the Princeton University Art Museum, where the exhibition Frank Stella Unbound: Literature and Printmaking opened this weekend and can be seen through Sunday, September 23, 2018. The show features a number of books from our collections and highlights Stella’s inspiration from literature. Organized in conjunction with the 60th anniversary of the artist’s graduation as a member of the Class of 1958, the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville.
See above our three volume Moby Dick, with prints by Rockwell Kent, installed so you can see Stella’s responding print on the wall. Label copy gives the viewer a quote from the book’s text, rather than an art historical commentary.
“Frank Stella Unbound: Literature and Printmaking focuses on a revolutionary period in the artist’s printmaking career, between 1984 and 1999, when Stella executed four ambitious print series, each of which was named after a distinct literary work: the Passover song Had Gadya, a compilation of Italian folktales, the epic American novel Moby-Dick, and the illustrated The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. In the four series titled after these sources, Stella created prints of unprecedented scale and complexity, transforming his own visual language—as well as his working process in all media—and reaching a technical and expressive milestone in printmaking.”—PUAM press release.
Today I was introduced to one of the earliest pictures of a roller coaster. It first appeared in Gaudia Poetica by Frederick Calvert, sixth Baron Baltimore, 1770 [at the bottom], but the better printing is eight years later in John Glen King’s Letter to the Bishop of Durham, 1778 [at the top]. Here are some close-ups, along with a review of the book where it is found.
“The ingenious and learned Dr. King is guilty of what may be called literary teasing in his pamphlet, …But the description of the use of the flying mountains at Zarsko Sello, accompanied with an explanatory plate, is a greater curiosity than any we remember to have met with before, concerning this country. We cannot resist the temptation of giving the description, though it must appear imperfect without the plate, of which reason, we recommend the purchase of this very cheap publication.
‘Of all the winter diversions of the Russians the most favourite, and which is peculiar to them, seems to be that of siding down a hill. The late empress Elizabeth was so fond of this diversion, that, at her palace of Zarsko Sello, she had artificial mounts of a very singular construction, made for this purpose (of which I here give your lordship a plate.) These have been called by some Englishmen who have visited the spot, the Flying Mountains, and I do not know a phrase which approaches nearer to the Russian name.’
‘You will observe that there are five mounts of unequal heights; the first and highest is full thirty feet perpendicular altitude; the momentum with which they descend this, carries them over the second, which is about 5 or 6 feet lower, just sufficient to allow for the friction and resistance, and so on to the last, from which they are conveyed by a gentle descent, with nearly the same velocity, over a piece of water into a little island.’
‘These slides, which are about a furlong and a half in length, are made of wood, that they may be used in summer as well as in winter. The process is, two or four persons fit in a little carriage and one stands behind, for the more there are in it, the greater the swiftness with which it goes; it runs on castors and in grooves to keep it in its right direction, and it descends with a wonderful rapidity. Under the hills, is a machine worked by horses for drawing the carriages back again with the company in them. Such a work as this would have been enormous in most countries, for the labour and expense it cost, as well as the vast q1uantity of wood used in it.’” London Magazine, or, Gentleman’s Monthly intelligencer 47 (1778): 228-9.
John Glen King (1732-1787), A Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Durham: containing some observations on the climate of Russia, and the northern countries, with a view of the Flying Mountains at Zarsko Sello near St. Petersbourg (London: Printed for J. Dodsley, 1778). RHT copy: Presentation copy to David Garrick with inscription by author. RHT 18th-339
Frederick Calvert, Sixth Baron Baltimore (1731-1771), Gaudia poetica: Latina, Anglica et Gallica lingua composita ao. 1769 (Augustae: Litteris Späthianis, 1770). Engravings by Hubert François Gravelot, Jeremias Wachsmuth and Jacob Wangner. Includes folding plate “The Flying Mountains,” a railway in Catherine the Great’s garden at Tsarskoe Selo. Ex Oversize 3617.235.1770
Thanks to the recent donation by Hollie Powers Holt, we are the proud owners of a Louis Prang and Company chromolithograph after Benjamin Champney (1817-1907) entitled North Conway Meadows, 1870. The print is still in its original frame with the Prang stencil identification on the back, exactly as it would have been purchased and hung in the last quarter of the 19th century.
Benjamin Champney’s signature and date (1870) can be seen at the bottom right.
This print should not be confused with other similar harvest scenes by Champney. The best place to double check is the hay in the center, which in this view is already on the cart.
Louis Prang Company after Benjamin Champney (1817-1907), North Conway Meadows, ca. 1870. Varnished and framed chromolithograph on canvas. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process. Gift of Hollie Holt.
Alexandra Exter (1882-1949), Design for two theater costumes [possible design for the ballet Don Juan], ca. 1927. Pencil, watercolor, gouache on paper. Presented by Simon Lissim. RBSC Theater Collection – in process
Among a group of drawings being conserved and rehoused, this design was discovered that may have been created for the production of Don Juan given by Anna Pavlova’s company at the Opernhaus, Cologne in 1927.
The Oxford Art biography lists Exter as a “Russian painter and designer of Polish birth.” After traveling to Paris in 1908, she “became acquainted with Picasso, Braque, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob and with the Italian Futurists Filippo Marinetti, Giovanni Papini and Ardengo Soffici (with whom she shared a studio in 1914) . . . In 1924 Exter emigrated and settled in Paris, teaching with Fernand Léger and in her own studio.
. . . [Exter] worked extensively in the theatre and continued to experiment, beginning, at this time, to make inventive theatrical puppets. In 1929 she used tubes of light to create an elegant, almost dematerialized spatial setting for the ballet Don Juan . . . .”
The drawing comes into the department thanks to Exter’s colleague and biographer Simon Lissim (1900-1981). Raymond Lister described Lissim, “who belonged unmistakably to the twentieth century, was nevertheless a modern example of Renaissance man, for his achievements were spread over a wide spectrum with theatrical décor at one end and porcelain designs at the other. Between were paintings in gouache and scraperboard, and designs for crystal, cutlery and jewelry.”
Around 1941, Lissim settled in New York City and was appointed head of the Art Education Project in the New York Public Library, later joining City University of New York as a Professor in Art History.
See also:
Simon Lissim (1900-1981), Simon Lissim [with] Raymond Cogniat, Georges Lechevallier-Chevignard, Louis Réau (Paris: Éditions du Cygne, 1933). Illustrations include 16 color plates rendered by the pochoir process. Princeton copy is no. 35 in the Charles Rahn Fry Pochoir Collection. Graphic Arts Collection Oversize 2003-0377Q
Letter completely folded. Possible translation: A letter to me and you is easy to give. The postage is low, accept it eagerly. The content is about you, me, and everyone; the places we go, that is and means, O heart take notice!
First unfold
Second unfold
Third unfold
Side one
Side two
The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired this religious transformation letter, divided into nine panels each front and back, with rhyming couplets to match the engraved illustrations.
Scenes include Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden; the crucifixion; and an overall message of the transience of life. The work is described in the August 2, 1835 issue of the Allgemeine Kitchenzeitung, where it is called a wonderful new invention. The author writes, in part:
… Now you lift the lower and last cover of the letter, the same figures appeared, from the head to the loins in the same clothing, but from then on to the feet as the most hideous skeletons, with a few Symbols that are supposed to reinforce fear in the mind and imagination. For example, with a corpse lying in a coffin, eaten by greedy snakes seen everywhere …
Rare Books and Special Collections holds a number of similar books and prints–sometimes called Harlequinades or Turn-Ups or Metamorphosis or Transformation books–but this might be the first one in German. The English and French examples are much earlier. See a few more: https://www.princeton.edu/~graphicarts/2010/03/metamorphosis_cards.html. See also Cotsen collection, Print case LA / Box 11465710.
Ein Brief an mich und Dich ist cito abzugeben. Das Porto ist gering, nimm ihn begierig an. Der Inhalt zielt auf Dich auf mich und Jedermann, der Ort wohin her soll, der ist und heisst, O Herz merk’s eben!. [No Place, no printer, 1835]. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process
Thanks to those who responded with suggestions about where to find money in books. Dimitri Gondicas, Stanley J. Seeger Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies, The Council of the Humanities, and Lecturer in Classics at Princeton University pointed to this volume with 24 banknotes mounted on 9 pages. “The banknotes inside,” he writes, “are testimony of the rampant inflation during the WWII German Occupation of Greece.”
The anonymous author writes: “For us Greeks and the future generations the collection of bank notes and paper money put into circulation by the Italians and Germans will be a horrible nightmare and an uncontradicted proof of the hardships that our cruelly tried country has gone through. The Institute of Mining Credit worked out this collection as a symbol for one of Greece’s most heroic eras, which rivals its previous ones in magnitude. This collection represents one of the most important financial events of the most devastating war the world has ever gone through.”
Unfortunately, the bank notes are so gently tipped into the volume, many are already beginning to separate from the page. All except the final example are legitimate and rare.
Oikonomikē syntrivē tēs Hellados, Aprilios 1941-Noemvrios 1944 = Financial Breakdown of Greece, April 1941-November 1944 (Athens, Greece: The Establishment of Mining Credit Corporation, Scientific Section–Historical Collections, [1945?]). 2nd ed. At head of title: Hotan hoi Nazi kataktoun = When the Nazis conquer. On cover: Oikonomika gegonota tou deuterou Pankosmiou Polemou = Financial Facts of the World War II. Ex 2014-0277Q
The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired two Stanhopes, also called Bijoux Photomicroscopiques. Rene Dagron (1819-1900) patented these devices, using a variation of the process developed by John Benjamin Dancer (1812-1887) to affix images to a miniature magnifying convex lens. Dagron enhanced the novelty by hiding them inside pieces of jewelry, tiny monoculars, or other souvenirs.
Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) described the Stanhope in a piece titled “On the Photomicroscope,” The Photographic Journal, January 15, 1864:
Under the name of bijoux photomicroscopiques, M. Dagron, of Paris, sent to the Exhibition of 1861 a series of these beautiful little optical instruments, which consisted of a plano-convex lens of such a thickness that its anterior focus coincided with the plane side of the lens. By placing the eye behind the convex side, these photographs, invisible almost to the eye, were seen so distinctly and so highly magnified that they excited general admiration. M. Dagron had presented some of them to the Queen, who admired them greatly; and as he was the only exhibitor, he naturally expected that the ingenuity with which he had produced a new article of manufacture would have received a higher reward than ‘Honorable Mention.’ . . . In 1860 M. Dagron had taken out a patent in France for this combination of an elongated or cylinder lens with a photograph, under the name of Bijoux Photomicroscopiques. He placed the lens in brooches and other female ornaments; and the combination became so popular, and the sale so great, that fifteen opticians in Paris invaded the patent, and succeeded in reducing it.
The first newly acquired piece is a jeweled cross with lens at the center. When you look deep inside, you see a microscopic Lord’s Prayer.
The second Stanhope now in the Graphic Arts Collection is a tiny monocular, no more than two centimeters long, with a small ring so it can be attached to a watch chain or necklace.
If you look inside, you can see a tiny reproduction of the 1882 lithograph From the Cradle to the Grave. Scenes and Incidents in the Life of Gen. James A. Garfield, produced as a remembrance of the recently murdered President Garfield.
Stanhope with the miniature From the Cradle to the Grave. Scenes and Incidents in the Life of Gen. James A. Garfield (New York: J.W. Sheehy & Co.; printed by Mayer, Merkel & Ottmann, 1882). Miniature photograph of a lithograph with James A. Garfield (1831-1881) at the center, surrounded by his family and fifteen vignettes with scenes from Garfield’s life. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process.
Below is a reproduction of the original lithograph, a little easier to see.
In his Chicago Tribune obituary, Morton G. Neumann (1898-1985), is described as a “local cosmetics manufacturer who assembled one of the finest collections of 20th century art in the world.” Held on deposit at the National Gallery of Art for a brief time, the Neumann collection was eventually sold to pay the family’s tax bill. They barely mention the company that provided the wealth to collect Picassos and Miros.
Morton and Rose Neumann made their fortune selling perfumes, cosmetics and other grooming product targeted to African American customers under the labels Valmor, Sweet Georgia Brown, King Novelty, and Madam Jones. The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a group of 100 brightly designed product labels dating from 1930s and 1940s.
The eye-catching graphics are immediately recognizable once you are introduced to the product line, chiefly designed first by Charles C. Dawson (1889-1981) and later by Jay Jackson (1905-1954), both African American artists of great talent and reputation.
Neumann’s firm not only had a brick and mortar shop in Chicago’s southside but established an enormous mail-order trade, as well as door-to-door traveling sales. The company’s first headquarters on Cottage Grove Avenue doubled as a recording studio for the Valmor blues record label, and would later become an early home of the legendary Chess Records.
When the firm expanded, Neumann took over the block between S. Indiana Avenue and S. Prairie Avenue, where they remained into the 1970s.
When the British artist Damien Hirst began planning a work of art “with a story running through it” (think artists’ book), his first stop was the United States Treasury. One thousand $100 bills were obtained so the final three digits would correspond to the edition numbers: 000 to 999.
Each bill was rolled and hidden inside Robert Sabbag’s 1976 cult classic Snowblind, a story about the cocaine trade at that time. Hirst bound the books in mirrored boards and added an American Express credit card bookmark. The card is a facsimile, the bill is real.
How many other books come with money? How many libraries leave the money in place?
The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired Gertrude Stein’s Money (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1973), which comes with a real dollar bill on the cover [above]. The boxed zine North Drive Press #3 (2006) co-edited by Sara Greenberger and Matt Keegan came soon after this, with a dollar bill among the 37 contributions [below].
Can you think of other books with money?
Please send your suggestions to jmellby@princeton.edu.
As a member of the Future Library, conceived by the Scottish artist Katie Paterson, Princeton University Library will receive a new book by the Turkish novelist, public intellectual, and political commentator Elif Shafak in 2114.
The author will hand over her manuscript for the Future Library on Saturday June 2, 2018, in a ceremony within the Nordmarka Forest, Oslo, where four-year-old spruce saplings are growing. In 2114, the trees will be harvested and made into paper for the printing of 100 books.
Shafak is the fourth author to be chosen for this project, joining the Canadian author Margaret Atwood, who was the first to contribute a manuscript, British novelist David Mitchell, and the Icelandic poet, novelist, and lyricist Sjón.
If you can’t wait until 2114, you might read Three Daughters of Eve ([London] UK: Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2016). Firestone Library PS3619.H328 T47 2016, one of Shafak’s ten book in English.
